Software-defined networking (SDN) is altering how IT perceives its role and redefining the entire IT infrastructure. To . The results show that nearly half are using or planning to deploy SDN architectures within the next two or three years, and another 25 percent are considering adopting the technology.

Other key findings from the survey include:

• The top perceived benefits of SDN are cost savings, improved network performance, increased productivity and improved security. Cost savings, integration and security are also considered the top three challenges in implementing SDN.
• SDN is deployed with a combination of cloud, virtual switches and bare metal. For organizations that opt for the cloud, the No. 1 driver is the ability to easily update networking appliances.
• Open source, particularly OpenStack, is considered extremely or very important by half of companies deploying or considering SDN.
• Enterprises are most likely to purchase SDN solutions from the large networking suppliers, while midsize companies lean more heavily on the channel and niche solution suppliers.

On Thursday, February 4, IT Business Edge’s Arthur Cole, along with several other Quinstreet Enterprise editors, will discuss the survey results and what they might mean for IT decision makers.

The video webcast will stream live on this page, Thursday, February 4, 1:30 PM PST.

	Jude Chao, Managing Editor, Enterprise Networking Planet
	Sean Michael Kerner, Senior Editor, InternetNews
	Arthur Cole, SDN specialist/tech journalist, IT Business Edge
	Jeffrey Burt, Senior Editor, eWeek

The post Video Roundtable: SDN in the Enterprise appeared first on IT Business Edge.

5 Tips to Retain Your Top IT Talent

We may yet see the death of the employee annual review in our lifetime. And it’s been a long time coming. This year, several very large corporations have announced that they will no longer put their managers and employees through the year-end torture. The shift appears to be taking hold fairly well in tech and tech consulting firms, perhaps as a result of the influence of workforces that skew somewhat younger than in other industries.

Let’s look at how companies are making this major change in order to benefit all employees and the bottom line.

Switch to a Focus on Coaching

Making news this week is Accenture’s rejection of the annual employee review in favor of ongoing performance assessments, in order to put a higher priority on the company’s 330,000 employees, says Chief Human Resources Officer Ellyn Shook in a Chief Learning Officer article. The plan is to put the focus on managerial coaching.

The shift will involve training for managers and learning/training executives in how to better “talk with” rather than “talk about” people. The increased feedback flowing back and forth, says Glint, Inc. CEO Jim Barnett, will require fast responses to keep employee engagement high. This is particularly of interest to millennials, according to many studies of their attitudes about what makes a good workplace.

Empower Your Managers

At Adobe, a switch from annual reviews to a monthly Check-In program includes broad latitude for managers to reward performance without interference from human resources. A post at ASICentral.com outlines a long list of benefits the firm has enjoyed, including rewards for all qualifying employees (no forced rankings), huge time savings for managers, lower voluntary attrition and, of course, more open communication.

Take Advantage of Technology

At GE, where the dreaded forced ranking system got its start with CEO Jack Welch, management has decided that it is time for a change. That change, they say, might involve getting rid of performance ratings altogether. A pilot group is testing the method.

Meanwhile, more certain changes are planned that will harness the power of technology, according to the Washington Post. Managers and employees may start using apps to chart productivity and exchange frequent feedback, allowing more effective casual coaching. GE managers also cite time and money wasted on the annual review process, goals that are outdated and irrelevant by the time the end of the year arrives, and the possibility that technology could correct for human biases.

No matter the organizational goals, or the amount of time and money that could potentially be saved, acceptance that the annual review is a concept whose usefulness has expired appears to have taken root.

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post Three Ways to Eliminate Annual Employee Reviews appeared first on IT Business Edge.

As a new hire, would you rather have 22 paid vacation days, 14 paid company holidays, or summer hours that let you take off at 12:30 p.m. every Friday? At non-profit IT trade association CompTIA, everyone enjoys all three, from their first day on the job.

And thanks to a new staff-driven social media campaign, more people know about the emphasis that CompTIA puts on work-life balance for its approximately 200 employees.

Colleen Hughes, vice president for human resources at CompTIA, developed the idea of the #CompTIAPerks campaign with Kelly Mahoney, CompTIA social media manager.

“I had decided to do a career page on LinkedIn, and I asked our LinkedIn guru, Kelly, to join me in thinking about how we could convey our positive thoughts at CompTIA about the healthy work-life balance, how we could best represent this,” says Hughes.

“We came up with a campaign where people would post fun pictures about life and CompTIA, showing how they used their summer Fridays or generous vacation time,” says Mahoney.

The campaign, for Twitter and Instagram, uses the hashtag #CompTIAPerks, and so far this summer has reached 26,000 accounts on the two platforms.

“The idea actually started as a contest,” says Hughes, “and we thought we would pick one picture as a winner. Since it’s started, we’re now thinking of keeping it going as a long-term campaign. People really like it.”

Images shared with the hashtag are shown on a large-screen TV in the company’s Downers Grove, Illinois, headquarters, and soon will be shared on SharePoint with staff worldwide in Washington, D.C.; Gurgaon, India; Tokyo, Japan; Gauteng, South Africa; and London.

“You can’t underestimate the competitive aspect of this,” says Steven Ostrowski, director of corporate communications for CompTIA. “It’s really fun and amusing to see how people react to contests. The most mild-mannered people go crazy for it.”

That is true of another set of activities the company leads, its wellness events, says Hughes. A current contest to get as many steps as you can in a two-week period carries a prize for the winner and employees are teasing and egging each other on with social posts.

What made the #CompTIAPerks campaign successful, says Mahoney, is that it’s fun, but also that it was timed appropriately during the summer. Employees received an initial email detailing the campaign, with specific examples of the types of photos and shares expected. The kickoff was timed with the company picnic, which got the sharing started.

Eileen Ristau, coordinator, marketing certifications for CompTIA, says she saw the initial email and “any time there is a prize, well … I started using the hashtag right away. I already tell my friends and family that I ‘work at Disneyland’ because the perks are so wonderful, so it’s nice to show my followers on social media.”

Susan Kostbar, senior manager, vendor relations for CompTIA, joined the company just 90 days ago and already thought the benefits were excellent. “I’ve tweeted things like visiting the world’s largest screen at Samsung, or how I’m sitting in my Florida room working and it’s fabulous. It’s really been fun.”

Mahoney is also a new employee, having started at the beginning of this year. “It’s easy to list benefits like 22 days off, but now we can see how people are using these benefits, in their own words and pictures, and it highlights what makes it different to work at CompTIA.”

“For the last five years,” says Ostrowski, “we’ve received an award for being one of the top places to work in Illinois, which is given by a local newspaper, along with other organizations. This year, we are number three. I think this is another testament that we work at a great place.”

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

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Getting Ahead of Your Organization’s IT Skills Gap

After identifying where the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) can benefit the organization, the search will be on for staff with the skills to make it happen – and quickly. Particularly within the IIoT, or Industrial Internet of Things, successfully retaining existing staff who are knowledgeable about legacy systems and production practices, and offering them training and certification opportunities, could be the key to getting to market and seeing returns from IoT-related projects.

That’s part of the urgency behind a new job-role-based certification offering from Cisco, the CCNA Industrial (IoT). A skills gap is forming, say Cisco executives, as industrial networks converge with IT infrastructure. IT professionals who can master IT, networking and traditional control systems are needed to oversee the transitions.

Sudarshan Krishnamurthi, senior manager, product management and marketing at Cisco, says about the creation of the new certification:

“The interest and requests came from employers and individuals working in industrial plants. Technology disruptions in manufacturing and industrial plants have created talent and skill gaps. This gap was at manageable levels when the number of connected devices was few. Now with every single device being connected, the skills gaps have increased and compounded the problem. Employers and individuals working in the plants came to us saying, we need to address this as an industry, and that was the genesis of the curriculum. Since Cisco has a very established program in traditional networking areas, the employers were looking to us to create a similar program for IoT. The main criteria that led to the conclusion that it was time for this cert is the business problem that the customers were facing due to lack of an education curriculum in this area. The job role had evolved, but the skills hadn’t.”

Cisco uses the term Internet of Everything (IoE), in addition to the IoT, and I asked Tejas Vashi, director, product strategy and marketing at Cisco, to explain the thinking behind this term and how Cisco defines it, as opposed to the IoT. Vashi explained that the IoE is more expansive than the IoT:

“Cisco defines the Internet of Everything as the networked connection of people, process, data and things. The benefit of IoE is derived from the compound impact of connecting people, process, data and things, and the value this increased connectedness creates as ‘everything’ comes online. IoE is creating unprecedented opportunities for organizations, individuals, communities and countries to realize greater value from the aforementioned networked connections. 

“The difference between IoE and Internet of Things is that the IoT refers solely to the networked connection of physical objects. Cisco uses IoE to include the people and process components. IoT is a single technology transition, while IoE comprises many technology transitions, including IoT.”

To find out how much of the training for the new IoT certification is related to system security measures, I asked Danny Tomic, product marketing manager at Cisco, about the specifics for the course, and they are substantial: 

“Security measures in industrial networks are very different to those of enterprise IT networks and in many ways, more challenging. The new CCNA Industrial curriculum covers security, specifically for industrial networks, in its own topic area. Over the five-day course, approximately one day will be dedicated to Industrial Wireless and Security Concerns.”

The new IoT-focused CCNA Industrial certification is a lab-based training and certification, and is part of the CCNA Industrial Education curriculum. The curriculum is targeted at Plant Administrators, Control Engineers and IT/Network engineers working in manufacturing. “The training and certification offerings,” says Cisco, “equip individuals with the knowledge and skills necessary to build, manage and operate converged industrial networks.”

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post New Cisco IoT Certification Fills Employers, Employees Needs appeared first on IT Business Edge.

We’ve been taking a look at passwords and feasible replacements for them in authentication systems here at IT Business Edge. One key to the equation of letting go of our reliance on an obsolete and weak system of passwords for access is user acceptance of new security methods. Change is hard.

Some signals from the market indicate that users are coming to terms with the idea that they’ll indeed have to make some changes in order to support efforts to protect their data privacy and system security. In a recent Telstra survey of over 4,000 financial services consumers, a quarter of respondents said they would be willing to share their DNA information with a financial service provider for use in authentication. That’s a pretty strong indicator.

But when Sue Marquette Poremba talked to several security experts about what comes after passwords, many of them expressed skepticism that users will be as flexible as they think they can be. “Whenever we introduce barriers to logging into devices, or making payments, then the user becomes frustrated,” says Phillip Dunkelberger, president and CEO at Nok Nok Labs.

Perhaps the method of introduction will have to be altered to sidestep frustrations and the potential of lost customers and business. And, of course, all scenarios are not created equal.

“The complication is finding the right balance between convenience for users and the right level of security for the information being protected,” said Travis Greene, identity and access management solutions strategist at NetIQ. “Imagine a health care professional struggling to access life-saving, but regulated information. Risk-based authentication techniques, which require the minimal level of authentication for the situation, hold promise. But if a user is in a work environment during business hours, authenticate once and provide single-sign on to all low-risk information.”

Prudent providers are moving into some very small tests to see how users respond to change: Carl Weinschenk describes a 500-user test at MasterCard in which subjects will use facial scans and fingerprints instead of passwords, for example. In contrast, Microsoft’s use of biometric access in the new Windows 10 operating system, while it has the potential to instantly reach many more users, carries the burdens of higher costs for better cameras, plus potentially irritating physical requirements for users.

The results of a new survey by Accenture may carry good news for both end users and providers working to maximize their data security and minimize their reliance on passwords. And the number of respondents is quite impressive: 24,000 people in 24 countries.

The 2015 Accenture Digital Consumer Survey was conducted in countries including the U.S., Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and kept the numbers proportional to the online population in each country.

The summary, “Digital Trust in the IoT Era,” which goes far beyond Internet of Things issues, found that 60 percent of respondents find usernames/passwords “cumbersome,” and 77 percent said they were interested in using alternatives to protect their security. Respondents in China and India were most open to these alternatives, at 92 and 84 percent, respectively.

Overall, 46 percent of respondents said they are confident in the security of their personal data – a number I frankly find surprisingly high.

However, said Robin Murdoch, managing director of Accenture’s Internet and Social business segment, in a statement:

“Digital trust concerns are not limited to one type of country or part of the world. In developed and emerging countries, consumer wariness about data privacy and digital trust is intensifying as the exploding Internet of Things market generates unprecedented amounts of consumer data on more devices. Companies that build the most trust with consumers will be able to access more consumer data, use analytics to unlock more value from that data, and offer more revenue-generating services and applications leveraging Internet of Things opportunities.”

Will Internet of Things applications be the factor that pushes businesses and end users past their reliance on outdated passwords?

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post End Users Closer to Embracing Change, Giving Up Passwords appeared first on IT Business Edge.

One influential profession, focused on the intersection of technology and policy, is a bright spot in the examination of gaps in pay for males and females in tech-related fields. The 2015 Privacy Professional Salary Survey, conducted by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), found that compensation levels for men and women in the field are very close. Further, the survey found that the small gap was even smaller for those possessing privacy certifications.

Trevor Hughes, IAPP president and CEO, says the organization has been annually benchmarking compensation as a tool for its members for some time, and always collected data about gender, but never found the results to be remarkable. This year, with heavier industry focus on salaries for men and women in IT, the IAPP salary survey dug deeper to better understand gender in the privacy profession.

“We found remarkable parity, almost 50-50 in the raw numbers, up through the ranks,” Hughes explains, “the salaries were, within statistical deviation, essentially not distinguishable.”

Depending on the breakdown, women in the survey of 1,253 IAPP members sometimes came out ahead. For instance, women surveyed in the U.S. make a median salary of 96 cents to the dollar for men; women in Europe make $1.10 to the dollar for men. And possessing privacy-specific certifications evened the balance more.

The profession is almost evenly split between men and women, and men in the U.S. make a median salary of $130,000, while women make a median salary of $125,000. Among certified professionals, men make a median salary of $135,000 compared to $132,500 for women.

Several attributes of the privacy profession contribute to these results, says Hughes. It is a relatively young field, professionals come from a broad array of backgrounds – 40 percent are lawyers – and it just has less baggage.

“The field of privacy is a hybrid field, and there is a plurality of professions within it. We see law, IT, audit and compliance skills. And the privacy professionals didn’t bring with them the baggage of other professionals. There’s no glass ceiling, no entrenched male hierarchy. Men and women compete and succeed on their merits, so in that regard, we see what we expect to see.”

Whatever the individual’s background, mastering the core skills is of course important for career success, says Hughes, and those are starting to crystallize in more ways. He cites skill sets in data audits, measurement and metrics and law and policy as key, and notes that related certifications are appearing more often in job descriptions. At the same time, more privacy law and data protection classes are being built into computer science programs, like Carnegie Mellon University’s Master’s for Privacy Engineers, as well as law programs across the country.

The 2015 survey found that women in the U.S. are 33 percent more likely to have a seat in the C-suite than men, and the levels between genders for VP, legal counsel and director positions were very close. That all bodes well for strong career growth potential for all privacy professionals, male or female, says Hughes.

“The IAPP has 23,000 members in 80 countries. It took 12 years to hit the first 10,000, and then three more years to hit the next 13,000. So that growth curve is accelerating. We expect to add 5,000 this year, and are seeing jobs that previously didn’t exist and new opportunities.”

The IAPP currently has 10,000 certifications in the marketplace, and Hughes says he expects to give tests for about 6,500 more this year.

The one survey slice that revealed a salary gap was among the 15 percent of individuals who have 15 years or more of experience in the field, where the men were found to be making an average of $181,000 annually compared to $156,300 for women, That, says Hughes, may be an anomaly and the result of very few IAPP members working within the field for that amount of time. The question, he says, will be examined in future surveys to ascertain the causes.

So, for those who are thinking this all sounds pretty good, what career advice does Hughes have, based on his 13 years of experience with the IAPP and the privacy profession?

“The first steps are to get smart, and network like crazy. As far as the IAPP, we have tons of programs available, we have 60 chapters, and a great many conferences where you can rub elbows with the great and mighty in the field. The big message, and it’s a very powerful message, is that people are succeeding on their merits in this field, and we’re excited about that. It’s a next-generation digital career that continues to explode. It doesn’t get easier, it gets more complicated, and the risks become more and more expensive for organizations to bear, but all of that makes it really compelling to pursue. This is a field where you will find some powerful and inspiring women. It’s a field that is waiting for the best work of both men and women.”

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post IAPP Finds No Salary Gender Gap Among Privacy Professionals appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Survey Highlights Workplace Productivity Drains

Talking about work can be fun when you see “vicious nodding going on,” says Planview Senior Vice President of Product Management and Solutions Marketing Louise Allen. That’s been her experience when discussing with clients ways to incorporate a more comprehensive view of all of the work being done across an organization and its projects, both for project managers and for others in management.

The conversations include the company’s “No Matter How You Work” initiative, which is designed to address the fact that so much daily, unstructured, collaborative work is not captured or reported by traditional project portfolio management tools, let alone understood. Companies are eager, says Allen, to find new ways to support vital collaborative work:

“We’ve heard from a lot of people in a number of industries, where they’ve had other approaches, like waterfall, for example, but they’re seeing more hybrid, agile, and more highly structured, worlds all converging quickly. They’re seeing where things are headed. There’s another group of work that doesn’t need that structure; it needs more collaboration, it needs to be quicker. This could be in IT or any other division, it doesn’t matter. Often, it’s happening in two environments, and you see more structure in one, but not in another.”

Of course, those traditional project portfolio management tools can’t handle all the ways people are getting work done now. And managers want to know more about how work is getting done. Planview’s approach, integrating its Planview Enterprise platform with Projectplace, its “smart project collaboration solution,” is appealing not only to larger enterprises, but to smaller companies and teams. It’s also garnered Planview a Leader position in the 2015 Gartner “Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications, Worldwide.”

“IT is Planview’s largest customer segment, and we feel that our designation in the Leader’s quadrant by Gartner is further validation that we are on the leading edge of helping IT organizations continuously optimize all of their resources,” said Patrick Tickle, chief product officer at Planview, in a statement. “Through our organic product development and recent acquisitions of Troux and Projectplace, Planview is enabling CIOs and other IT leaders to more effectively tie strategy to execution, resulting in more innovation, higher levels of service, and improved financial performance no matter how they work.”

With so many elements changing work at once, from mobile applications to global partners to BYOD and BYOA, clients are often finding themselves in one of those “I didn’t even know I needed this, but I see that I do now,” moments, says Allen.

“Product launches are a perfect example of the type of collaboration that often falls through the cracks. These typically are centered in marketing, but require company-wide, collaborative, global teams. People are not in the same room, but they need to assign tasks, work with external partners, coordinate with external PR firms, and more.”

When I asked Allen how the project manager fits in, if the firm has one, I was wondering if there is a perceived threat with this concept. She said it’s a common question, but not a common problem.

“Traditional PMOs often ask about change. But again, think of it as another new way to work. If you want to get visibility into work overall, this is how you can do that. You end up with a really nice picture of what’s going on, and you can see where the efficiencies lie. Rather than being a threat, it’s empowering the project manager, who knows that not everything needs the same level of project management rigor or control. Through visibility into thought projects, how people are doing work, getting a global view, and better ideas of cost, it ends up redefining what they’re doing, and creating a new breed of project manager.”

So, taking into account that the way that people work has already changed, how do you take the lead and go about changing the way people work again, and incorporating new collaboration tools? Allen says the key is using success steps that you would use in other implementations.

“I think you start by asking yourself a series of questions:

How do you want to work?

How dynamic does it need to be?

Is this the most efficient way, or is it more impactful and need the PPM tool?

Maybe what we have is hybrid, and needs both tools for visibility across the organization?

Who is using this approach?

Our traditional buyer is the PMO, but it’s expanding, going viral, so to speak. Now, the PMO, marketing managers, team leaders, IT, other line of business managers, are all asking all of the above and need to track it.”

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post Projects: Planview’s ‘No Matter How You Work’ Approach appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Study Finds Payment Executives at Security Crossroads

The flip side of looking at what enterprises must do to strengthen identity authentication and privacy protections is asking, “what will users tolerate?” As with our Congressional representation, most of us will say we are extremely concerned with the present state of affairs, but when it comes time to make a change in our habits and routines, or to vote, we stick with the status quo.

With mobile technology changing everything – or offering the potential to do so — telecommunications and information services company Telstra delved into both sides of this question for its new report, “Mobile Identity: The Fusion of Financial Services, Mobile and Identity.” Turns out that talking to over 4,000 financial services consumers, focusing on the Generation X and Generation Y age ranges, produces complicated results. These consumers are largely fearful of ever being without their financial applications – they are “no-finapp-phobic,” according to Rocky Scopelliti, Global Industry Executive for Banking, Finance and Insurance for Telstra. They also cite financial and personal information security as their number-one priority in selecting financial institutions with which to interact.

This addiction to mobile access to financial services and info may be tipping users toward acceptance of the idea that they may have to give up a little convenience, or even a little privacy, to get what they want. The Telstra report data found that a quarter of U.S. consumers would consider sharing their own DNA information with their financial institution for use in authentication. And a third of them said they would be willing to pay an extra $20 per year for improved mobile data security – the highest median price indicated among the seven countries in which Telstra surveyed consumers.

A caution is in order, at this point, though. When IT Business Edge’s Sue Marquette Poremba recently spoke with a number of security experts about the future of passwords and authentication approaches, more than one voiced concern about user acceptance. For instance, Nok Nok Labs President and CEO Phillip Dunkelberger said, “Whenever we introduce barriers to logging into devices, or making payments, then the user becomes frustrated.”

So, though two-thirds of the U.S. consumers in Telstra’s report said they think two-factor authentication incorporating biometrics of some kind would improve mobile data security, the number expressing satisfaction after implementation might prove to be different. For proof, keep reading the report statistics:

• 44 percent of consumers use a small number of passwords multiple times across multiple accounts.
• 18 percent use one password for all digital accounts.
• 25 percent write down passwords.

For the financial institutions, Telstra’s advice is to keep the focus on user trust and comfort with changes made to data security and privacy protections. While technically, the organization makes the final decision in what it will or will not implement, the consumers will make the final decision about whether they will accept even the changes they say they want:

“Most institutions seeking more secure ways to identify and authenticate customers face a balancing act between increased security and the risk of increasing friction for customers.”

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post Authentication Options: What Users Want Matters appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Tipping the Data Breach Odds in Your Favor

In communicating with the business and the board about the consequences of data breaches, IT is always going to be asked to place dollar figures, which can be difficult to do, even with increasing access to predictive analytics and historical data from any previous breaches in the organization. One of the most extensive benchmark studies that IT can use to help with this is the Ponemon Institute’s annual “Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis.” In its 10^th year, and sponsored by IBM, the recently released 2015 edition covers 11 countries, 350 companies, and detailed data about direct and indirect costs of data breaches.

Three major reasons are contributing to a rapid increase in the average cost of a data breach and the average cost per breached record – this last varying by industry – according to Chairman and Founder Dr. Larry Ponemon:

“First, cyber attacks are increasing both in frequency and the cost it requires to resolve these security incidents. Second, the financial consequences of losing customers in the aftermath of a breach are having a greater impact on the cost. Third, more companies are incurring higher costs in their forensic and investigative activities, assessments and crisis team management.”

Overall, the average cost per lost or stolen record was found to be $154; within the health care industry, that average could be as high as $363. In education, the average reached $300. The lowest industry averages: transportation, at $121, and public sector, at $68. The report also breaks down averages among the 11 countries surveyed; you can select country-specific data upon downloading the free report.

How can these costs be mitigated? Key takeaways involve the board of directors and purchasing data breach insurance products. Ponemon figures that a board active in breach risk management can reduce costs by $5.50 per record, and insurance can make a reduction of $4.40 per record possible. And business continuity management during remediation produces very good results: reducing the cost per record by $7.10.

The damage to customer relationships and lost business after a breach are on the rise: Ponemon put this cost area at $1.23 million per breach in 2013 and $1.57 million for 2015. Direct notification costs were about the only area where a decrease was found, but the numbers are already quite small, relatively, averaging $170,000 this year, down from $190,000 last year.

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

The post Data Breach Cost Study Finds Steep Increases appeared first on IT Business Edge.

The 10 Fastest-Trending IT Skills: Spring 2015

Before the robots come for all of our jobs, another cohort must be dealt with: Generation Z, or those born in 1995 and after, is entering the workforce. The consensus in business circles seems to be that big changes in workforce management will result.

A column at Chief Learning Officer, which somewhat creepily refers to Generation Z as “self-aware” (like robots?) says we should expect these youngsters to be “aware of their value” and looking to “sketch and re-engineer everything in pursuit of valued excellence.”

Preceding generations, it seems, will require management training to incorporate Generation Z’s “swagger,” as 30 million of them will be part of the workforce by 2019. Making the most of key skill sets possessed by this group, like a strong customer focus and a digital mindset, will be the payoffs for accommodating their work styles.

How to acquire the best of these young employees? Writing at Fortune, Adecco Group North America CEO Bob Crouch says many are focused on getting into “their dream job within 10 years from now,” and looking for career growth and fulfilling work. They will expect employers to demonstrate how they can fulfill the employee’s career goals, rather than the other way around. And retention may become more difficult; 83 percent say one should stay in a first job for three years or less. Twenty-seven percent say a year or less is enough.

Generation Z, according to CBC News, will expect prospective employers to communicate with them the same way everyone else does: Think messaging apps and posting photos and videos of workplace environments and staff activities for them to evaluate. Email and voicemail, most likely, won’t get through.

Employers demonstrating that they are comfortable with two-way messaging and that they can offer meaningful work may come away, according to Fast Company research with some of the youngest Generation Z members, with a new influx of employees that are pragmatic, practical, and some of the best brand managers around. This may become a strong additional selling point: They also are attempting to move away from some of the criticisms of Millennials, having been “shaped by their individualistic, self-reliant Gen X parents…”

Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

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