It’s a PC world. That’s PC as in personal computer, not politically correct, although it is arguable that owning a PC, whether at home or at work, is so ingrained in our minds that is has a certain political correctness about it. Take away our PCs and you’ve taken away our productivity. Well, that’s assuming you are productive with your PC. Or is it really just a case of feeling secure with your PC?

We have reason to feel both productive and secure with our PCs. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Microsoft have poured billions of

Many people shudder at the mention of the law of unintended consequences, but unforeseen results aren’t always negative. Ask Greg Baumgardner, IT manager at Stimson Lumber Company. When Baumgardner’s CFO asked him and his staff of four to research positive-pay solutions, the objective was simply to beef up security of the company’s payment operations by introducing a check fraud intervention process. But Baumgardner’s search set off a far broader corporate initiative that completely transformed the company’s back-office operations.

Stimson Lumber is a leading forestry and wood products company with roots tracing back to the mid-1800s. The company owns some 450,000

When it comes to paying maintenance fees, Brian Bradley is probably like most AS/400 administrators. That is to say, he doesn’t like them. To avoid paying the fees, Bradley, who runs a data center in Mobile, Alabama, developed his own utilities, including security and object maintenance programs, to save his clients money. Now the entire iTool Suite is available for under $800 through his new venture, Initech.

In his day job, Bradley is the technical director at Mobile Customer Service Data Center, which hosts servers and applications for 20 or so companies in the credit union and shipping industries.

OS/400 is a notoriously secure operating system, but without proper exit point controls in place, PC-based users can gain unhindered access to the database. One of the providers of OS/400 network security products, Califon Systems, recently started shipping a new release of its network Security Module. New features with this release include the capability to restrict access by day or time, improved FTP server log-ons, and on-the-fly reporting of product settings for auditing purposes.

You may not have heard about Califon Systems, a small OS/400 software developer based in Newport Beach, California. The company’s roots go back to 1989,