No rush for Windows Vista

Microsoft is to roll-out Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 to business today, but eWeek says many customers do not plan to upgrade to the new products immediately.

The report says statistics from research group Gartner show that while 58% of new PC shipments in 2007 will include Windows Vista, they also estimate that Vista will run on less than 10% of PCs in the installed base by the end of next year. That figure is expected to reach 50% only in 2009.

Gartner is also advising companies that they should expect to spend 18 months testing, planning and piloting before undergoing large-scale mainstream deployment.

A new Oracle project will address the proliferation of sensitive identity information across enterprise networks, which Computerworld describes as one of the thorniest problems facing enterprises.

The Identity Governance Framework is an initiative to develop specifications for sharing identity data across heterogeneous applications. The project has the support of identity and access management vendors Ping Identity, Sun Microsystems and Securent, as well as CA and Novell.

Oracle hopes the framework will eventually be turned over to a standards-setting body. The Identity Governance Framework grew out of Oracle's efforts to integrate identity and access management technology it acquired from Thor Technologies, OctetString and other companies.

McAfee researchers expect malware writers to have considerable success in the coming year, using techniques such as Web sites built to steal users' information and e-mail-based phishing.

eWeek says McAfee is consequently predicting that identity theft and personal data loss related to online crime and stolen hardware will become an even more high-profile issue among businesses, regulators and consumers in the next 12 months.

The researchers say attacks carried out over video-sharing sites and technologies will be among newly-emerging threats in 2007, as malware writers try to capitalise on the rapidly increasing popularity of YouTube, MySpace and similar Web sites.

Sports authorities are taking action to stop live coverage of football and other events on the Internet, reports BBC News.

The report says almost all English Premiership football matches, as well as other leagues and sports, are available live and free from mainly Chinese sport channels using peer-to-peer applications.

The FA Premier League, Urea, Cricket Australia and other sport bodies have employed a company called NetResult to police the Internet for unauthorised video. NetResult claims to have already achieved significant success in stopping broadcasts on the Chinese services, but says it is an ongoing challenge because new technology is always evolving.