audit

New survey shows IT spending up...or does it?

For those searching for an IT spending recovery in 2009, new data from an Information Systems Audit Control Association survey offers some reason for hope...and confusion.

On the positive side, the survey of 500 IT professionals suggests that 25 percent of enterprises surveyed will be investing through the downturn.

This is great, especially when coupled with other data from the survey that suggests:

Only 16 percent will make "sweeping cuts" in IT spending. 14 percent will keep spending at the same rate.

This is good, right?

Well, it might be, except the survey, which was released Friday, … Read more

Can big software vendors audit their way through the downturn?

In December I wrote about Microsoft and the possibility that proprietary software vendors would seek to audit customers in 2009 to scare up revenue.

Fast forward a few months, and CMS Watch suggests that EMC is attempting to do that:

...[I]n the last couple of quarters we have started to see EMC in particular launch audits, with seemingly no [particular cause]. In what comes off as a coordinated, US-wide effort, many customers are currently being audited or under threat of audit by EMC -- or to be specific: Documentum buyers and EMC's proxy KPMG -- and as you … Read more

Defense agencies list top 20 security controls

A group of U.S. government security organizations has listed the top 20 security actions that they recommend organizations should take to improve computer security.

Called "Twenty Most Important Controls and Metrics for Effective Cyber Defense and Continuous FISMA Compliance," the list was published Monday by a conglomerate of U.S. government agencies, including the NSA, US-CERT, various U.S. Department of Defense computer security groups, and security training organization Sans Institute.

Alan Paller, director of Sans Institute, told CNET News sister site ZDNet UK in an e-mail Friday that the list, also known as the Consensus Audit … Read more

Microsoft kicks off the year of the audit

CIO.com offers a sobering reminder as to one potential downside to proprietary licensing: when vendors get desperate for revenue, auditing for "piracy" can help them clean up.

Piracy is illegal and wrong. But sometimes piracy is in the eye of the beholder, and it's a safe bet that if the beholder is Microsoft or some other large enterprise software vendor, it's going to win any dispute over illegitimate licenses. Just ask Ernie Ball, who had the unfortunate pleasure of greeting an unannounced, Business Software Alliance-sponsored raid by U.S. marshals on his office a few years back.… Read more