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CIO Tools - Disaster Planning - Security
Infrastructure - Job Descriptions
What Does Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Mean
03/21/2010
The IT industry continues to add emphasis and focus to Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning. While the concept has been around for many years, Disaster Recovery has a different connotation today. As business technology and software applications have advanced, Disaster Recovery has come to mean more than simply the ability to get your systems back online after a power outage. Companies are now expected to recover from unforeseen disasters, and retrieve contracts, memos, invoices, signatures and all other critical documents with minimal interruption.
There is little doubt of the importance of an effective backup plan if a natural or man-made disaster destroys your business records. Many companies, however, still have yet to implement a Disaster Recovery plan, believing that the chance of it happening to them is too slim.
The reality is that an organization may declare a disaster for a number of reasons, including:
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DRP - Business Continuity Template Update Service Is A Must
03/04/2010
The Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Template version 5.4 has just been released. Janco contiues to update its templates to meet the ever changing requirements of the business environment.
Janco provides and update service for all of its templates which guarantees its clients have the all of the information they need to meet mandated requirements.
With this new version a fully indexed PDF copy of the template is now provided in addition to the two versions of WORD (2003 and 2007).
The updates to the template included:
- Added Pandemic Coordinator job description
- Added Business Pandemic Planning Checklist
- Updated organization chart to include Pandemic Coordinator
- Updated backup and backup retention section
- Updated style sheet to be CSS Style sheet format
- Added Disaster Recovery Business Continuity General Distribution Information
- What to do after an explosion / terrorist attack
- How to clean up after a disaster
- Defined generic metrics for DR/BC success
- Business & IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire Updated
- Updated references to DRP card
- Updated formatting to meet WORD 2007 requirements
The version history for updates to template can be seen at http://www.e-janco.com/drpversion.htm and the full Table of Contents with sample pages can be downloaded at http://www.e-janco.com/Register_drp.asp .
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IT Manager are now younger than most IT professionals
02/25/2010
The average age of the workforce continues to drop. At no time is this more evident than when you ask older workers what it is like to be managed by younger bosses. A CareerBuilder report that polled 5,200 workers found 43 percent of workers who are 35 or older work under younger managers.
As you go up the spectrum of age brackets, the numbers consistently rise: 53 percent of workers 45 and older have younger bosses; as do 69 percent in the 55-or-over age bracket.
"As companies emerge from this recession, it is important for employees to work together and move the business forward, regardless of their age," said a vice president of Human Resources. "With so many different age groups present, challenges can arise. Younger and older workers both need to recognize the value that each group brings to the table."
Part of the reason is the evolution of the workforce, but also the sheer size of the baby-boom generation. A 2007 Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that between 2000 and 2005, the number of workers over 55 increased 30 percent. In that same time period, younger workers between 25 and 54 increased only 1 percent.
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Evolving data threats - CIOs and enterprises adapt
02/20/2010
Businesses adapt to increased mobility and expanded connectivity: Evolving data threats
Mobile computing and global networking cast a new light on data security issues as, in response, organizations reassess the technologies in use within their IT infrastructures and reconsider the ways in which staff members, customers and partners communicate. Solutions that do not provide the appropriate balance between protection and usability must be discarded in favor of solutions that effectively minimize risks of data theft or loss achieve compliance with existing regulations and equip personnel with tools that help them work productively and securely.
The facts are that business processes today rely on vastly different methods of data storage and data exchange than even a few years ago. These changes in the computing landscape make it essential that companies adopt a very different approach to security. According to the a research report by a leading IT think tank, 90% of organizations say that data security is "important" or "very important" and would get high priority in 2009.
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Big Brother gets closer
02/11/2010
The Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.
Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.
Not long ago, the concept of tracking cell phones would have been the stuff of spy movies. In 1998's "Enemy of the State," Gene Hackman warned that the National Security Agency has "been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the '40s--they've infected everything." After a decade of appearances in "24" and "Live Free or Die Hard," location-tracking has become such a trope that it was satirized in a scene with Seth Rogen from "Pineapple Express" (2008).
Once a Hollywood plot, now 'commonplace' - Whether state and federal police have been paying attention to Hollywood, or whether it was the other way around, cell phone tracking has become a regular feature in criminal investigations. It comes in two forms: police obtaining retrospective data kept by mobile providers for their own billing purposes that may not be very detailed, or prospective data that reveals the minute-by-minute location of a handset or mobile device.
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Security concerns drive FBI to set new mandades on ISPs
02/09/2010
Security conserns are making the FBI press Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years. This requirement could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes according to senior FBI investigators.
FBI Director supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.
The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. A survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.
The chief of the FBI's digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to "retain for a period of 18 months" records including "the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call."
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SOA improves productivity
01/31/2010
The applications within an organization's portfolio present a compelling argument for integration and connectivity to reduce maintenance expenses Disconnected applications can strain productivity, increase maintenance costs, and make overall system security difficult and expensive to manage. A proven strategy is to use an SOA approach with an enterprise service bus (ESB). Doing so can cut IT integration cost and maintenance by two to four times. Hence, the more integrations that are performed using this infrastructure, the greater the savings for your organization.
Change Control - Help Desk - Service Requests
Blog - Personal Web Site - Sensitive Information
IT Service Management (ITSM) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) have gained great acceptance as the change management discipline has grown over the last several years. The percentage of participants using a structured approach to manage change has grown from 55% to 75%.
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Where will demand be for IT Services in 2010
01/26/2010
A January 2010 survey of 1,586 CIOs, however, puts actual IT spending budgets for the year at 2005 levels or flat.
Mobile application developers will see job demand grow sharply in 2010 as Google's Android mobile operating system extends with the introduction of the Nexus One, and the leading Internet mobile device--Apple's iPhone--reaches 300,000 applications by the end of the year. It is predicted that mobile apps for Android to reach the 100,000 level by the end of 2010--a number that was reforecast from an initial estimate of 75,000.
Developers with knowledge of mobile operating systems including Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile and the iPhone are in the cat bird seat. The rapid growth of the netbook category from 2009--very small, ultra-portable laptops-- will carry over into 2010 with demand for developers who can create device-specific applications as well as skills in synchronization.
When it comes to cloud computing, it is predicted that a very big year with an expansion in the enterprise of private cloud offerings that take the best aspects of the public cloud--pre-built application and hosting infrastructure, a pay as you go model--with a customer's infrastructure in a more secure, private cloud similar to what you might find in the private "dark fiber networks" that many companies lease now from telecommunications companies and ISPs.
As businesses continue to have concerns about cloud security, availability, and performance, 2010 will be a big year for the announcement of private cloud offerings from virtually all major IT suppliers. This is not surprising: a brand-new (not yet published) IDC survey shows a strong preference by businesses for private clouds over public clouds, and vendors will act accordingly. One important implication: since clouds typically package infrastructure, platforms, and applications together, look for these announcements to drive many strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisitions/mergers.
It's not only the private cloud that is expected to expand in the enterprise. The market for cloud appliances, cloud accessories and hybrid cloud management tools is predicted to see growth in 2010.
Dell, IBM, HP, Sun, Fujitsu, Hitachi - and Intel and AMD - will partner with software vendors for "applianced" versions of traditional on-premise packaged software. Particularly once the EU approves Oracle's acquisition of Sun, Oracle will certainly be an aggressive cloud appliance player.
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Information is a security risk bu itself
01/17/2010
Information is one of the greatest sources of value creation for organizations today, with nearly every aspect of an enterprise dependent on a continuous flow of data. Think of it as currency - freely traded across and beyond the organization, it can yield a significant return on investment, including increased collaboration and innovation, shortened time to market and better decision making.
At the same time, information is one of the greatest sources of risk for organizations today. Whether through intentional or inadvertent means, breaches of data security can expose organizations to regulatory fines or legal actions, reduce a companys competitive advantage and undermine customer confidence. In recent years, lawmakers worldwide have responded to data security breaches with more rigorous data privacy laws.
As data privacy mandates continue to multiply, so too can the risk. Eliminating the risk altogether, however, is not the goal. Were that the case, the solution would be easy: simply lock down both the data and access to it - thus also shutting down the vital link to employees, customers, business partners and suppliers that makes innovation and collaboration possible.
A more sophisticated information security strategy takes a risk management approach that balances risk and reward - availability vs. the confidentiality and integrity of data. This strategy requires the ability to identify and classify sensitive data and mission-critical information within the enterprise and determine the various points of access to this information and the security posture of those access points - all while tracking who has accessed that data and understanding what they have done with it.
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2010 IT Salary Survey Released
01/07/2010
Janco has just released its 2010 IT Salary Survey, which shows that overall pay has stopped falling and has flattened out. In addition the survey show an increase in hiring demand for some IT professionals. The CEO of Janco, Victor Janulaitis stated, "The economic climate is still driven with a cost cutting mindset, business closures, and extensive outsourcing. However the worst seems to be over as salaries for IT professionals are no longer falling. " The CEO added, "...many 'baby-boomers' who had planned on retiring in the next few years are not leaving the job market frustrating middle aged workers who want to advance."More information on the IT industry can be found at www.e-janco.com- more info