Stories by Sharon Gaudin

The Omega Files

Tim Lloyd thought he had committed the perfect electronic crime.

Jury Convicts Net Manager in Landmark Case

The morning of July 31, 1996, the first worker in the door at Omega Engineering Inc.'s manufacturing plant in Bridgeport, New Jersey, logged on to his computer and unwittingly detonated a software time bomb that systematic-ally eradicated all the programs that ran the company's manufacturing operations.To make matters worse, executives soon found there were few options to keep the department running. Shortly before the attack, Tim Lloyd, a 37-year-old network administrator, moved the programs off individual workstations and onto Omega's central NetWare file server. And there were no back-up tapes to access because Lloyd brought them home and reformatted them, according to testimony at his trial for computer sabotage, which ended last week in a guilty verdict.

The Enemy Within

If your security strategy is focused on building the most impenetrable defense against external assaults, you may be ignoring an even more ominous threat - attacks from your co-workers. Experts say the majority of damage to enterprise systems can be traced to disgruntled or mischievous employees.

Shift Change

A group of friends share a pot of coffee and talk about trying to balance work and family. Skipping a daughter's basketball game to get a server up and running, dialing in from home after a 10-hour day or getting to work a half hour later than everyone else so they can drop their kids off at school.

The PDA Predicament

Personal digital assistants (PDA) are no longer just the geek's favorite gadget. In an era when real-time information is the lifeblood of business, and everyone from the sales rep to the CEO is virtually useless unless they're connected, the PDA is fast becoming a necessary tool for enterprise.

Auction Action: Right for Your Company?

Consumer goods aren't the only hot items on online auction blocks. In fact, on any given day, you'll find thousands of networking products up for bid on eBay Inc. And business-to-business auction sites are attracting a legion of followers, moving truckloads of products and forging previously unattainable partnerships around the globe. Best yet, the IT experience you'll need to engage in auctions is easy to come by.

Forget Y2K; It's On to W2K

When it comes to migrating to Windows 2000, network executives will need to devote several months to a whole range of key planning issues before the new operating system ever touches bit to metal.

Gearing Up

With the worst Y2K worries behind them, network executives are now turning to projects that were waylaid last year because of preparations for the dreaded millennium bug.

Microsoft reacts to service pleas

Though Microsoft's customer service has improved in the past year, corporate users say it remains a big problem - so much so that some say they don't invest more in the company's products because they're afraid to.
Message received.

Novell's full-serve strategy

Novell will make several announcements this week in an effort to move beyond the network directory arena and position itself to manage everything on the enterprise from users to applications to personal IDs, Computerworld has learned.

Y2k May Stall Windows 2000 rollout

A growing number of analysts are warning users not to expect delivery of Windows 2000 before the middle of next year.
That's at least six months after the delivery date pinpointed last week by Ed Muth, Microsoft Corp.'s group product manager for Windows NT. And the delivery date Muth targeted in his statement -- which came on the heels of a confirmed one-month delay in the release of the third beta of the updated operating system -- is later than what Microsoft had predicted. In a statement last year, it pegged mid-1999 for the final release of Windows 2000.

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