A study released Monday by the privacy-focused Ponemon Institute and funded by e-mail marketing firm Strongmail reveals a disturbing disconnect in companies between the executives tasked with protecting customer data and marketing departments, which use the data for advertising purposes or share it with third parties.

In response to a survey answered by 500 privacy and 900 marketing executives in industries ranging from health care to financial services, more than a third of marketing execs said they don't place any limits on the data they share with third parties, such as e-mail marketing agencies or online advertisers. By contrast, 75% of privacy officers believe that their companies limit the sharing of customer data.
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Today, data center experts are no longer taken for granted. The torrid growth in data centers to keep pace with the demands of Internet-era computing, their immense need for electricity and their inefficient use of that energy pose environmental, energy and economic challenges, experts say.

That means people with the skills to design, build and run a data center that does not endanger the power grid are suddenly in demand. Their status is growing, as are their salaries — climbing more than 20 percent in the last two years into six figures for experienced engineers.

“The data center energy problem is growing fast, and it has an economic importance that far outweighs the electricity use,” said Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor of environmental engineering at Stanford. “So that explains why these data center people, who haven’t gotten a lot of glory in their careers, are in the spotlight now.” (link)

 
 

Now more than ever, it's important that Windows users ensure their machines are safe from hackers. A dangerous new strain of malicious software that holds the victim's computers files for ransom has been unleashed, and Kaspersky Lab is warning that security researchers have yet to crack the encryption key.

The malware in this case is the latest version of Gpcode, a nasty piece of "ransomware" that scrambles all of the victim's data files with an encryption key known only to the attacker(s). Victims are told via a pop-up message that they need to purchase a special decryption program to regain access to their data.

Kaspersky and other anti-virus companies have previously unraveled the secret encryption key for all previous versions of Gpcode, but this time, the malware author apparently has learned from his previous mistakes. Now, the Gpcode author is encrypting victim files with an extremely strong 1,024-bit RSA encryption key. (link)

 
 

ioSafe says its new drive is “engineered to protect data from fire (up to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit or 760 degrees Celsius) and flood (full immersion in fresh or salt water).”

ioSafe have managed to do this by putting a 2.5-inch hard drive into a 3.5-inch disk enclosure, making the size compatible with 3.5-inch drive bays. The space between the 3.5-inch enclosure and the 2.5-inch drive is where the ioSafe protection against fire and water technology lies, while also “resolving heat dissipation issues found in all computer systems.”

The protection is question features a “FloSafe cooling vent technology provides air-flow cooling to dissipate heat during normal operation” which can also “detect destructive heat levels and automatically close the vents to protect data from extreme heat.” link