Corporate fraud, in-flight Wi-Fi, R&D tax credit, more

that big vendors such as IBM and others have to provide financing deals to customers is critical, given the economy. "Vendor-led financing initiatives may prove to be the lubricant that keeps tech spending moving forward," he says.

-Thomas Wailgum

Why Corporate Fraud Freaks You Out (And It Should)

Fraud is a fact of corporate life today, as a recent Kroll Global Fraud Report notes.

The average company's losses to fraud increased by 22 percent since last year, and the average business lost US$8.2 million to fraud during the past three years. These sobering statistics are from a recent worldwide survey of 890 senior executives, commissioned by risk consultancy Kroll.

The survey found that information theft, loss or attack is the type of fraud that most worried respondents, with 25 percent feeling highly vulnerable and 47 percent feeling moderately so. And the data shows why: The fastest growing types of fraud are information theft (27 percent) and regulatory and compliance breaches (25 percent).

Yet while senior management seems to be saying they have deep concerns about fraud, they wind up underestimating the exposure their businesses actually face today.

In fact, employees working below the C-suite who are closer to an organization's technology efforts and systems are over one-and-a-half times more likely than those at the corporate level to see their companies as highly vulnerable (31 percent versus 19 percent), according to the report.

"If senior executives are not worried about their vulnerability to information theft, they should check whether their sense of safety is based on a thorough understanding of the security deployed by the company, or ignorance of the full extent of threat," notes the report. "In this case, too little knowledge could be a dangerous thing."

-Thomas Wailgum

Center to Connect on Social Software

IBM recently announced the opening of the Center for Social Software in a move that it hopes will bring more of its Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise and allow an exchange of ideas with business, technology and academic communities.

Big Blue's Web 2.0 technologies, such as its Lotus Connections, which includes a blog and social network features, are its fastest growing software product.

"IBM has centered our infrastructure around a bigger investment in social software," says Irene Greif, director of the center in Cambridge, Mass. "We want to work more systematically and take this research and deliver it to customers."

The center will look for the best ways organizations can utilize social software and set policies around its adoption. Greif hopes those who interact with the center will give candid feedback about the company's social software. "We'd like to have people from outside working with us, too," she says.

Initial projects for the center derive from IBM labs including Beehive, an enterprise social network, and Many Eyes, a free Web-based application that allows users to visualize data in Web 2.0 formats, such as tag clouds.

While the center will mostly focus on IBM customers and software, Greif says it may work with other vendors to help provide standards around social software development. "I am expecting to see us step in and take some leadership in that area," she says.

-C.G. Lynch

Use RFID to Track Servers and Laptops

Accurate, well-planned and highly targeted RFID deployments in tandem with IT-driven data-integration plans can deliver substantial benefits, according to a slew of recent surveys and analyst reports.

First, a survey of 186 global organizations by ABI Research found that RFID is being used or evaluated for applications across a swathe of vertical industry sectors. "Virtually every economic sector and industry where data needs to be collected or objects need to be tracked holds the potential for RFID applications," notes ABI Research Director Michael Liard. Organizations are also increasingly using and evaluating RFID systems to improve the tracking of objects, assets, goods and materials within corporate yards and property, on campuses and in open-loop environments, according to ABI.

Another ABI report finds RFID moving into companies' data centers. "IT assets are key infrastructure for any