The Department of Homeland Security is still lacking in the cybersecurity department, according to a bevy of critics. What’s galling is that the DHS’ inadequacies are barely news anymore.

News.com’s Stephanie Condon outlines how some are saying DHS can’t be trusted with its cybersecurity mission. Trust isn’t the issue. Bureaucracy is. The DHS is a hodge-podge of 22 agencies and would frankly be better off sniffing out explosives than worrying about hackers. The job is big enough.

Zenprise for BlackBerry and Exchange has everything a company needs to monitor and troubleshoot mobile email delivery–as long as that environment comprises BlackBerry smartphones at the edge and Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server at the core. Despite this somewhat limited scope of supported environments, Zenprise for BlackBerry and Enterprise hits the mark with an outstanding combination of analysis capabilities and troubleshooting recommendations, earning an eWEEK Analyst’s Choice recommendation.

On the heels of media reports that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was using a private Yahoo email account to conduct Alaska state business, hackers have broken into the account and posted evidence of the hijack on Wikileaks.

An activist group calling itself "anonymous" claimed responsibility for the compromise and released screenshots, photographs and the email addresses of several people close to Palin, including her husband Todd and assistant Ivy Frye.

Passwords are now a part of everyday life, but many users don’t realize the importance of using a secure password, one that can’t easily be overcome by a brute-force attack. Web-based password management service PassPack offers these tips for creating strong passwords.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez has introduced legislation to establish guidelines for border searches of electronic devices such as laptops and smartphones. Currently, federal border agents may conduct searches and seize travelers’ personal laptops and other electronic storage devices without evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing.

The Border Search Accountability Act of 2008 (H.R. 6869), introduced Sept. 11, would establish specific rules for the retention, storage, copying and sharing of personally identifiable information that may be contained in electronic devices.

"This legislation will ensure that when an individual’s property is seized at a U.S. point of entry, there is a well-defined procedure in place that will protect their electronic data–especially information that does not pose a threat to our homeland security," Sanchez said in a statement.

Symantec has launched Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 in Europe, Middle East and Africa, raising the standard for speed and performance. The Norton 2009 products were designed with a "zero-impact" performance goal, supported by more than 300 improvements that span nearly every aspect of the product, from the scanning engines to the user interface.

Mainsoft, provider of Microsoft SharePoint -Java EE interoperability software and an advanced IBM business partner, announced that it has expanded its SharePoint Integration product suite to include Lotus Sametime 8.x and 7.5.x as well as Lotus Notes 7.x and 6.5.x.

Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator products combine SharePoint document sharing and collaboration capabilities with IBM presence awareness, instant messaging, email, and on-the-glass workflows. IT users can now work more productively, with easy access to SharePoint documents and collaboration capabilities from within Notes, the Sametime IM client, and WebSphere Portal.

Breitbart.tv has a short video clip of a local US news station showing that 35% of people prefer their Blackberry over their spouse in the bedroom. It’s likely that percentage would be the same across all similar devices, such as the iPhone or a Windows Mobile device.

Everyone knows by now that when you delete data on a computer it’s not necessarily completely gone. The importance of this fact, and the need to be able to delete data with absolute certainty, have increased in recent years.

Standard formatting tools aren’t perfect. They’re not designed to eliminate data completely, but more to get the disk blank enough and set up for new use. In fact, all software tools have a tough job in eliminating data, in that old data can survive multiple writes. Nevertheless, there are software products which erase data to varying standards of completion.

SOA may have seemed the savior of bad software architecture and poor development project planning, but the reality is that it’s a complex and difficult venture. Thus, the number of failed SOA projects is about equal to the successful ones. In other words, you have a 50 percent chance of failing, and the odds of failure are even greater if you work within a larger Global 2000 organization or within the government. But key patterns are emerging from the successful SOA efforts, patterns that can help you determine whether your SOA is a failure or a success.