Jaikumar Vijayan

Fidelity Investments confirmed that a laptop containing confidential information on more than 196,000 current and former employees at Hewlett-Packard Co. and its acquisitions was recently stolen from the company. The theft may have exposed information including the names, social security numbers and compensation details for the workers.

Companies struggling to keep up with a patchwork of US state laws related to data privacy and information security have three more to contend with, as new security-breach notification laws went into effect in Illinois, Louisiana and New Jersey on Jan. 1. n

U.S. federal officials are looking to outsource the IT infrastructure that's needed to support a planned smart-card system for authenticating employees governmentwide. And the outsourcing plan makes sense, given the scale and complexity of the smart-card initiative, IT analysts said last week. rn

U.S. federal officials are looking to outsource the IT infrastructure that's needed to support a planned smart-card system for authenticating employees governmentwide. And the outsourcing plan makes sense, given the scale and complexity of the smart-card initiative, IT analysts said last week.

Companies struggling to keep up with a patchwork of US state laws related to data privacy and information security have three more to contend with, as new security-breach notification laws went into effect in Illinois, Louisiana and New Jersey on Jan. 1.

Regulatory compliance requirements and concerns over data compromises have elevated the importance of information security issues in corporate boardrooms, according to panelists at the 32nd annual conference organized by the Computer Security Institute. And that trend is lending urgency to the need for security managers to adopt a more business-oriented approach to their jobs.

Regulatory compliance has emerged as the biggest driver of information security initiatives, trumping concerns such as worms and viruses for the first time, according to the results of a survey released Wednesday by Ernst & Young.

New tools are starting to become available to IT managers who are looking for ways to protect their systems from worms and other attacks while they work to test and install security patches issued by software vendors.