Disruptions resulting from these and other disasters have rippled across supply chains, shaken entire industries and taken their toll on employee, customer and partner relations. Not surprisingly, organizations of all types and sizes are making crisis preparedness and response a key focus of their business continuity planning. Chances are, your organization is taking a proactive approach and continually looking at ways to minimize the impact that potential crises can have on your business processes and technology systems. Yet, even though your companyÂ’s business continuity plan most likely serves to protect your companyÂ’s physical assets, such as its data, network(s), core business applications and facilities, how well does it address the human side of disasters?

This was frustrating to users of IE and did not really offer any addition security that was not already in place.

Some sites required users to click to activate before they could interact with the control.

Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing  the click to activate requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, Microsoft is removing the click to activate behavior from Internet Explorer!

It is important to note that this change will require no modifications to existing webpages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages.

Microsoft is reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require click to activate will no longer require the control to be activated. They will all just work.  

(Forbes) The news on the economy in recent months has been uninspiring. The subprime lending mess threatens to accelerate the housing slowdown. Gas prices are at their highest in eight months. Gross domestic product growth this year is expected to be less than 3% for the first time since 2003. But one part of the country consistently manages to produce strong economic growth and still keep costs down. For the second straight year the Southeast placed 5 metros in the Top 10 of our Best Places for Business and Careers. While most economies in the West have also outperformed their peers in the Northeast and Midwest over the past four years, living costs there have risen dramatically. Housing prices in Phoenix, spurred in part by easy lending, are up 57% in the past two years, knocking it off our Top 10.

The overall rank for the best places to live according to Forbes is:

The best places to do business rankings are:

The greatest job growth is in the following locations:

Merchants and service providers need to validate compliance against an audit by a qualified assessor.

But there are major holes in the process of becoming compliant, and even greater challenges in staying compliant as networks are evolving. Hundreds of qualified assessors attempting are audit hundreds of thousands of merchants creating a potential gap in the system.

Although the high profile credit card security beaches have stolden the headlines, problems at small merchants present a severe risk. For example the link between scanning devices through to the software application on the PC in a small store is often unencrypted, even though the data is encrypted is placed in an encrypted tunnel after it leaves the computer. A keystroke logging planted on such machines presents a severe security risk.

The problem is that small shops do not know PCI DSS exists and, if they do, they do not take the process seriously enough.

Small merchants using self-assessment will be tempted to just tick boxes saying they had set up a firewall or secured their network. Part of the problems is that assessors act more like consultants than health inspectors. Nothing will happen unless you take away merchant accreditation.

Many merchants wonder why they should invest in PCI DSS compliance when it does little to help them sell more products.

Intel Prepares to Slash 2,000 More Jobs

Savings from Intel's work force cut are unlikely to lower desktop and notebook prices.

(eWeek) Intel plans to cut an additional 2,000 jobs from its payroll to cut costs, executives announced Oct. 16 after an earnings report that showed both income and margins up in the third quarter of 2007.

CEO Paul Otellini and executives told analysts and reporters during a conference call Oct. 16 that the Santa Clara, Calif., company expects to save about $1 billion in 2008 on payroll cuts and a switch from the 65-nanometer processors to the new 45-nanometer processors, which are cheaper to manufacture.

The strategy of reducing and saving began in 2006, when Intel's employee roster stood at about 94,000. It now stands at 88,000.

Will US air carriers follow suit?

(Reuters) - Mobile phone users might be able to make telephone calls on UK-registered aircraft from 2008 under new proposals published by telecoms and media regulator Ofcom.

Ofcom suggested that aircraft could provide an on-board base station as part of its proposals, developed jointly with other European Union countries, aimed at encouraging companies to develop innovative technologies to use radio spectrum.

To ensure that mobile phones did not interfere with other terrestrial mobile networks, they would still have to be switched off during take-off and landing.

But Ofcom said once the aircraft had reached a minimum height of 3,000 metres, handsets could use the aircraft's network to make and receive calls, which would be routed via a satellite link to the network on the ground. Calls would be billed through passengers' normal service providers.

Ofcom, which is calling for industry comments by November 30, suggested amending the aircraft operators' existing Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 licences to enable a service that already operates in countries such as Australia.

Some airlines already offer in-flight outbound telephone services via their own network. However, Ofcom's proposals will enable passengers to use their own handsets.

• First-call resolution rate: percentage of issues handled on the first call
• Number and length of system outages (network downtime, dead printers, phone systems)
• Overall number of phone calls answered and abandoned to support desk by agent, day, hour, system
• Overall number of tickets opened with the support desk by employee, day, hour, system

These and related metrics track how many problems customers are encountering and how quickly they are getting the answer they need. Graphing numbers on a weekly/monthly basis helps track service levels and agent productivity. Adjust schedules and staffing to fit the peaks/valleys for support, which is more complicated as large companies consolidate help desk operations and one help desk must service employees in multiple time zones. Metrics also allow reporting on root cause analysis and trends like hardware failures.

Balance these operational metrics with metrics that point to the mission of the service desk to prevent or cure interruptions in employee productivity such as:

• Number of incidents per employee
• Average minutes of downtime per employee

TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday, two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year to read articles by columnists such as Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman.

The trademark orange Ts marking premium articles will begin disappearing Tuesday night, said the Web sites Vice President.

The move is an acknowledgment by The Times that making Web site visitors pay for content would not bring in as much money as making it available for free and supporting it with advertising.

 

Regulation	Industry Impacted	Retention Implications	Penalties
Sarbanes-Oxley	All publically-traded companies	Audit records must be maintained for 7 years AFTER the audit	Fines up to $5,000,000 & imprisonment up to 20 years
Section 17a-4	Financial Services	eMail records must be kept for 3 years, trading records thru the end of the account plus 6 years	Case by case
HIPAA	Healthcare	Hospital records must be kept for 5 years, medical records for the life of the patient plus 2 years	Fines up to $250,000 & imprisonment up to 10 years

In its annual state of the Internet for 2000 Consumer Reports finds that:

• Spam - The incidence of heavy spam is still high for many people.
• Viruses - The frequency is at the same high level as last year's.
• Spyware - The danger is still high. In the past six months, infections prompted 850,000 U.S. households to replace their computers.
• Phishing - The incidence is still very high. There were about 23,000 attacks in April 2007.

Now, more than ever, with the release of version 3, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) sets the world standard for IT service management. Most companies have embraced, and expect compliance with, the IT management disciplines that are documented and detailed in ITIL. And anyone who's delved into the depths of the ITIL library knows that the information, while well organized and sensible, is daunting due to the sheer volume.

This is where we can help! The ITSM for SOA Template complies with ITIL. This kit is a complete collection of polices and procedures that will help you and your organization quickly understand and implement ITIL disciplines. It will help you assess where your organization currently stands in regards to ITIL standards and arm you with the information you need to fill in the gaps.