In this week’s issue of Computer Weekly, we look at the key trends and technologies that will be on IT leaders’ agenda in 2012. Our first Buyer’s Guide of the year examines how IT consumerisation will affect business technology; and Home Office IT director Denise McDonagh tells us why government IT isn’t working. Download the new issue now. 

In this paper, discover what is a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) and explore the differences between threats posed by malicious types of software such as computer viruses and worms, and those which are classified as being potentially unwanted. 

This paper provides a snapshot of what is happening in the arena of cloud computing. What are the benefits? Why are businesses embracing it? What does it mean to a business owner or executive? How does it affect the workplace? What are the payoffs and the pitfalls? Is it really ready for "prime time"? 

The number of mobile enterprise workers is growing which is also compounding the data they create. Since they are often disconnected from the corporate network, backing up this endpoint data is quite a challenge. 

Delivering smarter security and more customized services are at the top of any IT agenda. Both would be easier and cheaper to achieve with a common infrastructure, in what we call an identity and context service. In this paper, we’ll address how such a shared service can serve these two very different IT initiatives. 

Check out this E-Guide for key considerations when drawing up a DR plan and to learn how the cloud can work into such a strategy. You'll also learn what types of organizations can most benefit from DR in the cloud. Read on to learn more. 

In this week's Computer Weekly, we examine the economic benefits of plans to release more government data for wider re-use by software developers. We announce the winners of our Social Media Awards, and hear what the IT industry thinks of the new UK cyber security strategy. Download the new issue now. 

Content provided by Google. IT organizations are working to improve email security and add compliance and e-discovery capabilities. Spam and malware are bad and are getting worse, and the risk and potential costs associated with e-discovery are increasing. As a result, organizations need a better way to solve these problems. 

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at the importance of IT strategy when budgets are under pressure. The first part of our Buyer’s Guide to virtualisation examines the barriers preventing many organisations from adopting the technology; and Transport for London’s CIO talks about how IT helps avoid Olympic travel chaos. Download the issue now. 

To properly protect the information at the database layer there are a number of comprehensive measures that need to be taken. With this paper Tanya Baccum, SANS Institute analyst, examines these measures for holistically protecting Oracle database from inside out. 

As IT commoditization continues to increase audit and control activities, IT gets better at identifying and documenting the causes of significant outages. In an increasing number of cases, these ITIL efforts show the source of the outage to be action from the security department, and the BSM processes show the impact to be devastating. 

In this white paper, you'll learn about some of the most common pitfalls associated with backups and how to avoid them. You'll learn about the repercussions of poor/failed backups, and learn how to establish a backup strategy that can ensure minimal downtime during a disaster. Read on to learn more. 

The security of SQL Server database servers has become a top priority for database administrators. This article examines best practices that can be employed to secure Microsoft SQL Server 2000 databases. It provides an overview of the security model in SQL Server 2000 and discusses best practices you can employ to secure yours.