Computing SA staff

The number of U.S. adults that are sure or think that they have received phishing e-mails has nearly doubled since 2004, according to a survey by Gartner. Financial losses stemming from phishing attacks have risen to more than US$2.8 billion in 2006.

Advanced Micro Devices, (AMD) and ATI Technologies (ATI) have announced that the proposed acquisition of ATI by AMD has been approved by the Minister of Industry under the Investment Canada Act, satisfying one of the conditions to the closing of the acquisition.

Over 200 major incidents have been detected by PandaLabs in a two-hour span due to the mass-mailing of spam messages carrying files infected with the Spamta worm.

With the proposed East Africa Submarine cable system (EASSy) fiber cable coming on stream in 2008, and the steady roll-out of national backbone and cross-border links, it might be expected that the proportion of African traffic carried by fiber would increase very quickly. This appears unlikely to happen within the next three to five years, according to a recent report from consultancy company, Balancing Act.

Standard Bank says that it has introduced Internet banking on the cell phone designed to take advantage of the latest developments in modern cell phones and their ability to access the Internet.

First National Bank (FNB) has emerged as the market leader in South Africa's cell phone banking space, posting 1.8 million transactions valued at R200 million (US$33 million) since the launch of its mobile banking service in March 2005.

The MTN Group has announced the acquisition of a 100 per cent stake in Libertis Telecom, one of two cellular network operators in the Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville). Libertis provides coverage in various towns to approximately 190,000 subscribers. The country has a population of 3.5 million people with mobile penetration estimated at 13.9 per cent. MTN aims to significantly increase Libertis

With the UK predicting that it will be facing a shortage of up to 500,000 professionals with top-end networking skills within the next three years, South Africa (SA) can brace itself for some serious head-hunting from UK companies - a situation that could exacerbate a local shortage. This is according to Org Geldenhuys, a director of Pretoria-based IT recruitment company, Abacus Recruitment.