Topic: Security

Everyone has too many distractions and too many fires to put out. How can you stay aware of the status of your systems and prioritize events that interrupt your day? Conrad Albrecht-Buehler presents "Heed": Simpler than a dashboard, but more informative. Less disruptive than an alarm, it helps you keep an eye on your systems and gives you a more usable warning when things are going to blow!

Cloud computing can be a powerful tool in academic research but the costs associated with commercial implementations and the established hardware available at most universities has left a gap in the development of solutions for academic environments. Join Rich Wolski, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbra, as he discusses the challenges involved with building an open source project that gets scientists' heads into the (computing) cloud.

Christine Peterson is a founder and Vice-President of Foresight Institute, and focuses effort on educating the public on nanotechnology issues. In this emotionally-charged presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Peterson lays out the potential privacy concerns of using nanotechnology and closed-source software to monitor for a future terrorist attack.

Andre' DiMino of the Shadowserver Foundation discusses the darker side of the Internet and how Shadowserver is working to gather, track, and report on malware, botnet activity, and electronic fraud. In addition to giving its background, he talks about methodology and presents examples of some of the major security issues and how the problems are being solved.

As our lives increasingly straddle the physical and the virtual worlds, the management of identity becomes increasingly crucial from both a business and a social standpoint. John Clippinger, Kaliya Hamlin, and Reid Hoffman examine how online identity can foster relationships and deepen value creation. They discuss OpenID, including how America Online has chosen to adopt it, and answer questions related to such issues as anonymity and restricting information.

Sony's Blu-Ray defeats HD-DVD, but will downloadable movies make that victory moot? On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, targeted trojan horse attacks are a growing security threat and have expanded the spyware vocabulary. Also, an interview with Ash Nehru of UnitedVisualArtists on their interactive light exhibits.

Since data is the raw material of the information economy, it is increasingly important that it is properly controlled by organizations. Data governance is a quality control discipline for assessing, managing, using, improving, monitoring, maintaining, and protecting organizational information. Steven Adler, Program Director of IBM Data Governance, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the increasingly important issue.

"Practice safe VoIP," is Dan York's appeal to the new entrants in the digital telephony landscape. In a spicy, fictional anecdote, CISSP's Director of Emerging Communication Technology cleverly reveals the possible security vulnerabilities VoIP networks are amenable to. Like all happy tales, in the end, the bad guys lose; VoIP security tools are to the rescue. But in real life, Dan warns, the potential threats are only increasing.

Jeff Jonas of IBM explains enterprise intelligence by using his experience providing security in the gambling industry. When data is kept in separate silos, important connections can be overlooked. Jeff outlines the method he uses to manage connections in multiple large datasets.

Can consumers and social networkers trust the security and privacy of information they share on line? How can companies manage their brands to earn customer confidence? Lise Buyer moderates this astute panel of experts from business, the law and academia as they look at what it means to be trustworthy in the digital age.