Lisa Vaas

Microsoft wants to drag online every mom and pop shop it can, and if it has to give away Web hosting, Web site building tools, custom domain names and business-branded e-mail accounts to get them there, that’s exactly what it’s planning to do. The company will announce on Feb. 11 that it’s collapsing what was […]

Between Microsoft’s new freebie, Office Live Small Business tools, and Yahoo’s recently announced all-you-can-eat free Web site hosting buffet, you’re a fool if you reach for your wallet when it comes to getting online. In fact, one analyst said, you’re crazy if you own a small business and are actually paying for software to get […]

CA has released new backup, recovery, high-availability and replication products, all geared to midmarket companies with the updates’ ease of use, better security and faster data recovery. Frank Jablonski, director of product marketing for CA Recovery Management, said that this trio of updates is the most significant crop yet from CA’s new Midmarket and Storage […]

Within days of finalizing its $1.4 billion purchase of EqualLogic, Dell has delivered the first fruits of its promise to bring plug-and-play ease to data storage. Dell launched its EqualLogic PS series of iSCSI SAN (storage area network) products in a splashy Nashua, N.H., event that was simultaneously Webcast on Feb. 4. “The world will […]

Hewlett-Packard has released a batch of entry-level disk arrays that allow smaller companies to flip between low-cost Fibre Channel and iSCSI on the one hand and high-availability storage area networks in virtualized server setups on the other. On Feb. 6, HP unleashed the new family, dubbed the HP StorageWorks 2000 Modular Smart Array, or MSA2000. […]

Aten Technology has released an IP-enabled keyboard/video/mouse switch that promises to let smaller businesses manage multiple servers over the Internet regardless of which closet in which country the systems are tucked away. “These new Category 5 switches [allow businesses] lots of flexibility from the standpoint of where you can deploy the switches as well as […]

A security consultancy in February will launch a portal to automate the infliction of faux spear-phishing attempts on one’s own work force—an educational tactic that experts are increasingly pointing to as one effective method to stem the tide of information being unwittingly handed to thieves. The site, PhishMe.com, will be launched by Intrepidus Group, a […]

When office workers are asked to self-report anonymously on their work-related security behaviors and attitudes, a snapshot emerges that may make IT workers cringe. The research, conducted in on-the-street surveys in Boston and Washington by RSA in November and published in a report titled “The Confessions Survey,” (PDF) found that 53 percent of respondents who […]

Attackers are going after Microsoft Office Access databases, US-CERT warned earlier in the week, taking advantage of an unpatched stack buffer overflow to deliver malicious databases that are leading to system hijacking in an undetermined number of cases. Security researchers didn’t have many details on the attacks, but US-CERT’s advisory did say that users don’t […]

Microsoft’s latest monthly patch set tackles critical vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit in the wild to target PC users. Microsoft released seven security bulletins that addressed 11 vulnerabilities on its Dec. 11 Patch Tuesday. Of those, three bulletins containing seven client-side vulnerabilities are rated as critical and affect nearly all major Microsoft operating systems: 2000, […]