In brief
75% of UK firms are vulnerable to data theft
Short takes on this week's news
Three-quarters of UK enterprises are vulnerable to data theft, a
survey from Loglogic has found. While half of the firms reported
that their enterprise data is mission critical, most do not have
systems in place to track and trace potential data theft according
to the survey, carried out by Vanson Bourne.
www.computerweekly.com/220180
Criminal Justice IT names Coker new CTO
Criminal Justice IT, part of the Office for Criminal Justice
Reform, has appointed Tunde Coker as its new CTO, with a remit to
set the technology direction of a £2bn programme designed to join
up police, courts, prison and probation services.
www.computerweekly.com/220144
Number of women working in IT falls to 16%
The number of women working in IT has fallen dramatically over
the past five years, to a low of 16%, a Department of Trade and
Industry sponsored study shows. The research, published by
Intellect, shows that many of the women that are employed in the IT
sector are found in the lower skilled, lower paid areas of the
industry, rather than more professional and technical
positions.
Barclays extends deal with Siemens to 2008
Barclays has extended to 2008 its business process outsourcing
contract with Siemens Business Services as part of a multi-million
pound deal. Siemens is operating areas of Barclays' retail banking
back office, including account closures, transfer of funds and
administrative processing for direct debit and standing order
instructions.
www.computerweekly.com/220143
Worldwide server shipments on the rise
Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2006
increased 9.1% compared to the same quarter last year, while
worldwide server sales for the same period climbed 4.4%, said
analyst firm Gartner. Global server revenues totalled £7bn for the
quarter, as worldwide server shipments reached just over two
million units. But in the EMEA region, server shipments only grew
2.7%, while server revenue increased 3.5%.
www.computerweekly.com/220145
O2 and Motorola to provide police with PDAs
Airwave O2 has signed a contract with Motorola to provide
personal digital assistants (PDAs) that can work on the UK police
forces' national Tetra (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) network. The
agreement is the world's first commercial contract for Tetra PDAs,
with Motorola providing the first handsets to the police by the end
of the year.
www.computerweekly.com/220146
Nokia's bid to prevent network snarl-ups
Nokia has launched a program to help prevent network logjams
caused by the growing amount of bandwidth-hungry data being passed
over mobile networks. It lets operators control the use of network
resources by applications such as file sharing and VoIP.
Yorkshire Building Society to use BI
platform
Yorkshire Building Society is to install the BusinessObjects XI
Release 2 business intelligence platform to support more than 500
managers and staff across its 131 offices. The software will
provide the building society with an integrated business
intelligence platform for budgeting, planning, performance
management, analysis and enterprise information management.
www.computerweekly.com/220095
IT workers count the cost as they rack up
debts
A fifth of IT and telecoms workers are in serious debt, with
unsecured loans of at least £10,000, according to research by debt
consultancy Thomas Charles. Of those, 15% report regular debt
repayment problems, and 14% report some likelihood of declaring
themselves bankrupt or taking out an Individual Voluntary
Arrangement (IVA). The research was conducted in October with 2,322
respondents.
www.computerweekly.com/220103
UK to spend £1bn on implementing MiFID
The Financial Services Authority has estimated that investment
banks and stock exchanges based in the UK will spend up to £1bn
implementing the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. The
main costs are expected to come from order-routing and settlement
systems that provide clients with the best prices.
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