Eric Lundquist

The Black Hat hacker conference saw nearly 8,000 digital security pros talking, hacking and holding press briefings on the latest security holes in the corporate armor. Smartphones were hacked and demonstrated to act as secret recorders relaying your conference room discussions to outside listeners. Sensors running in manufacturing plants and on oil pipelines were remotely […]

It was a rare speech for the director of a super secret agency and was admirable for presenting what public facts are available and gamely handling hecklers. A bigger obstacle than hecklers or the acts was the speech’s timing. It took place the same day NSA secrets leaker Edward Snowden published new documents via the […]

This year’s annual Black Hat security conference is about to get underway this week. The conference always promises a security professional’s mix of research, vulnerability disclosures and general updates on the state of digital security. This year’s keynote speakers include Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and […]

Google launched on July 24 a bunch of new products and services (the $35 Chromecast TV viewer was the coolest) aimed at the consumer space, where the combination of Android phones and tablets, Google services and the Chrome system are enjoying growth. While I was watching the press conference—via YouTube, which was done really well […]

You are embarrassed to discover your company is sending mail to a former customer now deceased. You have to hire a swivel-chair data input operator who spends the day re-entering data between incompatible systems by swiveling from screen to screen. Government organizations are supposed to share data on suspicious individuals, but a name falls through […]

Here’s the issue that the IT industry is already starting to deal with: Big data creates lots of new, well-paying jobs but in a digital update of the prime maxim of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, demand will outstrip supply, some experts contend. And it will get worse, because those newly graduated data […]

You are embarrassed to discover your company is sending mail to a former customer now deceased. You have to hire a swivel chair data input operator who spends the day re-entering data between incompatible systems by swiveling from screen to screen. Government organizations are supposed to share data on suspicious individuals, but a name falls […]

The half year mark is when the major technology research organizations recalibrate their technology predictions. This year is no different, with both Forrester Research and Gartner recasting their forecasts. Forecasting technology markets, like forecasting the weather, is an inexact science but a topic that draws much discussion. In 2013 the major trends of mobile, cloud, […]

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer created a big news splash last week as he outlined a fundamental reorganization of the company. His 2,700-word memo highlighted a company organized functionally around products and services designed to compute in harmony. Amid the many news analyses (including mine) about the new (to their corporate positions at least) players, the new […]

Here’s what I’ve learned from covering big corporate reorganizations and being on both sides of media reorganizations: The real work starts the day after the stump speeches, PowerPoint slides, and salutes to the new bosses and good-byes to the old. Unless the reorganized employees can answer the question, “What does this mean to me and […]