Company policies that are outdated, misunderstood or simply ignored cause expensive compliance liabilities. ReSoft is releasing PolicyMatter into the North American market. PolicyMatter is a software solution that protects organizations from compliance infractions by automating the delivery, acceptance & auditing of corporate policies ensuring employees have read, understood and signed-up to them. The software’s goal is to make sure that a damaging email does not even get written.

JP Callahan, a former counter-intelligence agent with the U.S. Department of Defense, runs data center security for Verizon Business, the company’s data center hosting arm. While Callahan has the demeanor of a standup comedian rather than a CIA spook, his full time focus is data center security. SearchDataCenter.com caught up with Callahan at Afcom’s Data Center World conference.

At Convergence 2006, the Microsoft Business Solutions Group’s annual customer conference, Microsoft previewed Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, an adaptable, global business management solution. Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 is proof that Microsoft is delivering on its vision to provide next-generation business value to customers in the form of powerful role-based activity. As a composite application, Microsoft Dynamics AX enables the use of business logic and data from multiple systems to show a complete view of a customer’s business processes, keeping the focus on people and the work they need to do.

Microsoft filed an appeal with the Seoul High Court to review the decision in the Korea Fair Trade Commission case against Microsoft. The appeal is a lawsuit seeking revocation of the KFTC’s decision, which was issued last December, based on the law and facts in the case. The company has also requested reconsideration of the decision by the KFTC. Microsoft continues to believe that its actions are consistent with Korean law and have benefited Korean consumers and the Korean technology industry.

According to a recent report by a technology labor union, Microsoft programmers and workers are mad as heck and don’t want to take it anymore. The union hopes this may be a key to promote organizing Redmond’s work force. The report, "Rising Frustration with Microsoft’s Compensation and Review System," was released by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a union affiliated with the CWA (Communications Workers of America). It says that workers are troubled by a range of performance review issues, including management’s apparent use of a bell curve grading system for raises and complaints of a "well-entrenched culture of favoritism."

A do-it-yourself malware creation kit is being hawked on a Russian Web site for less than $20, according to security researchers tracking the seedier side of the Internet. Virus hunters at SophosLabs discovered the spyware kit, called WebAttacker, on a Web site run by self-professed spyware and adware developers. The kit is available for sale directly from the site, which even offers tech support to buyers. The WebAttacker kit includes scripts that simplify the task of infecting computers and spam-sending techniques to lure victims to specially rigged Web sites.

Enterprises searching for the answers to their security problems should increasingly take a closer look at their internal operations before blaming outside threats, according to experts participating in an online IT security conference. Speaking as part of Ziff Davis Media eSeminars’ Security Virtual Tradeshow, industry watchers conceded that applications such as email clients, file-sharing systems and instant messaging platforms continue to pose serious problems for those people charged with protecting corporate IT networks and information.

Funeral services for Paul A. Flaherty, 42, the computer engineer who developed key inventions for the Alta Vista search engine, were held Friday in Menlo Park, CA, not far from the former Digital Equipment Lab where the pioneering search engine was launched. Flaherty died March 16 of a heart attack at his home in Belmont, Calif.

The Internet’s freewheeling days as a place exempt from the heavy hand of federal election laws are about to end. Late Friday, the Federal Election Commission released a 96-page volume of Internet regulations that have been anticipated for more than a year and represent the government’s most extensive foray yet into describing how bloggers and Web sites must abide by election law restrictions.

Microsoft may rush out a security update for Internet Explorer to fix a flaw that is now being exploited to attack Windows systems, security companies say. Computer code that demonstrates how a hacker can use the flaw to take over a PC was released onto the Net on Thursday. At least two such exploits were made public, and one has now been adapted to attack systems, Monty IJzerman, the manager of security content at McAfee, said on Friday.