The inauguration of Barack Obama as US President and the overhaul of the White House cyber system has raised alarm bells and provided some important security lessons for companies and individuals.

E-Brief News reports that the Obama team pioneered new ways of using the Internet to campaign, including the use of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. They even announced the selection of Joseph Biden as Obama's vice presidential nominee by SMS text message. Obama, as promised, put his first weekly address from the White House on YouTube, sparking a raucous debate in the comments section of the video-sharing site. According to a report on the IoL site, the five-minute video, in which Obama promoted his economic stimulus plan, drew more than 210 000 views and 1 000 comments some 12 hours after it was released on the White House YouTube channel. The report says the video of Obama's first weekly address since being sworn in as the 44th President was also available on the official White House Web site. However, there has been no shortage of complications as well. Obama's aides were forced into a red-faced admission on Monday when the White House e-mail system crashed. The Washington Post reports that Obama aides had just switched over from their now-defunct transition accounts over the weekend and were handing out their new government e-mail addresses when the outage hit. There was no indication that the outage caused any sort of national calamity. Obama still managed to give former Senator George J Mitchell a formal send-off to the Middle East and to swear in Timothy F Geithner as Treasury Secretary. But several administration officials said that business had ground to a halt because of the disruption - and that they were fearing the deluge of messages that would come when service was restored.
Full report on the IoL site
Full report in The Washington Post


The e-mail meltdown was all the more embarrassing as the White House only last week had revealed that the famously connected new President Barack Obama had won a battle to keep his BlackBerry - albeit a high security encrypted device. Business Day reports that Obama's BlackBerry might be retrofitted with a special encryption package. The so-called 'BarackBerry' would permit the President to use it for routine and personal messages without fear of penetration by foreign governments. Network World reports that Obama isn't the only US federal government employee who wants to keep his BlackBerry. Across the federal market, information workers are asking for mobile devices such as smart phones and laptops with wireless data cards so they can access e-mail and other Internet services while they are on the go. Increasingly, notes the report, federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Department of Interior, are responding with wireless data contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to carriers.
Full Business Day report
Full Network World report


Reporters at The New York Times might have felt a more than usual twang of sympathy for Obama, because they, too, have had their Web 2.0 wings clipped. A memo just sent to staff tells reporters that they should avoid using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites in certain ways, even in their personal lives. In an Out-Law.com column, Simon Horsfield, a partner at Pinsent Masons, questions whether we should we be outraged at this intrusion into employees' personal communications, or angry that they are barred from using new media technologies altogether? 'Of course not. In fact in seeking to control the way their staff use new media, both organisations are doing the right thing. If an employer is going to restrict someone's digital freedoms in and out of the workplace they need very good reasons. Those reasons exist, but they had better be carefully formulated and clearly communicated, otherwise the organisation could open itself up to the accusation that it is trying to exert too much control over its employees' lives.'
Full column on the Out-Law.com site


A social networking site operated by the Obama presidential campaign is serving up malware to unwary visitors a full week after the tactic was reported, a security researcher says. My.BarackObama.com, still active a week after the inauguration, is being used by hackers trying to dupe users into downloading a Trojan horse, said Dan Hubbard vice-president of security research at Websense Inc. Computer World reports that My.BarackObama.com provides tools that enable visitors to join groups of Obama supporters, raise funds and create a personal blog hosted on the site. The criminals have set up bogus accounts and used them to create blogs. When a user reaches one of the fake blogs, a YouTube-like video window is displayed; clicking on that video frame takes the user to a malicious Web site packed with pornography. Meanwhile, hackers are using dozens of fake Web sites linked to the inauguration to spread a virus on the Internet. According to the firm, Panda Security, more than 70 Web sites are running a bogus news story titled 'Barack Obama has refused to be a President', aimed at tricking Internet users into downloading the computer virus. According to a report on the News24 site, users who click on the story are asked to click in a pop-up window to download an information file.
Full Computer World report
Full report on the News24 site


Tech companies will have a major opportunity to snag government contracts by working with the Obama administration on its planned cybersecurity goals, according to a new report from Forrester Research. In the report, Forrester outlines the administration's plan and discusses how tech companies can put themselves in the position to work on upgrading the nation's cybersecurity infrastructure. Network World reports that among other things, Forrester says that the Obama administration plans to declare cyber infrastructure a strategic asset and to create a national cybersecurity adviser; to work with both universities and private companies to research and develop next-generation security for both government computers and applications; and to create standards for securing personal data stored on government computers.
Full Network World report