Cisco Systems has released patches for eight of its products after the Internet security company Assurance Pty discovered vulnerabilities in some of the vendor’s wireless products. The vulnerabilities were discovered after studying the Cisco Wireless LAN Solution Engine. The security team found vulnerabilities within the Cisco Hosting Solution Engine, the Ethernet Subscriber Solution Engine, CiscoWorks2000 Service Management Solution, the Cisco VLAN Policy Server and the ME1100 Series of the Cisco Management Engine.

On Tuesday, IBM boosted its dividend by 50 percent in a move meant to add positive momentum to Big Blue’s recently static stock price. The increase was announced at IBM’s annual shareholders meeting, where hundreds of investors gathered to listen to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano discuss his plans for the coming year. Prior to the boost, the company’s quarterly dividend was 20 cents per share, or roughly 1 percent annual yield, based on its recent $80 stock price. The new 30-cent-per-share dividend will take effect this quarter and will continue through 2006.

EMC is still in the process of fitting together all the pieces of its ILM (information lifecycle management) jigsaw puzzle, but the company is very clear on one aspect of the strategy: it has IBM in its crosshairs. At the EMC World conference in Boston this week, the heads of EMC’s software and information security businesses–two core pillars of its evolving ILM strategy–both singled out IBM as the chief competition.

Anti-virus powerhouse Symantec has released patches for three "moderately critical" security vulnerabilities that could put users at risk of security bypass and information exposure attacks. In an alert posted online, the vendor urged users to upgrade to Symantec Scan Engine 5.1 to protect against the threat of improper authentication for Web-based user logins. Symantec claims there are no known publicly available exploits. However, security researchers warn that proof-of-concept exploit code showing how a remote attacker can change the administrator password has already been published, raising the likelihood of targeted attacks.

More Americans would be forced to pay taxes subsidizing broadband service in "unserved" locales, and cities would be free to go into the Wi-Fi business under an upcoming U.S. Senate bill. Later this week, Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, plans to introduce a legislative package called the Broadband for America Act of 2006, he said Tuesday morning at a conference hosted by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, which represents small and rural carriers. Conspicuously absent from the bill, however, is any mention of Net neutrality, which refers to the idea of the federal government forcibly preventing broadband providers from favoring some Web sites or video streams’ connection speeds over others.

Optaros, an open-source software consulting and integration firm, has announced a partnership with LogicBlaze, a maker of open-source solutions for business integration, to provide professional services for the LogicBlaze open-source service oriented architecture. Optaros officials said the alliance with LogicBlaze will enable Optaros to provide tailored solutions to customers who need cost-effective, enterprise-class SOA platforms.

Cubicle-dwellers across the country rejoiced April 24 as an administrative law judge determined that an Education Department worker in New York City had been unfairly penalized after being axed for browsing news and travel Web sites on company time. "It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work," wrote Judge John Spooner in a statement. Arguing that the same standard should be applied to Internet use as to other personal activities at work, Spooner argued that it only mattered that these idle pursuits do not affect job performance.

Newly disclosed, unpatched flaws in three browsers could make the Web a more dangerous place to surf, security experts have warned. Security researchers published details on the bugs in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Apple Computer’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox to security mailing lists over the weekend. The Firefox and Safari bugs could cause the browsers to crash, while the IE hole could be exploited to hijack a vulnerable Windows computer, Secunia said in advisories on its Web site.

Internet users around the world send an estimated 60 billion emails every day, and many of those are spam or scam attempts, business leaders said on Tuesday. Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Kai-Uwe Ricke said cybercriminals were growing more active and sophisticated, and the vast email traffic meant industry, government and Internet users had to be vigilant and work together.

Security breaches from computer viruses, spyware, hacker attacks, and equipment theft are costing British business billions of pounds a year, according to a survey released Tuesday. The estimated loss of $18 billion (10 billion pounds) is 50 percent higher than the level calculated two years ago, according to the survey that consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted for the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry. The rise comes despite the fact that companies are increasing their spending on information security controls to an average 4 percent or 5 percent of their IT budget, compared with 3 percent in 2004.