The Danish company Secunia says it is testing what will be a free service that can manage computer users' many software patches and security updates -- which now arrive on the average of one every five days. Adapted from its Personal Software Inspector tool, Secunia's new service is slated to be available as a preview for expert users in April, with a general beta release a few months later.

Two House lawmakers have introduced a bill that would give federal grants and other awards to companies or university researchers that develop "deployable technologies to defeat Internet suppression and censorship." The measure by Reps. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., and Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., would disburse the funds through a new "Internet Freedom Foundation" within the National Science Foundation.

A "Digital Literacy Corps" modeled after the AmeriCorps and Senior Corps community-service programs will be part of the National Broadband Plan, according to Federal Communications Commission official Mignon Clyburn. The new program aims to extend the benefits of broadband to remote or underpriviliged areas, Clyburn said.
Opposition building to broadband plan - Business Week, March 10

Symantec, McAfee and F-Secure are hurriedly developing security software for smartphones, whose increasing popularity is drawing more attention from cyberthieves. Symantec's offering, intended to be deployed by wireless carriers, will do the evaluation of applications at its own data centers rather than on customers' phones.

Microsoft on Tuesday warned of a critical security flaw, already being exploited on the Internet, affecting Internet Explorer 6 and 7. It said the flaw can be used to insert malicious code on to a Windows computer using either of the older browsers, but not the latest version, IE8.

A Florida couple has been indicted for allegedly brokering information obtained by an ambulance company employee for sale to personal-injury lawyers. Prosecutors say Ruben Rodriguez and Maria Victoria Suarez -- who are already under indictment in a separate medical identity-theft case -- got the ambulance-patient data from an unnamed American Medical Response employee.

The Chinese government said Wednesday that its exports in February jumped 45.7 percent over the year before, well above outside analysts' forecasts. Some said the lift that exports are giving to the Chinese economy may persuade officials to loosen exchange-rate controls on China's currency, something other nations have long urged.

Leaders of some European nations and European Commission officials are calling for increased regulatory scrutiny on credit-default swaps, saying their use has worsened the budgetary difficulties of Greece and other nations. "If needed, the commission will use the competition powers it has in that matter," said José Manuel Barroso, head of the EC.

The World Trade Organization is not the right venue to resolve Google's dispute with China over Internet restrictions, according to an official with a think tank under China's Ministry of Commerce. "If someone intends to challenge China's right to govern its Internet by resorting to WTO rules, they are apparently misguided and bound to fail," wrote Zheng Zhihai of the China Society of World Trade Organisation Studies.

The technique apparently used by students at Winston Churchill High School in Virginia to modify their grades in the school's computer system -- a keystroke logger -- is impractical to defend against, experts say. "Right now, attack software is so good that the average user in a small business or a school cannot protect himself and still get his job done," said Alan Paller of the SANS Institute.

The American Hospital Association is urging Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to modify the meaningful-use standard to qualify for federal incentive funding for electronic health records. The group says an incremental, flexible standard would "lead to much broader adoption rates of successful EHR systems across the vast majority of hospitals in a sustainable timeframe."

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on Tuesday released an early draft version of the strategic framework for expanding use of health information technology. The framework is to be reworked into an official plan over the next two months.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is seeking input on technologies that could help it integrate its command-and-control systems across the realms of cyberspace, air and space. White papers should cover C2 strategy development, planning and assessment, the agency says.

The Obama administration plans to release within 120 days a Web-based platform for agencies to use in developing crowdsourced input on open government and innovation. Federal chief performance officer Jeff Zients said the General Services Administration will help agencies develop such systems, including management of prizes for contest-based programs.

The rising tide of data created by the growth of social networking and cloud computing is straining resources at many firms that must manage it. But that strain is opening doors for a new generation of companies that aim to help data centers deal with the flood.

A report by the Partnership for Public Service says that federal agencies will need to fill at least 11,500 key information technology jobs over the next three years. The group also found that a record number of federal IT workers are nearing retirement age even as entry-level hires have declined.

Some economists estimate that the 750,000 workers to be hired for the 2010 census may reduce the U.S. unemployment rate by as much as half a percentage point -- although only temporarily. "This is the best-timed census you could ever dream of," said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.