bane

Spam turns 30

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:59:59 -0400

Spam, the bane of every office and personal email system, celebrated its 30th birthday on May 3 and as every CIO knows, age hasn't stopped the scourge from remaining ubiquitous. Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicted in 2004 that the spam problem would be solved in two years. But Sophos, an email security company, says that 95 percent of all email today is spam, while Symantec says that figure is more like 80 percent to 85 percent. Due to sophisticated solutions, email service providers and the hard work of IT managers, end users only see a fraction of what's out there. But the spammers are an industrious lot, constantly presenting new security risks to company systems and offering an unrelenting array of solicitations for unwary victims. Princeton computer science professor Ed Felten says "there is more spam than ever and no end is in sight."

For more on spam's significant birthday:
- See this InformationWeek article

ALSO NOTED: Vista makes headway in the corporate world; Ten tips for technology management;

Wed, 09 May 2007 20:01:38 -0400

> Vista is gaining acceptance among U.S. IT managers. Article

> Ten tips for technology management. Article

> World CIOs talk about common transformation challenges. Article

> The CIO's guide to mobile security. White paper

> Updates to ITIL should benefit IT managers. Article

> Telecom expense management: the bane of the CIO's existence. Article

> Common-sense strategies for lowering TCO. Webcast

> Improve decision-making with spreadsheet optimization. White paper

> Keeping business partners in the loop. Article

And Finally… Careless emailing can cost executives their jobs. Article

Controlling enterprise content

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 20:01:38 -0400

Gaining and maintaining control over the varied types of content in an organization is the bane of many CIOs' existences. The best way to make it manageable is to create effective policies and adopt products that allow your organization to track, audit and discover content while ensuring compliance and mitigating legal risk. In addition to traditional records management, effective retention management prevents the deletion of business-critical information, automates retention management based on business rules, protects content from unauthorized recipients, protects against information leaks and reduces costs.

Read more about effective retention management:
- read the white paper at SearchCIO

ALSO: read this on making sure not to ignore data retention

New ways to drive down support costs

Thu, 04 May 2006 20:01:37 -0400

The bane of IT--maintenance and support--has long been a drag on tech budgets and resources. The goal is to figure out how to minimize the cost, labor and management time involved, yet boost responsivity to problems. While many tech leaders have consolidated and tried to trim in every corner with standardization, the quest to cut operational costs is still a big task. One strategy enterprises are taking today is developing what's called "centers of excellence," which pull tech staffers into departments by areas of expertise so that every skill is being put to efficient use. As one company has discovered, the payback can be big.

For more on driving down costs:
- read this article at Computerworld