Technology News: Sysadmin

Trashing IT Hardware the Responsible Way
November 19, 2009

Disposing of obsolete and broken electronic devices, or e-waste, is not as simple as taking out the trash. Heavy metals and other poisonous contaminants can leak into the environment if electronic equipment is not properly processed. Without foresight, discarded data is also at risk of unintended exposure.

Back to Basics: 5 Things IT Could Do Better in 2010
November 17, 2009

Well, it's November again -- which means that it's just about time for this year's set of New Year's predictions. Every year around this time, everyone from antimalware companies to analyst firms line up to tell us about the top IT and security trends -- what they are and why we should care.

Text Analysis and the Next Generation of BI
November 15, 2009

Text-based content and information from across the Web are growing in importance to businesses. The need to analyze Web-based text in real-time is rising to where structured data was in importance just several years ago. Indeed, for businesses looking to do even more commerce and community building across the Web, text access and analytics forms a new mother lode of valuable insights to mine.

What's on the Wire? Choosing the Best Approach to Network Monitoring
October 27, 2009

There's no debate about the need for centralized network monitoring. The potential benefits are numerous, including improved end-use productivity, network performance, application performance and security and compliance. There are three main approaches to network monitoring: Simple Network Management Protocol, flow records and packet-based.

Why It Pays to Second-Guess Your Technology Assumptions
October 20, 2009

As a resident of New Hampshire, I can tell you that the Old Man of the Mountain is a very tender topic for Granite Staters. If you've never heard of it, the Old Man is -- or rather was -- a natural rock formation that was the spitting image of an old man's face. It was carved out of granite on the slope of Mt. Cannon, and if you've never seen it you can check out what it looked like on the back of the N.H. state quarter.

Is the Internet Falling Apart?
October 13, 2009

How secure and dependable is the Internet? The Great Twitter Outage of 2009, which shocked the microblogging community and amused many other observers, called into question the reliability of Web-based communications and transaction capabilities that are easy to take for granted.

The Winding Path to Xsan Nirvana
October 13, 2009

The Apple Xsan system follows the relatively common path that other storage area network products have established, which is to simplify storage management, and the Xsan delivers -- but it takes a lot of planning to reach Xsan Nirvana. An overview of the Xsan system requires technical and budget planning.

Microsoft Preps for Ginormous Patch Tuesday
October 09, 2009

Microsoft on Friday announced that it will issue a record 13 security bulletins on its next scheduled Patch Tuesday, which will arrive Oct. 13. It rates eight of these as critical and the rest as important. The bulletins address 34 vulnerabilities across a variety of Microsoft products, ranging from Windows to its Forefront security app to Internet Explorer.

The Efficient Enterprise Bouncer
September 17, 2009

Managing access to protected resources for users in the extended enterprise can be a daunting task. New applications and services are continuously being developed and deployed; new users join the extended enterprise, change roles within it, and eventually move on.

The 'Visual Yield' of Information Security
September 15, 2009

Over the holiday weekend, a family friend introduced us to a great concept we hadn't heard before: The concept of "visual yield." It's a concept that I think anybody who's ever been involved in a home improvement project can understand and appreciate -- and it has more to do with information security than you might think at first blush.

When Microsoft Exchange Availability Matters the Most
September 10, 2009

The average worker checks email once every 15 minutes, recent studies have shown, with some users checking email as often as 40 times per hour. In addition, increasing use of personal mobile devices means that employees have become attached to their email at all times, with some checking their device as soon as each email arrives.

Security Showdown: Cloud Computing vs. On-Premise IT
August 24, 2009

Much of the cloud security debate revolves around perceptions. It's about seeing the glass as half-full. Perhaps it's only a matter of proper practices and means to overcome fear, caution and reluctance to embrace successful cloud computing. Or is the glass half empty -- that in order to ramp up to cloud computing use and practices, a number of potentially onerous and perilous security pitfalls will prove too difficult?

Virtualization Reimagined
July 27, 2009

Let's look at a series of three important considerations when moving to enterprise virtualization adoption. First, we'll investigate the ability to manage and control how interconnections impact virtualization. Interconnections play a large role in allowing physical servers to support multiple virtual servers, which themselves need multiple network connections.

Microsoft Takes Windows 7 Out of the Oven
July 23, 2009

Microsoft's been working hard to build a positive buzz around the release to manufacturing of Windows 7, but there remain a few flies in the ointment. Many enterprises may decide to wait until the first service pack comes out in about six months before moving to Windows 7. Also, complaints have already been popping up on the Windows Team Blog about staggered release dates and incomplete information.

Refining User Access to Keep Employee Power in Check
July 23, 2009

It has been a year since the city of San Francisco was held hostage because a city network administrator, Terry Childs, allegedly locked down the city's IT system through a privileged account. Yet today, even with the heightened awareness created by this headline incident, companies continue to struggle.

Putting the Mac to Work in a PC Shop
July 21, 2009

It used to be that if you had any sort of affinity for Macs, then there was a good chance you were a graphic artist, musician or niche computer fan. Today, the Mac is popular among an increasing number of users in a variety of work environments. Apple's platform doesn't look like it'll completely replace Windows -- or Linux, to a smaller degree -- in the everyday workplace anytime soon.