regulatory compliance

HP upgrades archiving software

Mon, 19 May 2008 06:59:59 -0400

Hewlett-Packard Co. has rolled out an improved version of its HP Database Archiving software that could be good news for IT pros. The new software comes equipped with a visual design tool that HP says will allow IT departments to quickly model their core business applications and maintain data for regulatory compliance and e-discovery needs.

Kevin O'Malley, product marketing manager for database archiving at HP, said the new software "marries the infrastructure and business."

"We think this will change the game, he said. "Customers can do archived deployment far more readily and align the business and the IT objectives of managing the data."

To read more about the new HP software:
- check out this searchcio.com article

Protect your system with archiving software

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:59:58 -0500

There's a growing demand for archiving software among CIOs who want to protect their systems from incidents involving disaster recovery and business continuity, according to market research firm IDC, which last week published its Quarterly Storage Software Tracker report. The data tells it all. Worldwide revenues from storage software license and maintenance fees were up nearly $3 billion during the third quarter of 2007, an increase of nearly 10 percent from the same period in 2006.

"Overall market growth was driven by strong performance in both the archiving and data protection and recovery markets," according to Michael Margossian, research analyst, Storage Software at IDC. "Customer demand for storage replication seems to be cooling off, while the need for archiving appears to be picking up." There were plenty of reasons for the growth of the archiving market, including regulatory compliance, overall storage needs and eDiscovery. Check out the top five vendors worldwide and their share of this growing market in this IDG article on the IDC survey.

For more on this market trend:
- See this IDG Article

Spare no expense

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:00:00 -0500

It's time for CIOs to bite the bullet on the cost of protecting corporate information. Many companies remain clueless about what information needs to be protected, and it's a CIO's job to make the company understands that leaving content unprotected is asking for disaster. A survey by AIIM--The ECM Association--found that among 600 business people surveyed, nearly two-thirds said their organizations had "no appreciation" for the costs of lost data, not to mention the harm that can come from hacked data being used by criminal minds.

The business community is not really up to speed on why content needs to be secured. The top reasons for protecting data were listed in the survey as general risk avoidance, followed by regulatory compliance as well as e-discovery and litigation concerns. Less than one-third of those surveyed said they didn't know if their company had specific controls to ensure their validity and security.

CIOs are not teachers, but they are leaders. And it is becoming increasingly important to move businesses toward an understanding of what is at stake and to make the right choices in security protection. If you don't, you may be heading for a disaster. - Judi

Searching For A Signal

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:01:40 -0400

There's a good study out from Citigroup Investment Research that features the results of a first-quarter 2007 survey of 100 U.S. CIOs. Of those surveyed, 83 percent expect to see economic recovery in 2007, yet almost half say that their spending will remain flat. When they do spend, security tops the list as does server consolidation, application and business intelligence software deployment and regulatory/compliance projects.

In today's issue, we have a few excerpts from an interview with Google's CIO on security. The company has been pretty quiet about its security initiatives, but has lately become more vocal, even featuring a security blog on its site. We've also included some information on succession planning for CIOs, which is an issue that comes up frequently when I talk with CIOs. And in today's technology section, we discuss Municipal WiFi, based on news and interviews that came out of a conference this week in Boston, where a number of CIOs discussed deployment plans. Personally, I'm pretty excited about the prospects of MuniWiFi. After spending the last four days in three different cities, I'm getting a bit tired of searching for the nearest Starbucks and handing over $10 a day for Internet access--and that doesn't even include the money I spend on coffee in the process. -Patty

Survey: Storage and security are merging

Tue, 22 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

A new study by consultancy Taneja Group finds that storage administrators are facing increasing pressure to encrypt sensitive corporate data and to secure multiple endpoints of a scaling IT infrastructure. That has forced storage administrators to become more involved with security. About 65 percent of respondents said that regulatory compliance was a major factor in boosting storage security efforts, while 57 percent listed liability concerns. Storage security is so important that it has become the top priority for 29 percent of respondents and a top five priority at 68 percent of the sites surveyed.

Learn more about the marriage of storage and security:
- read the article at ComputerWorld

Data center challenges

Sun, 20 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

There are five major issues IT managers must consider to ensure smooth data center operations in 2007: regulatory compliance, disaster recovery/business continuity, power, cooling, and IT as a service. In the compliance arena, recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make it necessary to store key data for longer periods as to be able to retrieve that information at a granular level. Disaster recovery is crucial, but business continuity seldom goes beyond the planning stages at most companies until downtime or data loss hit. Power continues to lead as a concern for data center operations. Per-cabinet power consumption has steadily increased over the past several years, and faster CPUs, larger memory chips, and smaller disk drives also continue to increase power demands. Careful planning and growth projections must be maintained to ensure that power requirements can be met. Approximately half of the power consumed by a data center is required for cooling. Alternate approaches, or a reduction in the amount of equipment housed in each cabinet, must be considered. Finally, customers will continue to leverage the computing and storage infrastructure managed hosting operators have made large investments in, and companies will continue to derive increased cost savings and benefits by using shared, highly available infrastructure.

Read more on data center issues:
- read the article at LocalTechWire.com

ALSO:
- read this on the greening of data centers
- and this on energy efficiency in the data center

Study: Poor governance = project failure

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:01:39 -0400

IT governance initiatives are generally deployed only within the IT department, leading to a lack of coordination between the IT part of the project and the overall management of business transformation initiatives. This type of poor IT governance leads to project failure, increased costs, data security risks, problems with regulatory compliance and inefficiency, according to a report from consultancy Butler Group. Much of this, the report says, is due to a lack of awareness of IT in boardrooms, although it is generally believed to be the board's responsibility to ensure that large capital expenditures are managed properly. The solution is creating a separate IT governance committee with non-IT executives to oversee and scrutinize large IT projects. This committee can also ensure that risks are identified and mitigated and that transparency exists.

Learn more about the effects of poor IT governance:
- read the article at Silicon

ALSO: read this on the importance of IT governance

One-stop compliance tools on their way

Wed, 10 May 2006 20:01:35 -0400

Every year brings more regulation and compliance mandates, and IT is typically tasked to find the right solution and process for attaining regulatory compliance. The big problem enterprises are finding is that there are few solutions that can achieve that goal because the various rules each have their own requirements. But one vendor has put in the time to cross-track the rules and mandates to achieve greater efficiency in the industry of life sciences. The goal is a single configurable system that helps grab data and put policies in place that meet legislative needs. For example, compliance vendor Qumas discovered that the policy, processes and procedures for the FDA had a lot in common with the processes for SOX and even new insurance industry rules.

For more on one-point compliance solutions:
- read this Newsfactor article

Compliance, not malware, drives security costs

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 20:01:38 -0400

If you think viruses, Trojans and increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks are responsible for pushing security budgets higher every year, think again. According to a new report, the mandate to meet regulatory and compliance requirements is actually the top instigator. According to a recent survey of 50 chief security officers conducted by Merrill Lynch, regulatory compliance is the top business driver for investing in security software. The second most critical factor is the quest to protect networks from unauthorized access.

For more on top security issues:
- read this article at InformationWeek