Caron Carlson

Congressional leaders appear eager to pass an identity-theft law this week, and their proposals are becoming tougher. Last week, Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and John Dingell, D-Mich., the chairman and ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, respectively, floated a draft bill requiring businesses engaged in interstate commerce to encrypt sensitive […]

Recent efforts to improve cooperation and coordination between the federal government and the IT industry have shown mixed results, including the aborted attempt this spring to create a Chief Information Security Officer Exchange. The ongoing struggle to improve the dialogue increases the pressure on the original public/private-sector forum—the Industry Advisory Council—and its new chairman, Ellen […]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, who took the helm of the agency this spring, last week outlined an agenda that will extend the deregulatory program of his predecessor, Michael Powell. Addressing the telecommunications industry at its annual Supercomm gathering in Chicago, Martin said his top priority is to create a regulatory environment conducive to […]

For an industry made up of companies long accustomed to going their own way, telecommunications is becoming increasingly dependent on partnerships. At the Supercomm show here last week, service providers and software developers unveiled a series of intriguing partnerships. IBM, which for years has helped network operators team up with other vendors to maximize efficiency […]

Privacy advocates have toiled for three years to rein in the governments enhanced power under the USA Patriot Act to demand confidential customer records from American businesses, but congressional leaders instead are poised to expand the power and make it permanent. Several of the most invasive provisions of the Patriot Act, passed hastily in the […]

CHICAGO—The chiefs of the countrys largest network equipment makers are sending a clear signal that security and reliability will remain top challenges for network operators, both in the enterprise and service provider markets. While IP networking and converged services promise untold benefits, they also expose the network to more sophisticated attacks. At the Supercomm conference […]

CHICAGO—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, who took the helm of the agency this spring, on Tuesday outlined an agenda that will extend the deregulatory program of his predecessor, Michael Powell. Addressing the telecommunications industry at its annual gathering, the Supercomm conference and expo in Chicago, Martin said his top priority is to create a […]

CHICAGO—A decade after lawmakers envisioned opening up telecommunications so that all service providers could compete in all markets, the vision is beginning to see realization. However, it is primarily video and data applications, rather than voice as originally anticipated, which are spurring the insurgencies. The telephone companies efforts to take video share from the cable […]

Silicon Valley is fast moving into the world of telephony, and it is dragging the contest between open and proprietary code along with it. Next week at Supercomm, the annual telephony conference and expo in Chicago, IT will show a higher profile than ever before. Standards advocates will champion open architecture as a way for […]

Cisco Systems Inc. used the Supercomm trade show in Chicago to announce a new service Monday to prevent distributed-denial-of-service attacks on customer networks. The new Cisco Distributed Denial of Service Protection Solution service uses updates to the companys 7600 Series Routers and Catalyst 6500 Series Switches, along with Arbor Networks Peakflow SP traffic monitoring and […]