Stories by: Stacy Collett

"Richard," a 40-year-old IT architect, felt like his career path had reached its end at the financial services company where he'd worked for seven years. In a shaky economy, he was grateful to have a job at all, but when his employer eliminated matching funds in his 401(k) plan, as well as its profit-sharing program -- which usually put an extra $1,000 in his pocket each year -- he knew he had to go.

Encryption can make up for a litany of security snafus -- from a bad firewall to an unrelenting hacker to a lost laptop. Once data is encrypted, criminals can't use or sell it. Plus, if encrypted data goes missing, companies are protected from disclosure requirements in most states. No wonder 38% of companies surveyed by Forrester Research have already adopted full-disk encryption technology. But data protection doesn't stop there. Encryption keys and digital rights also must be well orchestrated and secured, or else encryption protection goes out the window.

Waste Management may be in the business of managing and reducing waste, but it's really a transportation and logistics company with 20,000 trucks driving 100,000 routes daily, according to Puneet Bhasin, 49, senior vice president and CIO.

Technology departments prefer to handle projects one at a time.

In today's 24/7 news cycle, reporters at media outlets use all kinds of wireless gadgets to gather and report news and communicate with the newsroom.

When touting their company's products, EMC sales reps often get this question from prospective customers: "Do you guys use your own stuff?"

Overhauling an IT infrastructure is never easy, but winning over IT staff and business units with an ambitious plan can be nearly impossible.

If you're sitting in your office right now, take a glance at the co-worker on your left and then at the co-worker on your right. Chances are one of them is looking to leave the company. Or perhaps it's you.

It's 2 p.m. Do you know where your cloud data is? Really? Executives at one large Fortune 500 company thought they knew, but a routine audit of the cloud provider uncovered a serious problem.

We've all heard the predictions: By 2020, the quantity of electronically stored data will reach 35 trillion gigabytes, a forty-four-fold increase from 2009. We had already reached 1.2 million petabytes, or 1.2 zettabytes, by the end of 2010, according to IDC. That's enough data to fill a stack of DVDs reaching from the Earth to the moon and back -- about 240,000 miles each way.