Crumbs

Oh Sony. As if Dell, Lenovo, Apple and Toshiba having to recall its batteries wasn't bad enough, now Acer has done the same.

The Taiwanese manufacturer said yesterday it was recalling 27,000 Sony batteries becasue they might shortcircuit and burst into flames.

Anyone who bought an Acer TravelMate notebook between May 2004 and November 2006 ought to read this.

Thank God there's still life left in trade shows. Those readers who have been around for as long as I have (sympathy, please), will remember the sad demise of the CMA conference in Brighton shortly after the dotcom crash, and then the sudden exit of the NEC-based Networks Telecom shortly afterwards.

Those two flops, plus a few smaller failures, put the skids under the enthusiasm of a) exhibitors and b) more importantly, IT professionals, to turn up. There are even rumours that the Hannover monstrosity CeBIT could be feeling the heat.

Well thankfully there is more oomph in the security sphere. Markedly more, in fact. We're had four reporters on the ground here at InfoSecurity Europe in London's Olympia today, attending a broad variety of briefings and keynotes, plus the usual mix of speaking to a large handful of contacts.

And it's not only us who've found the event useful. Several vendors are reporting good business - and at face value, that doesn't seem surprisingly given how busy the main exhibition hall has been.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for two more busy days of security. We'll bring you the cream of it right the way through the show.

The chairman of the Parliamentary Olympic Group has called for the International Olympic Committee to foot the bill for both physical and information security for the London Olympics.

As UK taxpayers face a security bill set to spiral to over £1bn, Derek Wyatt MP has called for the UK to pass the bill to the IOC, which is responsible for organising the Olympics.

"The IOC want the Games. They should pay for it. It is unrealistic to expect the Home Country to foot the security bill," Wyatt said, in his keynote speech at the InfoSecurity Europe conference today.

He said that although the official estimate was for a total of £1bn to be spent on securing the Games in 2012, it was far too early to place an estimate on the figure.

But Wyatt added, "It's going to be much more than that."

The MP also raised the possibility of a conflict between the technology necessary to secure The Games, and the demands of sponsors.

Because of the size of the big eight sponsorship deals, the sponsors hold considerable rights over the technology which can be on public display at the Games.

Wyatt was backed by one of the leaders of the Security Group at the British Computer Society (BCS), who called for a broader range of technology to be embraced.

Good security hardware and software are not the top priority for securing a corporate network, according to a leading security consultant presenting at the InfoSecurity Europe show in London's Olympia today.

Much more important is getting management to support IT security policy - and for users to follow it. This is according to Yves Le Roux, one of the leading figures behind ISC(2), the organisation which offers training to security professionals. Le Roux, for the record, is also a technology strategist at Computer Associates in his day job.

That's pretty much a poke in the eye for those selling security products, but what Le Roux says makes some sense. Human weaknesses are often underestimated in terms of how vulnerable they can make a corporate network.

In his presentation this morning, Le Roux also said that organisations must not have security generalists: security is now so broad that individuals must specialise in a particular technology - be that encryption, network design or compliance - to be effective.

In terms of training needs, security professionals are demanding training in information security risk management, business continuity and forensics, ISC(2)'s research found.

And a new young breed of security professionals is entering the profession. Le Roux said there were now an increasing number of security professionals earning the lower band of salaries, and also that the average age of security professionals was falling.

Interesting to see the announcement from WiFi operator The Cloud that it has completed its outdoor WiFi network in the City of London, and plans to activate it today.

The operator has been building out the network for some months, but at last it reckons it's complete.

Apparently 350,000 City workers will now have internet access in the street on any WiFi device.

It's kind of ironic timing. We've got a scoop on the Cloud today, which the company tried to sweep under the carpet.

The story strikes quite a contrast if you search for "The Cloud" at news.google.com.