Stories by: Mary Brandel

IT professionals have been through the wringer when it comes to managing their careers. They've had to keep up with ever-changing technology, endure the often painful aftermath of offshoring and outsourcing decisions, and learn new skills -- including communication and other so-called soft skills -- because of the blending of IT with the business. And those are just the biggest challenges they've faced over the years -- and continue to face today.

Who couldn't use some good news these days? John Arnold, CIO at FedMed, a healthcare financial services organization in Rockville, Md., is ready for some. Four years ago, his IT staff was downsized from 14 employees to four, and they have experienced the familiar squeeze of salary freezes and increased workloads.

"Bring Back the Wild" -- that's the mission of Earth Rangers, an innovative nonprofit organization that works to educate kids about environmental threats. Its goal is to inspire kids -- the "chief inheritors of environmental destruction," as its Web site says -- to become a powerful part of the solution by working to protect endangered species and their habitats.

In its 16 years of business, DataServ Solutions has relocated five times. That makes David Berndt, CIO at the document-digitization and process-automation company in St. Louis, Mo., something of an expert on the topic of securing corporate moves. "By now, we've got a good process," he says. In the most recent move this past February, nothing was lost or damaged. "We shut down the office at about 2:30 on Friday, and we were up 100 percent on Monday, with no disruption for our clients and no service levels missed."

Cloud computing is one of the most-discussed topics among IT professionals today. And not too long into any conversation about the most highly touted cloud models--software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS)--the talk often turns to cloud security.

We laid out the essential concepts of cloud security in Cloud security: The basics.

When CIO Daniel Chan was first prompted to use open-source software, cost savings weren't top of mind.

Biometrics encompasses a variety of methods for ensuring identity based on physical or behavioral traits. Conventional identifying traits include fingerprints, face topology, iris structure, hand geometry, vein structure, voice, signature and keystroke recognition. Emerging technologies analyze characteristics such as gait, odor, and ear shape. Rather than being used in isolation, biometrics systems are increasingly becoming multimodal, an approach that serves both to increase security and overcome failure-to-enroll problems.

Considering a biometric access system? Experts offer practical advice in these dos and don'ts.

When the global trade association SEMI experienced a big revenue decline last year and had to cut staff, CIO Gil McInnes turned to outsourcing.