CIO Resource Site

Delta Air Lines sue for allegedly hacking e-mail accounts

Webmaster — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:48:16 -0600

Delta Air Lines is being sued and seeks a minimum of $11 million in damages for allegedly hacking the e-mail account of a passenger rights advocate who supports legislation that would allow access to food, water, and toilets during long delays on the tarmac.

The executive director of Flyersrights.org, alleges Delta obtained sensitive e-mails and files and used the material in an attempt to derail the "Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights of 2009," which is pending before Congress. If the bills are passed, airlines could lose as much as $40 million in revenue and spend much more to comply, the lawsuit contends. The bills would allow passengers to deplane if they have been delayed on the tarmac more than three hours. They would also be entitled to clean air and access to medical treatment.

New notebooks faster and green

Webmaster — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:54:39 -0600

New notebook trends include:

The next generation of chips for notebooks
Mobile-oriented features in Windows Vista and XP
Embedding wide-area broadband capabilities
"Ultra-light" notebooks, Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) and other mobile devices
"Green" notebook-related initiatives by vendors in manufacturing, use, and post-use stages.

More Processing Power

For notebooks, the continued improvement in CPUs - the "brains" of the system - means doing more work faster. It also means using less energy (and not costing more than their predecessors). Intel's newest CPU family for notebooks, desktops, and servers has Core 2 Duo processors and the latest 45-nanometer (nm) process technologies. The processors offer nearly twice the density of Intel's older 65nm approach. That translates into more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core, providing faster processing and less energy use. It also adds to energy efficiency.

Today's cost savings increase cost of doing business

Webmaster — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:55:33 -0600

In these economic times, CIO and CFO are tempted to have their companys employees to hang on to their desktop and notebook computers for a couple of years beyond the usual three-year life cycle. This way they hope to avoid the capital expense of replacing them. However, knowledgeable professionals have data that shows that as a false savings.

Four to five years after a laptop has been put in service they often are more trouble than they are worth. The reasons are simple, the longer a laptop or a desktop is in service the greater the chance that they will need for repair, an upgrade of an internal card, an upgrade in memory, and a new OS.

After the three years, hard drive failures go up dramatically, as do problems with keyboards, screens, and batteries. In addition, the outdated notebooks will cost an organization in lost end-user productivity, since a machine that is two generations behind current models takes longer to boot up and runs sluggishly.

When CIO and CEO look to trim costs, care needs to be take so that long term productivity is not impacted. In addition, if employees feel they are not productive because of "technology', once the economy improves they will find better jobs where the technology is more current..

Browser Twelve Year Trend - Released by Janco

Webmaster — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:24:30 -0600

Janco has just updated its web site to include a chart that provides a view of browser market share trends from 1997 to 2009. This is the most compressive set of data that is available. Mr. Janulaitis, the CEO of Janco Associates said, "Our data has been used by all of the major browser providers as well as the courts in suits by various governmental agencies as well of individual companies.

Browser Twelve Year Historical Trend

The full study was produced with data through August 2009. See a full copy of the press release here.

The Browser Market Share and Operating System Market Share White Paper data is by month starting in September 1997 through the August 2009. The data sampled is internationally based (Just under 50% of the data points sampled are outside of the United States).

Medical students violate HIPAA laws

Webmaster — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:03:02 -0600

In a survey of medical colleges, 60% reported incidents of medical students' posting unprofessional content online. Thirteen percent reported that students had violated patient confidentiality in postings on social networking sites. Below is a summary of the results of the study by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

(JAMA) Sixty percent of US medical schools responded(78/130). Of these schools, 60% (47/78) reported incidents ofstudents posting unprofessional online content. Violations ofpatient confidentiality were reported by 13% (6/46). Studentuse of profanity (52%; 22/42), frankly discriminatory language(48%; 19/40), depiction of intoxication (39%; 17/44), and sexuallysuggestive material (38%; 16/42) were commonly reported. Of45 schools that reported an incident and responded to the questionabout disciplinary actions, 30 gave informal warning (67%) and3 reported student dismissal (7%). Policies that cover student-postedonline content were reported by 38% (28/73) of deans. Of schoolswithout such policies, 11% (5/46) were actively developing newpolicies to cover online content. Deans reporting incidentswere significantly more likely to report having such a policy(51% vs 18%; P = .006), believing these issues couldbe effectively addressed (91% vs 63%; P = .003), andhaving higher levels of concern (P = .02).

SSD a reality - IT productivity to improve - green tehcnology

Webmaster — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:17:55 -0600

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced that it will offer 60GB and 120GB solid-state disk (SSD) drives as an option across the full range of HP ProLiant G6 servers, as well as in select ProLiant G5 servers.

The serial-ATA (SATA) SSDs, from Samsung Electronics Co., are aimed at supporting virtualized environments and I/O intensive applications where the latest HP ProLiant G6 servers are often deployed, the company said. Virtualized environments require significant memory, data storage and network connections to optimize server performance.

HP qualified Samsung's SSDs for what it's calling the "green" option across its server line to give customers a way to minimize power consumption, saving money while boosting performance. Samsung claims the SSDs can significantly cut power use in HP's ProLiant servers and offer 40 to 50 times the performance over traditional hard drives, depending upon the application and computing workload

CIOs Major Responsibilities Are Focused

Webmaster — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:02:43 -0600

CIOs have three major responsibilities in helping enterprises succeed.

CIOs must keep all IT systems and networks managed, optimized, and available to contribute maximum business value at minimal cost.
CIOs need to protect critical infrastructure against an increasingly hostile threat environment spyware, viruses, attacks, intrusions and human-engineered security lapses.
CIOs must prevent exposure to legal and regulatory compliance penalties or breach disclosure laws. If IT fails in any one of these areas, their organizations can go out of business, or face criminal sanctions.

In meeting these responsibilities, CIOs can no longer incrementally buy new tools to meet any new requirement that makes headlines in the technical or business media. Business drivers, security and compliance mandates converging on the enterprise require a converged response. CIOs now demand solutions that enable them to eliminate redundant technologies and processes and integrate disparate elements into a common workflow. While established enterprise software vendors have adopted the language of convergence and consolidation, their product lines remain constrained by legacy architectures and designs. Proposing radical change to their customers' carries the risk of disrupting established revenue flows not to mention technical risks inherent in overhauling or replacing obsolete products.

Business runs at a velocity unimagined a few short years ago. Complex and highly distributed environments have grown to support an intricate web of partners, suppliers, distributors, and customers. Service oriented architectures and web-based applications have progressed from vision to real-world instantiation as enterprises look to leverage technology to innovate and deliver new services. In this new world, IT-delivered services must be available 24x7 to customers, suppliers, employees, regulators, investors and other constituencies.

The highly exposed nature of today's IT infrastructures fundamentally changes how organizations manage IT assets, processes and data. IT organizations can no longer treat resource management and maintenance as back-end functions that can be performed at times and conditions of their choosing. Neither is their work protected from outside scrutiny. Processes whose success or failures were largely internal now make the difference between business success or failure, legal compliance or litigation, prudent stewardship or ineffective execution.

Turn layoff into an opportunity

Webmaster — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:12:15 -0600

How does one go about turning a career setback like a layoff into an advantage? First of all -- and here's the power of positive thinking at work -- think of a layoff as an opportunity, not a setback. Is a layoff a serious challenge? Of course. But you won't get anywhere by focusing on the negatives or feeling sorry for yourself. Look at a layoff as a unique opportunity to open a new door. Maybe this is the time to take your career in a brand-new direction. Recessions have spawned many an entrepreneur, and some of the world's biggest companies were launched in the midst of economic downturns.

Metrics productivty and cost control focus of CIO

Webmaster — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:31:35 -0600

Metrics are the key to productivty improvement and cost control. Today, CIOs have many reasons for adopting lean practices; saving costs is only the most obvious. Other objectives are to reduce time to market, offer more competitive products and services, increase capacity, and simplify solutions.

There are a myriad of ways to accomplish this: streamline project-planning practices, use opensource applications, opt for solutions that avoid bureaucratic approvals and delays, etc. Drawing on the experience of four IT vice presidents from diverse industries, this ExecBlueprint discusses lean IT thinking from multiple perspectives and provides guidance for how todays CTO/CIO can create a more cost- and time-efficient operation without sacrificing quality, employee morale, or ITs vital role in the organization. The claim that such a focus can, in fact, serve to improve ITs standing with the business and employees by creating innovative opportunities to earn recognition and profits. The key to engaging the business and IT team members? Stay aligned with overall business objectives while celebrating individual and team accomplishments.

IT employee confidence up

Webmaster — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:59:15 -0600

The IT Employee Confidence Index increased 6.1 points to 45.8 in the second quarter of 2009, according to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive®, indicates that overall confidence levels among IT workers surveyed rebounded in the second quarter as a result of fewer workers believing the economy is getting weaker, and more workers reporting confidence in their personal employment situation.

Despite having to cope with massive budget cuts, salary freezes and demoralized staffs, most employed IT executives are more satisfied with their jobs this year than they have been in previous years, according to the results of a job satisfaction survey.

Summary Results and Changes in Demand for IT Jobs 2009

The only functional leaders who ranked less satisfied than IT executives were engineering execs, 60 percent of whom said they were satisfied, and sales leaders, 59 percent of whom said they were satisfied.

Executives in marketing, HR, consulting and finance reported the highest levels of job satisfaction.

If anything positive emerges from the recession, it's that the weak economy is making some people grateful for what they have

White House Spams -- Accounts remain open!!

Webmaster — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:56:23 -0600

The White House has admitted sending e-mail updates to people who did not sign up for them. In a blog posting the White House Director of New Media, announced:

It has come to our attention that some people may have been subscribed to our email lists without their knowledge - likely as a result of efforts by outside groups of all political stripes - and we regret any inconvenience caused by receiving an unexpected message.

He did not expand on who the "outside groups" were or how they could subscribe users to White House e-mails without their permission. E-mail lists often employ confirmation systems where the recipient has to confirm that they wish to receive e-mails in order to prevent 3rd-party sign-ups.

Earlier the White House deleted an e-mail address (flag@whitehouse.gov) that had been set up for users to report what they considered "fishy" claims about the President's health care proposals. E-mails are currently bouncing with a note that "We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck." The flag address had been called a "monitoring program" by opponents.

CIO success is driven by relationships

Webmaster — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:30:46 -0600

Relationships are critical for a CIOs success. A poor relationship with superiors and staff is the number one reason for failure of CIO. Relationships are critical to communications and without them common goals cannot be achieved.

CIO and employees who understand each other have preferred styles .better understand how to communicate and work together effectively. Factors that strongly predict the compatibility between a CIO and their teams are self-assurance, self-reliance, conformity, optimism, decisiveness, objectivity, and approach to learning. Assessing a CIO relationships with team members allows the CIO to use objective information about themselves and their teams so that they can work more effectively toward a common goal.

A poor relationship with one's boss is the number one reason for failure at work. Two common flashpoints adversely affect performance:

The employee is unclear about the CIO's expectations - Goals should cascade down from the CIO to team members so that everyone understands how they contribute to the objectives of both the team and the organization. If an employee does not understand the goals given,or if they have not been given goals at all, the onus is on the employee to seek clarity. Asking a simple question such as, "What are the top three priorities in my role that you would like me to focus on?" can help everyone on the team gain clarity. Employees should also ask, "Why is this so important?" as the answer will give them a lot of good clues for developing the relationship with their CIO.
CIOs fail to adapt their styles to the employees' preferred styles - Every employee/CIO relationship is unique and requires a different management approach. For example, the approach taken by highly decisive boss working with a highly decisive employee should be significantly different from the approach taken by this same boss when working with a less-decisive employee. The decisive employee thrives on quick decisions, while the other employee will be more methodical in thier decision-making approach. The less-decisive employee will potentially enter into conflict with the faster-paced CIO.

E-Verify Pushed by Congress Stalled by White House

Webmaster — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:08:37 -0600

The Homeland Security Department runs a Web-based E-Verify system in partnership with the Social Security Administration. About 134,000 employers currently use E-Verify, and 12 states require its use to some degree. The House version of the legislation does not have a similar provision.

Employers enter Social Security numbers of prospective new hires and existing employees into E-Verify. If there is a match, the employee is deemed eligible for work. If not, the employee is advised to contact SSA. The system has been criticized for alleged high error rates.

Legislation approved by the Senate that would require federal contractors to use the E-Verify employment verification system is broad and goes beyond what is required for federal agencies.

The Senate's version of the Homeland Security Department fiscal 2010 appropriations bill includes a provision that would require federal contractors to use E-Verify for new hires and existing employees. By contrast, federal agencies are only required to use E-Verify for new hires, the group said.

Also, the Senate measure also goes beyond what is required of federal contractors in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rule that pertains to E-Verify and is scheduled to go into effect on September 8. The rule and enforcement has been delayed four times while the Obama Administration has reviewed it.

Under the acquisition rule, there are exemptions for contractor employees with security clearances or Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 credentials, existing employees not working on federal contracts, and contracts under a certain dollar threshold, among others.

The Senate provision would remove any flexibility that DHS has to further address the applicability of the final rule as part of the Obama Administrations review of the implementation of the final FAR rule and the overall E-Verify program.

Apple and iPhone linked to suicide and employee abuse

Webmaster — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:22:58 -0600

Apple is a worldwide monopoly and acts like it is a law onto itself. A Chinese worker responsible for handling the next generation of iPhone somehow misplaced it. The security team at the facility "questioned" the employee and he in turned jumped from the top of his apartment building. Apple's mild response was to rebuke the company in China with "no sanctions".

Apple will continue to work with employer in China and nothing has been done to help the dead employee or his family.

Cloud Computing Puts Enterprises at Risk

Webmaster — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:02:57 -0600

Security is only as tight as the weakest link. For example, an administrative employee at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked. From the personal account, a hacker was able to gain information which allowed access to the employee's Google Apps account which contained Docs, Calendars, and other Google Applications that Twitter relied on for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and sensitive data for the company.

Following that attack, Twitter conducted a security audit and they concluded that there was not security vulnerability in Google Applications. Twitter continues to use the suite internally.

Are your security policies and procedures strong enough to withstand such a breach?

psrorders.com site re-launched

Webmaster — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:28:51 -0600

Today Janco Associates re-launched its site http://www.psrorders.com utilizing a new "look and feel". The site is a CIO resource site with links to newsletters, RSS feeds, and xml newsfeeds.

The site utilizes Dreamweaver and php to generate dynamic pages. There is a search option to look for terms on Janco and Janco affiliate sites.

Google Monopoly Threatened

Webmaster — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:44:47 -0600

The Google search monopoly seems to be threatened by Microsoft's updated search engine Bing.

Bing, an update to Microsoft Live Search, is already getting more attention than its predecessor, according to a report released today by ComScore Inc.

Microsoft Sites increased its average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during the period of June 2-6, 2009, an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft's share of search result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent during the same time frame.

Goals of a Disaster Recovery Planning Defined

Webmaster — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:43:32 -0600

The ultimate goal of Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is to get your business restarted in an acceptable timeframe. For some organizations that means within minutes, while for others it means hours or possibly days. The cost of operational downtime varies among businesses and industries. For example, financial firms often calculate that cost in millions of dollars per hour, while other industries calculate operational downtime as thousands per day. These costs include lost business transactions, employee productivity, and customers - not to mention regulatory penalties. The ability to tolerate these losses generally determines business continuity strategy.

There are two types of disasters:

Physical destruction of a location and data (or access to location and data). Examples: fire, flood, earthquake, significant power or network outage.
Data destruction without physical destruction. Examples: hardware failure, virus/hacker attack, software malfunction, human error.

Each if these have a different set of requirements and your Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Plan needs to take them into consideration.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Defined

Webmaster — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:52:58 -0600

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning are the way an organization can prepare for and aid in disaster recovery. It is an arrangement agreed upon in advance by management and key personnel of the steps that will be taken to help the organization recover should any type of disaster occur. These programs prepare for multiple problems. Detailed plans are created that clearly outline the actions that an organization or particular members of an organization will take to help recover/restore any of its critical operations that may have been either completely or partially interrupted during or after (occurring within a specified period of time) a disaster or other extended disruption in accessibility to operational functions. In order to be fully effective at disaster recovery, these plans are fully defined and are tested regularly.

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) are how an organization guards against future disasters that could endanger its long-term health or the accomplishment of its primary mission. BCPs and DRPs take into account disasters that can occur on multiple geographic levels-local, regional, and national-disasters like fires, earthquakes, or pandemic illness. BCPs and BCPs should be live and evolving strategies that are adjusted for any potential disasters that would require recovery; it should include everything from technological viruses to terrorist attacks. The ultimate goal is to help expedite the recovery of an organization's critical functions and man-power following these types of disasters. This sort of advanced planning can help an organization minimize the amount of loss and downtime it will sustain while simultaneously creating its best and fastest chance to recover after a disaster.

Palm Pre in Short Supply

Webmaster — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:38:32 -0600

The Palm Pre, which goes on sale June 6 from Sprint Nextel Inc., appears on the Best Buy Web site for $849.99, several times the $200 price after a $100 rebate that Sprint has announced. Sprint and Best Buy could not be reached immediately to comment, but bloggers speculated the Best Buy online price is artificially high to discourage Best Buy employees and other customers from reserving a purchase in advance due to expectations that there will be shortage of the new Smartphones at the time of the launch.

The expected shortages were clearly described by Sprint's CEO at an investors' conference. He said, "We don't intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while. We won't be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time."

Abuse of Email Cause for Termination

Webmaster — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:15:04 -0600

The 58% of employers who have dismissed employees for computer violations cited excessive personal e-mail (26%) or Web (34%) use as the reason. Excessive personal use takes a toll on employee productivity, eats up valuable system space, and creates potentially damaging legal evidence. In order to protect your company and keep your employees aware of the risks, you need to have a written acceptable usage policy in place to notify employees that compliance with e-mail and Web usage rules is 100% mandatory.

CIO Strategic Planning Guidelines

Webmaster — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:01:25 -0600

CIOs now are starting to develop new information technology strategies. As they do that, they need to include understanding the fundamental business and operational trends that are driving businesses and enterprises of all types to redesign their operations. The principles that CIOs need to keep in mind are:

Flexibility - CIOs must be able to respond to opportunities and challenges faster than ever before. These CIOs are usually battling well-resourced organizations that may be based where the opportunity originated, or another globalizing company that is reaching out for new opportunities. In order to compete, a CIO must create a strategy this helps the enterprise to deliver faster a product or service as good, or better, than that of potentially any other company in the world.
Simplicity - The increase in technology has led to increased complexity. While per unit costs of technology are decreasing, in aggregate IT budgets continue to increase. With the pressure on IT to act less as a cost center and more as a way to increase the profitability of business units, adding more storage, more bandwidth, or additional technologies throughout the organization is no longer an acceptable approach to managing information technology. Instead, smart CIOs are investigating technologies like continuous data protection, virtualization, and wireless connectivity to help IT slim down its footprint while increasing their business's competitive advantages. Therefore, the IT team is typically in a difficult position, assessing where to cut costs while still moving forward with a plan to continually enhance IT services to the business.
Security and Mandated Requirements - With the growing importance of applications and data, the sources of threats to enterprise data have multiplied dramatically. Everything from natural disasters, to criminals, and corrupt sources within the company can steal or corrupt data. While CIOs do everything that they can to stop these threats in the first place, they still must be prepared to recover from these threats as quickly as possible.
Disaster Recovery Business Continuity - As businesses have expanded, the need for anytime, anywhere application access has become a requirement. At the same time, "follow the sun" (global 24/7) operations have shrinking maintenance windows and a need for applications to be running at all times. Delay or loss of data for any reason - system failure, natural disasters - has a domino-like effect across the entire organization, at any time of the day or night.

SPAM a Productivity Killer

Webmaster — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:50:35 -0600

Spam now accounts for as much as 80-90% of an organization's total e-mail volume. Every day, organizations face potential communications, operations, and intellectual-property disruption from spam and other e-mail borne threats. As a result, different types of attacks have started to merge and pose severe threats to your organization, leading to a significant increase in e-mail related costs. For companies grappling with limited IT staff, outsourcing e-mail security to one of the growing number of service providers is a quick, no-fuss way of protecting internal e-mail systems.

Added Security Risks

Webmaster — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:38:09 -0600

It used to be relatively easy to secure a corporate network. It was a physically connected entity used only by internal users. Web browsing was not generally available at the desktop, and data was transferred only by removable media or email.

Today, networks as we once understood them are disappearing as the network perimeter has become blurred by the prevalence of new technologies and business practices. Instant Messaging (IM), Voice Over IP (VoIP), peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software, and wireless and mobile devices all offer new ways of transferring data. Network access is given to remote workers, business partners and contractors.

These changes fulfill the real business need to remain competitive, but they also increase the risk of malware, other security threats , and data breach threats infecting the network via unsecured hardware and unmonitored communication channels.

Security in this more complex environment requires:
Securing more types of endpoint devices
Securing endpoint computers
Monitoring for compliance with security policies
Protecting network from fast-moving zero-day threats

The Market that Micosoft Missed

Webmaster — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:57:30 -0600

Before Bill Gates left Microsoft, he realized that Enterprise Search was becoming increasingly important to organizations, and a central component of their business strategy. Competitors such as Google had moved quickly to fill the gaps left by Microsoft. With increasing competition and customer demand, Microsoft publicly announced in 2007 that Enterprise Search was strategic to them and began developing a unified search strategy, rationalizing the disparate portfolio of search products they owned.

Now Microsoft is moving to fill that gap. The question is will they succeed?

Who Should Have a Formal Security Policy?

Webmaster — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:25:10 -0600

Regardless of the size of your company, you should have an IT security policy in place. Even if you have not put one in writing yet, you have a policy already. In most small companies the policy is an island approach where every individual is left to his or her own devices and while this has worked well in the past, it must change in the future. In the past, with the exception of burning down your offices, damage from a single employees actions would usually be limited to their own files and sphere of influence. Today, the actions of one can affect your entire IT structure and wreak havoc and even destruction or disclosure of your data. Running your business without a policy in place is akin to setting sail in a boat with no rudder. The winds may carry you safely somewhere, or smash you into the rocks at any time. At a minimum the security policy should act as a guide for your business. If you have more than one employee, you should have a policy in place. For companies with up to 200 employees, the Janco Security Manual Template allows management to have a better awareness of IT security and for larger organizations, the standards should allow the creation of a mature and compatible IT security culture within the company.

Data Breaches Result in Law Suits

Webmaster — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:16:51 -0600

(ComputerWorld) - In an indication of the legal troubles that companies can find themselves in over data breaches these days, several banks and credit unions have begun suing Heartland Payment Systems Inc. over its recently disclosed data breach.

In the six weeks since the potentially massive breach was disclosed, eight banks and credit unions have filed lawsuits against Heartland over its alleged failure to take adequate measures for protecting credit and debt cardholder data.

Heartland said on Jan. 20 that unknown intruders had broken into its network sometime last year and accessed payment card data belonging to an undisclosed number of customers. The breach, thought to possibly be the biggest ever disclosed, has already affected over 500 financial institutions, including a handful in the Bahamas, Bermuda and Canada.

The lawsuits seek compensation from Heartland for the costs that the financial institutions said they've had to bear in notifying affected customers about the breach and in reissuing new payment cards. The lawsuits also claim damages from Heartland for costs of the alleged fraud that the banks claimed have resulted from the breach.

Compliance Management

Webmaster — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:44:58 -0600

Regulatory requirements have made log management & analysis one of the two fastest growing areas of security. In fact, nearly every major regulation affecting cyber security now demands or implies the need for continuous logging and effective log management HIPAA, SOX, ISO 27001, COBIT. Even the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard appears to demand it. And regulations governing information security technology are evolving as fast as the technology itself.

Economic Downturn Impacts IT

Webmaster — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:30:17 -0600

A false belief about the economic downturn: Tech workers will not be as bad off as everyone else will because they already went through our violent contraction at the beginning of the decade. The recovery after the dot-com bust was weak and for the most part never came close to restoring IT spending to its previous levels -- so there just is not that much to cut. IT has become a part of operations. If you want to keep the lights on, then you cannot cut that deeply.

To avoid the axe, many IT professionals are hunkering down and taking whatever protective measures they can. The IT professionals fate often depends on justifying the project to which they have been devoting their time and effort. That means selling it all over again -- like a well-prepared MBA.

IT Service Management is a Way for CIOs to Stand Out

Webmaster — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:44:51 -0600

A one-size-fits-all approach to service management does not recognize the uniqueness of each customer. Tailoring support interactions to fit the specific circumstances of an account can not only increase customer satisfaction, but also increases revenue by giving special attention to customers at certain sales milestones (renewals, pending deals) and by extending highly contextual upsell/cross-sell offers when appropriate. Some things that you can do include

Reward staff for outstanding relationship skills. If your metrics are centered on productivity and technical prowess, shift the emphasis toward relationships skills. I
Change service level metrics to include all communication. Though the emphasis may be primarily on phone, include other communication channels including email and customer forums.
Implement quality-monitoring metrics. Measure the quality of customer interactions in order to get a better understanding of how to improve IT Service Management.