How much money do Italians make?

Now you can find out. The Italian government posted the earnings of every Italian on the Web. More information is available here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7376608.stm

While this was apparently legal according to Italian law, many were very upset by the decision of the outgoing government to post this data. For those countries in which posting sensitive information or other confidential data isn't legal, it points out the critical nature of deploying data leak protection (DLP) systems that will guard against intentional or inadvertent breaches. Our research shows that these types of systems are seriously underdeployed, making the breach of corporate data all too likely.

IT spending in 2008

We have just concluded a large survey on email, Web and IM security among mid-sized and large organizations in North America and will be publishing a report on our findings shortly. One of the questions we asked was about overall IT spending plans in 2008 -- here's what we found:

48% of organizations will spend more in 2008 than in 2007
18% will spend less
28% will spend about the same
6% are not sure

Interact 2008

I attended Interact 2008 in San Diego today and will be at RSA tomorrow. Interact offers a nice view into what Microsoft is doing in the UM and UC spheres, with lots of good information provided in a number of sessions, including some frank comments on areas in which Microsoft needs to bolster its UM and UC offerings.

Some observations:

- Microsoft views Exchange as a mature offering that, in some ways, will act as a "mentor" for OCS. OCS will steal some best practices from Exchange, such as the capabilities of Systems Center, improvement of the command line interface in OCS and working with common partners for both platforms. Microsoft's goal is to make both Exchange and OCS "look like they come from the same vendor".

- Exchange and OCS share some of the same architectural focus and engineering, but different business pressures force them to be "out of phase" with one another, although Microsoft anticipates coordinating Exchange and OCS to a greater degree in the future.

- Saw an impressive demonstration of Exchange UM in action; each server can support about 10,000 users.

- There are currently 71,316 users at Microsoft on Exchange UM.

In all, Interact 2008 was definitely time well spent even if San Diego was cold and windy today.

More changes in the hosted market

mindSHIFT Technologies has acquired Collaboration Online Limited Company, owner of groupSPARK and AgileWave CRM. mindSHIFT is a managed services provider that offers a variety of managed and SaaS services. The acquisition will expand the company's hosted Exchange, hosted SharePoint and CRM offerings.

Analysts and the Al Gore Keynote Policy at RSA Conference

From the organizers of the RSA Conference, a conference I hold in very high regard:

"Dear Michael:

For the last 17 years, RSA Conference keynote speakers have brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to Conference attendees. Continuing that tradition, we've recently announced that the closing keynote speaker at RSA Conference 2008 will be former Vice President Al Gore. In accordance with the agreement with Vice President Gore, members of the press will not be permitted to attend his keynote presentation.

RSA Conference offers industry analysts a free, all-inclusive press badge that provides full access to all resources, sessions and the press room while attending the show. Given that industry analysts are provided press badges, you will also be precluded from attending former Vice President Gore's keynote. Anyone with media credentials will be seated in a special press section for The Hugh Thompson Show on Friday afternoon and will be escorted out at its conclusion, prior to former Vice President Gore taking the stage. If Conference staff notices anyone with a press badge is found in the keynote room during Gore's speech, they will ask that person to leave immediately. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We are looking forward to seeing you next week."

Any theories as to why Mr. Gore doesn't want the press -- and anyone outside the live event -- to know what he will say?

DLP is getting interesting

We've all heard of incidents of data theft from lost laptops, lost backup tapes, hackers getting into email systems, etc. But how safe is your passport information?

We heard last week that the confidential passport information of Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama had been breached. Now, there's news that the electronic passport information of perhaps 20 Americans has been breached.

I also read today that new US passports contain an RFID chip and an antenna designed to transmit information on the passport during screenings at the border. US passport production is outsourced to a company in the Netherlands that inserts the RFID chips, then passports are sent to another operation of the company in Thailand for the insertion of the antenna, after which the passports are sent to Washington, DC for final assembly. The company that assembles the passports revealed in October 2007 that someone in China had stolen its technology for the RFID chips used in passports.

Presence, corporate culture and personal preference

Presence - the ability to know another's status - is an incredibly useful tool. It allows you to know when someone is at their desk and is likely available for interaction in real time. Presence can serve as a sort of informal time clock that allows you to know when co-workers have arrived in the morning. It can allow you to get questions answered quickly and easily using an instant messaging client, for example.

However, unlike store-and-forward technologies like email or voicemail, presence requires the right corporate culture and the right mindset for organizations to derive the greatest value from it. As most users of an instant messaging system will admit, receiving an IM at an inopportune time is usually more irritating than helpful, which has resulted in the ability to selectively provide presence information only to specific individuals or groups in a variety of clients.

More importantly, however, is the role of personal preference in the success of presence. For example, do you really want others to know your presence at all times - when you're at your desk, on a mobile device, when you've turned on your laptop, etc.? For those that resist the publication of this data, how do you convince them to embrace the benefits of presence?