Stories by Michael Fitzgerald

Back in 1980, the woman who now runs the data center at State Street Bank started her career there by pricing a mutual fund in a ledger book. That process would get automated as the bank became a computerized enterprise. Today, she can connect State Street's systems with those of customers and partners and produce sophisticated reports to let customers analyze the mutual funds they might buy. That's the digital enterprise.

As if CSOs don't have enough on their plates, they now need to beat back made men, capos and the other elements of the Mafia. Yes, the Mafia is formally involved in cybercrime, or so alleges the US attorney for Florida, who filed charges against associates of the Bonanno crime family that included pilfering data from Lexis-Nexis.
The Mafia engaging in cybercrime might sound like your grandmother joining Facebook. In fact, "the majority of data breaches are the result of organised crime," says Nick Holland, an analyst at Aite Group in Boston. That doesn't mean it's the conventional Mafia pulling the strings--though it can be. In fact, it's hard to tell just who is in control sometimes. For the most part, cybergroups that become notorious, like the Rockfish or the old Russian Business Network, do so because very few cybercrime groups publicize themselves, says Steve Santorelli of Team Cymru. (Cymru, pronounced cumri, is the Welsh word for Wales.)

CIOs think about <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/32306/Privacy_Is_Your_Business">privacy</a> the way some people think about exercise: with a sigh and a sense of impending pain. Outside of regulated industries like health care--where patient privacy is paramount--privacy affects CIOs as a corollary of security when, say, a laptop holding millions of people's records is lost or hackers siphon off customer data.

When thieves stole the PIN pads at a cash register in one of his company's stores, Daniel Marcotte was amazed. Not that they'd done it -- such thefts can happen once a week during the holiday season. But watching it on videotape later, &quot;I couldn't tell they had it with them when they left&quot; the store, says Marcotte, director of systems and data security at La Senza, a Montreal retailer now owned by The Limited.
A couple of hours later, the thieves were back. They'd doctored the PIN pads to let them get customer card data. They got them back onto the point-of-sale system quickly, too. But here's where La Senza's security precautions kicked in: Its PIN pads in effect have their own Media Access Control address, and once they're disconnected, that address is no longer available. So the thieves were foiled--this time.

Barbra Cooper started as a CIO when the position was still called &quot;VP of IS&quot;. In her more than 30 years in IT, she's seen the role become ever more strategic. Until now the CIO is in the unique position of being the C-level officer who can &quot;see across the entire enterprise.&quot;

Antivirus software makes Greg Shipley so mad he has to laugh. "The relationship between signature-based antivirus companies and the virus writers is almost comical. One releases something and then the other reacts, and they go back and forth. It's a silly little arms race that has no end."

The credit card business turned 55 last year, and it might look as though the industry is having a midlife crisis - what with credit purveyors trying to dump the classic mag-stripe-and-plastic cards in favour of cards that use wireless technologies and even mobile phones. But that's no midlife crisis. It's market expansion, and it could change the way most people use their credit cards.

Since its founding in 1995, Amazon.com Inc. has taken a lot of titles. Internet bookseller. Warehouse builder. Personalization expert. Shipping discounter.