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techtree: With the rapidly growing mobile phone usage in the country, the concern regarding the safety and responsible usage of it is also at a rise. To deal with this, Samsung unveiled a new range of mobile phones dubbed as “Mobile Tracker Phones” exclusively for the Indian market.

With this new range, the company is targeting all segments of the society as the three mobiles SGH-C140, SGH-X520, and SGH-E250 are entry level and mid-range models.

The main highlights of the new mobiles include new security features such as mobile tracking (MT), emergency SMS, and privacy lock, thus empowering consumers with security during mobility.

Elaborating on the new security features, Ryu Hyun Chul, MD, Samsung Telecommunication India, said, “Samsung understands Indian consumer needs and through our secured phones, we have tried to address three of the lager issues of mobile security i.e. securing mobile phones and preventing any untoward usage or incidents through MT, securing the safety of near and dear ones through emergency SMS, and securing the confidential data’s that are stored in that phone.”

Firstly let us have a look at the other features of the new phones. To start with SGH-C140 is an entry-level bar phone in a compact and stylish design. It packs 65K color LCD, speaker phone for Handsfree communication, and 16 polyphonic ring tones. It has a screen measuring 3.8cm with a resolution of 128×128 pixels, and the phone comes with an internal memory of 700 KB.

The SGH-X520 has been tagged by the company as the chic slim phone with extra seduction of stunning colors such as Indigo Blue and Wine Red. It’s features include FM radio, VGA camera, and 65 K color CSTN LCD screen measuring 4.8cm with a resolution of 128×160 pixels. It comes with an internal memory of 2.8 MB.

techtree: Symantec has announced its Security Information Manager 4.5, providing customers the foundation for solid IT governance and compliance.

The company said that Security Information Manager assists customers in mitigating IT risk, by reporting on the effectiveness of IT security controls, and enabling IT administrators to quickly respond to security threats and incidents in network environments.

Symantec Security Information Manager 4.5 delivers integrated event archiving and management, improved compliance reporting, and strong administration. In order to improve compliance efforts, customers are able to build a repeatable and documented incident response program, and are provided built-in report templates that can be customized, scheduled, and distributed automatically.

Besides, it provides customers long-term retention of logs for forensic and compliance mandates. And to lower total cost of ownership, numerous new storage options are now available, including DAS, SAN, and NAS. It also offers an infrastructure monitoring user interface, and user management through Active Directory integration and roles management.

Announcing the product, Unmesh Deshmukh, Director - Specialist Sales and Services, Symantec India, said, “Only Symantec can provide an inclusive view of threats by co-relating host and network activity with a unique perspective of the global threat landscape through integration with Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network.”

Techtree: Bird Information Systems (BIS), a leading provider of automated travel solutions, has announced use of its Web check-in application service for the national carrier, ‘Indian’.

Indian will adopt this state-of-the-art BIS technology, and will brand it as “i Check-in” service.

It is learnt that the “i Check-in” service will allow passengers holding e-tickets to check-in from the comfort of their home or office, thereby saving a lot of their time.

The service works by presenting the passenger a simple user-friendly Web check-in option on the Internet booking engine of ‘Indian’ (www.indianairlines.in). The passenger needs to enter basic booking details, and with a few clicks he/she can avail the boarding pass right from his desktop. As such he/she can save time by directly going to the security gate at the airport.

Talking about this service, Ankur Bhatia, Executive Director, Bird Information Systems, said, “We are committed to offer the latest technology solutions to ‘Indian’, be it e-ticketing through Amadeus (BIS affiliate) in the past, or the latest Web check-in service. The Web check-in facility will enhance the overall efficiency of ‘Indian’ enabling them to streamline operations and ultimately deliver a matchless experience for end travellers.”

Commenting on the partnership, Vishwapati Trivedi, Chairman and Managing Director, Indian, said, “We have committed ourselves to redefine air travel in India by offering the very best on ground and on air. This facility will greatly help all our domestic travelers who in today’s day and age have very little time at hand to handle check-in facilities. This facility would save time, increase productivity, and offer seamless service to our clients.”

cnn: Keeping information secure in this age of laptop-lugging workers is the tech industry’s most formidable challenge, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates says.

Speaking Tuesday to an annual gathering of 15,000 computer security experts in San Francisco, Gates invoked the metaphor of a medieval castle to explain the problem: Programmers build bigger moats and thicker fortress walls — but they don’t bother to protect the corporate crown jewels when members of their fiefdom exit the castle and leave the drawbridge open.

“We used to think of the data center as a glass house that was very isolated,” Gates said. “But if we look (at) what actually goes on — consultants come into your company, employees who are not onsite need full access — we cannot think of that glass house as the way to define what can connect to what. We need a far more powerful paradigm.”

Gates repeated Microsoft’s claim that Windows Vista, which launched last month, was the most secure operating system in the company’s history. But he acknowledged that all software has “weak links” — particularly when thieves steal servers with confidential information, or when employees use simple, obvious passwords on multiple accounts.

Instead of passwords, Gates favors “public key certificates” — combinations of digital signatures and other identifying information such as a person’s name, address, Social Security number and other data. He calls it the “identity metasystem.”

“We all struggle to remember an ever-growing number of user names and passwords as we move between systems at work and home,” Gates wrote Tuesday in a message posted on the company’s Web site. “Because it is unlikely that a single digital identity system or technology will be universally adopted, a different approach is required.”