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A new International Business Machines Corp.IBM -0.15% security tool uses Big Data to help CIOs detect internal and external security threats in new ways—and can even scan email and social media to flag apparently “disgruntled” employees who might be inclined to reveal company secrets

The new tool, called IBM Security Intelligence with Big Data, is designed to crunch decades worth of emails, financial transactions and website traffic, to detect patterns of security threats and fraud.

the new platform, based on Hadoop, a framework that processes data-intensive queries across clusters of computers, will allow CIOs to conduct sentiment analysis on employee emails to determine which employees are likely to leak company data,

Dupress

Forward-thinking CIOs are embracing delivery models that distribute agile experience more evenly across teams, seeking to optimize enterprise IT at a speed that’s right for the entire IT organization.

Leading organizations are building on the simple two-speed IT mindset and recognizing they must be able to support a continuum of speeds in order to dial in the right approach for a specific initiative, with the underlying disciplines, capabilities, platforms, and talents to appropriately support the actual breadth of business needs.

How well Internet Explorer--or any Web browser, for that matter--protects against attacks and malware greatly depends on whether you keep it up to date and have the right security settings. Here's how to take the proper security measures with Internet Explorer 9 and 10.

IE lets you set custom security settings for different zones: Internet, Local Intranet, Trusted Sites, and Restricted Sites. When you visit a website, IE automatically classifies it as in the Internet zone. The exceptions are websites hosted by your local network (say, a site set up for use on your company's network)--then it's Local Intranet--or sites that you've added to the Trusted or Restricted lists beforehand. You can set each zone to a predefined security level and customize the settings as well.

Hardware continues to evolve with new integrations, features and peripherals, ranging from smaller and energy- efficient units, to tablets used as a traditional POS, or as tableside/kiosk devices. This year also saw the release of location-based beacon technology for restaurants.

Pressure to heighten the guest experience is driving all kinds of innovation in hotel technology

Consumers are wowed by new technology, and expect the latest gadgets they use at home and on-the-go to be a regular part of their travel experience.

Guest-facing apps have drawn well-earned attention as part of a larger trend toward enhancing the guest experience

The Keys to Marriott's Success Long before the economy went south, Marriott had a reputation for finding creative ways to wrest the most value from every IT dollar.

The devil is in the details—success is in the system.-The Spirit to Serve Metrics drive Marriott. Talk to an IT associate on any given day, and he can tell you exactly how much business the company processed via its systems that week per second ($3,568 when this reporter visited).When implementing the PeopleSoft enterprise service automation module for project tracking and time reporting within IT, for example, programmers developed a tool so that project and productivity metrics are automatically computed after time is entered. Another rule for metrics is to make sure that the right people get the right data in a form that’s meaningful to them. "You need to measure a lot of things, but the trick is to publish the right information to the relevant audience," says Melnick. "Having Marriott.com up and running is not as important as the dollars running through it," explains Keppler. Melnick adds, "For each system we try to focus on the core metrics. And that changes. What might have been important the day you go live becomes a nonevent a few weeks in." For example, five years ago the critical metric for Marriott.com was uptime. Today, it’s how much business the website books. Last year, metrics fueled the IT department’s decision to invest in an upgrade to the site that would make it easier to reserve rooms. Today, more than 75 percent of rooms booked online come through Marriott.com, saving the company $12 million annually.Keeping its eye on the numbers lets Marriott revisit business cases for IT projects each quarter. "The project itself may not change that much, but something external may happen—something like SARS, something from the competition," Melnick explains. "Just because you start a project and it’s on track doesn’t mean you want to keep the same pace. There may be something that comes up that’s even better." Success is never final.-The Spirit to Serve Though the IT department’s resourcefulness is helping keep Marriott afloat during hard times, Wilson and his peers aren’t taking anything for granted. They say they can’t let their culture of resourcefulness wither away when the economy turns around. They’re reminded of how easy it could be to let their guard down each time they flip through Mr. Marriott’s book in which he quotes Somerset Maugham: "The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones."But Wilson believes the principles and procedures put in place for prudent and resourceful IT decision making should keep the company on the straight and narrow and ahead of the competition."I have a firm belief that the only real sustainable competitive advantage we can get with IT is making sure our people understand conceptually what IT can and can’t do and apply it better than competitors," Wilson says. "Anything we do in IT, a competitor can install. What they can’t capture that quickly is having a team of people throughout the company that really gets this and follows it all the way through. That’s sustainable."Marriott has valued resourcefulness—on paper if not always in practice—for decades. But resourcefulness is not an end in itself. It’s a tool one uses in the ongoing construction of value, a project that’s never finished. Or, as Mr. Marriott says succinctly in his book, "Success is never final."

Absence management

Most HRIS offer broad self-service functionality to streamline HR functionality and ease the administrative burden.

An effective HRIS provides information on just about anything a company needs to track and analyze data about employees, former employees, and applicants, from their first application, through their tenure on the job, to resignation or retirement. It’s a one-stop-shop for individuals, employees, managers and hiring and recruiting professionals to find information when they need it.

Indra’s Travel Management Suite services all the business needs of a hotel chain or management company in one system, hosted in the cloud or on-premise. The system is modular and each module is also available individually as a stand-alone entity.

Minimizing the number of different systems that hoteliers have to deal with onsite and replacing them with a seamless, uniform tool for all of their needs paves the way to higher levels of guest service and much more efficient operations. After all, accessing accurate guest information from all parts of the operation in real time and from a single database is what the lodging industry has been aspiring to for some time, and there’s a strong demand from CIOs to reduce the number of inter-system interfaces they’ve been struggling with for years.

the new team will be dedicated to the expansion and customization of unique e-commerce and omni-channel platforms for the sandwich chain.

“This reinforces our commitment to attracting top technology and digital marketing talent,” said Carman Wenkoff, SUBWAY® restaurants CIO and Chief Digital Officer. “This will bring our commerce platform of enhancing engagement and building loyalty to the next level and will allow us to deliver value to the market quickly.”

“Being the only provider that has deployed online ordering at such a large scale, in multiple countries, has put us in a great position to pursue our mission of providing convenience while bridging the in-store and online experience for brands and customers alike - a real omni-channel approach,” says Jason Strashek, Avanti’s founder and CEO.

As if significant savings on electricity bills weren't enough, IT managers have another reason to embrace environmentally friendly IT practices: a bevy of federal, state and local tax incentives that could tip the scales to make green IT projects financially attractive. However, companies have been slow to take advantage of the available incentives, essentially leaving money on the table. One reason is that many tax incentives are for solar energy, which is still expensive. Another reason is that CIOs -- who don't often talk with tax experts -- may not be aware of what's available. Among the federal tax incentives is the Energy-Efficient Commercial Buildings Tax Deduction, part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. (Subsequent legislation extended this deduction through 2013.) Companies can claim a tax deduction of $1.80 per square foot on new or existing buildings by installing interior lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation or hot water systems that reduce a building's total energy and power costs by 50% or more. "If an IT manager is looking to retrofit or construct a data center, this particular incentive is absolutely appropriate -- almost a given," says Jenny Bravo, a director at Deloitte Tax LLP. "A 50% reduction [in energy and power costs] for a well-planned data center is absolutely doable."

is how it will drive the business and generate more revenue

Take the example of the GoSLSHotel-using guest who always orders Dom Pérignon for the room on arrival. "After five days, maybe you send a bottle of Dom to the room before they even get there," Chao said.

There's a direct correlation between how much an app is promoted and how much it is used.

it is of the utmost importance that we constantly and actively evaluate and update security plans, strategies, and practices to keep up with threats today. Without this flexible approach, companies will be ill prepared for a security attack or threat. These attacks are becoming increasingly more effective, complicated, and damaging for companies.

the top three obstacles blocking improved security were insufficient funding, a lack of future vision for business needs, and a lack of support and leadership from the top executives.

Gary Loveland, another Cybersecurity lead with PWC Advisory, noted that you cannot keep up with today's threats and challenges if you are using yesterday's technology

Current technology trends are on the rise, influencing several industrial sectors, among which is the travel and hospitality industry, where enhancing the guest experience of the utmost concern

Integration between hotel systems, such as connecting a property management system (PMS) to another smart tool, will allow hoteliers to create a detailed customer profile.

The vast majority of hotel systems and software are cloud-based and can enable multiple operations, which allow proficiency in reducing time consumption