More on NetGuards and TechCorps... US House of Representatives passes digital tech corps bill. The objective of the legislation is to build up the expertise of government IT workers by allowing them to obtain private sector employment, and to give private-sector workers an opportunity to volunteer on government projects. (Computer World, 11 Apr) New web services security specifications developed. Microsoft, IBM and VeriSign have teamed to create security specifications for Web services. The three companies will release a new specification, called WS-Security, which will encrypt information and ensure that the data being passed between companies remains confidential. The companies, which are announcing the new security initiative at Microsoft's Tech Ed developer conference, also plan to build five more security specifications in the next 12 to 18 months that will provide additional security measures that businesses may need for Web services. (ZDNET News, 11 Apr) Software company to stop viruses at Web pages. Web-software company Inktomi announced that it has signed a deal with Symantec to include the security company's antivirus technology in Inktomi's caching software. The company hopes the deal will block a relatively new path that viruses have into corporate networks: Web pages. The software will scan any object from a Web site for malicious code before caching that object to Inktomi's Traffic Edge Security Edition server software, which serves pages to employees' browsers and also saves pages for easy recall. By only caching clean content, and not potential viruses, the antivirus software can prevent malicious code from finding its way into a company from a traditionally unmonitored source. (ZDNet News, 11 Apr) Judge tentatively approves PG&E's disclosure statement. A federal bankruptcy judge tentatively approved a major component of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s reorganization plan on 11 April, allowing California's largest utility to continue its efforts to emerge from debt and escape state oversight. PG&E hopes to transfer $8 billion of power plants, transmission lines and thousands of acres of land into new, federally regulated companies under the umbrella of its parent company. The transfers would allow PG&E to charge market prices for the electricity it generates at its power plants and borrow more money to pay the $13.5 billion debt it claims. (Associated Press, 11 Apr) Break-in at water treatment facility prompts testing. The Dunkard Valley Water Treatment Plant in Greensboro, Pennsylvania was broken into, but preliminary testing shows the water was not tampered with. None of the authority's 1,200 customers were in danger. Several thousand gallons of water at the Dunkard Valley plant were to be dumped as a precaution, and customers are being supplied water from another facility. (Associated Press, 11 Apr) Red Hat to standardize its security warnings affecting Linux. Red Hat has announced it will standardize its warnings of security problems with the Linux operations system, using the Mitre Corporation's Common Vulnerability Exposures system (CVE). The move makes it easier to catalog and search for security issues. (ZDNet News, 10 Apr)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun May 26 2002 - 11:40:20 PDT