16th WCAS

16th WCAS: "16th World Continuous Auditing & Reporting Symposium will be held November 7-8th 2008 at the Rutgers Business School, Room 123, Lecture Hall, Ackerson Hall
180 University Avenue, Newark, NJ"

Desktop Virtualization Drives Security, Not Just Dollar Savings -- Desktop Virtualization

While desktop virtualization (VDI) has been gaining in usage, it is only beginning to attract the attention of security professionals. yet, with all the problems that have been experiencedwith laptops going missing - stolen or lost, that contain sensitive information, it may provide an ideal solution. VDI allows the operating system and core applications to be stored on a central server and accessed from a PC remotely. The process in hardware indepenedent and can enable central storage of data and still allow users to load their favourite applications on the server. The best of all worlds. Desktop Virtualization Drives Security, Not Just Dollar Savings -- Desktop Virtualization

Technology Review: The Flaw at the Heart of the Internet

A DNS expert has found a vulnerability in the basic structure of the internet that will undermine a lot of the security around the system. The ability to bypass DNS lookups could be a boon to Phishers. IS Auditors will have to give some thought to how they will deal with this new issue in terms of testing. Technology Review: The Flaw at the Heart of the Internet

Arek: Service-Oriented Architecture

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is becoming widely used to restructure systems for higher performance and greater accuracy and reliability. At the following link, Accenture describes how SOA was used to develop a better pension-earnings system for Arek, which runs a centralized pension registry in Finland. Arek: Service-Oriented Architecture

Tough economic climate can heighten insider threat

Some of the biggest risks to business systems come from inside the company. This is always true, because of the privileged access that insiders have. However, in tough economic times, this risk is even higher and it calls for additional vigilence by systems security personnel. Tough economic climate can heighten insider threat

Exposure Comments

A summary of all of the comments received to date on COSO's June exposure draft on Guidance on Monitoring Internal Control Systems cna be found at the following link: Exposure Comments

E-Commerce News: Enterprise IT: IBM Enlarges Sphere of Influence in the Cloud

Social Networking is working its way into IT systems in various ways. Generally, Facebook and Facebook look-alikes are not mainstream vehicles for business systems. IBM has come out with a new tool - Bluehouse - that will likely be mainstream. It is a social networking site that is used in the growing cloud computing space. There will be more tools like this in future. E-Commerce News: Enterprise IT: IBM Enlarges Sphere of Influence in the Cloud

Technology White Papers from WebBuyersGuide

Technology White Papers from WebBuyersGuide: "You need accurate, trustworthy data to meet today's GRC requirements. What will it cost your organization if your auditors receive incorrect information? What if your regulatory reports are inaccurate? Download this white paper today to explore the critical role data quality plays in GRC, and how Informatica can help ensure complete and trusted information for GRC. With advice and knowledge from real-world customer success stories, this White Paper will help you to understand how to satisfy regulatory data audit and documentation requirements, minimize IT project risk, and reduce the cost of producing timely and trusted data for GRC."

IBM Systems Journal | Vol. 47, No. 3, 2008 - SOA: From Modeling to Implementation

IBM Systems Journal Vol. 47, No. 3, 2008 - SOA: From Modeling to Implementation: "As many businesses, applications, and platforms make the transition to a service-oriented architecture (SOA), significant changes are required in business process design as well as in modeling and solution development. To this end, innovative techniques, tools, and methodologies from a variety of SOA deployments are being developed for use in future solutions. This issue contains eight papers which describe challenges and insights related to modeling, testing, and governance, which have emerged from SOA engagements in a variety of industries."

Vendors rush to fix bug that could crash Internet systems

A recently discovered bug in TCP-IP is causing a number of vendors to adopt remedial measures. TCP-IP, the core of Internet communications is vulnerable to denial of service attacks because of the bug or bugs. Microsoft says it is investigating, but hasn't taken any action yet. Vendors rush to fix bug that could crash Internet systems