Interop Winners: Desktop Conferencing, Deep Security

It's a purely unscientific and anecdotal perspective, but here are my picks for most interesting and most needed technologies from Interop this week, plus the most startling stat I heard in my New York City travels.Most interesting technology: Desktop videoconferencing system from Avistar Communications that can be delivered on a hosted or licensed basis, and integrates with major desktop applications such as IM to include a critical presence element. Want to initiate a video call? Connect with your co-worker or partner in IM, and kick things off. The video quality is excellent, and the system integrates with room-based systems for those companies that have a huge investment in old-line VC technology that may be underutilized. Avistar's system makes videoconferences more accessible to a larger number of employees and desktops within a big company. Avistar touts major financial firms as multi-thousand-seat customers. Avistar President Simon Moss estimates Avistar's network and systems will carry 50 million minutes of usage this year and an expectation of 90 million minutes in 2008.

Most desperately needed technology: The list of data loss/data breach incidents grows every week. Now there are claims that the granddaddy of them all, TJX, is twice as large as the company has been reporting, with 94 million affected accounts. Stepping up to the plate with security technology that locks down laptops, mobile phones and more is a company called Mobile Armor that's making inroads into U.S. military and other government agencies. Its products range from a Policy Server to set and enforce security policies, to tools to encrypt files and folders on removable media devices, to software for pre-boot authentication and full disk encryption on laptops. The company has unique insights into the most intensive data protection requirements. Director of technical services Matt Brickey related the story of certain military applications in Iraq where three failed password attempts will result in a laptop's hard drive being erased. Which leads me to the...

Most startling stat I heard: One New York-based financial services firm loses one laptop per day and five smartphones per day in taxicabs, says John Pironti, chief information risk strategist for the consulting firm Getronics. A common outcome: The cab companies sell off the gear after 30 days. How that's for risky business?