If you have kids you know how much they like jelly beans. Other than them being candy, I believe the multitude of colors and flavors greatly adds to their attraction. So I find myself in a large retail chain the other day walking past the aisle with USB drives. The store had all kind of USB drives in various colors, shapes and capacities, so I begin thinking of jelly beans. We all know if we do not pay attention and let our kids eat too many jelly beans that they can become sick, so I believe we are well beyond that point with USB drives. For our Enterprise organizations eating USB drives is most likely not an issue, but the public consumption / ownership of multiple drives is an issue. I personally know that I have over eight lying around in my household alone. Well I don’t believe the average consumer may have that many, however I would bet that most people own two or more.

A couple weeks ago, a preview for a new movie by a famous actor playing himself as both the lead man and woman caught my attention. I like this actor and his movies are pretty funny, but it got me thinking…How many of these same movies have there been in the past with just a slight variation? How many people have paid to see, rent or own roughly the same movie with some alterations to make it seem new – either the actors change, the motivation for the characters change, the plot is slightly different? And, if this happens with movies then what about TV, music and books? I continued to ponder this, then it hit me that the same can be said for most of these art forms. We’ve seen countless TV shows about a group of friends living in close proximity to each other sharing life’s events, songs with the same message or similar notes and rhythms, books about spies, double crosses, wizards, vampires, but the stories all have strong commonalities.

IT is constantly adapting to new realities spurred by the types of technologies that people are using and bringing into the enterprise environment. One of the most disruptive technologies of late has been iOS devices. These devices are massively popular, and for good reason. Whether you’re a vice president keeping up on the latest sales reports mid-flight via their iPad or a physician accessing medical reports while meeting with his patient, iOS devices can improve productivity.

Platforms such as iOS have been designed from the ground up to be more secure—they raise the bar by leveraging techniques such as application isolation, provenance, device encryption, and permission-based access control. However, these devices were designed for consumers and, as such, security has been traded off for usability to varying degrees. It’s this usability that makes them so popular among consumers.

Internet connectivity is turning up in every product we see: phones, video game systems, video cameras, televisions, coffee machines, home lighting, vehicle alarms and soon refrigerators, ovens, and heck, maybe toilets.

What a great world it will be when my refrigerator sends me a text message or posts to my favourite social network that I need to buy milk and salami. It will be even better when I can log into my oven and tell it to turn on and cook a pot roast at 350 degrees for 4 hours so I come home to a great slow cooked meal, or when my oven contacts the fire department when it lights my house on fire. I’m sure over time this great technology will be adopted by supermarkets to manage their nationwide chains remotely to ensure proper temperatures are maintained in their coolers and freezers.

(Cross-posted from Symantec Connect)

Technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing offer the potential to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency – benefits organizations can’t afford to ignore. The shift to a cloud-based IT infrastructure is a goal for many, with 75 percent of enterprises at least discussing the implementation of these technologies. Whether you are just beginning to implement virtualization and private cloud computing or are already in the process, here are a few recommendations to give you the smoothest transition possible, based on the results of our 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey.

(Cross-posted from Symantec Connect)

Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re on a business trip. You hear the boarding call for your flight and reach down to grab your laptop – only your laptop isn’t there. Whether it was left at security or snagged by another traveler in the terminal, your laptop is gone and your company data is at risk.

So what do you do? Typically you’ll need to make a call to the office, notifying your IT department of the incident. This call will initiate a chain reaction of events set into place to ensure measures are taken to secure the files and equip you with a new device to keep business running as usual. This process typically involves a series of forms, approvals, signatures, etc.

Malcolm Harkins is Chief Information Security Officer, Intel Corporation.

Recently, I sat down with several other IT security experts and reporters to provide context to a study of the nagging and, as it turns out, incredibly expensive problem of missing laptop PCs. The study found that the odds of having your laptop lost or stolen are as high as 1 in 10.  This won’t surprise many CISOs who regularly field reports of laptops vanishing at airports, customer conference rooms, homes and through shattered car windows.  Likely most would be shocked at the cost.  The 300 companies shared a $2.1 billion bill by and large to cover the ramifications from potentially compromised information on the hard drives.

There was one stat, however, that really stunned me – 70 percent of those companies do nothing to protect their laptops and data.  No encryption.  No back-up.  No antitheft technologies.