Travel and Off-Site Meeting Policy
Protect your data from lost and theft
Travel and Off-Site Meeting Policy - Protection of data and software is often is complicated by the fact that it can be accessed from remote locations. As individuals travel and attend off-site meetings with other employees, contractors, suppliers and customers data and software can be compromised. This policy is seven (7) page in length and covers:
- Laptop and PDA Security
- Wireless and Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
- Data and Application Security
- Public Shared Resources
- Minimizing attention
- Off-Site Meetings
- Remote Computing Best Practices
This policy has been updated to reflect the requirements of PCI-DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and ISO. The policy comes as both a WORD file and a PDF file utilizing a standard CSS style sheet.
Laptops can and do get lost or stolen. In studies conducted by several security firms, it has been found that over 50% of all lost or stolen laptops disappear at airport security checkpoints an departure gates. Unfortunately almost 70% of these laptops are never recovered.
CIO - CTO - CSO News
Sensitive Information Policy Template released by Janco
The Sensitive Information Policy Template (Version 2.4) has just been released by Janco. This policy applies to the entire enterprise, its vendors, its suppliers (including outsourcers), co-location providers, and facilities regardless of the methods used to store and retrieve sensitive information (e.g. online processing, outsourced to a third party, Internet, Intranet or swipe terminals).
New with this version are updates that specifically define the mandates of most recent federal (Gramm-Leach-Bliley) and state (Massachusetts and California).
- more infoWhich skills are in high demand and low demand
IT salaries are determined by the skills that are required. Janco has determined the following are the skills in high demand and low demand.
Skills with a high demand
- Project Management - especially large projects with short time frame for delivery
- Security - focus on mandated compliance issues
- Network Administration - wireless and cloud administration
- Virtualization (Cloud) - new applications and management of the IT infrastructure
- Business and Operational Analysis - focus on business change
- Productivity Improvement Analysis - metrics and operational analysis
- Web 2 - interactive applications that add value
- Database Management - applications that leverage enterprise assets
- System Administration - Windows and UNIX management
- Desktop Support - standardization and change management
Skills with a declining demand
- COBOL
- HTML
- System Network Architecture - SNA
- Siebel
- Rapid Application Development - RAD
- ColdFusion
- Wireless Application Protocol - WAP
- Visual J++
- Novell NetWare
- Asynchronous Transfer Mode -
ATM
IBM outsourcing cost 2,000 US jobs
After shrinking its U.S. workforce by as many as 10,000 employees last year, IBM may be on its way to cutting another 2,000 workers.
As of last October, IBM employed 105,000 workers in the U.S., compared to 115,000 in 2008. In 2007, IBM had 121,000 U.S. employees. It employs about 400,000 globally.
IBM isn't commenting on its latest round of cuts and information about it comes from the Alliance union which gathers its data directly from IBM employees.
"IBM is clearly offshoring things where they can," said one IBM employee who received his notice and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn't want to jeopardize his severance. A 10-year veteran and UNIX administrator, this employee said his customer support team once had 15 U.S.-based workers. That staff was reduced over time to just three workers in the U.S., with other members of the customer support team now in Brazil, Argentina and India.
The employee said he was not given a good reason for his layoff. "Higher ups made a decision that a certain percentage had to be cut - it was not performance-based at all," he said. Although the employee said he's uncertain about the job market, "my sense is that it is not horrendous but I'll have to assume that I'll have to take a cut in pay."
- more infoPractical Guide for IT Outsourcing Released by Janco
Practical Guide for IT Outsourcing Released - Version 3.0 of the Practical Guide for IT Outsourcing has just been released. It includes a sample Outsourcing contract, Service Level Agreement with metrics, Risk Assessment - Business and IT Impact Questionnaire, and much more.
The guide is delivered electronically and is available in MS - Word and industry standard PDF.
- more infoCIOs are looking for more cost savings
The recession is impacting how IT is performing. Budgets for many IT organizations has been frozen for about two years, and CIO have been on this efficiency kick for about the same amount of time. IT organizations have virtualized, consolidated data centers, have cut hiring and outsourced. There is no low-hanging fruit left.
Service level agreements are set however costs need to be reduced.
The only areas where cost savings can be made are in hardware and software maintenance.
- more infoCIO must protect critical data
CIOs need to focus on at least four areas in order to protect critical data:
- Implement a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan. This is the traditional solution for mitigating exposure to information loss. However it has grown more complicated as 24/7, global economy, and open source have become standard business mantras. Of paramount importance is overcoming the hurdles associated with backup window requirements, application performance, reliability and consistency, and recovery time.
- Streamline IT Infrastructure and Increase Productivity. As staff and resources become overburdened, companies are refocusing on infrastructure management. Easing critical pressure points is often the catalyst to surviving a difficult fiscal climate.
- Manage Storage and Server Costs Closely. Controlling cost of operations has become a top priority for many organizations. With data growing at exponential rates, these costs can easily mushroom.
- Support IT Infrastructure Consolidation. Today's data protection architecture seems to be intrinsically broken - as characterized by slow backups, complex recoveries, compromised application performance, and difficult resource administration. IT infrastructure consolidation including server virtualization magnifies the problems and elevates the rearchitecture of storage and data protection as a priority. Finding high performing, easy-to-use, scalable data protection remains a key imperative. Further, system migration of production servers and critical applications to a virtual environment are likely to be costly and painful unless an easy and minimum-impact solution to migration is built into the rearchitecture.