"Boys, there ain't no free lunches in this country. And don't go spending your whole life commiserating that you got the raw deals. You've got to say, I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it. It's called perseverance.” – Lee Iaccoca

 

"Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.” – Josephus Daniels

 

Top Picks

Information Security Governance and Boards of Directors:  Are They Compatible?  By Endre Bihari
“This paper presents a critique of emergent views on the roles of the boards of directors in relation to information security. The analysis highlights several concerns about the separation and validation of proper theory and business assertions of information security at board level. New requirements articulated by industry bodies – represented by a selected group of experts and evident in literature – are compared to the underlying theory of corporate governance to identify possible discrepancies.”
http://scissec.scis.ecu.edu.au/conferences2008/proceedings/2008/aism/Bihari%20Information%20Security%20Governance.pdf
I really enjoyed this paper that Endre wrote.  Be sure to check it out.]

 

Resurrecting a failed ITSM implementation
“Organizations are eager to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of IT services. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has much to offer with its IT Service Management (ITSM) philosophy and reference processes. The challenge that groups face when implementing ITIL is that the process must be tailored to the needs of each organization, and it is critical that it's done correctly. As a result, many ITIL projects either stall or outright fail. Herein lies a challenge: How can these projects recover?”
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1351147_mem1,00.html

[If you have any thoughts on the article/topic, please drop me a note.]

 

IBM, Sun talks seen continuing to next week-sources
“IBM (IBM.N) is still in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O) and discussions could take several more days as IBM studies various parts of Sun's computer server and software businesses, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2051831420090320

 

IT Audit / Internal Audit / Compliance / Ethics

Peanut case reveals inspector-company ties
“As federal legislators prepared to revamp the nation’s food-safety system, they examined the cozy relationship between food inspectors and the companies they inspect —- exemplified by the company linked to the salmonella outbreak —- at a congressional hearing Thursday.”
http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/03/20/peanut0320.html

 

FTC Asked to Investigate Google's Privacy Breaches
“The recent privacy glitch with Google Docs is just the latest example of security concerns with Google's cloud computing services, and the Federal Trade Commission should take note, according to a filing from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).”
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343346,00.asp

 

IT Process Improvement / Quality Management

ITIL tools standard, endorsed by ITIL creator, seeks to aid buyers
“For the first time since creating the Information Technology Infrastructure Library more than 20 years ago, the U.K.'s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has officially endorsed a compliance framework to audit vendor products, documentation and processes against the published best practices of ITIL (versions 2 and 3). The compliance scheme will be managed by the OGC's official accreditor, APM Group Ltd. The move seeks to create a formal, recognized ITIL tools standard to make technology investments easier, though other organizations already offer similar services.”
http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid183_gci1349709,00.html?track=NL-1014&ad=691872&asrc=EM_USC_6060583&uid=4561296

[Thank you for sending this in Michael!  I wonder if organizations will fall for this and think it will guarantee success.  The fact is that ITIL promises much *BUT* if it is not implemented correctly (meaning if the processes are not designed and implemented correctly with the goals of the organization in mind and then the tools supporting the needs of the processes, the compliance of a tool doesn’t really matter.]

 

Kurt’s Corner

News and views from Kurt Milne, the managing director of the ITPI.  He can be reached at: kurt.milne@....

 

eWEEK Labs sees a cloud-y future for databases
Nice high level overview of cloud storage.  It doesn’t get into the pesky details of security and compliance, however.  I agree with their conclusion that new services are required to manage cloud-based services.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Database/I-Have-Seen-the-Future-of-Database-and-It-Is-705402/?kc=EWKNLEDP03162009A

 

The Next Great War for the Data Center
Get ready for the convergence of servers, storage and networking in the data center.   Does it make more sense to buy servers from your network vendor?  Or, buy network tools from you server vendor?
http://blogs.eweek.com/masked_intentions/content/infrastructure/the_next_great_war_for_the_data_center.html?kc=EWWHNEMNL03192009STR1

 

BMC steps up as part of Cisco Strategy
BMC's technology will be critical to the success of Cisco's unified offering. Without management and automation at the foundation, the environment would be too complex for administrators to control.
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/nsm/2009/031609nsm1.html?Inform=nl&nlhtspec=rn_031609&nladname=031609specialnl

 

Data Centers / Cloud Computing / Green IT

Economic Blues Could Slow Data Center Construction
Basically the article reviews the capital investment required and that on-going data center construction is likely to continue but new construction may be put on hold while organizations monitor economic conditions.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/032009-economic-blues-could-slow-data.html

 

Federal policies could make or break cloud computing, experts say
“The United States could secure economic and technological dominance in the burgeoning realm of cloud computing, or it could fall behind the rest of the world, depending on how Congress may choose to regulate industry, experts said Friday.  Meanwhile, as cloud computing becomes more commonplace in the lives of everyday consumers, the new federal chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, said Friday he is reviewing what policies are necessary to ensure the federal government does not fall behind.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10201461-38.html

 

Security and Risk Management

Computer Experts Unite to Hunt Worm
Interesting report on concerns over what will happen on April 1^st in regards to the Conficker series of worms.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/technology/19worm.html?ref=us
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/the-conficker-worm-april-fools-joke-or-unthinkable-disaster/?ref=technology

 

Due Diligence on IT Security
“Organizations must deal with corporate governance, information security and privacy, and identity theft—along with an ever-growing number of laws and regulations.”
http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Security/Due-Diligence-on-IT-Security/

 

What Customer Data Should You Keep--And Toss?
“Heartland Payment Systems, a credit card processor, may have had up to 100 million records exposed to malicious hackers. Payment processors CheckFree and RBS Worldpay, and employment site Monster.com, have all reported data breaches in recent months, as have universities and government agencies. Experts at Wharton say that personal data is increasingly a liability for companies and suggest that part of the solution may be minimizing the customer information these companies keep.”
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/19/heartland-payment-security-entrepreneurs-sales-marketing-security.html

 

VA's security lessons learned
“The theft in 2006 of an employee laptop that contained personal information on millions of veterans taught the Veterans Affairs Department some hard lessons. VA became ‘the poster child of data breaches,’ said Kathryn Maginnis, the department's associate deputy assistant secretary for risk management and incident response.  As a result of that incident and several breaches that followed, the department developed a comprehensive incident response program and incident resolution team that evaluates all serious exposures of sensitive data.”
http://gcn.com/articles/2009/03/23/update1-va-incident-response.aspx

 

'Smart Grid' may be vulnerable to hackers
“Is it really so smart to forge ahead with the high technology, digitally based electricity distribution and transmission system known as the "Smart Grid"? Tests have shown that a hacker can break into the system, and cybersecurity experts said a massive blackout could result.  Until the United States eliminates the Smart Grid's vulnerabilities, some experts said, deployment should proceed slowly.”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/20/smartgrid.vulnerability/index.html

 

Health and Healthcare

Obama names doctor to clear health-care paper swamp
“Dr. David Blumenthal will become the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, charged with implementing health information technology provisions of Obama's recently passed economic stimulus package.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE52J4L820090320
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/Articles/2009/3/20/Blumenthal-Tapped-as-National-Coordinator-for-Health-IT.aspx

 

Social Security goes live with first federal e-health information exchange
“The Social Security Administration (SSA) today said it has gone live with a disability claims processing system that was designed to reduce the time millions of Americans spend each year waiting for benefits to be approved — and that could mark the start of the rollout of national health information network.”
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130144

 

Human Error / Safety / Environment

Navy to begin collision investigation
“Fifteen sailors aboard the nuclear attack submarine Hartford suffered minor injuries when it collided with the New Orleans, an amphibious transport dock from San Diego that was on its maiden deployment, said Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.”
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/mar/21/1n21sub235921-navy-begin-collision-investigation/

 

Climate Change Myths and Facts
“A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR2009032002660.html

 

Global News / Business / Economics

World Bank Outlook Further Dims China's Sun
“The World Bank cut its forecast for China’s gross domestic product growth the second time in four months, predicting that the economy would expand by only 6.5% in 2009, its weakest performance since 1990.”
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/18/world-bank-china-markets-economy-growth.html

 

China's U.S. Debt Quandary
“U.S. investors may have cheered the Federal Reserve's decision this week to pump more than 1 trillion new dollars into the economy, but at least one faction in China was on the verge of tears.”
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/19/china-debt-fed-business-beijing-dispatch.html

 

IMF: Global economy to shrink for first time in 60 years
“The total of goods and services produced around the world is projected to slump by 1 percent in 2009, compared with a 3.2 percent growth rate the year before.  Leading the slump will be the world's most developed economies, including the United States, Europe and Japan.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/03/20/imf.global.economy/?iref=hpmostpop

 

US News / Business / Economics

Fed steps up, buys Treasuries in support of US economy
“The Federal Reserve stepped up to support the US economy, buying $300 billion in Treasuries.  The bold move signaled the Fed's belief that the recession would end which in turn pushed the dollar down 1.6 cents, making commodities a cheap bet against inflation.”
http://www.axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/17691

 

U.S. Economy Has A Long Road To Recovery
“Rose-colored glasses would offer little improvement for Thursday's U.S. labor and manufacturing data. Though the numbers came in better than expected, there are still scant signs of an economic recovery.”
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/19/jobless-employment-labor-markets-economy-recession-manufacturing.html

 

Technology & Science

Google kicks Amazon in the Kindle
“Escalating the ebook wars, Google has backed Sony's Reader Digital Book with more than half a million public-domain titles coded in the open ePub format.  The move, announced today, gives Sony's eBook store more than 600,000 titles in total, dwarfing the roughly 245,000 closed-format titles currently available for the much-hyped Amazon Kindle.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/19/google_and_sony_ebooks/
[Interesting.  Note, you can email PDF files to a Kindle.  Simple text PDFs convert fairly well actually.]
http://www.crn.com/retail/215901113
I like the following Business week article’s take on it:  “For starters, the Amazon approach may appeal to people who are interested in newer, more expensive books, such as New York Times bestsellers, Baker says. At $10 bucks a pop through Amazon, books add up. Sure, Sony lures e-reader buyers with free books, but at some stage, sales of digital books will outweigh the revenue generated through the sale of a machine.”

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090319_435494.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_technology

 

NASA: Space station work 81% complete as solar arrays unfurled
“The solar arrays are designed to gather energy through 32,800 solar cells and then transfer that power through the truss to the space station's batteries. Unfurled and with data and power cables attached and tested, the arrays are expected to begin delivering energy to the space station sometime today, according to Debbie Nguyen, a spokeswoman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration”
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130138&intsrc=news_ts_head

 

End Notes

The News is brought to you by George Spafford, Principal Consultant at Pepperweed Consulting, LLC.  Pepperweed is nationally recognized as a leader in IT Management Consulting.  For more information, check out our website at www.pepperweed.com or call 888-229-0145. Please let us know if you see stories you think should be included in the next issue of The News, and feel free to forward this email on to others.

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