Opinion

Opinion

• Security Think Tank: Patching is vital and essentially a risk management exercise

  How should organisations address the need to keep software up to date with security patches without it costing too much or being too labour intensive?  Continue Reading

• Rethink risk through the lens of antifragility

  Antifragility is an exciting alternative that fuses value and risk, and CIOs and IT executives are well positioned to help  Continue Reading

• Gov.uk Verify and identity assurance - it's time for a rethink

  The government's Verify identity platform is not meeting user needs - it's time to step back and review how best to make online identity for public services work  Continue Reading

• What to do first when hit by a cyber attack

  What actions should organisations take if they suspect they have suffered a cyber security incident?  Continue Reading

• The rise of the ODMs: Should the branded hardware suppliers be worried?

  The use of ODM datacentre hardware makes good economic sense for the hyperscale providers, but what about everyday enterprises?  Continue Reading

• Escaping waterfall government and the myth of 'digital transformation'

  An agile approach to digital programmes will not transform Whitehall unless the waterfall approach to policy and decision-making is overhauled too  Continue Reading

• The internet of things: an overview

  Despite security and other concerns, there are many benefits associated with embracing the internet of things  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Risk of DNS attacks goes beyond websites

  What are the main security risks associated with DNS and how are these best mitigated?  Continue Reading

• How AI is disrupting the role of call centres and call centre staff

  Artificial intelligence could eliminate many white-collar jobs in coming decades. Its effects are already being felt in the call centre industry, but there is still no substitute for the human touch  Continue Reading

• Beware of Oracle’s developer Trojan Horse

  The Oracle Technology Network allows developers to prototype applications for free, but there is a catch when it is time to deploy  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Top three DNS-related security risks

  What are the main security risks associated with the domain name system and how are these best mitigated?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Communication is key to cyber security in digital era

  How can information security professionals help organisations to understand the cyber risks across increasingly digital businesses?  Continue Reading

• Obituary: Jonathan Green-Armytage, former Computer Weekly journalist

  Computer Weekly marks the passing of one of the great tech reporters from the 1980s and 1990s  Continue Reading

• Gary McKinnon: Why Lauri Love should be spared the nightmare of extradition

  Computer activist Lauri Love should be spared a life sentence in a US jail, says former hacker Gary McKinnon  Continue Reading

• Enterprise NAS performance challenges and how to resolve them

  NAS storage can be used for mission critical workloads but NFS-based storage comes with performance challenges. Jim Bahn of Virtual Instruments outlines the main ones  Continue Reading

• A new nearshoring game is emerging

  Countries selling themselves as nearshore business services locations need to change their sales pitches to avoid becoming like all the other countries doing the same  Continue Reading

• Consumer identity management is the core of real CRM

  IAM + CRM is much more than simply IAM for external users, says Ivan Niccolai  Continue Reading

• Six essential processes for keeping data secure

  Data security is increasingly vital for organisations as the countdown begins for compliance with new rules imposed by the EU’s general data protection regulation  Continue Reading

• Was that it? Business as usual for fintechs after Brexit vote

  Following the Brexit vote, Fintech Times editor Bird Lovegod describes how financial services IT startups are getting on with business as usual  Continue Reading

• The true cost of running technology

  Ministry of Justice digital chief Arif Harbott discusses the importance of disclosing the costs of technology – and why it makes sense to invest to avoid expensive glitches  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Many breaches down to poor access controls

  In the modern business environment, what are the most common access control mistakes – and how best are these corrected?  Continue Reading

• The problem with passwords: how to make it easier for employees to stay secure

  An organisation’s IT security can be compromised if staff do not follow a strict policy of using strong passwords to access internal systems  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Top five access control mistakes

  In the modern business environment, what are the most common access control mistakes and what is the best way to correct them?  Continue Reading

• Demystifying service delivery automation

  What is service delivery automation and what can it do for your organisation?  Continue Reading

• Robots will transform, not replace, human work

  Claims that robots will steal our jobs are commonplace – but humans will find themselves working side by side with robots, rather than being replaced by them  Continue Reading

• Why we’re measuring the digital economy in the wrong way

  Conventional measures of productivity and growth, such as GDP, fail to capture the true effect of the digital revolution – but we're getting richer nonetheless  Continue Reading

• The problem of smart cities and connectivity in the UK

  Only once leaders develop a framework for local economic and societal development can the “smart city” buzz can evolve into “intelligent communities”  Continue Reading

• How the Consumer Rights Act will affect the digital industry

  Consumer legislation has been updated to take into account the unique nature of digital content – but what does it mean for technology suppliers?  Continue Reading

• The importance of e-leadership in meeting digital challenges

  Henley Business School identifies ICT trends that will alter the demand of e-skills, especially those needed by e-leaders  Continue Reading

• Life’s a breach: How to handle the press after a hacking attack

  Emily Dent, specialist in crisis PR, offers some advice to organisations that unexpectedly find themselves in the headlines  Continue Reading

• Three things you may not know that DNS data can tell you

  Big data tools can help network administrators gather new insights into security and performance from DNS data  Continue Reading

• The top 10 myths about agile development

  Examining some of the most common misconceptions in the growing field of agile software development  Continue Reading

• Government as a platform, or a platform for government? Which are we getting?

  Government as a platform is the latest buzzword in Whitehall - but is that really what they are going to deliver?  Continue Reading

• Can legislation stop cyber crime?

  Rising cyber crime suggests criminal law does not deter criminals and that a better legal solution is required to prevent further rises  Continue Reading

• What is government as a platform and how do we achieve it?

  There are lots of discussion going on at the moment about digital “platforms”, and the impact they might have on UK public services  Continue Reading

• Disrupted everything: How Google will change our world

  While Apple could be the first company to hit a $1tn valuation, Google could be first to hit a $2tn market cap. But how will it get there?  Continue Reading

• Five questions every board should ask after Sony Pictures breach

  What can the board do to avoid having to answer embarrassing questions at the next shareholder meeting?  Continue Reading

• Germany and the UK - Europe’s technology pioneers

  Stephen Georgiadis, managing director at investment bank Altium, explores the thriving technology sectors in the UK and Germany  Continue Reading

• Revolutionising digital public service delivery

  Public sectors across the world are attempting a transition away from closed, top-down, bureaucratic, and paper-based transactional models  Continue Reading

• Nobody has a monopoly on digital leadership

  As IT becomes more strategic and pervasive, effective digital leadership is needed by just about every organisation  Continue Reading

• The digital CIO: ‘Fear of Google’ and the ethics of digital business

  Could the big digital players be using their dominance by exerting unfair competition?  Continue Reading

• Watermelon SLAs – making sense of green and red alerts

  Often IT SLAs don’t reflect the real service and service experience of users. They also aren’t focused enough on the business results  Continue Reading

• Define a software delivery strategy for business innovation – four key steps

  As software takes a central role in modern business models, application delivery capability has become the key enabler of disruption  Continue Reading

• The legal considerations of the internet of things

  As with many new technologies, there are a number of tricky legal challenges to consider as part of widespread IoT adoption  Continue Reading

• Opinion: The Strategic Execution Framework

  Innovation. Agility. Performance. Scalability. Are these among the key initiatives for your company this year?  Continue Reading

• Five tips for managing project change requests

  Change is an inevitable part of a project, so working out in advance how best to handle change requests will make the whole process much easier  Continue Reading

• Searching for the signal of open standards amid the growing noise of agile

  For all its undeniable strengths, the use of agile in government is in danger of becoming a fetish  Continue Reading

• Should you allow a bring your own device policy?

  Employers are realising there are challenges presented by BYOD which, if not dealt with, could have a serious impact on the business  Continue Reading

• Living with Google Glass – not quite useful enough to overcome the dork-factor

  Businesses will use Google Glass first, says Simon Dring after spending a few days living with the technology.  Continue Reading

• User acceptance testing needs real training, not just a short course

  In spite of its importance, user acceptance testing (UAT) is often chaotic, problematic and ineffective  Continue Reading

• Intel x86 and IBM Power CPUs: Which, when, why?

  There are only three processors left in the market for mission-critical applications. Which should you chose ?  Continue Reading

• Technology, society and morality: the implications for technology leaders

  Technology is evolving at a pace and scale that has never been experienced. Society is struggling to keep up with the social and moral implications  Continue Reading

• Array-based or vSphere Replication for VMware SRM?

  What’s the best replication method for VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)? GlassHouse Technologies’ Paul Grimwood runs the rule over array-based replication and vSphere Replication  Continue Reading

• Who owns your LinkedIn account?

  It is common for employees to use personal social networking accounts for work, but who actually owns those accounts?  Continue Reading

• Privacy concerns in the digital world

  Considering the full spectrum of privacy, people need to ask themselves if they are comfortable with all their characteristics in the public domain  Continue Reading

• Nirvanix failure – a blow to the cloud storage model?

  Cloud storage firm Nirvanix has given customers a deadline to retrieve their data. Are the reasons for its failure specific to Nirvanix or a real blow to cloud storage overall?  Continue Reading

• Gartner: Benefits of mobile collaboration

  The rapid adoption of smart devices, both in the workplace and outside, has raised expectations about accessibility and user experience  Continue Reading

• When to use flash SSD instead of SAS or SATA?

  When to use flash SSDs instead of SAS or SATA spinning disk is all down to application requirements, says David Boyle, senior consultant at GlassHouse Technologies (UK)  Continue Reading

• How to appoint a new outsourcing supplier

  Outsourcing can come with its own security risks if not managed appropriately, making due diligence and clear contractual arrangements key  Continue Reading

• The dangers of internet cafés

  Businesses need clear computer use policies and need to ensure staff are properly trained in data protection, writes Garry Mackay  Continue Reading

• The data fragmentation challenge

  Few organisations have policies to guide where data should and should not be stored. The result: data fragmentation  Continue Reading

• Whiteboard it – the power of graph databases

  Graph databases map relationships between entities in a network. They won’t replace conventional relational databases, but for harnessing the value of interconnectedness they mark a breakthrough  Continue Reading

• The ideology of hacking

  Business leaders need to be educated on the true threats their firms face and IT security professionals have to arm their executives with that information  Continue Reading

• How to assess the security of a cloud service provider

  As businesses continue to put more information online, understanding cloud suppliers and agreements has never been more important  Continue Reading

• BBC's DMI project failure is a warning to all organisations

  The decision to cancel the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative (DMI) with nothing to show for the almost £100m spent on it should be a warning to other organisations about the risks involved in large-scale IT projects  Continue Reading

• The challenges of information governance in our increasingly litigious age

  Formulating the right enterprise-wide information governance policies is essential in heading off potential legal and compliance costs  Continue Reading

• Why IT education is failing

  There are a plethora of UK IT educational projects and initiatives but no focus or urgency to channel the energy of teachers, says entrepreneur, Rick Chandler.  Continue Reading

• The Great Deverticalisation – part 5: Mind the GaaP

  Politicians and government have the opportunity, through the power of open platforms, to take the lead in creating modern public services  Continue Reading

• Empowering users: It is not all about BYOD

  The real benefits of bring your own device (BYOD) only arise when the right culture and mindset are developed  Continue Reading

• The Great Deverticalisation - part 4: The role of the private sector

  Why do we persist in running vertically integrated organisations when standardising many of these processes would free us up to do things so much better, and more cheaply?  Continue Reading

• Securing the hypervisor: expert tips

  There are many potential security issues with the various components of a virtualised infrastructure, and nowhere is this more of a concern than with the hypervisor platforms that host virtual systems and application instances  Continue Reading

• The Great Deverticalisation - part 3: New skills and structures in the public sector

  Why do we persist in running vertically integrated organisations when standardising many of these processes would free us up to do things so much better, and more cheaply?  Continue Reading

• The Great Deverticalisation - part 2: The power of open

  The public sector has the opportunity, through the power of 'open', to take the lead in creating organisations for the future success of UK plc  Continue Reading

• The great deverticalisation – part 1: the street

  Why do we persist in running vertically integrated organisations when standardising many of these processes would free us up to do things so much better, and more cheaply?  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: You can’t protect what you don’t know you’ve got

  IP theft: who should be tackling it and how?  Continue Reading

• The socially intelligent project manager

  IQ alone is not enough to determine project success. Good project managers also require social intelligence  Continue Reading

• Customer relationship management vs business relationship management

  Business relationship management (BRM) and customer relationship management (CRM) are different, yet must work hand-in-hand  Continue Reading

• How to survive a data breach

  Six practical tips on how to prepare for and survive a data breach  Continue Reading

• EU court legalises second-hand software

  In a landmark decision, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that the reselling of used software licences is legal.  Continue Reading

• The history of the next-generation firewall

  Security expert Rik Ferguson explains how next-generation firewalls were developed and what protection they provide businesses.  Continue Reading

• Tackling the challenges of the next-generation firewall

  Security expert Brian Honan shares top tips on installing and maintaining a next-generation firewall  Continue Reading

• Tech companies facing mounting IP challenges

  The recent flurry of patent buying and selling activity in the global tech sector illustrates dramatic changes in the way some of the biggest technology companies are approaching their intellectual property (IP)  Continue Reading

• Why the public sector is turning to multi-sourcing

  Sarah Burnett explains why the public sector is moving from single sourcing to multi-sourcing, in an age of austerity.  Continue Reading

• Open standards are about the business model, not the technology

  Software companies, abuzz with lobbyists and patent lawyers over government open standards, are similar to the record industry 10 years ago.  Continue Reading

• What will training look like in the workplace of the future?

  Kevin Young (pictured), head of SkillSoft EMEA, explains the impact of technology on education  Continue Reading

• IT service management: The only way is ethics

  It is now very common for professional bodies and membership organisations to have codes of ethics and standards of conduct.  Continue Reading

• Opinion: Is big data just big hype?

  If the deluge of headlines and vendor marketing materials is anything to go by, big data is the next big thing. So how much is there really to all this big data talk?  Continue Reading

• The problem with Open Data

  Although clearly a good thing in theory, Open Data risks increasing the digital divide and social inequality unless approached right.  Continue Reading

• Five ways to improve your IT project management

  Project management and the IT industry go together like jam and toast. But not all project management is good project management.  Continue Reading

• Bridging the information gap

  The pace at which modern business tends to move has resulted in a situation where centralised decision-making struggles to keep up.  Continue Reading

• The importance of mutual understanding: A faster track to business alignment and satisfied users

  The benefits of a service-centric approach to IT tend to come back to IT in numerous ways - users are happier, the business functions more effectively, and in return IT tends to receive both more funding and freedom to develop, writes Andrew Buss, ...  Continue Reading

• What are the opportunities mCommerce offers?

  Throughout 2010, a flurry of announcements from players in the mobile value chain placed the spotlight squarely on the potential of the mCommerce market and highlighted it as a valuable revenue driver in a tough and competitive economic environment,...  Continue Reading

• Seven steps to successful negotiation for IT buyers

  Nigel Owen of training consultancy Huthwaite International provides some key tips for benefiting both seller and buyer when negotiating a sale or purchase.  Continue Reading

• Software as a service can breed dependency so choose suppliers with care

  SaaS is not utility computing: it matters who delivers it and how  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: The ISO/IEC 38500 IT Governance Standard

  IT governance means different things to different folks, yet it is generally understood to require alignment with best practice standards and methodologies. However, it can be really hard to see the wood for the trees due to the multiple frameworks,...  Continue Reading

• Mac vs PC: Which should I buy?

  Which is better – Macs or PCs? Computer Weekly content editor Faisal Alani gives his opinion on their respective advantages and disadvantages  Continue Reading

• Six reasons why the NHS National Programme For IT failed

  Like many men, I don't go to the doctor very often. The last time I did, I was with my GP for 25 minutes: five minutes discussing my symptoms and 20 minutes helping her to understand how to use her new computer system to record my symptoms, her ...  Continue Reading

• Action is the deal on Naked Leader's blog

  The Deal is the latest blog to launch on ComputerWeekly.com - and one with a twist. David Taylor, author of The Naked Leader, said, "My blog won't be about discussion and debate, but about action."  Continue Reading

• NHS IT - A personal view

  The media last week was full of comment on the "problems" at the NHS IT project as Accenture ducked out. Yet again, the comment portrayed the project as a "disaster" - indeed “yet another public sector IT disaster”.  Continue Reading

• How to win the jobs game

  Many readers have been disappointed by recruitment agents. All the more reason to develop the relationship  Continue Reading