Chief Information Officer and IT Managers Areas of Interest

Disaster Recovery Planning, Job Descriptions, Salary Survey, Business Continuity, ITSM, SOA, Compliance, SOX, and HIPAA

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IT job market shrinks

CIO and IT Manager news articles
13 month cummulative job loss - 155,100 jobs

There are approximately 133K unemployed IT Professionals. The IT job market shrank by over 200K jobs in the prior 24 months. Overall that is a flattening of the long-term growth rate pattern of the IT job market. Based on our data and forecast models, there will be limited growth in the IT Job Market in the calendar year 2025.

Hiring and job growth continues to be in small to mid-sized enterprises. Many of the larger firms continue to be focused on improvements in productivity and replacing lower-level skills with AI applications. AI continues to halt the growth of entry-level positions within IT, especially in customer service, internal reporting, telecommunications," non-essential" managers, staff, and services.

Read on IT Hiring Kit

Over 4 Million individuals are employed as IT Pros in the US

Hiring of IT Pros Robust but Slowing

Hiring of IT Pros is hindered by the lack of qualified individuals. This will have a dampening impact on the growth of the IT Job Market size.

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CIOs and Cybersecurity Awareness

WFH increases CIO cybersecurity awareness

Top 10 Best Practices "World Class" CIOs follow include:

Scan Network for Layer Vulnerabilities .
Isolate executables from critical system resources
Implement and manage a Patch Management / Version Control Policy
Maintain a configuration management process
Monitor and prevent internet activity with known un-trusted networks
and devices
Regularly scan internal and external applications
Control WiFi usage and look for employees venturing to other WiFi networks
Monitor web traffic and install application level firewalls
Conduct penetration testing which is not to be confused with vulnerability scanning
methods of attack that could be used to compromise your networks.
Manage identities in a customer environment provides peace of mind that access is granted as needed

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Janco quoted in the Wall Street Journal

Unemployment levels quote in the WSJ

Janco and its CEO were quote for 27th time this year in the Wall Street Journal.

The unemployment rate for information-technology workers rose to 6% in August, up from 5.6% the prior month as the boom in artificial intelligence continued to drastically alter the tech landscape.

In August, there were 148,000 unemployed IT workers, more than the 145,000 in July, according to consulting firm Janco Associates, which based its findings on data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The IT unemployment rate has been above the national jobless rate for seven of the last eight months, Janco found. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the national jobless rate ticked down to 4.2% in August as the economy added 142,000 jobs.

Joblessness for IT workers is at its worst since the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, said Victor Janulaitis, Jancos chief executive. And this time the culprit is AI, he said, which is causing seismic change comparable to that seen when personal computers came into wide use.

Job reductions in IT remain concentrated in traditional technology roles like managing back-end corporate systems, Janulaitis said, while AI and cybersecurity are providing pockets of growth.

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Primary Reason AI Deployment is Slow

CIO AI deployment concerns

CIOs in all regions and sectors are struggling to get skilled people into the right roles and/or upskill current employees. More than half of organizations worldwide are seeing delays in the rollout of AI applications, quality problems and lost revenues because of the skills crisis.

As AI is the focus of many technology initiatives, companies, and CIOs in particular, are having difficulties recruiting IT Pros with AI knowledge and experience. With the economy in turmoil and cost cutting the focus of many C-Level executives, some CIO are cutting what they believe are unnecessary jobs and replacing them with AI-skilled workers.

Read on

Computerworld quotes Janco employment report

4.18 million individuals are employed as IT Pros in the US

Janco's employment report was quoted in a Computerworld article.

"... lackluster IT job market performance in February. It said in its report today that hiring of IT Pros is hindered by the lack of qualified individuals and a slowing economic picture, which will have a dampening impact on the growth of the IT job market size."

"...there are currently 4.18 million US workers employed as IT professionals. The rate of growth in the number of new IT jobs has slowed..."

"There now are just over 121,000 unemployed IT professionals. The IT job market shrank by over 48,600 jobs in calendar year 2023, Jancos report stated. Overall that is a flattening of the long term growth rate pattern of IT job market.."

"One of the more surprising results of the BLS report, however, was that the agency drastically revised its January job gains, which had previously been reported as a leap of 353,000 new jobs. The revised numbers dropped that by more 124,000 jobs."

IT Governance addresses top 10 security vulnerabilities

IT Governance addresses cloud processing security and compliance vulnerabilities

IT Governance Infrastructure HandiGuide by Janco addresses top 10 cloud security vulnerabilities.

Data breaches
Weak Security
Non-Secure Interfaces & API
OS vulnerabilities
Account hijacking
Insider breach as System Administrator
Parasitic code on server
Data Destruction -
Denial of service (DoS)
Ransomware

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Disaster Recovery Planning & Business Continuity Planning Quick Action Steps Defined

The must do things that your company must do to make sure the disaster recovery and business continuity plan will work when they are need are:

Distribute the disaster recovery and business continuity plan or a HandiGuide^® to all decision makers and key operating employees who will need access to it when the event occurs.

Define the chain of command with single leader but do not limit the people who would have to implement the disaster recovery business continuity plan when the event occurs if that leader is unavailable.

Conduct frequent tests and address all areas where shortcomings are found.

Conduct the tests in an unannounced mode

Validated that mission critical data is at sites other than the primary data center

Establish a communication plan that can be implemented after the disaster.

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Bank Payment and Check Washing Scams are on the Rise

Cybersecurity Management

Two finance and bank-related swindles are starting to rise. Everyone needs to be aware and follow best practices.

Pay Yourself Scam

Scammers mine for PIN data of consumers through phone calls, emails, text messages, or social media messages. They use spoofed phone numbers or email addresses that appear legitimate, making it seem like they are indeed from a trusted bank. Common scam tactics.

The Pay Yourself scam begins with a text message from a scammer that looks like a fraud alert from their bank. If the individual responds to the text message and engages the scammer, they get a call from a number that appears to be from their bank. The scammer impersonates a bank employee and offers to stop the alleged fraud. The scammer is tricking the user into sending money to their bank account.

When you enroll in a service they recommend like Zelle, the bank sends the individual a security code to verify their identity. The scammer claims that they need this passcode to authorize your payment to yourself.

If the code is provided, then the individual will provide them with the keys to their account. With that passcode, the scammer is able to connect the individual's bank account with Zelle utilizing the individual's email or phone number. The money the individual thought they were sending to themself is sent directly to the scammer's bank account.

Check Washing

According to the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), check washing is growing at an alarming rate thanks to bands of thieves who fish personal checks from USPS mailboxes or take them out of personal mailbox. They may even go as far as robbing mail carriers in search of checks.

USPIS says it recovered more than $1 billion in counterfeit checks and money orders in the last 12 months.

Once they have a check you wrote and mailed -- for example, to a charity -- they use chemicals to wash the check to change the amount or make themselves the payee. They then deposit the individual's check and steal money from their account. A warning sign is If a check which was mailed that was paid, but the recipient never received it, the individual may be a check-washing victim.

Ways to a mitigate this scam are

Consider making payments using e-check, ACH automatic payments and other electronic and/or mobile payments.
Use pens with indelible black ink so it is more difficult to wash the checks.
Follow up with charities and other businesses to make sure they received the check.
Use online banking to review copies of checks to ensure they were not altered.
If you still receive paid checks back from the bank, shred dont just trash them.
Regularly review bank (and credit card) activity and statements for errors.
Don't leave blank spaces in the payee or amount lines of checks you write.
Drop off mail in blue collection boxes before the last scheduled pick-up time or directly at your local Post Office.
Regularly check your mail. Do not leave your mail in your mailbox overnight.
If you are heading out of town, have the Post Office hold your mail or ask a trusted friend or neighbor to pick up your mail.

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CIO and HR Staff Management Kit

Economic Turmoil Mandates Aggressive Management of Staffing

Every CIO and IT organization that is successful has the right organization and staffing in place. The basis of that is an organization with clear definition of responsibilities, compensation that is competitive, and clear career paths which all IT professionals can relate to.

The CIO HR and Staffing Management Kit contains the tools needed to support the CIO and the IT department in its quest to get and maintain the best IT talent.

The CIO HR and Staffing Management Kit is provided in MS WORD, PDF, and ePub formats. Included are the following

Internet and IT Job Descriptions HandiGuide
All of the Job Descriptions
IT Job Classification & Pay Grade HandiGuide
Interview and Hiring Guide
Termination Checklist (electronic form)
Latest IT Salary Survey (PDF format only)

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