In Short

A round-up of other stories in brief.

Public bodies fail to offer translations

Statutory bodies are failing to fulfil their obligations under the Official Languages Act, according to a website survey by Pan Research for content management company Terminalfour.

The group said as many as 58 per cent of Irish public bodies were failing to implement services on their websites through Irish.

At present, 650 bodies come under the remit of the Act but the survey of 50 Irish sites - covering State bodies, Government departments and universities - found they fared poorly on the level of translation on web pages and online publications. The remaining elements of the 2003 legislation come into force today.

Tech firms hit by security breaches

The reliance on digital information and technology by firms in the technology, media and telecoms sector is leaving them vulnerable to attack, according to a new report.

The study by Deloitte says that more than half of the companies surveyed had reported security breaches in the past 12 months, one-third of which led to significant financial loss. Half of the attacks came from within the companies affected.

"Irish TMT companies, as some of the most progressive in the industry, must recognise that they represent an increasingly attractive target," said Colm McDonnell, a Deloitte's enterprise risk services group director.

Microsoft to offer vendor financing

Microsoft plans increasingly to offer financing to its commercial customers, a company official said, as the world's largest software maker looks to boost slowing revenue growth.

As part of that effort, Microsoft said on Wednesday it was entering a five-year partnership with CIT Group, under which it will outsource its vendor financing to CIT for sales in France in Switzerland and, eventually, in other markets.

Vendor financing has traditionally been the domain of hardware companies, but Microsoft is finding that many customers are spending as much on software as they are on hardware.

CIT, which has 400 of its 600 European staff at its European headquarters in Dublin, provides vendor financing for firms such as Dell and Toshiba.