Social networks teeming with spam and malware
The dirty Web is getting dirtier. Today 95 per cent of user comments in blogs, chat rooms, message boards and other social forums are actually spam or links to malware, research shows.
Nearly 95 per cent of user comments in blogs, chat rooms, message boards and other social forums are actually spam or links to malware, according to a recent report from Websense Inc., a Web security software developer in San Diego, Calif.
What’s more, security tools provided by sites such as YouTube and BlogSpot are only 25 to 35 per cent effective in protecting Web users from “objectionable content and security risks,” noted Carl Mercier, director of software development at Websense. (…)
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Forrester: IT spending in U.S. to jump 6.6 percent in 2010; Will the optimism stick?
Declaring the tech downturn history, Forrester Research came out with a rather optimistic view of IT spending in the U.S.
According to Forrester projections, IT spending in the U.S. will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion. In 2009, IT spending fell 8.2 percent. Projections for IT spending in 2010 have been moving gradually higher.
The global outlook goes like this: IT spending will grow 8.1 percent in 2010 to top $1.6 trillion. In 2009, global IT spending fell 8.9 percent.
Software and hardware will garner most of the investment as companies start a “new multi-year cycle of technology investment growth.” Forrester predicts a 7-year buying cycle led by analytics. These smart computing efforts will have technologies such as service oriented architecture, virtualization and cloud computing as pillars. (…)
Six Enterprise mega trends to watch in 2010
Most enterprise technologists should see a continued payoff of the hard work in planning, architecture, documentation, development and configuration work that has been occurring over the last several years. Enterprise technologists were building Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) long before SOA was over-hyped. And most enterprise technologists I know were investigating constructs of scalable, elastic Cloud Computing capabilities long before that became the dominate theme in trade journals, conferences, and tech blogging. With all the hard work and progress seen in enterprises to date we could be in store for some very positive improvements in 2010.
There are other mitigating factors to watch, however. Some that come immediately to mind are the steady pressures to reduce budgets and the constantly increasing security challenges. Mission requirements are also continuing to accelerate. (…)
Preparing for Exchange Server 2010’s hardware and software requirements
Exchange 2010 is out and about and ready to deploy. Scott Lowe provides you with some assistance on getting prepared for this latest release in the Exchange line.
With a plethora of new and enhanced capabilities, Exchange 2010 is well worth a look. Whether you’re just evaluating the software or preparing for an official rollout, there are a number of hardware and software prerequisites that you need to consider in order for your deployment to be successful.
Hardware requirements
Although Microsoft has taken steps toward reducing Exchange’s overall footprint in Exchange 2010 (particularly when it comes to I/O), the product still requires significant resources, including a large amount of RAM and disk space. Processing power is also a concern since the server needs to be able to keep up with its workload.
From a processing and operating system perspective, keep in mind that Exchange 2010, like Exchange 2007, supports only 64-bit processors and operating systems. Any recent x64 processor, with the exception of Itanium models, will be sufficient, but faster is better, and more cores equals more processing power. However, you don’t want to seriously overbuild servers, as those unused cycles cost money. (…)
