Spotlight Features

Perhaps no industry was as blindsided by the power of the Internet as the music business. The sudden rise of Napster pitted content owners against customers, and now, with the RIAA suing individual file swappers in an effort to stop rampant music piracy, a crisis is in full swing. Enter DRM, or digi...

In the world of computer security break-ins, the focus has shifted from alleged hacker masterminds to enterprise shortfalls -- unpatched software, poorly secured firewalls and weak computer passwords. However, vulnerability assessment tools are educating IT admins about how to close holes in network...

The Microsoft-versus-Linux skirmish has heated up discussions about how much a company should pay for servers, software and operating systems. In addition, the harsh economic climate has forced many companies to cut costs, so they are taking a long, hard look at licensing agreements. How much impact...

From the 1970s to the late 1990s, the computer industry's main source of revenue came from developing business and consumer markets through channels like the personal computer, client-server networking technologies and, eventually, commercialization of the Internet. But with consumer and business te...

The SoBig.E worm, released two months ago on the Internet, continues to spread among unprotected computers. Some Internet security analysts fear that this latest variant of the SoBig family -- much like future variants of the new Microsoft Blaster worm that began to proliferate early this week -- wi...

Although ciphers long have been a staple of spy thrillers and mysteries, data encryption now has gained a real -- and critical -- foothold in the business world. Without this technology, data packets can be easily captured and viewed by unauthorized users. Right now, most enterprises and government ...

It's official: Web services technology has gone mainstream. The technology -- which consists mainly of software designed to let business systems communicate with each other across the Internet without human intervention -- is already making a huge impact on how companies share information and conduc...

Real-time data mining -- powered by neural-network technology -- has begun to remake the way large corporations manage customer accounts. The technology has been helping companies gain deep insight into customer purchasing patterns. While the technology is just now beginning to gain appeal, research...

A sense of deja vu is sweeping through IBM's executive offices. Hardware, a category of computer technology that has been commoditized over the past several years because of falling prices, once again has become sexy -- so sexy, in fact, that it has become the linchpin in IBM's quest to maintain its...

2003 was supposed to be the year of the PC upgrade. More than halfway through the year, however, a jump in PC sales is nowhere in sight. Fortunately, IT departments are likely to buck the overall enterprise trend, because new PC purchases can more easily be justified for the people who manage and ma...