Stories by: Michael Crawford

The current skills shortage is affecting most people in the salary range of between $50,000 and $80,000, according to a national survey released today.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs last week extended an ICT outsourcing contract with IBM Australia in place since early 1992. The current contract will be run for four years, with two two-year contract extension options.

The quarterly Unisys security index released today has found the majority of Australians surveyed particularly savvy when it comes to personal information security, in particular choosing a PIN (personal identification number), destroying bank or credit card statements or even reading the privacy policies of organizations they have dealings with.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has selected an auditor to compare the service coverage of Telstra's CDMA network compared to the new 3G network, 3GSM850 (WCDMA).

Security professionals, applications developers and financial database experts can expect the highest salary increases over the next 12 months according to the Ambition Technology Market Trends Report - Summer 2007, a survey of salary and contract rate figures of some 370 IT professionals nationwide.

Once an organization outsources, it is a mammoth task rebuilding in-house capability, or insourcing. In fact, of all the companies in Australia that have outsourced a mere 23 per cent have brought services back in-house, according to a Gartner study undertaken last year.

Today's enterprises are not spending their security dollars wisely, often shelling out vast sums to protect their least-sensitive digital information while ignoring common risks like insider threats and paper theft - a situation that security experts insist is likely to get worse over the next four years.

The IT Governance Institute (ITGI) in conjunction with ISACA (Information Systems Audit and Control Association) is developing an IT governance accreditation framework to be released late next year.

Transaction and IT services company NCR has been ordered to reinstate an employee fired last year for storing pornographic and other graphic images on an NCR-owned work laptop.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs is tendering for a complete redesign of their Web site, www.dva.gov.au.

The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has replaced outgoing CEO, Rob Durie, with former Manpower director of recruitment, Sheryle Moon, who will take over the role immediately.