Top 10: Spitzer falls, Bebo goes to AOL, Gates to D.C.

1. “Eliot Spitzer: High tech felt his impact” and “Oliver North ridicules Spitzer, calls on IT to hire war vets”

It might not have seemed at first that the saga of almost-former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had any connection to IT, but when he was attorney general of that state, he targeted the high-tech and networking industries in various investigations, including participating in the RAM price-fixing probe. His alleged penchant for hooking up with high-priced “escorts” from the Emperors Club VIP service, which investigators say was a prostitution ring, was uncovered using an electronic financial transaction system. Suspicious transactions triggered an automatic report to the Internal Revenue Service.

All of this came to light on Monday, leading to Spitzer announcing his resignation on Wednesday. He leaves office Monday. The day before Spitzer resigned, Oliver North, who knows a thing or two about the hot seat, used part of his keynote speech at the Infosec World Conference to mock Spitzer. The disgraced governor “apparently forgot everything he knows about information security,” said North, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel still best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal.

[ Video: The World Tech Update week in review ]

2. “AOL to buy Bebo for $850 million” and “Acquisition may be too late to help AOL prosper in Web 2.0 world“

AOL continued its hoped-for transition from ISP to media/content company this week with word that it is buying the social-networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. AOL, which is part of the Time Warner media empire, hopes to rake in advertising revenue from Bebo, which has about 40 million unique users globally, and so AOL will integrate its Platform A online advertising technology with Bebo. But some analysts said that AOL may be too late to the social-networking scene for the Bebo deal to actually help in its metamorphosis.

3. “Gates repeats request for more H-1B visas” and “Gates: Next decade will bring huge software advances”

Bill Gates went to Washington, D.C., this week to — again — urge lawmakers to increase the cap on H-1B visas. “We provide the world’s best universities … and the students are not allowed to stay and work in the country,” Gates told the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee, speaking to them on Wednesday about foreign students and the need to allow more skilled workers into the United States. “The fact is [other countries’] smartest people want to come here, and that’s a huge advantage to us, and in a sense, we’re turning them away.” When he finished appealing to legislators, Gates went on to talk to the Northern Virginia Technology Council the next day, offering a series of predictions about the future of technology. Tablet PCs will replace textbooks in schools, he said, and TV will be more like the Internet.

4. “Trend Micro hit by massive Web attack”

Trend Micro was hit with a huge Web attack that sent malware onto hundreds of legitimate Web sites this week. The company’s site was hacked early in the week, and so Trend Micro took down some pages and worked to fix the problem, which affected more than 20,000 Web pages. The infected sites contain malicious code that tries to steal passwords from people who visit those sites. By week’s end, researchers still weren’t quite sure how the hackers were attacking the pages, but said they all seemed to use Microsoft’s ASP (Active Server Page) technology, which is often used to create dynamic HTML pages. And that wasn’t the only nasty security news of the week….

5. “Hackers launch massive IFrame attack“

Attacks that started a week or so ago showed no signs of abating this week as hackers continue to use a new method of subverting Web pages with IFrame redirects. The result has been that hundreds of thousand of Web pages have sent unsuspecting victims to sites containing malware. Infected sites include the U.S. Medicare program site, the North Carolina State University library, and the U.S. Administration on Aging. Some researchers were hopeful about preventing the attack outbreak from continuing, but researcher Dancho Danchev isn’t so optimistic. “To sum up — it’s a mess,” he said.

6. “CIOs brace for economic downturn”

CIOs surveyed by Goldman Sachs say they are getting ready for a recession, with some of them planning to put the brakes on IT spending this year. Almost 70 percent of the 100 Fortune 1000 managers interviewed said they expect a weaker economy this year compared to last year. Spending growth isn’t expected to take a steep dive, but Goldman Sachs does expect “a tightening effect on IT budgets.” It helps that CIOs have become “generally quite cost-conscious” in the post-bubble era. One likely ripple effect of the penny pinching is that CIOs aren’t as fussed about buying from best-of-breed vendors these days and are willing to go with “good enough substitutes.”

7. “How DoubleClick could recharge Google”

Soon after the European Union approved Google’s plan to buy Internet advertising firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, Google closed the deal. Privacy advocates vowed on the heels of Tuesday’s news to remain vigilant in watching how things go after DoubleClick is merged into Google. Meanwhile, analysts and others in the IT industry suggested that the deal will breathe some fresh air into Google, boosting the company’s lethargic display ad business and, consequently, its bottom line.

8. “Remote workers still causing IT headaches”

The headline might change a bit, but the content of the news remains the same — the bad habits of remote workers continue to push IT security budgets up. In a recent survey, 62 percent of 2,000 remote workers and IT pros in various industries in 10 countries said they are increasing security spending this year. Despite the steady stream of malware and security-issue news, some remote workers continue to open e-mail that is suspicious or from unknown senders, and they also still open attachments, according to the study, which was commissioned by Cisco and done by market researcher InsightExpress.

9. “Security futurists shun perimeter, anti-virus systems”

The trends in outsourcing, grid computers, and increased professionalism of hackers will have profound effects on how companies protect IT systems, researchers and analysts said this week at the Source Boston 2008 conference. The use of new IT architecture at the same time that hackers are becoming more sophisticated presents ever more challenges, speakers said at the conference. Security outsourcing is one way that companies will deal with those challenges. “For security, especially for things like firewall management, outsourcing absolutely makes sense,” Rick Mogull, a Securosis analyst, said. “You’ll also have companies outsourcing workstation systems management, and eventually they will outsource anti-virus management as well.” They’ll mix outsourcing with in-house security functions, he and others forecast.

10. “IT’s top 5 training mistakes”

Many of us end-users know the feeling — a computer problem leads us to seek help from the IT department, and before it’s all over, we’re made to feel like idiots with blame for the problem foisted on us whether we deserve it or not. Turns out that the problems might actually lie in IT training or the lack thereof. Companies don’t seem to grasp the importance of good tech training, experts say. Talking to IT managers, trainers, industry advocates, and academics led to a list of the top five mistakes made with IT training — as familiar as the blame game is, the list will undoubtedly ring some bells, too.