Grant Gross

Domain registrar VeriSign Inc. defended its now-suspended Site Finder search tool Monday, saying concerns about its effect on the stability of the Internet and on the amount of spam are overblown.

Lingering concerns over a ban on Internet-unique taxes shouldn't stop the legislation from being passed in the U.S. Congress, a senator said Friday at an Internet taxation forum.

A piece of congressional legislation intended to ban taxes unique to the Internet could end up exempting many telecommunications services from state and local taxes, costing states billions of dollars a year, according to a group representing 45 state governments.

The U.S. government has started to use its immense purchasing power to influence cybersecurity, beginning with a Department of Energy (DOE) contract with Oracle Corp. that requires the software vendor to build in security configurations.

The U.S. House passed a bill Wednesday that would permanently ban governments in the U.S. from levying taxes unique to the Internet.

The OASIS standards consortium has approved a standard that members say will make it easier and cheaper to publish data on Web portals.

Some government agencies in the U.S. hope to outsource certain IT functions to private vendors in the coming years, but they have concerns about the political fallout if outsourced jobs were to go overseas, and in some cases don't know enough about their IT assets to make an informed decision on what to outsource.

As the U.S. Congress reconvenes this week after a month-long break, legislation imposing cybersecurity requirements on private industry, including a proposal that would require public companies to report their cybersecurity efforts, may be on the way.