Worried that your company's data isn't totally secure from outside threats? Stop worrying. It's not the outside threats you need to be afraid of. According to a new study, your own employees are much more likely to be the cause of any data breach. The newly released Compuware study says that only 1% of data theft this past year was the result of outside hackers. Instead, negligent employees are to blame when data falls into the wrong hands, as well as outsourced and disgruntled workers. Even scarier, 79% of the 1,112 IT workers surveyed say their company had experienced …

How do you know when the economy is in serious trouble? The Dow below 9,000 is a start, but if that isn't enough for you, try this: Even Google executives are talking about tightening the belt, suggesting the search market may not be as invincible as once thought. The search giant is "watching the economy closely and making sure our expenses and revenue are very much aligned," said an uncharacteristically cautious Tim Armstrong, president-sales and commerce, to a group of travel executives last week. Taken by itself it might not be much, but it came the week before Google …

MySpace finally launched its MyAds program this weekend, which allows anyone to create and place ads on the social network. Unlike Facebook, which allows only text ads, MyAds will allow only banner ads. Will this be the moment that lifts MySpace profits from an encouraging afterthought to full fledged sustainability, like when Google decided to team search with contextual ads? The key to MyAds is the targeting. Facebook targets users based on what is written in their profile. If you say you like T-shirts, you'll see ads for T-shirts. But MyAds will gather information on how users actually behave …

Game designer Richard Garriott has taken video game promotion to a new level--literally. The creator of the Ultima series of games was launched into orbit this weekend aboard a Soyuz TMA spacecraft. The trip makes for a nice marketing tie-in with at least one Ultima online game, Tabula Rasa, which begins when aliens wipe out humans from outer space. In order to prevent such a disaster, Garriott brought with him the DNA of several well-known Americans to be stored in the space station and, potentially, used to re-up the human race should the need arise. Garriott clearly knows …

Not that anyone still doubted the iPhone's heft in the mobile ad market, but just in case: Google is reportedly telling advertisers they will soon be able to create an iPhone-specific ad group as part of their regular search campaign. The search giant wouldn't confirm the rumor, but several agency executives say they've taken meetings with Google where the opportunity was discussed. Essentially the creation of an iPhone-specific ad group would mean that marketers could create ads that would appear specifically to iPhone users. In January, The New York Times reported that the iPhone was already the No. 1 source …

As if there weren't enough companies starting their own music or movie download services, a new study shows a surprising new competitor in the field: colleges and universities. According to the latest Educause survey, a full 15% of US schools are already offering campus-sponsored music or movie download services. Another 17% either have plans to implement such a service or are "considering" it. The reason? These schools are tying to avoid the legal fallout from students using their computer labs to illegally download such content. A torrent of pre-litigation letters from the Recording Industry Association of America seems to have …