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| Market Research
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Platform change?: Cliff Mills, NCC Research (November 2008)
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The current economic climate is challenging most organisations, and this in turn has an impact on the IT department and its
budgets. The pressure is on to do more with less, cut costs, become greener and deliver more flexible and agile services to
the business.
Against this backdrop, companies are looking to IT to help them cut unnecessary costs and make the business as efficient and
effective as possible to meet any downturn in their market.
It is more imperative than ever, therefore, that organisations continually re-evaluate their IT infrastructure so that it provides the
right foundation to deliver the necessary services required by the business.
Our latest survey shows that the majority of companies (77%) appreciate the need to have a comprehensive management
strategy for developing their IT infrastructure – though this still leaves 21% who are working on a less formal basis.
We asked respondents to rank the key concerns they face with their IT infrastructure on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 equals ‘not
important’ and 5 equals ‘very important’. The leading concern is to ensure that corporate data is kept safe
and secure (4.5), followed closely by the constant need to reduce IT infrastructure maintenance and running costs (4.4). This is
seen as a more pressing issue than reducing investment in new hardware or software (rated at 4.1).
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An inside job: Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research (November 2008)
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Protecting company information is becoming more and more difficult. As IT professionals we are
faced with attacks from all sides – but ultimately the biggest threat to corporate data appears to
be from our own users. The threat boils down to two key types of user: the incompetent and non-malicious – people who make genuine mistakes based on lack of
training, lack of awareness or being tired. Lost disks are a common example; and the competent and malicious – people who are simply out to get you. They are, thankfully, a
very, very small percentage of any employee base but they do exist.
I had a telephone call from my bank the other day and they asked me for the first line of my address
to confirm who I was. Yes – they called me and wanted me to answer their security question.
Of course it could have been anyone on a phishing trip and I told them I wasn’t going to answer
the question. The caller was most put out and quite frankly surprised I wasn’t going to give him
an answer.
In actual fact I believed he was from my bank but wanted to make my point. Clearly the majority of people quite happily hand
over their security details in these calls – our incompetent and non-malicious user base.
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