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When you have a file that has the owner as TrustedInstaller you can not assign any rights to that file unless you take ownership.  To do that with what you need to do ist the following:

• Right Click on the properties and go to the secruity tab
• Create a new owner for the file Everyone
• Assign the rights to the file

Now you have ownership and you can do anything that you want to the file.

(Reuters) - Yahoo Inc on Monday rejected Microsoft Corp's unsolicited $41.5 billion takeover offer as too low, forcing the software maker to either sweeten its bid or adopt a hostile approach to clinch a deal.

Analysts say Microsoft will probably raise its bid, originally valued at $31 a share, to at least $35, but could be persuaded to go as high as $40. Yahoo's statement did not suggest what price its board was seeking.

The proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders, the Chief Executive wrote in an e-mail to employees on Monday. We believe the Microsoft proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo!

Yahoo said the offer did not properly assess its global brand, its audience of some 500 million users worldwide and investments in its online advertising platform.

The offer also does not take into account growth prospects or substantial holdings, which include a stake in Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.com, the company said. Yahoo said its board was evaluating all its strategic options.

Microsoft now must decide whether to sweeten its offer, launch a proxy fight or simply withdraw. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

The most likely outcome is they negotiate a higher price, said an analyst with William Blair & Co. It seems Microsoft has expressed a willingness to go to $35 or $36 a share.

A more hostile alternative could be to propose a tender offer to buy shares directly from Yahoo shareholders, although Yahoo could use a "poison pill" defense to dilute the stock holdings purchased in the market by an unwanted aggressor.

(Microsoft - Vista Blog)  Here is the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

• In mid-March, Microsoft will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com.  Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1.  If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1.  Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
• In mid-April, Microsoft will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically.  That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically.  As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1.  The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when Microsoft is confident they will have a good experience.
• The remaining languages will RTM in April.

Microsoft Corp. today gave users of its Office 2003 application suite a 30-day warning that it will begin pushing the software's Service Pack 3 via Microsoft Update next month.

The notice followed a dustup earlier this month over new security settings in Office 2003 SP3 that blocked access to a swath of older file formats. After users complained on the company's support forums, and a software rival asked why its files were being barred, Microsoft apologized and posted work-arounds to make it easier for users to unblock the formats.

Today, Microsoft announced that it would add Office 2003 SP3 to its Microsoft Update listings beginning Feb. 27. Microsoft Update, a companion service to Windows Update, downloads patches and other fixes for the operating system as well as a number of the company's applications, notably Office.

(New York Times) INNOVATION usually needs time to steep. Time to turn the idea into something tangible, time to get it to market, time for people to decide they accept it. Speech recognition technology has steeped for a long time: Mike Phillips remembers that in the 1980s, when he was a Carnegie Mellon graduate student trying to develop rudimentary speech recognition systems, “it seemed almost impossible.”

Now, devices that incorporate speech recognition are starting to hit the mass market, thanks to entrepreneurs like Mr. Phillips. He is the chief technology officer and a co-founder of the Vlingo Corporation, an 18-month-old start-up in Cambridge, Mass., that is selling services to cellular carriers and other software companies that want to give their customers the ability to let their mouths do the walking — and the searching.

VlingoÂ’s service lets people talk naturally, rather than making them use a limited number of set phrases. Dave Grannan, the companyÂ’s chief executive, demonstrated the Vlingo Find application by asking his phone for a song by Mississippi John Hurt (try typing that with your thumbs), for the location of a local bakery and for a Web search for a consumer product. It was all fast and efficient. Vlingo is designed to adapt to the voice of its primary user, but I was also able to use Mr. GrannanÂ’s phone to find an address.

The Find application is in the beta test phase at AT&T and Sprint. Consumers who use certain cellphones from those companies can download the application from vlingo.com.

Mr. Phillips has spent more than 15 years in the trenches at companies that nourished speech recognition. In 1994, he was one of the founders of Speechworks, which made early interactive voice-response systems, the now-ubiquitous automated services that answer when we call a company. In 2000, Speechworks was acquired by ScanSoft, which five years later bought Nuance Communications, keeping Nuance as the name. Mr. Phillips left that year to work at M.I.T. as a visiting researcher.

In 2006, he and a colleague from ScanSoft, John Nguyen, started Vlingo because they thought that speech recognition technology, cellular networks and phones were all becoming powerful enough to allow voice navigation systems on cellphones. “We couldn’t have done this five years ago,” he says.

Now, Mr. Phillips is in a race for market share. Another start-up, Yap Inc., based in Charlotte, N.C., is running a beta test of its service, which is similar to VlingoÂ’s but already has text messaging. Igor and Victor Jablokov, YapÂ’s co-founders, decided to start the company because they saw their teenage sister text-messaging while in a car.

She wasnÂ’t driving at the time, but Igor Jablokov says cellular companies tell him in meetings that two-thirds of their teenage customers have either sent or read a text message while behind the wheel.

Big companies are also attracted to this market. Nuance started its Nuance Voice Control system last August, the same month that VlingoÂ’s appeared. NuanceÂ’s system is in use at Sprint and Rogers Communications and can be downloaded to 66 models of hand-held phones, with many more on the way.

Microsoft is a significant potential competitor, thanks in part to its purchase of TellMe Networks last March. TellMe offers a speech-driven search application for cellphones that is available to customers of AT&T — only those who were part of Cingular before the merger — and Sprint. TellMe’s system is built-in on the new Mysto phone from Helio, a mobile phone operator started by Earthlink and SK Telecom, and is the engine for 1800call411, a free directory information service.

Over all, speech recognition was a $1.6 billion market in 2007, according to Opus Research, which predicts an annual growth rate of 14.5 percent over the next three years. Dan Miller, an analyst at Opus, said that companies that have licensed speech recognition technology would probably see faster revenue growth, as more consumers used the technology. The cellphone market holds the most potential, given its billions of phones, but cellular providers are still working out the business model for such services.

Igor Jablokov, YapÂ’s chief executive, says that he wants his application to be supported by advertising, but that the carriers with whom he is negotiating, which he declined to name, want to charge customers for the service.

To be sure, speech recognition technology has been available on personal computers since 2001 in applications like Microsoft Office, but few people use it. But in cellphone and other markets, speech recognition “is on the cusp of a curve,” says Bill Meisel, editor of Speech Strategy News, an industry newsletter.

Speech recognition, already used in high-end G.P.S. systems and luxury cars from Cadillac and Lexus, is now spreading to less expensive systems and cars — witness those slapstick Ford Sync commercials, featuring vignettes like one showing a young woman who approaches her office building and says “door open,” expecting it to respond the way her car does. It doesn’t, and she and her coffee cup smack directly into it.

Sync was developed by Microsoft and Ford, and based on Nuance technology. And the speech technology chief at I.B.M. Research, David Nahamoo, says the company has an automotive customer testing speech recognition to help drivers find songs quickly while driving — no more pushing buttons.

Then there’s SimulScribe, a New York company that is one of several businesses using speech recognition to convert voice mail into e-mail. “Voice recognition has finally hit the point where someone like ourselves can take it over the hump for specific applications,” says James Siminoff, SimulScribe’s chief executive.

James R. Glass, a principal research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T., says speech technology “is going to end up everywhere speech can be useful.” He says machines will keep improving their ability to recognize the way humans naturally talk, even if they have strong accents, and that the technology will find myriad new uses.

THIS doesnÂ’t mean that people will always choose to speak. Genevieve Bell, director of user experience at the digital home group of Intel, says people are unlikely to want to use speech recognition to handle their finances, at least in public spaces. It also may not work well in the living room.

Ms. Bell jokes that if she could, she would yell “cricket!” at the television anytime she walked into a room, so her favorite sport would appear on the screen.

Even a digital expert like her cautions that some people may never be satisfied with the quality of speech recognition technology — thanks to a steady diet of fictional books, movies and television shows featuring machines that understand everything a person says, no matter how sharp the diction or how loud the ambient noise. But soon we will be able to speak our minds to many of our machines, and have them obey our commands.

(Posted on Vista Security Blog) Now that Windows Vista has been available to business customers for more than a year, itÂ’s a good time to go back and look at how itÂ’s holding up from a security perspective.  I think that itÂ’s fair to say that Windows Vista is proving to be the most secure version of the Windows to date. Our investments in the SDL and our defense in depth approach to building Windows Vista seem to be paying off.  LetÂ’s take a look at some areas that weÂ’ve made progress in: the impact of defense-in-depth; Internet Explorer 7Â’s protection of personal information; vulnerabilities and infections; and cost savings.

First, letÂ’s look at the impact of defense-in-depth features like User Account Control and Internet Explorer Protected Mode.  These features have helped reduce both the risk and severity of security bulletins, giving enterprises more time to deploy patches:

•       Running as standard user, which is the recommended configuration and made easier in Windows Vista thanks to User Account Control, helps reduce the impact of any particular vulnerability.  Of the 23 security bulletins that have been released for Windows Vista through January 2008, 12 specifically call out a lower impact for those running without administrative privileges:  MS07-033, 034, 040, 042, 045, 047, 048, 050, 057, 064, 068, and 069.  This is a great illustration of the importance of User Account Control and why we included it in the product.  ItÂ’s also the reason I personally run as a standard user on every machine I use.

•       Because of IE Protected Mode, the MS07-056 bulletin from October Â’07 was rated important on Windows Vista and critical on Windows XP.  The bulletin rating helps organizations determine the urgency with which they need to deploy the update.  Fewer critical updates help organizations maintain regular processes around patch management.

Internet Explorer 7, which is the default browser in Windows Vista, also helps protect the personal information of end users.  WeÂ’re seeing almost 1 million phishing attempts blocked per week, representing a large number of potential cases of identity theft or credit card fraud that were stopped.  In addition, there are over 3500 sites with Extended Validation SSL Certificates (EV SSL) representing an improved level of authentication for securing transactions on these sites.   Internet Explorer 7 is the first browser to fully support EV SSL.  It turns the address bar green for EV SSL sites and notifies users about the available identity information so they can make better trust decisions when entering sensitive personal information while online. 

Next, letÂ’s look at patch events, vulnerabilities and infections.  WeÂ’re showing steady positive progress in this area.   When looking at Windows Vista compared to Windows XP, weÂ’ve seen:

•       An important metric for IT professionals is the concept of patch events, which is discussed in the One Year Vulnerability Report released today by MicrosoftÂ’s Jeff Jones. During Windows XPÂ’s first year, updates were released on 26 separate days.  Through a combination of the move to a predictable monthly release schedule, and decreased vulnerabilities, Windows Vista had updates released on just nine days in its first year.  To the average security professional, this is one of the most relevant metrics:  how many times did I have to activate my internal patch management process due to vendor update releases over the course of a year?  Nine times is much more attractive, and cost effective, than 26 times.  Jeff JonesÂ’ one year report goes into this in area in more detail, and the graph below from his report shows the patch events during the first year of Windows Vista and Windows XP:

•       Fewer vulnerabilities:   Also from the  One Year Vulnerability Report, we see that Windows Vista in its first year had significantly fewer fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities than Windows XP in its first year: 36 fixed/30 unfixed for Windows Vista vs. 68 fixed/54 unfixed for Windows XP.   The chart below gives you an idea of the progress weÂ’ve made:

•       Fewer months with updates:  Building on the concept of patch events, since Windows Vista was released, there were three months in which Windows XP had updates and Windows Vista did not  (December Â’06, January Â’07, and November Â’07).  This means that an organization running all Windows Vista clients would have had three months in which they wouldnÂ’t have had to deploy an OS update to their clients at all.

Fewer infections:  From January – June 2007, there were 60% fewer malware infections and 2.8 times less potentially unwanted software on Windows Vista than on Windows XP SP2, according to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report from 10/07. This illustrates how the defense in depth features built in to Windows Vista help prevent machines from getting infected by malicious and potentially unwanted software.

Finally, what does Windows Vista do to help organizations reduce costs?  A recent Microsoft commissioned report from GCR on cost savings for mobile PCs shows $251/machine per year in cost savings for Windows Vista, of which $55/machine per year was attributed to security and data protection features such as User Account Control and BitLocker Drive Encryption.

WeÂ’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: our job with security is never finished.  But, the focus we put on engineering for security, the backing of the world-class security response process delivered by the Microsoft Security Response Center, and the defense in depth approach of Windows Vista are showing  real-world benefits for customers and thatÂ’ something I take pride in. 

(Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. on Monday dropped its prohibition on running the least-expensive versions of Windows Vista in virtual machines, doubling the choices for Macintosh owners who run the rival operating system in VMware Inc.'s Fusion or Parallels Inc.'s Parallels.

Beginning immediately, Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium can be run in a virtualized environment, Microsoft said Monday. The pair are the cheapest editions of the operating system available at retail, selling in full versions for $199 and $239, respectively. Previously, Microsoft only allowed Vista Business ($299) and Vista Ultimate ($399) to be installed in a virtual machine (VM).

In June 2007, Microsoft nearly pulled the same trigger -- it actually briefed reporters before backtracking -- but did not say why it had changed its mind. At the time, it only issued a terse statement through its public relations company: "Microsoft has reassessed the Windows virtualization policy and decided that we will maintain the original policy announced last fall." Seven months ago, however, some analysts pegged problems with Vista's digital rights management (DRM) software for the hesitation.

The only change Microsoft needed to make was to the end-user licensing agreements (EULA) of Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium; there has never been a technical barrier to virtualizing either version on the Mac or any other platform.

Microsoft has made Vista's Service Pack 1 near-final "release candidate" available for download to the general public, after initially choosing to restrict it to 15,000 beta testers when it debuted last week.

According to a blog by ZDNet.com's Mary Jo Foley, a Microsoft representative said the build contained a number of bugs that testers encountered in previous prerelease versions of SP1.

The update is largely a collection of bug fixes and performance and compatibility improvements, but includes some minor new features.

SP1 RC Refresh, as the update is known, requires previous versions of SP1 to be uninstalled before it can be replaced with Refresh, which may entail waiting for the computer to "reboot multiple times," according to Microsoft.

After multiple rebooting, a period of an hour is required to allow the installer service to "clean up and complete the uninstall" to prevent possible installation errors.

Those with Vista RTM need to install two to three updates, depending on their version of Vista, before they can welcome SP1 onto their computer.

Refresh is time-limited, with the deadline for uninstall being June 30, 2008. According to Foley, Microsoft still aims to have the official version of SP1 available within the first quarter of 2008.

On its Web site, Microsoft warned that it does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission-critical systems.

State announced a final rule for passport cards Dec. 31 to facilitate travel between the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The rule requires cards with vicinity radio frequency identification tags to shorten delays at land border crossings. Currently, U.S., Canadian and Bermudian citizens entering the United States across land and sea borders are not required to present citizenship documents.

In the meantime, the Homeland Security Department conditionally accepted software for the first task order under SBInet, a multibillion-dollar project to deploy technology and tactical infrastructure to secure U.S. borders.

Customs and Border Protection agency officials said the highly anticipated announcements will help bolster security and facilitate legitimate movement of goods and people across U.S. borders. Six lawmakers traveled to El Paso, Texas, last week to more closely examine DHSÂ’ efforts to find that balance.

Each day, CBP agents inspect 1.1 million travelers, 327,000 cars and 85,000 shipments of goods. They also intercept 21,000 fraudulent identification documents and 200,000 people who are refused entry each year.

At a field hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in El Paso, federal officials, government auditors and other experts testified to growing concern about whether CBP is prepared to deal with technological advances. more info

Managing applications is a big business challenge today. IT departments must get involved as part of the normal desktop fix, upgrade and replace process as well as dealing with operating system upgrades.

The issue is that when applications must be updated, installed or migrated, companies must ensure that disruptions are minimized to keep users productive throughout the process. Additionally, the process must be simple for the user. If application management isnÂ’t in place, the end user might make an erroneous decision on how to configure the software, such as installing it in the wrong directory, which leads to problems.

Adding to the challenges of application management is the arrival of Windows Vista, which Microsoft has designed to offer more features, advanced security, and higher functionality than any other Windows operating system to date.

These changes mean that before a company moves an application to Windows Vista desktops, it must validate the application to ensure it is compatible.

This could lead to two types of challenges. First, an application may not work with the new OS. Second, the application might be okay, but the packaging of the application for installation may cause problems.

(Janco) Eventhough Microsoft owns the OS market in the commercial marketplace, the market share of Vista is still only a little over 9% after one year.  Currently almost 95% of all systems that browse the internet are some form of the Windows OS. 

In is Browser and OS Market Share study, which is to be release on January 3rd, Jancofound that most users are not really interested in the OS.  Rather they are interested in the way that they can use the systems to meet their needs.

Janco found they are basically two types of Vista users:

(ComputerWorld) - "Service Pack 1 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system will be available for download on [Dec. 11]," a spokeswoman said today in an e-mail, adding that the update focuses on stability, performance and security improvements.

Previously, the company had pegged the SP1 ship date to the first quarter of 2008, which makes next week's release one of the few Microsoft updates to beat its originally scheduled shipping date.

Microsoft has been mostly mum about SP1's contents, and today it would say only that it would offer more information on Dec. 11 when it posts the pack on its Web site. But according to a Microsoft employee who posted on a company blog today, users will initially need to retrieve the update manually; SP1 will not be pushed out via Windows' Automatic Update mechanism.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.

That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

Before the House vote, which was a lopsided 409 to 2, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) held a press conference on Capitol Hill with John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted and Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Allen said the legislation--called the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act, or SAFE Act--will "ensure better reporting, investigation, and prosecution of those who use the Internet to distribute images of illegal child pornography."

The SAFE Act represents the latest in Congress' efforts--some of which have raised free speech and privacy concerns--to crack down on sex offenders and Internet predators. One bill introduced a year ago was even broader and would have forced Web sites and blogs to report illegal images. Another would require sex offenders to supply e-mail addresses and instant messaging user names.

Wednesday's vote caught Internet companies by surprise: the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation. It was introduced October 10, but has never received even one hearing or committee vote. In addition, the legislation approved this week has changed substantially since the earlier version and was not available for public review.

Not one Democrat opposed the SAFE Act. Two Republicans did: Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning presidential candidate from Texas, and Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia.

(C/Net) The past year has seen a massive increase in the number of flaws found in Microsoft software, according to vulnerability-scanning company Qualys.

Between 2006 and 2007, there was an almost threefold rise in Microsoft flaws, Qualys said on Wednesday."We have seen a huge jump in the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office products," said Amol Sawate, manager of Qualys' vulnerability-management lab. "These charts show growth of nearly 300 percent from 2006 to 2007, primarily in new Excel vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by getting unsuspecting users to open Excel files sent via e-mail and instant message."

"It isn't that Microsoft isn't doing a better job," Paller said. "The reason (is that) it is so lucrative to find vulnerabilities in Excel and Word, so there are a lot of (hackers) searching for them."

Microsoft declined to comment for this story.

With all the controversy as of late regarding the extent to which Service Pack (SP) 1 will improve Windows VistaÂ’s performance, what is Microsoft saying?

Throughout 2007, Microsoft officials have tried to downplay SP1, hoping to convince users that they donÂ’t need to wait for the first service pack before moving to Windows Vista. As a result, executives have been less-than-forthcoming when it comes to the performance gains they expect Vista SP1 will deliver.

Internally, however, the company is promising some pretty hefty improvements for users who install SP1, according to sources.

Microsoft is telling its own employees - whom it is hoping to convince to install the new escrow build of the Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) test build in order to give the code a final check before the company begins making it available to testers outside the company — that Vista SP1 will:

• Improve by 25 percent local file copying on the same disk on the same machine
• Improve by 45 percent the speed of copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
• Speed up by 50 percent the rate of copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system
• Improve the reading time for large images by roughly 50 percent
• Improve the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB hubs by about 18 percent
• Improve the performance of user login on corporate PCs outside of the corporate environment so that it is comparable with login inside companies

What else will Vista SP1 fix? Microsoft is dangling these other SP1 improvements in front of its employees internally, sources said, including:

• Reduction of the number of User Account Control (UAC) prompts from four to one when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location
• Improvement of compatibility with third-party diagnostic tools that rely on raw sockets
• Addition of a password hint during the initial set up of Vista SP1
• Resolution of many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Vista, especially those involving Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player and a number of other drivers included with Vista

New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.

Vista first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system's performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Vista performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

New notebook computers based on Dual Core Processors are hitting the streets, and they deliver the power needed by today's mobile workforce.

Although powerful notebooks have been available for years, whatÂ’s intriguing about these new systems is the potentially new ways businesses can tap the dual core processing capabilities of the machines.

For instance, Intel and Voice Over IP (VoIP) pioneer Skype announced a collaboration to optimize SkypeÂ’s software for Intel dual core processors.

Skype software can now be used for 10‑way voice conference calling. This is double the five caller limit when the software runs on systems with other processors. And as an added advantage, it saves money because the company does not have to pay for a conferencing service or a high end audio conferencing system.

The two companies are also working on ways to leverage dual core technology to improve videoconferencing sessions.

At the heart of this effort is a plan to split the audio and video portions of a videoconference and take advantage of the Intel Core Duo Processor.

Industry analysts believe other vendors will also likely optimize their software for Intel based dual core computers. This will enable mobile workers to do their jobs better, smarter and faster.

The five license states in any installation of Windows Vista are:

• Licensed. This state refers to an activated genuine copy of Windows Vista.
• Initial grace, or out-of-the-box grace. This is the period before the initial activation of a machine and lasts 30 days at first. You can restart this by issuing the command slmgr.vbs /rearm; this resets the counter to 30 days, but you can only re-arm this timer three times before activation becomes required.
• Nongenuine grace. This state is used when the Windows Genuine Advantage tool is installed and run on a machine and it fails the test. This grace period lasts 30 days.
• Out-of-tolerance grace. This state occurs when hardware changes exceed the activation threshold or if a KMS-managed computer has not reactivated itself via the KMS host in more than 180 days. This grace period lasts 30 days.
• Unlicensed. This is the state Windows Vista enters when any grace period ends. When a machine enters the unlicensed state, it runs in reduced functionality mode, or RFM, which limits users to one-hour sessions and disables some features and functions of Vista.

Lost Back-up Tapes Put an Enterprise at a High Risk

(Computerworld) -- The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has notified about 237,000 policy holders of a potential compromise of their personal data.

The warning followed the loss of three backup tapes containing the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and drivers license numbers of customers of the company's personnel lines claims center.

So far, there is no evidence that the tapes were stolen or that the information has been misused, a company spokeswoman said. Hartford Financial Services has no idea if the tapes were misplaced while in transit to another location or if they went missing inside the company. But the information contained on them could only be read with the use of sophisticated and expensive equipment, she added.

The Hartford breach is similar to scores of others in recent years involving the loss or theft of computers and media containing sensitive personal data. Security analysts have recommended that companies use encryption to mitigate potential data loss in such situations. Many companies that have been reluctant to do so because of cost concerns end up paying significantly more in notification and other costs when a breach occurs, analysts have previously noted.

Security Standards Drive New FTP Requirement

FTP is the technology underpinning much of the information transmission conducted in todayÂ’s corporate enterprise. However, security concerns are changing this. FTP offers absolutely no security and is a fundamentally limiting technology; sweeping legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, GLBA, etc.) will not tolerate its use for the transmission of important or sensitive data.

Industry analysts predict that all companies, small, medium and large will discontinue their current methods of sending and sharing data information. Gartner, in particular, states that, Â…in the immediate future, most companies, regardless of industry, need to consider how they are securing and managing their file transfers. They must discontinue using the older, unsecured, and uncontrolled methods of sending and receiving information. Homegrown solutions are commonly used, although many users acknowledge the limitations of these tools when applied in an integration fi le transfer context. Internal and external security, management, and integration requirements will force companies to scrutinize and consider replacements to their homegrown solutions.

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