(Computerworld)  More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to the older Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, a performance and metrics researcher said today.

According to Devil Mountain Software Inc., which operates a community-based testing network, nearly 35% of the 3,000-plus PCs it examined had been downgraded from Vista to XP.

"Either these machines were downgraded by [sellers like] Dell or HP, or they were downgraded by the user after they got the machine," said Craig Barth, chief technology officer at Devil Mountain. "In any case, these machines are no longer running Vista.

Implementing a risk management process that simplifies, streamlines, and integrates security shouldn’t be viewed as a daunting task. Instead, it should become a way of doing business—a philosophy in which organizations take a proactive approach to identifying and eliminating security exposures. Organizations can then put in place a system that comprehensively blocks attacks while planning and implementing remediation strategies on an ongoing basis.

Given the variety of available technologies and products with numerous features and cost differences, it can be confusing and time consuming to evaluate and select the right solution to ensure continuity of critical eMail systems in your organization. Five Considerations are:

• Usability and Manageability - Most organizations, especially small and medium enterprises and enterprise remote offices and branch offices, have limited IT resources and need solutions that are easy to deploy and simple to manage.
• Application and Data Recovery Performance - A critical email system is constantly dodging bullets and avoiding traps, but eventually its luck will run out and the system will go down – and when it fails, unplanned outages average almost an entire business day, with over 25% of outages lasting more than two days.
• Unplanned and Planned Downtime Mitigation - Critical email systems can become unavailable for many reasons, but there are generally two types of scenarios: unplanned and planned. Unplanned downtime is caused by unexpected failures, including hardware component failures, application and OS failures, damaged hardware from power surges, and natural disasters, network problems and site failures. Planned downtime is typically caused by planned hardware and software maintenance tasks in order keep an email system healthy. Other causes include network infrastructure maintenance, system testing, equipment moves and power grid maintenance.
• Hidden Solution Costs - Finding the optimal email system continuity solution is more than just meeting functional and performance needs. It is also important to consider the hidden complexities and costs associated with any solution.
• Deployment Options - Systems may differ by location, network infrastructure, server and storage hardware. A solution that cannot support a broad range of deployment scenarios may be costly to maintain or replace as your organization evolves.

In Microsoft's quarterly report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission  gave a more formal glimpse at how it views and plans to deal with the growing threat posed by Google, Apple, and  open source.

In a section titled "Challenges to our business model may reduce our revenues and operating margins,"

• Linux – "Proponents of open-source software continue efforts to convince governments worldwide to mandate the use of open-source software in their purchase and deployment of software products. Although we believe our products provide customers with significant advantages in security, productivity, and total cost of ownership, the open-source software model continues to pose a significant challenge to our business model. To the extent open-source software gains increasing market acceptance, sales of our products may decline, we may have to reduce the prices we charge for our products, and revenue and operating margins may decline. Â… Another development is the software-as-a-service business model, under which companies provide applications, data, and related services over the Internet. Providers use primarily advertising or subscription-based revenue models. Recent advances in computing and communications technologies have made this model viable and enabled the rapid growth of some of our competitors. We are devoting significant resources toward developing our own competing software plus services strategies. It is uncertain whether these strategies will be successful."
  
  

  

  
  

• Apple – "An important element of our business model has been to create platform-based ecosystems on which many participants can build diverse solutions. A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls both the software and hardware elements of a product, has been successful with certain consumer products such as personal computers, mobile phones and digital music players. We also offer vertically-integrated hardware and software products; however, efforts to compete with the vertically integrated model may increase our cost of sales and reduce operating margins.."

Even if your company has an effective, integrated ERP system and a robust corporate performance metrics system chances are you won't have a good answer. Because, even the 'best of breed' ERP systems don't give the business stakeholders sufficient visibility into the actual execution necessary to ensure performance improvements.

Corporate performance management is all about understanding the difference between what you've planned and what actually happens. If that understanding stops short of the end-user performance, this critical link in corporate performance is ignored.

Operational improvement opportunities are not viewed by all as an area of IT focus.

.DLL files are dynamic-link library files (sometimes also written "dynamic link library" files) and are an integral part of Microsoft Windows and the software that runs on it. DLL files are shared between a number of different software applications. Each DLL is a small chunk of software code containing instructions and tools for an application to operate a particular hardware device. In the broader sense Microsoft dynamic link-library files sometimes also have the extension .OCX (in the case of files which include ActiveX controls) or .DRV for older system drivers.

The most common problem people will face, with regards to DLL files, is not having them. For example when you plug a new piece of hardware into your PC and you get an error message saying something like "DLL file WXYZ.DLL is missing: please install it now." What this means is that your PC can´t find the driver associated with the new hardware, because it was not preinstalled with the operating system and you have not subsequently installed it either from the CD, accompanying the product, or by downloading it from the manufacturers website.

There have been major data breach impacting Google employees and patients of the Unniversity of Utah.

The data breaches did not result from cunning hackers penetrating a vulnerable corporate network. It is just another case of computers getting up and walking as a result of an old-fashioned burglary. 

It was reported that Google employees hired before Dec. 31, 2005, received notices that their personal data, including Social Security numbers and birth dates had been compromised by a break-in at an Outsourcing Services, a payroll and human resources outsourcing company.

The break-in occurred at Colt Express on May 26 and Google informed employees on June 9 about the breach. As a result, employees are getting a free year of identity theft protection.

Google employees looking to get an explanation from the outsourcer will find the company's Web site is no help. The site only reports that the "home page will be reconstructed."

The likely reason for the site being down is that Ceridian, the giant payroll processing and human resources company that serves more than 25 million employees, announced in early February 2008 that it had acquired "certain assets" from the outsourcer. Ceridian's benefits services division is now providing services to outsourcers' clients.

In the case of University of Utah the backup tapes were taken from an employee of another outsourcer.

This latest cases demonstrate again that poor physical security is a more common cause of data breaches than remote hacking attacks. Most of the biggest data breaches reported over the past couple of years have resulted from laptop computers being lost or stolen.

Many organizations initially believe that they can create and maintain manual maps that demonstrate how their infrastructure works together to deliver critical business services. In fact, many initial attempts are quite successful with one or two services. However, as time goes on and more services are added, it becomes difficult to the point of being impossible to maintain reliable models due to the number of changes and intricate dependencies. This is an area where automation is key to lowering costs and increasing accuracy for IT groups. By leveraging technology that automates discovery and dependency mapping, companies can reduce costs while reducing mean time to resolution and increasing mean time between failures.