DarkReading has an interesting article today which explains why “

[n]ew and little-known regulations could mean fines, or even jail time, for [American] companies that do business with bad guys.”  The publication writes: “If you’re a security pro, you might be familiar with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) requirements, which basically require companies to check their customers’ identities against a list of known terrorists to prevent them from unwittingly providing products or services to an enemy. Most major credit bureaus check customers and applicants against these lists, so if you’re vetting your partners and customers that way, you’re probably covered.  However, you may not have heard yet about the Federal Trade Commission’s "Red Flag" program, which is designed to warn companies when they are about to do business with identity thieves or money-laundering operations. The Red Flag program, which takes effect Nov. 1, requires enterprises to check their customers and suppliers against databases of known online criminals — much like what OFAC does with terrorists — and also carries potential fines and penalties for businesses that don’t do their due diligence before making a major transaction.”

The Register reveals that “Scotland Yard has set up a team to monitor social networking websites such as Facebook and YouTube for snippets of intelligence from clueless crooks who brag about their exploits online.  Officers from the Met’s newly established Open Source Team surf websites and infiltrate chatrooms, without disclosing their identities, to gain intelligence. It’s far removed from the traditional image of coppers, as epitomised by Det Inspector Jack Regan from landmark ’70s cop show The Sweeney, grilling their snouts for leads down the pub over a bottle of whisky, but Scotland Yard says the changed approach is appropriate for changed times.”

Computerworld has a good article on the importance of synchronization, pointing out that “[n]ew technologies, such as Phoenix’s HyperSpace, Microsoft’s Live Mesh, and more, will help users synchronize their data and devices—heck, their digital lives.”

Internetnews.com reports that “massive cyberattack is targeting vulnerable Internet Information Server-based Web pages by redirecting visitors to the site toward one hosting malicious code, and it’s growing rapidly.  When Panda Security first noted the infestation, it put the number of infected IIS servers at 282,000. Less than a day later, security firm F-Secure wrote its own blog entry, putting the infestation at over 500,000.  ‘In the old days, you used to think if you went to the dark side of the Internet, you had a chance of being infected,’ said Ryan Sherstobitoff, chief corporate evangelist at Panda Security.  ‘Now, you don’t need to go to the bad neighborhoods to get attacked. You can be walking down the good side of the Internet and be infected.’”

BusinessWeek writes that “[t]he term ‘cloud computing’ is being used so promiscuously these days that it’s dizzying. I even ran into a company a few days ago that offers its supply chain software in a hosted model and calls itself a cloud computing company. Yikes! So I decided to try to cut through the marketing fog and see if I could bring some clarity to the matter. Here’s a Socratic I did for BusinessWeek Online. I asked a bunch of the industry’s big thinkers for their take on this, and Marc Andreessen practically wrote a book on the topic for me. He said he’s going to post it on his blog, but I haven’t seen it yet. What do other people think? Is cloud computing the industry’s latest exercise in hype or is there really something new and different going on ri