IT Security

CIO.com – 8 IT management productivity killers

From neglecting to prioritize key strategic initiatives to failing to adjust project estimates, weak IT management practices are threatening IT’s ability to get the job done.

There are two types of productivity killers in the modern workplace: small distractions that sap your focus and big productivity killers that push you into applying time and effort in all the wrong places. Like it or not, weak IT management practices are what cause the more significant productivity killers.

Following is a look at eight such practices that are derailing your IT department — and how to adjust for success.

1. Neglecting to prioritize strategic projects
IT has to put out fires on occasion. When the online banking servers go down, it’s an emergency. But panic situations tend to be rare. Instead, the steady stream of ad hoc questions and change requests from users are the more significant problem. Making users happy is a worthy goal, but you can easily fall victim to short-term thinking.

More of the CIO.com article from Bruce Harpham

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07
Jun 18

InformationWeek – Why IT Costs Keep Rising (and How to Resist the Climb)

It will take a multi-pronged approach for IT organizations to stop the escalation of IT costs.

IT departments have gone through several fundamental changes over the past couple of decades. Today’s technology seems space-aged compared to what was available just 10 years ago, and IT professionals everywhere are just trying to keep up.

Many businesses are seeing their IT expenses, or costs, rise. They’re being forced to invest more in their technological infrastructure and, in many cases, the growing demand of superior technology is driving budgets through the roof. IT costs are expected to maintain this upward trajectory for years to come, and for businesses with already-tight budgets, this seems like an insurmountable challenge.

So why is it that IT costs keep climbing, and what can you do to resist those increases?

More of the InformationWeek article from Larry Alton

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06
Jun 18

WSJ – Cloud, Not Tax Cuts, Drives IT Spending: Survey

Corporate information-technology budgets are expected to inch up over last year, as large firms continue to shift more workloads to the cloud, according to Morgan Stanley.

Despite recent federal tax cuts aimed at boosting corporate spending, most chief information officers say their IT spending plans haven’t changed, the bank said in a report Wednesday.

The results are based on a survey of 75 U.S. and 25 European CIOs at companies in a range of industries, most with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. The survey was conducted online and by phone between February and March.

More of the Wall Street Journal article from Angus Loten

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05
Jun 18

On stones, clay and rubber balls: why business continuity is not a risk management discipline

Mark Armour explains why he believes that we need to agree on our definitions and change our thinking around risk management, business continuity and resilience.

First, this is not about where the responsibility for business continuity should reside within an organization. It is about the responsibilities of the business continuity profession and its practitioners. Lately, I’ve witnessed the practice of risk management begin to take over that of business continuity. Many practitioners promote this alignment and foster the perception that business continuity is simply a part of the practice of risk management. I say this is bad for both disciplines and the organizations they serve.

For the sake of clarity, let’s start with some simple definitions:

The Institute of Risk Management states ‘Risk management involves understanding, analysing and addressing risk to make sure organisations achieve their objectives.’ The International Risk Management Institute describes its work as ‘The practice of identifying and analyzing loss exposures and taking steps to minimize the financial impact of the risks they impose.’

InfoWorld – When being cloud-native is a bad idea

Although being pushed as the end game for most cloud-based applications, there are trade-offs to consider.

It’s good to be cloud-native, or at least that’s what everyone is telling you. The idea is that you refactor (meaning partially recode) your applications to take advantage of the native features of the host cloud, such as its native APIs, storage systems, database systems, or security systems, depending on what that host cloud services offers.

The promise you’re being given is that being cloud-native will provide enhanced performance, lower operational costs for your applications, easier operations, and a bunch of other benefits as the cloud platform improves over time.

More of the InfoWorld article from David Linthicum

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07
May 18

Computer Weekly – How a new ISO standard helps you take control of your IT assets

The updated ISO standard 19770-1:2017 offers IT managers a way to bring their hardware and software assets under a single management standard.

You must have control over your software and hardware. Not just because you should – but because it makes perfect sense and it is good for your business.

The updated ISO standard 19770-1:2017 promises to help you do just that. ISO 19770-1:2017 is really not a new standard, but an update from ISO 19770-1:2012.

But it is not a minor update. It feels more like an overhaul in that it now meets the requirements of a “real” management systems standard, such as ISO 27001. In relation to IT asset management (ITAM), the standard helps to address some significant problems when it comes to reducing risk and establishing a best practice for managing your IT assets.

The 19770-x family covers all the essential areas, such as lifecycle processes and best practices, software tagging and usage rights (entitlements).

More of the Computer Weekly article from Jesper Østergaard

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24
Apr 18

Continuity Central – Vast majority of organizations are unable to identify anomalous behaviour in cloud applications

Bitglass has published the findings of a survey for its ‘Cloud Hard 2018: Security with a Vengeance’ report, which includes insights from over 570 cybersecurity and IT professionals on their approach to cloud security.

Visibility and compliance challenges continue to trouble organizations, with less than half of respondents claiming they have visibility into external sharing and DLP policy violations in their cloud application and environments. Even more worrying was the finding that 85 percent of organizations were unable to identify anomalous behaviour across cloud applications.

ZDNet – As cloud adoption soars, cloud architect becomes a top career choice

Could you imagine 15 years ago telling your colleagues, or your college career officer, that you wanted to someday be a ‘cloud architect?’

Make room, enterprise architects, data architects and systems architects. There’s a new architect in town, the “cloud architect,” and his or her role is to make sure clouds are staying in formation.

That’s the gist of a survey of 997 technology professionals conducted by RightScale, which documents a shifting role for IT managers and professionals in the emerging cloud-centric enterprise.

The role of cloud architect is on the rise, the survey shows. This year, the survey finds 61 percent of architects identify themselves as cloud architects, an increase from 56 percent in 2017. The percentage of architects identifying themselves as “IT architects” has decreased to 31 percent in 2018 from 35 percent in 2017.

More of the ZDNet article from Joe McKendrick

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12
Apr 18

Forbes – Is It Time For A Technology Haircut?: The Lasting Value Of Pruning Your IT Landscape

What doesn’t make sense? Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon all prune their massive technology portfolios more than you do.

I’ve been studying this issue for a while and have recorded my latest thinking about why you should be pruning your portfolio in detail on EarlyAdopter.com in this article: “Numerify: Using Systems of Intelligence for IT Pruning” The article also explains how to use a system of intelligence, essentially advanced BI applied to IT, to provide detailed information about all aspects of IT to help with pruning.

While that article explains the details, in this space I’d like to take a closer look at the benefits of pruning.

The two main benefits are:
1. Increasing the pace and amount of resources truly freed up to support innovation.
2. Reducing staffing costs related to keeping the lights on.

The first benefit related to innovation comes from the fact that a well-executed pruning program not only retires systems that are providing low value, but also makes operations more efficient in general. Pruning leads to understanding. Understanding leads to optimization, which if meaningful, should mean that your systems become easier to run and change.

More of the Forbes article from Dan Woods

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.