RSS
Follow us on:

Grant Gross, IDG News Service, Nancy Weil

Most Recent Posts by Grant Gross, IDG News Service, Nancy Weil

Gartner Predicts Huge Rise in Monitoring of Employees' Social Media Use

Corporations are starting to embrace technologies used to monitor employee Internet use, with 60 percent expected to watch workers' social media use for security breaches by 2015, according to a new report from Gartner.

Less than 10 percent of companies now monitor their employees' use of Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media sites for security breaches, although many companies monitor social media for brand management and marketing purposes, said the report, released Tuesday.

10 Questions for Cormant CFO Catherine Goodison

Name: Catherine Goodison

Catherine Goodison

Lawmakers Call on DOJ to Reopen Investigation Into Google Wi-Fi Spying

Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries.

Representatives Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, called on the DOJ to fully investigate Google's actions for potential violations of federal wiretapping laws. In light of a recently released U.S. Federal Communications Commission report on Wi-Fi snooping by Google Street View cars, the DOJ should take a new look at the company's actions, wrote the lawmakers, in a Thursday letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

GAO: US Gov't IT Reform Slower Than Claimed

The efforts of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration to streamline and improve the government's IT systems aren't proceeding as quickly as officials have suggested, a federal auditor said Thursday.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has made "solid progress" toward IT reform, but officials there have oversold their progress, said David Powner, director of IT management issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

10 Questions for Imperva CTO Amichai Shulman

Name: Amichai Shulman

Age: 43

Obama Orders Agencies to Optimize Web Content for Mobile

U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered all major government agencies to make two key services available on mobile phones within a year, in an effort to embrace a growing trend toward Web surfing on mobile devices.

Obama, in a directive issued Wednesday, also ordered federal agencies to create websites to report on their mobile progress. The websites are due within 90 days.

Groups Launch Gigabit-per-second Broadband Project

An Ohio startup company has raised US$200 million to fund gigabit-per-second broadband projects in six university communities across the U.S., the company announced Wednesday.

Gigabit Squared will work with the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U), a coalition of 30 universities focused on improved broadband, to select six communities in which to build the ultra-fast broadband networks, they said. The two organizations will select winning communities between November and the first quarter of 2013, Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared, said during a press conference.

Study: Patriot Act Gives US Government No Special Access to Cloud Data

An often-repeated concern that the U.S. Patriot Act gives the U.S. government unequaled access to personal data stored on cloud services is incorrect, with several other nations enjoying similar access to cloud data, according to a study released Wednesday.

The governments of several other countries, including the U.K., Germany, France, Japan and Canada, have laws in place allowing them to obtain personal data stored on cloud computing services, said the study, by Hogan Lovells, an international law firm that focuses on government regulations and other topics.

VoIP Provider Files Net Neutrality Complaint With FCC

A Florida VoIP carrier has filed a net neutrality complaint against a Georgia utility and broadband provider, after the utility accused the VoIP firm of theft of service for using its network to deliver voice service without paying for it.

L2Networks filed the net neutrality complaint with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, the first formal complaint since the FCC passed net neutrality rules in December 2010. L2Networks' filing comes after the telecommunications manager for the City of Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission, a municipal utility in Georgia, filed a theft-of-service complaint with the Dougherty County Police Department in Albany earlier this year.

Education Group: Schools Need 100 Mbps per 1,000 Broadband Users

Schools in the U.S. will need broadband speeds of 100 Mbps per 1,000 students and staff members by the 2014-15 school year in order to meet a growing demand for Web-based instruction and a skyrocketing number of student-owned Web devices, according to a new report by a trade group representing state education agencies.

The report, The Broadband Imperative, recommends schools increase their broadband speeds to 1 Gbps per 1,000 students and staff by 2017-18. Internal WANs connecting schools within districts should be 1 Gbps by 2014-15 and 10 Gbps by 2017-18, said the report, released Monday by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA).

FTC Appoints Privacy Advocate as Adviser

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has hired Paul Ohm, a privacy advocate and critic of current online privacy practices, as a senior privacy adviser for consumer protection and competition issues affecting the Internet and mobile services.

Ohm, a University of Colorado Law School professor, will take a leave of absence from the school to serve in the FTC's Office of Policy Planning. The office focuses on long-range competition and consumer-protection policy efforts, and it advises FTC staff on cases raising complex policy and legal issues.

10 Questions for BroadSoft CFO James Tholen

Name: James Tholen

Age: 53

Subscribe to the Daily Technology News Newsletter - 7 days a week

See All Newsletters »
Latest News
Today's Special Offers