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Tech-savvy females boost business
I’d certainly have to agree with Lorraine Cousins (Letters, 15 October). At the same time, I’m finding it more and more disheartening to hear how difficult it is for women in the IT sector as a whole.
Fortunately, our company is far from the norm. Working in the computer recycling and asset disposal sector, we have seen extremely rapid growth over the past year, due in no little part to the company being led by my wife. She has got a head for running an IT business that would leave me feeling pretty much bemused half the time – and that is coming from a postgrad with years of experience in project management.
I think it is time the industry realised that being able to multitask can be a serious benefit in this industry. Besides, many clients like to speak to a woman about technical issues. It may be sexist, but having an IT-savvy female in charge certainly sells our services and even products.
Richard Tanfield-Johnson
Gender bias not to blame
In my many years of studying computing, I do not recall seeing any female students in my classes (Why IT’s gender bias has to end, 24 September). Now as an employer I have not received any applications from the said sex. Moreover, I regularly receive CVs from recruitment agencies and not one has been from a female applicant.
This must surely prove that women just do not want to do IT and there is no gender bias at all.
Martin Davies
Academia gets A for ID efforts
The public sector, particularly higher and further
education, has been leading the way in access and identity management for many
years (The case for federated ID management, 8 October). Indeed, 98 per cent of
The sector has built on this expertise and in early 2007 launched the UK Access Management Federation. The purpose of the federation is to formalise access for thousands of students, teachers and researchers to multiple online information resources, with a single username and password.
CA’s Simon Perry suggests that federated access and identity
management will become a mainstream technology in the next couple of years,
with some banks and EU bodies experimenting in the field already. For
Ed Zedlewski, Eduserv
Stop e-fraud in all its guises
I could not agree more that the online industry needs to increase its focus on anti-fraud tools (Fraud deterrent is lacking, 8 October).
However, this issue extends beyond the typical credit card fraud that plagues the internet today. Online fraud as it relates to e-commerce as a whole, and the channels used to drive both traffic and sales to retail sites, also needs to be addressed.
As an example, within affiliate marketing, the fraud resulting from publisher sites engaging in questionable practices that taint the industry at large must be stopped. These include problems that have popped up around adware and spyware as well as other dubious practices that allow links to be highjacked and sites to claim illegitimate traffic.
Increased industry diligence and co-operation in these areas
is very much required and something that should not be overlooked when
discussing online fraud if e-commerce is going to continue to grow and flourish
in the
Regardless of their context, all online transactions are premised on trust, and once this is broken, it will be twice as difficult to rebuild.
Kevin Kozinchik, LinkShare Europe
The iPhone is a smart choice for business
Apple has never promised to support Microsoft’s proprietary Outlook email protocol as claimed in your article (More style-phone than smartphone, 1 October), but there are third-party solutions for this, for example Visto.
Email is a low-bandwidth activity and so Edge or even GPRS
is perfectly adequate for this task. In any case, Edge rollout in the
Finally, any business person will appreciate the vast superiority of the iPhone’s web browser over that on the Nokia N95, BlackBerry or any other mobile device on the market.
The reason the iPhone beats all other mobile devices is nothing to do with the pretty hardware, rather the desktop-class software and operating system.
Neil
Anti-fraud side effects
Those who tout cure-all security solutions should really think more about the side effects (Fraud deterrent is lacking, 8 October).
Real-time checking of direct debit mandates would be disastrous for anyone moving house. When you have just signed the contract to buy or rent a new home, you want to get the utilities connected up and possibly furniture bought before you actually move in. It would not be very pleasant if all your direct debit mandates were rejected because the bank still has your old address. People with a second home would have similar problems.
Richard Parkins
Why VDi needs VPN security
While it is certainly very exciting to see what VMware’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDi) can do over a LAN, what about remote users (Pros and cons of desktop virtualisation, 8 October)? You are still faced with finding a way to serve up those virtual desktops securely over the internet, otherwise you run the risk of exposing those VDi sessions to the web.
I work for an SSL VPN manufacturer, and we see a natural connection between the benefits of VDi and the need to enforce remote access policy over the web, which is what SSL VPNs are designed to do.
We think that if a company decides to move towards VDi – and we are seeing more organisations doing so as standard practice – then securing those sessions for remote users becomes critical.
Eric Heller, AEP Networks
Windows Vista is not so bad
Guy Kewney talks about how the release of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows XP represented an improvement from their predecessors (Why Vista gets in my way, 1 October). He does not, however, feel the same way about Windows Vista.
“Like many, I have failed to be smitten with the latest
Windows version,
I use
I have, however, yet to use it as a business productivity platform. I have heard some of the horror stories, but I have also heard some very good things.
When I built my home theatre PC, I made sure that every
component was compatible with
I think it is like most things – the better we plan, the better our results are.
John
Women can and should do it themselves
Can it really be true that only 16 per cent of the IT workforce is female (Why IT’s gender bias has to end, 24 September)? This figure is both maddening and saddening, and shows the true picture of gender unbalance in the IT world.
I have been working in this fascinating sector since the early 1980s. During my career I have encountered every gender cliché possible: salary discrepancies; multiple interviews for a position when male counterparts were interviewed only once; and receiving mail addressed to “Mr Cousins” – the default assumption being that a software firm’s MD must be male.
I’m living proof that women can excel on their own merits in this sector. I am, however, very concerned that simply asking male directors to open their doors to female engineers and IT professionals is merely lip-service. It also implies that men will continue to control this sector.
Lorraine Cousins, Halcyon Software
BlackBerry users not at risk
Why does George Gardiner think that BlackBerry messages pass
through
There are two distinct BlackBerry services with different security properties. If you use BlackBerry Enterprise Server, your messages are encrypted end-to-end between the BlackBerry device and the server that is under your organisation’s control. You can choose between Triple-DES and AES, both of which are strong algorithms. No third party can read your messages because all they will see is the ciphertext.
If you buy an individual BlackBerry – for personal use or
small businesses – then the service provider owns one end of the encrypted
link. In this case the potential for government interception does arise, but in
the country of the service provider. Even if you were to roam to
Mark
BlackBerry data is safe
RIM has been a long-standing advocate of wireless security and the BlackBerry Solution is the first mobile platform to achieve Common Criteria Certification, so I am keen to respond to George Gardiner’s article to correct some major inaccuracies (Is BlackBerry data ripe for interception? 8 October).
All data sent between the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the BlackBerry handset is strongly encrypted and only decrypted once inside an organisation’s firewall or delivered to a BlackBerry. Since neither RIM nor the wireless operator ever has access to the encryption key, message contents cannot be provided to any law enforcement agency.
By default, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) uses
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which has been widely studied and is
considered computationally infeasible to break. In the
The UK Home Office recently issued guidance on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act Part III that is the opposite of Gardiner’s view. If an investigation requires access to data held on a BlackBerry, investigators would have to work directly with the device owner as it is not possible to access the data any other way.
Scott Totzke, Research In Motion
UTM is proving its worth
Martin Roesch’s comment that unified threat management (UTM) is only appropriate in limited situations because “just having border defence is not enough” ought to be read with IDC’s UTM report in mind (Network security needs to have depth, 24 September).
IDC’s research indicates that the UTM market is growing at a rate of 30 per cent year on year.
These figures indicate that there are plenty of situations where UTM is proving its worth.
Walter Schumann, Astaro
IT sector still gives women a raw deal
How wonderful to see Madeline Bennett reporting that the lack of diversity in IT is being tackled (Diversity defuses skills time bomb, 17 September).
Oh no it isn’t.
IT employers appear to be struggling with the idea that half the human race – ie women – could do an IT job. Attempts are being made to encourage firms to recruit young women – presumably before they do anything female like having children – with the carrot of being treated as equals to men, with the same opportunities. But diversity means treating people appropriately, not the same.
Women need to know they will not be put on a low-pay “mummy-track” when they have children, and just like men, need some assurance that their services and skills will still be valued when they are over 40 – another sort of diversity.
It would be nice to see the IT industry really tackle all types of discrimination.
Jenny Barnes
Thoughts on job-seeking
I couldn’t disagree more with Jason Davies on IT skills
(Letters, 24 September). I work just outside of
We always encourage our team to increase their knowledge and certifications in IT and even help pay towards the training in a lot of cases. I think all employers should help fund IT training, after all you are only as good as the staff you employ.
The only thing I do agree with is that most employers are unimpressed by MCSEs. Usually the only employers that hire based on an MCSE are just looking for Microsoft points.
I think experience and a proven track record in a job role is more likely to land you a job.
Chris Fitzgerald
Life support for old formats
I must disagree with Barney Haye of gold Microsoft business partner Essential Computing when he says he does not think standardisation of data formats is important (Letters, 24 September). Already, older data formats are becoming unreadable. When was the last time you accessed a WordStar file?
Haye’s point about the Sun plug-in for Microsoft Office is interesting. Sun could produce this plug-in because ODF is an open standard with multiple implementations. Perhaps he would care to comment on the failure of any company other than Microsoft to produce fully functional plug-ins for Microsoft’s proprietary document formats.
Without standards the format of data is at the whim of the software producers and is dependent on their goodwill, and company stability, for future access. With standards, we get future proofing, interoperability and customer choice.
Jerome Davies
Top tips for saving energy
There are a number of simple steps that organisations should take to reduce energy used as a result of datacentre activity (The great offsetting debate, 17 September).
Although not a new concept in the datacentre world, taking a “lights out” approach is not only a by-product of remote management capabilities but will significantly reduce energy used and in turn carbon emissions produced.
Overheating and cooling of equipment in the datacentre is still a key concern for businesses. One way to regulate the temperature and get the most out of air-conditioning systems is to keep the doors closed. Having staff walk in and out of the datacentre will require the air-conditioning to work faster and therefore use more power to stop equipment overheating.
With the arrival of the mega datacentre and the expected rise in capacity and energy needs of big business, looking at putting in place a more efficient IT infrastructure and making changes to wider business processes will all help towards reducing the amount of energy used.
Russell Stevens, Avocent
The FSA protects against data breaches
The likelihood of a breach notification law being
implemented in the
However, the ICO can pass cases over to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for enforcement action. Unlike the ICO, the FSA has unlimited fining powers and this was illustrated with the £980,000 fine imposed on Nationwide Building Society.
There is an existing obligation to report breaches to the FSA notwithstanding the possibility of any new requirement to report them to the ICO.
I think that the general public would get a very rude awakening if they knew how many firms routinely lost their information. External reporting could, however, lead to a competitive advantage for those more careful firms.
Elizabeth Nelson
IBM should add Projity
Bravo on the IBM commitment to OpenOffice (IBM to finally join OpenOffice, 17 September). It should bundle in OpenProj’s Projity, a complete replacement for Microsoft Project, which is part of the Microsoft Office family of solutions.
Microsoft Project is priced at about £500 and is on seven per cent of all Office desktops. It drives huge revenue for Microsoft and until Projity there was no open source alternative.
OpenProj is available on Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows, and is compatible with existing Microsoft Project files. I use it with OpenOffice and have suggested integrating it, but OpenOffice is an organisational mess to work with. IBM should trump Sun and OpenOffice and integrate OpenProj.
Joseph Kimble
CarbonNeutral projects vital
It is incorrect to say that “several projects” in which the CarbonNeutral Company invests were shown not to need our money during a Dispatches television programme (The great offsetting debate, 17 September). Only one of our projects featured in the programme and it was clearly stated during the broadcast that our carbon offset money was necessary.
The CarbonNeutral Company has been operating for 10 years and has extremely stringent standards. We work to the CarbonNeutral Protocol, a public and independently reviewed standard.
The practice of carbon offsetting is highly charged, with many passionate people both in favour and against it. Scientists advise that we need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 80 per cent by 2050. It is clear that regulation alone will not achieve this, which is why we believe carbon offsetting has a vital role to play.
Sue Welland, The CarbonNeutral Company
An internet alternative
The internet was never designed to deal with today’s demands (Internet’s demise is greatly exaggerated, 17 September). It was set up for academics to share information, so it is no surprise it is faltering. However, it has also been widely acknowledged that investment has not mirrored the growth in usage. The industry has always been preoccupied with the “bells and whistles” of the web, rather than investing in the internet backbone. But there are alternatives.
Application-sensitive networks encapsulate the idea of an “other internet”. This concept involves a complete bypass of the public internet, which entails the partitioning and prioritising of business-critical traffic. This approach guarantees 100 per cent reliability and enables online organisations like Yahoo to sustain business models without worrying about the shortcomings of today’s public internet.
This approach is not saying that the public internet is irrelevant, it is merely accepting it was not made to do certain things.
Kieron O’Brien, PacketExchange
