News

• FCC ruling on 800MHz band a boon for Sprint

  The U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved a rule change for part of the 800MHz band at a meeting on Thursday, opening the door for Sprint Nextel to use the band for its 4G LTE network.

• Coding contest shows how big data can improve health care

  A recent coding competition in the Boston area brought together IT professionals, medical workers and others with an interest in health IT to show how data analytics can improve health care.

• 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.

• Up-and-Coming Tech Jobs

  Any study of the IT labor market is likely to find that project managers and business analysts are in demand, but what about cloud transformation officers?

• Hospital system pursues identity-management Holy Grail

  It's an ideal in identity management: a centralized role-based access control system that supports single-sign-on (SSO) user access to authorized applications tied into the human resources systems for automated provisioning and de-provisioning, and the ability to integrate physical-security identity badges for room access.

• U.S.-Israel project with Motorola leads to security-hardened industrial control system

  SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The security associated with industrial control systems (ICS) is facing heavy criticism this week at the ICS Joint Working Group 2012 Spring Conference, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS is concerned cyberattacks could disrupt America's energy, water and manufacturing facilities.

• Security of industrial control systems questioned at DHS conference

  SAVANNAH, GA. -- Operators of America's vital power, water and manufacturing facilities use industrial control systems (ICS) to manage them, and the security of these systems, increasingly linked with Microsoft Windows and the Internet, is now under intense scrutiny because of growing awareness that they could be attacked and cause massive disruptions.

• 10 questions for ideeli CTO Mark Uhrmacher

  Name: Mark Uhrmacher

• DHS: Gas pipeline industry under significant ongoing cyberattack

  SAVANNAH, Ga. -- There is now an ongoing and massive cyberattack targeting the American gas-pipeline industry, aimed at giving the attacker a way to gather sensitive information by compromising business systems and possibly even subverting industrial control systems. The Department of Homeland Security's investigative division, called the ICS-CERT, says it's taking the somewhat unusual step of issuing an alert and speaking publicly about it to heighten awareness of a dangerous situation.

• MasterCard's PayPass Wallet will span online, mobile, in-store shopping

  MasterCard WorldWide announced a digital wallet on Monday that consumers will be able to use for purchases in stores, on the Web and on their mobile phones.

• The Grill: Arthur Langer turns the IT education model on its head

  Arthur M. Langer is chairman and founder of Workforce Opportunity Services, a nonprofit that uses an outsourcing model to train economically disadvantaged youth and match them with hard-to-fill IT positions. Langer's "skills first" approach stresses getting vocational training and a job upfront, and then gradually fulfilling general education requirements part time to finish a degree in five to six years -- leaving students with no debt. And since many families today can't afford the cost of college tuition, Langer's model is one that could have much broader appeal.

• Technical problems disrupt Euronext trading in Amsterdam

  Online trading in options and futures at NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam was disrupted for hours on Monday morning due to unspecified "technical problems," the stock exchange said.

• Target to stop selling Amazon Kindles in its stores

  Target plans to stop selling Kindle e-readers in its brock-and-mortar stores after seeing buyers test the devices in its showrooms only to later buy them online from Amazon.

• HCL CEO Vineet Nayar: Outsourcing is dead, and there's nothing innovative in cloud technology

  The customer always comes first. Except when it comes to HCL, the $6 billion Indian outsourcing -- make that co-sourcing -- giant led by CEO Vineet Nayar, who literally wrote the book on a philosophy known as 'employees first, customer second.' In this latest installment of our CEO Interview Series, Nayar spoke with IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant about how that philosophy is fueling HCL's rapid growth and why more CIOs ought to consider adopting it. Nayar also discussed how HCL has set its sights beyond competing with other Indian outsourcers like Infosys and Wipro and is squarely targeting what he believes are the many unhappy customers of services giants like IBM, Accenture and CSC. The outspoken Nayar took shots at the 'fear psychosis' created by services firms in trying to peddle their offerings and used a barnyard epithet to describe public cloud computing, which he claims isn't ready for prime time. He also outlined HCL's aggressive plans for hiring locally in the U.S. and Europe, and defended the company's use of the controversial H-1B visa program. In addition, Nayar talked about the new goals for IT departments in 2012 and beyond, and explained why treating mobile as a technology 'misses the point.'

• White House threatens veto of CISPA bill

  The White House today threatened a veto of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) if the bill reaches President Obama's desk in its present form.