It’s that time of the year again when we all reflect on the year gone by and consider what lies ahead.

In the world of IT, most of us have been grateful onlookers when we consider the misfortunes of others, and wonder how they could be so irresponsible as to allow such mishaps, or more likely thank our lucky stars that yet again we’ve escaped, and hopefully no one above us asks too many questions about how we would have dealt with a similar situation. So as we consider our resolutions work-wise, it might be good to reflect on some of the twists of fate suffered by some of our colleagues over the past year, and try to learn from someone else’s bitter experience.

March saw a well known bank having to pay a substantial fine for failure to produce some old emails on time, although they were not alone in this since a number of other companies who fell under the Sarbanes-Oxley umbrella suffered similar fates. Under the act, public companies are required to archive any and all financial data, and also to keep a record of a document's lifecycle, including who within the company had access to, viewed or amended a given document. The information also needs to be retrievable in just two business days!


August was the month for leaks! Not that kind – well maybe it was given the summer we had. People had nothing better to do it seemed, or maybe it was just a bad month for news, but suddenly it was raining source-code. First it was id Software, and then later in the year it was Microsoft, and lately Valve got hit. What is difficult to understand is why anyone who should not have access would even know where to look. Come on folks, we’re talking about a couple of hours work to make sure that the stuff is so out of sight that not even Santa would find the “grotto”! August continued to be a bad month for consumer confidence with the news that Hotmail had some flaws that allowed access to other peoples email.

October brought the issue of using home computers for work to the forefront, well in the Netherlands at least. Known as the Tonino affair, it involved case of Dutch public prosecutor putting his personal PC on the street with the garbage, believing it was defective due to a virus. A taxi-driver who happened to be passing by, saw it, and took it home with him. He easily got it to work and took it to a journalist. The hard drive contained information on high profile cases, and the system also allowed access into all of Tonino's email traffic. Adding insult to injury, hackers raided Tonino's email box and placed important correspondence on the Internet. Suffice it to say the unfortunate gentleman’s caseload is not what it was!