ICTs are vital to disaster management–Angara

In times of calamity and disaster, information and communications technologies (ICTs) can be used to deliver basic services such as decision-support systems for the agricultural and rural sectors, and improve health-care delivery to poor and far-flung areas.

Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara of Aurora province called on different stakeholders during the recent ceremonial launching of the Second National ICT of the Philippines (2nd NICP) Summit held at the Fort Stotsenburg Hotel here.

“The Congressional Commission on Science and Technology and Engineering [Comste] recognizes the significance of ICTs in delivering basic services…which also recognizes the need to implement these projects through public-private partnerships, where government need not spread thinly [and therefore ineffectively] already-limited resources and can tap into the varied and thriving expertise of the private sector,” Angara said.

At least 4,000 delegates are expected to attend the 2nd NICP Summit and Convergence 2009 from November 5 to 7 at the Fontana Convention Center.

The 2nd NCIP Summit 2009 and Convergence 2009 is a back-to-back event organized by the National ICT Conference of the Philippines and spearheaded by Clark Development Corp. (CDC), the Metro Clark ICT Council and Cyber City Teleservices Inc.

The two events be will be attended by a wide variety of sectoral members of ICT in academe, ICT-related business industries and related investment projects in the country, and is supported by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology. It is sponsored by Peregrine Global Gateways, ComClark, the Savers Group of Companies, Cyber City and CDC.

Organizers include the Department of Trade and Industry, the National Economic and Development Authority, the Clark Investors and Locators Association, the Philippine Society of Information Technology and Educators and Fontana Leisure Parks.

“I am particularly glad that the 2nd National ICT Summit has asked me to speak on global ICT opportunities and supportive government policies on ICT. This is exactly how we work in Congress and in Comste: Finding ways to leverage global experiences, technologies and opportunities with our own assets and, at the same time, provide an environment in the government where both the private and public sectors of society can be competitive,” Angara said.

“When Congress created the commission in 2007, we immediately identified IT and IT-enabled industries as one of the major players in the Philippines’ struggle for global competitiveness, identifying the IT sector as an important ‘enabler’ of many other sectors in society, especially in science and technology,” Angara added.

Metro Clark ICT council chairman George Sorio said the event will also include track sessions featuring various CICT initiatives and talks from key players in the business-process outsourcing and information-technology industry and in recognition of the important role of the ICT in advancing today’s growing business activities here and abroad. Written by Jacob Cunanan / Business Mirror Correspondent

Phone viruses to spread as telecom, computer worlds merge

BARCELONA, Spain--Viruses and hacking on mobile phones are still rare but attacks are a looming danger as increasing numbers of people access the Internet and download files with their handsets, experts say.

A survey released this week at the industry's Mobile World Congress showed that only 2.1 percent of people had been struck by a virus themselves and only 11.6 percent knew someone who had been affected by one.

The poll by IT security specialist McAfee, based on 2,000 people in Britain, the United States and Japan, showed that 86.3 percent had had no experience of mobile phone viruses.

The survey did suggest however that the more developed the mobile market is, with high use of the Internet and downloads, the more likely people were to be hit by bugs.

Virus attacks in Japan, the most developed mobile phone market in the world, were far more commonplace than elsewhere.

"We should look at places like Japan which is where the future of mobile technology is," said Graham Cluley, a consultant at Sophos, another IT security firm.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we saw this problem growing because the phone is going to grow into a sort of mobile computer."

The website www.mobilephoneviruses.com, which tracks incidents of mobile virus infections, lists a handful of examples such as Skulls, Velasco and Commwarrior.

The latter infected about 110,000 phones in Spain last year, attacking phones running Nokia's Symbian operating system. It spread via MMS messages, text messages containing an audio, video or picture file.

"Viruses aren't a huge issue now but they have the potential to be so in the future when Internet use is more widespread," said a telecom analyst at the Forrester market research company, Pete Nuthall.

The industry is keen for phone owners to use their handsets for more than just calls and texting -- for which profits are declining in developed countries -- with Internet and video, games and mapping the basis of new product offerings.

"It's a risk that we should be aware of but one shouldn't make it dramatic and worry people," said Emmanuel Forgues from Russian IT security group Kaspersky. "But it's a risk that exists and is certainly going to develop."

"There are few viruses that attack the operating system now. What people are looking at is how to propogate viruses," Forgues added.

One use of a virus would be to implant something in a user's address book for publicity or fraudulent purposes, for example.

Cluley said there were about 350,000 viruses written to attack computers running Microsoft Windows and about 200 known ones for mobile phone operating systems.

Computer viruses were now being written by organized crime gangs to steal money and personal information, while mobile phone viruses "have tended to be written by kids to show off," he said

A 12-year-old boy wrote a virus for the new Apple iPhone which disables it, "turning it into a brick," said Cluley, and a user had to go to the boy's Internet site and download some software.

This crude bit of malware, which could not spread from phone to phone, was said to be an upgrade for the iPhone's operating system.

At French network operator Orange, a spokesperson explained that "with the convergence of the worlds of IT and telecoms the threat is going to get more and more serious.

"What interest developers is that their viruses spread as much as possible," but the company added that telephones used a number of different operating systems at the present time, make this difficult.

Nuthall predicts that "it'll take one big public mobile phone virus attack to create alarm."

In the future, he expects the network operators like Orange to provide protection to their clients.

"You'll end up seeing operators selling bundled services which include a McAfee solution, for example," he said. Agence France-Presse