Those two States have made it easy on us but some other ones, like Massachussetts have generally unknown demonyms like Massachusites which merely has a few hundred hits in the Google Search engine!

So in order to help everybody make sense of how people are called in the 50 US States, here’s the updated list, straight from the Wikipedia but with a few adjustments, here and there.

Now, you’ll be able to impress your “Mississippian” friends by merely knowing how they’re called.

Most of these names come from way back so if you do some research on them, you’re sure to learn a thing or two as to how they came about.

Tags: us states, americans, united states, 50 states, how americans are called, names of us state citizens

To protect your databases, you need to plan ahead because in a large measure, “failing to plan is planning to fail” and such failure could cost an organization time, money, productivity and reputation.

Above the obvious advice that every employee should be allowed access to information on a need to know basis, namely through role-based controls, monitoring all systems (including the mobile devices) for data leaks help a great deal.

Here are a few things serious IT professionals can do to protect their businesses against all flavors of potentially damaging data breaches:

• Directly monitor financial databases to keep on top of unusual activities;
• Assess and remediate weaknesses to guard against unauthorized access (even with proper authentication);
• Audit user access and use of resources;
• Learn how users are using the databases to detect unauthorized activities;
• Check transaction authenticity (cross-check with the paper trail);
• Sollicit independent reviews to get that all important second opinion;
• Automate as many controls as possible to reduce manual audit errors;
• Make use of encryption to protect the information.

Remember that different types of businesses need to brace for different types of data breaches so keep in mind that what works well for your neighbor might not work as well for you.

In any business, there needs to be a response team which can take decisions when a breach is identified and that can go as far as shutting down all the database systems until the threat is properly dealt with. The general counsel should be part of that “emergency team” and proper training should be given so they understand the importance of dealing swiftly with a threat to prevent aggravated damages.

IT forensics teams can be called in to properly trace the source of an attack that has lead to a data breach. This team can conduct triage which can include heavy activity monitoring and the temporary deactivation of key services, until the threat is properly addressed.

It should also be mandatory for PR to be in on the action because you’d rather hear the bad news, in a controlled manner, from them than, say, the New York Times. Furthermore, in a case where customer data has been breached, they need to be properly presented with the facts.

Once the data breach is remediated, the organization must modify the business practices that allowed for such a breach to happen, in the first place. As always, preparation is key.

Tags: security, data breach, database breach, unauthorized access, user access, it audit, transaction authenticity, manual audits, automated controls, encryption, data protection, unusual activities, data monitoring

For the highly mobile users, SaaS provides a much needed alternative to desktop software, in part because the data is stored remotely and then, instantly made available to the properly authentified owner, wherever he or she may be.

SaaS also comes in handy for people who jockey between computers, for instance, between a laptop computer and a desktop. Logging into the web service grants them access to their work, whichever computer they be working on at that time.

But if you’re still unsure about bringing in more complex web services into your company, the following checklist should help you decide if SaaS is right for you, in a given line of work:

• Will modifications of IT or network integration be necessary, to accomodate the SaaS?
• Can I retire redundant IT infrastructure, by using the SaaS application?
• How long will the SaaS deployment take versus software?
• What training is need to use the SaaS application?
• How does the end-user experience compare between the SaaS application and software?
• Is SaaS data security up to corporate standards?
• What’s the operational security of SaaS compared to software?
• Will SaaS subscription fees end up costing more or less than a software setup?
• What kind of support do I get for SaaS compared to software?
• How easily can each solution be scaled, over time?
• What’s the financial stability like for the SaaS provider?
• Generally speaking, will SaaS better serve our business than software?
• Will the management and employees notice any difference with SaaS?

Depending on your answers, you’ll have a better idea if you’re ready to jump on the SaaS bandwagon that’s gaining speed in the online world, right now.

Successful upstarts, such as Salesforce.com, WebEx, RightNow, Taleo, Blackboard and NetSuite are benefiting the most from their disruptive offerings, in terms of SaaS applications. Companies can simply subscribe to their services online and start using them right away. This business model, depending on the needs, provides for a credible alternative to software, especially when applications need to be heavily networked across multiple locations.

It goes without saying that users that don’t have a reliable internet connection will shy away from SaaS as that entire business model is based on quality internet connectivity. That means the internet providers, including the big telcos, need to massively upgrade their network, all the way to the user (in offices or homes, whichever).

Security will also need to be reinforced in conjunction with ironclad privacy protection for serious work to be hosted in the internet cloud, meaning that at any given time, a specific user can’t be sure of the exact location where his or her data is stored — which is very different from using desktop software and saving the work on a local hard drive.

This being said, SaaS is big enough for everybody to notice and even though software is still the foundation of desktop computing, more web services are being launched regularly and it’s possible that some of them may end up changing our relationship with computing and how we get things done.

Tags: saas, web services, online services, software, desktop, computing, working online, web technology, web 2.0, end users, operational stability, application ownership, network infrastruction, web connectivity

While this kind of bold statement of direction simply piggypacks on common sense, coming from the Remond giant, known to be the champion of secrecy, meticulous direspect of standards and engineered hurdles against straightforward interoperability, this kind of statement left most people wondering if they heard right.

After all, Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar business has been built on closed sourced code, non-standard formats and a paranoid race to accumulate patents, wether they made sense or not. So is Microsoft’s willingness to open up its heavily guarded gates genuine or is it just for show? According to many observers, the final word isn’t spoken yet.

Although Microsoft is used to playing the part of the bully in the proverbial software schoolyard, the open source movement is a hard target to intimidate. After all, everyone openly shares their findings (not wasting time trying to re-invent the wheel all the time), most coders work out of sheer passion and this means the development pace is downright impossible to match for a closed-source and rather slow moving software shop, however rich it is.

So why is Microsoft opening up, in the first place?

Two main reasons being that (1) customers want (and now require) it and (2) also to properly address the regulatory and competitive pressures against its “traditional” business model.

In the current market conditions, Microsoft clearly can’t beat open source so it must shift from being its demonized antagonist to become —against all odds— part of the trend. So that’s what Ray Ozzie is trying to do but in real life, making Microsoft a credible open source proponent is, by all means, akin to a Herculanean task.

Because it’s such a huge undertaking, Microsoft is moving on its own terms and at its own pace and predictably, this has made it an easy target for those who believe their “open source move” was just for show and changes nothing to their previous market domination plans.

In fact, despite Ray Ozzie’s cozy words, Microsoft continues to accuse open source developers of violating 235 of its patents. While those accusations are unsubstantiated, Microsoft’s threat of legal action still hangs over the developers’ heads — this doesn’t help the software behemoth’s image, at all.

So while Microsoft’s PR department is saying nice things about open source, the legal department is playing dirty with developers who are very highly regarded, worldwide. Saying that it’s a “profoundly inappropriate approach” would be a gross understatement.

So what’s Microsoft doing about its open source commitment?

Well, it introduced the Live Mesh strategy for synchronizing data across platforms and devices, which takes into account Adobe Flash, MacOS X, non-MS browsers and programming languages. Also, Microsoft has added cross-platform extensions to System Center Operations Manager 2007 which (finally) make it possible to manage Linux and Unix servers from MS’ flagship management platform. To do this, Microsoft is incorporating two open source components, WS-Management and OpenPegasus, into Operation Manager. It’s a 180-degree turn from the company’s legacy mindset.

While the US Justice Dept and the European Union’s ruling (in 2001 and 2004) are (still) trying to get Microsoft to document and license its protocols, the open source movement is zipping away with an enormous momentum.

Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise is a legally binding assertion that it won’t enforce certain patents but longtime competitors know this might just be another strategy to force industry standards into its own mold, an approach known as “‘extend, embrace and extinguish”. If what Microsoft did to its proprietary extention to CSS and JavaScript is any indication of things to come regarding its open source stance, then we’re heading towards a great “open source deception”.

All in all, Microsoft still has a lot to understand about the open and participatory nature of the web — for everyone’s benefit, let’s hope they get it right, this time around.

Tags: microsoft, open source, patents, lawsuits, law, lawyers, developers, open standards, technologies, software, interoperability, integration, transparency, secrecy, closed-source, ray ozzie, linux, unix

As most companies are still wondering how they can tap into the whole web 2.0 paradigm shift, you can lead the evolution by attending this event which is held from June 9 to 12, at the Westin Boston Waterfront.

Over 1,000 IT and business leaders are expected to learn how enterprise 2.0 can make businesses more agile, connected and responsive while being exposed to case studies of those who make the whole 2.0 thing work wonders for various uses, today.

This year’s topics include:

• Social networking in business;
• Microblogging and Twitter;
• Enterprise mash-ups;
• Enterprise RSS and syndication;
• Developing a next generation workforce;
• Socializing search;
• Making the right video conferencing choice;
• Software as a service (SaaS);
• Security for enterprise 2.0;
• Office 2.0;
• Presence;
• Unified communications;
• Integrated collaboration platforms;
• Enterprise mobility.

So there’s a lot of ground to cover but IT and business leaders should learn a few very interesting things about the way the web can yield much better results than the already oldish way of doing things.

Make sure to swing by the Demo Pavilion where roughly 100 established industry leaders as well as hot start-ups will be featuring their latest enterprise 2.0-ready products and services.

Tags: enterprise 2.0, web 2.0, conference, boston, ma, evolution, web, interactive, leaders, start-ups, saas

Companies of all sizes seek to make the most of their IT investments, including storage, while keeping new spending in check. Depending on which company you ask, between 33 and 70 cents of every dollar spent on hardware goes to storage so working on allocation efficiency towards optimum distributed storage system use is just good business sense.

Also, storage is rapidly outpacing servers as the biggest user of power in the data centers so that could eventually impact negatively on the carbon footprint and infrastructure utility costs.

Could something as straightforward as storage resource management (SRM) be the answer to the storage woes IT has to contend with on an ongoing basis? Since lots of companies have urgent needs when it comes to storage, let’s hope the following mini-guide will come in handy.

Here’s how to get your storage sprawl under control by doing your homework pertaining to the following four strategic areas:

Policy management

• Make sure to map business rules pertaining to data storage;
• Report on and forecast infrastructure trends;
• Impose process conformance within your network as changes occur.

Data management

• Manage data provisioning and protection services based on business criteria such as hosting costs, protection, preservation and retention;
• Apply mechanisms for intelligent data movement over time to achieve utilization efficiency.

Capacity management

• Manage existing capacity to achieve allocation efficiency before buying more;
• Monitor data growth trends;
• Impose simple hierarchical storage management capabilities and data protection process monitoring.

Configuration management

• Emphasise hardware asset discovery and configuration;
• Interconnect (server / storage) mapping and optimization;
• Set up status monitoring, maintenance and trouble shooting facilities.

In theory, SRM is supposed to give us clarity and visibility into what we currently have at our disposal, storagewise, so we can manage it more efficiently. The real progress is made, however, when combining SRM with data management (enforced by comprehensive company policies) that leads to more effective storage management.

In other words, like many other things in a company, it’s about teamwork and communications between the team members because otherwise, the data growth issue may quickly get out of hand… and way over-budget.

Saving money over storage hardware purchases will make any IT decision maker a darling with CFOs but let’s not forget there’s a lot of work to be done before getting there. Provisioning, deduplication and virtualization must all be explored, understood and properly implemented to optimize a company’s storage resource management.

Remember that you can’t manage what you can’t see — that’s especially true when it comes to storage so start digging and you’ll eventually become an “SRM hero”.

Tags: srm, storage resource management, storage, storage policies, data management, data centers, capacity management, servers, hosting costs, data growth, infrastructure trends, status monitoring, maintenance

This is major news because this agreement means that HP’s and EDS’ combined revenues reaches a whopping $38 billion a year, a bit behind IBM at $54 billion but clearly ahead of Accenture at $21 billion.

According to the merger plan that’s been released, EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer will lead a new organization called “EDS — an HP company” and report directly to HP’s Mark Hurd. EDS will still employ 210,000 people but Wall Street is abuzz with rumors of downsizing.

While HP’s IT services unit was already managing P&G’s global consumer products’ tech operations (a 10 year, $3 billion contract, started in 2003), EDS brings blue-chip customers to the table, such as American Airlines, Bank of America and Royal Dutch Shell.

So EDS’ vast vertical and operational expertise which is especially strong in the financial services, health care and government sectors could finally help HP break into the IT services major leagues. The biggest threat to the success of this deal might come from HP’s somewhat “computer and printer” culture that’s still (proverbially speaking) lightyears away from SaaS, cloud computing and other new-wave IT trends for which EDS has proved to be more comfortable with.

HP hopes that with EDS now on its team, big multinationals will look to outsourcers more often to collect, secure, integrate and deliver software and other IT resources over the web.

Of course, the future will tell if giant system integrators, like HP’s newly acquired EDS, will still be required at a time when the SaaS and cloud computing super-efficient duo are removing complexity from many IT activities, across the board.

Tags: hp, eds, operations, merger plan, it, it services, saas, cloud computing, outsourcing, it resources

Being the financial reporting version of XML, XBRL allows for standardized accounting data to be tagged and retrieved more easily as documents can be mined for data without calling up entirely.

So the SEC is basically requiring big changes from large publicly held companies because their PCs aren’t fast enough to process large documents, errr… while that may hold true, the main reason has to do with the structured way in which the XBRL data is stored.

SEC 10-K annual reports and other documents that use XBRL can be read by software, screened for specific data and then, reorganized into new reports. For investigators and investors looking to quickly search for less common financial data such as “assets held for sale”, the XBRL tagging does wonders.

The new SEC requirement affects “large accelerated filers” which likely includes the majority of the Fortune 500 — 75 companies, including Ford, GE, IBM, Pepsi, United Technologies and Xerox already use XBRL.

Once XBRL has become a standard way of making SEC reports, the mandate is expected to be phased in for smaller publicly held companies. Furthermore, the FDIC and the central banks of the European Union have already adopted XBRL in their reporting.

While the XBRL requirement might seem somewhat steep for large companies, it’s probably a good thing since it’ll be easier for investors, including large retirement fund analysts, to finally be able to quickly compare several companies using very specific variables.

For the financial publications’ readers, this means that the financial reports, in the years to come, might yield significantly more comprehensible information that’ll likely be useful when trying to understand what’s happening in a company where an investment is being considered.

Tags: xbrl, xml, sec, fdic, european banks, financial reports, reporting, standards, compliance, mandate

Priced to pleased and loaded with popular features, they’ve come to be seen as the discreet yet efficient office multifunction sidekicks that sit politely in their place, waiting to receive new jobs, over the network.

What almost everybody forgets it the security risk networked printers represent. Combining several functions in a single unit, including fax, copy, print and scan, these devices are likely to be compromised by hackers.

Since nobody pays close attention to these seemingly mundane devices, they can easily be hacked under the IT Surveillance Team’s radar which, typically, has other (more pressing) threats to deal with, namely on the web server front. In the case of multifunction printers, the attacks are as likely to come from inside the office as from the outside world, which add to the severity of the security risk.

What’s the big deal if the networked printer secretly slides under a hacker’s control?

Well, for one thing, the hacker could view, collect, steal or distribute everything that goes through the device. Imagine your competitor electronically getting all your latest business proposals — that would surely endanger your entire company.

The following types of attacks are most likely to occur within the realm of your office’s multifunction printer so make sure to learn about these attack scenarios:

• DoS - Specialized malware can be programmed to crash printers and scanners, therefore disrupting paper-based business operations.
• Code execution - Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities to load a rootkit into printers, thereby hijacking all documents passing across the network (not just the compromised device).
• Document spying - Featring built-in network, fax / modem and LAN / WAN capabilities, there are a variety of ways to smuggle the stolen data out of an organization, once it’s been captured.
• Credentials theft - If users need to enter a password for certain operations, such as scanning to email, an attacker can capture user names and passwords to gain further access to network resources.

While they may look harmless, modern multifunction printers aren’t dumb machines anymore. IT Admins need to pay attention to these devices’ vulnerabilities and weaknesses to be in a more favorable position where they can apply patches and, at the very least, prepare comprehensive risk-management strategies.

A word of caution also to the multifunction printers that can be accessed through an online authentication interface, through any web browser. Though this system is remarkably convenient for end-users, such authentication methods can easily be bypassed to launch commands which may completely hijack the device.

If you’re serious about closing all prime networked entry points for hackers, perhaps ou should also include all multifunction printers connected to your network.

Tags: network, printers, hackers, hijack, devices, business, authentication, security

At the very least, resorting to short-term thinking for business management can be quite stressful as the lack of solid longer-term thinking sets the stage for a stressful work environment where everything seems to hang in the latest decision needing to be made.

For instance, look at how many business decisions are being made just to pump up the current quarter’s results. Worse yet, consider the legions of C-level executives who bend over backwards to tie in short sighted money deals with ever more capricious investors. The short-term thinking pitfalls are obvious, in today’s business environment, hence the importance of learning to recognize it in order to properly manage it.

Short-term management has upsides which, among other things, helps the company move swiftly when market changes occur but the downsides are way more risky as they could bring down the whole organization into a sort of vortex made strong by countless small mistakes adding up into a much larger “situation” that ends up spinning out of all control (and endangering everybody’s job).

Short-term thinking paves the way to exciting business management times as everything is up for discussion on a regular basis but that’s the kind of mindset that people who like to plan far ahead feel uncomfortable with.

The holy grail isn’t just short-term or just long-term, it’s about balance — a sort of comfort zone for decision making where the latest “trends” don’t necessarily wildly skew everything that was already planned ahead.

If anything, perhaps this article will help you realize how foolish it can be to jump head first in the latest media spin only to find out, a little later, that the spin had more to do with hot air than anything else.

So take your time. Think. Decide better and elevate yourself over the often risky pool of trends and media spins that , unchecked, can scrap a well laid out plan in favor of an impulsive and frenzied scramble for sudden (and usually largely irrelevant -or- unnecessary) reorganization.

Life is much better for those who manage to escape the short-term thinking roller coaster.

Tags: short-term, long-term, management, business, decisions, media spin