• Indiana companies benefit from UAV trend

    Last year, for the first time, the U.S. Air Force trained more pilots to operate unmanned vehicles than it did pilots for traditional fighter planes; UAV carry out more and more intelligence and operational missions; Indiana companies benefit

  • First computer forensics private investigation firm opens in Nevada

    Expert Data Forensics is the first computer forensics-only PI firm in the state of Nevada; the firm says it has already helped in almost a hundred clients get the electronic evidence used to make a difference in the outcome of their cases; the data is retrieved from cell phones, PDAs, and computers

  • International companies in Mexico now target for cartel attacks

    Until recently, few criminals dared to touch the factories and offices of the hundreds of multinational corporations — or maquilas — in Reynosa, Maxico; amid a violent three-way war among two cartels and the military, the maquilas are no longer untouched; none of the 140 maquiladoras in Reynosa’s eleven industrial parks have pulled out of the area, but many have developed exit strategies in case the violence does not abate

  • Cybersecurity companies weather the economic downturn

    Cybersecurity companies may have suffered during the economic downturn — but they suffered less; some companies even saw an increase in revenues; “The things that we’re delivering have become more of a necessity than a nice to have,” says the president of an Iowa-based company which provides technical support and corporate security for desktop computers — and which increased its annual revenue by 41 percent in 2009

  • End-of-the-world shelter company selling bunker space

    A California-based company offers people a chance to survive the end of the world; for $50,000 per person, the company will sell you a spot in an underground shelter guaranteed to survive nuclear attacks, bio terrorism, chemical warfare, super volcano eruptions, asteroids, solar flares, tsunamis, earthquakes, pole shifts, the return of Planet X, and social and political anarchy;

  • Mexico to disconnect millions of cellphones to fight crime

    In a desperate effort to curb crime, the Mexican government moves to disconnect 30 million unregistered cell phones; the government wants to be able to track cell phone calls and messages, so it passed a law requiring that cell phone users register their phones by sending in their personal information; most of Mexico’s 84 million mobile phones are prepaid handsets with a limited number of minutes of use; these units can be easily bought in stores and either discarded or have call minutes added to them; many have registered their phones, but as of last Thursday, 30 million had not

  • Recession over for technology sector

    Recession for the IT sector is over; IT spending in the United States will grow by 8.4 percent this year, to $550 billion; better outlook is helped by higher spending on communications equipment, accompanying the ongoing rebound in computer and software purchases

  • Safeguard is awarded security technology study in Mexico

    Mexico’s deteriorating security offers opportunities for American security companies; a Dallas-based specialist in security solutions is awarded a contract for an engineering study for a massive surveillance monitoring system in Mexico; The pilot program is estimated to be approximately $8 million;

  • Camgian awarded DARPA UAV-UGS fusion contract

    Today’s soldiers rely on advanced ground and airborne sensors to identify, track, and monitor critical targets; as stand-along platforms, UAVs and unattended ground sensors (UGS) have operational limitations such as endurance, coverage, and target resolution; Camgian is teaming up with BAE Systems to exploit the fusion of these assets in an automated network architecture to provide powerful ISR capability

  • Onyx targets business continuity acquisitions

    Energetic and acquisitive U.K. VAR Onyx refreshes DRS proposition after recent buy-out and aims for more consolidation; company claims that many disaster recovery packages do not cater effectively for smaller firms, particularly in London

  • New York denies water permit for Indian Point nuclear plant

    The New York Department of Environmental Conservation denied water-quality certification to Indian Point nuclear power plant; the operator requires the certification to extend by twenty years the license to operate the 2,000-megawatt plant

  • Japan plans nuclear power expansion

    Japan imports 80 percent of its energy; the government has a plan aiming to reduce that figure to just 30 percent by 2030; the key to the plan: building eight new nuclear reactors by 2020 — adding to the country’s 54 operating reactors; Japan is also about to resume operations of the world’s only fast-breeder reactor; the plan faces public opposition, especially in light of Japan’s history of earthquakes

  • Hillard Heintze security firm branching out to consult police departments, cities

    A Chicago-based security consulting firm, founded by a former Chicago Police superintendent and a retired chief of the Secret Service in Chicago, was named by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s fastest-growing companies; last week the firm announced it would add law enforcement consulting to the services it offered clients

  • Swedish pension fund drops Elbit Systems over West Bank barrier

    A Swedish pension fund has decided to Elbit Sytems from its portfolio because Elbit provides surveillance equipment to the West Bank barrier Israel is building; the barrier does not follow the Green Line which marked the border between Israel and the West Bank until 1967, but rather extends eastward to include Jewish settlements built in the West Bank since then; Sweden, the EU, and others consider these settlements — and the barrier itself — to be in violation of international law

  • FAA bolsters cybersecurity with help from IBM

    Malware introduced into the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) computer network which monitors and controls U.S. aviation can bring down a plane and cause havoc as surely as liquid explosives or underwear bombs can; the IBM is teaming up with the FAA to build a cybersecurity system which will improve defense against cyberattacks on the U.S. civilian aviation network; the flexible model used in the prototype system will be designed to look retrospectively at event occurrences and system compromises, and it will also be able to correlate historical traffic patterns with dynamic data from monitors, sensors, and other devices capturing information about network traffic and user activity in real time