Project Management

Being called to the podium at the 2003 Canadian Information Productivity Awards came as a major surprise to Bruce Fleming, VP and CIO of construction firm EllisDon Corporation.

Labelled as the one of the most damaging worms ever, the Mydoom malicious code was at press time proving to be a boon for hackers and spammers but of little consequence to those Canadian companies that took security up a notch after last year's spate of worms. However, this was written before it had not run its full course, said to be set for Feb. 12.

CIO Bob Plante was under the gun. A big security and controls audit of CIT Group Inc., completed in September, had left a trail of "red marks" - mostly related to legislation such as the USA Patriot Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - that had to be addressed immediately.

March 7-13, 2004 is Global Business Continuity Awareness Week, an international initiative to promote the awareness of and need for business continuity in the business community and beyond.

The movement to offshore outsourcing has been far more subdued here than in the U.S., where the trend has grown quickly, and opposing it has become a politically popular stance.

Viruses, hackers, unrest in outsourcing locations, employee apathy, a jobless economic recovery and stagnant budgets - these are the challenges that try IT leaders' souls. While 2003 brought a glimpse of economic recovery, few IT leaders at the annual Computerworld U.S. IT leaders awards program last December reported a positive impact on technology budgets or staff size. The mantra remains the same: do more with less.

Installing encryption and fraud-detection software on computers seemed like a good idea to Bank Rhode Island's CEO after a laptop containing the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of about 43,000 customers was stolen last December from its principle data-processing provider, Fiserv Inc.

A new version of the Mydoom e-mail worm is circulating on the Internet, according to warnings from antivirus companies.