By creating one-time session certificates, the firm's SecureEmail solution allows users to send encrypted emails to recipients who don't have public-key certificates.

By Chris Smith

I shudder when I think about some of the stuff we send over the Internet either in emails or as attachments.

Last season, my bookkeeper sent my tax return back for review as an email attachment and put my name and social security number in the subject line.

IT departments have been so focused on meeting compliance mandates they may have missed the value that compliance solutions can add to the organization.

By Marty Acks

In his inauguration speech this week, incoming American President Barack Obama announced "A New Era of Responsibility." This theme has many parallels to compliance issues impacting IT today. The increased focus on IT audits in the last few years is largely a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which came into being following a number of highly visible business failures. While one might argue that the malfeasance was--or was not--a result of ethical failures on the IT side of the organization, IT certainly seems to have been caught up in the SOX dragnet. Whether IT had any culpability or not, it's certainly a huge part of the proposed solution. In this light, let's explore the state of IT compliance initiatives in companies today and examine where they might be headed tomorrow.

As solutions become easier to implement and maintain, the presence of compliance regulations coupled with rising external threats will likely drive their widespread adoption.

By Chris Smith

In earlier columns in MC Systems Insight and MC Tips 'N Techniques, I've written at length about the importance of having good, strong passwords, but we haven't talked about the importance of having secure answers to security questions. For those of you still in the dark about how Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account was hacked by a Tennessee teenager with the handle "rubico," it was via the password reset function.

A new release of a popular utility for managing and securing passwords provides a place to store all your personal information.

By Chris Smith

I have written in the past of the importance of having solid passwords to protect your data. I haven't offered, however, any convenient and inexpensive utilities to manage passwords at home, in the office, or on the road. One such utility that has recently been released following a complete rewrite is Password Profiler 2. This automated password filler enables you to log into Web sites and quickly complete lengthy registration and checkout forms, allows you to save logins to frequently visited sites, and provides for multiple profiles for separating business and personal information.