Month in Review -- March 2005
The month of March started off with the opening of registration for HostingCon 2005 with will kick off in June.
March madness seems to have spilled over from the basketball world into web hosting as hackers went crazy with mutant virus Bagle shutting down anti-virus software, web hosting companies shared hosting servers being attacked by a malicious PERL script and Netcraft reporting on the banking industries online vulnerabilities amidst multiple identity fraud cases and a major database hacking.
It was a bad month to be a black hat web host with MCI finally bowing to increasing public pressure to discontinue viral spammer Send Safe and Microsoft taking 'bulletproof' web host CheapHosting to court over its spammer hosting
All this hectic hacking has given rise to a new security risk rating standard for the web industry and an alliance of web hosts to fight hackers called the Fingerprint Alliance.
In domestic hosting news Covad appointed a new VP and CFO John Trewin and Go Daddy continued to make news this month by moving into the dedicated hosting market as well as proving doubters wrong by pulling in a massive 51% "Share of Voice" from its Super Bowl advertising.
The Utah legislature and Covad were on opposite tracks this month as Utah has asked ISPs to filter any content that could be considered as harmful to minors while Covad began offering its "naked DSL" service.
In international hosting news the outsourcing trend with manufacturing, customer support, and programming jobs moving to Asia is now predicted to follow suite with web hosting. In other Asian news China has complained to the UN that America is monopolizing the Internet and finally the SHA-1 encryption standard has been cracked by a team at Shandong University in China. Closer to home, Bill Gates is now Sir Bill as he gained knighthood from the Queen of England following the only other 2 Americans to hold such distinction; Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
