The focus will be on fixes this week when the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) unveils its list of the top 20 Internet security vulnerabilities to a gathering of about 350 government CIOs and IT professionals. The meeting takes place Wednesday at the offices of the GSA in Washington.

This is the third year the list has been released to the public. Compiled by the nonprofit SANS Institute Inc. and the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, the list is intended to raise awareness of serious computer vulnerabilities and offer IT administrators a way to prioritize vulnerabilities, encouraging them to patch the most dangerous holes in their computer infrastructures.

Past lists have been divided into three categories: general vulnerabilities, Windows vulnerabilities and Unix vulnerabilities, with previous issues ranging from broad concerns such as the failure to maintain complete system backups to specific platform and product flaws such as programming vulnerabilities in the Remote Data Services component of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Information Server.

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