Opinion

Opinion

• Technology in tough times: preparing for economic downturn

  Microsoft research has shown that 76% of business owners have made no provision for an economic downturn, and 86% have not sought any advice on how to prepare for the worst  Continue Reading

• Plain speaking on outsourcing

  We report this week on two ground-breaking local government outsourcing developments  Continue Reading

• Hijacking blog strikes

  Christoph Alme, Team lead of Secure Computing's Anti-Malware Research Labs Hijacking blog strikes The infamous Storm...  Continue Reading

• Financial markets: How low can 'low latency' go?

  One of the buzz terms in the European financial markets in 2008 is "low latency".  Continue Reading

• Modern leadership techniques hinder crisis management

  There is evidence that modern management techniques can make it more difficult to respond to a data security breach, writes Jonathan Armstrong, partner at international law firm Eversheds.  Continue Reading

• Changes to Computer Misuse Act will turn security professionals into criminals

  The most recent changes to the Computer Misuse Act will give power to prosecute those who help or enable others to commit computer crime.  Continue Reading

• Maximising the value of IT to business

  Maximising the value of IT to business By Colin Tyler, head of technology practice, OC&C Strategy Consultants In today's changing economic climate,...  Continue Reading

• Is it farewell to legacy systems?

  The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. An apt expression for the basic conundrum posed by all legacy...  Continue Reading

• How to minimise risk of customer data loss and fraud

  UK businesses must change their attitude to customer data protection or they risk misuse and potential loss of this information.  Continue Reading

• Technology to weather the storm

  Not just recession, but M&S recession, joked The Economist in its 5 July issue. The nation's talismanic food and clothing retailer had posted...  Continue Reading

• When soft becomes hard for IT experts

  Under-investment in skills training in the IT sector is having a major impact on the UK's ability to compete globally, writes Fiona Bates of training provider...

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• The credit crunch: who dares, wins

  IT professionals may be forgiven for feeling some apprehension as to what the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the ensuing global credit...

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• Macs and Malware

  Everybody but the anti-virus industry "knows" that there aren't any Mac viruses, so what, if anything, does an IT team need to do about Apple Macintosh security?...

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• tom rogerson

  The march towards the consumerisation of the IT used by large organisations is appearing irresistible, writes Tom Rogerson, chief technology officer, financial services Europe, Computer Sciences Corporation.  Continue Reading

• Plug your zero-day vulnerability gap

  While a lot of time and effort goes into ensuring that networks are patched, the gap between vulnerability announcements and patch availability remains a serious and often costly issue for too many companies.  Continue Reading

• Improving the relationship between development teams and their customers

  You need your development team to be able to deliver what you need, when you need it, and to be able to respond to changes of all kinds on demand, write Ross Hamilton, director, and Joe Morrison, managing consultant, at Lab49 consultants.  Continue Reading

• Wireless and mobile blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the Wireless and Mobile category.  Continue Reading

• Programming and development blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the Programming and Technical category.  Continue Reading

• CIO and IT director blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by nominating your favourites in the CIO and IT Director Blogs category.  Continue Reading

• IT lifestyle blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  IT lifestyle blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08  Continue Reading

• IT security blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the IT Security category.  Continue Reading

• Company blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the IT Company Blogs category.  Continue Reading

• IT project management blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  IT project management blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08  Continue Reading

• Web 2.0 and business blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the Web 2.0 and Business category.  Continue Reading

• Public sector IT blogs: ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the Public Sector IT category.  Continue Reading

• What has Bill Gates ever done for us? Readers have their say

  Gates opened up the market to easy-to-use software

  Stephen Boulten, head of IT, Leek United Building Society

  Bill Gates and Microsoft produced...

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• Computer Weekly: beating the IT drum

  Welcome to the new-look Computer Weekly, which is the latest result of our ongoing programme of research into the information needs of IT professionals. We...  Continue Reading

• Banks should collaborate with customers to fight fraud

  New provisions to the Banking Code means banks can now pass responsibility for card fraud to consumers if they do not have antivirus software or firewalls....

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• BCS council seeks nominees

  The BCS is looking for members who want to contribute to the development of BCS and its goal to make IT the profession of the 21st century.

  For those...

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• Computer science departments must reinvent themselves to avoid a business school takeover

  Computer science departments must act quickly to meet the changing skills needs of the dynamic IT sector or risk a takeover from business schools. This would...

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• Bill Gates: looking back on the road ahead

  At the end of June, Bill Gates will finally stop doing the job he loves in order to concentrate on his philanthropic foundation. It is the end of an era that started with Microsoft Basic in 1975, continued with MS DOS in 1981, and exploded after ...  Continue Reading

• Faulty software can lead to astronomic costs

  Many factors compromise software development, leading to loss and exposure to risk that could dwarf the cost of the software itself.

  The most common...

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• Everyday superheroes

  Everyday superheroes John Dovey President UK corporates BT Global Services Among all the items about the sub-prime crisis and the credit crunch, one news story really caught my attention.  Continue Reading

• The economics of Software Testing

  The challenge facing any software development manager is how to balance the natural tension that exists between time, cost and quality. On top of this, programmes also have to balance the three organisational elements of corporate strategy, delivery...  Continue Reading

• Consultant roles demand communication skills

  What does it take to be a successful consultant?  Continue Reading

• Hardware reputation and the online fraud arms race

  Banks are used to arms races. In the 1960s and 1970s the easiest way to for thieves to get hold of a bank's money was to turn up in person at branches with a gun and demand cash. So banks placed their workers behind bulletproof glass. This forced ...  Continue Reading

• Customer relationship management: happy customers = profitable customers

  Customers, clients, consumers, call them what you will but without them, you don't have a business, writes Jason Nash, product solutions marketing manager,...

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• IT will be critical factor in airline survival

  You do not have to be a financial analyst to work out that airlines are going through pretty rough times at the moment.  Continue Reading

• PCI: a matter of timing

  PCI is a subject on which reams have been written already, but in my recent work I have seen it in a different light. For all the technical advice given - and to a large extent practiced - the one thing a project manager should be most aware of ...  Continue Reading

• Government services online are a real benefit

  If you believed everything you read in the media, you could be forgiven for thinking that every major government IT programme is unwanted and unloved. Yet...

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• Legal uniformity needed to tackle data breaches

  The clamour for specific security-breach legislation in the UK following the breach at Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs and more recent announcements by major corporations needs to be given more thought.  Continue Reading

• Blogosphere denial can hurt your business

  Technology moves fast. But you know that. It is your job, after all. Even so, sometimes it catches us all by surprise. Web logs, or blogs as they have become known, are barely a decade old as a publishing medium, but they are part of the mainstream ...  Continue Reading

• Security forecast: mobile devices

  Although historically little interest has been shown in security threats to mobile devices compared with that posed to PCs, the tables have recently started to turn. The Centre for the Protection of Critical National Infrastructure (CPNI) has stated...  Continue Reading

• Is data the CIO's responsibility?

  The challenge of maintaining high-quality data has been around since the proliferation of the database, but it is still an issue that affects a wide variety of businesses and the public sector, writes Colin Ricard of DataFlux.  Continue Reading

• Opinion: HP’s acquisition of EDS leaves questions unanswered

  Although Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of EDS was expected, the premium that HP paid was unexpected, and potentially unwarranted, given EDS's recent track-record and a depressed outsourcing market.  Continue Reading

• Web 2.0 blows a hole in business

  The explosion in Web 2.0 applications - social networking, blogs, wikis, Second Life sites, and so on - has made them a key target for cyber criminals...  Continue Reading

• ISF: Extend the security perimeter

  By and large, corporates have solved the problem of protecting the security of workstations against malware in their own internal environment...  Continue Reading

• ISACA: Constantly mutating challenge

  The idea that enterprises have made great progress in locking down their infrastructure to protect end-users from malware may not be totally accurate...  Continue Reading

• ISSA: Traditional controls inadequate

  There is a common misconception that because an organisation has anti-virus, it must be safe, writes Raj Samani, vice president of ISSA  Continue Reading

• Tif: Boundaries are blurring

  The idea that a boundary exists between "locked down" IT systems inside the corporate network and everything else operating outside it does not make as much sense as it once did...  Continue Reading

• Transforming NHS services requires flexible evolution, BCS delegates say

  "There is no point in informatics trying to enable a change in one direction when budgets are encouraging maintenance of the status quo," said Sheila Bullas, secretary of the BCS's Health Informatics Forum, at a recent BCS leadership debate on ...  Continue Reading

• Gartner: Control devices and encrypt data

  As new and improved technologies appear in the mobile markets, and are adopted by businesses, so new threats...  Continue Reading

• BCS: Audit and educate

  Attend the likes of InfoSec to ensure you are up to date with the latest products and then seek the advice of an expert consultant to help in cutting through the snake oil ...  Continue Reading

• Outsourcing: cost reduction in an economic slowdown

  With the dust from the credit crunch yet to settle, and real signs of tighter economic conditions ahead, most companies will be looking to rein in their spending in 2008.  Continue Reading

• NCC: It's all about layers

  Working outside an organisation's physical domain brings certain responsibilities with it and the road warrior must take caution along in the kit bag...  Continue Reading

• If film directors can insure against failure, why not project managers?

  What's the difference between an IT project and bungee jumping? Answer: they are both pretty scary experiences,...  Continue Reading

• Sustainability and the CIO

  The management of ICT resources can have an enormous environmental impact, but many CIOs could be exposing...  Continue Reading

• ComputerWeekly.com IT blog awards 08

  Computer Weekly has launched a search for the best UK IT blogs, with its first ever IT blog awards.  Continue Reading

• IT law and governance blogs: Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards

  Help us to identify the best IT blogs in the UK by voting for your favourite in the IT Law and Governance category.  Continue Reading

• Electronic information sharing is key to effective government

  Over the past few years, the government has launched a number of initiatives to promote data sharing between public organisations including the NHS, Whitehall departments and police services. The government's determination to overhaul information ...  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: managing your organisation’s social network footprint

  As well as helping to minimise the chances of data theft and the ensuing bad publicity, information security professionals have a more proactive role in helping to protect their organisations in the 21st century, writes Paul Maloney, managing ...  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - Developing infosecurity career paths

  Today more young professionals are choosing information security as a first career, bringing a post-graduate degree but little experience, writes John Colley, managing director EMEA of the International Information Systems Security Certification ...  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - New defence strategy in battle against e-crime

  E-crime has evolved into a booming business. Viruses, malware and online crime have moved from hacking vandalism into a major shadow economy that closely mimics the real business world, including profit-driven organised cybercrime, writes Yuval ...  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - Complying with security regulations is not enough

  The various legislation and industry standards that require businesses to protect sensitive data may drive us all a little nuts - the extra expense, investing the time to understand the new rules, business disruptions during the deployment process, ...  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - Taking security into your own hands

  Fingerprint biometrics is emerging as the authentication method of choice for access to enterprise data, applications and networks, writes Jim Fulton, vice-president of DigitalPersona.  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - Spam techniques reach new levels of sophistication

  Despite the proliferation of anti-spam solutions on the market, spam volume has reached epidemic proportions, writes Dan Hubbard, vice-president of security research at Websense.  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - IT governance critical to addressing information risk

  Information and its conduits provide the lifeblood of the modern business, writes Alan Calder of IT Governance ....  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity 2008 - Seamless security for roaming workers

  Work for many of today's employees is no longer restricted to the traditional 'nine-to-five' work day or the office environment. In our age of high-speed internet communications, more and more people can travel routinely for work or telecommute from...  Continue Reading

• The battle for internet advertising

  The massive market for online advertising is one that affects every internet user. Many ISPs, search engines and websites depend on advertising revenue for funding, and in the absence of those funding sources would either have to pass on additional ...  Continue Reading

• Be sure of making the complete case

  Governments and administrations are transient. And however complex, they are simple when compared with the complexities that surround how ID cards may be taken to and applied by the population. ID cards are only part of the identity management ...  Continue Reading

• Now is the time for action

  The key to this topic for me was a quote from Home Secretary Jacqui Smith: "Individuals to have as much control and ownership of their own data as possible," writes Andrea Simmons, consultant forum manager, BCS Security Forum.  Continue Reading

• Benefits to the citizen have yet to be proven

  In asking whether the government has got the business case for ID cards right, we need to understand precisely what that business case is, writes Geraint Price of Information Security Group, Royal Holloway, University of London.  Continue Reading

• Database administration security strategy

  Given the vital importance of the information held within corporate and government databases it is surprising that the security of these databases is often of unknown provenance.  Continue Reading

• Global village to impact on working practices

  According to Howard Grosvenor, managing consultant at people performance specialist SHL, global changes will have a great impact on the way we work in the future. UK employees will need to be flexible enough to continually work across time zones, ...  Continue Reading

• From infrastructure to innovation: the CIO thought revolution

  Cloud-based platforms and developer tools are set to revolutionise the IT industry  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity Europe 2008: Inside threat greater risk to data protection

  IT security has fast become a data-centric issue. Data is the most valuable asset in an organisation and the IT department must protect it or find itself in the headlines like HMRC and the Ministry of Defence. But as companies adjust their data ...  Continue Reading

• Security forecast: smartphones

  The modern mobile phone comes in two basic varieties. The more secure version is a stripped down 2G phone with very little data functionality. There are still some issues related to 2G confidentiality. First is the possibility that someone will ...  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity Europe 2008: Security governance and the wealth of nations

  What possible link could there be between the writings of an 18th century economist and the management of information security in the 21st century?  Continue Reading

• Seamless security for roaming workers

  Work for many of today's employees is no longer the traditional nine-to-five day or the office environment...  Continue Reading

• Catching the authorised hacker

  A threat looming ever larger in the minds of IT leaders is the risk of data loss through inappropriate behaviour or...  Continue Reading

• Which comes first: compliance, security or operability?

  The task of managing risk has changed dramatically, writes Raj Samani of ISSA UK...  Continue Reading

• Secret questions blow a hole in security

  It's a mystery to me why websites think "secret questions" are a good idea, writes Bruce Schneier, chief...  Continue Reading

• Letter from Richard Thomas: End pernicious trade in personal data

  The following is a letter by the information commissioner, Richard Thomas. It is reproduced from the Independent newspaper on 2 April 2008.  Continue Reading

• Sometimes the real threat is right under your nose

  Organisations often believe they need procedures to protect their databases from misuse by hackers outside the organisation, writes Jimmy Desai of law firm...  Continue Reading

• How to be big but agile

  The arguments for an agile approach to IT, particularly agile software development, are well established,...  Continue Reading

• Security is a management issue

  Many people in the UK still see security predominantly as an IT problem. But it's not it's a business one...  Continue Reading

• Towards another dotcom boom?

  At the University of Southampton's School of Electronics & Computer Science, we have just witnessed a major increase in computer science undergraduate numbers. In fact, our recent intake of 94 undergraduates, which is 20% higher than last year, is ...  Continue Reading

• Tackling the network eavesdropping risk

  Why do network security problems persist? While wireless network security issues continue to make current headlines, attention has been drawn away from the fact that wired networks are often affected by many of the same weaknesses. As a result, our ...  Continue Reading

• It pays to ask your IT provider, but don’t demand

  Ask any service provider and they will tell you about their struggles to manage the expectations of some clients, writes Phil Morris. Ask any IT professional and they will give an example of how their service providers just weren't doing what was ...  Continue Reading

• Data Centres Europe 2008 open for registration

  The BCS is the organisation sponsor for this year's 4th Data Centres Europe 2008 conference, which will be held 10 to 11 April, in London  Continue Reading

• Get a grip on your IT assets

  Licensing software should be simple. The IT department can keep track of IT assets such as desktop PCs, laptops and servers, so it should know what software is running. Unfortunately, the dynamics of business means software audits quickly go out of ...  Continue Reading

• Making Projects Work spring school to teach management skills

  The latest PROMS-G spring school, entitled Making Projects Work, will offer attendees the chance to improve their project management skills.  Continue Reading

• Infosecurity Europe to showcase latest technology

  Infosecurity Europe is Europe's number one dedicated information security event and yields a comprehensive convergence of information security professionals. It addresses today's strategic and technical issues in an education programme, and ...  Continue Reading

• IBM patent row: ensure protection at the agreement stage

  You do not expect to get sued when you buy IBM software, but that is exactly what happened to one US customer.  Continue Reading

• RFID, data security and the law

  The European Commission's new consultation on RFID...  Continue Reading

• Look before you leap into renegotiating an outsource deal

  The chancellor's downward revision of the 2008-09 UK growth forecast to 1.75%-2.25%...  Continue Reading

• Is software as a service the answer for SMEs?

  The more grey-haired among us grew up in an era before the personal computer, when our first experience of computing was often a teletype linked at just a few hundred bits/sec to a timeshared mainframe, writes Jim Norton. The dream in those days was...  Continue Reading

• CIOs can win with a high-octane strategy

  CIOs working in the banking and financial services arena are continually dancing to a familiar tune: the relentless pursuit of efficiency as a key driver of sustainable business growth. That's a very simple thing to say - but damned difficult to ...  Continue Reading

• The business can't abdicate its project responsibility

  A couple of years ago I was parachuted into a government project to review its requirements. The customer...  Continue Reading

• System administrators are biggest risk to corporate data

  My baby is leaving home, aged 23. We are now negotiating what he is legitimately allowed to take with him. First up is the TV. When you're setting up your own home, it's important to get your priorities right. The other main item is the door keys. ...  Continue Reading