Daily News Archive

Please note that The Daily News is publishing (hopefully) twice a week for the foreseeable future due to time constraints.

Tuesday, December 27th

 The Daily News was not published.

Thursday, December 26th

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchill

 

The Picks of the Day

Small Companies May Be Excused from 404

 “SEC committee votes overwhelmingly that most companies with a market capitalization below $700 million be excused from assessing their internal controls over financial reporting and from having their auditors certify those controls.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/5324151?f=advancesearch

[I nearly choked when I read the article and thought they were going to drop everything for these companies but then further investigation at the actual SEC site turned up a well done PPT summary of the meeting that made me feel better.  It is at:  http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acspc/pr-intcontrol.pdf ]

 

Congressman seeks changes to investor protections

“Consumer activists are concerned that Feeney is trying to weaken critically important consumer protections at a time when a record number of Americans are investing in the stock market.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13481567.htm

 

Shortages of IT professionals, accountants on horizon

“Baby-boomer retirements and a shortage of IT graduates are expected to create a shortfall in the number of skilled technology workers in 2006.”

http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2005/12/26/daily8.html?jst=b_ln_hl

 

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

The Awful Truth About Compliance

“Several years into an era of strict corporate-governance laws -- most notably Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA -- companies across a wide spectrum are still struggling to find their footing as they try to establish viable compliance frameworks.”

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/The-Awful-Truth-About-Compliance/story.xhtml?story_id=13000CNVNAP6

 

2006: The Year IT Spending on SOX Compliance Kicks In

“With their businesses processes in place to support compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and other countries’ financial reporting regulations, corporations will significantly increase their spending on the technology needed to support those compliance processes and other corporate governance matters, reports technology industry analysts Gartner Inc.”

http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101608&d=815&h=817&f=816&dateformat=%25B%20%25e,%20%25Y

 

CSOs seek regulatory sanity in 2006

“Ask CSOs to predict which issue will cause them the most pain in 2006, and year after year it's the same two words -- regulatory compliance.”

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1153140,00.html

 

Flotations back on wave of confidence

“Significantly fewer companies have floated in the US this year, as the regulatory straitjacket of Sarbanes Oxley continues to constrain and worry. It was obvious that the American authorities would clamp down on corporate governance in the wake of the shock to the national psyche of the Enron and WorldCom frauds. But it has made international companies significantly more chary of a US listing compared with London, with its lighter regulatory touch.”

http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=2450952005

 

Security and Risk Management

CSO Fundamentals: ABCs of Physical and IT Security Convergence

“Here's what it is: Formal cooperation between previously disjointed security functions.  When we say 'cooperation', we're talking about a concerted and results-oriented effort to work together.“

http://www.csoonline.com/fundamentals/abc_convergence.html

 

More Significant than Sarbanes-Oxley

“Question: What are the chances that the U.S. Congress will pass legislation requiring companies to protect personal information that they collect?  Webster: I think the probability is close to 90 percent if not 100 percent that you'll see some form of security regulation that specifically addresses identity theft out of Congress sometime next year.”

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=10232

 

Democrats: Homeland Security department failed to meet promises

“Nearly three years after it was created, the Homeland Security Department hasn't kept 33 of its promises to better protect the country, according to House Democrats overseeing the agency.”

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/28/homelandsecurity.ap/index.html

 

News.com’s Year in Review 2005:  Surveillance

http://news.com.com/Year+in+review+Electronic+surveillance+takes+center+stage/2009-1029_3-5989310.html?tag=html.alert

[This is a collection of articles they’ve run in the past year about database snooping, data security, the Patriot Act renewal, VoIP tapping, etc.]

 

NIST updates cryptography manual to help agencies meet FISMA requirements

“NIST issued the revised Special Publication 800-21-1 —first released in 1999—to help government organizations as they comply with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, which requires agencies, among other things, to certify and accredit their IT systems.”

http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/37840-1.html

SP800-21-1 can be accessed at:  http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-21-1/sp800-21-1_Dec2005.pdf

 

Human Error / Safety

Tech Glitches Can Slow Patient Care

“A controversial study linking an increased death rate to the installation of a new computer system at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh reinforces growing concern that such technology, hailed as a panacea for medication errors, can slow down the delivery of care and cause unintentional harm to patients if not properly put into practice.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113572820096632522.html?mod=djemTEW

 

Polluted water threatens millions in China

“About 300 million people in China's vast countryside drink water tainted by chemicals and other contaminants, the Government reported yesterday, in the latest official acknowledgment of mounting risks from pollution.”

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17686994%255E954,00.html

 

Outsourcing / Globalization

Going beyond costs to measuring value

“In 2006, Unisys sees business value metrics replacing service level agreements”

http://www.business-standard.com/iceworld/storypage_link.php?chklogin=N&autono=209831&lselect=2&leftnm=lmnu9&leftindx=9

 

India in danger of being outsourced

“The buzz phrase in Bangalore is ‘moving up the value chain’ – away from being a source of cheap labour to be leveraged in ‘cost arbitrage’ plays, towards more sophisticated higher-margin work, Subramanian Ramadorai, the chief executive of TCS and chairman of the Indian IT trade body Nasscom, says.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,16614-1910228,00.html

 

India gets more complex outsourcing

“Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, and J.P. Morgan Chase, the global investment banker, said Monday that they would outsource significant operations to India, an indication that more complex, high-value work is moving to the country.”

http://www.newsobserver.com/104/story/374683.html

 

Succeeding at sourcing

“How do you strike a successful balance of in-house and outsourced IT expertise?  These days, top IT executives tend to keep strategic IT architecture decisions close to home. But when a large volume of work provides enough savings to warrant it, they hire outside resources to execute on those decisions.”

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1411083417;fp;16;fpid;0

 

Hope and Toil at India's Call Centers

“As fireworks boomed across nearby New Delhi and families lit candles and incense and prayed late into the evening, thousands of call-center agents reported to work at a gleaming office tower here. Donning headsets and fake American names, they placed and fielded phone calls to and from the United States, collecting bills, selling products and raising credit limits.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600852.html

 

Economics / Business / Misc.

M&A Activity Highest since Dotcom Days

“In the fourth quarter alone, volume topped $783.4 billion, making it the fourth-largest quarter on record.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/5350017?f=alerts

 

An Explosion on the Moon

“NASA scientists have observed an explosion on the moon. The blast, equal in energy to about 70 kg of TNT, occurred near the edge of Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) on Nov. 7, 2005, when a 12-centimeter-wide meteoroid slammed into the ground traveling 27 km/s.”

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/22dec_lunartaurid.htm

 

Bankruptcy's double curse for carmakers

“Almost three of every four American consumers polled would not buy a car from a manufacturer that had declared bankruptcy, according to a recent survey, giving struggling U.S. automaker General Motors Corp. something else to think about.”

http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/28/Autos/bankrupt_automaker.reut/index.htm