Good day to you Mr. President,

It is good to see that you are taking a stance in the IT Security issues of today but the most fundamental problem we face is the concept that it is an industry or corporate problem. IT Security is a people problem and until we start seeing it that way our approach to the issues will always fail. The availability of information and resources to mitigate these issues needs to be centrally available and disseminated effectively across the board in an unbiased manner.

No man stands alone in this cyberwarfare, we must unify the effort to strengthen all links/angles as all are affected, no exceptions.

The problems of the technology space exist across all levels in personal, business and professional use. All are impacted by these issues and when a corporation is hacked and the data stolen, in most cases the end users are the ones that suffer because it is their personal info that ends up in the hands of the hackers or thieves.

I love the fact that you are a technology/gadget minded person as you’re aware of what they entail and how vulnerable we can be through them. I’m sure you would like to see these issues by more feature/resource rich securely and so we both share the same goals, security for all and across all levels.

How about helping us create better education and awareness initiatives like our ENGAGED. We need these levels of training, education, awareness and development at the lower school levels as well. Provide the funding needed to expand on the security users’ group communities and driving the availability of information and resources.

Let us work together on these initiatives and get over the power struggle issues.

We look forward to working with you and your administration sir.

Thank you and have a great day,

~Brett A. Scudder~

Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:52am EDT | http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE53S1A720090429

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Today’s Twitters are often tomorrow’s quitters, according to data that questions the long-term success of the latest social networking sensation used by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Britney Spears.

Data from Nielsen Online, which measures Internet traffic, found that more than 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the free social networking site a month after joining.

“Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent,” David Martin, Nielsen Online’s vice president of primary research, said in a statement.

“For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.”

San Francisco-based Twitter was created three years ago as an Internet-based service that could allow people to follow the 140-character messages or “tweets” of friends and celebrities which could be sent to computer screens or mobile devices.

But it has enjoyed a recent explosion in popularity on the back of celebrities such as actor Ashton Kutcher and U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey singing its praises and sending out “tweets” which can alert readers to breaking news or the sender’s sometimes mundane activities.

President Barack Obama used Twitter during last year’s campaign and other prominent celebrities on Twitter include basketballer Shaquille O’Neal and singers Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus.

Twitter, as a private company, does not disclose the number of its users but according to Nielsen Online, Twitter’s website had more than 7 million unique visitors in February this year compared to 475,000 in February a year ago.

But Martin said a retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to a 10 percent reach figure over the longer term.

“There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point,” he said in a statement.

Martin said Facebook and MySpace, the more established social network sites, enjoyed retention rates that were twice as high and those rates only rose when they went through their explosive growth phases.

Both currently have retention rates of about 70 percent with Facebook having about 200 million users.

“Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty,” said Martin.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)

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