Symantec issued its second annual report on IT risk management. Key findings from “IT Risk Management Report” that surveyed 405 IT professionals include: IT professionals are adopting a more balanced, less security-centric view of IT risk—more of them now see availability risk as critical or serious than any other element. Compliance risk is more than security risk formalized by law: data breaches, outages and disasters may cause irrecoverable losses of customer loyalty, revenue, and company value. Reactive or annual project-oriented IT risk management is better than nothing. But IT professionals’ expectations of monthly incidents in a constantly-changing global and regional business and technology environment call for a continuous, process-oriented approach. Best-in-class organizations deploy controls balanced across strategic, support, delivery, and…

As it stands, the Google-led OpenSocial has very little, if anything, to do with data portability. That’s the view of Marc Canter, a long time advocate of open standards and data portability, and one in which I’m inclined to agree. It seems that almost everybody got a little carried away about what OpenSocial really stands for, falling for Google’s attempt to outmaneuver Facebook and paint the latter as the big bad wolf of data lock-in. Except OpenSocial isn’t really designed to give users the ability to move their data from one social network to another. Instead, it’s about standardizing the development of ‘widgets’ (sometimes also called ‘gadgets’), mini-apps that can interact with a subset of data on each of the…

Amazon’s fourth quarter results had a little bit of everything for its various observers: Sales were impressive and the outlook wasn’t bad, but worries about profit margins are worrisome. But amid all the talk about consumer demand, growth abroad and adding third party sellers to Amazon’s platform the “other” line on the company’s breakdown of revenue is far more interesting. Why focus on “other” revenue when the fourth quarter tally was a mere $111 million, up from $81 million a year ago? That other line, which includes Amazon’s Web services, is the future of Amazon. You won’t hear much about that grab bag of sales from Wall Streeters today (see Techmeme). Why would you? In the context of Amazon’s overall…

Garmin made a surprise announcement last night of a new iPhone competitor–it even has “iphone” in the name. Nuviphone (rhymes with “Moviephone”) has an impressive feature set, including: Quad-band GSM mobile phone 3G HSDPA 3.5-inch touchscreen interface HTML Web browser WiFi Multi-network instant messaging MMS media messaging A suite of Google applications, and Tons of GPS capabilities. Nuviphone is based on Garmin’s proprietary OS and according to Electronista the Google applications allow it to search for local businesses, check traffic patterns and weather. Photos (or videos) taken with the built-in camera are automatically geotagged for positioning in location-based services. Garmin hasn’t announced the price, availability or carrier partner yet (heck, it’s not even on their Web site) but expect…

The Zune Car Pack FM transmitter is an attractive, useful way to listen to your Zune in your car.

The Zune Car Pack FM transmitter is an attractive, useful way to listen to your Zune in your car.

Amazon.com’s march into digital distribution of content continues–this time with plans to acquire Audible for $300 million. In a statement on Thursday, Amazon said it will acquire Audible, which provides digital spoken word content–audio versions of books, newspapers and other programming. Audible offers more than 80,000 programs. If you couple Audible with Amazon’s march into DRM-free music distribution the e-commerce giant is building quite a content arsenal. Obviously, Amazon’s Kindle (all resources) is going to be one key way this content is distributed. When Amazon reported earnings last night (Techmeme roundup) it noted that it was scrambling to keep up with Kindle demand. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said on the company’s earnings conference call: Kindle is, in terms of demand,…

Notable headlines: George Ou: Even SSL Gmail can get sidejacked Robin Harris: The data center on your desktop Janice Chen@PMA: Live from Las Vegas: Sony announces two more DSLRs under $900 David Morgenstern: Is Apple under attack from a whisper campaign? Jason O’Grady: Apple TV update delayed two weeks Photos: Vista’s first year Dan Farber@Demo: PCMobilizr: Access your PC from a mobile phone Eyealike tackles video copyright problem Visible Measures and TubeMogul measure video usage iLeonardo taps into the wisdom of the community Cozimo debuts Web collaboration for creative projects Delver debuts socially connected search engine StackSafe unveils virtualized staging and testing solution Sterna launches Business Positioning System Silobreaker pitches ‘insight as a service’ Six Apart adds activity streams to…

Rackspace announced that the company was going to add hosting virtual servers to its list of services for those needing access to a physical server without having to acquire the server, necessary software and hire an IT administrative staff. It will be interesting to learn how successful this offering is. Here’s how Rackspace describes their new offering Rackspace®, a leading provider of hosted IT services, today announced its virtualization initiative, starting with the enterprise-class support of dedicated virtualized servers. Virtualization is the newest service offering signaling Rackspace’s shift to IT hosting, transforming traditional IT functions into consumable services via the web. As more enterprises transition from purchasing in-house computing assets to leveraging service providers, Rackspace now offers a suite of…

When Robert Graham demonstrated how Web 2.0 wasn’t safe at last year’s Blackhat, it was thought that at least the SSL mode (HTTPS) of Google Gmail would be spared from sidejacking.  That presumption now appears to be false according to this updated blog posting from Graham.  Even with SSL enabled, Gmail sessions can still be hijacked by Graham’s Hamster and Ferret (or less easily with Wireshark and Mozilla’s cookie editor). Sidejacking is a term Graham uses to describe his session hijacking hack that can compromise nearly all Web 2.0 applications that rely on saved cookie information to seamlessly log people back in to an account without the need to reenter the password.  By listening to and storing radio signals from…