InfoWorld Daily | Tom Sullivan » TAG: Compliance

June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Worst error in e-discovery strategies

TAGS: Compliance

Best of the blogs: There's a new buzzword and acronym on the block, and it's Electronically Stored Information. "If you've not heard of ESI yet, you'd best get up to speed," Ephraim Schwartz writes in The art of e-discovery. "The problem is, ESI is more a term of art than a deliberately defined set of rules." It came about because of changes by the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure. But the FRCP is so vague companies need to create their own strategy. The biggest mistake companies make when devising their e-discovery strategy? "In-house lawyers and IT people never have lunch together," answers Ralph Losey, an attorney specializing in e-discovery at law firm Akerman Senterfitt.

From the Test Center: Monitoring systems to comply with regulations is an enourmous challenge, no question. To that end, Tablus now takes a distributed approach. "The company's content detection is precise," Mike Heck finds. "Tablus Content Sentinel 3.0 helps you gauge gaps in your data security by identifying content at risk on laptops, desktops, and servers. You can then take measures to protect this information before it moves or is misused." Read the full review.

Data management: Sean McCown shares some code you might enjoy. "I wrote this the other day to disable all user logins in SQL Server 2000," he explains. So if you need to be the only one on the server in SQL for doing maintenance, troubleshooting, etc., then you'll find this useful. "All this has come about because MS decided to not allow us to disable Windows groups. Now, I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing ... I'm just saying it's the reason we have to do it this way."

Notes from the field: Offshore gambling site BetUS.com is making book on the iPhone, Robert X. Cringely reports. "Odds are better than even the iPhone will sell more than 12 million units in 2008 (5 to 6) and Apple's stock price will spike on June 30 (1 to 2)," he writes in Gambling on the iPhone. Cringe just cannot resist making his own odds, too. "Steve jobs will appear in public on June 29 wearing something other than a black turtleneck and jeans: 15 million to 1."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 27, 2007 04:41 AM

March 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Outsourcing compliance efforts

TAGS: Compliance

Storage: The regulatory burden just might be making U.S. companies less competitive, depending on your viewpoint, reports Mario Apicella in Getting compliance out of the datacenter. A new pact inked by AXS-One and EDS, in fact, enables customers to do just that via outsourcing. "Staying compliant is not optional and has a big cost for all but the smallest companies."

Security: Call it criminal adaptability; Roger Grimes does as he explains car thieves' workarounds to beat tracking systems. Grimes encourages users to investigate related offerings for notebook PCs. "With nearly half of all data theft incidents now involving stolen mobile computer devices, expect services like these to become the norm in the next few years," he explains in Lojack for laptops. "It's great piece of mind."

Best of the blogs: SOA, it seems, might be falling into the 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of the services handling 80 percent of the processing. "Many SOAs that I'm seeing deployed have a tendency to be out-of-balance or a disproportionate portion of the processing is taking place within a small group of services, and the others are not pulling their load," suggests David Linthicum. Thus the increasing need for services balancing.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2007 04:57 AM

April 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The economics of compliance for IT

TAGS: Compliance

Columnists' corner: IT, in many ways, is shouldering the burden of compliance, including implementation and cost, among others. But these added expenses do little or nothing to enhance the revenue side, Ephraim Schwartz points out. "The question becomes how to minimize the impact on business operations," he writes in this week's installment of Reality Check.

Open source: Analysts are saying that Red Hat's purchase of JBoss could be good for Novell and other open source players. "Novell will probably call IBM and say 'Let's do something,'" one speculates. A handful of Linux backers, meanwhile, are planning a WinHEC shadow show dubbed FreedomHEC and focusing on how to make a variety of hardware devices run Linux effectively.

Security: A flaw in Oracle sparks warnings from a security researcher who says that it allows read-only users to delete or modify data. McAfee unwraps a Threat Center portal that offers virus information, tools, advice from its experts and the latest out of McAfee's Avert Labs.

The news beat: Salesforce.com acquires Sendia and its wireless technology, with which it plans to launch AppExchange Mobile. Skype buys VoIP startups Sonorit Holding and its U.S. subsidiary Camino Networks. And IBM builds encryption into a mobile processor.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 11, 2006 04:59 AM

December 30, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Another wave of compliance

TAGS: Compliance

The news beat: If you think compliance was a sticky issue in 2005, just wait until you learn what 2006 and 2007 hold in store. "A whole new level of monitoring and record-keeping software," notes Ephraim Schwartz, in New regulations loom large in 2006. It's not just the existing ones, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, either. A mound of privacy bills waits on Capital Hill, about 20 of them, in fact. Among those is a stack of regulations that could necessitate that companies re-engineer isolated business processes and integrate manufacturing into lifecycle management. "Better start working on that. Now," Schwartz advises.

Best of the blogs: Ed Foster is unsettled by the settlement over Sony's copy-protected CDs, and Jon Udell on the blog as resume and autobiography.

Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely, bitter that Time's persons of the year went to the trio of Third World poverty and disease eradicators Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono rather than to him, doles out another smattering of 2005's tech losers. Count Sony, Microsoft, Bank of America, ChoicePoint, CardSystems Solutions and Citibank among those Cringe brands with the "L" word. And don't forget Steve Ballmer's kids. It seems they couldn't get that Xbox 360, or even just someone to stop by and fix their home PCs blue screen of death.

From the analysts: IT shops need to prepare for the "highly likely" coming of avian flu, writes David Margulius in From the Analysts. Analyst firm Gartner recently issued a strong warning to IT managers, entitled “Prepare Now for a Coming Avian Influenza Pandemic.” The main tasks IT should be undertaking now, just in case avian flu does come: beefing up work-at-home and remote collaboration infrastructure and ensuring communication in case conventional voice and data channels get overloaded.

Quoteworthy: I just don't see get what's so hard about sticking a USB port on a car stereo. Why all the fuss? -- Oliver Rist in Freaky Friday.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 30, 2005 10:58 AM

December 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Crossing lawyers with document management

TAGS: Compliance

Columnists' Corner: Opposing attorneys walk into a litigation meeting and -- no, this is not the opening of a joke -- they'll be talking about document management systems. That's right: One of two proposed amendments relating to document management software would require attorneys for both parties in a litigation to sit down prior to court proceedings and discuss their clients document management systems. One source Ephraim Schwartz spoke with for this week's installment of Reality Check likened the amendments to Chernobyl. "If you think calling the changes 'Chernobyl' is a bit of hyperbole, well then, you can always sit back, do nothing, and wait for the fallout," Schwartz writes.

Networking: Nortel swallows Tasman Networks for $99.5 million and intends to add the acquired IP routers to its roster.

Best of the blogs: Oliver Rist reviews a 21-inch display from Gateway and finds that "the badly-named FPD2185W is a rock solid, high-end display with a $599 price tag that beats my similar Samsung by almost half." Of all the lessons garnered throughout the past 12 months, Matt Asay writes in Open Resource, his lesson #4 is that support is not a viable business model. And Jon Udell on more tag cloud visualization.

Check out the audio companion to this blog: InfoWorld Daily Podcast: Enterprise technology in 5 minutes or less. Listen now!

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 27, 2005 11:10 AM

December 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)

The awful truth about compliance

TAGS: Compliance

Special report: At least one expert says that 100 percent compliance is "fundamentally impossible." The situation is dire enough that an IT exec quoted in the feature The awful truth about compliance uttered the words: "Our compliance policy is to pray." Thus spoke Anna Bonaparte, CEO of MailFrontier, reciting what an IT director had told her. Bonaparte even asserts that many companies, realizing they simply cannot comply with all the regulations, are taking a wait-and-see approach, effectively waiting to see who gets nabbed and hoping it's not them. This package also includes a case study on Cisco: Poster child of regulatory compliance, and tips from the compliance front lines.

Columnists' Corner: Let the 2006 predictions begin. Mario Apicella breaks out his crystal ball, probes inside and, instead of merely anticipating what might happen in the next 12 months, offers up some solid advice on how to prepare for and cope with what is coming. Storage security, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, improved iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI are among those. Oh yes, and regarding compliance regulations, though not a new concern for storage gurus, "next year will probably see more companies realize that Uncle Sam's finger is pointing at them."

The news beat: The IEEE approves the mobile WiMax specification, a.k.a. 802.16e, which could allow users to wirelessly access the Internet from anywhere in a given city, NextApp and Compuware discuss plans to unwrap new tools for AJAX and application quality management, NEC creates an e-mail initiated VPN, and BEA lays down a road map for unifying its portal products.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 8, 2005 05:56 AM