Heard the bad news over your VoIP communications? Ottawa-based VoIPshield Systems is warning that media stream attacks could hit Microsoft Office Communications Server, Office Communicator and Windows Live Messenger. Microsoft estimates over 250 million computers worldwide run those applications, so this represents a potentially gaping security hole.
Why does it matter? Hackers can disrupt phone service, eavesdrop on private calls and of course steal private customer information.
VoIPshield has some pretty decent videos demonstrating how a hacker might be able to cause a breach. Will organizations be any more proactive about this threat than the hazards to networks and web applications? I'd like to be optimistic...
In related news, there's an excellent roundup of top 10 mistakes IT people in SMBs make. Read this BEFORE you set up your network.
Of course we would be greatly concerned about companies using or selling our private information. We're so terribly concerned... that we're giving it away for free.
At the Insight Internet Law conference that happened this week in downtown Vancouver, James Bond (the lawyer with Lang Michener LLP, not the spy with MI5) pointed out the strange disconnect between what people say about online privacy and what we actually do. He cited a Pew Internet Project study from November 5 showing:
Yet many of us are still giving in to the convenience of free web apps for work and staying in touch with our friends... and we typically don't even bother reading the contract before signing up (Have you ever read the Facebook terms-of-use contract? How about iTunes?)
Bond points out that the increasing ability of governments to obtain any private information they like a la the US Patriot Act doesn't bode well for their ability to protest behavioral tracking in the private sphere, given what they're doing.
The only conclusion that is easily drawn here is that we can't reasonably have an expectation of privacy on the Internet, if such a thing ever existed.
Lang Michener has been a leader in Canada’s legal profession for more than 80 years. Our national firm has 200-plus dynamic professionals who... [more]
Twenty million households in the USA have done away with landlines, using their cell phones as their default phones. But old habits can be hard to break and some might miss the convenience of receiving calls through their old landline.
Calgary-based Xtreme Technologies Corporation has launched XLink, which routes up to three cell phones through your old landline, even if you've already abandoned regular phone service (or set up in addition to your existing landline service). The landline phone can be enabled to use distinct rings for each cell phone, so nobody has to become a receptionist for their roommate or colleague. The product also comes with an optional long-distance service. Skype support is coming in 2009.
For those thinking of giving up their regular landline or who are regretting doing so, this service seems to offer a pretty good compromise between landline-plus-cell or fully mobile for the home or office.
Xtreme Technologies is an electronics design and manufacturing company and the leader in Cellular Gateways and Bluetooth Docking Stations. The new... [more]
Ottawa-based non-profit Precarn Incorporated announced $1.9 million in funding last week to help 12 companies across Canada bring their tech products to market quicker. There's no question that the tech sector has already taken some hits from the economic slowdown in the US, as already reported on Techvibes. Good to see the industry getting some help to help ensure our technology sector keeps humming.
The 12 projects selected from 56 proposals (as detailed on the Precarn website) include:
And these were just the projects that made the cut. Very cool stuff happening.
The pain from the current economic crisis may last a while, but the regulations deployed to help prevent a recurrence will long outlive this panicky moment. As today's Financial Post notes with a glowing review, Toronto-based BoardSuite is banking on it.
BoardSuite is described on its website as "a board level governance and compliance solution that was created to enable today's board to confidently manage to outperform against the challenges of good governance and regulatory compliance." Long story short, the online app helps businesses and organizations follow the sometimes Byzantine rules of business governance that could otherwise cause some serious legal and financial hurt.
BoardSuite was developed in the wake of the economic downturn brought on by terrorism and corporate malfeasance like the Enron scandal. This latest economic downturn, again seeming to be caused by poor regulator compliance of major banks and other financial institutions, will no doubt spur on even heavier rules. Since BoardSuite services are free to users (though not BoardSuite's partners, service providers like insurance companies, it seems like an easy sell for a responsible board of any-sized business.
Seems like more higher-ups ought to have been using something like BoardSuite before the economy tanked. Ah, well We seem to be making progress, at least.
In the post Enron era, company directors and officers have been under regulatory siege. While many large corporate entities have been able to... [more]
Viion Systems Inc. has announced the launch of Sentinel Sign-Off, which automatically locks a computer following the departure of a user. This will put the kibosh on your paranoid psycho co-worker who likes to scan your email when you've gone off to the kitchen for a refill of your coffee.
OK, there are other applications besides deterring disgruntled colleagues. The solution is aimed at environments where multiple users have access to the same computer, like in hospitals or banks.
The Montreal-based company has just finished with a successful round of beta testing and Viion has filed for patent protection. It's an awfully practical solution to a common problem, the walk-away-security vulnerability.
Meanwhile, until your office gets it, make sure you time your coffee breaks right... or just actually log off like you're supposed to when you go away from your computer.
Viion Systems Inc. is an innovative computer vision technology firm headquartered in Montreal. The first to develop Active Presence Detection and... [more]
