A hacking attempt against the U.S. Department of Defense unclassified email system earlier in the year caused minor administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences, but no adverse impact, a military spokesman said Tuesday.

The Financial Times, quoting unnamed officials on Monday, attributed the attacks to China’s People’s Liberation Army. Defense Department spokesman Maj. Patrick Ryder said he could not confirm the report.

An international study by online market research firm InsightExpress revealed many businesses plan to increase spending on security for their wireless networks in the next year.

Almost three out of every four IT decision makers said security spending will increase over the next fiscal year in an effort to accommodate growing wireless and mobility requirements, with 46 percent expecting investments to increase by more than 10 percent. About one in 10 of those surveyed expect spending to jump 20 percent or more.

The fallout from the data breach at Monster.com is growing wider, as the company has confirmed that the company’s databases have been targeted by hackers before.

Monster copped to a large security breach Aug. 22, but is now admitting that the data leakage has been going on for longer and could involve more customers than originally announced.

The iPhone lacks encryption, robust central management capabilities and the ability to integrate with localized infrastructure making it an unlikely choice for most businesses, according to analysts at Midvale, Utah-based research firm, the Burton Group.

In an online panel discussion, the analysts said the device is suitable for consumers to access email, browse the Web and access Web-based, Ajax-enabled applications. But cheaper devices that mimic many of the iPhone’s features may win out in the enterprise marketplace of the future.

IBM Lotus Connections provides a mechanism to customize the navigation bar as well as other areas of the product. This article outlines the steps you take to change the navigation bar and offers examples for changing the content of existing pages. This article is intended for IT specialists and IT architects and assumes that you have a solid understanding of HTML tags and some Java and JSP skills.

IBM introduced a new version of the breakthrough computing system based on the Cell Broadband Engine–the IBM BladeCenter QS21–that delivers twice the memory, density and I/O throughput as well as enhances power efficiency and the ability to work with existing IT infrastructure for both current and new customers. Also announced is the IBM Software Development Kit for Multicore Acceleration Version 3.0–the cornerstone of the Cell/B.E. software ecosystem and developer enablement program.

The IBM BladeCenter QS21 is the width of one blade computing system, allowing a customer to fit a maximum of 14 IBM BladeCenter QS21’s per BladeCenter chassis as opposed to only seven with the previous version–effectively doubling the compute density. As well the QS21 offers an additional two gigabytes of I/O buffer memory, a feature that was not available on the previous version of the product. The I/O throughput of the IBM BladeCenter QS21–a measurement of the ability for data to travel in and out of the system–supports 16 lanes of single data rate Infiniband.

IBM announced the System Storage DS3300, a robust, reliable and cost-effective new entry-level disk array featuring integrated management software designed to give small and medium-sized businesses a simple and affordable solution to handle all their storage needs. The DS3300 brings iSCSI to the IBM System Storage D3000 series of products, providing the industry’s broadest choice of interfaces.

Data integration software vendor JuxtaComm Technologies has filed suit in a Texas court alleging patent infringement. The case names a number of high-profile software companies, including Microsoft and IBM.

JuxtaComm is alleging that the companies in question–which include a number of prominent business intelligence and application integration companies–have infringed its patent for a system that transforms and exchanges data between distributed heterogeneous computer systems.

Sony appears to be reliving its rootkit nightmare of 2005, when it had to yank its XCP digital rights management technology after security experts said the technology used malicious rootkit techniques to evade detection on Windows systems.

This time, three Sony USB fingerprint devices are planting hidden files for two separate rootkit-like programs, according to security vendor F-Secure, based in Helsinki, Finland. F-Secure reported on Aug. 29 that its DeepGuard HIPS (host-based intrusion prevention system) was warning about a USB stick software driver.

DB2 pureXML provides hierarchical storage for XML data and advanced XML query capabilities such as SQL/XML and XQuery. SQL/XML is a standardized extension of the SQL language so that XQuery or XPath can be embedded in SQL. This allows for integrated processing of XML and relational data, or conversion from one to the other. One of the most versatile functions in SQL/XML is XMLTABLE. In part 1 of this series, learn to use XMLTABLE to retrieve XML data in relational format. Discover how to manage repeating or missing XML elements, and how to handle namespaces in the XMLTABLE function. Part 2 describes common XMLTABLE usage scenarios such as XML shredding, splitting large documents into smaller ones, and relational views over XML data.