Stories by Mark Phillips

Tips for an effective disaster recovery plan

According to some estimates, 2011 has become the year of billion-dollar natural disasters. With floods, storms and fires now a top-of-mind business risk concern, IBM has announced six tips that individuals, businesses and government agencies can use to help prepare their IT environments for natural disasters and a wide range of other threats.

Small businesses challenged by virtualization

Small businesses may have a strong interest in virtualization, but they are still a long way from effectively adopting it. In fact, according to a new study by Symantec Corp, as they attempt to implement server virtualization, many are actually putting their data at risk.

Top tips for fighting targeted cyber threats

Targeted attacks are penetrating standard levels of security controls and causing significant business damage to enterprises that do not evolve their security controls, according to Gartner vice president and analyst, John Pescatore.

Web breaches blamed on lacklustre security

With attacks on websites by the likes of Anonymous rarely out of the headlines, independent analyst Ovum has blamed Web developers for not putting enough importance on ensuring sites and applications are secure.

Social media has high workplace cost

A calculator which measures the cost to companies of time spent by employees using social media has revealed that an average business with 52 employees loses as much as $US65,000 a year from non-work-related social media activity.

Key steps to better data analytics

Organisations with effective data analytics can make stronger business decisions by learning what is working and what is not, what they are doing well, and where they need improvement, according to a new whitepaper by Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).

New multi-vendor management solution

As more enterprises turn to multi-sourcing as a way to drive down IT costs, minimise delivery risk and increase efficiency, HP Enterprise Services has unveiled a service that aims to facilitate enterprise control of multi-vendor service environments.

PC market to wane as new innovations take hold

It’s been 30 years since the advent of the IBM Personal Computer, but according to IBM designer Dr Mark Dean, who worked on the original 5150, the days of the PC are now numbered.

IT service management awarded in Perth

Monash University, Australian Defence Organisation, Australian Electoral Commission and the Doric Group are just some of the finalists in this year’s IT service management (ITSM) awards.

New focus on Cloud security

US-based not-for-profit Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has unveiled a free initiative designed to encourage transparency of security practices within Cloud providers.

More Cloud on the horizon

Asia-Pacific insurers are planning to increase their IT budgets in 2011–2012 and -- interesting for an industry that is traditionally slow to adopt new technologies -- 43 per cent of respondents in a new study have already deployed or are experimenting with private Cloud.

Compromise likely on Cloud computing

At this week’s Gartner Summit in Sydney a suggestion that by 2016, 20 per cent of all business organisation’s IT will be purely Cloud-based was put to delegates and a panel of IT gurus. Roughly 70 per cent of an audience of around 250 agreed with the prediction. Here’s some of what the panel had to say.

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