Amazon.com Inc.’s Web site suffered sporadic outages Monday, just days after unspecified issues knocked the online retailer offline for more than two hours.

Keynote Systems Inc., a California-based company that monitors Web site performance, said the latest troubles started shortly after 1 p.m. EDT and lasted at least an hour.

Keynote’s automated probes were able to reach the main Amazon.com site as little as 30 percent of the time. Even when the monitors did reach the site, they faced delays, said Shawn White, Keynote’s director of external operations.

The probes also found problems with the British Amazon.co.uk site, but other country-specific sites appeared to be functioning, White said.

Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith described Monday’s troubles as “intermittent” and said they did not affect Amazon Web Services, a separate offering that provides pay-as-you-go data storage to other companies such as the photo-sharing service SmugMug Inc. and Web e-mail provider Mailtrust.

On Friday, Amazon’s site shut down for more than two hours during the business day, giving an error code to anyone visiting it.

“Amazon’s systems are very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems,” the company said in a statement explaining Friday’s outage.

Smith said Monday that the statement was not meant to rule out any specific cause, including an external, denial-of-service attack intended to overwhelm Amazon’s servers, as some blogs have speculated.

But Keynote’s White said the “service unavailable” error message returned and the speed with which the site went down suggested an internal systems problem rather than an outside attack.

A similar “service unavailable” message greeted some visitors Monday, though at times the generic message was replaced by an apology and a promise to restore service quickly.

Outages at Amazon are rare, though the retailer had brief disruptions in 2006 because of a Thanksgiving Day sale on Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 video game…

How safe is your incoming e-mail? With phishing, viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, spam, data storage challenges, disruption and downtime risks, data loss and leakage concerns and a host of other potential e-mail obstacles (is your head spinning yet?), it could be time to rethink your e-mail protection strategy.

The bottom line: you must safeguard your network in order to adhere to compliance mandates.

Amateur hour is over. Just when malware design seemed to have reached a plateau, new attack techniques have burst forth. Some are so complex they could have only been designed by means of sophisticated research and development.

We spoke about the challenges this type of malware presents with experts at a number of software security and threat-management companies, including Sophos, AppRiver, and IronPort Systems, now part of Cisco Systems.

For a time, one expert pointed out, security controls designed to manage malware were working. But, as a result of this success, the threats they protected against were forced to change. In 2007, many of these threats underwent significant adaptation. Malware went stealth, and its sophistication increased. E-mail is a primary vector.

“E-mail is a challenge from a security perspective because everybody’s doors are open,” said Pat Peterson, vice president of Technology at IronPort Systems. “Anybody who wants to deliver mail to your server and ultimately to the desktop can do so as long as the get through your anti-spam and anti-virus scans. That’s one of the fundamental and unique problems with e-mail compared to the Web or the telephone.”

The Network Administrator’s Responsibility

End users still fall for social engineering gimmicks that compel them to click on a link promising something interesting. That links ushers them to a Web site that downloads malicious payloads. It’s the network administrator’s responsibility to make sure that payload can’t make its way to the desktop and subsequently…

So many Europeans use Google for search, you have to wonder if they know that other search engines exist. A whopping 79% of searches were conducted on Google in the month of March, according to comScore. That amounts to 19 billion. No wonder European regulators are so wary of a Googleopoly.

Coming in second was eBay with 3.1% followed by Russian search engine Yandex with 2.2%. Yahoo came in fourth at 2.0% with Microsoft rounding out the top 5 at 1.9%.

Google’s overwhelming dominance didn’t prevent the EU from approving its acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this year.

Related Reading:
European Group Wants to Cut Search Engine Data Storage
comScore launches Video Metrix in Canada, France, Germany and UK
Google on Global Search Standards: Thanks, But No Thanks

Medium-sized companies (those with 100-999 employees) in the United States will spend nearly $8 billion this year on data storage and security — a 12 percent increase over what they spent last year. One major factor in that growth is the need to guard against security breaches and to ensure that sensitive data is kept confidential.

Research by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners revealed that as much as 86 percent of medium businesses (MBs) reported a security breach or data loss over the past 12 months, while 77 percent said they had experienced a hard-drive failure in the same time period. Nichelle McKenzie, a research analyst with AMI Partners, said that the cost of security breaches is about $7,000 annually.

Data Breaches Spur Investment

With data breaches occurring more frequently than ever (and receiving ever-higher profiles), organizations are moving toward security and storage investments that they hope will help prevent loss. McKenzie said that most MBs are investing in data backup and recovery software. Those investments are aimed at preventing hard-drive failures and outside attacks, while also providing sufficient storage.

“The types of storage investments that are popular among U.S.-based MBs are in the areas of upgrading and purchasing storage hardware,” McKenzie told us. “For example, MBs are spending roughly $1.4 billion for storage hardware that includes fibre-channel storage area networks, IP storage area networks, network attached storage, PC-attached storage, SAN switches, server-attached storage, and tape-backup devices.”

These investments are needed to constantly manage the growing volume of e-mail data, ensure business continuity, make storage management/maintenance easier, and ensure legal compliance.

In terms of security, companies are investing in technologies that will keep them safe from hackers, as well as secure in case of a disaster.

McKenzie said that security hardware, managed security services and security software — such as antivirus,…

TORONTO, Apr 15, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — Data Deposit Box (www.datadepositbox.com) today announced the launch of its Refer-a-Friend program, a new program that rewards customers with cash credits for Data Deposit Box services when they refer another customer. For every new customer referred, Data Deposit Box will apply a $10 credit to a customer’s account. Enterprising customers could potentially earn free online storage for life by referring just a few friends every year.

Data Deposit Box is a secure and comprehensive online data storage service that enables users to affordably and simply backup, restore, and share information online for only $2 per GB per month. Using Data Deposit Box, individuals and small businesses can rest assured that their important photos and files are backed up securely and can be accessed remotely when a computer at home or the office is down or unavailable. Data Deposit Box customers can share files and photos with friends and colleagues simply via email or through the password protected Web site.

“Many of our 30,000 customers have come through word-mouth referrals, and we’d like to reward those customers for helping us grow our business,” said Jamie Brenzel, CEO of Data Deposit Box. “Customers that sign up with Data Deposit Box through referrals generally stick with the service for longer, likely because they were referred to the company by someone they trust. By rewarding those customers with free online backup for their referrals we give them one more reason to select Data Deposit Box for all of their online storage needs.”

Data Deposit Box customers may refer friends by logging into their secure account and clicking on a “refer a friend” link. If referrals sign up through the link, they will also receive a $10 credit.

Data Deposit Box is a small piece of software that, once installed,…