As a follow-up to my blog “What Really Measures IT Success”, today I am writing about a related topic.1 It deals with the promises made by cloud and service providers and how they entice customers with availability figures beyond 99%. Anexia/Netcup, the infrastructure provider where I operate, among other things, my mail server, VPN gateway, and a few other hosts, states an availability of 99. Read more

A typical day in a mid-sized company. The already overworked developer, deep in crunch mode1 gets a quick note: “Would you please make the open invoices visible in the overview of all customers for this project?” Dutifully, he nods. He knows it’s an important project, the task isn’t technically difficult and the boss likes quick and simple solutions. Read more

A typical crisis meeting scenario: The Management and myself as an external consultant or information security officer sitting in a conference room: Our processes are being slowed down by too many security requirements. Employees are complaining. ‘Your’ IT security is becoming a risk to our business. Read more

I need to admit: I really love writing audits. It has a certain degree of scientific working to falsify statements. So I was recently confronted with the following quote from a responsible IT manager: We are not concerned with security, but with liability. If Microsoft promises security, this is enough for us. Read more