David Beesley

It was only recently that IM was the preserve of teens and net-savvy companies. But like so many applications that start small, IM has made the leap from cool tool to useful business application. US analyst Gartner suggests that IM "will rival email in terms of both volume and ubiquity." In 2005 alone, it believes half of all companies will be using enterprise-level IM clients.

Clientless virtual private networks (VPNs) have made go-anywhere remote working viable for a far greater number of companies, because they rein in the costs without compromising security.

If a tree falls in a forest with no-one to hear it, does it make a sound? So goes a typical zen-like philosophical question. While it’s thought-provoking, what does it have to do with Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)?

Foreign hackers, weak passwords, backdoors and buffer overflows – just another day at the office for Network Defence’s penetration testers. Here’s a look at sample pages from the head tester’s diary– and what companies can learn from the results.