There exists a certain contingent of cybercriminals which perpetrates computer break-ins to make political statements, to demonstrate their prowess in front of their peers, or just for the thrill of it. But bored hackers living in their parents’ basements make up only a small percentage; according t ...  

WAN application delivery—and by necessity, related issues such as data quality, monitoring and optimisation, is one of the biggest behind-the-scenes technologies in the marketplace. It may not get the media attention as do the angry birds that populate the latest mobile games, but how this market sh ...  

Considering the very large investments made by businesses and service providers in network monitoring solutions, why is poor service quality still the number one complaint from online customers? Have the customer demands for the online experience changed or is the problem  

The mortgage and lending industry has faced major challenges over the past decade, not the least of which is the mortgage crisis, increasing reliance on unstable derivative instruments, and loss of confidence in major Wall Street players. Politics and financial gaming aside though, the mortgage indu ...  

Disruptive technologies like converged infrastructure (CI) tend to deliver two things: The reality of dramatic and positive changes to the business model, and an extraordinary amount of hype and misunderstanding. First the reality—converged infrastructure is indeed a game-changer, and succeeds in ac ...  

Purveyors of information technology, particularly nimble start-ups created by still-idealistic innovators and entrepreneurs, tell us that their new inventions hold great promise for changing the way we do things.   Although that message typically comes from their PR consultants, it nonethele ...  

Compliance of any sort tends to send CIOs shaking in their boots, and CFOs reaching for the corporate cheque book. PCI-DSS, the international payment card industry standard for security, was meant to create an environment in which customer data is kept private. And to the credit of the creators of P ...  

One of the first things the network manager of an enterprise will do, if it hasn't been done already, is implement a network monitoring system. Considered an essential part of the network, much time, money and effort is put into deploying and maintaining a monitoring system, and even more time, mone ...  

Despite network monitoring tools consuming hundreds and millions of corporate dollars, customer complaints for poor service are at an all-time high consuming even more of the corporate budget. To understand why network monitoring fails in its objective, it is first necessary to examine how the use ...  

Public sector organisations, particularly at the local council level, are being increasingly squeezed for funds, and citizen watchdogs are taking a closer look at expenditures on a regular basis. At the same time, these organisations are being called upon to provide more services without increasing ...  

With an explosion of data breaches in recent years, the protection of sensitive information has become a top priority for security organisations worldwide. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 535 million records have been breached in 2,651 incidents made public since 2005.1 Atta ...  

A strategic move to the cloud is often driven by two or three key considerations, most often, these include the ability to reduce capital expense and establish more predictable operating expense, and establishing a more scalable and more easily manageable infrastructure.   [ Unified Manage ...  

It should come as no surprise that it is possible to have a private cloud within a public cloud infrastructure, in much the same way as we have virtual private networks (VPNs) over the public Internet. The most common unschooled view of the cloud is unfortunately one of confusion, with the belief th ...  

Enterprises looking for the benefits of cloud computing may be averse to the idea, out of concern over lack of control, compliance issues or security. Those with a transaction-based environment or which collect credit card information will be especially aware of the potential risks, no matter how re ...  

Public perception of how safe credit card and identity information is when placing an order over the Internet has swung from outright suspicion and fear, to acceptance. Internet transactions are at an all-time high especially during the holiday season, and the relatively new phenomenon of “Cyber Mon ...  

Ultimately there is no escape from PCI. Whether you are a sophisticated multinational retailer or a small business that accepts card payments – online or offline, it is widely expected that much more rigorous enforcement will be commonplace from 2012.   Technologies and strategies for dealing ...  

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (abbreviated to PCI DSS or commonly, just PCI) is a set of 12 requirements designed to secure and protect customer payment data. These 12 requirements of PCI DSS compliance can be quite daunting for any merchant. These are listed below:   ...  

The rewards of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment naturally start with, from the point of view of the end user, increased mobility between, better access to information, and more flexibility in access device type (PC’s, notebooks, Mac, Smartphones and Tablets).  From the perspec ...  

Every merchant that processes card payments and retains card payment details must adopt the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).  Failure to do so can result in merchants being subject to substantial fines, higher transaction costs or ultimately the suspension of banking faci ...  

Migration programs are often met with resistance on the part of end users, and a demand for cost-justification from managers, and then after approval has been granted, the migration itself seldom goes exactly as planned. Nonetheless, if the key benefits have been defined, the results can be dramatic ...