The World's Most Wired Airports

By Elizabeth Woyke

Beth Breidenbach calls it the "vulture hover."

It's a maneuver familiar to anyone looking to use a laptop in an airport—the circling, swooping dance to locate and secure access to wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) and power outlets.

Breidenbach, a Spokane, Wash.-based senior data architect for IBM Global Business Services, is on the road an average of 45 weeks a year. To cope, she's memorized plug locations in her favorite airports—she's found them by the main poles in the seating area in Denver International Airport; by the workstations at Chicago's O'Hare and New York's LaGuardia; still others near particular restaurants in Minneapolis, where she can grab a bite while charging her laptop and Palm handheld.

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Security 'vital' to telecommunications

An IBM survey has found that the issue of security is to be of utmost importance for telecommunication companies in the future.

The survey, dubbed 2007 State of Security for Global Telecommunications Carriers, found that rather than being a hindrance to rolling out new technology, security could enhance it. Only 36 per cent of internet companies surveyed reported that security issues slowed the roll-out of IP services. Counse Broders, senior research director, telecom services with Current Analysis, said: "This survey shows what the market is already experiencing from recent mergers and acquisitions, including Verizon/Cybertrust and IBM/ISS: that security is a key ingredient for carriers as they move into next generation services and solutions.

"Clearly, those providers without a security solution in place risk losing their competitive edge." Less than half the companies that plan to IP-based networks in the near future have technology in place to address the security concerns that such networks bring.

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IBM: Malware getting more sophisticated

This year has seen a sizable increase in the amount and sophistication of malware being disseminated around the internet, according to IBM's security research team, X-Force.

So this year far the team has identified 210,000 examples of malware, more already than in all of 2006. The most http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifpopular category of malware in 2007 has been Trojans, accounting for 28 percent of all malware detected. In 2006 it was Downloaders that were the most popular form of malware.

Kris Lamb, director of X-Force, said: "The X-Force security statistics report for 2006 predicted a continued rise in the sophistication of targeted, profit-motivated cyber attacks. "This directly correlates to the rise in popularity of Trojans that we are witnessing this year, as Trojans are often used by attackers to launch sustained, targeted attacks." However, X-Force also found that vulnerabilities have actually gone down so far this year, the first time that vulnerabilities have lessened in the first half of a year. Meanwhile, research published in PLoS Medicine states that at least one-third of all spam is touting health products.

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