Is public sector IT a jobs safety net?

Is public sector IT a jobs safety net?

With the economic slowdown affecting industries as diverse as banking and construction, will the public sector prove a recession-proof haven for IT professionals? For some IT workers, the answer is yes – but the public sector is not the land of milk-and-honey it may first appear.

Apart from anything else, the public sector is also feeling the pinch and aiming to cut jobs. “The efficiency agenda has been a high priority for some time,” says Richard Steel, president of Socitm and chief information officer at the London Borough of Newnham.

“We are mandated to make year on year cuts and to work more in partnership, so the public sector workforce has been contracting irrespective of whether or not we are in an economic slowdown.”

However, IT looks to be less affected than other areas because IT is a major player in delivering projects to achieve greater efficiency.

Read the whole article...

Cost-Effective Staffing on IT Projects

Cost-Effective Staffing on IT Projects

The economic downturn is forcing numerous companies to cut costs, and as a result, many are looking to streamline their investments in IT. For this reason, staffing services provider Veritude recently published a report titled “Staffing An IT Project? Five Steps for Savvy Sourcing and Recruiting” that outlines a few key steps to create and build an IT team cost-effectively. “It’s fair to conclude and assume that if an industry is getting hit hard, expense reductions in IT are clearly taking place as they are in other parts of the company,” said Tom Hart, executive vice president of client management, talent acquisition, operations and technology at Veritude.

Full story at Certification Magazine.

Gadget survey finds many bugs can't be fixed

Gadget survey finds many bugs can't be fixed

Gadget makers love to sell us on all the things their devices can do, whether it's letting us chat with distant friends at any time or watch movies on our commute. But can anyone fix this stuff when it breaks?

That's a question raised by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which discovered in a survey released Sunday that 15 percent of people who had some piece of technology break down in the previous year were never able to get it repaired.

The figure was even higher for certain products. Almost a quarter of cell phone users said they never managed to get their device fixed. And among those who did resolve an issue, a higher percentage either corrected the problem themselves or sought help from friends or relatives rather than call customer service.

Not certification news as such, but something I think we can all relate to in one way or another. The full story is at...

AVG update cripples some Windows XP systems

AVG update cripples some Windows XP systems

On Tuesday an update for AVG 8 suggested that a Windows system file is a Trojan horse, and users who delete the file from the system could leave their Windows XP systems endlessly rebooting or unable to reboot at all. The problem only affects users of AVG 8 products running the Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish language versions of Windows XP. AVG immediately sent out a corrected update to its customers, including those using the free editions of AVG.

Since we have a multi-national forum, I thought you might want to read this article, published at news.cnet.com.

Breaking down the Windows Server Backup tool for Windows 2008

Breaking down the Windows Server Backup tool for Windows 2008

The NTBackup program has been a Windows fixture for many years. While previous Windows releases of the tool have never included many of the fancier features found in commercial backup programs, the Windows Server Backup feature for Windows Server 2008 is completely different from earlier versions. On the surface, it appears that Microsoft has decided to dumb down the utility somewhat. I say this because the new version no longer allows you to back up individual files or folders. Instead, you are forced to back up an entire volume, even if you are really only interested in a single file.

Read the rest at TechTarget.com.

Server threat lands admin in court

Server threat lands admin in court

A US-based systems administrator has been arrested for allegedly trying to extort money and even good job references out of a mutual fund company that had just laid him off. Viktor Savtyrev, of Old Bridge, N.J., was arrested at his home on Monday morning. He faces two charges under the federal cyber extortion statue. Savtyrev, also known as Victor Savturev, was employed as a systems administrator for an unnamed mutual fund company in New York City until he was let go, along with nine other employees, on November 5. All of the laid off workers were given a severance package, according to a criminal complaint filed with the courts.

Full story at Techworld.com.

Once thought safe, WPA Wifi Encryption is Cracked

Once thought safe, WPA Wifi Encryption is Cracked

Security researchers say they've developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks.

The attack, described as the first practical attack on WPA, will be discussed at the PacSec conference in Tokyo next week. There, researcher Erik Tews will show how he was able to crack WPA encryption, in order to read data being sent from a router to a laptop computer. The attack could also be used to send bogus information to a client connected to the router.

To do this, Tews and his co-researcher Martin Beck found a way to break the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) key, used by WPA, in a relatively short amount of time: 12 to 15 minutes, according to Dragos Ruiu, the PacSec conference's organizer.

They have not, however, managed to crack the encryption keys used to secure data that goes from the PC to the router in this...

Fingerprint 'developer' used to lift text from letter-containing envelopes

Fingerprint 'developer' used to lift text from letter-containing envelopes

MacGyver and Maxwell Smart had a plethora of tricks up their sleeves (or shoes, as it were), but they never had this. One Paul Kelly and colleagues at Loughborough University have discovered that a disulfur dinitride polymer can not only turn exposed fingerprints brown as it creates a reaction with the nearly undetectable residues, but it can also lift text from departed letters. In an odd twist of fate, it was found that traces of ink jet printer ink can actually initiate the polymer just like print residue can, and the detection limit is so low that details from a letter that was once within an envelope can be seen after adequate exposure to the chemical. And you thought snail-mailing those interoffice love letters was a safe bet.

Source: engadget.com

198 Windows Vista Tips & Tricks

198 Windows Vista Tips & Tricks

It may have taken you months to be persuaded, but switching to Microsoft Windows Vista is certainly not a PC death sentence. With the release of Vista Service Pack 1, you can now enjoy a higher degree of program compatibility, an increased speed when copying large files and connecting to networked PCs, improvements in BitLocker encryption, and a configurable search option. We know that Vista takes some getting used to—new translucent interfaces, constant security prompts, and Sidebar gadgets, oh my!—but you can't live in the shadow of Windows XP for much longer. With a little hand holding, we can make your Vista experience smoother (and more beguiling) than ever. Here are 198 tips and tricks to get the most out of Windows Vista.

The rest of the article is at PCMag.com.

Search Engine Cache Isn't Copyright Infringement

Search Engine Cache Isn't Copyright Infringement

There are some out there who have suggested that search engines such as Google and Yahoo are basically just massive copyright violators, because they scan, index and keep an archive of websites. That copied archive (usually called a cache) is, according to these commenters, an unauthorized copy. Now a court has basically destroyed that argument, noting that putting content online is giving an implicit license for search engines to index and copy. The lawsuit also claimed that individuals who visited the cached version were also infringers -- but the court also rejected that argument, claiming that the implied license extends to those users. The only part of the case that seems to be moving forward is whether or not this implicit license was broken after the lawsuit started and search engines still didn't take down the content.

Full story at...