My favorite football teams aren't doing so well.

First, my University of Texas Longhorns were ousted by a computer ranking.

Then my Dallas Cowboys took a late-game beating from the Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday afternoon (although that was some defensive standoff for a while there).

When is it again that baseball season begins?

I don't have to watch this punishment on the HD for long. Soon, it seems, I'll be able to stay in touch with all my favorite sports teams via a new iPhone from Wal-Mart. Bloomberg is reporting this morning that Wal-Mart will become the second mass-market retail chain (the other was Best Buy) to sell the iPhone. Nobody seems to have yet confirmed the rumored $99 version.

And while we all eagerly await the Benjamin Franklin iPhone, IBM late last week announced a set of actions intended to help bolster its security solutions.

First, there was a 30 percent increase in network and Web-based security events over the last 120 days, with the total number rising from 1.8 billion to more than 2.5 billion worldwide per day. That data comes directly from IBM's managed security services client base, comprising approximately 3,700 clients worldwide.

Second, IBM saw a 40 percent increase within the last 120 days in its clients' access of IBM virtual security operations centers. A significant portion of those had come from clients that had not previously logged in for more than six months.

In response to these findings, IBM Internet Security Systems has taken several measures, including the introduction of new identity and access management services and a complementary, comprehensive financial assessment of a company or government's security infrastructure management costs.

This announcement comes just as a commission of technology experts makes a number of key cybersecurity-related recommendations for the U.S. government.

The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. agencies from the Pentagon to the Department of Homeland Security have experienced "major cyber break-ins," with intelligence officials estimating U.S. losses from such breaches in the multiple billions of dollars.

An ounce of cyberprevention is probably worth a few billion pounds of post-intrusion cure.

— Todd "Turbo" Watson, blogger for IBM's On Demand Business Website