Database and network news and products.

Ianywhere Selected for Global Recruitment

Microdec have selected SQL Anywhere Studio for mobile, embedded and small to medium sized business environments. Microdec's Profile 2000 application is designed to meet the needs of global professional recruitment consultancies and manages the recruitment process from the initial registration of a client to hiring an applicant. In an evaluation process, SQL Anywhere was top choice to address the small to medium sized business (SMB) database requirements of Microdec's leading clients. During the product evaluation stages, Microdec tested the SQL Anywhere-powered Profile 2000 solution in a "model office" to assess its functionality and ability to meet the needs of global organisations. Profile 2000 was put through a qualified IBM benckmarking test to ensure the scalability and speed of the underlying SQL Anywhere database and the robustness of the application. The results revealed that the SQL Anywhere-powered solution:

* Demonstrated high-performance running more than 1,300 active, connected users on a single database with 30 million records.

* Surpassed benchmark requirements on an 18 GB SQL Anywhere database with 3,900 concurrent connections.

* Performed more than 400% faster than benchmark requirements for global recruitment consultancies, with some search results over 4,700% faster.

* Addressed the key requirements for case of use and zero administration necessary for non-technical users to run the Profile application across a large number of distributed offices. www.ianywhere.com

IT Governance

Alan Calder and Steve Watkins

The new edition of this important handbook, published by Kogan Page on 7th June 2004, is fully updated with the final version of the BS 7799 standard. It guides managers through the maze of issues involved in effective information security management and shows how to introduce reliable management controls. In so doing, it also explains in detail the process of achieving BS or ISO certification. The development of IT governance--which recognizes the convergence between business management and IT management makes it essential for managers at all levels of the organization to adopt 'best practice' in information security. By taking on BS 7799 or ISO 17799 organizations can be certain that they are doing this. www.kogan-page.co.uk

Quest Central for MS v 1.0

Quest Software have available Quest Central for Microsoft version 1.0, a unified administrative workbench that extends day-to-day management of Windows server environments, including Active Directory and Exchange.

The Quest Central for Microsoft console provides:

* An intuitive graphical interface with multiple task panes;

* The ability to perform basic Active Directory and Windows NT administrative tasks (such as creating users, resetting passwords, or managing sites and domains) using native tools, without the need to open a separate window to launch each;

* An efficient way to manage multiple versions of Exchange (5.5, 2000 or 2003) through a single console, including creating and managing mailboxes;

* Access to native Windows, Active Directory and Exchange tools collectively from a single desktop, as well as enhanced functionality that goes beyond native tools in several areas;

* Integrated access to Quest Spotlight solutions to troubleshoot Windows and Exchange server performance and Active Directory replication;

* A technical information portal for quick access to the latest security patches, best- practice standards, technical articles and white papers.

The basic Quest Central for Microsoft console can be downloaded at no charge from http://www.guest.com/guestcentral/microsoft.

Windows Environment 

Quest Software has a combined solution offering for Windows, designed to help IT professionals manage their Microsoft environment. The Windows product group includes

Quest Central for Microsoft, the first unified administrative workbench that extends and enhances the efficient day-to-day management of Windows server environments, including Active Directory and Exchange. The basic console, available at no cost, provides unified access to multiple administrative tools. Customers can add more value by licensing plug-in products, such as Quest Patch Management for Microsoft.

Other products for Windows include:

* Quest Spotlight on Windows, an agentless diagnostic and troubleshooting product for Windows systems.

* ERDisk offers automated backup and 10-minute recovery of System State on Windows servers and workstations.

* Quest Patch Management for Microsoft, which scans, analyses, deploys, and tracks Microsoft patches for servers, workstations, Exchange, SQL, and MS Office.

* InTrust providing event log management for audit and regulatory requirements.

* Quest Reporter, for security assessment for the Windows infrastructure and configuration change auditing.

* Quest Consolidator, offering agentless storage analytics and online Windows data, security and printer migration that deliver ZeroIMPACTconsolidations and optimise storage resources. Quest Software has also decided to discontinue Aelita Consolidation Manager, moving forward with Quest Consolidator. Support for Consolidation Manager will cease at the end of 2004. Customers with current maintenance contracts for Consolidation Manager can substitute Quest Consolidator at no charge. http://www.guest.com/microsoft.

Free CAB Software for Academic Establishments

Leading geotechnical, structural and CAD software suites that provide invaluable tools for both teaching and research are available to download free of charge to all educational establishments from OASYS. This move not only sidesteps many of the financial issues in higher education but also gives students and researchers access to software used by their peers in industry.

The primary idea behind the initiative is to create and foster stronger links between academia and industry. Under the name UNIPAC, the package comprises three major components: Geotechnics Suite (GEO), which includes Windows SAFE--a two-dimensional finite element analysis program specifically designed for geotechnical problems; the Structural Suite, which includes GSA, a fully integrated Windows based structural analysis and design package, ADC, ADSEC and COMPOS; and the CAD Suite (CADtools), which includes CADrebar, CADbatch and CADplot intended for architects and designers in the construction field. Downloads include comprehensive user manuals in pdf format and a selection of on- line demonstrations. Tutorials for some programs can also be downloaded. Further details, including a breakdown of the software and how to obtain the free licences, can be found in the 'Academic Zone' within the Oasys website (http://www.oasys-software.com/product/academic).

Extended Capabilities for Microsoft Exchange 

Quest Software has unveiled an improved comprehensive roster of products for the management and migration of Microsoft Exchange. Quest Software's solutions for Exchange management provide a full range of capabilities and include-.

* Quest MessageStats measures e-mail traffic, reports policy compliance, defends Service Level Agreements, helps ensure sufficient capacity, and assists in preparing for Exchange migrations.

* Collaboration Services for Exchange (formerly Aelita Collaboration Services for Exchange) enables secure synchronisation of free/busy information and global address lists between Exchange organisations.

* Quest ActiveGroups automates, secures, and ensures the accuracy of distribution and security group membership for Exchange and Active Directory, eliminating error-prone manual administrative tasks.

* Quest Directory Integrity Agent automates policy compliance and enforces security on directories, mailboxes, public folders, e-mails, and attachments in Exchange.

* Quest SelectDL offers self-serve distribution list administration to reduce IT workload and increase customer satisfaction.

* Quest Spotlight on Exchange provides real-time troubleshooting, performance analysis, and simplified administration from a powerful graphical interface. Spotlight complements the monitoring capabilities of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM).

* Recovery Manager for Exchange enables quick investigation and retrieval of message-level data from standard backups without a dedicated recovery server,

* Exchange Migration Wizard provides inter-org migration capabilities with full coexistence during migration from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 200X.

* Quest Move Mailbox Manager increases the efficiency of intra-org upgrades from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 200X. http://www.guest.com/microsoft.

7th EU R&D Framework Programme

Public Consultation

The Office of Science and Technology has launched a public consultation on the 7th EU R&D Framework Programme. The consultation paper at www.ost..qov.uk/ostinternationa//fp7 outlines the key issues and initial Government thinking, and is inviting responses by 26 July.

The Programmes are the EU's primary mechanism for supporting and encouraging R&D in the European Community and are open to public and private entities, large and small. Through the Programmes, the EU provides funding for collaborative R&D projects, researcher mobility and the development of infrastructure. The current four-year programme (FP6) was launched in November 2002 with a budget of 17.5bn Euros, rising to 19bn Euros from I May 2004 as a result of EU enlargement.

The 7Ih Framework Programme (FP7) will cover the period 2006-2010. The European Commission's formal proposal is expected in the first half of 2005.

The Member States and Parliament will negotiate the new Programme during 2005 and 2006, and it is expected that the Programme will be agreed and launched towards the end of 2006.

The UK consultation will close on 26 July 2004. Initial feedback will be published on the OST website in August, and responses will feed into a UK position paper on FP7, to be published in early Autumn 2004. The Government will publicise the paper with the European institutions and other Member States. It will inform UK input to discussions between Member States and the Commission. Hard copies of the consultation document, response form and shorter Executive Summary can be ordered from DTI Publications Orderline at www.dti.gov.uk/publications

ADIC Joins HP

Advanced Digital Information Corp, specialists in Intelligent Storage solutions for the open systems market, has joined the HP Information Lifecycle Management (HM) partner program and is now working with HP to provide data management software to the companies' mutual customers in support of HP's ILM initiative designed to provide active, automated management of information throughout its lifecycle, from initial creation through deletion, based on changing business requirements for access and retention.

The announcement covers ADIC's StorNext data management software, a policy-based data management solution that helps to provide companies with a foundation for ILM. StorNext is certified under the HP ILM partner program and is now available through the BP sales force under terms of a worldwide reseller agreement. www.adic.com

Actinic Catalog V 7.0

Actinic Software have announced the release of version 7 of its range of ecommerce products version 7 of Actinic Catalog, Actinic Business and Actinic Developer. These offer improvements to the user interface plus major new functionality to enhance customer service and enable the e-tailer to deploy different types of promotional offers.

Version 7 includes a range of features designed to enable better and more efficient service and communication with customers. All Actinic products will now support entry at the desktop of orders received by telephone, fax, post etc.--creating a multi-channel order--processing system for the whole business. Orders can now be amended, colour-code and commented. An advanced order-searching facility has been added, together with an extension of the emailing capabilities.

A new discounts and surcharges option makes it easy to set up offers such as 'Buy one get one free', 'Three for the price of two', and 'Buy product A and get product B half price'. Offers can be limited to certain time periods or payment methods, and can be triggered by clicking a hyperlink or entering a voucher code.

Site' design and development Two modules previously available at a further cost of 500 [pounds sterling] are now included as standard with both Actinic Business and Actinic Developer. www.actinic.co.uk

VISTAselect for Small Fleet Management

VISTAselect from WS2 is designed to be the UK's most comprehensive entry-level fleet reporting solution for managers of small and medium sized fleets offering fleet managers a scalable solution for the reporting of vehicle fleet activity and reduction-of running costs. VISTAselect dealers will be able to supply the package over the Internet direct to the fleet manager, financial controller or customer service teams, avoiding the need for installation costs. All the customer needs is an Internet connection using Microsoft Internet explorer 5.5 and above. This, along with VISTA's compatibility with most IT systems, means there is little or no impact on the end-users' IT infrastructure.

VISTAselect includes street level maps of England, Scotland and Wales, and can generate a suite of live and historical vehicle/driver activity reports for up to 90 days. It is a GPRS communications package that enables capped costs. As a web-based package any number of users can securely monitor vehicle activities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. www.ws2.com

Quicken 2004

Quicken 2004, includes three new versions of the personal finance software that enables individuals to control their finances better: Quicken Money Manager, Quicken Investor and Quicken XG.

Each of these new versions of Quicken, from leading software provider Intuit, is aimed at individuals with different needs--savers and money organisers, investors, and small office and home office (SOHO) businesses. Each is tailored for a specific purpose with different functions included at each level in the range.

Quicken Money Manager, includes TaxCalc Lite and is designed to help with Internet banking, savings and debt reduction planning plus basic spending analysis. It is specifically for those who want more control over their finances and have a need to see where they are spending their money.

Quicken Investor, also includes TaxCalc Lite, and is aimed at those with investments. Users can download bank statements and credit card transactions alongside share and unit trust prices. Performance parameters can be set to help users make better investment decisions, including help to track changes in savings and investments.

Quicken XG, includes a copy of TaxCale Standard,and is the most comprehensive package is designed for people running a business from home using their personal bank account. It contains automatic reports and templates, has simple to set up accounts and a new multi-currency feature that makes international commerce easier. www.quicken.com

Investigation into Evacuation of World Trade Centre Survivors

Over 2000 survivors of the 9/11 World Trade Centre disaster are to be interviewed in the largest project ever undertaken into the evacuation safety of high rise buildings. The team, from the universities of Greenwich, Liverpool and Ulster, has been awarded a 1.6 million [pounds sterling] grant by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to study the experiences and behaviour of survivors of the September IIth tragedy.

Factors to be investigated include: whether survivors started to evacuate immediately or continue to work; the urgency with which the evacuation took place; the realisation that they were in danger; whether survivors formed groups; and other evacuation-shaping factors.

The project, High-rise Evacuation Evaluation Database (HEED), is due to start in September 2004.

The project will involve substantial knowledge and technology transfer, with the data obtained being archived and made available to all bona-fide researchers. www.gre.ac.uk

Printegration Formed

iWay Software and Oc6, developer and producer of professional document management systems have a partnership agreement to enable customers to integrate multi-domain back-office data into different types of documents, adding value to both digital and printed assets.

Under the name of Printegration, the partnership encompasses the approach and the solutions designed to generate up to 80 percent savings on the cost of integrating back-office information systems such as ERP, CRM, call-intake, and data warehouses with document technologies. www.ibi.com

Security Notes

Virus Top Twenty for May 2004

Kaspersky Labs

1  I-Worm.Netsky.aa        31.47%
2  I-Worm.Netsky.b         30.98%
3  I-Worm.Netsky.q          6.89%
4  I-Worm.Netsky.y          5.03%
5  I-Worm.Bagle.z           5.00%
6  I-Worm.Netsky.d          3.12%
7  I-Worm.LovGate.w         1.74%
8  I-Worm.Netsky.t          1.66%
9  I-Worm.Swen              1.56%
10 I-Worm.Mydoom.e          1.32%
11 I-Worm.Mydoom.g          0.86%
12 I-Worm.Netsky.o          0.86%
13 I-Worm.Netsky.c          0.71%
14 I-Worm.Netsky.r          0.70%
15 New I-Worm.Bagley.y      0.47%
16 New I-Worm.Sober.g       0.44%
17 I-Worm.Bagle i           0.43%
18 New EXPLOIT.HTML.
ObjData                     0.41%
19 Re-entry                 0.35%
20 I-Worm.Mimail            0.34%
Other malicious programs
(not in the Top 20)         5.66%

May 2004 was a red-letter month in computer virusology. The first major event was the appearance of Sasser, the latest Internet worm exploiting a Microsoft Windows vulnerability. www.kaspersky.com

Nebulas Security & CipherTrust Deliver Secure Email

Nebulas Security Limited, has partnered CipherTrust to deliver Ironmail, CipherTrust's email gateway security appliance, to businesses across the UK. The joint effort between Nebulas Security and CipherTrust has directly seen Nebulas Security obtaining an order within a number of weeks, as well as compiling a pipeline of Ironmail opportunities with some of the UK's leading brand names. www.nebulassecurity.com

IntaChange integrates with Exchange/Outlook

IntaChange, the web-based change management software from Intasoft, has a new integration with Microsoft Exchange/Outtook, which is designed to allow Microsoft Exchange/Outlook users to incorporate change management into their normal working routine. It will give them direct access to all their Outlook contacts from within the change management environment and the ability to import their contacts directly into Intachange. Intachange's new automatic import facility means that details of all relevant Outlook contacts associated Yiith a change request, such as email, phone or fax, can be stored within Intachange. The Outlook contact details can be logged with individual change requests and accessed at any time.

No re-keying is required because all Outlook contact details are available directly from the Intachange screen. Users tan define their own fields in Intachange and map all the contact information they require, directly from Outlook. www.intasoft.net

Tope Ten Viruses Reported to
Sophos in May 2004

1  New   W32/Sasser      51.1%
2  W32/Netsky-P          11.7%
3  W32/Netsky-B           4.1%
4  W32/Netsky-D           3.8%
5  New W32/Netsky-Z       3.4%
6  W32/Netsky-Q           2.4%
7  W32/Netsky-O           2.1%
8  New   W32/Sober-G      1.5%
9  New   W32/Bagle-AA     0.8%
10 New   W32/Lovgate-V    0.7%
Others                   18.4%

www.sophos.com

Comment

So how are these events connected with our Top Twenty? After all, the Top Twenty is mainly composed of viruses which propagate via email. There is a direct link--the virus writer arrested for creating Sasser admitted to authoring worms from the NetSky family--the very worms which have received so much attention over the past few months, and which occupy much of this month's Top Twenty. It's certainly no surprise that there were no new NetSky variants in May, but this hasn't stopped one of the most recent variants, NetSky.aa, from taking this month's first place. NetSky.b, last month's leader, now finds itself in second place by a small margin.

NetSky's old enemy, Bagle, wasn't able to compete with NetSky. However, two new variants have appeared in the ratings, with one, Bagle.z, moving straight up to fifth place. Bagle.y, the other new variant, only managed to clamber as far as fifteenth place.

Sober variants have been sliding down the charts for some months now, and failed entirely to make an appearance in April. This turned out to be a call to action: Sober.g, the seventh variant in this family, has now showed up, but is currently in the low ranks. The Mydoom family, on the other hand remains more or less stable in comparison with last month.

In terms of number of places gained, the classic email worm LovGate.W is the undisputed leader. Written in Korea, this worm's distinguishing feature is its ability to independently answer all emails in a mail box, simply adding itself as an attachment. This feature enabled the worm to move up a whole seven places.

One worm from the Mimail family, Mimail.j, returned to the ratings, overtaking Klez.h--a veteran in the virus ratings, which has already celebrated its second birthday.

Last but definitely not least, a surprising new entry: 18th place is occupied by an exploit, instead of a worm. Exploit.HTML.ObjData has been used in numerous spam mailings. It is highly unusual to find a mere exploit in the Top Twenty, but this one is special. ObjData installs a Trojan turning the victim machine into a zombie for further spam attacks. Other malicious programs made up a significant part of total virus traffic, with more than 400 malicious programs being detected--slightly fewer than in April and significantly fewer than in Marc. We have a good news, bad news scenario. The good news is that the huge number of new malicious programs created in the wake of Netsky, Bagle and Mydoom has been reduced significantly by anfivirus vendor and user vigilance. The bad news is that the strongest viruses have survived and extra care is needed to avoid infection.

Summary

New entries: 4 now--2 Bagle variants, Sober.g and Exploit.HTML.ObjData

Moved up: NetSky.aa, NetSky.y, LovGate.w, Swen, NetSky.o

Moved down: NetSky.b, NetSky.q, NetSky.d, NetSky.t, MyDoom.e, NetSky.c, NetSky.r, Bagle. 1, Kiez.h

Unchanged: MyDoom.g Source--www.kaspersky.com

Padobot aka Korgo--What are the chances of infection?

Lately a lot of antivirus software vendors have been alerting Windows 2000 and Windows XP users worldwide to new variants of Worm.Win32.Padobot aka Korgo. A new variant of this malware appears every few days, with the latest being Padobot.e (named W32.Korgo by Symantec).

Padobot variants exploit the Windows LSASS vulnerability described in MS Security Bulletin MS04-011. Other worms that have used this breach include Sasser, Cycle and Plexus.Padobot presents yet another example of why patching is important, since responsible users probably downloaded patches after the Sasser outbreak. If you haven't patched yet, you are open to infection by Padobot, Plexus and any other malware exploiting the LSASS vulnerability.

Alex Gostev, virus analyst at Kaspersky Labs, comments that 'Padobot was probably written in Russia; it uses the same IRC channels as the Padobor backdoor program, which was authored by the Russian virus writing group HangUp Team, and displays some of the same characteristics.'

He believes that although antivirus companies are right to warn users of the dangers of the new malware, 'there is too much attention focused on Padobot. We are monitoring the IRC channels used by computers infected by Padobot variants and the overall number of infected systems is around several thousand: significantly less than the hundreds of thousands of machines infected by Mydoom, NetSky, Bagle and Sasser.' Kaspersky Labs