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October 19th, 2009UncategorizedVeracode Inc., provider of Application Risk Management Platform, announced expansion of its SecurityReview® cloud-based subscription service to support mobile applications. With more than 100,000 mobile applications already in the market and millions of mobile users accessing critical business data, the security risk posed by these applications is staggering. Veracode announced immediate availability for Windows Mobile with near term support for other platforms such as RIM BlackBerry, Google Android and Apple iPhone. Veracode's SecurityReview is the first solution to enable enterprises and software vendors to assess the security risk of mobile applications before they are shipped or deployed to combat the growing number of data breaches and compliance failures.Enterprises are increasingly transacting critical data with customers and remote workers through mobile applications, yet the security of these applications goes largely untested. Source code for mobile applications is rarely available, as most software is written by third parties, and is insufficient in finding vulnerabilities such as backdoors, malicious code or flaws introduced by third party libraries and components. Veracode provides the only solution to assess binary code – the way attackers see it – enabling organizations to apply a common, holistic approach to secure both their mobile and server applications regardless of whether they are internally developed, purchased from a commercial vendor, outsourced or open source.
The Verified by Veracode Software Ratings Programme is a quality indicator for the security level of applications and software components. By expanding this Programme to cover mobile software, providers of mobile applications can now protect their brand and platform with a consistent and automated security verification Programme for mobile applications developed internally or by third parties. Organizations who have achieved "Verified by Veracode" status have made reasonable efforts to demonstrate that they have taken due care to ensure the security of their applications and their software has been assessed against industry standards for software assurance.
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October 18th, 2009Uncategorized
It's the catechism that vexes chargeless accessible antecedent software advocates and bartering competitors about the globe: Why is Microsoft Office so difficult to dislodge from its branch aloft the IT heap? Is it the absolute bundling deals? The abysmal Software Assurance entrenchment? Steve Ballmer's backroom accord with the devil?
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October 12th, 2009Uncategorized
The need for customized electronic health records software may be pricing out some hospitals, according to a collaborative study done by a Harvard Medical School doctor and an MIT Sloan School of Management professor.
The study, which will be published in the journal Management Science, found that because privacy laws differ across states, EHR software often has to be customized to account for these differences. This is a potential barrier for many hospitals, because customization costs money.
States that had unique health privacy laws in place experienced a 20 to 30 percent reduction in EHR adoption rates, Catherine Tucker, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor and the study's coauthor said.
"What we found is that when we were talking to hospitals, a lot of the costs came because these state laws are very different and so it meant that a vendor couldn't sell a standardized solution," she told The Boston Globe. "Any time you mention customization and software, it gets costly."
However, there is one potential way to hold costs down for hospitals that can't afford commercial solutions: Using open-source software.
For instance, the EHR package built by the Veteran's Administration using taxpayer dollars is free and open source, although hospitals will need to spend money and time to customize it to fit their needs.
In addition, West Virginia senator John J. Rockefeller last month introduced Senate Bill 90, the Health Information Technology Public Utility Act of 2009, which would help promote open source EHR and offer grants to hospitals willing to implement it.
Medsphere, a company that has helped commercialized VistA, sells its EHR software "for comparative pennies on the dollar," CNET reported. Proprietary systems comparable to what Medsphere offers typically run between $10 and $20 million dollars.
