Sandra Stark's List: Business and Employment

In the Wikileaks aftermath, the military has reportedly banned disks and USB drives and threw in the threat of a court martial for good measure. Should you do the same for your corporate network?

Wired reported that the U.S. military is telling troops to ditch removable media. The problem is that these “sneaker networks“—actually combat boot networks—are an efficient way to get data from one point to another.

The big question here is whether enterprises should also put some limits on removable drives. Let’s face it, there are a lot of removable media that can tap into corporate networks. USB drives, iPods and phones are just some of the avenues where data can escape.

Increasingly, however, the ads tailored to them are for specific products that they have perused online. While the technique, which the ad industry calls personalized retargeting or remarketing, is not new, it is becoming more pervasive as companies like Google and Microsoft have entered the field. And retargeting has reached a level of precision that is leaving consumers with the palpable feeling that they are being watched as they roam the virtual aisles of online stores.

Good comparison of smart cards and magnetic stripe cards. Has international implications.