It's an old story: A sales manager comes up with a great system for squeezing maximum results from his salespeople and uses spreadsheets to support the process. Another sales manager thinks this is a great idea and proposes scaling the whole works up to support many more salespeople. IT says no, we don't have the resources to build this, and if you do it yourself, we won't support it. Sales hires a programmer who whips up a database-driven version. The dog and pony show wows the CEO, who throws his support behind the project. But it turns out the new software breaks some existing applications and even corrupts critical data. And a year later, it's IT's job to fix the problem.
Why do I suddenly feel like that unhip guy in the Macintosh commercials?
Leadership. Communication. Strategy. Diplomacy. Money. Technology. Industry. These are the things IT leaders must master. If you want to make it to the top of your profession, these disciplines are no longer fancy bells and whistles you might add on to your basic IT management functionality. These days, they're the requirements for the job.
I owe David Maynor and Jon Ellch an apology. Several weeks ago, in a column titled "Quack Hackers," I described their presentation at this year's Black Hat USA security conference as one of a pair of "hoax hacks" and "rigged demos of make- believe security holes." At Black Hat, Maynor and Ellch (who hacks under the name "Johnny Cache") showed how they could hack into a Macintosh laptop via Wi-Fi, as long as the Mac was using a no-name Wi-Fi card with buggy drivers. But Maynor and Ellch also told a Washington Post reporter they could pull the same trick on stock Mac Wi-Fi -- a trick they refused to demonstrate. Baloney, I said. It's bogus, a publicity stunt using Apple's name to grab headlines.
Here it comes, ready or not.Microsoft has announced that the first release candidate for Windows Vista is ready. Vista RC1 is already on its way to 2 million beta testers who have seen previous builds of Vista. That's no big deal for corporate IT; we've all been through successive waves of prerelease Windows versions. The testers in the beta programs tend to be pretty well behaved.
Maybe we've been going about IT security the wrong way. Security guru Bruce Schneier thinks so. Last week at the Hack in the Box conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Schneier told the crowd that technical security measures have proved to be not enough -- it's time to apply economic pressure. For example, banks will only get serious about identity theft if they're legally liable for unauthorized withdrawals, and software vendors will take security seriously only when they can be sued for loss because of buggy software.
Maybe we've been going about IT security the wrong way. Security guru, Bruce Schneier thinks so. At the recent Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia, Schneier told the crowd technical security measures have proved to be not enough -- it's time to apply economic pressure. For example, banks will only get serious about identity theft if they're legally liable for unauthorized withdrawals, and software vendors will take security seriously only when they can be sued for loss because of buggy software.
Hoax hacks. Rigged demos of make-believe security holes. Those, it appears, are the real big news that came out of the Black Hat USA security conference earlier last month. Two of the headline-grabbingest claims by independent security researchers at the show have since turned out to be bogus.
Who does your business trust? Do your users and managers trust you to use technology to solve business problems? Or do they believe that your IT shop can't do the job, and that going outside or offshore is the only way to get real results?
At the Black Hat conference last week, the FBI offered a truce to hackers. Actually, it was more than that. Daniel Larkin, who heads up the FBI's Internet crime unit, came right out and asked for help from a group of people that the G-men have often been chasing over the past two decades. Larkin pointed out that hackers -- er, security researchers -- often dig up crucial cybersecurity information before law enforcement people do. And now that the FBI is working with software vendors, big online businesses and academic institutions, hackers are the next logical group for the bureau to join forces with.
Last week, Microsoft unveiled what it called "Windows Principles: Twelve Tenets to Promote Competition." Stop laughing. It could happen. Really. True, Microsoft's "voluntary principles" mainly consist of things the company already has to do in the wake of its disastrous antitrust trial a few years back. And true, Microsoft's spokesman promoting these competitive principles -- its chief competition officer, so to speak -- was the company's top lawyer, Brad Smith.
You're about to get a rare opportunity. Oh, not this week, or even this year. But sometime next year, you'll probably start rolling out Windows Vista. That's when you'll have the opportunity to make your end users truly loathe you -- or make them feel like IT really is on their side after all.
Either you get it or you don't. That's the open secret about the Best Places to Work in IT. Either you understand that being a great place to work is a competitive business advantage or you still think it's a luxury your company can't afford in a competitive business world.
Is Java dead? Come on, seriously -- why else would Sun Microsystems be offering it up to the open source crowd? A decade ago, Java was the hottest, most exciting thing in IT; a certified Windows-killer that was going to wipe out Microsoft's monopoly and revolutionize the way software was made, distributed and run. Today? Today, Java is old hat. It's been eclipsed by open source, the new hottest thing in IT that's going to wipe out Microsoft's monopoly and revolutionize the way software is made, distributed and run.
Call it the worst work-around ever. How else to describe the advice from Mike Danseglio, a Microsoft security guru, to wipe and reinstall Windows on any PC infected with an insidious malware known as a rootkit? Danseglio grabbed some headlines this month when he told an audience at the InfoSec World security conference that once a rootkit digs in, there's no sure way to get rid of it short of nuking Windows and starting from scratch.