Stories by: Peter Sayer

Threats of cyberwar and a story of real violence rubbed shoulders at a news conference to mark the opening of the ITU Telecom World exhibition and forum in Geneva on Monday.

Sweden's Pirate Party won 7.13 percent of the vote in elections earlier this month. Its campaign for the respect of privacy, the reform of copyright law and the abolition of the patent system earned it a seat in the European Parliament, and it may yet gain another seat there, if planned changes to the number of seats attributed to each country win approval.

IBM liked Watchfire s Web application security software so much it plans to buy the company for an undisclosed sum, it said Wednesday.

The U.K. Security Service, responsible for the country's counterterrorism efforts, plans to send out e-mail alerts to citizens warning them of changes to the "national threat level," a measure of the risk of terrorist attacks. It will announce the start date and details of the sign-up process soon, it said Tuesday.

Security will be a major focus this week at the giant Cebit show in Hanover, Germany. This year, the annual IT trade show will hone in on the multiple layers of security threats facing enterprise networks. Now it's not just data networks that are under attack; VoIP and even paper documents are at risk.

A German teenager who confessed to creating the Sasser computer worm has been found guilty of three counts of computer sabotage and four counts of data manipulation, and given a suspended sentence of 21 months.

Symantec will buy Veritas Software in an all-stock transaction, the companies announced Thursday. Based on Wednesday's closing stock prices, the deal values Veritas at around US$13.5 billion, they said.

If there's one thing the Atos Origin team understands as lead contractor for the Olympic IT infrastructure, it's that you must learn from your mistakes.