Job losses for IT security staff

Information security experts have been warned that the credit crunch will soon have a significant impact on the security sector, leading to potential job losses and forcing staff into new ways of working, says Computing.co.uk.

Nick Coleman, interim chief executive of the Institute of Information Security Professionals and a former European head of security at IBM, told delegates at the annual ISSE event, in Madrid today, that chief technology officers are already reporting projects being delayed due to the economic downturn.

“Structural change will happen to the information security market in the next 18 months,” he said.

UK company Path Intelligence has proved the longer people spend in shops, the more they spend, says The BBC.

Not a shock result perhaps, but the technology behind it has a range of other uses.

The company's system reads an anonymous identifier that mobile phones transmit and can then track their movements.

Larry Ellison's days as one of the technology sector's best-remunerated chief executives could be numbered if a group of activist Oracle shareholders get their way this week, reports The Register.

Investors attending Oracle's annual general meeting on Friday are being asked to support a "say-on-pay" plan that could see them approve the pay and stock allocations granted to Ellison and other senior Oracle executives going forward.

Awards are currently left to an Oracle compensation committee of elected members, a standard procedure in corporate America.

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, has released technology that helps Web sites detect the physical location of computers, says The BBC.

The system will allow users, for instance, to find local restaurants when they travel to a new town.

The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full-blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.