The British Department of Trade and Industry has made £4m available for four research projects aimed at reducing the IT risk created by human error.

The program, which is part of its Network Security Innovation Platform, reflects the fact that human error is by far the biggest risk to network security.

It cited the results of a survey it conducted, involving over 1,800 people, on the use of passwords. It found that:

• Just over 30% of users recorded their password or security information by either writing it down or storing it somewhere on their computer.
• About 65% never changed their password
• 20% of people used the same password for non-banking websites as well as their online bank

The projects will use behavioural science in a bid to tackle the human risk element in network security.

Four projects will receive funding under the programme.

• The first is about developing a risk assessment package focused on organisational and human factors.

• The second, named Trust Economics, is aimed at developing a predictive modelling framework that assesses security policies that regulate the interaction between humans and information systems.
• The third is aimed at developing a solution for the analysis of digital communications to identify threats introduced by humans.
• The fourth named CatalysIS, is a tool to improve risk culture and identify human vulnerabilities in network security.

Minister for science and innovation Malcolm Wicks said: "Unfortunately, the weakest link in network security is not usually with the technology, but with the staff and system users. A DTI survey found that a shocking number of people were careless with passwords, unwittingly exposing themselves and their company to fraud and theft.

"Network security is also a major growth area where the UK has a good opportunity to become a global leader if we develop new technology to give us a competitive edge."

This article was originally published at Kablenet 

Source: The Register 

 

Tags: 2007, aim, analysis, arc, art, blog, communication, computer, digital, Fun, global, human, ict, ICT Security, identify, im, industry, interaction, internet, Internet News, Internet World, IT risk, King, lan, network, nomadcom.net, online, password, pet, privacy, project, risk, science, search, security, space, study, survey, technology, the register, threat, uk, user, web, website, wp, www, XP

I found an interesting review made by ExtremeTech about some of currently available multi-services Instant Messenger (IM) clients supporting at least all 3 majors IM services (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ). While the option for Mac users is limited to Adium, it exists few Web 2.0 based solutions such meebo and eBuddy and a bunch of classic software for Windows-based computer. Etremetech's prefered choice is the long existing Trillian Pro version (25 USD) but they also speak about PC-World prefered SightSpeed (also for MacOS) and the Swiss Army knife-like Raketu (I plan to test both of them in the coming days).

The list will grow up again with soon release of Orgoo, which aims to integrate email, IM, chat, SMS, and video messaging into one interface.

To sum up the six services in this review roundup, here's a table comparing their features:

	Adium	eBuddy	Meebo	Meetro	Pidgin	Trillian
Services supported:
AIM	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MSN/Windows	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yahoo	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ICQ	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IRC	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Jabber/Google	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes**
Bonjour/Rendezvous	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes**
Multiple simultaneous service login	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ad free	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tabbed message window	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Contacts in groups	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Message history	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Text formatting	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Themes/skins	Yes	No	Just colors	No	No	Yes
Group chat support	Only join existing	Yes	Yes	No	Only join existing	Yes
Buddy icons	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Audio chat	No	No	No	No	No	Yes**
Video chat	No	No	No	No	No	Yes**
Mac/Windows	Yes/No	Yes/Yes	Yes/Yes	Yes/Yes	Yes*/No	No/Yes
Web-based	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Plugins	No	No	No	Yes, but only 2 available	Yes	Yes

Source : ExtremeTech 

 

Tags: 2007, 24, adium, aim, art, ATT, blog, ces, computer, ebuddy, fon, free, gaim, google, History, ia, icq, im, instant messenger, Internet World, lan, list, login, meebo, meetro, messenger, MIT, mobile, Mobile Communications, msn, nomadcom.net, orgoo, pet, pidgin, plugin, raketu, release, review, services, sightspeed, sms, story, swiss, theme, trillian, user, video, web, web 2.0, windows, world, wp, www, yahoo

One of my first question was about how to send Twitter updates using Skype instead of anything else as I did not want to install an additional application with a single dedicated purpose.

Apparently I'm not alone in that situation and I found today a "how to" to post updates on Twitter using Skype chat tool

Quote

Here’s a little secret which no one seems to know about. There is a Skype robot which will post to your Twitter account.

1. Add twitter4skype as a contact.
2. Type the following as a chat message (be sure to do a FULL return for each line):
   /account
   yourtwitteraccountname
   yourtwitteraccountpassword
3. The system should return: twitter4skype Registration complete!
4. The next time you write a chat message to twitter4skype, the entry will appear as a Tweet on your account.

Give it a try and let me know how it works out.

Update: Some have reported they have not been successful on their first try to make this work. The issue usually is identified with the returns. On a Mac, make sure you press alt + return after each line. Also make sure there is a return after the last line. Once this is fixed, everything seems to “automagically” work.

Unquote

Source: PacificIT  

Tags: 2007, account, art, blog, ces, Gadgets, how to, im, install, Internet World, ITU, lan, mobile, Mobile Communications, nomadcom.net, nyt, password, pda, post, press, skype, skype4twitter, space, tweet, twit, Twitter, twittering, update, wp, www