Compiled by Paul Thompson
Tripwire, Lloyd's Partner for Cyberinsurance
Security software vendor Tripwire Inc. is entering the cyberinsurance business via a partnership with Lloyd's of London. Tripwire, of Portland, Ore., Monday unveiled an alliance with Lloyd's that offers discounts on Lloyd's e-Comprehensive cyberinsurance policy to customers who use Tripwire's products. Tripwire software is a data integrity assurance tool that alerts administrators if a file has been altered or tampered with. "Insurance companies haven't been particularly aggressive (with cyberinsurance) because they don't really understand the technology part of it," Wyatt Starnes, Tripwire president and CEO said. "We're at the front end of cyber-risk with our products."
Firms to Manage Multilingual Web Content
Uniscape and NCompass Labs this week announced a strategic alliance to offer companies solutions for delivering timely Web content across linguistic, cultural and national boundaries. The ability to deliver fresh content across multiple languages is emerging as a key competitive advantage for successful market expansion in the Internet economy. NCompass Resolution provides powerful Web site design, content
authoring, publishing and content management capabilities. By linking Resolution to Uniscape's Globalization Infrastructure, companies can efficiently localize, manage and automatically update multilingual content in more than 40 languages across multiple language or country-specific
Web sites. "Our customers increasingly want to build upon their current e-business successes by expanding into global markets," said Gerri Sinclair, CEO of NCompass Labs. "This partnership with Uniscape will allow us to offer companies a world-class platform for rapidly and efficiently transforming their Web sites into expertly localized global businesses."
ValueClick Enhances Ad Targeting Capability
ValueClick, Inc. has announced enhancements to its advanced online ad targeting capabilities, including the addition of DoubleClick's DART technology. Other enhancements include new hardware and
software solutions from Oracle, Sun and Data Systems West, and new back-end analytical and reporting tools. This suite of tools continues ValueClick's history of delivering results to advertisers with technology innovation and integration of best-in-class tools, while maintaining commitment to consumer privacy. "With the introduction of industry-leading equipment, targeting technology and reporting and analysis tools, we will continue to set the industry standard for effective performance-based advertising on the Web," said ValueClick Chairman & CEO Jim Zarley. With the new tools, advertisers can anonymously target criteria including interest categories and subcategories, geography, domain types, organization types and names, organization size and revenue, Internet service providers, operating systems, browser types and ad-related information.
New Real Estate for Web Ads
Hotbar.com, Inc. has introduced a free plug-in designed to take advantage of existing Web browser
real estate to offer Hotbar's users access to the best of the Web through an unobtrusive toolbar. Hotbar offers e-businesses, through partnerships, a new way to cut through Web clutter and effectively reach their target audiences. Web sites can integrate their content into millions of customized browsers and fully leverage the Hotbar plug-ins 7.5 million user-base. "Our goal is to streamline the surfing process,
immediately connecting our users with the best content and e-commerce deals available anywhere," said Oren Dobronsky, Hotbar's co-founder and CEO. In the eight months Hotbar's beta version has been available, the 140-kilobyte plug-in has amassed nearly 7.5 million users. While Hotbar's "skins" -graphical images that can be instantly applied to the browser's existing gray-top toolbar- have fueled Hotbar's popularity, it also provides ebusinesses with a method to increase both their online visibility and profitability. Hotbar has formed partnerships with some of the Internet's highest-profile providers of
content, ecommerce and Internet services. Leveraging its partnerships, Hotbar also provides users with access to a range of services, such as free PC-to-Mobile MS Messaging and chat. Hotbar does more than add functionality to a user's Web browser. It also jazzes up users' Web journeys by introducing a splash of color and personality to an otherwise gray browser. Partners with Hotbar have created "skin centers," or areas on the site containing branded skins relevant to their respective companies. Individuals and companies can create skins in standard bitmap format using their own artwork and photographs. Users can also email skins to friends and family, post them on personal Web sites, and submit them to Hotbar's Skin Gallery for anyone to use. Hotbar has Internet Explorer- and Netscape-compatible versions.
Visionics Releases New Facial Recognition Technology
Visionics Corporation, developer of face recognition technology, released a new version of its FaceIt® Sentinel/Surveillance product. FaceIt® Sentinel/Surveillance 2.0 is aimed for use in new and existing closed-circuit TV systems. It uses the underlying FaceIt® engine, which has superior face finding capabilities, matching accuracy and speed. The system detects faces in the field of view and either automatically or manually initiates a search against a user-defined "watch list" or database. The software is built on Windows NT ® platform and utilizes standard "off the shelf'" computer hardware components and cameras. Enhancements added to the new version include user definable capture and search thresholds; visual and audible queues which indicate whether a high confidence match image is designated as a friend or foe; improved face detection and capture speed; increased simultaneous face acquisition; and several new visual system status indicators. The casino market uses FaceIt® Surveillance through a system that allows casino security to search for known card counters and cheaters.
Intel Recalls Fastest Chips
Intel has recalled its fastest chip, the 1.13GHz speed Pentium III, launched this summer, after two hardware testing sites found faults in them, news reports said. Although Intel said only a few thousand chips had been shipped, timing of the announcement late last month coincided with Advanced Micro Devices' shipping of its new competing chip, the Athlone 1.1GHz. Intel has contacted users who bought the faulty processor, and all unsold products have been withdrawn from the market. The flaws, the company said, should take about a month to fix.
New Software Attacks Chat Technology
Internet Security Systems (ISS) is warning users about an new attack software that can deliver crushing loads of traffic to victim computers via Internet relay chat, CNET News reported. Dubbed "Trinityv3," the program launches "distributed-denial-of-service" attacks. In a DDoS attack, a programmer secretly imbeds software into hundreds or thousands of computers. Then at a designated time, the infected host computers send messages to target computers, overloading servers and making websites inaccessible to other Net surfers. "In the past year DDoS tools have really come into the limelight, and the people who write this kind of software are constantly looking for ways to make it better," said Michael Horrin, a security consultant at the University of Washington. "This is another example of that."