BT CEO steps down

Ben Verwaayen is to step down as CEO of BT at the end of the month after six years, says Computing.co.uk. Verwaayen is widely credited with transforming the telco into a leaner company, less reliant on dwindling revenue from traditional telephone services. BT shares rose 1.5p on the news.

BT chairman Sir Mike Rake said in a statement that Verwaayen had "transformed BT from being a deeply troubled organisation into a thriving business with global capability and a clear strategy for the future".

Verwaayen's replacement, BT retail division CEO Ian Livingston, was the BT board's unanimous choice, said Rake. Gavin Patterson, head of BT's consumer division, will replace him.

IBM's SOA Business Catalogue failed to meet a target of collecting 10 000 services by last year's end, reports ITWorld.

The SOA Business Catalogue lists ready-made free and paid services that business can mix with services developed internally to craft enterprise applications.

At the Impact 2007 conference, in May last year, the company vowed to expand the catalogue to 10 000 services by the end of that year. The company fell 30% short of that goal: the catalogue as of Monday holds 6 937 services.

Secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff says the US government is working on the equivalent of the "Manhattan Project" to defend federal networks and national security interests from large-scale cyber-attacks, reports eWeek.

During a keynote presentation at the RSA Conference, Chertoff painted a gloomy picture of the government's readiness for a determined attack on critical communication networks. He said the recent creation of a new National Cyber Security Centre would be crucial to finding early signs of hacker activity.

"The human and economic sacrifices from a cyber-attack can be devastating, on par with what this country experienced on 11 September," Chertoff said. He called on the private sector and computer security professionals to partner with the federal government on creating a valuable early warning system for major network attacks.

It turns out al-Qaida's leader and his cohorts aren't the biggest threat to cyber-security. You are, reports News.com.

Six years ago, Osama bin Laden represented the nightmare scenario for the computer security establishment. But more immediate cyber-dangers lurk on the horizon. Experts attending the RSA Conference say it's you, the computer user, who presents the biggest threat.

In fact, they contend, the future of cyber-security hinges less on a latter-day version of spy-versus-spy against shadowy terror groups than on a more serious effort to instil best practices.