Anne Chen

Eighteen months ago, if The Boeing Co.s help desk had had radar to track incoming calls from users whod forgotten passwords, the screen would have been lit up like a Christmas tree. Why? Because a whopping 500,000 such calls a year used to get stacked up in a gridlocked holding pattern. At what Gartner Inc. […]

Implementing PKI in the wired world is becoming an increasingly important way to authenticate and secure e-commerce transactions. But, experts say, security managers shouldnt stop there. The same security and identity verification capabilities that are making PKI important for wired transactions will also make it a fit for wireless transactions, experts say. Various public-key infrastructure […]

On June 30, 2000, President Clinton made history when he signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act?federal legislation legalizing digital signatures?into law. He also helped Chuck Chamberlain breathe a whole lot easier. Ten years ago, Chamberlain, manager of the U.S. Postal Service?s NetPost Certified and e-Government programs, recommended that the USPS invest […]

At Harrahs Entertainment Inc.s casino properties, a few lucky gamblers arent the only ones coming up with winning hands. While other casinos on Las Vegas famous strip are luring customers with extravagant rooms and entertainment, Harrahs is placing its bet on CRM (customer relationship management) technologies that allow it to track and analyze the behaviors […]

Its an axiom of e-business: If youre running a Web site, you cant afford downtime, particularly unexpected downtime that knocks customers off line and threatens their transactions and data. With demanding customers expecting 24-by-7 uptime from Web sites and the competition only a click away, every second offline means potential customers, and dollars, are lost. […]

On a chilly morning last December, a group of IT and business managers from some of the largest agriculture companies—and fiercest competitors—in the country gathered in a basement conference room of the OHare Hilton in Chicago. The group, including representatives from agricultural products companies Tyson Foods Inc., Louis Dreyfus Citrus S.A., Monsanto Co., Cenex Harvest […]

Agribusinesses helping to create the AgXML standard have learned that getting competitors pulling in the same direction can be a big and difficult task. In some respects, however, its just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Thats because companies such as Cargill Inc. plan to use standards like AgXML not just to build business-to-business […]

Surges in web site traffic come with the e-business territory. But few businesses have quite as much experience with unpredictable traffic floods as Weather.com. The Atlanta-based site, which is owned by The Weather Channel Enterprises Inc., receives floods of visitors—quadruple its normal average page views—within two or three days of impending bad weather. Adding to […]

The rail riders of vancou- ver, British Columbia, are in for the ride of their lives when, later this year, a new generation of automated, driverless SkyTrains—complete with smart-card ticketing systems—come hurtling down the tracks. But all that high-tech wizardry is nothing compared with the trail of security magic the railway projects IT team had […]

Komatsu mining systems Inc. builds mining equipment, such as dump trucks, tractors and excavators, but the IT managers in the companys engineering department didnt have to dig deep to find reasons to begin using the Linux operating system for mission-critical applications. The promise of more control over their computing environment was all it took to […]

Its been a struggle, but after scrambling for months to head off what seems like every virus and denial-of-service threat under the sun, youve finally managed to get a grip on your enterprises network security. Intrusion detection is in place. Encryption works. Nothings perfect, but its finally possible to turn your attention from security to […]

Although wireless protocols such as wap may not be as secure as most IT managers would like, vendors are rapidly closing holes. But how do you know when a wireless platform is finally safe for mission-critical applications? One way is to get actively involved with the growing number of industry groups, standards committees and vendor […]