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20 security (and other IT) mistakes to avoid
Fall prey to any one of these common IT blunders and watch your organization’s prospects suffer -- not to mention your own
By IT World Canada Staff (with files from InfoWorld)
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13. Underestimating the importance of scale
You may think you've planned for scalability, but chances are, your systems are rife with hidden trouble areas that will haunt you as your business grows. First and foremost, be mindful of process interdependencies.
A system is only as robust as its least reliable component. In particular, any process that requires human intervention will be a bottleneck for any automated processes that depends on it, no matter how much hardware you throw at the task.
Also, cutting corners today is a sure recipe for headaches tomorrow. As tempting as it may be to piggyback a departmental database onto an underutilized Web server or let an open workstation double as networked storage, resist. Today's minor project could easily become tomorrow's mission-critical resource, leaving you with the unenviable task of separating the conjoined twins.
14. Mismanaging your SaaS strategy
Salesforce.com proved that SaaS (software as a service) has real legs in enterprise computing. When compared to traditional desktop software, the on-demand model offers customers a low barrier to entry and virtually no maintenance costs. Little wonder, then, that a growing number of software vendors have begun offering hosted products in numerous software categories. If you haven't at least considered SaaS options, you're doing your business a disservice.
Too much SaaS, on the other hand, can become problematic. Hosted services don't interoperate as well as desktop software, and the level of customization offered by SaaS vendors varies. Remember, SaaS is just a business model -- it isn't really a bargain if the software itself is immature.
15. Not profiling your code
Relative performance is a perennial debate among programmers. Does code written for one language or platform run as well as equivalent code written for another?
Here, software development dovetails with carpentry, as it's often the poor craftsman who blames his tools. For every application that suffers due to an underlying flaw in the language, countless others are rife with poorly designed algorithms, inefficient storage calls, and other programmer-created speed bumps.
Locating these trouble spots is the goal of code profiling, and that's what makes it so essential. Until you've identified the slowest portions of your code, any attempt to optimize it will ultimately be fruitless. Because who knows? Maybe the problem isn't your fault after all.
16. Logging in as root
One of the oldest rookie mistakes is still alive and well in 2008. Techs who habitually log in to the administrator or "root" account for minor tasks risk wiping out valuable data or even entire systems by accident, and yet the habit persists.
Fortunately, modern operating systems -- including Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows Vista -- have taken steps to curb this practice, by shipping with the highest-level privileges disabled by default. Instead of running as root all the time, techs must enter the administrative password on each occasion they need to perform a major systems maintenance task. It may be a hassle, but it's just good practice. It's high time that every IT worker took the hint.
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