Opinion

Opinion

• Security Think Tank: Outsourcing of IT security is not for everyone

  What should and what should not be outsourced in IT security?  Continue Reading

• Why the public sector is turning to multi-sourcing

  Sarah Burnett explains why the public sector is moving from single sourcing to multi-sourcing, in an age of austerity.  Continue Reading

• The carping of naysayers harms the wielding of influence

  Government data-sharing Czar Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom refutes the leaks that question his commitment to open standards.  Continue Reading

• Time to assess the value of the data you hold

  Martha Bennett offers strategic advice for managing growing volumes of corporate data.  Continue Reading

• Forrester: Innovation In Outsourcing Relationships

  Clients play the most important role in innovation In outsourcing relationships, says Wolfgang Benkel, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research.  Continue Reading

• Leveraging the benefits of ‘Big Data’

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• Emerging markets: The future home of IT spend?

  Cognizant group CEO of technology and operations, R. Chandrasekaran, talks about IT spending in emerging markets  Continue Reading

• Bigger drives mean the RAID rebuild must become a thing of the past

  With 20 TB drives possible by the end of the decade, RAID rebuilds would be unacceptably long. Subdrive and platter-level protection schemes need to be devised to replace them.  Continue Reading

• Three key considerations to deliver benefits from big data

  There is a real commercial advantage to be gained from big data and organisations need to make sure they have the right elements in place to seize that advantage.  Continue Reading

• Government open standards proposal fails the 'so what?' test

  The consultation on open standards in government IT is generating a lot of discussion, much of which misses an important point: so what?  Continue Reading

• Open standards are about the business model, not the technology

  Software companies, abuzz with lobbyists and patent lawyers over government open standards, are similar to the record industry 10 years ago.  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: Business continuity: putting the plan to work

  A strong business continuity model – with performance criteria and supporting management systems – is required to assure a workable roadmap to recovery  Continue Reading

• How tech geeks in Africa are transforming IT education

  Zambia, like the UK, is awash with unemployed graduates. But tech geeks in Africa are helping each other to fill the gap left by deficient education.  Continue Reading

• How to get IT right in mergers and acquisitions

  Charlie Mayes offers advice on IT-business integration as mergers and acquisitions begin to take off.  Continue Reading

• An insider's view on the government open standards consultation

  Andy Hopkirk chaired the first public meeting of the government's open standards consultation. He gives his report on the debate.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How can business achieve compliance and security? (Part 8)

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• BATS software bug hits business strategy

  Randy Clark, chief marketing officer at IT automation firm UC4 Software, writes about the withdrawal of a planned IPO at trading exchange BATS  Continue Reading

• The implications of identity assurance for public services

  Jerry Fishenden, chairman of the ID Assurance privacy and consumer stakeholder group, says a new approach to identity will transform government IT.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How can business achieve compliance and security? (Part 7)

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• What businesses need to do before the cookie law deadline

  Organisations have to get their house in order ahead of the 26 May 2012 deadline for European e-commerce regulations governing the use of cookies.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How businesses can achieve compliance and security (Part 6)

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• What will training look like in the workplace of the future?

  Kevin Young (pictured), head of SkillSoft EMEA, explains the impact of technology on education  Continue Reading

• Maintaining our communications data capability

  Dictated and sent without sight by Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, Data-sharing Czar in Her Majesty's Government.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How businesses can achieve compliance and security (part 5)

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How businesses can achieve compliance and security

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How businesses can achieve compliance and security

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• The storage startups’ war of the flea against big vendors

  Storage startups constantly wage war against the big storage vendors, which face attacks on many different fronts. But it’s all in the game and keeps the storage world turning.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How businesses can achieve compliance and security (Part 2)

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How can business achieve compliance and security? (Part 1)

  What can businesses do to make regulatory compliance a priority without losing focus on security basics?  Continue Reading

• How to introduce bring-your-own-device schemes in the enterprise

  A look at some of the issues businesses must consider when introducing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) schemes.  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: LinkedIn or left out?

  LinkedIn is a great tool to market yourself and it claims 150 million members in 200 countries and territories; but who vouches for the integrity of LinkedIn?  Continue Reading

• IT service management: The only way is ethics

  It is now very common for professional bodies and membership organisations to have codes of ethics and standards of conduct.  Continue Reading

• Social media: the tiger the senior Civil Servant must ride

  The exclusive thoughts of Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, permanent Secretary at Large and Her Majesty’s Government’s Data Sharing Czar.  Continue Reading

• Vendor consolidation, with help from cloud, shapes the storage market

  Vendor consolidation is shaping the storage industry, with large storage vendors dominating. Find out how cloud technology is likely to speed this concentration.  Continue Reading

• Providing work experience to close the skills gap - give IT to those who want IT

  Many IT employers still complain of a lack of suitable recruits on the job market. What role could work experience play in closing the IT skills gap?  Continue Reading

• Universities behind the automation curve

  Universities and Colleges have spent millions on technology over the past 10 years and yet they are still handling their day-to-day operations manually or semi-manually.  Continue Reading

• Women in Technology: Learning the rules of a boys' game

  Maria Ingold, CTO of FilmFlex Movies, shares her experience of working in the male-dominated technology industry  Continue Reading

• UK must invest in skills to ensure future IT innovation

  Young people may learn how to use PowerPoint at school, but they lack the innovative ICT skills businesses really need  Continue Reading

• How to prepare for proposed EU data protection regulation

  The proposed EU data protection framework is under scrutiny and debate, but there are practical steps that companies could usefully be considering now.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How to prepare for EU data protection rules (part 7)

  The changes to the EU data protection laws are intended to simplify what has become a quagmire of differing standards derived from existing legislation  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How to prepare for EU data protection rules (part 6)

  With the new EU Directives for Data Protection knocking on the door of organisations, it is time to wake up and prepare for the data privacy law changes  Continue Reading

• Collaborating on IT best practices

  It makes business sense for similar organisations to speak to each other and take a more collaborative approach when it comes to their use of IT.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How to prepare for EU data protection rules (part 5)

  There is consensus among members of The Corporate IT Forum that while proposed changes to data protection regulation might lead to greater consistency in the handling of personal data across the EU, ratification without any amendment could add ...  Continue Reading

• Can Raspberry Pi transform the sorry state of IT education?

  Is the $25 Raspberry Pi – a basic computer on a single printed circuit board - capable of transforming the sorry state of IT education in our schools?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How should UK business prepare for EU data protection rules? (part 4)

  There are eight main areas of the proposed EU data protection framework organisations should note, according to global IT security association ISACA  Continue Reading

• UK courts show the way on piracy

  The UK courts are taking the right approach to online piracy, says John Moffat, senior attorney at Avidity IP  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How to prepare for EU data protection rules (part 3)

  If your CIO has little board input or budget responsibilities, now is the time to make these changes – to empower the CIO with budget responsibility and board influence  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How to prepare for EU data protection rules (part 2)

  Proposed changes to the existing EU Data Protection Directive aim to unify the existing legislation of each EU Member State, theoretically making it easier for businesses to transfer data throughout the EU and beyond  Continue Reading

• Registering improvements in IT service management

  If you stay where you are then in effect you will be going backwards - so it is for IT service provision.  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: Adopting cloud services with confidence

  Cloud-based services are highly attractive to many organisations. But what are the emerging issues you need to know about?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: How should UK businesses prepare for EU data protection rules?

  The European General Data Protection Regulation represents the most significant change to data protection in the UK and EU since 1995. The ISF, working with its members, has identified the top five actions to take  Continue Reading

• Opinion: Is big data just big hype?

  If the deluge of headlines and vendor marketing materials is anything to go by, big data is the next big thing. So how much is there really to all this big data talk?  Continue Reading

• Identity management: helping to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals

  The increase in high-profile cyber attacks has shown that basic security perimeters have been breached. Identity management is part of the solution.  Continue Reading

• A place for cloud-based office productivity tools

  Recent research by Freeform Dynamics suggests that a cloud-only approach to office productivity is worth considering.  Continue Reading

• Incident non-disclosure amounts to hiding facts from shareholders

  It’s time Indian regulators recognize security incidents as a business risk, and make it mandatory for organizations to disclose risks and incidents.  Continue Reading

• Forrester: Agile development

  Application development leaders are looking to adopt agile computing methods, says a Forrester survey of more than 200 IT executives.  Continue Reading

• Mobile devices: balancing security and morale

  In today's ever-evolving world of new gadgets, devices and connected technologies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep a cap on the new risks that arise on a daily basis, writes Clint Merritt, CISSP, senior information security analyst for...  Continue Reading

• Social media and IT support - which side is your bread buttered?

  While IT underpins the social media revolution, IT managers are only scratching the surface when it comes to using these tools to improve IT service and support.  Continue Reading

• How big storage vendors can win the server-side flash wars

  With Fusion-io up against EMC’s Project Lightning, it’s becoming clear how the big array vendors can win the server-side flash wars in the battle to speed storage I/O.  Continue Reading

• The problem with Open Data

  Although clearly a good thing in theory, Open Data risks increasing the digital divide and social inequality unless approached right.  Continue Reading

• How to be headhunted

  The best candidate for a job might be happy in their current role and not actively on the job market - but still the target for a headhunter.  Continue Reading

• Three trends that will shape the master data management market

  Master data management (MDM), has become a crucial discipline. Three key trends will shape this market's growth and evolution, and each trend has its complexities.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Challenges and opportunities of smartphone security policy (part 8)

  The use of smartphones in the workplace brings many benefits to organisations, but also risks. Increasingly, users want to experience the functionality available to them in their private lives in their professional lives, and certainly businesses ...  Continue Reading

• The top seven mistakes IT executives make

  Global IT spending is forecast to increase slightly this year. But will IT executives spend the money effectively?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: What are the challenges/opportunities of smartphone security policy? (part 7)

  Smartphones have become wide spread in both the consumer and business realms. More importantly, employees expect they can hold just one device for their everyday use thus the boundary between personal and business usage is diminishing. The companies...  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Challenges and opportunities of smartphone security policy (part 6)

  The main rising challenge for many businesses is that of bring your own device (BYOD) and the related issues, the key issue (as always) being that of the data. And in particular, how the ownership of the data on the device is agreed, or at least ...  Continue Reading

• Reach out to children to secure tomorrow's workplace

  Organisations should be working with current knowledge of how behaviour is changing in the workplace  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Challenges and opportunities of smartphone security policy (part 5)

  There are security challenges throughout the whole smartphone lifecycle, from device creation and marketing, through purchase, implementation and operation, to the eventual recycling or destruction of the device.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Challenges and opportunities of smartphone security policy (part 4)

  In many ways, smartphones can be more secure operating platforms than PCs, but there is one major policy issue that needs to be dealt with first, writes John Pescatore, vice-president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Challenges and opportunities of smartphone security policy (part 3)

  The smartphone – and tablet – revolution offers organisations new ways of performing their work and realising tangible benefits. They offer new paths to gain business and competitive advantage by creating new customer services and experiences, and ...  Continue Reading

• Rising to the information management challenge

  In a world of increasingly devolved decision making, few would disagree that it’s important to make the right information available to the right people at the right time.  Continue Reading

• Forrester: Big data – start small, but scale quickly

  At extreme scale, traditional data management and business intelligence become impractical and companies do not get what they demand — more insight to drive greater business performance.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: What are the challenges/opportunities of smartphone security policy? (part 2)

  The main challenge of the smartphone is keeping it and its contents safe, writes Peter Wenham, committee member of the BCS Security Forum strategic panel and director of information assurance consultancy Trusted Management.  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Challenges and opportunities of smartphone security policy

  Employees using their personal smartphones for work present added pressures to keep the network secure.  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: Security and collaboration – we're In this together

  2011 saw a shift in targets and attack vectors. Smaller targets with fewer defences, and more external sources earmark the reported breaches last year  Continue Reading

• Why consumer habits are changing retail IT strategies

  Graham Benson, CIO of online clothing business M&M direct, discusses the reason why consumer habits must change retail IT strategies.  Continue Reading

• Why government needs open source

  The tough economic climate has forced a radical rethink on public sector IT procurement, with decision-makers now on the lookout for more efficient, cost-effective solutions.  Continue Reading

• Seven enablers of effective disaster recovery for SMEs

  This article considers the current status of disaster recover (DR) in small and mid-size businesses (SMEs) and highlights a few simple steps every organisation can take to ensure it is better able to address such challenges.  Continue Reading

• IT industry must play its part in improving IT in schools

  IT in schools has been in the news recently with the UK government announcing the withdrawing of the GCSE ICT curriculum and the debate around the Royal Society report focusing on the lack of computer science teachers.  Continue Reading

• What computers can't do

  Sorry to rain on your parade, but computers can't transform education any more than social media can depose dictators.  Continue Reading

• Innovation's dirty little secret

  Innovation has a dirty little secret. It is unspoken, so swept under the carpet that most executives are unaware of it: breakthroughs don't really pay.  Continue Reading

• M-commerce: Why CIOs need to manage the risk

  CIOs will need to manage four key risks if they want their businesses to benefit from the growth in mobile commerce.  Continue Reading

• Top 10 project management trends for 2012

  Collaboration is a common theme throughout many of the 2012 top 10 trends for project management, according to a panel of experts.  Continue Reading

• itSMF UK: Back to reality in 2012

  Wherever you stand on the optimist/pessimist scale, the beginning of a new year is always an opportunity to look ahead.  Continue Reading

• Five ways to improve your IT project management

  Project management and the IT industry go together like jam and toast. But not all project management is good project management.  Continue Reading

• Opinion: Cloud, mobility, social among top infosec challeges for 2012, says ISACA

  What is the most important nut for infosec to crack in the coming year and why? Global IT security association ISACA gives its views.  Continue Reading

• Opinion: 2012 must bring security for the internet of things, says BCS

  The reality is that no IT security issue ever gets solved for all time - it is a race without end between attackers and defenders, says the BCS.  Continue Reading

• Mobile security among top priorities for 2012

  Solving security issues relating to the use of mobile technologies will be among the most pressing priorities for businesses in 2012.  Continue Reading

• Security skills gap to become crucial in 2012, says (ISC)2

  The emerging threat in the developing cybersecurity skills gap is an issue (ISC)2 has highlighted throughout 2011, and 2012 will be the year when industry really begins to feel it, particularly in London with the Olympic Games coming to town.  Continue Reading

• Opinion: Supply chain security should be top goal in 2012, says ISF

  The most important thing to achieve in information security in 2012 is supply chain security, writes Adrian Davis, principal research analyst at in Information Security Forum (ISF).  Continue Reading

• Supporting user-centric computing

  User virtualisation can make life easier for IT departments and users alike.  Continue Reading

• Recession could spell the triumph of the cloud service provider

  Recessions provide the strongest possible impulse to cut costs. Will this mean the death of the in-house IT department and the triumph of the cloud service provider?  Continue Reading

• International collaboration key for infosecurity in 2012

  Outgoing year 2011 has been turbulent and eventful for information security, with a number of high-profile security incidents and an increase in cybercrime, and there is no indication that 2012 is going to be any different.  Continue Reading

• Top tips for avoiding fraud on the internet

  The Serious Organised Crime Agency estimates that online fraud costs internet users £3.5bn per year. Follow these 12 tips on how it can be avoided.  Continue Reading

• Businesses face tough EC data protection laws

  If leaks are to be believed, a proposed European Commission law will require countries to adopt stringent new data protection measures.  Continue Reading

• Shared storage model faces challenges from virtual servers

  Virtual servers are exerting pressure to change on the storage ecosystem, challenging even the fundamental model of shared storage.  Continue Reading

• Making industrialisation work

  Industrialisation represents a relentless drive to discover how an activity is optimally done, then doing it in exactly the same way every time.  Continue Reading

• Need ideas for improvement? Ask your customers

  Continual service improvement is a key tenet of IT service management and a fundamental part of the ITIL service lifecycle.  Continue Reading

• Forrester: It's time to take agile to the next level

  Agile development has become very popular, with more than a third of developers citing agile as their primary methodology.  Continue Reading

• A touch of SaaS: Feeling the benefits for mobility

  As internet connections get faster and devices get smaller and more portable, we have seen a sea-change in the definition of a “mobile” workforce.  Continue Reading