High Alert? Forget Duct Tape.
Here's How to Prepare... Remembering the
aftermath of the attacks on the twin towers of the World
Trade Center and on the Pentagon reported in our October,
2002 issue, it makes sense to plan backup systems for data
and communication. Even before the attacks, many businesses were
using "hot"
backups - instant, off-site backups of critical data. These
backup systems enabled them to conduct business after the attack
with little interruption. And it helps to remember that as for
communication after the attacks, conventional
telephones failed and cell phones were overwhelmed, but internet
email, wireless email, satellite phones, and 2-way radios kept
working. As for personal data, some internet service providers
(ISP's) now provide their subscribers with free off-site backups
or "electronic safe-deposit
boxes." See, for example, planttel.net
Hackers I: Global Tensions Expected to Lead to Greater
Hacker Activity on Both Sides. The FBI has warned that escalating
animosity between the US and Iraq could lead to an increase in
global computer hacking efforts by both sides. The warning comes
one week after President Bush signed a secret order authorizing
the government to establish guidelines under which the US could
launch cyber attacks against foreign computer systems. See the
report at siliconvalley.com
Hackers II: Cost of Hacker Insurance Skyrockets.
Not unexpectedly, the cost of hacker
insurance is soaring. The market for such insurance is expected
to increase from $100 million to $900 million by 2005. As reported
by usatoday.com
Online Retailers: Charging
Sales Tax for Online Sales Burdens Interstate Commerce. Coming under increasing pressure
after the recent decision of several major retailers to charge
online sales tax, major online retailers such as Amazon.com respond
that the difficulties of collecting such taxes place an undue
burden on interstate commerce. As an example, they cite the case
of one zip code in Colorado which contains 5 separate taxing
jurisdiction and tax rates. The states must simplify the process,
they say. As previously
reported in the Brief, the states
are working on doing just that, and 35 separate states have
now adopted the Streamlined
Sales & Use Tax Agreement (pdf file). As reported
by wired.com
Enron's Tax Scheme So Confusing,
Not Even the IRS Could Figure it Out. Congressional tax experts who have
spent more than a year going over Enron's income tax returns
will
testify before a Senate Finance committee today that Enron
avoided payment of income taxes by means of financial maneuvering
so complex that not even the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could
understand it. In part, Enron (and other companies) avoided taxes
by manipulating the differing rules governing the two sets of
books that each corporation must keep - one for shareholders
and another for the IRS, or the difference between book accounting
and tax accounting. See the article
in nytimes.com. (free subscription
may be required.)
Not Even Reformatting Computer
Hard Drive Will Make Data Unretrievable. "As long as the hard drive
is working, there's nothing you can do short of taking a sledgehammer
to it to make sure the data are really gone," says this
expert who spends his days recovering data from computer hard
drives that have been damaged by fire, flood and worse. See this
article
at usatoday.com
25% of all Email is Now Spam
- But You Knew That... Message Labs, an internet security
service provider based in the United Kingdom, surveyed over 100
million emails last month, and found that nearly 25% of them
constituted spam. The company also found that the virus-to-email
ratio increased by more than 25% since December, 2002, and found
more than 600,000 instances of a variant of the email virus Klez.
As reported
in smh.com, the website
of the Sidney Morning Herald.