2008 Computex Preview: WiMAX, threat? opportunity?

April 17, 2008

2008 Computex Taipei (a.k.a Taipei International Information Technology Show), the second largest IT show in the world, will start on June 3 to 7 at the TWTC Hall 1 & 3, Taipei International Convention Center (TICC), and TWTC Nangang, in conjunction with 2008 WiMAX Expo Taipei, which will start earlier at the Taipei Show Hall 2. With two IT-related industry shows will be concurrently showcased in different venues, it will bring on many convergences and opportunities for networking and mobile-related industries worldwide including Taiwan. Since the Taipei Computer Association, Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), and Industrial Technology Research Institute preliminary imported the "WiMAX Forum Showcase & Conference" into the TICC, WiMAX-related topics were mostly focused by several worldwide media and industrial elites. In extremity, some technologies and solutions like eSNG, wireless medical care, wireless transmission, and mobile entertainment were showcased there. And the MOEA also signed MOUs with 5 world-class WiMAX companies to help the networking industry last year in Taiwan.

Even though the signing of MOUs and new technologies will bring opportunities for WiMAX-related industries, and the mobile devices will be progressively popular in the future and more slim like an UMPC, but some companies from information security industry were worried about the future trend because of invisible threats on the Internet.

As of "Asia-pacific IT Security Forum" and "IT Security Pavilion" of SecuTech Expo 2008, there were several changes on participation from IT industry, but due to a major impact of "Edison Chen's photo scandal", several crisis were exposed with improper habits on modern people when using the Internet. There were several weak points on IM or P2P software, and USB mass storage devices. For example, Skype, a famous Internet telephony software, progressively became a hacking tool by several fraud groups although several enterprises had awareness on IM software and made several policies to prevent using them. According to a statistic on virus-infected users, even though there were 99% of Microsoft Windows users (infected by viruses), but a minor of 0.03% mobile device (e.g. Windows Mobile, Palm OS, etc.) users shouldn't be unnoticed. If the infrastructure of WiMAX technology is matured, although it (WiMAX) will bring convergences and opportunities for networking and digital content industries and bring on mobile populations, as the fraud groups updated their crime tools and extended their platform into mobile devices, there will be a lot of risks for mobile and Internet users as they welcomed the WiMAX technology.

It's a real deal that the WiMAX will bring different kind profits and benefits for different industries, but before the WiMAX became the trend, if Internet users didn't cultivate proper habits on using the Internet, the WiMAX will still bring on threats for end-users and industries.