NSA officer: Defense systems are at risk from internal threat
Defense Department personnel pose a greater potential threat to DOD's information systems than hackers on the outside, a senior National Security Agency official said recently. "For many years, we pursued a strategy of isolating our sensitive information systems from outsiders by using strongly encrypted and isolated communications networks," said Michael Jacobs, NSA's deputy director of information systems security.
EPA's almost set to reorganize IT shop
The Environmental Protection Agency will centralize its information technology decision-making under a national program manager who will oversee three IT offices. But a key question is still unanswered: Will this program manager be an appointee or a career civil servant? The agency's top managers have not yet decided, chief information officer Alvin Pesachowitz said.
Intel tags Pentium III chips with optional IDs
Intel Corp.'s Pentium III processor, set for release late this month, has a built-in serial number to ease the chores of LAN asset and configuration management. But the serial number will arrive software-disabled in the new Pentium III servers and workstations. Mobile Pentium III notebook processors that come out later this year also will have built-in processor IDs, and Intel's security road map extends beyond that, spokesman George Alfs said.
Combining voice and data traffic is cost-efficient, FEMA says
FEMA has been testing voice-over-data products for disaster field offices in the Caribbean and the southern United States since the summer. "The whole experience is very promising," said Bill Anderson, team leader in the Development and Implementation Branch of FEMA's Information Technology Division. "The cost benefit is impressive."
Bell Labs pushes gigabit wireless link as a way to boost throughput fourfold
High-powered, fiber-optic amplifiers can transmit up to 2.5 Gbps over distances as far as 1.5 miles without wires. That is a fourfold throughput increase over current commercial wireless products, which are limited to 622 Mbps and short wavelengths. The new amplifiers boost power output tenfold, so that the longer wavelengths of fiber-optic transmissions can also work for point-to-point wireless, said Jim Auborn, head of communications technology for Bell Labs, the R&D arm of Lucent Technologies Inc.
Navy hospital moves to NT
Lt. Kevin Darnell, the hospital's CIO, says one of the biggest challenges was integrating 50 legacy medical apps. Between June and mid-August last year, Lt. Kevin Darnell managed a migration to Microsoft Exchange and Windows NT Workstation 4.0 from three different e-mail systems and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
Network Associates buys up rival security, management products
A string of acquisitions during the past three years has made Network Associates Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., into an enterprise security and management conglomerate. Network Associates gobbled up Cyber-Media Inc., Dr. Solomon's Software Inc., Magic Solutions Inc., McAfee Associates Inc., Network General Corp. and Trusted Information Systems Inc. As independent companies, all had federal users as customers.
ENTERPRISE COMPUTING
Will the government see readiness only in black and white? Or will it accept shades of gray for commercial products such as Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, which Microsoft Corp. calls "compliant, with minor issues"? Last month a panel of experts dissected legal issues between the federal government and its information technology contractors.
BREAKING NEWS
The software giant, which sells more than 800 products, including many dated Cobol and Assembler programs, will send its most experienced engineers at no cost except travel expenses, said Michael Miller, senior vice president and general manager for North American sales. "A lot of our clients will be going through crises because of a stone left unturned,'' Miller said.
GSA Web site offers Dolch portable PCs
Ruggedized Dolch Computer Systems Inc. portable computers are available for online purchase through the General Services Administration's Advantage Web site at http://www.fss.gsa.gov. Dolch of Fremont, Calif., makes Intel Portable Add-in Computers, DataView and SmartView flat-panel displays, and other computer products. The Defense Department used the multislot PACs in Somalia and Operation Desert Storm. NASA's space shuttle program has used Dolch flat-panel displays. Other federal users include the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Marines
Marines plan barrage of tests to check systems for 2000 readiness
"The close fight that we're dealing with right now is the year 2000," said the commander of Marine Forces-Pacific at the recent Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet Asia-Pacific '98 conference. The Marine Corps' Pacific units have more than 26,000 PCs, ranging from 286s to Pentium II machines, said Fulford, who commands more than 80,000 Marines and sailors at 12 installations in the region.
App spots PC flaws, tells you how to fix 'em
TEST DRIVE Pros and cons: + Free + Simple Web and client-based interface + Low resource requirements – Can't download updates for every product you might have Real-life requirements: Win9x or NT, 386 or faster processor, 8M of RAM, 2M free storage, Internet access for updates
Alchemy system can convert PC files into Web gold
Information Management Research Inc. has Web-enabled its document database manager, which handles large volumes of public records at several government sites. The Englewood, Colo., company designed the Alchemy Web Server and Alchemy 6.0 to be set up quickly without custom coding for relational database and storage devices. The Alchemy Web server is compatible with Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Internet Information Server and Microsoft Active Server Pages. Alchemy 6.0, the document database manager, runs under NT.
ViaGrafix's CAD software makes drafting easy to learn | GCN PRoduct Review
Throw away the T square and plastic triangles. Stop drawing lines that are too thick or thin, too dark or light. I used to commit all those errors in a single drawing. That's why I turned to computer-aided design software. DesignCAD Pro 2000 from ViaGrafix is a vector-based, 2-D and 3-D CAD package with nearly a decade of development behind it, and the system requirements are quite modest. When I
IP gains support as sole network protocol
Network traffic is shifting from mostly voice to mostly data. The Internet Protocol is on the verge of communications dominance, based on the product demonstrations and sessions at the ComNet conference in Washington last month. As John Chambers, president and chief executive officer of Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., said: Who wants or needs any network protocol except IP?
Translation app lets DOD, South Korea talk shop
HONOLULU—Handheld PCs running a translation application are helping U.S. and South Korean forces deployed in Korea bridge a language gap. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory developed the software that lets users speak either English or Korean into a microphone-equipped PC, which then produces a translation. The translation app is put to good use, Defense Department officials said late last year at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet Asia-Pacific '98 conference.
VHA shaves data storage costs with CD-ROM
The Veterans Health Administration's decision to store monthly accounting information on CD-ROMs instead of paper will save taxpayers $420,000 a year, a VHA official said. VHA began sending CD-ROMs to 146 VHA sites nationwide in October. The CD-ROMs let the agency's financial management employees access end-of-the-month accounting reports on their desktop PCs instead of sorting through boxes of paper.
Calendar date has naysayers seeing nothing but nines
Year 2000 hucksters lately have begun proclaiming Sept. 9, 1999, as a day of doom. They say computers will read the date as 9999—the hexadecimal code for "end of file." Will 9999 prove to be a computer's equivalent of 666? No, said Intel Corp.'s Doug Steffen, who works on the chip maker's PC motherboard team.
Too cheap to meter
You've seen funny lists of wrong predictions made long ago by famous people, such as IBM Corp.'s Thomas Watson's on how few computers the world would need. One of my favorites is that of a champion of nuclear power whosaid in the 1950s that electricity so generated would be too cheap to meter.
Desktop Computing | New Products
| New Products Kenwood Technologies' Multi-beam CD-ROM drive can transfer up to 7 megabytes/sec, which means users can load and run applications from CD-ROM nearly as fast as they can from hard drives. The IDE drive splits the laser beam seven ways to read seven tracks at once, then combines the data and sends it to the computer, said Grady Tucker, federal sales manager for the Kenwood USA Corp. subsidiary.
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