plus 3, PG&E soil tests to force Napa tenants to move - San Francisco Chronicle

PG&E soil tests to force Napa tenants to move - San Francisco Chronicle
'Kneber' Attack Shows Extensive Vulnerability of Corporate Computer ... - Newsweek
CRM's Identity Crisis: Duplicate Contacts - CIO
Sterling Bancorp Declares Cash Dividend of $0.09 Per Share - Stockhouse

PG&E soil tests to force Napa tenants to move - San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:04 AM PST

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The utility recently bought the half-empty complex, at the corner of Riverside Drive and Elm Street. Built in 1964, the apartments sit atop the location of a plant that - a century ago - made gas for streetlights, homes and businesses.

PG&E started notifying tenants this week that all of them must leave by Aug. 20, before soil testing and possible cleanup begins. The utility, based in San Francisco, has hired relocation experts to help them hunt for new housing and will also provide some financial assistance, although PG&E representatives this week wouldn't say how much.

The company will hold a meeting with the tenants on Saturday. Twenty five of the complex's 40 units are occupied.

"It is a disruption, and we apologize for it," said Darrell Klingman, a manager with PG&E's environmental remediation department. "I actually think that when it's all done, they'll be fine."

Tenants of the Riverside Apartments, perched on the Napa River's western bank, say they're nervous about finding new homes.

Several said, however, that they had been thinking about leaving the run-down apartment complex even before receiving a letter from PG&E.

Three two-story buildings clad in dingy yellow stucco surround a pool with leaves coating the bottom, and balconies are cluttered with bikes, appliances, lawn furniture and tarps.

Tenant in shock

"I was in shock when I heard about it," said Yolanda Hernandez, 24, who has lived there with her husband and three children for more than two years. "We were planning on looking for another place, but now that we got the letter, we'll have to move faster."

Contaminants left over from former PG&E gas plants have caused controversy in the past.

For more than 20 years, residents of the Midway Village housing complex in Daly City have complained of chemicals oozing from the ground and causing health problems.

Dirt from a former gas plant next door was used as fill when the complex was built, but state officials have said the chemicals within the soil don't pose a threat to residents' health.

A Chronicle investigation last year found that contaminants from a gas plant in San Francisco, next to the city's last remaining power plant, may be seeping into the bay.

PG&E used to have 41 "manufactured gas plants," which processed coal or oil to make a fuel similar to natural gas. Those using coal as the raw material produced coal tar as a byproduct, sometimes selling it, sometimes burying it on-site. Similar plants had been used throughout the country since the mid-1800s, and most of them closed in the 1930s.

In recent years, the utility has been checking the site of each former plant, looking for contaminated soil. In most cases, the process involves nothing more than collecting a few samples of dirt.

The utility plans to check the soil at three former gas plants in San Francisco this summer, taking samples from the backyards of homes and apartment buildings.

But unlike most sites, the Napa location may still have some of the old plant's abandoned infrastructure hidden just below the surface.

In addition, a 1992 study for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found "high concentrations" of gasoline, diesel and oil 11 feet underground, on one corner of the property. PG&E representatives say the utility did not know about that study until last year, but considering the depth, the tenants weren't in danger.

"You have to come in direct contact with these chemicals over an extended period of time for there to be a problem," Klingman said. "That's not going to be happening at a depth of 11 feet."

Tenants said they'd never heard about the gas plant, or the possible contamination, until this week.

"They said everything is OK, but then if everything is OK, why do we have to leave?" asked Valerie Sanders, 51, who lives in the complex with her teenage son.

In San Francisco, PG&E this week started mailing letters to some residents of Fisherman's Wharf and the Marina District whose homes sit on the sites of old gas plants.

The utility already tested the soil there in the 1980s but only took samples on the surface. This time, PG&E will dig 10 feet down.

San Francisco tests

The San Francisco testing program will be voluntary, with the company only checking a property after receiving the owner's permission. The company plans to test the grounds at Marina Middle School during spring break in March.

Klingman said the tests during the 1980s found no problems at the Marina and Fisherman's Wharf locations.

"We don't believe there are any health concerns at all associated with any of these sites," he said.

The company also checked for contamination at the Napa site in 1986 but, again, only examined the surface. One test showed elevated levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - a particular class of contaminants, some of which can cause cancer - but subsequent soil testing found nothing.

The 1992 report for the Army Corps, prepared by consulting company Kleinfelder Inc., took four subsurface soil samples and found gasoline, diesel, oil and grease in one of them. Groundwater in that sample also was contaminated.

Not unusual

The state's Department of Toxic Substances Control, which monitors PG&E's gas plant program, did not see that report until last year, said Carol Northrup, the department's chief of external affairs support services. But she said it is not unusual for those contaminants to be left in place for years after they're found because they don't tend to migrate to the surface where they can come into contact with people.

"They tend to stay there if they're left alone," Northrup said.

The department is still trying to determine which government agencies saw the 1992 report, she said. But in the years since then, she said, residents of the Riverside Apartments weren't in any danger from subsurface contamination, buried beneath 11 feet of earth and building materials.

"The site is contained, and nobody is being exposed to it," Northrup said.

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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'Kneber' Attack Shows Extensive Vulnerability of Corporate Computer ... - Newsweek

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:32 AM PST

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Some 75,000 computers at 2,500 corporations around the world have been compromised by a botnet attack that has been in progress for more than a year, according to a Virginia-based security firm. NetWitness, which published the data on its Web site and whose findings were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, said that it first detected the scheme in late January, after its security software discovered a 75-gigabyte cache of stolen data.

The botnet, dubbed "Kneber" after a single account name linking the hacked machines, was focused on stealing users' credentials, NetWitness said—more than 68,000 sets, mostly for e-mail systems and social networking sites like Facebook, Yahoo, and services popular outside the United States. Banking and e-commerce sites like Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Bank of America, PayPal, eBay, and others were also targeted, leading to the capture of credit-card information and Social Security numbers. The types of institutions breached included government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels; financial institutions; energy companies; and Fortune 500 corporations, the firm said, and the ongoing thefts went undetected for months.

Coming on the heels of Google's January announcement that it had detected from China "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on its servers, as well as other recent security breaches, the Kneber breakdown illustrates the limited ability of even the largest corporations to protect their data—or even to know that they are at risk while information is being stolen. Much of personal and enterprise antivirus software is backward-looking, and the more people that have access to a given system, the more cracks there are for hackers to exploit. Expect more of these attacks, and more cunning ones, in the coming months.

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CRM's Identity Crisis: Duplicate Contacts - CIO

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:59 AM PST

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Thu, February 18, 2010 — CIO —

At the core of customer relationship management is "who am I talking with?" In a simple SFA or CRM system, it's obvious: you called them, or they called you. But in enterprise CRM, it's tricky to identify exactly whom the interaction is with, and every new data source seems to make it harder. The problem occurs at two levels: contact information blur from multiple databases, and avatar confusion from multiple entry points into your company's web and social networking sites. This week, we'll cover the top layer of the problem.

CRM Definition and Solutions

Multiple Contact Lists

Nearly every employee in your company has an address list in their e-mail client. On analyzing a large number of those address books, you'll find a high degree of overlap. Of course, the data entries in each address book will have minor variations, setting the stage for a massive duplication problem if you ever tried to consolidate all that contact information. Fortunately, in most companies there is little reason to try this for most employees' contacts. The relationships just aren't relevant enough to the overall business.

But in professional services firms and investment banking/private equity/venture capital, the contacts of nearly every employee can be a valuable asset. It is very tempting to move towards a centralized list of contacts, making all of them visible in the CRM system. But the chaos of data in the individual address books makes that very hard. Here are approaches we've seen work, with the pros and cons:

• Using a shared address book for corporate contacts, supplementing the private address books for each user. This approach is simple, can be set up to automatically synchronize the shared address book with your CRM, and doesn't involve a lot of cost. But it does require a change of user behavior: users have to remember to keep the contacts in the corporate address book updated, and to put new business contacts into the shared address book rather than their own private one. Further, the effort of deciding which people should be in the shared list, and deduping that shared list once created, is a visible and painful startup cost that stops many organizations from using this strategy. Finally, this won't really work if you're a Mac shop.

• Using the CRM system in place of the e-mail shared address book. This is simple to understand and execute, but it requires an even bigger change to user behavior. People like to live in their e-mail client, and this approach means telling users to log in to their CRM system to get the contact info they need all day long. This strategy can work in sales, marketing, and customer service, but for most professional services organizations or senior management, this e-mail-plus-CRM approach is the kiss of death.

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Sterling Bancorp Declares Cash Dividend of $0.09 Per Share - Stockhouse

Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:39 AM PST

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NEW YORK, Feb 18, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX News Network/ --

Sterling Bancorp (NYSE: STL), the parent company of New York City-based Sterling National Bank, today announced that the Company's Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.09 per common share, payable on March 31, 2010 to shareholders of record as of March 15, 2010. This declaration extends the Company's history of continuous cash dividends to 257 consecutive quarters over 64 years.

About Sterling Bancorp

Sterling Bancorp (NYSE: STL) is a New York-based banking and financial services company with assets of more than $2.1 billion. Established in 1929, the Company's principal banking subsidiary, Sterling National Bank, has successfully served the needs of businesses, professionals and individuals in the NY metropolitan area and beyond. Now in its 80th year, Sterling is well known for its focus on business customers, an extensive and diverse product portfolio and a high-touch, hands-on approach to customer service.

Sterling offers working capital lines, asset-based financing, factoring, accounts receivable financing and management, payroll funding and processing, equipment leasing and financing, commercial and residential mortgages, import trade financing, a wide array of depository products and cash management services, trust and estate administration and custodial account services.

Certain statements in this press release, including but not limited to, statements as to future liquidity, future interest rate risk and operating expenses, statements concerning future results of operations, financial position or dividends, plans and objectives for future operations, and other statements regarding matters that are not historical facts, are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are not historical facts but instead are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and represent only the Company's belief regarding future events, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside its control. Any forward-looking statements the Company may make speak only as of the date on which such statements are made. The Company's actual results and financial position may differ materially from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in or implied by these forward-looking statements, and the Company makes no commitment to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect new information or subsequent events or changes in expectations. For a discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect the Company's future results and financial condition, see "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations - Forward-Looking Statements and Factors that Could Affect Future Results" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2008 and "Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" in the Company's Quarterly Report on form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2009.

SOURCE Sterling Bancorp

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