Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

Happy Mother’s Day!

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

Happy Mother’s Day! It was a gorgeous day here in central Iowa! I did business work all morning, but then took off at 3:00pm, went out with my family to a restaurant we all love, and then did some gardening; tomatoes, turnips, watermelon, peppers, pumpkins, sunflowers and sweet corn this year…plus a few pretty assorted annuals! The fruit trees, red buds, crab apple trees, Russian olives, and wigelias are all in full bloom right now…and the scent of the breeze is spectacular! 🙂
In honor of Mother’s Day I quickly scanned the news and blog sites to see what types of interesting information I could find relating to mother’s day and privacy. I didn’t find much, but here is a bit of what I found…

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Effectively Working with IT Auditors

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

The April edition of my “IT Compliance in Realtime” e-journal is now available!
There are three papers within this month’s issue. The first is, “Effectively Working with IT Auditors.”
Communicating well with your IT auditors will help ensure that your audit goes smoothly and provides as much value as possible for your business. within this article I explain what to ask for before, during, and after your audit.
Downlowd the PDF version of the e-journal to not only get the nicest looking version of the article, along with much information in tables and additional short items I included within sidebar boxes throughout the article, but also to get all three of the articles I wrote for this month.
The following is an unformatted version of “Effectively Working with IT Auditors”…

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Employee Fined $13,096 for Drunken Hacking

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Dan Swanson sent me this news story (thanks Dan!), which gave me a chuckle…
Employee Fined $13,000 for Drunken Hacking
A rather interesting part of his judgment:

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The Benefits of a Privacy Ombudsman

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

The folks from Cutter just notified me that an excerpt from a recent article I wrote, “Learning from a Privacy Ombudsman: A Case Study to Establish a Healthcare Services Ombudsman,” will soon be featured in the “Quote of the Day” section of the Cutter Web site.
Here’s the excerpt…

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Spitzer Downfall Spotlights Surveillance In Mainstream

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

In case you haven’t heard, now ex-New York-governor Elliot Spitzer recently was found to be the frequent customer of a “high end call girl service” for the past couple of years.
How was he caught? Through an electronic path he left making payments for his philandering flings.

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Blog Changes…More Papers, Less Daily Opinions

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

When I started blogging a couple of years ago (actually in January 2006…just realized I passed my anniversary!), I would not only post daily to my blog, but I would also publish 3 – 4 research papers or white papers to this site each month. Last year I stopped doing that and spent more time providing more analysis and opinions within my daily blog postings.

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A Roadmap For Successful ITIL Implementation

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

The final chapter of my ebook, “The Shortcut Guide to Improving IT Service Support through ITIL” was just released!

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The Iowa Caucus Experience in Madison County: Cameras Not a Factor

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Well, after over a year of fervent campaigning by many presidential hopefuls, the Iowa caucuses are over! As I mentioned a couple of days ago I have never declared a party before, but this year I wanted to be part of the caucus experience. I wanted to participate and see first-hand what it was like and not just have some political pundits from the east or west coasts giving their inaccurate opinions of what really goes on.

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3 Inspiring Examples For This Season of Holidays

Monday, December 24th, 2007

In the spirit of this season of holidays, all pointing out the need for kindness and goodwill to mankind, I want to take a break from my usual information security, privacy and compliance topics and share with you some of the things that inspire me and my family during this magical and special time.
I think it is important to recognize and look to those who do so much good for others as inspiration and positive role models. This year while watching and reading the news, my family and I found the following particularly inspiring, and perhaps you will also.

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Domain Name Issues And Related Business Risks

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

I have learned a lot about domain name maintenance and management issues over the past week! As a follow-up to my blog post yesterday, I have since discovered that as a result of a divestiture *two* registrars claim control of my domain (that I created and have owned and used since 2002); one in Australia has primary control, and the one I have always communicated with in Washington state has secondary control…I never knew this before.

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