E-SECURITY

Information Security in a Business Intelligence Environment

- - B Sujatha

Business Intelligence (BI) systems provide deep insights into the business processes, financial information, customers and products, and render tremendous value to users. This sort of information, while being a priceless asset to the enterprise, could also pose a significant security risk. Making BI systems secure is a crucial step in protecting the valuable information that these systems seek to analyze. Enterprises need to incorporate the security aspect in their BI tools in the design stage itself and also lay down a well-framed security policy.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved

E-SECURITY

Improving IT Risk Management

- - Greg Hughes

Improving IT risk management should be on the agenda of nearly every senior executive of a large corporation. Those executives, who are aware of their IT risks, understand the tools to manage these risks, and build the institutional capability to control them are in a fundamentally better position to improve the return on investments in information systems.

© 2006 Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. (www.rmmag.com). All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission. Originally published as "Five Steps to IT Risk Management Best Practices".

E-SECURITY

Phishing : A Perilous Threat for Internet Security

- - Ravi Kumar Jain Banda

Phishing scams are being ranked as one of the most prominent threats on the Internet and are causing losses to the tune of billions of dollars to both the companies and customers, eventually deterring people to transact online. Phishing has to be dealt with appropriatelytechnically, legally and sociallyin order to maintain the credibility of the Internet as a viable and safe platform to transact. The article explains the common techniques used in phishing attacks and suggests a few ways to overcome them.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved

E-STRATEGIES

The Future of IT in Large Corporations

Large corporations are becoming increasingly frustrated with the long deployment cycles, high costs, complicated upgrade processes and IT infrastructure demanded by traditional software applications. Many are realizing that the future of IT is moving away from data center, system and infrastructure management and more toward business process improvement. This article demonstrates how large corporations such as Iomega, MasterCard, BT and Xerox are experiencing significantly reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increased Return on Investment (ROI) with their software applications by adopting Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions and focusing more on business process improvement than IT infrastructure maintenance.

© 2005 THINKstrategies, Inc., (www.thinkstrategies.com). All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission.

DATA WAREHOUSING

Data Mining : Revealing Patterns or Privacy

- - Sridhar Vaithianathan

The emergence of data mining as a technique to find the implicit patterns or useful knowledge from large pool of data has received much attention and focus among researchers. But data mining or knowledge discovery in databases not only reveals hidden pattern or nuggets of knowledge but also invades privacy of an individual. Before the issues of privacy in data mining gathers momentum, it should be addressed at the earliest.

© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved

E-MOBILE

Achieving Operational Excellence in Mobile Telecom

Mobile telecom operators in the Western markets face several operational challenges. The article suggests that the operators can benefit from the expertise and support of a skilled IT vendor. Operators can leverage the vendors' extensive industry experience and their unique perspective on the specific process issues and technology implications affecting them. This would enable them to successfully implement technologies that meet requirements and optimize operations.

© 2006 Syntel Inc. (www.syntelinc.com). Reprinted with permission.

INTERVIEW

"Microsoft is a `21st Century Consumer Electronics Firm".

- - Steve Ballmer

In its core software business, Microsoft, whose revenues is now more than $44 bn, is launching an all-new operating system, Vista, by early 2007 for retail markets and also a new version of its profitable office suite, Office 2007. In the interview, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft Corporation, discusses how the company has changed in the recent years under his leadership, the challenges it faces as it transforms into a `multi-core' technology company and the future of the company in a Web2.0 environment.

© 2006 Business Today (www.businesstoday.com). All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission.

CASE STUDY

Grameen Bank's Village Phone Initiative

- - Vivek Gupta and Indu P

The case discusses the Village Phone project from Grameen Phone. Grameen Phone, in association with Grameen Bank and Grameen Telecom had established a unique business proposition for the rural consumers in Bangladesh. Grameen Phone explored the villages where mobile services could be provided. In association with the local branch of Grameen Bank, it also encouraged and educated credit worthy members to become Village Phone Operators (VPOs). The VPOs were given unsecured loans from Grameen Bank to purchase and operate mobile phones. The VPOs collected revenues from the users, who used the phone for making and receiving calls. The case gives a detailed overview on the Village Phone project and examines the benefits reaped by the project's stakeholders.

© 2006 ICMR. All Rights Reserved. For accessing and procuring the case study, log on to www.ecch.com or www.icmrindia.org.

BOOK REVIEW

Ethical Hacking : An Introduction

In the early days of computing, `Hacking' was a respectful word referring to computer wizards. But the meaning of this word changed from a complementary description to a derogatory term as several computer wiz-kids started using their skills for illegitimate purposes. Recently, hacking assumed a better connotation in security parlance, in the name of `Ethical Hacking'. Ethical hacking emerged as a mainstream corporate security practice with its roots in the military operations.

© 2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. IUP holds the copyright for the review.