Stories by Bob Francis

Cisco's black eye at Black Hat

There I was, running late to the Black Hat conference because of the weather , riding the long escalator to the third floor of Caesar's Palace in Vegas when I heard someone at the top of the stairs yell to someone behind me on the escalator.

Dell adds Exchange services

Dell on Thursday announced a new professional services program that helps companies upgrade to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

Security vendors enter vulnerability bidding war

As security personnel met at this week's Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, there was easy money to be made at the security vulnerability table.

Rethinking the data security box

Computer security can be a difficult problem to get a handle on, so sometimes it takes some creative thinking. I would say it involves "thinking outside the box," but that's a little too trite and overused.

Cast Iron offers new application integration appliances

Cast Iron Systems this week released two new appliances for data-integration projects, with one designed to provide a high-availability fail-over option.

Security vendors respond to heightened concerns

Recent security breaches involving universities, credit card processors, and financial institutions are making security a hot topic, and security companies are busy upgrading their product lines -- either by acquiring new product lines or upgrading current products.

Dell adds high-performance switch line

Dell on Monday introduced a new series of high-performance PowerConnect switches with new security capabilities and enterprise-class management features.

Another week, more lost confidential records

It's beginning to get a little too routine. Nearly every week, some well-known, highly respected financial institution a) loses, b) misplaces, or c) has in its possession stolen confidential consumer financial data.

Cisco adds intelligence to network gear

Cisco is embarking on a new direction as it announced Tuesday details of its first move into the messaging middleware business with its Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit.

Sun, EMC bolster storage lineups

EMC and Sun Microsystems Monday released updated and new systems designed for the growing content-addressable storage market.

Tacit upgrades WAN acceleration line

Tacit Networks on Tuesday added e-mail acceleration, distributed software management capabilities, network and Web services, increased performance features, and flexible product packaging options to its wide-area network (WAN) optimization products.

Oracle, IBM update identity management packages

Oracle and IBM on Tuesday both re-enforced their identity management software offerings with new features and functions.

Security's weakest links

Database security is simple and can be covered in three words: encrypt, encrypt encrypt, reports Bob Francis

Security's 'simple' truth

It all sounds so simple. You save your data to a tape cartridge. When you have enough cartridges, you put them in a box and send them off to be stored. And yet, we can't seem to go a week without some company reporting another -- usually boneheaded -- data loss. This time it's Time Warner wearing the dunce cap: the media giant lost 40 tapes with personal information on about 600,000 current and former employees as the tapes were in transit to a storage facility.

EMC's Invista eyes storage virtualisation

EMC has joined the storage virtualisation pack, unveiling its Invista Network Storage Virtualization Platform at its annual user conference.