Over half of all companies doing business in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors have experienced data breaches that potentially exposed their intellectual property or customer information, a new research report shows. According to the report, published by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, not only have many technology providers been hit with the same sorts of data losses that have recently plagued other industries, but a large number of the firms have also failed to make sufficient investments in security technologies aimed at preventing future incidents.

IBM unveiled two free security tools for software developers that are designed to enhance automatic data encryption and to increase security for Java applications. Big Blue on Thursday said it is adding the tools to AlphaWorks, a 10-year-old online program that offers free software tools, as the company looks to beef up its security offerings.

A former Computer Associates executive pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges Wednesday, yet another CA executive to be swept up in the controversial financial fraud case that’s marred the software company’s reputation. Thomas Bennett, 50, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 12. Bennett, a former CA senior vice president in charge of business development, faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Novell’s board of directors on Thursday named Ron Hovsepian as CEO to replace Jack Messman, and ousted the company’s chief financial officer. Company executives said the changes were made to accelerate growth at Novell, which has had disappointing financial results, particularly in its Linux business.

Xandros 4.0, the first new version of Xandros’ desktop Linux distribution in a year and a half, arrived on June 20. Xandros 4 is based on Debian Sarge Linux, with LSB (Linux Standard Base) improvements courtesy of the DCC Alliance’s Common Core. It also includes the KDE 3.42 desktop interface. This latest version of the first mass-market Linux desktop, the long-gone Corel Linux, has added a variety of features designed to make it a drop-in replacement for Windows.

Zone Labs has fixed a bug in a recent upgrade to its security software that is causing trouble for some Eudora and McAfee users. The problems relate to ZoneAlarm 6.5 products released last week, the company said Tuesday. One glitch means the software won’t install alongside McAfee antivirus products, while another interferes with date and time stamps in Qualcomm’s Eudora email client.

Worldwide IT services revenue totaled $624.4 billion in 2005, a 6 percent increase from 2004 revenue of $588.9 billion, according to Gartner. "Traditionally, the outsourcing service segment has been the key growth area for the worldwide IT services market, but that trend was altered in 2005," said Kathryn Hale, research vice president for Gartner’s worldwide IT services group. "In 2005, project-based services and software support grew at a greater rate than the overall market average, which has not been the case since 2000." IBM continued to be the worldwide market leader, but its growth rate was below the industry average.

The question remains as to whether PHP can be made to better fit in an enterprise community aggressively pursuing service-oriented architecture. IBM would like to believe that they have found some answers. The challenge is to maintain the idiosyncratic strengths of PHP. Christopher Jones, a technical consultant at Oracle has similar issues with PHP.

Are you an old school Notes user? Are you someone who’s used Notes since Notes 3 or Notes 4 and has grown to love the traditional Workspace? Notes has certainly improved over the releases, but one of the things I’ve missed most about the newer releases was the Workspace. Oh, sure, it’s in there (and so’s pretty much everything else). But how do you set up Notes so the Workspace loads as your default screen, just like in the good ol’ days? In this article, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz tells you how.

Read this DominoPower article.

The major Web browsers are getting facelifts as they increasingly become the focal point for handling business transactions and running programs over the Internet rather than simply displaying Web sites. The upgrades are the latest skirmish in the browser war that started in the mid-1990s and led to Microsoft’s triumph over Netscape. The battles reignited in 2004, when Mozilla’s Firefox launched and revealed new avenues of development. On Tuesday, Opera Software ASA is releasing its Opera 9 browser, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Firefox are in line for major overhauls later this year.