Monday, 6 October 2008
Bird flu tops the list of the world's next "potential pandemic" -- virulent influenza strains which spread rapidly across the globe -- but figuring out how to fight it has not been clear-cut. So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a few vaccines which may be able to fend off the virus, but they are all grown in chicken eggs, take up to six months to produce, and are each effective against only one strain of the virus.
Better coastal defenses against large waves
Coastal defenses have to withstand great forces and there is always a risk of water overtopping or penetrating these structures; Liverpool University's mathematician says we need new concepts for coastal defenses
Send Word Now completes $14 million financing round
As more attention is paid to alerting people of imminent or on-going disasters, investors pay more attention to companies producing effective, reliable alert systems; Send Word Now benefits
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DHS, industry promote security awareness month
Companies offer tips on avoiding and dealing with attacks; October will also see major cybersecurity initiatives in Europe, Asia
FCC restarts public safety network in the 700 MHz band
The Federal Communication Commission revives plans for a nationwide emergency network; decision follows disappointing results of the "D Block" auction
Hurricane proofing Houston's power
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, residents, politicians, and utility officials say it is time to consider burying electric lines underground in order to hurricane-proof Houston
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Stolen laptops "broadcast" their location to rightful owners
Huskies researchers develop a software tool which uses the Internet as a homing beam; if the thief uses the stolen laptop to connect to the Internet, the owner receives information on the laptop location (and Macintosh owners also recvied a picture of the thief)
Invisibility cloak as a protection against tsunamis
Rather than fortifying sea platforms and coastal towns to withstand tsunamis, it may be possible to use invisibility cloaks to make off-shore platforms, islands, and even cities "invisible" to waves
Engineers to quake-proof Cal stadium on free-floating blocks
Engineers have solved one of the world's great retrofit puzzles: how to keep UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium from crumbling into a pile of concrete rubble during a major earthquake
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Created from the combination, in 1986, of Sperry and Burroughs, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Unisys claims a heritage of 100-plus years of experience in many areas of information technology -- so many, in fact, that recently the company decided the time had come for an exercise in self-definition. Not an overhaul of any kind, this was to be simply an effort to identify the main streams of proficiency in a firm that was active in a broad field of endeavor.
"We asked ourselves, what do we do best?" Tim Kelleher, vice president of enterprise security for Unisys, told Homeland Security Daily Wire. "We have a rich portfolio and we're not changing it. But we wanted to package it up, make it easier to grasp. We recognized five primary areas and determined we would concentrate on them."
In the key area of security (the others are outsourcing, Microsoft, open source, and real time infrastructure), Unisys saw itself as an especially strong player, with mastery ranging from physical to applications to network to management: what Kelleher termed "this mile-wide breadth of security capabilities that we'd amassed."
In contrast to other providers of IT services that partake in one portion of risk management, Unisys not only helps organizations manage enterprise risk, it also uncovers and evaluates a company's vulnerabilities, recommends a solution, and integrates a system that affords the organization improved risk control.
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