IT management

Gary Beach cites research showing that a lot of corporate spending for technology (like robotics and embedded chips) is outside the CIO's purview. CIOs need to step up and become "chief digitization officers."

Time-management skills for most people are learned along the way, a necessary part of getting the job done. However, like most things, the more you invest in it, the greater the reward.

Repeating an action every day is a common way to forge it into a lasting habit. This approach works for some habits, such as a simple exercise routine (say, the Fitness Ladder described in The Hacker's Diet). But other actions can't be repeated daily, and don't need to be as rigid: For example, you can't water your houseplants every day, and nothing bad would happen if you watered them in slightly irregular intervals as long as you didn't forget to do it for two weeks straight. That's when habit-forming gets tricky, and where the $10 utility Sciral Consistency shines with an interface like no other.

Many in IT have been struggling with changes cloud, virtualization, mobile, consumerization and other computing trends have had on IT, often making it seem as if IT itself is obsolete, even as technology gets more important. The reality is sobering, but not quite that grim.

If you have a to-do list a mile long with items that never get accomplished, you're not alone: According to a new LinkedIn survey, only 11 percent of respondents across the globe complete all of the tasks they plan to do. The reason for the low number: unplanned events like phone calls, emails and meetings that derail their priorities.

Recursive deletes, deep-sixing servers, bugs that become rewarding features -- let he who is without IT sin cast the first bits

Only 4 percent of IT people surveyed by Sophos trust end users, and with good reason. Eight of 10 data breaches are due to their mistakes. Less than half of IT organizations even teach users about basic security and even fewer encrypt the data being lost. You decide who's to blame.

Insider data theft isn't sudden or impulsive according to a new study. Disgruntled techies who think the company is persecuting them, stealing their ideas and are badly mishandled by managers who don't see a problem or overreact when one arises make a volatile combination.

Surveys differ on whether cost or flexibility is the main driver behind cloud adoption, when the real reason for it is to stay ahead of end users who are adopting it whether IT wants them to or not.

Recruiter Howard-Sloan crowned a pharma exec nation's funniest compliance officer after a competition pitting the standup of six of the most hilarious stewards of corporate governance.

Cloud computing looks like a perfect, low-cost IT solution, at least to business managers, who are increasingly unhappy with IT for not giving them what they want, Accenture report shows.

"Improvisation is too good to leave to chance," said singer Paul Simon. It's a lesson that IT needs to learn and, more important, act on.