Risk Management - Infoworld

How to move a data center without having a heart attack

Paul Venezia — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

As the dust settles in the aftermath of a successful physical data center move, I'm nursing my bruised and cut hands, kicking back with a Scotch, and reflecting on what went right. I said "successful," but actually there's no such thing as a failed data center move: If something's going wrong, there's nothing you can do except keep working until everything's up and running.

But a successful data center move is no accident. Whether it's a data center relocation or new data center build-outs, detailed plans must be made months or even years in advance.

Lost in BYOD's uncharted legal waters

Galen Gruman — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The majority of businesses now allow employees to choose -- or even bring -- their own mobile devices rather than require the use of corporate-issued units. The BYOD phenomenon quickly moved from a "not in my business" option in 2010 to the de facto standard in 2011. BYOD also intermingles personal and professional usage, data, and ownership, creating uncharted territory for businesses and individuals alike as to who has rights over what, as well as to what are the best legal approaches to securing their respective interests.

Downtime is ... good?

Matt Prigge — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Ask yourself: How do your users react when you announce (or plead for) a downtime window to accomplish an upgrade or to perform maintenance? Not well, I'd imagine.

Years ago, scheduled downtime was a common occurrence in all but the very largest IT shops, but today, few businesses let you get away with a solid downtime window without an act of Congress. Even some shops without obvious 24/7 requirements -- like three-shift manufacturing plants or hospitals with emergency rooms -- have a hard time denying their user base access to data even in the wee hours of the night.

Carrier IQ and Facebook pose the least of your privacy threats

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:40:35 +0000

There's plenty of rightful indignation over the revelation that AT&T and Sprint have installed monitoring apps (purportedly to detect network and p

The real force behind the consumerization of IT

Galen Gruman — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Dek:

You can blame the iPhone, Salesforce.com, and Facebook, but the truth is that business itself has driven the shift to employee-directed tech

Source:

InfoWorld

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When your offshoring fails: A guide to suing the outsourcer

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Dispute resolution is always an important consideration when outsourcing IT. If that fails, however, you can always sue if your provider has breached the contract. "But you probably shouldn't," says Edward Hansen, a partner with the law firm Baker & McKenzie.

The case for compliance as a cloud service

David Linthicum — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:00:00 +0000

IT must deal with an increasing number of regulations, many of which come with stiff legal and financial penalties for noncompliance. As cloud computing comes on the scene, it's no wonder that many in IT push back on its use, which in many instances forces you to give up direct control of systems that have to be maintained with these regulations in mind. As one client put it, "Why would I let somebody who does not work here get me arrested?"

Developers' big decision: Whether to bet the farm on Facebook

Neil McAllister — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Today's developers are all too aware of the dangers of vendor lock-in when choosing an application platform. Want to write apps for Apple iOS? Better learn Objective-C and the terms of the iTunes App Store. Android? That'll be Java coupled with Google's online infrastructure. Windows? Get ready to go exclusive with the likes of .Net, Visual Basic, and C#. None of these platforms makes it easy to port software to the others.

Mobile BYOD strategy reveals if your CIO is good or bad

Galen M. Gruman — Tue, 17 May 2011 10:00:00 +0000

How does your CIO (or you, if you are the CIO) view the influx of iPads, iPhones, and Androids into the organization by individual users and business departments?

How not to handle a data breach

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:10:05 +0000

Once a data breach is discovered, the best response is to spring into action and notify customers as fast as humanly possible, right? Well, not really.

In search of: A Delete key for email

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:34:13 +0000

If lawyers or hackers got hold of your company's email messages, what sort of picture would emerge?

Deferred IT maintenance is a ticking time bomb

Galen Gruman — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:00:00 +0000

$500 billion -- it's a number so big you'd assume it's a component of the national debt. It isn't. Instead, it's what Gartner analyst Andy Kyte calls the IT debt. "When budgets are tight, maintenance gets cut. After a decade of tight budgets, the scale of the maintenance backlog has created systemic risk, particularly for large organizations," he says.

How cloud providers can allay IT's fear of abandonment

David Linthicum — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:00:00 +0000

With Yahoo set to offload Delicious, the cloud once again takes it on the chin as skeptics point to another instance where cloud computing left -- or could leave -- users high and dry.

Don't pull a TSA on security policies

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:13:30 +0000

If you're traveling today, bring a good book to read in the security lines. Travelers fed up with the security measures mandated by the Transportation Security Administration have declared the day before Thanksgiving to be National Opt Out Day. The wait could be long.

No need to trust online retailers' security anymore

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:31:03 +0000

A steady stream of reports of unauthorized access to credit card information has emanated from the retail industry.

The rise -- and risk -- of the composite clouds

David Linthicum — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Many cloud providers are learning to eat their own dog food, and they're leveraging other clouds to augment missing pieces of their offerings. As a result, you may find that a cloud provider offering software as a service (SaaS) is actually leveraging another cloud for storage, another cloud for compute, and perhaps other components as well.

5 reasons IT pros should be paranoid

Jason Snyder — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:00:00 +0000

IT organizations have a lot on their plates, and keeping the data center humming is only part of the equation. Factor in the threats coming at IT from every direction, and you can see why IT pros have ample reason to be paranoid. The invasion of consumer devices into the workplace, the rush toward cloud computing, the constant vigilance to prevent data spills, all while managing a meager budget in an era when your career can be cut short at any time can cause even the most level-headed IT pro to start looking over his shoulder.

What SAP can teach you on how to adopt open source

Savio Rodrigues — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:00:00 +0000

SAP, arguably one of the remaining enterprise software vendors to accept and use open source in its products, recently made news by announcing a broader open source strategy. More important, SAP explained how it planned for the greater acceptance of open source components in its projects. Enterprise IT decision-makers can learn from SAP's approach to open source adoption.

The quiet threat: Cyber spies are already in your systems

Galen Gruman — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:15:00 +0000

Is your company's data under surveillance by foreign spybots looking for any competitive advantages or weaknesses they can exploit? This might sound farfetched, but such electronic espionage is real. It's an insidious security threat that's a lot more common than you probably realize.

As an IT or security executive, determining whether your organization is under attack via this seemingly undetectable threat -- and putting in place adequate technology and procedural safeguards -- should be a high priority. The stakes are too high to ignore the problem.

Google vs. Microsoft: The battle of Ormandy

Neil McAllister — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Software developers should never take reports of security vulnerabilities lightly. But to ignore a vulnerability to the extent that you won't even commit to a timeframe to fix it is utterly irresponsible.