Deborah Gage

As the year ended, Bonnie Burns—a training and policy specialist with California Health Advocates, a nonprofit that counsels people on Medicare—was stretched to the limit. She was swamped with requests for help from senior citizens afraid of losing coverage for their prescription drugs under the new Medicare drug benefit, which took effect on Jan. 1, […]

The error was simple. But a newborns life hung in the balance. Baby J needed more potassium chloride, a type of salt that is vital to the proper functioning of the nervous system. Too many of these dissolved salts, also known as electrolytes, can kill. Near Baby Js bedside at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center […]

It was the 1990s. A boom time, at least in technology. And Stanford University was eager to dump its 20-year-old mainframe software and move to the latest financial and human-resources systems from Oracle and PeopleSoft. The prestigious institution, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, enjoys access to the best and the brightest minds in […]

If Chris DeVoney hustles, he can stay one step ahead of the hackers he fears are going to steal patient records. But he doesnt dare rest. He is the computing director at the clinical research center of the University of Washington Medical Center. In the past year, he has patched and installed software firewalls on […]

Both the high-tech industry and the Bush administration have opposed government regulation of the Internet on the grounds that it would burden businesses and hinder technological innovation. But after 2003— which all acknowledge was the worst year ever for worms, viruses and security breaches that cost billions of dollars in lost productivity— some question whether […]

Its hunting season on marketers, thanks to “Do Not Call” regulation and anti-spam legislation, and companies such as Publishers Clearing House are in the line of fire. The 50-year-old marketer of magazine subscriptions believes it has taken every conceivable precaution to protect customers privacy. Publishers Clearing House refuses to buy or sell customers e-mail addresses, […]

Security technology is growing increasingly sophisticated—so much so that computers can now identify and track the movements, physical characteristics, and chemical traces of people without much help from human beings. Over time, those processes will become even more automated, making it easier to protect airports and other facilities against disasters and possible terrorist attacks. But […]

More than 100 handpicked senior managers were summoned to a conference room at the Milford, Mass., headquarters of Waters Corp., a manufacturer of analytical instruments for the pharmaceutical and scientific industries. They were mostly in the dark. All they knew when they arrived on Monday, July 22, 2002, was that they had been selected to […]

U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner is trying to fight terror with a stick and a carrot. Hes telling business leaders to batten down their supply chains, meeting standards set by Customs to secure every aspect of the way they process cargo—from manufacturing facilities to warehouses to people. The stick is C-TPAT, short for Customs-Trade Partnership […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Nervous executives took the stage at the RSA Security Conference here on Tuesday to fret about poor Internet security and its effect on their businesses. In a 40-minute discussion punctuated with warnings to the audience not to rush the stage to try to sell them security products, the executives ticked off their concerns: developers […]