CIOs should address risk management issues

CIOs should use marketing-style "fear, uncertainty and doubt" tactics to pressurise boards and senior management into properly resourcing and prioritising operational risk management, silicon.com reports.

The finance sector`s requirement of instantaneous performance and high levels of interfacing between complex systems, combined with rapid change, demanded CIOs be "creative" in maintaining control over operational risk, says Martin Laing, CIO, Societe Generale Australia.

Microsoft has entered the managed e-mail services business following its announcement to acquire FrontBridge Technologies, Enterprise Networks & Servers reports.

The acquisition of FrontBridge will provide Microsoft customers with an integrated service that will address: e-mail security, archiving, content filtering, encryption, reporting, and business continuity.

A survey has revealed that compliance is insignificant relative to disaster recovery and business continuity planning.

Furthermore, compliance barely registers as an issue for a large majority of UK IT directors, sourcewire.com reports.

Respondents from a cross-section of UK companies say disaster recovery, business continuity, and growing data volumes are the major drivers in their data strategies.

"This is a bit of a wake-up call for the storage industry," says Tony Cotterill, CEO of BridgeHead Software, the company that conducted the survey.

Just over half of all businesses in Wales have a business continuity plan in place, according to research from insurance firm AXA, icnetwork.co.uk reports.

The insurer said that just 56% of Welsh firms had plans in place - a worrying statistic as one in six businesses surveyed said they had been affected by a disaster and just over one in five had taken longer than a week to recover.

Every year, thousands of enterprises fold. Some of these could be saved if they had a strong business continuity plan in place, says AXA`s risk control strategy manager Doug Barnett.