AKIBIA'S PRACTICAL GUIDE TO ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
Entries by Date: 2010
The Next Generation of Smartphones in the Enterprise
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
In recent years the Smartphone market has turned the industry upside down. According to comScore, (http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/12/u-s-smartphone-vs-non-smartphone-subscriber-share/), Smartphone adoption in the U.S. now represents 1 in 4 subscribers, compared to 1 in 10 just two years ago. Enterprise IT Administrators are now struggling to test and manage different types of handheld devices’ access to corporate networks. In the past, IT Administrators were able to mandate what phones were approved and limit corporate Smartphones to one or two models.
How to Ensure a Successful Monitoring Implementation
Monday, October 25, 2010
When considering embarking on a monitoring solution, it is probable the scope of need is already defined because “something” occurred. Was it a down server that cost the company revenue? Was there a staff reduction and increasing technology requirements? Did an office move and customers are complaining things are slow? Or a server was down and the CTO was the first to notice? Embarking on a monitoring initiative for your department or company, on the surface, is a fairly straightforward task. But, digging deeper in the world of monitoring, above and beyond functionality, there are several keys factors to consider for success.
Too Many Requirements; How One VP of IT Handles It
Thursday, September 30, 2010
In 1996 IT departments were only concerned with two mandates, but today there are over 200 and more than 2500 security controls associated with them. The cost, both in budget and time, associated with understanding, addressing and proving compliance with these ever expanding mandates is considerable. Because requirements expand and change on a regular basis, the project of managing compliance is never complete, leaving CIOs and their IT departments constantly at risk of non-compliance.
The Missing Link
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Bill Brown has taken a bold step in the IT management world. Bill, who is the current CIO at Iron Mountain has carved out a newly created position as the SVP Global Compliance Process. While the traditional approach is to put someone in charge of overall audit and legal compliance, Bill has smartly created a bridge position between the business need for compliance and the IT operational delivery of the same.
Informationweek Survey of Sun Customers - Demonstrably Worse Service
Thursday, August 19, 2010
An interesting survey from InformationWeek’s Analytics team points to dissatisfaction among the legacy Sun customer base.
The Death of Information Security
Monday, August 16, 2010
It may be hard for you to imagine a day without an Information Security group, but the truth is that the role of the security team is changing rapidly as priorities shift and other functions become more security savvy. Certainly the responsibilities of the current security team won't ever disappear, but I see more and more organizations adopting a decentralized model of managing information security. We now have robust privacy and compliance functions within many organizations with responsibilities that greatly overlap with the traditional security team. The most significant trend that I see is the move towards a deeper focus on risk management principles.
Moving to Larger Mailbox Sizes with Exchange 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
In the age of Google, Hot Mail, Yahoo and other ISP’s offering large mailboxes to consumers and even to businesses through a cloud based service, corporate customers have started asking why their organization’s messaging service is not able to provide larger mailboxes. IT departments have their own challenges in managing mailbox services at such a large scale with reduced budgets and demand for more efficiency and productivity. This blog sheds some light on the challenges for provisioning large mailboxes on a “On Premise” messaging system such as Microsoft Exchange and briefly discusses the capabilities of Exchange 2010 and the role it could play in this space.
Top 10 Features in Exchange 2010 for Users
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
After many interactions with Microsoft clients and end users I have found that many of them are still trying to understand what’s in it for them with an upgrade to the latest and greatest Exchange 2010. This blog hopefully will answer some of those questions. The top features listed here are geared towards making it simpler to manage large mailboxes and improving productivity for end users. In a future blog I will cover the top features of Exchange 2010 that are relevant to administrators and business in general.
Low Risk Support Alternatives for Cisco End of Life Equipment
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Corporations universally have been reducing corporate IT budgets as a way to preserve profitability in these difficult economic times. CIO’s and especially IT Managers are experiencing increasing demands for improving the reliability of their network infrastructure services while maintaining their current services levels and without increasing expenses. Network outages are simply not an option. Finding solutions that are low risk is their key guideline when it comes to maintaining their network.
Health Providers Beware of the New HITECH Act
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or more commonly known as the HITECH Act, is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This act appears to put some teeth into the HIPAA regulation of 1996. The HITECH Act wants to provide some general and specific incentives for companies to adopt the electronic health record (EHR) systems for health organizations. With these incentives also comes greater increased privacy and security protections for consumers and potential increased liability for those that are not in compliance.
Compliance and Security Go Hand in Hand – How to Achieve Both
Friday, May 28, 2010
The buzzword “Compliance” has now overshadowed many of the previous popular terms in security discussions. Many equate “compliance” with “security,” but recent literature abounds with titles such as “Compliant Does Not Mean Secure” and “Information Assurance: The Difference between Secure and Compliant.” These articles make the case that it is possible to be compliant yet not secure. Most discussions focus on payment card industry (PCI) security, because of the high value of the data involved, the stringency of the compliance standards, and recent security breaches of major players. It is also useful for illustration purposes, since the typical PCI technical environment is usually confined, and the standards are very specific. However, it is important to expand the discussion beyond one security standard, especially since others are more comprehensive, although less specific.
A Boston Globe Article Ignites a Password Controversy - Why We Need Them, How to Make Them Effective
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The article by Mark Pothier in the Sunday Boston Globe entitled “Please Do Not Change Your Password” has caused some controversy among IT staff members, security managers, and technology users. The article provides a compelling argument that the costs associated with frequent password changes outweighs the costs of security breaches caused by weak or static passwords. Although a position on either side of this debate may be supportable, the reality is that there are a number of standards that organizations (your employer for example) must follow including periodic password changes, password complexity requirements and password history requirements.
Reviewing Oracle’s Changes - Has the Sun Set on Sun Systems?
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Now that Oracle’s acquisition is complete and their changes for Sun hardware and support have been announced it is time for customers to determine whether Sun’s products and support will work for their environments over the short and long term.
New Requirement - New Fire Drill?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Gartner research suggests that companies that select individual solutions for each regulatory challenge spend 10 times more on the IT portion of compliance projects than companies that take a proactive and more integrated approach. One grocery chain in New England is doing just that.
Why HP is Worried about TPM’s
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Recently HP’s anti-third party maintenance data sheet crossed my desk. Why is a multi billion dollar hardware behemoth worried about third party support providers? The fact that this datasheet even exists is proof that a large number of forward-thinking, innovative companies are looking to third party maintainers for customized, high-value, lower cost data center support services. In fact, more than two-thirds of all companies leverage a third party maintainer for IT support today.
Has the Sun Set on Flexible Support Options?
Thursday, February 18, 2010
As the dust has settled on Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, some interesting questions remain for companies thinking about their support options.
You Inherited Your Cisco Infrastructure, But Do You Know Why You are Still Buying It?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
All too often companies say “we are a Cisco shop” in answer to discussing alternative solutions to core switching, routing, branch office switches and wireless networking. While Cisco is a good product and worthy of investment, why are so many companies not even considering alternatives at all?
Your Workers are Surfing While Snacking on a Big Mac - Time to Revisit Managing Your End-Point.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The availability of wireless networks has proliferated in our society to the point where even at your neighborhood McDonalds you can get online. 27 million people eat at one of McDonald’s 30,000 restaurants per day so chances are high someone on your team will connect in from McDonalds often. With this increased Wi-Fi availability, comes greater requirements for organizations to secure and protect the end-point.
Ensuring Security in the Virtualized Environment
Friday, January 08, 2010
With virtualization more and more prevalent in your IT infrastructure, this is a good time to ensure your virtualized environment is meeting the same high standards for security that you have set for your non-virtual infrastructure.
