IT Security

ZDNet – If you want to be secure, get in the cloud

Some CIOs are reticent to rely on the cloud. The high cost of a data loss means executives decide to keep information within the enterprise firewall. However, a change in stance is taking place – and many business leaders recognise the cloud is actually a better way to keep information safe and lawmakers in check.

CIOs in all territories face a tranche of data rules. Businesses are currently preparing for another change in legislation. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is due to come into force on 25 May 2018 and will see companies fined up to 4 per cent of their global turnover for breaches.

GDPR will require a serious step up in security policies and procedures. The potential costs, both in terms of financial and reputational damage, could leave executives out of pocket, out of a job – or even more seriously – in jail.

However, evidence suggests a wake up call is required. Research from insurance specialist Lloyd’s suggests 92 per cent of companies have suffered a data breach in the past five years. Executives must react and take a proactive approach to information security.

More of the ZDNet post from Mark Samuels

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21
Dec 16

ZDNet – Gartner’s digital transformation, IT crystal ball for 2017: Reading between the lines

ugmented reality will become a shopping paradise, webpages will start to give way to screen-less voice interactions, blockchain technology will create a business worth $10 billion, and the Internet of Things will save $1 trillion a year by 2022.

Those items reflect Gartner’s crystal ball predictions for 2017 and beyond. The predictions were outlined at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando. The theme for the conference is digital transformation, experiences, and engagement.

Jason Hiner at TechRepublic is looking at the implications for IT as these trends play out, but it’s worth looking here at the business takeaways amid the tech shifts.

In a slide, here’s a look at the technologies companies will have to put together and navigate. At the very least, the slide provides a starter set for a tech buzzword drinking game.

Here’s a between-the-lines reading of Gartner’s prognostications.

By 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality. Gartner analysts Daryl Plummer and David Cearley argued that AR will go mainstream. Retailers will use AR to boost the shopping experience as digital information blends with the physical.

More of the ZDNet post form Larry Dignan

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16
Dec 16

Arthur Cole – What’s Up with Digital Transformation?

Practical article from Arthur Cole on how digital transformation is different than what we’ve been doing for 40 years in IT.

Some enterprise executives may rightly be confused by the whole concept of “digital transformation.” Digital technology has been a common facet of the enterprise for decades, so what exactly is being transformed?

In a nutshell, the difference this time is that rather than using digital technology to support and streamline existing business processes like sales, support and customer relations, the processes themselves are becoming digitized into services. So instead of using data infrastructure to make it easier to sell, say, cars, a digitally transformed business incorporates service-level functionality into the car itself, along with all the support systems that contribute to the manufacture, sale and ongoing support of the car.

More of the IT Business Edge post from Arthur Cole

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15
Dec 16

ComputerWeekly – IT Priorities 2017: What will IT decision-makers be focusing on?

Each year, TechTarget looks at how CIOs and senior IT decision-makers will be investing in IT in the 12 months ahead

Budgets for staff and on-premise servers are falling as CIOs focus on cloud computing, according to the TechTarget’s IT Priorities 2017 survey.

Most of the 353 people surveyed said their IT budgets would remain the same. Only 17% said their budget would increase by more than 10%, 16% said their budget would increase by 5% to 10%, and 9% said their budget would decrease.

The survey found that most of the budget increases would be invested in cloud services (43%), software (43%) and disaster recover (30%).

More of the ComputerWeekly post from Cliff Saran

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14
Dec 16

Continuity Central – The rise of SIP-based cyber attacks

Cyber attacks using the VoIP protocol Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) have been growing in 2016, accounting for over 51 percent of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) security event activity analysed in the last 12 months, according to a new report from IBM’s Security Intelligence group.

“SIP is one of the most commonly used application layer protocols in VoIP technology, so it’s not surprising that it’s the most targeted. In fact, we found that there has been an upward trend in attacks targeting the SIP protocol, with the most notable uptick occurring in the second half of 2016,” states the IBM Security Intelligence group.

The second most targeted protocol, Cisco’s proprietary Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), accounted for just over 48 percent of detected security events during the same time period.

ComputerWeekly – Future of the server operating system

We look at the evolution of the server operating system, and how the next generation is moving into the cloud

Microsoft’s new Windows Server 2016 operating system (OS) is just being launched. Linux is celebrating its 25th birthday. IBM has its mainframe operating system and its Power operating system, Oracle has Solaris – and that is just a few of the OSs that still abound in the market. But what is the role of an OS in the modern world?

Going back to the early days of servers, the stack required to get a computer up and running was pretty simple – a basic input/output system (BIOS) to get the hardware started, followed by an operating system to provision basic services, followed by an application to carry out the actual work.

More of the Computerweekly article from Clive Longbottom

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07
Dec 16

Baseline – Why IT Pros Feel Unprepared for Disasters

While most C-level executives feel their organization is “very prepared” for a potential systems-crashing disaster, IT professionals sharply disagree, according to a recent survey from Evolve IP. The “2016 Evolve IP Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Survey” report indicates that a significant number of companies have suffered from a major incident that required disaster recovery (DR) over the past year—sometimes resulting in six-figure losses. Many tech employees indicate that a lack of DR budgeting leaves them unprepared for disruptions caused by hardware failures, server issues, power outages, environmental events, human error and targeted cyber-attacks. And a great many organizations still rely on old-school recovery methods such as backup tapes, instead of newer cloud-based solutions.

There is, however, notable interest in Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), despite the fact that only about half of C-level executives have heard of this term. “The lack of DR education at the executive level—and the likely related lack of budget—poses a real risk to today’s businesses,” according to the report. “These factors are further exacerbated by a dramatic increase in targeted attacks, continued reliance on aging tape backups, as well as internal hardware that remains highly susceptible to failure.

More of the Baseline slideshow from Dennis McCafferty

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06
Dec 16

Fast Company – These Companies Are Vacuuming Up Everybody Else’s Tech Talent

This is happening all over, not just in Silicon Valley. How will your organization meet the challenge of attracting and retaining high end IT infrastructure talent?

Want to know just how much or how well a given company is innovating? Take a look at the talent it attracts—or loses. These days, acquiring and hanging onto top-notch tech talent isn’t easy.

Plenty of companies are fooling themselves that they’re keeping their digital skills current simply by changing job titles and adding roles that include the term “digital.” The number of professionals on LinkedIn calling themselves “chief digital officer” grew from 965 in 2015 to 3,255 in 2016—a 237% increase.

That semantic shift conceals a stark reality: A select handful of companies—those that have always lived and breathed digital technology (not to be confused with those other “digital natives”)—are sucking up top-notch tech talent, leaving everyone else to pick over the scraps.

THE INVISIBLE (WORKING) HAND
Some things remain true that have long been so. According to our research here at L2, it’s clear that a solid brand makes a company beautiful to strangers. If your company has a reputation as a tech innovator, tech talent will come a-knocking.

More of the Fast Company article from Maureen Mullen

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02
Dec 16

Data Center Knowledge – The Mission Critical Cloud: Designing an Enterprise Cloud

Today, many organizations are taking a look at cloud from a new lens. Specifically, organizations are looking to cloud to enable a service-driven architecture capable of keeping up with enterprise demands. With that in mind, we’re seeing businesses leverage more cloud services to help them stay agile and very competitive. However, the challenge revolves around uptime and resiliency. This is compounded by often complex enterprise environments.

When working with cloud and data center providers, it’s critical to see just how costly an outage could be. Consider this – only 27% of companies received a passing grade for disaster readiness, according to a 2014 survey by the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council. At the same time, increased dependency on the data center and cloud providers means that overall outages and downtime are growing costlier over time. Ponemon Institute and Emerson Network Power have just released the results of the latest Cost of Data Center Outages study. Previously published in 2010 and 2013, the purpose of this third study is to continue to analyze the cost behavior of unplanned data center outages. According to the new study, the average cost of a data center outage has steadily increased from $505,502 in 2010 to $740,357 today (or a 38 percent net change).

More of the Data Center Knowledge post from Bill Kleyman

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01
Dec 16

InformationWeek – IT Priorities Shifting Toward Security, Managing Costs

A recent IDG survey shows CIOs and IT managers have a renewed concern for operational security and improved customer experience.

The priorities of CIOs and their IT budgets have undergone a rollercoaster journey since the outbreak of the Great Recession 2008. In the midst of the downturn, for example, cutting costs was frequently top of mind for the beleaguered IT manager.

In mid-2009, InformationWeek noted that IT managers “had stopped cutting IT budgets” and might be contemplating “spending a bit more” in 2010.

If budget issues were successfully addressed, then the challenge of aligning IT with the business was a frequent mantra of IT managers asked to express where their priorities lay during the 2010-2013 era, according to InformationWeek research.

In 2014 and 2015, however, IT’s focus shifted significantly again, according to an IDG Research report, in a survey sponsored by Datalink, a data center transformation consulting service.

The survey, “The Importance of Linking Outcomes to IT Investment Strategy,” found that holding down costs remains a concern, and named IT’s new priorities and emphases. Compiled at the end of 2015, the report offered a snapshot of how IT’s outlook had changed over the previous two years as IT staff entered 2016.

More of the Information Week post from Charles Babcock

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.