You just rolled out Microsoft Windows Vista company-wide only to find your help desk flooded with calls. Or you spent hours with the mobile sales group going over the basics of laptop and wireless security only to discover team members still opening rogue email attachments and stumbling over password protocols. Sound familiar? The problem could be in your training.

It’s all too natural for IT to cast blame on end-users when new or upgraded systems hit snafus, but rather than pointing fingers, IT should instead consider its own role in training miscues, experts advise. While IT’s relationship with end-user training has always been ambivalent, the pressure is on to get users comfortable and productive on new tech systems, thanks to a corporate emphasis on information security, compliance, and return on investment to justify costly hardware and software rollouts.

Whether the next generation of the iPhone will eventually support a second enterprise-class email application to Microsoft Exchange–namely Lotus Notes–remains a mystery.

IBM spokesman Mike Azzi said IBM Lotus Notes developers will be working on a Notes email application for iPhone 2.0, but he did not elaborate and could not be reached for further comment.

Apple officials would not comment on Notes for the iPhone either, but released a statement saying that 100,000 developers had downloaded the beta SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone in the first four days since its release. Several developers are named, but there is no mention of Lotus Notes.

US officials said that "real and growing" threats to US computer and telecommunications networks were behind the holding of the largest-ever cyber-security exercises this week.

Computer security experts from five countries, more than 40 private sector companies, and numerous government and state agencies are spending a week fielding simulated "real-world," on-line attacks on the computer systems of government bodies, corporations, transportation and other key industries.

Is the United States under attack again? Recent reports have the U.S. military not quite blaming the Chinese military for a long string of cyber-attacks against U.S. military computers. It sure sounds like they believe it, but they’re not quite saying it. Also left unsaid is how much actual damage and compromise has happened already.

A Wall Street Journal article described how military networks are increasingly the targets of hackers. The targets are not limited to actual Department of Defense networks, but can also include defense industries and think tanks. The full article is available only to subscribers. Another detailed article on the same material is available on DailyTech.

What happens when you recompile all the LotusScript and there’s a LotusScript error — but no LotusScript? This is what Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard encountered. Read his fascinating tale of discovery and learn from his experience in the secret world of hidden code.

Read this DominoPower article.

IBM announced new technology to secure "mashups," Web applications that pull information from multiple sources, such as Web sites, enterprise databases or emails, to create one unified view. Mashups are attractive for business use, as they allow non-technical users to gain insight on complex situations in minutes, but as with all Web-based initiatives, security has been a concern.

IBM is helping businesses realize the value of these situational applications without all the risk, through a new technology created by IBM researchers, codenamed SMash. Short for secure mashup, this technology allows information from different sources to talk to each other, but keeps them separate so malicious code cannot creep into enterprise systems.

Reckless and uninformed remote workers–opening emails from unknown sources and surfing on their neighbours’ wireless networks–are partly responsible for an anticipated rise in security spending by IT managers during 2008.

That’s according to new research commissioned by networking giant Cisco and carried out by market research firm InsightExpress. It surveyed more than 2,000 remote workers and IT professionals across various industries in 10 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, India, Australia and Brazil.

Security vendor Trend Micro has fallen victim to a widespread Web attack that splashed malicious software onto hundreds of legitimate Web sites in recent days.

A Trend Micro spokesman confirmed that the company’s site had been hacked Thursday, saying that the attack took place earlier in the week. "A portion of our site–some pages were attacked," said Mike Sweeny, a Trend Micro spokesman. "We took the pages down overnight Tuesday night–and took corrective action."

On Thursday security vendor McAfee reported that more than 20,000 Web pages have been affected by the attack. The pages are infected with malicious code that tries to install password-stealing software on the PCs of people who visit the sites.

Big legal changes have been happening over the last few years with respect to the use of digital evidence in legal proceedings. Digital evidence is getting to be just about the only documentary evidence there is.

Research at Berkeley in 2003 showed that more than 92 percent of all corporate information was generated in electronic form. Nowadays, virtually all source information used in legal and regulatory proceedings will have been generated electronically. A recent white paper from the Microsoft U.S. National Security Team, entitled "The Evolving landscape of Legal Discovery & the Expanding Role of the Chief Information Officer," delves into these issues.

IBM announced it has acquired Encentuate, a privately held company based in Redwood City, California, and provider of identity and access management software focused on enterprise single sign-on and integration of strong authentication technology. IBM will integrate Encentuate into IBM Software Group’s Tivoli division. Financial terms were not disclosed.

IBM also announced the forming of the IBM Security Software Laboratory in Singapore. Consistent with the company’s globally integrated enterprise strategy that draws on local, highly-skilled specialists to service all clients, the new lab will utilize the expertise of Encentuate’s Singapore development team to better serve IBM clients in Asia and around the world.