04-10-2004 • VOLUME 7 • NUMBER 37 • £2.60
WWW.ITWEEK.CO.UK
15 ENTERPRISE Better
controls for blades
25 CLIENT Palm OS backs
wireless and smartphones
36 MANAGEMENT IT changes
for new data archiving laws
CONTENTS
ENTERPRISEWEEK
Storage tools improve flexibility 15
Microsoft Data Protection Server 16
Service-oriented architecture kit 19
INTERNETWEEK
Will Google offer a browser?
21
Microsoft dot-Net versus J2EE 22
IT policy, child porn and the law 23
CLIENTWEEK
Intel amends wireless LAN plans 25
Are appliances the future of IT? 26
PC chips build in more security 27
NETWORKWEEK
O2 launches 3G for corporates 29
Video-over-IP surveillance systems 30
AirWave WLAN manager review 33
MANAGEMENTWEEK
Dell helps corporates to recycle 35
Growth in IT spending picks up 35
EC backs security standards
Madeline Bennett
new EC security agency will begin
work this week to encourage IT
vendors and users to support common standards to counter spiralling attacks.
EC official Michael Niebel, founder of
the European Network and Information
Security Agency (Enisa), said the unit would
monitor threats and share advice on best
practice. “We will be making recommendations on standards,” he said. However, he
pointed out that Enisa will not be an earlywarning agency like the US-based Cert.
Enisa will formally appoint Andrea Pirotti, vice-president of Marconi, as its executive director on Wednesday. One of his
first tasks will be to recruit about 30 technical experts from industry and academia
to form an advisory body, and to establish
the agency’s main goals for the coming year.
However, the head of IT security at a
major investment bank said the agency may
find it difficult to collect data from firms.
“When people are in the thick of a security
incident, they won’t want to share [data]
A
SECURITY THREATS INCREASE
UK firms suffering an attack
2004
2002
2000
1998
68%
44%
24%
18%
Source: DTI
with a [public agency] unless they have
found they get useful results.”
Experts believe the agency will ask more
vendors to certify their products under the
Common Criteria security certification
scheme sponsored by the UK, the US and
other governments. The scheme is designed
to offer vendors a single certification process, recognised across borders. Previously,
each country operated separate initiatives.
“The big question at last week’s Information Security Solutions Europe event was
how to get more Common Criteria products into industry,” said Roger Dean, head
of special projects at non-profit e-business
organisation Eema. “There’s a need for
more awareness.”
According to the UK government’s Com-
munications-Electronics Security Group,
which operates the scheme in this country,
“The use of certified products and systems
provides a high level of confidence that claims
being made about security functionality have
been independently verified and tested.”
Bob Jones, managing director of security firm Equiinet, said,“Independent certification of products is pretty essential as the
majority of customers have no way to make
a judgement.” But he warned that for nonsecurity products, Common Criteria has
been less enthusiastically adopted. “[Vendors] are more concerned with proving
their product does what it says on the box
than proving that it is also secure.”
The head of IT security at the investment bank said independent evaluations
are worthwhile, to eliminate products that
are insecure or to get them fixed. “I’ll use
external evaluations as one component of
my own evaluation – but not depend on
them,” he added. “The danger is that it
becomes little more than a marketing tool.”
Email security, p6 Leader, p12
PCs gain hardware security, p27
Thumbs up
for T42 login
Firms weigh RFID specs
Selected IBM ThinkPad T42 laptops will
get a built-in fingerprint scanner later this
month, to let staff
use fingerprints to
New models boot up or log in to
due this month Windows.The models also have hard
disk encryption and extensions to
IBM’s Rescue and Recovery tools to
patch Windows without booting up.
Biometrics, p6 IBM laptops, p25
L
IT Week staff
eading vendors of radio frequency identification (RFID) wireless tag systems
met last week to promote common specifications for the emerging technology, as a
new poll showed the lack of such standards
is the biggest obstacle to wider take-up.
Callum Moy of Unisys, a founding
member of RFID standards body EPCglobal, which hosted the US conference, said
that European standards have already been
agreed for the data structure of tags, power
output and frequency.
“But there are some frustrating differences between the US and Europe,” he
added. European RFID standards stipulate
that devices here will operate at lower
power than those in the US. As a result the
performance of European tags and readers
is likely to be inferior, leading to higher
costs for businesses.
But firms are still pioneering various forms of the nascent technology. Last week
Tesco began to roll out radio
barcode technology across
its 98 Tesco Extra stores to
track high-value items bet Moy: specs differ
in US and Europe
New route
for IP calls
Emerging IP telephony services could
make it simpler for firms to realise the
cost savings promised by routing voice
calls over IP networks.
Voice over broadband specialist
OnInstant last week announced a deal
with carrier Level 3 Communications
to provide a bridge connecting IP calls
to the public telephony networks.
The service offers rates of 2p a
minute or less for fixed-line connections and 10p a minute for IP calls to
mobiles, with a FollowMe feature that
can forward calls placed to IP phones
to analogue or mobile numbers.
Antony Walker, head of government
advisory body the Broadband Stakeholders Group, said voice over IP will
see huge growth in the coming year “as
firms and consumers realise the benefits and savings they can make”.
BT forecasts that most phonecalls
will be made via IP by 2008.
IP telephony, p10 O2 3G, p29
ween its distribution centres and shops.
Under the scheme, Tesco will only store
a barcode-style identification number on
each tag – much less data than RFID tags
are able to store. “We are aiming for the
industry standard of five cents per tag, and
storing only unique item numbers enables
the cost per tag to be driven down,” said
Colin Cobain, group IT director at Tesco.
A recent survey found many UK firms
are still put off RFID by interoperability
problems and high costs, however. Sixtyseven percent said the lack of a common
standard was the main obstacle. A further 22
percent said cost was the main barrier, and
11 percent said the main hurdle was the conflicting demands of retailers, according to the
poll by internet specialist Ross Systems.
Giants push deeper into RFID, p8
NEWS INSIDE: CRM Hosting, p4 • WINDOWS Upgrades, p5 • CHIPS Multimedia, p5 • INTRANET Search tools, p6 • EMAIL Security, p8 • ITANIUM HP, p10