CompTIA Blog

A look at the week of September 12 in public advocacy for the IT channel: This week, Obama revealed a new jobs plan with tax cuts targeted at small businesses.  Now that Congress is back in session, cybersecurity is topping their agenda.  The healthcare industry reports it is understaffed, in terms of its IT needs. Small Business Is Focus of Tax Cuts— The Wall Street Journal reports that President Barack Obama's new jobs plan seeks to coax wary employers to invest and hire ...

The President’s $447 billion jobs bill includes a number of provisions that would benefit small businesses.  This legislation, which was sent to Congress on Monday, would: Provide a 50-percent reduction in payroll taxes for the first $5 million in wages.  Approximately 98 percent of all businesses pay out less than $5 million in wages. Eliminate employer payroll taxes for small businesses that create jobs or give a wage increase from the prior year.   An employer that increases an employee’s wag ...

Earlier this year the U.S. Secret Service in coordination with Verizon and the Dutch National High Tech Criminal Unit released the 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report.An interesting outcome of the report is that in 2010 cyber attacks decreased significantly from earlier years, but the number of actual breaches was the highest ever. A possible reason for outcome is that hackers are no longer going after the big targets in large numbers, but instead are focusing their efforts on smaller and mor ...

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, (CFAA).  The CFAA was passed initially in 1986 to impose criminal liability for hacking computers and IT systems owned by the federal government and financial institutions.  Since then there have been numerous amendments to the CFAA, and most recently as a result of the enactment of the USA Patriot Act.The CFAA makes it a crime for any individual to access a federal or financial “computer” ...

We are delighted to have Julie Meyer, chief executive and founder of Ariadne Capital, original business development advisor in Skype and star of BBC’s Dragon’s Den Online, deliver the opening keynote at this year’s CompTIA EMEA Members Conference.Meyer will provide insight into the digital world and explain why establishing new digital business models has become the cornerstone for future business growth.  In her “Ecosystem EconomicsTM”, large organisations (known colourfully as Goliath) and the ...

It seems many tech-minded people are either tired of working for “THE MAN” or their employers are making that choice for them. Self-employment in the IT channel is on the rise, according to the latest news, with one-man (or woman) shops and other small solution provider businesses flourishing across the nation.Some of this change may be inspired by previous employers, as the business owners’ companies look to offload or outsource their IT departments. Rather than introduce a new solution provide ...

Human motivation guru Steve Head is set to deliver a dynamic and inspiring presentation at the CompTIA EMEA Member Conference. During his 45-minute closing keynote, Steve will take you on a journey of self-awareness that will increase your ability to positively impact on others, minimise conflict and improve both your personal and team performance. After his session, you will be able to apply one idea immediately that will help you at a personal / team level.In a recent interview we asked Steve ...

Despite much hand wringing over the impact of cloud in the channel, many companies are beginning to gain a clearer – and more relief-tinged – picture of what the model means to the industry at large and their own business roadmaps.Clearly for the channel, the devil is in the details. Companies today are determining the role they will play in the cloud evolution and how they will implement steps needed to make the transition and overcome obstacles. This holds true whether they are planning a mino ...

A look at the week of September 6 in public advocacy for the IT channel:  This week, IT policy news focused on two topics: cybersecurity training and employment and the role of cloud computing in cutting government IT costs.  Nextgov.com reports that the GAO is concerned about whether the supply of U.S. cyber workers will meet the government’s demand, while USA Today reports that cyber programs are springing up in institutions of higher education across the country to address this gap.GAO Review ...

CompTIA UK hosted our UK Channel Community last Thursday at the ICC in Birmingham and most of us agreed it was the best meeting to date.A community operates differently. Whilst sometimes tempted to dictate the run of play, it was more productive and more satisfying to see members of the community step up and take the lead at different times during the session, each adding their own nugget of value to the collective. Our chair, IT consultant Richard Tubb, is well respected by all, and his effortl ...

So you just came back from the latest IT event and found the one service/product that you think is a perfect fit for your company. You want to get it up and running quickly and can’t wait to see how it grows your bottom line! So you have a staff meeting, roll out the new offering to your team and walk away satisfied that the conference was a success—with your organization ready to make a lot of money!Well take a step back, because this type of “fly by” business plan is typically unsuccessful.  I ...

The West Coast generally gets all the attention when it comes to earthquakes, which seem to be a part of everyday life for those in California, Oregon and Washington (not to mention Alaska and Hawaii). The Gulf Coast, on the other hand, seems to be a magnet for hurricanes and tropical depressions. So it came as quite a surprise to those in the North East who got hit with both last week. A rare 5.9 earthquake struck Mineral, Va., on Tuesday, which rattled nerves and lit up Facebook with “what was ...

By the time she had graduated from Stanford University, Stephanie Brown had already completed internships with Fortune 500 companies Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Deloitte. She was only 21.No wonder, then, that Microsoft’s human resources department tracked her down, offering her a position she had not even applied for: helping the company’s enterprise customers in the Southeast streamline their IT infrastructure.Getting connected with BDPA in high school put Stephanie Brown on a learni ...

A look at the week of August 29 in public advocacy for the IT channel: This week, government agencies take steps to expand health IT to rural areas.  States and businesses struggle over sales tax as more transactions take place in cyberspace.  A new report finds that IT workers received millions of dollars in recruitment, retention and relocation incentives in 2009. HHS, USDA Align To Reach Rural Areas with Health IT — The Departments of Health and Human Services and Agricultur ...

A recent article in The New York Times discussed how security concerns are contributing to the reluctance of federal agencies and businesses to migrate their IT operations to the cloud.  While some of these concerns are legitimate, given the benefits of the cloud, the transition seems inevitable and the longer we wait, the more money is wasted.In the past, businesses of all sizes and government agencies spent billions of dollars on IT hardware and software.  Much of this technology was proprieta ...