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The first step is to create a password that is hard to quess but easy to remember. ThatÂ’s easier said than done, but some guidelines can help users create passwords that are more secure than what they currently use.

A good password is a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that cannot be found in a dictionary. A password should be at least six characters long and should not have any personal information such as the userÂ’s name, childÂ’s name, occupation, telephone number, address or birth date. A combination of letters, numbers and symbols will work best, although some systems allow a different set of characters than others, so the use of characters like the semi-colon can be problematic. It is also important to use a mixture of capital and lower-case letters to make a password even more difficult to guess. Best practices for a strong password policy are:

• Users should change their passwords regularly – once every three months at a minimum.
• Enterprises should train their employees and associates to use several techniques that can make existing passwords more difficult for hackers to crack. The method chosen should be easy and understandable to make stronger passwords without much effort.

A strong password policy may increase help desk costs and user frustration and result in lost productivity. To implement a strong password policy that works, an enterprise should research techniques, establish a policy, train its employees, and adjust their authentication processes or systems to reflect the harder password requirements. Many studies show that employees cannot or refuse to remember multiple passwords, and take shortcuts which create a less secure environment.

•  Mean Time to Repair,
• First Fix Rate,
• Change Success Rate, and
• Server to System Administration Ratio

Regardless of how you measure up to high performers, there are steps you can take to improve your processes. Start by controlling change to manage unplanned work— it is an amazingly simple and significant way to improve performance and processes, especially when compared to wading through a sea of best practices literature that may not be relevant to your cause. It’s also helpful to know that in any improvement endeavor, the 80/20 rule applies: 20% of the set of IT controls result in 80% of the realized benefit.

Let metrics that matter guide you.

• Internet Adoption - By 2011, 39% of respondents said they expect to increase Internet use on their mobile device by at least 40%.
• Desired Content - 71% of respondents acknowledged that they expect to increase their usage of communication services such as obtaining maps and directions, instant messaging, social networking, emailing and reading the news from their mobile device. 
• Age Preferences - The mobile Internet is the most popular among Generation X and Generation Y, as they tend to be more technology savvy and have a greater exposure and acceptance of emerging technologies. Over 50% of respondents who chose "Strong to Full substitution" of accessing the PC versus a mobile device were 15-30 years old and believe the industry is doing its best to advance the mobile Web, although most are still unsatisfied with the price and services offered by carriers and handset manufacturers.
• Brand loyalty - Consumers are most loyal to their preferred brands for communication services such as email and instant messaging, but the survey found a lack of loyalty for entertainment services. Over 50% would like to use the same brand on their PC and mobile device when emailing, banking and instant messaging.
• Device Features - While there is an overall consensus that the industry is doing its bit for mobile Web, more consumers desire greater affordability, awareness and better content and applications for the mobile Internet. In terms of device features, the survey found consumers prefer a large screen, high resolution, internal memory, and quick speed data transfer as the most important and desired features in their mobile device.
• Implications - In order to stimulate and increase mobile Internet adoption, device makers, mobile operators, Internet service providers, mobile application developers and content providers need to consider the following:
  
  1. Define their mobile Internet strategy by understanding consumer behaviors and needs to identify the strategy that best leverages their core strengths.
  
  2. Transform their business model to align with the identified mobile internet strategy: this touches areas such as Research & Development, Marketing & Sales or Services Delivery.
  
  3.  Establish and host a reliable, cost-efficient and scalable infrastructure to deliver mobile internet services to consumers.
  
  4. Improve devices in terms of processing power, memory, resolution, screen size and intuitive user interfaces. Specifically device makers need to think about how to integrate technologies such as nano projectors and projected virtual keyboards.
  
  5. Move towards a high adoption of open standards and open source to further grow and nurture the ecosystem.

But although the overall job market continued to worsen in the second and third quarters, employment in the IT sector is not nearly as bleak. In fact, according to the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses, IT employment is on the rise.

This year, businesses have added close to 90,000 IT professionals in theiremploy - a gain that is in contrast to the job market as a whole, which had lost a total of 463,000 jobs by the end of June. What's more, in June the number of IT professionals employed in the U.S. reached an all-time high of close to 4 million.

According to a number of survey, including the one published by Janco Associates, wages in the Inormation Technology sector are holding steady. The latest Yoh Index of Technology Wages found that pay remained stable throughout June and even finished up slightly (0.29%) from June of last year.

The economy's current struggles are different from those before the dot com bubble, when overvalued tech stocks caused the bubble to burst, sending many technology companies, and the economy, tumbling. This time, the slowdown was sparked by the subprime mortgage crisis, putting contractors and real estate moguls, not Information Technology professionals, at greatest risk.  However if IT professionals in the financial services sector in the New York area are excluded from that comment.

Second, there are certain skills that a business simply cannot live without, skills that no recession or economic downturn can eliminate the need for. In fact, in many cases, the workers who possess such skills become even more valuable during an economic slump or recession, because they are integral to keeping the company afloat and moving forward.

Regardless of the status of the economy, there will always be a demand for Information Technology professionals involved in R&D or product development, since they create or enhance a company's product line.

Basic policy requires a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that cannot be found in a dictionary.  A password should be at least six characters long and should not have any personal information such as the userÂ’s name, childÂ’s name, occupation, telephone number, address or birth date.  Use a mixture of capital and lower-case letters to make a password even more difficult to guess.

Users should change their passwords regularly - once every three months at a minimum.

The main benefit of implementing a strong password policy is that it avoids the start-up and implementation cost of some of the other solutions. It may increase help desk costs and user frustration and result in lost productivity.

To implement a strong password policy, a company must research techniques, establish a policy, train its employees, and adjust their authentication processes or systems to reflect the harder password requirements.

There are many potential downsides. Many studies show that employees cannot or refuse to remember multiple passwords, and take shortcuts which create a less secure environment.

There is a fine line between downtime being merely a minor inconvenience to internal users and resulting in lost opportunities. When a system is down, business and employee productivity suffers. An internal failure, for instance, may impede the ability of a technology company to prepare proposals or respond to customer queries. If repeated outages prevent employees from accessing corporate systems or completing tasks, the long-term negative effects can be significant. If applications are worth running in the first place, they also are worth protecting.

Charged with the task of extending disaster recovery capabilities to cover a broader spectrum of applications in the enterprise, IT departments are beginning to explore new disaster recovery alternatives. An emerging trend is for organizations to leverage server virtualization to achieve disaster recovery capabilities. Once confined to use primarily in software development, test and server consolidation scenarios, server virtualization and supporting technologies can afford significant cost and performance advantages over conventional recovery options.

 Trying to add up individual system performance metrics to understand actual application or end user performance does not work either. Due to advances in hardware reliability and performance as well as architecture, the causes of most performance problems today are usually problems with application components, as opposed to individual pieces of hardware. As a result, system monitoring alone, while still critical, will not provide an accurate or complete picture of true application performance. True end user focused monitoring is critical and is an essential piece of todayÂ’s monitoring strategy.

The single count indictment, returned on Oct. 7, 2008, and unsealed today, alleges that on approximately Sept. 16, 2008 a resident of Knoxville, obtained unauthorized access to the Vice Presidential candidateÂ’s personal e-mail account by allegedly resetting the account password.  According to the indictment, after answering a series of security questions that allowed him to reset the password and gain access to the e-mail account, the email hacker allegedly read the contents of the account and made screenshots of the e-mail directory, e-mail content and other personal information.  According to the indictment, the email hacker posted screenshots of the e-mails and other personal information to a public Web site.  The email hacker also allegedly posted the new e-mail account password that he had created, thus providing access to the account by others.

• Standard Complexity - General business products or applications and require product proficiency to effectively support the business in an IT Service Management environment.
• Moderate Complexity - Increasingly complex products running in a variety of environments require advanced technical and/or business skills to provide effective support for improved IT Service Management.
• High Complexity - Complex application and/or operating environments require high degree of technical and/or business expertise.

• Industry and/or enterprise specific knowledge - Information technologists who have intimate specific industry or business knowledge that can translate to improved productivity or revenue to the enterprise.
• Cross-discipline expertise - Information technologists who know have a good working knowledge about an IT technology or approach that can be applied in many industries and or enterprises such as data (structured, unstructured), media, tools and applications.
• High risk and impact skills - Information technologists who are willing to take risks and create results.  For example, they can guarantee a complete functional solution within a specified time-frame or budget.
• Limited external supply - Information technologists who have skills that are not readily available on the outside.  These can be skills associated with a new technology that few know about or an obsolete technology that are not easily learned.  Often these skills reside with outsourcers and consulting firms.
• Consistency with direction -   Information technologists who are going with the flow of technology and the industry but have good "core".

You areas included with this policy template are:

• Record retention requirements for SOX sections 103a, 302, 404, 409, 801a and 802.
• Policy
• Standard
  • Scope
  • Responsibilities
  • Record Management
  • Compliance and Enforcement
  • Email Retention and Compliance
• Job Description Manager Record Administrator
• 12 forms for Record Retention and Disposition Schedule

• SARBANES-OXLEY ACT requires accurate reporting of all assets, including computer assets. Non-compliance carries severe penalties (fines of up to $5 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years) for senior management.
• CALIFORNIA SENATE BILL 1386 requires all organizations in the state of California that own or license computerized data containing personal information to disclose to residents any breach of security if unencrypted personal information is reasonably thought to have been compromised by an unauthorized person. Furthermore, the bill extends beyond California's borders because it also applies to any business that holds data on a California resident. Most states have also adopted legislation similar in scope to Senate Bill 1386.14
• GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY is a law that mandates that all companies protect the security and confidentiality of their customers' private information. To comply, organizations storing personal customer information must identify and safeguard against the loss of any personal information.
• HIPAA (HEALTH INSURANCE PORTABILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT), establishes rules for handling and securing medical records to ensure the privacy and security of patient information. The act pertains to organizations - including school districts - that process, transmit or store protected health information. Noncompliance carries significant civil and criminal penalties. Since most districts maintain student medical records on at least some of their computers, they must therefore comply with HIPAA.

States that do not have such laws are:

• Alabama
• Iowa
• Kentucky
• Maryland
• Mississippi
• Nebraska
• New Mexico
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Virginia
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Impact on IT Professionals

The actual percentages were 71.63% - Laid off; 8,65% - Quit within 90 days of the outsourcing; and 19.72% - Remained with the company at least 90 days after outsourcing.

Outsourcing by Industry

Outsourcing is occurring at various levels by industry.

In the "Best Updated Add-on" category, Mozilla also pegged three winners, including Read it Later, a bookmarking substitute; TagSifter, which lets users browse bookmarks by their tags; and Bookmark Previews, an extension that adds album and thumbnail views of bookmarked sites.

Some of the factors driving secure messaging are:

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) holds CEOs and CFOs of public companies personally accountable for documenting and controlling business processes and systems with intentional offenders facing up to twenty years behind bars.
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations are aimed at protecting patient privacy. Penalties range for up to ten years in prison with fines to $250,000 for knowingly misusing individually identifiable health information.
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) mandate financial institutions of all types - from banks and security firms to tax-return preparers, credit counselors, real estate settlement services and insurance companies - to follow a host of provisions for protecting consumersÂ’ personal financial information.
• Corporations doing business internationally are forced to adhere to other countries' laws as well. There are Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the United Kingdom's Data Protection Act (OPA) and the European Union Privacy Directive.
• Corporations doing business with the US Government must comply with FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) when implementing email security.
• In the United States individual states have also initiated laws relating to a company's responsibility to maintain customer personal information confidentiality. CaliforniaÂ’s AB1950 requires businesses that store or manage residents' "private" information provide "reasonable security" for that data.
• Internal governance, privacy and intellectual property protection concerns are also driving organizations to take a closer look at technologies that can protect data both stored in databases and transmitted via the internet.

The data center is unstable because it was built on a landfill. The foundation has been cracking and part of the facility is sinking. The IT staff avoids adding more weight in some sections to help stabilize the building. The data center also has some single points of failure, including one power source, which is unacceptable.

For example, while too much success may not sound like a threat to the business, it can become one if the business is not prepared to handle a surge in customer demand. For example, when VictoriaÂ’s Secret televised a fashion show during the 1997 American foot­ball Super Bowl, the company was unable to scale to meet the ensuing demand for access to its Web site, resulting in significant performance degradation and customer dissatisfaction.

On the other hand, a disruption in business operations and services, whether from a natural disaster, a terrorist strike, a cyber attack or a simple malfunc­tion, can seriously reduce your revenues and even do long-term damage to your brand. Industry estimates indicate that upwards of 40 percent of organi­zations without business continuity and recovery plans will go out of business within a few years of a major disaster.

The best response to the threat of disaster is to combine several disparate risk-management strategies into a single, integrated resilience strategy that will allow your organization to adapt and respond rapidly to opportunities, regulations and risks - in order to maintain security-rich business operations, be a more trusted partner and enable growth.

The Janco Disaster Recovery Plan & Business Continuity Template is just such a solution.

·         Physical Consolidation - Physical consolidation involves migrating and/or combining workloads from multiple physical servers onto larger or newer physical hardware configurations such as blade servers. Blade server technology aids physical consolidations by allowing organizations to make the most of data center floor and rack space. Factors driving physical consolidation may include:

1.       The retirement of legacy or end-of-lease hardware.

2.       Data center relocations – i.e. moves to regions where power and cooling costs are significantly lower or where local government offers new business incentives.

3.       Post-merger or acquisition IT consolidations.

Physical consolidation requires the movement of workloads between hardware platforms via physical-to-physical workload migration. Consider a multiplatform workload migration solution that supports different hardware configurations and server technologies to accommodate future changes in server infrastructure.

·         Virtual Consolidation - Virtual consolidation involves migrating workloads from physical servers to virtual hosts running virtualization infrastructures hardware and software. Virtualization allows more efficient sharing of physical resources to deliver higher CPU utilization rates. It also reduces the total number of servers needed to run the business, as multiple workloads can be combined and hosted on a single virtual machine host. Server consolidation through virtualization requires the movement of physical workloads to virtual platforms via physical-to-virtual (P2V) workload migration. This task may be performed over a local network (LAN) or across greater distances using a WAN. In cases where bandwidth or lack of connectivity between sites is an issue, staged workload migrations may be required in which workloads are captured to image archives, redeployed on the virtual hosts at the remote site and then synchronized to capture any changes that occurred during the move.