IBM is taking the first step toward a major overhaul of how it packages and sells global services. The vendor is due to begin rolling out the first two of what it terms "service products" worldwide on Tuesday. The standardized offerings are designed to be used by any IBM customer anywhere, a very different approach from the company’s previous focus on providing customized, one-off services to individual users.

Security vendor Sophos has upgraded its antivirus software to allow system administrators to block the installation of file-sharing, voice over IP and instant-messaging programs, the company announced Wednesday. Enterprises have asked for ways to control what applications end users install, citing concerns over liability, bandwidth consumption and flagging productivity.

A tool that makes it easier to gather and store digital archives has been developed by the National Library of New Zealand and the British Library. As more and more information goes online the race is on to create meaningful digital archives. The Web curator tool automates the process of collecting and storing information.

Tabloids, law firms, and corporations during the 1990s used James Rapp as a sort of information power drill. Rapp, a self-described data broker, bored deep into people’s private lives largely by duping employees at banks, hospitals and phone companies into giving him information, a practice known as "pretexting." Before the federal government forced him to shut down his business in 2000, Rapp spared no one–detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department, Monica Lewinsky, some of the slain victims of the Columbine High School massacre: Rapp snagged information on them all.

The hallmark of "Mission: Impossible" was the message that would self-destruct after a spy played it. Now a startup communications company promises that same level of secrecy with a Web-based messaging system designed to leave no traces. The VaporStream system from Void Communications LLC is envisioned as a complement to email and instant messaging, both of which leave abundant records.

When should your I.T. organization’s mission switch from being "Strategic," e.g., working on improving your corporation’s competitive position, to "Tactical," e.g., hunkering down, running data centers and networks more securely and reliably at a lower cost? To complete the downloadable worksheet, consider this analogy: You have a gasoline gauge in you car. Only when the dial moves into the red zone does it signal that you must stop and fill up the gas tank.

Dell said it would hire an additional 500 engineers for its product development operations in central Texas. Dell’s development team in Texas is its largest, the company said. Hiring will begin immediately. The engineering hiring planned for the company’s central Texas development operations is among the series of investments this year to enhance Dell’s design, production and customer service capabilities.

Cybercrooks are using e-cards that appear to come from a secret admirer in a scam to collect sensitive personal information, a security expert has warned. Data including credit card numbers, online banking credentials, and log-in names and passwords of thousands of individuals from Australia and the U.S. has already been collected in the scam, Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at security software maker Exploit Prevention Labs, said in an interview.

Attacks that capitalize on vulnerabilities in popular Web browsing software and targeted malware and phishing efforts dominated the first six months of 2006, according to Symantec’s latest Internet Security Threat Report. Published on September 25, the twice-yearly analysis highlights continued growth of the browser vulnerability issue, finding that 69 percent of all the new threats unearthed by the company between Jan. 1 and June 30 attempted to take advantage of flaws in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox and other popular Web applications.

The next Linux distribution that IBM throws its weight behind is likely to be China’s Red Flag Linux, suggesting that for businesses elsewhere in the world the Linux market will remain a two-horse race for the time being. Support from vendors like IBM and Oracle makes a big difference for the adoption of a Linux distribution. It gives big businesses the confidence that the software will be around and supported for several years to come. IBM wants to give its customers as much choice with Linux as it can, but the cost of porting and testing applications for more than the two leading distributions–from Red Hat and Novell–makes it impractical to widely support a third option, said Adam Jollans, IBM’s worldwide marketing and strategy manager for open source.