Patrick Thibodeau

Last week's terrorist attacks are expected to shift government and legislative priorities on a host of technology issues.

Not wasting any time, the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing last week on a key question in the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington: whether computer networks that run vital services are vulnerable to terrorism.

U.S. Congress returns from its recess next week and is expected to consider extending a three-year moratorium on Internet access taxes that's set to expire in October.

Hewlett-Packard Co. chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina called on the IT industry Sunday to move aggressively to support the rapid and widespread deployment of broadband, saying ubiquitous high-speed Internet access could boost the economy.

The recent U.S. Court of Appeals decision in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case could ultimately give corporate end users the ability to pick and choose among some Windows applications that the company plans to integrate with future versions of the operating system, say some legal and industry analysts.

IT departments that try to battle computer crime independently may be undercutting their companies' ability to fight off intruders, said a panel of industry experts.

A data standard created to act as a high-tech lubricant for the exchange of customer information is facing problems, including a just-announced review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and, perhaps more important, a lack of big end-user acceptance so far.

Despite Microsoft Corp.'s recent warning of bad financial times ahead, the company's market share in PC operating systems and servers may be expanding, according to new research data from IDC.