According to the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, CA there have been close to 60 reported security breaches of customer financial information from United States corporations thus far in 2005, involving 13.5 million customers’ identities. The companies include Choicepoint, Inc., Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp., Ameritrade Holding Corp., DSW Shoe Warehouse, Time Warner Inc., LexisNexis and most recently Citbank Financial Group. While most lost data has involved data storage tapes lost in transit by courier services or UPS, others involved computer security breaches. And as corporate America looks for ways to shore up its security problems rather than face the wrath of Congress, an even more unwieldy problem is brewing abroad.

As holes still exist in protecting the personal information of both customers and employees of corporations in the United States, many of these same corporations, which include the largest financial institutions and two of the three credit reporting agencies, have offshored information technology units which include-back office functions from customer service to software development and engineering.

Yet American customers or consumers are never informed whether or not their personal information and credit history is being offshored, as it is not required by U.S. corporations to do so. Coming to light is that various U.S. government programs and states are utilizing more and more offshore subcontractors in addition to those corporate entities which indirectly do business with the U.S. government. But unknown to the American consumer or taxpayer is the threat of theft of an individual’s identity and financial resources which remain largely unprotected without the ability to enforce U.S. law on foreign land.

See the complete article here: Magic City Morning Star: U.S. Offshoring of Personal Data Grows

An article about Ukraine IT outsourcing myths has been published by Ezine Articles, an online article directory.

While Ukraine is becoming a new popular IT outsourcing destination, there are still many myths about it and no clear understanding of the opportunities outsourcing to Ukraine can present...

See the article here: Ukraine IT Myths Dispersed

Apple has been in the news a lot lately. First, the news of Apple/Intel deal. Now, there's more coming. Michael Dell is thinking different about the Mac OS. The founder and chairman of the No. 1 computer maker told Fortune magazine that he would be interested in becoming a switcher himself if the opportunity ever came up. "If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy

Declining CD sales can't be blamed on file-sharing networks alone, according to a new report.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Monday that digital music piracy is a problem, but other factors--such as the rise in the number of entertainment sources--are more likely to have had a significant impact on music sales.

"It is very difficult to establish a basis to prove a causal relationship between the size of the drop in music sales and the rise of file sharing. Sales of CDs, as well as the success of licensed online music services are likely to have been affected to some degree by a variety of other factors, for example physical piracy and CD burning, competition from other, newer entertainment products and faltering consumer spending in some markets," the report said.

While the report found a "pronounced" fall in overall global CD sales of 20 percent between 1999 and 2003, and a particularly large drop in CD sales in the U.S., some countries, including France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, are actually experiencing steady or growing CD sales.

See the complete article here: Study: Falling CD sales can't be blamed on P2P | CNET News.com

Related link: Is Ukraine Pirates' Paradise?

Open Source is gaining more and more popularity, and not only among developers and techically minded folks. Apart from software development, Open Source is gaining new markets. As Nokia announced, a new web browser for its smart phones will use two components already employed by Apple Computer in its Safari Web browser for its Mac OS X operating system. Moreover, This is not Nokia's first