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The News - July 6, 2008
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires ” – William Arthur Ward
Top Picks
12,000 Laptops Lost Weekly At U.S. Airports
“A new study sponsored by the Dell computer company estimates that more than 12,000 laptop computers are lost or stolen each week at U.S. airports, and only 33% of those that turn up in "lost and found" are reclaimed.”
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/LAP07038.xml&headline=12,000%20Laptops%20Lost%20Weekly%20At%20U.S.%20Airports
[ Wow! Running the numbers for 52 weeks, that’s “more than” 624,000 laptops a year and of which only 205,920 are recovered. ]
The report is at: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/services/dell_lost_laptop_study.pdf
Social Engineering Rescues Long-Time Hostages
“Yesterday it was widely reported that 15 hostages held by Colombia's Marxist guerrillas for as long as 6 years were freed after some very brave and daring commandos posed as being part of the guerrilla group.”
http://www.realtime-itcompliance.com/miscellaneous/2008/07/social_engineering_rescues_lon.htm
Book Recommendations
The Limits of Expertise by R. Key Dismukes, Benjamin A Berman and Loukia D. Loukpopoulos
This book sets forth that to understand human error and aviation accidents, one must look at the entire system – a concept that makes sense. They studied 19 accidents from 1991-2000 that the NTSB ruled were crew error. They then apply cognitive psychology to each of the accidents to review what happened.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0754649652?ie=UTF8&tag=georgespaffor-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0754649652
It’s Not Luck by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt
This novel sets forth Dr. Goldratt’s Thinking Processes (TP) that are used to identify and resolve systemic conflicts. It’s a sequel to The Goal and works through how Alex and his team will overcome serious business issues. This book’s writing doesn’t flow quite as well as the Goal but the concepts are seminal so don’t give up early on as it gets better.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0884271153?ie=UTF8&tag=georgespaffor-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0884271153
A review of the book is at: http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/11768
IT Audit / Internal Audit / Compliance
The IT Unified Compliance Framework
“The Unified Compliance Framework reduces the regulatory tornado to a much smaller set of harmonized controls, giving you a single point of control over hundreds of complex compliance requirements from around the world.”
http://www.unifiedcompliance.com/
[I had a chance to have dinner with Doran Cougias at SANS. He’s brilliant and what they are doing with the UCF is very interesting. Check it out. ]
IT Process Improvement / Quality Management
IT catfight in Portland, OR
“Portland, Oregon’s late and over-budget ERP implementation has become a battleground between city officials and system integrator Ariston Consulting & Technologies. As the failing project’s budget ballooned from $31 million to $49.45 million, finger-pointing and mutual blame have obscured faults on both sides.”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=836
[ Full of examples of what to avoid. ]
Tone From the Top
“It is important to lay the necessary groundwork for changing existing processes or implementing new ones. It is unfortunate but many process improvement efforts fail. One vital area to address involves gaining senior management’s commitment to processes in general and the process improvement effort in question. There are at least three reasons for this that need to be considered.”
https://swarm.jupitermedia.com/itsmwatch/2008/07/tone-from-the-top.html
Security and Risk Management
ISO/IEC 27005:2008 Information technology -- Security techniques -- Information security risk management
This new standard was released in June. “It supports the general concepts specified in ISO/IEC 27001 and is designed to assist the satisfactory implementation of information security based on a risk management approach. Knowledge of the concepts, models, processes and terminologies described in ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27002 is important for a complete understanding of ISO/IEC 27005:2008.”
http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=42107
Press Release: http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1139
[ Thank you as always Julia! ]
YouTube ordered to reveal its viewers
“Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/03/youtubelawsuit.ap/index.html
Please hold your call is being transferred to a phreak...(the insecurity of voice)
“Information security largely focuses on data communications, and voice is often ignored. Every successful hack or extortion has a phone involved somewhere in the process. but in most cases the phone is a silent and overlooked component in the forensics.”
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29609
Security breaches climbing this year
“Businesses, governments and universities reported a 69 percent increase in data breaches in the first half of 2008 compared with a similar period in 2007, according to a study by a non-profit fraud-prevention group.”
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0705biz-databreach0705.html
Gov't: Terrorists increasingly exploiting tech
“In a speech at the Homeland & Border Security Conference 2008 in London on Thursday, Admiral Lord West, parliamentary undersecretary of state for security and counter-terrorism, said that terrorists were increasingly harnessing technology to try to achieve their goals.”
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39442176,00.htm
Healthcare / Bio-Informatics / Care Delivery Organizations (CDOs)
Health care providers hit by ailing economy
“With the stock markets sagging, gas prices shooting over $4 a gallon and the economy ailing, doctors, dentists and hospitals are fighting to stay out of the red, but experts say it'll likely be a while before their higher costs are passed on to consumers.”
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/07/05/health_costs_economy.html
Dealing with the Data Deluge: Three Things IT Should Do
“It’s no secret that life sciences organizations must deal with ever-growing volumes of data. New lab equipment, lab automation, and computer simulations are increasingly generating more and larger data files, all of which must be stored, backed up, and managed.”
http://www.bio-itworld.com/BioIT_Content.aspx?id=74008
They have a link to a very interesting study from IDC on exploding data storage requirements. It’s at: http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf
“The IDC research shows that the digital universe — information that is either created, captured, or replicated in digital form — was 281 exabytesiii in 2007. In 2011, the amount of digital information produced in the year should equal nearly 1,800 exabytes, or 10 times that produced in 2006 (see Figure 1). The compound annual growth rate between now and 2011 is expected to be almost 60%.”
Hospital HIT survey shows slow adoption
“HIMSS Analytics estimated that in 2008 hospitals will spend roughly 3 percent of their total budgets on healthcare IT, with urban and multi-hospital systems expected to spend the most somewhere between $22 billion and $32 billion. On the low end, rural hospitals are expected to spend as much as $1 billion, while academic facilities may spend as much as $5 billion, the study said.“
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9487
Human Error / Safety / Environment
“Global Disruption” More Accurately Describes Climate Change, Not “Global Warming”–Leading Scientist John Holdren
“In fact, temperature is only one of the things that’s changing. It’s a sort of an index of the state of the climate. The whole climate is changing: the winds, the ocean currents, the storm patterns, snow packs, snowmelt, flooding, droughts. Temperature is just a bit of it.”
http://i1.democracynow.org/2008/7/3/global_disruption_more_accurately_describes_climate
Lessons Learned from IBM's Big Green Initiative
“How strong is the Green IT wind blowing? In the software industry, the Green IT wind is blowing but not very strongly. Much of the industry still stands on the sidelines of climate change innovation. From industry leaders like Microsoft and SAP down to niche apps vendors, software firms are just now defining their strategies for environmental sustainability, Green IT and climate change.”
http://www.greenercomputing.com/column/2008/07/02/lessons-learned-ibms-big-green-initiative
Global News / Business / Economics
Japanese Shell subsidiary plans solar-panel plant
“Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Showa Shell Sekiyu, Japan's fifth-largest oil refiner, plans to invest 100 billion yen, or about $938 million, in a solar-panel megaplant, according to AFP. The planned factory will produce panels with the cumulative annual capacity to produce 1 gigawatt of power, equivalent to that of a small nuclear-power reactor.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9984098-54.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech
U.N. report: Clean energy booming globally
“Global investment in sustainable energy amounted to $148 billion in 2007, a 60 percent gain over 2006, according to a United Nations report (PDF) Tuesday.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9983501-54.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech
The report is at: http://sefi.unep.org/english/globaltrends1.html
The executive summary is at: http://sefi.unep.org/fileadmin/media/sefi/docs/publications/Exec_summary.pdf
US News / Business / Economics
The Nature of Things: Janine Benyus Biography
"When self-confessed ‘nature nerd’ Janine Benyus coined the term ‘biomimicry’ in a book she published a decade ago, little did she know it would make her into an household name, rubbing shoulders with Hollywood stars.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/04/janine.beyusbio/index.html
Long a Reliable Profit Source, Dividends Start to Crumble
“The credit crisis and economic slowdown have become so grave that many companies are chopping dividend payments to their shareholders.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070400085.html?nav=rss_business
The buck doesn't stop here; it just keeps falling
“The almighty dollar is mighty no more. It has been declining steadily for six years against other major currencies, undercutting its role as the leading international banking currency. The long slide is fanning inflation at home and playing a major role in the run-up of oil and gasoline prices everywhere.”
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-07-06-dollar-doldrums_N.htm?csp=34
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