Irish financial institutions are under threat from international competitors that will "land grab" the virtual market and become the established electronic providers. So says a survey of the financial services sector published by Prospectus Strategy Consultants. The report, which found that the maintenance of existing systems is preventing Irish financial institutions from developing a virtual relationship with customers and from entering overseas markets, recommends that e-business be put at the top of the banking agenda.
FLAWED COMMUNICATOR: Netscape has acknowledged that a flaw in the email component of its browser can allow passwords to be cracked. Two engineers duplicated the algorithm that Netscape Messenger uses to scramble users' passwords and were able to access encrypted passwords.
WINNING WAYS: Two computer scientists from UCD have won the best application paper award at this year's International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence. Dr Barry Smyth and Paul Cotter co-wrote the winning paper describing ongoing research in UCD on applications of artificial intelligence on the Internet.
EURO ROW: The European Court has said that the European Commission was wrong not to pursue a complaint against Microsoft from French software firm Micro Leader Business. The court overturned a decision not to investigate Microsoft for controlling imports of its software into France.
ELF WARNING: Anyone who has played Elf Bowling may be alarmed to learn that when the game is launched it secretly makes an Internet connection to the company that created it. NVision, which developed the game, says that the data transmitted is completely innocuous.
Y2K'S OKAY: President Clinton has said that all but a handful of the US government's most important computer systems are prepared for Y2K. "We have done our job," he said. In its final report, the administration said only eight of the government's 6,167 most important systems were not prepared for the Y2K rollover, and those would be ready later this month.
CHALLENGING TIMES: An Irish mathematician is seeking volunteers to help crack a $10,000 cryptography challenge. Robert Harley is part of the team that won $5,000 earlier this year for cracking a 97-bit elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) key. He is now recruiting help to tackle a much harder 109-bit key. Volunteers download a program that runs in the background on their computers to work out a small part of the problem. Certicom, which sells ECC-based encryption programs is sponsoring the challenge to try and prove that ECC is more secure than traditional DES and RSA encryption.
Info - cristal.inria.fr/~harley/ecdl7/readMe.html
HEALTH PORTAL: The VHI has announced a £4 million investment in a healthcare portal. It aims to be an electronic gateway to interactive health information, tailored for the Irish consumer.
PC FEARS: More than half Irish consumers interested in buying a PC believe the purchase is likely to be confusing, too technical and time consuming, according to research on consumer attitudes commissioned by Gateway Computers.
IN BRIEF...Newbridge Networks has completed its acquisition of Stanford Telecommunications. . . MicroWarehouse is now selling and stocking memory components from Viking Components. . . build-online.com has announced details of a $2 million venture capital agreement with Delta Partners and BancBoston Capital. . . Datalex announced its intention to be among the first global e-commerce providers to enable people to book airline flights online by using their mobile phones. . .