Microsoft has agreed to acquire Whale Communications, a specialist in secure remote access and Web application firewalls. The takeover is meant to broaden Microsoft’s security offerings and give its customers more options in providing secure access to their networks from more locations and devices, Microsoft said in a statement Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Symantec has launched a suit charging Microsoft with misappropriating its intellectual property and with violating a license related to data storage technology. The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring Microsoft from using the Symantec technology, which would include a halt on Windows Vista and the Longhorn server, according to a copy of the filing.

AOL has purchased Lightningcast, an online-advertising company that specializes in the placement of streaming video and audio content. In addition to video and audio advertising creation and insertion, Lightningcast also handles ad campaign management and results reporting. AOL has had a working relationship with Lightningcast since 2002 and has used its services for AOL Radio, AOL Video and In2TV ventures.

One in three workers want flex schedules as part of their overall compensation, finds the Hudson Employment Index’s Transforming Pay Plans 2006 Compensation and Benefits report. Examining employee attitudes about traditional pay and benefits programs, the survey reveals that while three out of four workers claim to be very satisfied with their compensation, nearly half of the same sample say they would change their mix of pay and benefits if they could. Twenty-two percent would choose additional family benefits, including parental leaves and personal days, over job training or supplemental insurance.

A new study of Web surfing behaviors at work finds that on any given day, an employee might check out porn, fall for a phishing scam, or drain bandwidth while streaming a music video on company time. Nevertheless, 50 percent of office workers would rather give up their morning coffee than their Web surfing, finds Web@Work: General Trends in Internet Surfing, a survey released by Websense.

After months of providing only basic guidance about the kind of PC hardware needed to run Windows Vista, Microsoft is ready to get a bit more specific. On Thursday, the company is expected to give details of two marketing programs that computer makers and retailers can use to indicate whether, and how well, their computers will run the upcoming Windows operating system. The "Vista-capable" program lists the features needed to minimally run the new operating system. The "Premium Ready" program will identify PCs that can take advantage of Vista’s high-end features, including its new Aero graphics, according to a source familiar with the company’s plans.

Hewlett-Packard is consolidating its 85 data centers worldwide into six centers in the United States, a move the company said will save $1 billion in IT costs over the next few years and give it a chance to showcase its adaptive infrastructure capabilities. The data centers will be spread between three cities, with two facilities each in Atlanta, Houston and Austin, Texas, HP announced May 17. The consolidation will take several years to complete, according to a company spokesperson.

Advanced Micro Devices says its new chip design will boost processor performance without increasing power consumption. The Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker previewed a quad-core processor design the company said it will use to create higher-performing Opteron chips, in addition to boosting some of its other chip lines.

Laplink announced that its PC transfer and migration software, PCmover, now supports migrations to PCs using the Windows XP Media Center operating system. Consumers now have a way to move files, settings, and even entire programs quickly and automatically from their old PCs to their new Media Center PCs. PCmover is the only product that moves all programs between PCs, even if they have different operating systems and hardware.

New threats to your computer infrastructure emerge every day. Baseline’s Security Survival Guide provides tips and techniques to help you safeguard your organization.