Technology Issues: Open Source, Environmental Impact & Data Breach

This week’s IT Pro has several good articles about prevailing technology issues. Although the examples quoted are mostly British, the issues raised will be familiar around the world.

The majority of companies are using open source software for business processes, but that brings some risk, says the analyst firm.

The majority of businesses – some 85 per cent – already use open source software (OSS), with the rest set to dip their toes in the collaborative waters within the next year.

This was according to a global survey by analyst firm Gartner, which found such software is being used for mission critical processes as often as it is for less business-necessary functions. Read more…

IT Pro run down the top 10 ways to cut energy use and green up your business technology.

With increasing pressure on companies to be more environmentally friendly – from shareholders, the Government and the public – staff at every level are being forced to learn new green skills, and IT managers are by no means exempt.

The IT industry is currently responsible for around two per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the same as the aviation industry, but IT’s emissions are growing at a much faster rate. BT alone uses 0.7 per cent of the UK’s electricity supply. Read more…

This next story specifically related to British examples of data breach, but the issues raised and the concerns voiced by the public are global. For international readers, HMRC stands for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and is the government body responsible for the collection of taxation.

In the year since the HMRC data breach, many more have been made public – here’s a roundup of 11 lessons (we should have) learned.

It was the data breach that kicked it all off – a year ago this week, the government admitted HM Revenue and Customs had lost two discs containing records on 20 million people.

The tax body had dumped data on a third of the population – including children – onto a pair of unencrypted discs and sent them off with a courier, not once, but twice. Read more…