Sandra Rossi

Mention the dreaded "outsourcing" word at Telstra Corp. Ltd., throw in a reference to a few Indian computer programmers and IT staff are guaranteed to go into a spin while the union tells tales of worker exploitation and politicians offer financial assistance on talk-back radio.

It's true your computer can kill you. We're not just talking about the gamers who have died at their machines after days of no food and water, butrnanyone who is affected by long hours at their desk.

Since network outages became a rarity at Australia's Greater Shepparton City Council, the 300-plus end users like to joke the IT team sit around all day drinking coffee. But it is a far cry from the days when its IT team was "stressed out" and operating in "break/fix mode".

Security threats are on the increase as voice applications move to converged networks where devices are connected to the IP network.

More than 30 Australian companies have registered for a national, federal government supported 'Security Challenge' that will formally measure the level of end user IT security awareness. Companies have been invited to register for the computer-based competition to test the level of employee awareness of information security. Results will be provided to participating organizations to let them identify their own strengths and weaknesses.

Promising greater bandwidth to remote locations and speedy return on investment (ROI), one technology that has been immune from tight IT spending is Virtual Private Networks (VPN).

Leaving business units solely responsible for defining IT investment priorities inevitably fails, particularly if a project spans...

Linux has emerged as the darling of the