Janco provides and update service for all of its templates which guarantees its clients have the all of the information they need to meet mandated requirements.

With this new version a fully indexed PDF copy of the template is now provided in addition to the two versions of WORD (2003 and 2007). 

 The updates to the template included:

• Added Pandemic Coordinator job description
• Added Business Pandemic Planning Checklist
• Updated organization chart to include Pandemic Coordinator
• Updated backup and backup retention section
• Updated style sheet to be CSS Style sheet format
• Added Disaster Recovery Business Continuity General Distribution Information 
  • What to do after an explosion / terrorist attack
  • How to clean up after a disaster
• Defined generic metrics for DR/BC success
• Business & IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire Updated
• Updated references to DRP card
• Updated formatting to meet WORD 2007 requirements

The version history for updates to template can be seen at http://www.e-janco.com/drpversion.htm and the full Table of Contents with sample pages can be downloaded at http://www.e-janco.com/Register_drp.asp .

As you go up the spectrum of age brackets, the numbers consistently rise: 53 percent of workers 45 and older have younger bosses; as do 69 percent in the 55-or-over age bracket.

"As companies emerge from this recession, it is important for employees to work together and move the business forward, regardless of their age," said a vice president of Human Resources. "With so many different age groups present, challenges can arise. Younger and older workers both need to recognize the value that each group brings to the table."

Part of the reason is the evolution of the workforce, but also the sheer size of the baby-boom generation. A 2007 Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that between 2000 and 2005, the number of workers over 55 increased 30 percent. In that same time period, younger workers between 25 and 54 increased only 1 percent.

Mobile computing and global networking cast a new light on data security issues as, in response, organizations reassess the technologies in use within their IT infrastructures and reconsider the ways in which staff members, customers and partners communicate. Solutions that do not provide the appropriate balance between protection and usability must be discarded in favor of solutions that effectively minimize risks of data theft or loss achieve compliance with existing regulations and equip personnel with tools that help them work productively and securely.

The facts are that business processes today rely on vastly different methods of data storage and data exchange than even a few years ago. These changes in the computing landscape make it essential that companies adopt a very different approach to security. According to the a research report by a leading IT think tank, 90% of organizations say that data security is "important" or "very important" and would get high priority in 2009.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

Not long ago, the concept of tracking cell phones would have been the stuff of spy movies. In 1998's "Enemy of the State," Gene Hackman warned that the National Security Agency has "been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the '40s--they've infected everything." After a decade of appearances in "24" and "Live Free or Die Hard," location-tracking has become such a trope that it was satirized in a scene with Seth Rogen from "Pineapple Express" (2008).

Once a Hollywood plot, now 'commonplace' - Whether state and federal police have been paying attention to Hollywood, or whether it was the other way around, cell phone tracking has become a regular feature in criminal investigations. It comes in two forms: police obtaining retrospective data kept by mobile providers for their own billing purposes that may not be very detailed, or prospective data that reveals the minute-by-minute location of a handset or mobile device.

FBI Director supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.

The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. A survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.

The chief of the FBI's digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to "retain for a period of 18 months" records including "the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call."

IT Service Management (ITSM) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) have gained great acceptance as the change management discipline has grown over the last several years. The percentage of participants using a structured approach to manage change has grown from 55% to 75%.

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A January 2010 survey of 1,586 CIOs, however, puts actual IT spending budgets for the year at 2005 levels or flat.

Mobile application developers will see job demand grow sharply in 2010 as Google's Android mobile operating system extends with the introduction of the Nexus One, and the leading Internet mobile device--Apple's iPhone--reaches 300,000 applications by the end of the year. It is predicted that mobile apps for Android to reach the 100,000 level by the end of 2010--a number that was reforecast from an initial estimate of 75,000.

Developers with knowledge of mobile operating systems including Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile and the iPhone are in the cat bird seat. The rapid growth of the netbook category from 2009--very small, ultra-portable laptops-- will carry over into 2010 with demand for developers who can create device-specific applications as well as skills in synchronization.

When it comes to cloud computing, it is predicted that a very big year with an expansion in the enterprise of private cloud offerings that take the best aspects of the public cloud--pre-built application and hosting infrastructure, a pay as you go model--with a customer's infrastructure in a more secure, private cloud similar to what you might find in the private "dark fiber networks" that many companies lease now from telecommunications companies and ISPs.

As businesses continue to have concerns about cloud security, availability, and performance, 2010 will be a big year for the announcement of private cloud offerings from virtually all major IT suppliers. This is not surprising: a brand-new (not yet published) IDC survey shows a strong preference by businesses for private clouds over public clouds, and vendors will act accordingly. One important implication: since clouds typically package infrastructure, platforms, and applications together, look for these announcements to drive many strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisitions/mergers.

It's not only the private cloud that is expected to expand in the enterprise. The market for cloud appliances, cloud accessories and hybrid cloud management tools is predicted to see growth in 2010.

Dell, IBM, HP, Sun, Fujitsu, Hitachi - and Intel and AMD -  will partner with software vendors for "applianced" versions of traditional on-premise packaged software. Particularly once the EU approves Oracle's acquisition of Sun, Oracle will certainly be an aggressive cloud appliance player.

At the same time, information is one of the greatest sources of risk for organizations today. Whether through intentional or inadvertent means, breaches of data security can expose organizations to regulatory fines or legal actions, reduce a companyÂ’s competitive advantage and undermine customer confidence. In recent years, lawmakers worldwide have responded to data security breaches with more rigorous data privacy laws.

As data privacy mandates continue to multiply, so too can the risk. Eliminating the risk altogether, however, is not the goal. Were that the case, the solution would be easy: simply lock down both the data and access to it -  thus also shutting down the vital link to employees, customers, business partners and suppliers that makes innovation and collaboration possible.

A more sophisticated information security strategy takes a risk management approach that balances risk and reward - availability vs. the confidentiality and integrity of data. This strategy requires the ability to identify and classify sensitive data and mission-critical information within the enterprise and determine the various points of access to this information and the security posture of those access points - all while tracking who has accessed that data and understanding what they have done with it.

Palm announced the public beta availability of Project Ares, which the company called "the first complete set of integrated mobile development tools hosted entirely in the browser."

The goal of the new Palm development platform is to lower the barriers keeping Web developers from getting involved in mobile development. Palm Ares makes it "easier and faster" to create Palm WebOS applications, the company said. Project Ares was demonstrated for the first time during a Palm keynote at the Open Mobile Summit in November and an alpha release has been available to a limited group of developers for the past few weeks.

"We've had Wi-Fi working in our restaurants for five years under the pay-to-play model, but now is the time, with the ubiquity of Wi-Fi devices -- including handhelds and laptops -- to extend that offer," McDonald's USA CIO David Grooms said in an interview today.

"We said, let's go with free Wi-Fi.... We talked to customers and asked what they wanted to see, and they really wanted us to go free. You don't need a lot of focus groups to find that out, and we take what customers say seriously."

Asked whether McDonald's sees free Wi-Fi as a draw for new or infrequent customers, Grooms said, "We'll appeal to customers who visit us already, the folks with a [Wi-Fi] device ...who want a cup of coffee and to visit."

The chain plans to expand the free Wi-Fi service to all 14,000 U.S. restaurants over time, he said.

Upon investigation, the Navy found that the laptop contained "high risk" personally identifiable information on only eight people. And the external hard drives were either still in their boxes or encrypted when taken. 

The incident emphasizes the importance of security policies and continued vigilance over insider threats, according to Navy department of the CIO privacy team lead  who disclosed the breach in a blog post on the Navy CIO's Web site.

"External hard drives are becoming as vulnerable as thumb drives," Muck wrote. "A best practice should be to physically secure them at the end of each work day."

The Navy Privacy Offices advised employees to never store personally identifiable information or unencrypted user names and passwords on government computers. And he reminded of the importance of inventory control policies.

According to CNN, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network in Atlanta wasn't working properly, forcing pilots to process their flight plans through the network's office in Salt Lake City.

A check of several major airports, including those in Boston, New York City, Chicago and Dallas, showed that no flights destined for Atlanta would be allowed to depart before 10 a.m.

Although the problem was apparently fixed by mid-morning, the FAA site later showed several airports on the east coast with departure delays, some of them lasting more than an hour.

The problem occurred just a week before the Thanksgiving holiday, which is traditionally the busiest travel period of the year in the U.S.

The number of Droids sold between last Friday and Sunday is about 100,000, or roughly half of the 200,000 Droid phones that Motorola had initially supplied to Verizon stores. Early sales figures are "encouraging."

However, some analysts disagreed with that conclusion. Othes say that selling only half the initial supply of Droids over the first three days is somewhat troubling for Verizon, and even more so for Motorola, which is staking much of its wireless phone future on Android devices like the Droid. The iPhone sold multiples of that amount in its first weekend for the original version."

The complete list of Google services that are participating in "Google Dashboard" include:

• Google Account, Alerts, Blogger, Calendar, Contact, Docs, Finance, Gmail, Health, iGoogle, Latitude, Orkut, Picasa Web Albums, Product Search, Profile, Reader, Talk, Tasks, Voice, Web History, and YouTube

Not every Google service is represented - there are several that have not joined the Dashboard camp yet -  including the likes of Google Analytics, Google News, Checkout, AdWords.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that provides Recovery.gov, designed to allow citizens to track funding, is posting only what it gets in reports from recipients. A spokesman said theat they are not analyzing the data in terms of types of jobs but would do it "later".   The lack of detailed information, the absence of data, the lack of consistency to the data collected, and insufficient rules governing how that data is supposed to be collected and displayed makes the site useless.

The Recovery.gov site includes interactive maps and spreadsheets showing companies that have received the data, the number of jobs created or saved, and a description of some of the work.  This barebones information makes a rough guess possible about the quality of jobs based on description of the work.

Recovery.gov falls short in a number of respects in helping users understanding spending.  Among the problems is site navigation difficulty and an inability to search by recipient. This prompted the creation of the Coalition for and Accountable Recovery, which represents about 30 groups.

Along with OBM Watch, some of its other members include the Center for Responsive Politics, OMB Watch, Sunlight Foundation, Economic Policy Institute. The groups criticized the usability of the Web site, and said it needed functions, such as ability to search by recipient.

The stimulus is expected to create IT jobs but there's never been any estimate about how many. Both IT and engineering jobs have declined in the recession.

However, IT firms are expecting the stimulus to perk up spending. IBM's chief financial officer, said this month that public sector was again the fastest growing sector with 2% growth, led by health care and education.

The DHS has the authority to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals over the next three years in order to help fulfill its mission to protect the nation's cyber infrastructure, systems, and networks, she said.

"This new hiring authority will enable DHS to recruit the best cyber analysts, developers and engineers in the world to serve their country by leading the nationÂ’s defenses against cyber threats," Napolitano stated.

DHS is the focal point for the security of cyberspace -- including analysis, warning, information sharing, vulnerability reduction, mitigation, and recovery efforts for public and private critical infrastructure information systems.

The hiring authority, which results from a collaborative effort between DHS, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, lets DHS staff up to 1,000 positions over three years across all DHS agencies to fulfill critical cybersecurity roles, including cyber risk and strategic analysis, cyber incident response, vulnerability detection and assessment, intelligence and investigation, and network and systems engineering.

The need for DHS to bolster its security realm is a hot topic. A Government Accountability Office report this year said that while DHS established the National Cyber Security Division to be responsible for leading national day-to-day cybersecurity efforts that has not enabled DHS to become the national focal point for security as envisioned.

The original legislation repealed telecom immunity provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, passed by Congress in July 2008.

The FISA Amendments Act provides some additional court oversight to the NSA wiretapping program, which former President George Bush's administration launched after terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. The FISA Amendments Act allowed the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, which allowed the interception of phone calls and e-mail messages of people with suspected ties to terrorism, to continue until the end of 2012.

Critics of the NSA program said it illegally targeted U.S. residents' communications with people linked to terrorist groups without court-approved warrants. The program was illegal under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, critics said.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Friday began notifying about 163,000 women about the potential compromise of their Social Security numbers and other personal information after a hacker breached a system containing the data.

The breached server belonged to the UNC School of Medicine and contained information that was collected as part of a federally funded mammography research project. The system contained records on a total of 236,000 women, of which about 163,000 included Social Security numbers.

The Chairman of the university's Department of Radiology said the breach was first discovered in July when a researcher reported problems accessing the system. A subsequent investigation by the school's information systems staff revealed that the system had been hacked.

Though the breach was discovered in July, there are indications that the actual intrusion may have taken place as long as two years ago.