One of the best kept disaster recovery and business continuity secrets in the industry is not even on companies' radar: that's the failure to push teleworking for staff as an ideal fallback measure.
In Australia, both the private and public sectors have begun increasing permanent ICT staff, spurred by the resources boom in Western Australia and Australia’s stable economy. According to Candle Australia’s 2007 market analysis report, demand for permanent staff in New South Wales has increased 25% compared to the same period last year, and an ongoing resources boom in Western Australia has led to a stable hiring field for ICT employers.
Recognising the growing importance of ICT to the state’s economy, the government of Queensland has joined other Australian states by appointing a chief technology officer in addition to a CIO.
NCR Australia has been ordered to reinstate an employee fired last year for storing pornographic and other graphic images on an NCR-owned work laptop.
Customers are voting with their feet when it comes to data breaches, according to the 2006 Cost of a Data Breach study.
When it comes to dealing with the public purse, government IT professionals claim they are under more pressure to be accountable.
Very few organisations manage information content well, says Gartner vice president Phil Sargeant. Generally, it is still an ad hoc activity, and one that is creating a “storage nightmare of the future”.
Australian IT managers have come out in support of the use of keylogging software to monitor staff access to customer records after the Australian Department of Human Services’ Centrelink agency admitted it has been undertaking employee surveillance for the past year.
When John Talbot, general manager of operational management at Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, said identifying the real experts from those who make hollow claims can be a real stalling point in an IT service management project, his comments hit home with a number of IT execs.
The customisation of off-the-shelf software is the weakest link in application security. This is particularly true for widely used enterprise products such as SAP and Oracle, according to Gartner research director Rich Mogull.
Symantec Asia Pacific vice president David Sykes has confirmed his company will move to offering software as a subscription-based service, with new enterprise “buying” plans expected to be ironed out within the next 12 months.
The Australian federal government has laid out nearly A$300 million (NZ$371 million) to reduce social security fraud and lessen the amount of incorrect payments before introducing the "access card system using smartcard technology".
Cisco Systems has released patches for eight of its products after the Melbourne-based internet security company Assurance discovered vulnerabilities in some of Cisco’s wireless products.
CA plans to boost its Melbourne-based research and development staff, with up to 50 new positions to be offered over the next five years.
The Australian federal government has signed a whole-of-government agreement with Microsoft to exchange information on security issues, ranging from cyber-terrorism and general security bulletins.