• Northrop Grumman successfully demonstrates VADER dismount detection

    Northrop Grumman’s Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER) capable of tracking vehicles and foot traffic over a wide area; it is used with medium altitude, long endurance UAVs and smaller manned aircraft; it should help U.S. and Coalition forces better detect militants as they try to plant IEDs

  • IDenta Corp.’s detection kit prove a success in India

    Israeli detection-kit maker Identa sees success in India; last year the company has shipped 20,000 different kinds of kits to India; tests by India’s National Investigative Agency showed Identa’s kits to be more effective than sprays and other means of explosive detection

  • Companies compete for Haiti cleanup contracts

    Cleaning up after the Haiti earthquake, in which some 225,000 homes and at least 25,000 government and office buildings collapsed, is big business; American clean-up companies with political muscle are vying for lucrative contracts

  • Critical infrastructure companies targeted by malware

    Companies in the critical infrastructure sector, such as oil, energy, and chemical industries, experienced a higher percentage of malware in 2009 than organizations in other sectors – much, much higher: more than 350 percent more than other industries

  • McAfee: China leads world in hacked computers

    A new study finds that more personal computers in China — about 1,095,000 computers — than in any other country have been hacked to make them zombies, then grouped into botnets to engage in massive e-mail attacks on Web sites; the prevalence of botnets is a sign of how vulnerable computer networks are to infiltration

  • Flir Systems forecast falls Short; CFO to retire

    The company profit forecast falls short of expectations; profit for the fourth quarter was in line with Wall Street expectations; it earned $60.3 million, or 38 cents per share, in the last three months of the year. That matched the average forecast from analysts, according to a Thomson Reuters poll; profit in the year-ago quarter was $65 million

  • Revolutionary water treatment system may make coping with disaster easier

    Researchers develop a revolutionary waste-water treatment device which uses little energy, is transportable, scalable, simple to set-up, simple to operate, comes on-line in record time, and can be monitored remotely; new system cleans influent wastewater within twenty-four hours after set-up to discharge levels that exceed the standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for municipal wastewater

  • U.S. tech salaries up slightly

    IT workers in the United States will see their pay rise by 1.8 percent in 2010 – but this will not keep up with the expected 2.6 percent inflation for 2010; software developers can expect 2.1 percent increases, operations staff 2.0 percent, server and network staff and system administrators could see 1.9 percent growth, managers 1.7 percent, and executives just 1.3 percent

  • IA certifications improve hiring, promotion, salaries

    It pays to get cybersecurity certification; security skills accounted for 17 percent of base pay in the fourth quarter of 2007, and pay for network security management skills increased by more than 27 percent in 2007; going forward, IT professionals will need to be able to incorporate their security savvy into network, wireless, application, operating system, and other IT areas to best compete

  • Soteria to replace U.K.’s search-and-rescue helicopters

    The U.K. government wants to harmonize search and rescue (SAR) in the United Kingdom and replace current helicopters in operation with a bespoke capability; the government has chosen a helicopter from the Soteria Group which consists of Sikorsky, Thales, CHC Helicopter Corporation, and the Royal Bank of Scotland

  • Group aims to set standard for cloud security

    A new consortium aims to provide a Common Assurance Metric (CAM) that will consist of objective, quantifiable measurements; it will draw from existing standards, which are often industry specific, to provide an international, cross-sector approach

  • New facial authentication system installed at Israel Discount Bank

    A bank installs an advanced facial recognition system to verify the identity of employees and customers who want to go into the vault; the system can identify people in difficult conditions such as dim light; changes, such as sunglasses, beards, moustaches, different hairdos, or a hat do not affect its ability

  • U.S. losing ground in the global defense industry

    The U.S. global dominance of the defense industry is eroding; Russia and China encroach on formerly assured markets, while South Korea, Australia, Pakistan, and India will emerge as strong competitors in the industry

  • A nuclear Iran may be good for U.S. defense industry

    A defense expert says that the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran will lead to growth in exports of American weapons systems, training, and advice to U.S. Middle Eastern allies; this would give the American defense industry a needed shot in the arm; Boeing has been making noise about shifting out of the defense industry, which would mean lost American jobs and would also put the United States in a difficult position should it be threatened by a rising military power like China; “a nuclear Iran could forestall such a catastrophe”

  • Aging infrastructure poses economic, security risks

    The World Bank says global infrastructure investment needs will be $35 trillion over the next twenty years; in the United States, a leading engineers group estimates that $2.2 trillion is needed over the next five years; the group gave U.S. critical infrastructure a D grade in 2009