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• Outsourcers grow by 8 per cent: Gartner

  

  Outsourcing is still on the rise, with global revenue from outsourcing increasing 7.8 per cent year on year in 2011; however, growth is becoming hard to achieve, according to Gartner.

  

  Information technology outsourcing revenue hit $246.6 billion in 2011, a 7.8 per cent increase from 2010 of $228.7 billion.

  Although Indian-based IT services providers clocked the largest growth numbers in the year, IBM remained king of the market, growing its revenue by 7.8 per cent year on year, and accounting for 10.9 per cent of information technology outsourcing revenue.

  HP's growth was slower, but it managed to hold onto second place, with a market share of 6.1 per cent.

  Fujitsu, meanwhile, was able to take over CSC to accept the bronze market-share position, with the two providers holding 4.5 and 4.2 per cent of the market, respectively. Accenture grabbed the fifth spot, with 2.6 per cent of the market.

  The cloud spelled doom for some outsourcers, according to the analyst house.

  "ITO providers that are heavily focused on infrastructure outsourcing risk revenue cannibalisation and muted growth opportunities, as more of their clients move to industrialised, cloud-based services," said Bryan Britz, research director at Gartner.

  "As clients are likely to pursue hybrid cloud strategies, providers need to deliver some asset-light and some asset-heavy offerings. This will result in varying growth trajectories for ITO providers over the next several years."

  Britz said that 2011 revenue results had shown that it is hard for many providers to maintain market share, let alone grow it, and that providers are likely to consolidate in order to boost their growth.

• TechnologyOne keeps profits growing

  

  TechnologyOne has managed to achieve an 18 per cent rise in its initial licence fees for products in the half year to 31 March 2012, keeping its profit in modest growth.

  Revenue for the half was up 8 per cent to $77.3 million. As well as initial licence fees jumping 18 per cent to $18.4 million, annual licence fees increased 16 per cent to $25.4 million, and consulting services revenue rose 9 per cent to $21.3 million. Net profit after tax grew 2 per cent, to 9.3 million, despite 33 per cent growth in the last half.

  Executive chairman Adrian Di Marco said that the initial licence fee increase saw TechnologyOne outperform its international competitors SAP and Oracle, which achieved single-digit increases.

  "We are continuing to steal market share in our vertical markets, including health, education, government, utilities and financial services," he said.

  TechnologyOne continues to put focus on research and development (R&D), with $16.6 million spent in the half on mobile solutions, financials, supply chain, human resource and payroll, customer-relationship management, enterprise content management, student management, performance planning, business intelligence, enterprise budgeting, asset management and property and rating systems.

  A new area of focus has been the next generation of its Connected Intelligence suite, Ci².

  TechnologyOne has also been banking on specific, pre-configured products that go in quickly to companies of a certain type. It managed to net 38 customers in deals worth more than $16 million since their launch at the end of 2010, with a recent win being Townsville City Council.

  "We believe that the model used by other software vendors of relying on third-party organisations, such as Accenture, to implement their software solutions is broken. TechnologyOne customers benefit from a direct relationship with us every step of the way, and we are therefore always accountable to them," Di Marco said.

  The company has opened a new R&D centre in Indonesia, which it said was necessary due to a lack of Australian graduates. In these results, the company said it hopes that the trial will enable Australian employees more time to work on the most innovative products, as the offshore R&D will be focusing on support for existing products.

  The company intends to grow its profits by 10 to 15 per cent in its full-year results.

• War talk dominates AusCERT 2012

  

  The last 12 months have seen a clear shift in the way information security is discussed. It used to be all about cybercrime. Now, there's talk of war.

  We no longer talk about "information assurance", but rather "defensive cyber operations".

  At last week's AusCERT 2012 information security conference, there was still plenty of discussion about online crime. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, outlined a complex transnational criminal operation that saw goods bought fraudulently in Denmark being resold in Moscow. But Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky reckons that cybercrime's golden age will end in 2014, and the consensus seems to be that we've at least got a handle on cybercrime, and know our next steps.

  In this week's Patch Monday podcast, the first of two episodes covering AusCERT 2012, we hear the cyberwar-related highlights.

  It's clear that nations including the US, the UK, China and France are already building and stockpiling offensive cyberweapons. Hypponen explains how we can judge the scale of American cyberweapon development by simply looking at recruitment advertising.

  US Department of Defense (DoD) lawyer Richard Clarke explains cyberwar from a legal viewpoint, and tells us why he thinks the sudden-strike "cyber Pearl Harbour" or "cybergeddon" won't happen.

  AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram reflects on the appeal that cyberweapons hold when compared with traditional kinetic weapons, and what it'll mean for information security to become militarised.

  To leave an audio comment on the program, Skype to stilgherrian, or phone Sydney 02 8011 3733.

  Running time: 52 minutes, 16 seconds

  Thanks to Risky Business for some of the audio recordings.

• National Botnet Network coming: Earthwave

  

  Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are on the rise, and, according to Earthwave CEO Carlo Minassian, the situation will get worse when the National Broadband Network (NBN) rolls out.

  

  Carlo Minassian
  (Credit: Earthwave)

  Speaking to ZDNet Australia, Minassian said that in the most recent quarter to 31 March 2012, he saw DDoS attacks grow across his client base by around 700 per cent. Of these, 50 per cent were aimed at government organisations, with the remainder typically for financial services and critical infrastructure groups.

  Last week alone, he said that Earthwave's security operations centre dealt with major DDoS attacks on two Australian organisations, one of which he said was a major retail shopping centre chain.

  Despite the growth, he said that Australian organisations are naive; he stated that most people don't know how to deal with DDoS attacks.

  "If you're a typical organisation in Australia, most of them have 10 megabits per second, 100Mbps internet links, [but] the smallest DDoS uses 10,000 bots, so for them to flood and take you out is really simple in Australia," he said.

  The saving grace for these organisations is that traffic in Australia is comparatively different to traffic in the US.

  "In America, the type of DDoS they're experiencing ... some attacks are 95Gbps. In Australia, the DDoS we're experiencing is like 6Gbps, because our connectivity to the rest of the world is not that big."

  However, with the roll-out of the NBN, Australia has the potential to look more like the "National Botnet Network", and become a juicier target for hackers.

  "Everyone will have 100Mbps connections to the NBN, and there's going to be literally tens of thousands of compromised machines connected to the NBN from home PCs as part of a botnet, and [attackers will have] access to literally gigabytes and terabytes of bandwidth then," he said.

  "Australia will become a massive botnet of zombies. It will take a while, but, once it happens, once they have access ... then they can launch, 50Mbps, 100Mbps, 100Gbps [or] 150Gbps attacks."

  According to Minassian, an army of zombie computers is only the tip of the iceberg, as hackers begin to shift their tactics from censoring websites through takedowns to causing significant economic damage to businesses.

  "There is a new type of DDoS. We refer to it as an economical DDoS," he explained.

  He said that as more people jump on-board the cloud movement, and pay an outside provider for bandwidth, there is a huge opportunity for hackers and unscrupulous business competitors to attack their rivals - not to take down their website, but to increase the amount of bandwidth they consume, thus leaving the company to have to purchase from their provider.

  "You'll get a bill from [your provider] all of a sudden that's half a million dollars [when] usually you pay $10,000," he said.

  "This is something that's coming. It's happening slowly, but it's going to come more and more as cloud popularity grows."

• ACCAN gets govt tick amid industry criticism

  

  A report into the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has delivered mixed results, finding that the organisation is appropriately representing consumers and interest groups, but risks fermenting anti-industry sentiment in public, while under-representing small business interests.

  The mid-term review into ACCAN, undertaken by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) has found that overall, the group is performing well as a peak body representing interest groups and telco consumers.

  The review found that ACCAN has established itself as a "well-regarded and effective organisation in representing the interests of consumers in the telecommunications sector", and went on to note that ACCAN has met each of its key performance indicators as laid out by the deed of agreement signed with the DBCDE.

  The report noted that these achievements are significant, given "ACCAN's broad obligations to consumers, and the complex and dynamic nature of the telecommunications landscape".

  Despite the praise, ACCAN's flaws were also laid bare.

  The report highlighted complaints made by the Communications Alliance and the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) that criticised the way in which the organisation represents itself to the public.

  In some areas, ACCAN has been accused of fermenting an "us-versus-them" feeling in the industry between consumers and telcos, particularly in the "Fair Calls for All" campaign.

  The Fair Calls for All campaign saw ACCAN push for free calls from mobile phones to 1300 and 1800 "free-call" numbers with a media-driven, public advocacy campaign centred around a superhero-like mascot. AMTA and the Comms Alliance took umbrage with the campaign, as noted by the report.

  "AMTA considered that such a media-orientated approach can create an aggressive 'us' versus 'them' environment, and contended that an adversarial approach is more likely to lead to consumer detriment if both parties cannot agree on an outcome.

  "The Communications Alliance submission also asserted that ACCAN's industry approaches were sometimes adversarial, rather than constructive, and that ACCAN could benefit from working with industry more closely," the report said.

  Most notably, ACCAN, in its role with the Comms Alliance, voted against the Telecommunications Consumer Protection (TCP) Code developed by the Comms Alliance last year. This was something that Comms Alliance CEO John Stanton noted in a speech last month.

  The report cited ACCAN's defence of its engagement practices, and added that friction in the industry is nothing to be surprised about, as "industry and ACCAN will represent different interests".

  "The review does not consider this disparity inherently problematic," it added.

  One flaw that the review did find problematic, however, is the industry body's under-representation of the small business sector.

  Several submissions highlighted the lack of small business representation within the industry body, a problem that ACCAN and the government have also noted. Also, with the Australian Telecommunications Users Group no longer in operation, and a marked increase in small business-related complaints coming into the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), the need to represent small businesses at an industry level needs to be a "greater focus" for ACCAN, according to the review.

  "This [under-representation] is inconsistent with the government's intention in establishing ACCAN, and ACCAN should undertake measures to rectify this," the review said.

  ACCAN is working with the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia to shore up the small business voice within the industry body, but it's not enough to satisfy the government yet.

  "While this is encouraging, ACCAN needs to build on this work."

  Despite the problems, however, ACCAN CEO Theresa Corbin is largely happy with the results of the review.

  "We are pleased with the feedback from the government, regulators, industry and non-government groups that we are a well-regarded organisation that is effective in representing the interests of Australian telecommunications consumers," Corbin said, adding that the recommendations made in the review will be addressed as a matter of priority.

• Medicare Locals get $50m for e-health

  

  The Federal Government will provide $50 million to Medicare Locals over the next two years, to support the adoption of e-health records from 1 July.

  Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek announced the funding on Friday, stating that it will be provided in addition to the $233.7 million set aside in the 2012 Budget for the launch of the personally controlled e-health records (PCEHR). Medicare Locals are networks that help to support frontline health providers.

  The $50 million will go towards providing training in GP practices, and to other healthcare providers, Plibersek said in a statement.

  "The practical training will include how to get the practice ready for the eHealth record, including how to achieve data quality, the registration process for eHealth records, engagement and support of the practice's patients," she said.

  GPs have been concerned about receiving adequate compensation for the amount of time it will take them to create and manage the e-health records for patients, and, while the government will allow doctors to claim back e-health record management through Medicare, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) is still concerned that the cost of the initial creation of e-health records would not be covered.

• Microsoft admits Vista was 'cheesy'

  

  Microsoft published a "brief" history of the Windows interface in a blog post that offered some flashes of candour about Vista and Windows 95, and argued that the tablet as we know it today is one device too many. Redmond also said that it is dropping Aero Glass.

  

  Windows 8
  (Credit: Microsoft)

  First and foremost, Microsoft said it has "moved beyond" Aero Glass on the Windows 8 desktop, in Friday's Building Windows 8 post.

  "We spent a lot of energy carefully considering how substantially to update the appearance of the desktop in Windows 8 ...Our primary goal was to bring visual harmony to Windows, while still preserving much of the familiar feel of the Windows 7 desktop, and not sacrificing the compatibility of existing apps," wrote Jensen Harris, director of program management for the User Experience team at Microsoft.

  "In the end, we decided to bring the desktop closer to the Metro aesthetic ...We have moved beyond Aero Glass - flattening surfaces, removing reflections and scaling back distracting gradients."

  Harris also laid out "a brief history of the Windows user interface" that is anything but brief (true to the blog's prolix style). He then took a tour of the interface from Windows 1 to Windows 8.

  Some highlights of "Creating the Windows 8 user experience":

  • Windows 1 and the "dubious value" of the mouse: Windows 1, released in 1985, was a "rough graphical shell around DOS, primarily to be used with the keyboard," Harris wrote. And the mouse was doomed to fail from the beginning, according to pundits at the time: "Mice are nice ideas, but of dubious value for business users" (George Vinall, PC Week, 24 April 1984); and "There is no evidence that people want to use these things" (John C Dvorak, San Francisco Examiner, 19 February 1984)

  • Windows 3 and 3.1 and File Manager: "This upgrade bet big for the first time on most users having a mouse," he wrote. And Alt+Tab came into vogue then. "Because getting to ... minimised apps often required moving a bunch of windows out of the way first, the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut became a very popular way to switch between running programs"

  • Windows 95 and the nonstarter "Start" button: that Start button didn't live up to its initial billing. "The Start button was so undiscoverable that, despite having the word Start right on it ... text had to be added to the taskbar after early test releases, so that people could figure out how to get started using the programs on their PC." And an interesting sidebar about the IBM Simon mobile phone: "The first ever mobile phone with PDA capabilities, the IBM Simon, was introduced around this time. It weighed almost 1.5 pounds, ran DOS and the only app ever designed for it sold only two copies"

  • Windows XP was a "garish" experience for some: "Although Windows XP eventually became a major success, some people at the time were frustrated with the changes to the user interface. They found the Windows XP experience to be garish, and users inquired about how to 'downgrade' to previous versions," Harris wrote

  • Windows Vista now looks "cheesy": this was Microsoft's most panned OS. Harris had relatively little to say beyond describing the Aero as having the "appearance of highly rendered glass, light sources, reflections and other graphically complex textures." But he did add this: "This style of simulating faux-realistic materials ... looks dated and cheesy now, but, at the time, it was very much en vogue"

  • Windows 8 means not having to carry around a tablet: converge the tablet and laptop, and, presto, you don't necessarily need a tablet. "Windows 8 imagines the convergence of two kinds of devices: a laptop and a tablet. Instead of carrying around three devices (a phone, a tablet and a laptop), you carry around just a phone and a Windows PC," Harris wrote. Of course, this attempts to refute Apple's argument that convergence doesn't always work. "Anything can be forced to converge, but the problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left doesn't please anyone," CEO Tim Cook said last month.

  Harris also touched on Windows RT, the version of Windows that will run on ARM processors from Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

  Harris argued that the tendency for phones and tablets to "show only one app on the screen at a time" is strictly done to "manage the background activity on the device, so that only apps you are actively using can drain the battery".

  "We did feel like only offering 'one at a time' in the Metro-style experience was a bit of a constraint, and not totally true to the Windows history of multitasking. So we evolved Snap for Windows 8. This feature lets you run any two WinRT-based apps side by side, so that you can watch a video while you browse the web."

  Via CNET

• By the numbers: Facebook's slow start a good sign?

  

  Investors have been quick to pounce on Facebook's first day on the markets - but its slow start is probably good news for a web-based business.

  Just like Facebook, on its first day on the Nasdaq in August 2004, Google struggled to stay ahead of its listing price. A week later, it was up 8 per cent. After just three months, investors found themselves richer to the tune of nearly 50 per cent. Conversely, Yahoo and LinkedIn had a promising first week but saw their share prices slump within a few months.

  It seems that the scrutiny of a public listing makes people quickly realise the true underlying value of a business. Pre-IPO hype can drive a frenzy of speculative fervour that soon disappears when the cash is in the bank, and the promised returns are failing to materialise.

  Australians know this better than most. There's a long list of companies promising the world, but delisting soon after: Eisa, Spike, Davnet, Winepros, Harvest Road, Travelshop, Chaos - the list goes on. We're left with a couple of significant listed online properties: realestate.com.au (REA Group) and Webjet, both launching with little fanfare and modest wins for early investors.

  

  (Credit: Phil Dobbie/ZDNet Australia)

  Facebook is too big to compare with modest Aussie start-ups, but the demands of short-term performance can threaten the stability of any listed business.

  For Facebook, that means trying to find a business model that will deliver real returns quickly. As we highlighted in February, Facebook's $100 billion market cap is half that of Google's, with one tenth of the revenue. Chinese search engine Baidu made seven times more than Facebook's $1 billion profit last year, yet it's worth half as much. At the moment, Facebook's $100 billion market capitalisation doesn't make a lot of sense.

  Back in 2004, Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote to investors ahead of the company's listing. They told investors to think long term, and not to expect short-term forecasts. Rather, investors should be satisfied that they were involved with a company that would "make the world a better place".

  The world must indeed seem a better place for those who invested in Google back then. Now, will the same be true for those who take the leap with Facebook?

• Microsoft launches its own social service

  

  In the wake of the IPO of social-networking giant Facebook, Microsoft has quietly launched So.cl, its own foray into social networking.

  

  Microsoft launches So.cl
  (Credit: Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)

  However, So.cl isn't designed to be a Facebook-challenger. The project, the details of which were leaked last year, is designed to give students the ability to network with their peers and share information.

  "So.cl (pronounced 'social') combines search and social networking for the purpose of learning; and is the latest experiment from FUSE Labs," Microsoft said in a description of the app. Users log in to the network with their Facebook or Windows Live accounts. Once logged in, users are presented with a variety of suggested topics of interest.

  Much like Facebook's share or recommend buttons, So.cl has a "bookmarklet" feature that adds a "Share on So.cl" button to users' bookmarks toolbars, allowing them to share interesting websites with other So.cl users. In addition to sharing, commenting, and tagging other users' posts, they can also "riff" on the post - a feature that Microsoft described as "a new way to interact and improvise with content".

  Another feature in So.cl is the ability to create "video parties", which allow users to search for and assemble videos that they can share with other users.

  Microsoft referred to the network as "an experiment in open search", meaning searches will be viewable to other So.cl users and third parties. Microsoft also said that it won't automatically post users' So.cl activity, unless they opt in. Likewise, Facebook friends won't be contacted, unless users invite them.

  Microsoft initially made the network, which it described as an "experimental research project" in an earlier blog post, as a service available to information and design schools at the University of Washington, Washington; Syracuse University, New York; and New York University, New York.

  Via CNET

• Oracle v. Google loses another juror

  

  Rather than 12 Angry Men, proceedings are starting to play out more like And Then There Were None in the Oracle versus Google case.

  That's because the jury lost another member on Friday morning, bringing the total count to five men and five women. The trial originally started with 12 people in April; five men and seven women.

  The juror who was dismissed on Friday complained the day before that she had come down with a cold. Although she was originally instructed to try to show up at the US District Court of Northern California on Friday morning after the jury was sent home early on Thursday afternoon, she called the court after on Thursday night to inform the court that she wasn't going to make it on Friday.

  As he warned, Judge William Alsup dismissed her from jury duty immediately on Friday morning, telling the jury that it would be an inconvenience to the remaining 10 of them if proceedings were delayed any further. Thus, the jury continued to deliberate on Friday.

  This followed the departure of another female juror on Tuesday morning ahead of closing arguments, after she called in to say that she couldn't make it, due to car trouble.

  Incidentally, the judge told the jury a few weeks ago that the trial can still carry on if it loses a few jurors. Alsup never offered an exact number, but he said that it is possible to continue proceedings even if the total count drops by one or two. On Thursday, he specified that the jury count could be as low as six for the trial to continue without disruption.

  At the same time, based on the questions from the jury thus far, it looks like they could be at an impasse yet again over US Patent 6,061,520, which is addressed two of the three questions on the special verdict form for the patent phase of the case.

  Twice, the jury has requested to hear transcripts of court testimony read back to them - specifically from Oracle's expert witness John Mitchell and Google's expert witness Terence Parr. Excerpts from both readings focused on the terminology and differences of simulated execution and pattern matching.

  In closing arguments, Van Nest said, on the 6,061,520 patent, that every expert witness who acknowledged every step of the method must be present, including simulation of the bytecode. He also explained that Android doesn't implement simulated execution like Oracle argues, but, rather, pattern matching.

  Parr said that the dx tool in Android doesn't use simulated execution for the purpose of identifying static initialisation of an array. Mitchell said that simulated execution includes pattern matching.

  Finally, also pointing towards potential problems in the deliberation room, one juror submitted a note on Friday afternoon, asking why the verdict vote has to be unanimous.

  The judge responded soundly, "It's the law. That's why it has to be unanimous. Congress said it has to be unanimous."

  Before the jury re-entered to hear the answer and reading of Parr's testimony, Alsup added that he has "been privileged to preside over more than 100 trials," with the vast majority of them being jury trials. He said that only in a couple instances did he have juries that could not come to unanimous decisions.

  Oracle v. Google: special verdict form for patent phase

  Via ZDNet US

• Nasdaq admits Facebook IPO tech issues

  

  Design problems with Nasdaq's technology interfered with Facebook's initial public offering (IPO), the stock exchange's chief executive has acknowledged.

  

  (Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

  Tests conducted ahead of Friday's highly anticipated offering failed to detect problems with order cancellation, Robert Greifeld told reporters in an interview reported by The Wall Street Journal. He said that Nasdaq was "humbly embarrassed" by the problems.

  "This was not our finest hour," he said, adding that Nasdaq's board met on Saturday to discuss the matter.

  However, he maintained that nothing in the exchange's data indicated that the glitch was responsible for the plunge in share price that the stock experienced. Not long after the stock began trading on Friday at US$42.05, shares tumbled to their US$38 offering price.

  "It would lead a reasonable person to conclude that it didn't have an impact on the stock price," he said, according to a New York Times account of the interview.

  Greifeld's comments were the first public admission by the exchange that technical glitches may have contributed to confusion among traders after the IPO's opening was delayed by 30 minutes on Friday. Traders complained that they were not able to confirm changes or cancellations made to Facebook orders starting as early as 4.30am PT. Later in the morning, some traders said that they had not received confirmation from Nasdaq that their transactions had actually been completed.

  Angry traders and investors are demanding that the exchange compensate them for any losses incurred as a result of the glitch, according to a Fox Business report. Those demands could add up to US$100 million, but Greifeld said that the exchange will not cover the losses.

  Facebook shares finished the day at US$38.27 - up just 27 cents, or 0.71 per cent, over their US$38 opening.

  Bloomberg reported on Friday that the SEC will review Nasdaq's performance in regards to trading Facebook shares. However, the news service noted that the commission "routinely" conducts such reviews.

  A snafu with another Nasdaq IPO in March caused Apple shares to briefly plunge more than 9 per cent when shares in BATS Global Markets, a stock-exchange rival to both the NYSE and the Nasdaq, were halted due to "clearly erroneous" trades. BATS issued its own alert, reporting "system issues in symbols range A through BF" - a range that included Apple (AAPL).

  Via CNET

• Pakistan blocks Twitter for prophet images

  

  Pakistan blocked the social-networking website Twitter over the weekend, because it refused to remove tweets considered to be anti-Islamic.

  The tweets were promoting a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, said Mohammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

  Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favourable ones, as being blasphemous.

  The government restored access to Twitter before midnight on Sunday, about eight hours after it initially blocked access.

  It is unclear whether the government reversed its decision because of action by Twitter, or because of public criticism that it received for its censorship.

  Yaseen said on Sunday afternoon that Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology had ordered the telecommunications authority to block Twitter because the company refused to remove the offending tweets.

  In contrast, Facebook agreed to address Pakistan's concerns about the competition, he said.

  Officials from Twitter and Facebook were not immediately available for comment.

  A top court in Pakistan ordered a ban on Facebook in 2010 amid anger over a similar competition. The ban was lifted about two weeks later, after Facebook blocked the particular page in Pakistan.

  The Pakistani government said at the time that it would continue to monitor other major websites for anti-Islamic links and content.

  Even when Twitter was blocked on Sunday, many people based in Pakistan continued to use the website by employing programs that disguise the user's location.

  There was widespread criticism of the government's action by those on Twitter, who tend to be more liberal than average Pakistanis.

  "Another cheap moral stunt by Pakistan," tweeted liberal Pakistani columnist Nadeem Paracha.

• NSA, FBI split on comms intercepts

  

  The differing missions of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI have led to a split over telecommunications intercept policies - which Americans call "wiretaps" - according to computer scientist Susan Landau.

  The FBI's focus is on law enforcement. Since 1994, the agency has had a direct say in the design of communications networks, courtesy of the US Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), so that its ability to conduct intercepts isn't compromised by new developments, such as voice over internet protocol (VoIP) communications, and other peer-to-peer technologies.

  Law-enforcement agencies in the US and elsewhere are demanding the ability to intercept communications in their fight against terrorism, espionage and serious international crimes. The impact of American actions is felt far beyond its shores, because the majority of the world's internet communications still traverses the US.

  But as Landau, a visiting scholar in the Computer Science Department at Harvard University, told the AusCERT information security conference last week, wiretaps help solve just six US kidnapping cases per year, and, according to a June 2006 Department of Justice whitepaper on counterterrorism, only 441 defendants have ever been charged with terror- or terrorism-related activities with an international "nexus".

  Landau said that natural disasters pose far greatest risks to the nation.

  The FBI estimated that the cost to the US of nation-state espionage is US$200 billion annually, she said, and Kaspersky Lab chief Eugene Kaspersky told the conference that criminal malware costs more than US$100 billion globally.

  But in 2005, Hurricane Katrina alone was responsible for 1836 deaths and an estimated US$81 billion in property damage - and the US has been relatively lucky. The Haiti earthquake of 2010 killed 230,000 people. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed 283,000.

  "We face serious natural disaster risks...what do you need during those times? You need emergency responders to be able to communicate," she said. Availability and interoperability are key.

  Landau said that while researching her book Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies, the NSA told her that the answer is for secure, interoperable land mobile radio to be available cheaply through consumer electronics stores. Mobile or landline phones might go down in an emergency, she said. Satellite communication could be blocked by tall buildings or bad weather.

  "To get [the balance] right, you want to have secure communications when you have a disaster, whether natural or otherwise, and the natural ones happen much more often," Landau said. Only after that should we consider ensuring the security of personal and business communication, and then the potential for intercepts.

  "You build wiretapping capability into a communications system, it stays a really long time. You try to deal with an emergency threat [such as terrorism] now by building a wiretapping capability into your system now, you might take care of your threat now, but five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, you've still got that wiretapping capability, and somebody else can break into it," she said.

  "The NSA and FBI have split on this, because they have different viewpoints," she said, with the NSA looking at the broader picture of national security, rather than just law enforcement.

  Landau recommends against focusing on the blunt instrument of privacy-invasive communications intercepts, which she says could easily be turned against citizens. Law-enforcement agencies should instead use transactional information, such as mobile phone location data, the vulnerability of end hosts and other "clever" solutions.

• Travel Tech Q and A: Gartner's Warren Anderson

  

  Gartner group vice president of Asia Pacific Warren Anderson is not only active in the IT industry in Australia, but also competes internationally in triathlons, so he needs to travel, and often. Here are his travel tips.

  

  Warren Anderson
  (Credit: Gartner)

  Gartner provides research and insights into the IT industry, delving into the nuts and bolts of business technology.

  What tech do you travel with, and why?

  I never go anywhere without my BlackBerry, and would be so lost without it. As I travel so much, I am either in planes or in meetings, and, so, I need to be in constant contact with the business across the region and with the mother ship in the US. I am still a "button" guy, so getting me to type on a touchscreen will take a lot of changing. I do take my laptop PC with me if I need to work on any documents, but have just added an iPad to my travel technology, and view documents and email on that. So, unless I need to work on documents on a plane and save them, I don't touch the PC.

  What's your favourite phone app for travelling and why?

  My favourite app for travelling is FaceTime. It allows [me] to contact my kids and wife on their iPads by video, which makes travelling just a little more bearable. As it is video [on] a portable device, it feels just a little more real since you can move around with them, rather than having them tied to a PC using video. It is my job to read with my son at night; FaceTime means we still have that time together when I am away, and he can even show me how far he has progressed on Call of Duty or Halo. I have some family in New Zealand: their eldest son has just gone away to uni, but they still have dinner with him on FaceTime, each night. He sits at his normal spot at the dinner table, on his iPad.

  Most memorable travel story/experience?

  I was recently sitting on a plane to New Zealand, when a famous actor came and sat next to me. He had a very familiar face; I knew him from being in The Lord of The Rings and I knew my daughters would be very impressed. I couldn't remember his name, so I did a search on my phone as soon as I landed. He happened to lean over, saw what I was searching for and had a big laugh. I said it was for my daughters. I'm not sure he believed me, but they were still very impressed. It was Orlando Bloom.

  Personal travel advice/tip?

  I think that everyone is always willing to give advice on what the best things are to do, but I think that in all the years I have been travelling, I have never met someone with the same habits as myself. I think we all try different things, and then do what works best for ourselves. For me, I always leave home with the motto that as long as I have my passport, my BlackBerry and my credit card, there is no problem I can't solve.

  How do you deal with jet lag?

  I always arrange for my flights to arrive at the destination early evening and then I don't sleep on planes, other than a 30-minute nap. When I arrive, I go for a ride or a run in the gym, have a couple of beers, a big meal and then have a good eight or nine hours of sleep. This works even when I travel to the US. It is definitely something that you get better at, the more you travel, but I would rather be tired on a plane, than have to struggle with jet lag whilst I am trying to work.

  What (if any) travel websites do you use?

  I use Wotif and Qantas.

  What was your biggest travel disaster?

  My assistant books all my travel, but, on a recent trip to India, I decided to take my wife and daughters with me, so I booked the same flights for them online. On the return leg, we had a flight leaving at Mumbai at 10 minutes past midnight. To get into the airport, you needed to show your passport and itinerary to pretty heavily armed soldiers. They ushered me through, and then stopped my wife and daughters outside the airport, saying that they couldn't come into the airport, as their flights were only booked for the following day. They had to wait outside the airport for two hours whilst I tried, desperately, to get them onto flights. They finally found a flight with a business-class seat and three economy seats, and, so, I then went to tell a pretty irate wife how good I was. Guess who sat in economy with the kids?

  Where is the best place you've been for duty-free tech shopping?

  I used to say Singapore Airport, but, with the outlet shopping in the US now, being able to get special tax credits at the stores, the strength of the Aussie dollar and just the cheap price of tech and clothes, I would have to say the US.

  What is your dream travel tech to have on planes/in airports/at hotels?

  I would really like wireless electricity.

  Favourite destination city to work/visit and why?

  I would have to say home, in Brisbane, as it is always so nice to get home. Although, I am sure that one day, I will find out that there is a huge radiation cloud above my house, as my wife and three kids all have laptops, iPads, phones, iPods, etc, and most of our media is wireless. We have fantastic wireless access at home in every room, so I can work from my office or from bed at night, with the same device. One of my Gartner colleagues introduced me to Sonos speakers last year, so now we have them throughout the house and can stream music, legally, to all speakers separately or linked together - very, very cool.

• Facebook IPO goes off without a bang

  

  One of the most celebrated IPOs in history, which raised US$16 billion dollars, ended the day below where it started. At Facebook, it's back to business.

  

  After Zuckerberg rang the bell
  (Credit: James Martin/CNET)

  After an all-night 'hackathon' at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Founder Mark Zuckerberg rang the ceremonial Nasdaq bell from his home turf and the trading started. Almost. There were glitches that stalled things. Financial news anchors vamped breathlessly. And, ultimately, ticker symbol FB traded for a shortened day, just about five hours.

  There was no 1999-style pop, but the stock did climb. In fact, it opened at just above US$42 dollars - 11 per cent above the offering price of US$38 a share. That's how much demand there was. In fact, the trading volume set an all-time record for the Nasdaq. But this demand didn't want to stick around. These weren't bets on Facebook's grand future. These were attempt to make a quick buck.

  And when the shares started to fall towards their opening price, apparently the bankers worked like mad to try to "support the deal". In other words, the investment bankers, who have an agreement to make a market in the stock, likely began buying shares themselves to keep it afloat.

  And it makes sense. The bankers don't want to see the price close below the offering price. At the close, the stock was priced at US$38.27 - below where it opened, and just above the offering price. For the bankers, this was not casual Friday.

  It's too late now, of course, but you can bet the bankers are wishing they were able to get this deal done a few months back. Timing is everything, and in this case, theirs was not ideal. Think about it: in the last couple of months, the stock market overall has taken a sharp turn south amid continued worries about Europe and, in particular, Greece.

  But the problems that have cast doubt on Facebook are closer to home as well. In April, two months after the company filed to go public, Facebook reported a slowdown in revenue and a drop in profits, highlighting that the days of hyper-growth are coming to and end. Zuckerberg then spent a surprising US$1 billion cash and stock to buy the photo-sharing app Instagram, drawing attention to Facebook's problem in mobile.

  Mobile is where Facebook's growth is, and yet Facebook doesn't yet have a way to make money money from mobile users. The company last week amended its S-1 filing with the SEC to underscore the mobile challenge, and Zuckerberg reportedly told potential investors that mobile is his top priority for 2012.

  Then there was General Motors, which earlier this week pulled US$10 million of ads from Facebook because, it said, they weren't working.

  Throughout it all, however, the big investors wanted in, and on Wednesday the company upped the price range of the stock offering. Despite warnings, few fund managers wanted to miss out. But plenty seemingly also don't want to be left holding too much.

  For the gang at Facebook, however, the party continued. Facebook posted back-slapping photos and videos for the celebrations from the sprawling campus that was once home to Sun Microsystems.

  Now, the eight-year-old Facebook has a fat pile of cash and sports a market value that, at almost US$110 billion dollars, is more than US$15 billion higher than Amazon's. Google, which is in many ways Facebook's biggest competitor, has a market cap of US$196 billion. In short, Facebook is now among the big boys - in almost every sense.

  The one place it's falling short is bottom line. Sure, Facebook makes money, and it's on track to do more than US$4 billion in revenue for 2012. But Google did 10 times that last year. So Zuck and team, now under Wall Street's watchful and sometimes distracting eye, need to buckle down and figure start figuring out how to make more money from its 900 million users. Zuckerberg's hardest test awaits.

  Via CNET

• Automation key for time-poor security boffins

  

  The way in which IT departments have been approaching information security is flawed, according to Juniper Networks senior director and security architect Christopher Hoff, who said that security departments need to adopt automation to free up their time to think outside the box.

  

  Christopher Hoff
  (Credit: Michael Lee/ZDNet Australia)

  Speaking to ZDNet Australia, and presenting at AusCERT 2012 earlier this week, Hoff said that security experts tend to only set up reactive plans on how they think systems might break, without taking into account the unpredictable ways in which complex systems of today actually do fail.

  "Every once in a while, we test certain things, but we test them as though you hit the first domino and every other domino hits the other one, and there's this linear sequence of events that happens," he said.

  "What normally happens is chaos ensures people don't respond the same way, technology doesn't respond the same way you expect it to and so what ends up happening in complex distributed systems is you end up with complex distributed outcomes that aren't always predictable."

  Rather than being a reactive force, focusing on threats and vulnerabilities as they become public, security teams should be trying to break their own systems, so that they can manage their risk, he said.

  But security experts haven't been able to do this, because they have been treading water for years, Hoff said. This is because it's difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with new technologies and their associated threats, which are being rolled out at an increasingly faster pace. The only way to be able to experiment with systems in that way is to use automation to do basic security jobs that steal the team's time.

  Such automation measures can include setting up systems so that they automatically notify each other that they are under attack, even when they are on completely separate layers.

  "It's amazing to me that infrastructure can be under attack, and the apps don't know about it and vice versa. We have the capabilities ... we know how to exchange information about vulnerability and threat. It's silly that we don't."

  Although automation seems like quite a logical step, it isn't as simple to execute. Hoff said that many chief information security officers (CISOs) and CIOs are struggling with the "technical debt" that they have inherited, and are weighed down by the need to maintain what are now considered as being legacy platforms. Newer platforms running over the cloud are more suitable for automation, he said.

  "Large enterprises with tons of applications and legacy infrastructure have a more difficult chore. [Enterprise customers] kind of get mad at me, or at least upset and grumpy about the fact that I keep pointing out [new infrastructure models]. What their frustration stems from is just being saddled with all of this stuff that in many cases, if they could, they would just move off their plate."

  As someone who has worked on both sides of the fence, and also in start-ups and large enterprise environments, Hoff is sympathetic to the frustrated CISO. However, he promised that the benefit of taking the time to set up automated procedures is worth the pain.

  "I've been in the trenches, I've been a CISO, I know what it's like. It took me three years to, across the entire company, establish a risk-management program that folded in IT and all of the business and audit, and it's a tremendous amount of work, but it moved us forward and to the point of really making a difference," he said.

  "A lot of that was stopping doing simple routine tasks and automating as much as we possibly could, and testing the heck out of the domain and [other] areas [for] impacts that a failure would produce."

• Lightning round!

  

  What's an IPO and why is Facebook doing it? How's this year's AusCERT? Where's our slice of Raspberry Pi? And where are Josh and Michael?

  On this week's Piccolo-sized Technolatte:

  • Facebook launches its IPO

  • What's happening at AusCERT 2012

  • How many Raspberry Pi computers are there in Australia?

  Subscribe to Technolatte on iTunes.

  Running time: 14 minutes, 21 seconds

• Vic scraps HealthSMART system

  

  The Victorian Government has made the decision to scrap its HealthSMART system, which was years overdue and had run hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.

  HealthSMART was launched in 2003 and had been designed to run as a single electronic foundation for the state's public health service. The single platform would combine a finance system, as well as patient-management and clinical-applications services.

  However, Health Minister David Davis today confirmed that the government had scrapped the continuation of the roll-out of HealthSMART, with the government to now work on a hospital-by-hospital basis, to set up individualised systems.

  Davis said the government is determined not to "throw more good money, after bad" and would set up an expert panel to advise it on the best way to upgrade the hospital information and communication technology (ICT) systems.

  "In those hospitals where it has been put in place or partially put in place, health services will make their decisions from that position, but going forward, beyond that, health services will be able to examine what is appropriate for their particular service," he said.

  The new ICT projects would be payed for through the $100 million innovation fund, allocated in this month's Budget.

  The road to the system's cancellation is one littered with blowouts and delays; $323 million was originally budgeted for the system and a deadline for completion was set for the end of 2007.

  Administrative issues and bureaucratic headaches saw the system miss its initial deadline. The government laid out hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding, eventually taking the project's final bill to a total of $566 million, although the system is only operational in four health services.

  When the Baillieu-led coalition government delivered its first state Budget, State Treasurer Kim Wells tore the delayed systems implementation to proverbial shreds, blaming it and the troubled Myki public transport ticketing project for heavily contributing to the state's $7 billion debt figures.

  "Major projects inherited by this government - including Myki ... and HealthSMART - face significant cost overruns, which total around $2 billion, and have further contributed to the run-up of debt," the treasurer said in May, last year.

  Despite the bashing, HealthSMART received an additional $6.7 million in funding in the most recent Budget.

• US, Australia team up on cybersecurity

  

  Attorney-General Nicola Roxon today said that the US and Australia have agreed on a statement of intent to increase collaboration on cybersecurity.

  "The new and emerging challenges of a digital economy were the subject of recent talks in Canberra between myself and secretary [of the US Department of Homeland Security, Janet] Napolitano. And yesterday, in Washington, we built upon those discussions," Roxon said in a statement.

  Countries are ever more reliant on critical infrastructure, such as telecommunications, she said, which are the backbone of increasingly important online commerce. Because of this, Australia and the US have to increase their resilience to malicious activity, she said.

  "This statement will lead to increased collaboration between the two countries on critical infrastructure, particularly digital control systems."

  Australia will now share information on operational security between their national cyber-incident teams, exchange security best practices for IT and industrial-control systems, work together on cybersecurity exercises and encourage training and education on security.

  Officials will meet to decide on a timetable of work, and to uncover issues that might arise. The governments have previously signed statements for increased intelligence sharing and easier travel between the countries.

• Woolies case poses procurement questions

  

  Whether it's in a public or private organisation, IT procurement, and perhaps procurement of any kind, seems to be a black hole that if not watched, can suck money away into an abyss.

  We've heard the stories of the government employees in Victoria who were receiving gift cards for buying printer toner that departments didn't need. We've heard the stories of the Sydney University IT manager who allegedly hired a company for IT work in which he and his wife held an interest. We've heard the rumblings about government agencies doing too much procurement outside of the tender process, with one example being a contract awarded by Synergy, which was picked up in an audit.

  This week, Australian icon Woolworths has been forced onto the dodgy IT-procurement bandwagon, with a case on the matter being heard in the District Court.

  It's alleged that a former general manager of information systems at Woolworths, David Wills, used his position to influence the awarding of contracts, netting himself $3.75 million. Crown prosecutor Sunil de Silva outlined one example, saying that on Wills' insistence, Woolworths had awarded a $20 million contract to Azben Technology.

  Wills "used his position to influence the awarding of these contracts in a way that would prejudice the interests of Woolworths", De Silva said.

  "If a company was awarding tenders without following procedures for tenders, it loses credibility in the financial market."

  De Silva is exactly right. That company does. After all, if you're not managing your spending, then how is the business going to do well? And what about the service that the company was trying to obtain? Will it actually be delivered?

  The trouble is, people often hate the procedures that are put in place to stop similar fraud from occurring. They make it difficult to buy anything, and cause problems if time is an issue with the purchase. We know the pain of a company slogging its way through a government tender process. On the other side of the fence, it's likely just as tedious for IT managers, who are waiting for the program that the business so desperately needs to get on track.

  Given these issues, people will inevitably be tempted to try to cut corners. This helps those who really are intending to rort the system.

  So, how do we make sure that procurement is kept honest, while not overburdening the IT department?

  Perhaps big data has the answer. If we pull together data from inside and outside an organisation about individuals who work in procurement process and their procurements, it could be possible to follow the breadcrumbs to the realisation that something is wrong.

  Remember the case of the former EDS employee who stole $3 million from the Bank of Queensland? His spending on wine and cars sparked the investigation that led to him being sentenced to jail. This sort of spending could probably have been picked up sooner, with data sucked from the social media sphere.

  In the realm of procurement, a query might find a link between a person and a company's services that are being procured.

  After all, wouldn't you brag on Twitter or Facebook if you bought a luxury car?

  How do you keep an eye on procurement in your organisation?

  AAP contributed to this article.