Stories by Melissa Chua

Networks with many users and a mature IT infrastructure are a favourite with hackers.Take, for example, the National University of Singapore (NUS), whose user population exceeds 40,000.
“A total of 105,546 intrusion attempts targeted at NUS were detected in 2006,” says Yong Fong Lian, manager, IT security, NUS. The university estimates that if every attack resulted in successful compromise of the network, a staggering 210,000 hours in productivity would be lost. And the potential cost of these man hours? A jaw dropping S$4.2 million (US$2.8 million), or S$350,000 (US$240,000) a month.

Finance, insurance, manufacturing, security, marketing, healthcare and the government - the 16 CIOs hail from diverse industries.
But all arrive at the Window East Room of Singapore's Four Seasons Hotel with one common goal, to seek their counterparts' opinions on how to better improve on their management of IT in their companies, in order to ensure their organisations' survival and prosperity, especially given the dark cloud currently blanketing the economy.

A survey commissioned by technology giant Hewlett-Packard has revealed that the current financial crisis has brought about an increased tendency for IT heads in the Asia Pacific to move away from the mainframe and outsource aspects of their enterprise IT operations.
The survey covered 490 business and technology executives across the globe, between December 2008 and January 2009. More than 100 (128) respondents were from countries in the Asia Pacific, such as Australia, China, India, Japan and the Philippines.

While 2007 and the early months of 2008 saw banks focus mainly on growing market share, 2009 will instead see financial houses in the Asia Pacific channel their IT resources into surviving the current economic crisis, according to a report by research firm Financial Insights.
Noting that the Asia Pacific will continue to be an important region for banks, due to its large domestic markets, recent wealth accumulation, relatively stringent economic and corporate regulations and pockets of under-served banking segments, the report stated that banks in the region will be devising counter-cyclical technology initiatives to cope with the downturn. Such initiatives include portfolio analytics, asset-liability management and credit collections and recovery.

The distribution of malware on social networking sites first occurred in small amounts towards the end of 2007, but that trend appears to be on the rise.
According to a report from MessageLabs Intelligence, which specialises in the analysis of messaging security issues and threats, a popular tactic in 2008 among cyber criminals involved the creation of fictitious accounts on social networking sites. These fake accounts were then used to post malicious links, which usually led to a phishing site, to legitimate users.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced new features for its suite of data centre management software. The improvements encompass both physical and virtual servers.

China-based PC manufacturer Lenovo, which acquired IBM's personal computing division in 2005, has announced its new server line, aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The company defines SMEs as companies ranging in size from one to 500 employees.
The product line, dubbed ThinkServer, consists of five servers--three tower and two rack. The servers are based on the x86 architecture and run Intel processors. Lenovo offers either Microsoft Windows Server or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell as choice of operating system for the ThinkServer line.

IT is now essential to any beverage company's business, according to Allan Ong, general manager, group management information system, Asia Pacific Breweries (APB).
"IT solutions are designed to play a critical role in supporting brewery operations, such as facilitating logistics, sales and distribution transactions," says Ong. "IT also helps in the delivery of information for analysis and business decision making, in the various overseas markets where APB operates."

He's only three months into the job, but a passion for education is what led Nick Hutton to his role as CEO of U21 Global, an educational institution focusing on graduate studies that operates on a 100 per cent online environment.
Hutton spent much of his childhood in North Africa, where his father headed the English Department at Ethiopia's University of Addis Ababa.

According to Cyrus Daruwala, managing director of research firm Financial Insights, Asia Pacific, the CFO's role, most times, tends more towards the back-office.

Android, the open source Linux-based mobile platform, the development of which is under the jurisdiction of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, will ensure its competitive advantage by employing "Internet style innovation," said Andy Rubin, senior director, mobile platforms, Google.

Kwek Buck Chye joined StarHub from pan-Asian info-communications group Singapore Technologies Telemedia, and was actively involved in the 2002 merger between StarHub and Singapore-based cable TV operator Singapore Cable Vision (SCV). According to Kwek, the intricacies involved with the merger demanded astute management skills.

Large scale negotiations, administration and a multitude of decisions to be made--these are all part and parcel of an acquisition. The list of tasks to do includes new roles to be performed and budgets to be calculated. How does the chief financial officer (CFO) feature in such a situation?

Overcoming the disparity in the IT literacy rate among members of an organisation is a challenging issue. Would having various applications for differing IT proficiency levels be the best solution in the long run? Improving internal user satisfaction ranked as a key management priority in our State of the Asian CIO 2007 study, and the NTUC's Martin Tsang outlines some key strategies to achieve this.
Overcoming the disparity in the IT literacy rate among members of an organisation is a challenging issue. Would having various applications for differing IT proficiency levels be the best solution in the long run? Improving internal user satisfaction ranked as a key management priority in our State of the Asian CIO 2007 study, and the NTUC's Martin Tsang outlines some key strategies to achieve this.