Businesses seeking more IT staff

More than one-third of Irish firms plan to increase the number of staff with IT skills in their business this year, according to new research. The study by IT consulting firm Clarion Consulting found that while 35 percent of respondents plan to increase their IT employee levels this year, many firms are having trouble finding staff to meet their needs. Filling temporary vacancies was also cited as a major challenge by 49 percent of companies. Half of the companies surveyed said they needed permanent project managers and systems analysts, while 36 percent needed network administrators, security specialists and IT managers. "We are seeing a much greater emphasis on building project management capability," said Pat Millar, managing director, Clarion Consulting. "For some time now, we have been encouraging companies to invest more in project management skills and welcome these recruitment trends." For more on this story see ENN.ie.

Three steps for successful outsourcing

Companies should always follow three essential steps before embarking on IT outsourcing, according to a new report from analyst firm Forrester Research. First, organisations should not choose an outsourcing deal without figuring out how it will affect and fit in with the firm's overall IT landscape. While this seems obvious, Forrester found that businesses are in fact failing to analyse the role of IT in their firm's overall performance before selecting an outsourcing provider. The second step is that companies must consider how to manage IT and staff resources when outsourcing. Third, managers should ensure that the outsourcing model makes sound economic sense and that any additional IT spending is taken into account. Forrester claims that following these steps will allow a company to properly evaluate what type of IT outsourcing model would best suit its needs. For more on this visit Silicon.com.

Small firms neglect data security

A large proportion of small firms fail to adequately secure their electronic data, according to a study by server appliance maker Equiinet. Nearly half of all attempts to recover lost data fail to some extent, the study found, even at companies with a relatively large number of IT staff and with back-up systems in place. "Despite a lot of time and effort in undertaking the back-up process, older back-up technologies, such as tapes, have considerable drawbacks," said Equiinet product marketing director Dave Abbot. "Our survey showed that 40 percent of data recovery attempts fail to restore all the required data." Equiinet also found that back-up media is often stored insecurely, with almost two-thirds of companies admitting to leaving back-up data in the same room as servers, putting both at risk should there be a fire or flood. For more on this story see VNUnet.com.

Online sellers should harness power of email

Online retailers are losing out on opportunities to spread their message by failing to make the most of email marketing. A new study by the Email Experience Council, an email marketing organisation, found that while more than 70 percent of online retailers send out welcome emails to customers who sign up for email programmes, only 7 percent of such emails contained send-to-a-friend links. Furthermore, only 9 percent of welcome emails featured links to articles or other content, while only 7 percent provided links to retailer loyalty programmes. None of the welcome emails studied included links to company blogs. The organisation stressed that welcome emails were a good opportunity for retailers to take advantage of viral marketing, when consumers themselves spread the word about a product or service. For more on this story see eMarketer.com.

Security focus: Web 2.0

Are you managing your website's content?

Case study: B.P. Cars

WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy or Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) is a security protocol used to encrypt wireless networks in order to render them inaccessible to unauthorised users. The standard was originally developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers a number of years ago, but since 2003 it has been superseded by better, more secure standards, such as WPA and WPA2. WEP has been found to contain several security vulnerabilities, and has recently been in the news in two high-profile stories. In the US, retail chain TJX suffered a massive credit card data theft after hackers were able to bypass its WEP-encrypted network. On this side of the Atlantic, certain models of wireless broadband routers distributed by Eircom were found to be using the protocol and although no security breaches have been reported, the firm has been widely criticised for choosing the WEP standard.

Institute of Public Administration, Lansdowne Road, Dublin 4, October 25
The Irish Internet Association and web design firm Tibus present this half-day seminar on how world class web design is fundamental to maximising the return on your web development budget. Attendees will hear about what matters most to customers online and how to increase sales, improve efficiencies, communicate more clearly and integrate a website into the rest of a business.

This site is yet another useful online tool from search giant Google, which has of late been extending its reach into providing business applications and services in a bid to better compete with Microsoft. Sporting Google's customary clean look, the site pretty much does what it says on the tin, allowing users to either post chunks of text into a box and convert it into a choice of languages, or enter the URL of a webpage they wish to translate. The translation is far from perfect but is sufficient to give a fair sense of the meaning.