IT Productivity, ITSM, IT Job Descriptions, Sarbanes Oxley, IT Salary
Survey, and Disaster Planning News Portal
July 2nd, 2008 - PDF Now an ISO Standard Along With Office Ipen XML
The Portable Document Format (PDF) is now an ISO International
Standard - ISO 32000-1. This move follows a decision by Adobe Systems
Incorporated, original developer and copyright owner of the format, to
relinquish control to ISO, who is now in charge of publishing the specifications
for the current version (1.7) and for updating and developing future
versions.
 
Adobe said that it is committed to open architecture and by
passing the copyright to ISO they now have a product that competes with
MicrosoftÂ’s Office Open XML, a proprietary XML-based document format it built
for its Office 2007 productivity suite, to the ISO. The ISO approved OOXML on
April 1 in a controversial vote that is still being contested by some of the
standards bodies that took part in it.
more info
June 27th, 2008 - IANA and ICANN Sites Hacked by
 Muslim hackers yesterday defaced the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA) site. IANA is the organization responsible for managing
the DNS root zone and assigning the DNS operators for the Internet's top-level
domains, such as .com and .org. DNS, which translates the domains and URLs -
such as e-janco.com - into IP addresses.
A group calling itself "NetDevilz" claimed responsibility for the hack, which
Thursday morning temporarily redirected visitors to the sites for IANA and ICANN
(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Users who tried to reach iana.com, iana-servers.com, icann.com and icann.net
were shunted to an illegitimate site. According to a screen capture of the
defacement snapped by zone-h.org, the bogus site simply displayed a taunting
message claiming ownerhship of the assignment processes.
more info
June 14th, 2008 - Average Worker Wastes 28% of The Day
Based on a study published in the New York Times, a typical
worker in information based job wastes 28% of their day with unimportant and
personal e-mails, text messages, voice mails. According to the
ITProductivity.org – an Information Technology think tank – most organizations
would be able to help their bottom line by doing the following:
- Install a robust firewall and SPAM filter at the front end of
the corporate mail server
- Improve SPAM filters on both desktops and smart
phones
- Provide company owned laptops and smart phones that have
robust SPAM filtering software and
- Limit the accessibility to POP and non-company mail
servers
more info
June 13th, 2008 - 35% of Businesses Do Not Open Doors After a Disaster
It is impossible to deny how important disaster recovery and
business continuity are in today's digital economy. In a survey conducted
by FEMA fully 35% of all businesses that are impacted by a disaster never
re-open their doors.
 Without systems in place to keep applications and data flowing
after a natural disaster or other interruption, a business risks losses that
extend far beyond a manufacturing plant or data center. Many businesses incur
ongoing financial loses, damage to a businesses' reputation, and possible
regulatory and legal sanctions. In a worst-case scenario like 35% of the
companies that FEMA estimated, a company can find its existence
threatened.
How can an organization tackle disaster recovery and business
continuity issues effectively? How can it develop a strategy that reduces risk
and increases the likelihood of success? And how can it devise a roadmap for
coping with constant change? There are no easy answers, but the Disaster
Recovery Planning Template with the Security Manual Template are a step in
the right direction.
more info
June 12th, 2008 - IT Hit by Tough Economic Times
Hiring and spending has slowed down in IT as businesses try
to control costs in tough economic times
Park City, UT - The prospect for
IT professionals is not good. Janco has found that IT compensation growth
remains flat, hiring is limited to key replacements, and discretionary spending
has been cut back and in many cases eliminated. The CEO of Janco said, "As we
collected compensation data for our mid-year 2008 IT Salary Survey we found that
at the end of the first quarter businesses turned off the faucet for IT
spending. Many businesses, in response to economic projections, slowed down and
halted discretionary spending for software and hardware as well as placed hiring
requisitions on a slow track."
 The summary findings in Janco 2008 Mid-Year IT Salary
Survey are:
- Hiring demand is now the lowest it has been since 2004. Many
enterprises have stopped hiring except for key replacements and those
positions are being replaced at lower salary levels.
- Enterprises have slowed down and in many cases eliminated
discretionary spending by IT. This has resulted in fewer projects being
initiated, consultants use being reduced (if not eliminated), and a slow-down
of initiatives that had already been approved.
- In the last twelve (12) months the increases in compensation
for most IT Professionals were lower than increases in the cost of
living.
- The mean increase in compensation for CIO's was less that
1.5%. The mean compensation for CIOs in large enterprises now is $179,823 and
$171,755 for CIOs in mid-sized enterprises. (Large enterprises have over
$500 million in revenue and mid-sized have are $100 to $499 million in
revenue).
- The mean compensation (which includes bonuses) for all
Executive IT positions surveyed now is $144,645 in large enterprises and
$131,763 in mid-sized enterprises.
- Positions that were in high demand in the 4th quarter of 2007
such as CSOs and others to develop new Web 2.0 applications are now back to
normal hiring patterns.
- Administrative positions in some IT functions are now being
looked at as those that are expendable
more info
June 11th, 2008 - Google Yahoo Merger Protested
The American Corn Growers Association asked Congress, via letters to John
Conyers and Patrick Leahy, to look closely at any potential search advertising
tie-in with the top two search providers Google and Yahoo.
They said that Without competition, the free enterprise system suffers. It is
true across all segments of industry, and that includes the business of
agriculture.
 The American Corn Growers Association
represents part of a thriving industry knows it has to adapt and change to
survive market conditions through the years.
An AGCA spokesperson said it is no different for the family farmers out
there, who have come to use search advertising as a way to mitigate risks
associated with supplying customers and their businesses. Fewer providers, they
fear, means higher prices.
more info
June 9th, 2008 - Bank of NY Mellon Loses 4.5 Million Records
The Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon lost multiple sets of unencrypted
backup tapes containing private data belonging to 4.5 million individuals.
Third-party vendors misplaced the tapes during transport to off-site locations.
According to the bank, the tapes "included shareowner and plan participant
account information, such as name, mailing address, Social Security number, and
transaction activity."
Responding to the bank's delay in reporting one incident, which was not
disclosed for over three (3) months, the Connecticut Governor said: "The
disastrous effects of identity theft are virtually instantaneous in today's
computerized world, and the lag time between the theft and the notification only
aggravates what is an already outrageous situation."
 BNY Mellon's chief risk officer said the bank now plans to improve
security related to backup tapes. From Computerworld - "To bolster its security
controls, the bank said it will now require that any confidential data written
on tapes or CDs for transport must be encrypted or transported with undisclosed
additional data protections. Further, when "technically feasible," the bank will
demand that encrypted confidential data be delivered to off-site facilities
electronically".
After exposing 4.5 million people to identity theft, it seems the notion of
tape encryption suddenly popped into their heads.
more info
June 3rd, 2008 - PDAs, Laptops, WiFi, and Internet Cafés Make Vacation Like Work
With the advent of wide-scale connectivity around the globe people now do
have the ability to get away from it all. In two recent trips the CEO of
Janco was able to connect while in the Amazon via a Internet Café that
was driven by a satellite dish and a diesel generator and in Belarus via a
public WiFi connection.
 One in
four workers said they plan to stay connected with work while they are on
vacation this summer, a percentage that has nearly doubled in the last two
years, according to a survey released by CareerBuilder. The bulk of these
hyper-connected workers were in the IT industry. Beat out only by sales workers,
37 percent of IT workers said they planned to check in while away.
Yet while IT workers also led the way in the requirement to be connected in
the off-hours - 19 percent said working, checking voice mail and/or e-mail while
on vacation was mandated by their employers - the reverse of this is that four
in five IT workers are checking in with their jobs while on vacation on their
own volition.
The Solutions Research Group study found that 68 percent of Americans feel
anxious when they are not connected in one way or another. This disconnect
anxiety (feelings of disorientation and nervousness when a person is
deprived of Internet or wireless access for a period of time) affects all age
groups, describing their feelings when offline as dazed, tense, inadequate and
even panicked. The study also found that 63 percent of BlackBerry users
admitted to having sent a message from the bathroom.
In fact, this concept of "technology addiction" has gone so far that U.S.
psychiatrists are considering adding this "compulsive-impulsive" disorder to the
next release of the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders) in 2011.
more info
May 30th, 2008 - Firefox and IE Continue Browser War
Firefox has just released the first release candidate for Firefox Version
3.0. At the same time Microsoft has announced that it will release a
second beta of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) before the end of October. Both
Mozilla (Firefox) and Microsoft (IE) are looking to at the future.
Firefox version 3.0 has a cleaner look and is significantlty faster than
prior versions. One issue over the long terrn will be the exposure to
security breaches with the Master Password feature.
 IE 8.0 will
default to a standards-compliant rendering of Web content -- an approach that
had been pushed by site developers in lieu of a mode that stresses compatibility
with IE7. A new tag, which can be applied on a per-page basis or site wide,
instructs IE8 to display the content as would IE7. Browsing with this default
setting in IE8 may cause content written for previous versions of Internet
Explorer to display differently than intended
The first beta of IE8 is not exactly in widespread use. According to the
latest data from Janco
Browser and Operating System Market Share Study IE8 Beta 1 accounted for
just .03% of all browsers used in May 2008. IE7, by comparison, held the top
spot with a market share of 30.07% and IE 6 at 34.22%.
more info
May 28th, 2008 - Technology Needs to be User Friendly
As more technology is released to users vendors face a risk of too much "bang
for the buck".
What many vendors do not realize is there are a large number of
users who just do not like to change. These
people are not technophiles, they are just users who comfortable with what they
are using and they do not want to deal with the risk that something they depend
on does not work.
Many feel that just because a product is old it does not mean it do not meet
their requirements. Eventually as their computers get replaced they will move to
a new version of an OS and Browser because that is what the computer comes with.
A great example of this reluctance to change is Vista. After 18 months, many
have not moved to it because they do not to risk what they have that works with
something new.
Another example is seen in a a survey by Opinion Research Corp. which
found that non-iPhone and non-BlackBerry smart phones were the single
most-returned gift during the most recent holiday season; more than one-fifth of
those purchased were brought back to stores. Why? The top reason was the
inability to understand the setup process.
Returned gadgets are bad enough for the companies that make them, but the
survey also found that almost 16% of those polled said that trouble with phone
setup 'significantly worsened their perception of the company that manufactured
the product."
more info
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