Category: Trends

Most of the “blocking and tackling” that was needed to handle network threats has, to a large extent, already been accomplished via technologies such as firewalls and intrusion-detection and -prevention systems, said Mark Burnett, director of IT security and compliance at Gaylord Entertainment Co. in Nashville. “We are layering technology controls to make sure we can identify where the information is passing across our network” and protect it. The overall driving force behind our [security] program is reputation management. Any one incident could ruin all that work.”

Also driving the focus are regulations that Gaylord is required to comply with, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard, which is mandated by the major credit card companies, he said. Ann Garrett, the chief information security officer at the North Carolina state office of information technology in Raleigh, said that a new state law governing the use of personally identifiable information has elevated the need for security controls at the data level.

High-profile breaches such as the one at the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year have resulted in an intense scrutiny of data security practices government-wide said Patrick Howard, chief information security officer, at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9004914

The head of Symantec’s Asia-Pacific business, Bill Robbins, explained in an interview that the changing threat means businesses will not only have to spend more time and energy on making sure that data is secure, but also on recording which users are accessing and manipulating information stored in corporate databases.

Midsize companies should sit up and take notice because hackers aren’t choosing their targets by brand name, Robbins said.

Symantec’s warnings come at a time when fear of online crime is increasing and law enforcement agencies around the world are taking the issue more seriously.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9004741&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

Several factors will contribute to the decline in capital IT spending, including lower costs for commodities and volatile energy costs, according to Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels.

While software sales will grow, computing hardware sales will essentially be flat, according to Forrester. That forecast is in stark contrast to what market leader Cisco Systems is telling Wall Street: that it expects growth for the 2007 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, to be in the range of 15 to 20 percent. The most recent Goldman Sachs CIO panel survey, released last month, shows that 67 percent of Cisco customers expect to increase their spending with the vendor. The Goldman Sachs survey also raises a red flag that networking spending overall could be flat. While 65 percent said they will increase their network spending, that’s a drop from 76 percent two months earlier.

Spending growth on security, while a key priority among all customers, may start to slow in 2007, Forrester’s Bartels says.

On the software side, Forrester’s Bartels says many customers will be preparing for the release of next-generation ERP suites from the likes of SAP and Oracle.

In terms of new application rollouts, those will be more spotty, with demand up for contract and project management and invoice presentment, while procurement will be more flat.

One area in software that most expect to be reasonably strong is infrastructure management, including virtualization platforms.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193500339&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News

“Years back, when you brought physical and cyber security guys together they weren’t even speaking the same language,” said CA Senior Vice President and Chief Security Strategist Ron Moritz, one of four featured panelists Wednesday at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

Senior Vice President and Chief of Security for Indymac Bank, Boulton Fernando, said corporate decision-makers should realize that they are likely to reap cost-saving benefits of convergence in three years, not immediately.

Irene Lam, senior products manager of American Dynamics IP Video Edge Solutions, said that the consolidation of security and networking companies — evidenced by recent Cisco acquisitions and EMC’s purchase of RSA — is good news.

James Henry, chairman, CEO and Founder of Henry Bros. “One of the things we did not see happening is the eyeballs moving offshore, at least on the third shift,” he said.

Fernando and Moritz said that foreign workers are taking more security precautions than Americans take. Moritz pointed out that, while Americans seek assurances that foreign environments are secure, foreigners are sometimes skeptical about the safety of products from beyond their borders.

http://www.techweb.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193402341

“Regulatory requirements such as [Sarbanes Oxley] and [the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act] are forcing organizations to take a closer look at their people and processes,” Allan Carey, senior research director at International Data, which conducted the study, noted.

While the number of security professionals increased 8.1 percent worldwide in the past year, “you can look at any jobs site and see that there are a lot of open positions out there,” Carey noted. As a result, many organizations are giving more responsibility to junior-level staffers and security outsourcing organizations, the report says. “If they can’t hire somebody with the skills they need, a lot of companies are taking a junior staffer and investing in the training and certifications they need within the organization,” Carey said.

In the study, respondents rated biometrics, wireless security, intrusion prevention, and forensics tools as high priorities. “Biometrics rated either number one or number two across all regions, which is a relatively new trend,” said Carey

The study can be found at: http://www.isc2.org/workforcestudy

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=108163&WT.svl=news2_1

Seventy-eight percent of 75 senior IT and business continuity professionals (8 percent of whom represent financial services organizations) surveyed report that their organizations have installed or are in the process of upgrading technology to support telecommuting or remote customer access in case of a disaster. However, only 9 percent of…