Archive for March, 2009

E-Commerce: What you should be focused on during this economic cycle

Monday, March 30th, 2009

The number one focus during this economic cycle is security. Traditionally, the economy and crime are inverse. When the economy is good crime decreases and  vice-verse. Unlike other economic cycles we are seeing many highly skilled computer people being laid off from their jobs.

The average information technology professional is not what you have to worry about in regard to security, but the mediocre IT people. Why? Because they are the ones that would be reckless enough to hack into your systems with total disregard for Federal Regulations. Many do not understand that the times when a “hacker” was hired by the organization he or she just hacked into are gone.

Organizations are very dependent upon technology for running their lean supply chain.  There is not a lot of sympathy towards someone who just cost an organization capital they do not have to repair the damage.  The Federal Government is also not going to be sympathetic towards those individuals or groups.

However, the problem is that the threat is not entirely from within, but worldwide. How do you prevent someone from stealing your intellectual property or vandalizing your e-commerce site when they reside overseas? To be honest, someone right now is copying this article and going to place it either on their web site or sell it as an original article.  I feel that within the next couple of years you will see more copyright lawsuits starting to emerge.

If you are contemplating hacking into a web site or e-commerce site you should be aware of the risks you are taking prior to exercising your desires.

Mike Kniaziewicz, MIS

Economics: Trickle Up vs. Trick Down and how we need to reverse the policy of the 1980’s

Monday, March 30th, 2009

During his two terms as President of the United States, Ronald Reagan supported an economic policy better know as “tickle down economics.” The premise was that by lowering the tax burden of the wealthy and businesses alike the multiplier effect would take hold.  The multiplier effect is a beautiful aspect when the conditions are correct. We did see sustainable growth in both jobs and discretionary income.

However, another aspect we saw was the changing of the guard in regard to the Wall Street – Business relationship. Trickle down economics was designed to spark investment in businesses. The investments created the cash flow to enable the business to expand product lines into emerging markets and hire more skilled workers.

During the 1990’s we saw the emergence of the Information Technology era. Information Technology created the need to hire skilled labor. The problem with Information Technology is the premise you can reduce labor through computer automation. Quite frankly, the Information Technology industry ended up canabalizing its own jobs. Hence the Information Technology decline in 2000.

Now the United States has been almost entirely transformed into a service based society. So how do you get out of this hole? Simply put you reverse trickle down economics and place the money back into the consumer’s hands. Let the consumer make the decisions about what is needed and spark the growth within the United States once more.

Think about this: If consumer confidence is down and they are not spending money, then what incentives do businesses have to expand product lines and hire more workers?

Mike Kniaziewicz, MIS