Stories by Carolyn Duffy Marsan

Will new top-level domains promote cybersquatting?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is hosting two meetings this week -- one in New York City and the other in London -- to discuss the trademark and cybersecurity issues surrounding its plan to introduce hundreds of new top-level domains into the Internet.

Get ready for CIO musical chairs, consultancy warns

A leading management consulting firm is predicting tough times ahead for CIOs, as companies <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/120908-it-spending-forecast.html">cut IT spending</a> and turn to commodity services to preserve cash during the recession.

Feds encrypt 800,000 laptops; 1.2 million to go

U.S. government agencies are scrambling to plug one of their biggest security holes: sensitive information -- names, addresses and Social Security numbers, for example -- stored on laptops, handhelds and thumb drives.

Standards bodies unite to resolve MPLS spat

The internet's leading standards bodies have joined forces to clarify a set of next-generation network transport specifications that critics warn could cause massive interoperability problems for service providers.

Prediction of IT department's death refuted

IT professionals are mad as hell about Nicholas Carr's new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google, which predicts the demise of the corporate IT department and its replacement by utility computing.

The IT department is dead: Nicholas Carr

The IT department's days are numbered, due to a shift to utility computing. So predicts Nicholas Carr in his new book,The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google.

Security is the top concern says new IETF chair

Russ Housley is the first chair of the IETF with a particular expertise in network security. Housley, who runs consulting firm Vigil Security, has been active in the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) for nearly 20 years and helped write early email security and public key infrastructure standards. Three months into his job as chair of the leading internet standards body, Housley talked with Computerworld about his strategy for bolting better security onto the freewheeling internet.

Preparing for the next generation

The new IPv6 is a long-anticipated upgrade to the internet&#8217;s primary protocol, IPv4. It has a 128-bit addressing scheme that lets it support an order-of-magnitude more devices connected directly to the internet than IPv4&#8217;s 32-bit addressing. It also boasts autoconfiguration, end-to-end security and other enhancements.

Vista not playing well with IPv6

Early adopters of Microsoft's new Vista operating system are reporting problems with its implementation of IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's primary protocol.

Health insurer reinvents the IT management wheel

Joining Blue Shield of California as CIO in 2005, Elinor MacKinnon found no strategic or tactical planning function inside the IT department. So she set about creating one from scratch for the San Francisco-based health insurer.

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