Stories by Thor Olavsrud

IT must provide enterprise collaboration tools employees will use

Emerging technologies, like cloud computing, and the economic turmoil of the past five years have put tremendous pressure on businesses to transform their business processes to make them leaner, more efficient and more competitive. Increased collaboration between geographically dispersed workers and with business partners has become the norm. But the unwieldiness of many enterprise collaboration tools has led many workers to turn to insecure collaboration channels like email and consumer-grade file sharing services.

Written by Thor Olavsrud28 March 12 05:14

Cost of data breaches declines

For the first time in seven years—and despite numerous high-profile incidents—the average cost of a data breach fell in 2011, according to new findings released by Symantec and the Ponemon Institute.

Written by Thor Olavsrud21 March 12 07:22

Guide: How to be ready for Big Data

Big Data is all the rage these days, and more than a few organizations are at least wondering what sort of business intelligence they could derive from all the information at their disposal.

Written by Thor Olavsrud21 March 12 01:30

Can your apps handle an 1800 percent spike in traffic?

As Super Bowl XLVI approached this year, Cars.com was facing a thorny issue. For the third year in a row it was running a big-budget ad during the game. In 2010 and 2011 the high-profile ads drew huge numbers of car shoppers to its site--a definite win--but the spike also slowed performance to a crawl.

Written by Thor Olavsrud17 March 12 09:00

Why you need automated server access controls

A large number of enterprises have not implemented automated server access controls, exposing themselves to risks ranging from insider fraud and corporate espionage to regulatory compliance issues and even nation-state sponsored attacks, according to a recent report by information security research firm Echelon One and enterprise access management specialist Fox Technologies.

Written by Thor Olavsrud16 March 12 02:32

Five ways to prepare for Big Data with scale-out NAS

As enterprises seek to move into the big data world -- digitizing paper documents and saving email communications, Word docs, Excel files and all sorts of other unstructured data with the hopes of mining them for actionable business intelligence -- they need to address a big problem up front: Storage.

Written by Thor Olavsrud13 March 12 03:57

Google Cloud storage cuts prices, integrates with tech providers

Google yesterday cut the cost of Google Cloud Storage--a service geared to enabling developers to store and access massive amounts of data on Google's infrastructure--between 8 percent and 15 percent depending on the service tier. Google also noted that third-party technology providers have begun integrating Google Cloud Storage directly into their offerings.

Written by Thor Olavsrud08 March 12 07:55

Healthcare industry CIOs, CSOs must improve security

Protected health information (PHI) data breaches are growing in frequency and magnitude as the healthcare industry moves to adopt electronic health records (EHR), say a group of standards and security organizations. The healthcare industry must take action to better defend PHI if it wants to keep the public's trust, they say.

Written by Thor Olavsrud07 March 12 01:39

Application streaming gets a new face with Cloudpaging

Delivering software on-demand from centralized servers or the cloud was the great promise of application streaming technology. But Osman Kent, CEO of startup Numecent (formerly known as Endeavors Technologies) says that promise was tarnished. Kent believes it's time the technology delivered.

Written by Thor Olavsrud06 March 12 04:53

CIOs must fit the Cloud into IT strategy

That was the consensus of six panelists brought together by information exchange solutions specialist IntraLinks in a roundtable discussion Thursday morning at the Gabarron Foundation in New York City.

Written by Thor Olavsrud03 March 12 08:31

How to choose your Cloud service provider

Many organizations have now gone so far as to dip their toes into the shallow end of cloud computing, and many more are thinking about testing the waters. Other organizations have jumped into the cloud with both feet. But whether you're wading in or fully immersed, properly vetting your cloud service providers is essential.

Written by Thor Olavsrud28 Feb. 12 08:34

Big Data causes concern and big confusion

Big data gets a lot of buzz these days and organizations are increasingly concerned about the problem of managing it, but many don't really understand what big data is.

Written by Thor Olavsrud25 Feb. 12 07:53

Inadequate SSL certificate data threatens IT security

SSL certificates are a fundamental component of secure online transactions, but a majority of organizations admit that they have an inaccurate or incomplete inventory of their certificate populations, according to a new study conducted by Osterman Research on the behalf of enterprise key and certificate management (EKCM) provider, Venafi. Salt Lake City-based Venafi calls that a worst practice that presents a substantial risk for security and compliance incidents.

Written by Thor Olavsrud25 Feb. 12 01:44

Security in the Cloud is all about visibility and control

It's an oft-repeated mantra: Organizations engaged in or investigating cloud computing in any of its many flavors are concerned about security. In fact, concerns about security, data privacy and data residency are often cited as inhibitors to cloud adoption. But are the concerns justified? Some security experts say visibility and control are the missing elements.

Written by Thor Olavsrud18 Feb. 12 11:45
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