Ara C. Trembly is the founder of Ara Trembly, The Tech Consultant, and a noted speaker on and longtime observer of technology in insurance and financial services. He can be reached at ara@aratremblytechnology.com.

A New Hope For Cloud Security
December 21, 2011 Insurers are skeptical about the cloud, but new developments could lend hope to a secure future

Data Storage Continues to Attract IT Funding
December 21, 2011 Reports of more investing in efficient and sophisticated data storage systems that improve data protection and file recovery...

Want IT Job Security? Learn COBOL
December 9, 2011 Even though pundits have been on the “dump the legacy systems” bandwagon, many enterprises are stubbornly holding...

Can Social Media Become A Boon to Health Care?
November 29, 2011 Simply leaving people to discover whatever information they run across online is risky for them, and irresponsible for insurers

Why are Women Underrepresented in High Tech?
November 16, 2011 Whether or not the legendary corporate glass ceiling is a factor, some female executives see a brighter future for women in...

The Cloud: Jump in Now or Wait?
November 4, 2011 Cloud technology may solve storage problems, but only while creating security challenges

The Risky Business of Doing More with Less
October 31, 2011 Those with the drive and will to forge ahead with well-strategized IT improvements will achieve the much sought-after growth...

Solid State vs. Magnetic Drives: Cost vs. Efficiency
October 4, 2011 What are the relative costs and benefits of solid-state drives for the huge data challenges that face the insurance and...

IT Steering Committees: Do They Have Any Power?
August 23, 2011 The reality of corporate life is that decisions are not made in a vacuum, and that other forces within an organization (and...

New Economic Turbulence: What it Means for IT
August 15, 2011 Up-and-down markets and unemployment could put spending and development in limbo

Amid Cloud Security Concerns, Mother Nature Raises Her Ugly Head
August 10, 2011 Insurance industry's caution with deployment supported after recent downed data centers

Growth in IT Spending Will Take Time to Reach Insurance Industry
August 2, 2011 A forecast increase in overall IT spending and in cloud computing funding will have to wait for fears to subside

Insurers Join Push for Cloud Data Standards
July 13, 2011 User organizations are banding together to establish baseline for cloud data interactions

The Shift of IT Decision-Making
July 12, 2011 Survey on role of CFOs revisits age-old battle between business and IT executives

Why Do So Many IT Projects Fail?
June 20, 2011 Experts at the IASA Educational Conference and Business Show came up with lots of potential answers, but a solution continues...

Social Media Adoption: is it as Viral as We Think it is?
May 25, 2011 Adopting social media for business purposes is all the rage among journalists and analysts, but on the ground, it has yet to...

Data Loss Often Due to People Who Just Don’t Care
May 19, 2011 With data and confidential information at the heart of the insurance enterprise, threats from "trusted selfish insider" and...

Space, Power Squeeze will Force Data to the Cloud… Slowly
May 19, 2011 A data center industry survey sees operations migrating to the cloud as resources dwindle

PC Shipments Are Off: But Why?
April 19, 2011 Financial stress and reliance on legacy systems may have more to do with it than researchers report

Court Grants ‘Permission’ to Stop Virus
April 18, 2011 This intrusive zombie army may have been around for 10 years and nobody has done anything about it. And now, when we finally...

Security Breach at The Hartford is a Dire Warning
April 8, 2011 While the size of this event was not significant, there are several disturbing signs

Epsilon Breach: If the Blast Didn’t Get You, the Fallout Will
April 5, 2011 Maybe I’m just becoming jaded about the fact that we are losing the security battle to the criminal element, but I have...

Watson-Type Automation: How Do I Get It?
February 24, 2011 Advanced AI systems like those being developed by IBM sound great, but acquiring such systems is another matter

We Have Seen the Enemy, and He Works for Us
February 16, 2011 It’s one thing to acquire and maintain the latest anti-intrusion technology and to clamp down on security-averse...

Legacy Systems Have More Lives than a Cat
February 11, 2011 Admitting that one still has and uses legacy technologies is somewhat akin to being a fan of the Backstreet Boys in an age of...

Fraud Detection May Benefit From New Big Data Tech
January 19, 2011 DEX system offers high-speed processing, configurable data entry from multiple sources, and the management of networks with...

New Hard Drive Survives Drops, Water and Shotgun Blasts
January 13, 2011 Like it or not, this is a dangerous world, and our data are relatively fragile

Forecasting 2011: More Wireless, More Cybercrime, Less Privacy
January 5, 2011 Anyone who followed the technology sector in 2010 could not ignore the marked increase in high-level criminal hacking that is...

IT Spending to Improve, But Not for Full-Time Personnel
December 20, 2010 What would make a lot of us feel better is organizations, as they begin to spend for IT, to show a little faith in the future...

As Social Media Sites Mature, New Privacy Concerns Emerge
December 15, 2010 Even small scraps of personal information may be used to make connections that hungry social media purveyors then try to use...

Unemployment Numbers Especially Troubling for IT
December 7, 2010 Outsourcing may have IT sector worse off than rest of sluggish economy

Health Claims Database Moves Forward, Security Lags Behind
November 12, 2010 Unless someone can show me a database that is 100 percent protected from intrusion, creation of such a national treasure of...

Revenge of the Thin Client?
October 26, 2010 We’ve certainly seen this idea before, with some vendors pushing “thin” client stations that contain few if any...

Outsourcing Gains Popularity, But Where is it Best Applied?
October 13, 2010 Organizations would be wise to invest their outsourcing funds in improving the quality of their data. Nothing will gum up the...

Tech CEOs Weigh In on Federal Budget Deficit
October 8, 2010 In what may be life imitating the art of science fiction movies, the Technology CEO Council (TCC) is proposing tech measures...

Driving Behavior Database Raises Questions of Causation
September 29, 2010 I have no doubt that a driving behavior database will provide more statistical evidence of correlation between certain...

Pronouncements of Recession’s End Rival Disney’s Fantasies for Believability
September 28, 2010 So maybe some economic indicators have been on a slight uptrend over the past 15 months, but you couldn’t prove it by...

The Human Costs of Outsourcing
September 21, 2010 Sometimes outsourcing is an answer to a need for lower overhead, better performance, new capabilities, or more efficiency. But...

Doing More with Less: It's Not Just for Insurers
September 8, 2010 Since 2008, we have heard nothing more clearly than that insurers operating in this tight market and sickly economy need to do...

Slowing PC Market Could Reflect Changes in Device Preference
September 3, 2010 I have no doubt that fears of a still-sluggish economy may slow down PC sales for businesses and consumers, but I also wonder...

Solid State Drives Do More With Less
August 19, 2010 New drives are smaller than a postage stamp with no moving parts

As Enterprises Snooze, Data Attacks Focus on Financial Services
August 4, 2010 An apparent shift in criminals’ strategies toward poorly protected banking services should spark concern, but does it?

IT Spending Emphasizes Safe Bets, Short-Term Gains
July 28, 2010 Enterprise managers are keeping their cards close to the vest as they wait for the economy to show more definite signs of...

As the Worm Turns, Firms May Lose Their Best IT Workers
July 22, 2010 Survey data reveal that IT employees are more confident about a number of things—including finding employment elsewhere

Enterprises Bullish on Storage But Cautious on Cloud
July 7, 2010 The economy, it seems, is forcing us to make choices

Feds Overreach Their Capabilities in the National Trusted Identities Program
June 29, 2010 The federal government wants to build a place where everyone feels safe online, but are they instead creating a tempting...

Study Documents No Recovery in IT Spending
June 25, 2010 While some hopeful signs are anticipated, economic recovery is still not a reality in terms of IT budget levels

Social Media: Are We Talking About it Because There’s Nothing Else to Talk About?
June 22, 2010 The latest item to hit the insurance tech griddle is social media technology. There was plenty of hubbub about social media at...

Data Security: There Really is a Monster Under the Bed
June 15, 2010 Cyber-security is a rapidly growing problem, but you’d never know it by the response in our industry

Why Aren’t Insurers Better at Adopting BI?
June 8, 2010 An industry analyst survey says BI systems efforts aren’t cutting it in the insurance industry

Business Users: Can We Trust Them with IT Tools?
June 4, 2010 Vendors are making insurance software tools easier for business users, but how much technology can we leave in the hands of...

Where Do We Put Our Precious IT Dollars Now?
May 7, 2010 It is no exaggeration to say that companies will be betting a huge chunk of their IT budgets — and their futures —...

Where to Store Data? Security is the Key
May 4, 2010 There are many ways to store data, but mitigating risk must be priority No. 1

To Block or Not to Block (Social Media Sites): That is the Question
April 30, 2010 Social media outlets are hot marketing tools — and dangerous security risks. What’s a body to do?

SAP Move Strengthens Insurance Industry Profile
April 23, 2010 SAP AG announced its intent to acquire TechniData AG

Outsourcing Providers Must Answer to a Higher Standard
April 14, 2010 Recent security breaches have focused attention on Indian outsourcers at a time when they can least afford it

When Offshoring Goes Onshore, Everybody Wins
March 19, 2010 Thinking globally and acting locally, Patni follows the example of Mitsubishi and others that have brought jobs to the United...

Einstein Will Be Ineffective — Relatively Speaking
March 9, 2010 A new, more robust version of the federal government’s intrusion detection program could be a blessing for U.S....

What’s Wrong with Your IT? Try Asking Your Customers
March 3, 2010 IT is a world unto itself, and that’s part of the problem when it proves to be ineffective

Privacy vs. Social Networking: The Battle Begins
February 16, 2010 Google Buzz users went nuts when their contacts were assembled without their consent, but other social media users are only...

Data is King, But How You Use it is Emperor
February 10, 2010 A new study from IBM suggests that data governance is critical, but actions based on data are unique

Tiny IT Pay Hikes Don’t Necessarily Mean that Happy Days are Here Again
February 5, 2010 IT personnel budgets for 2010 are slightly higher, but who will actually benefit from the increase?

Why Bill Gates is Wrong about Online Learning
January 26, 2010 The computer revolution has brought sweeping changes to our lives, and many of these changes have been beneficial beyond our...

Facebook Revelations Highlight Dangers of Social Media for Commerce
January 22, 2010 Everyday users worry about their privacy, so how much more should business users be concerned?

Insurers Ignore the Political Reality of Dealings with China
January 20, 2010 When are we going to “get it” about the Chinese government?

Which Windows Version to Run? Answer is Tied to Hardware Replacement
January 15, 2010 With hardware replacement cycles being what they are every three years or so, we can expect that even the wildly popular XP...

The Problem with Data Storage: Way Too Much Information
January 13, 2010 The primary hope for securely storing critical information should and must lie with technologies that increase capacity and...

Enhanced Security Makes Seagate Portable Hard Drive a Winner
January 8, 2010 “Faster” and “easier” are very appealing buzzwords, but “safer” is even better in the current...

Act to Strengthen Cybersecurity Actually Threatens Business and Freedoms
January 5, 2010 As usual, the federal government chooses a sledge hammer to swat a fly, which means we all get squashed

What Will 2010 Bring? Not as Much as Some Hope
December 29, 2009 Many of us are trying hard to see positive trends for the coming year, but employment remains the only meaningful bellwether...

Virus Attacks: It’s Bad Out There and Getting Worse
December 11, 2009 Virtually every Internet source I could find has documented increases in most kinds of malware over previous years, and...

Cutting IT Spending? Skimping on Tech Support Could Have Disastrous Consequences
December 8, 2009 No one wants to spend more money these days, but cuts can bleed in ways we never would have imagined

Cyber-fraud More Than Just a Cost of Doing Business—It May Be Deadly Business
December 1, 2009 Internet-related crime is a fact of life, but can we afford to simply write it off and forget about it?

Thought Leadership: Inspired Strategy or Tired Buzzword?
November 20, 2009 What does it mean for an individual or a company to be a thought leader? For some the answer is powerful, but some refuse to...

DVD That Lasts 1,000 Years Makes Perfect Sense for Insurance
November 17, 2009 Will anyone need today’s data a millennium from today? Quite possibly, the answer is yes

Who Can We Trust with Our Enterprises?
November 10, 2009 At least one consultant organization is suggesting that leaving our enterprises in the hands of human administrators is not...

Is H1B Policy to Blame for Shortage of U.S.-born Technology Graduates?
November 3, 2009 A reader pointed out that the real reason behind the lack of enthusiasm for technology among recent graduates is H1B

Finally, Increased Government Spending We Can Feel Good About
October 27, 2009 While the federal government’s irrational urge to throw money at every problem is sickening, more funding for...

Why Young Workers Don’t Care About Computer Science
October 23, 2009 The House of Representatives unanimously approved H. Res. 558, a resolution supporting computer science and the designation of...

The Latest Wireless Security Device May Be a Simple Paint Job
October 20, 2009 Scientists at the University of Tokyo developed an aluminum-oxide-based paint designed to stop Wi-Fi transmissions in the...

The Pace of Technology Change: How Fast is Too Fast?
October 16, 2009 It is no secret that the insurance industry of today is not known for its cutting edge technology inventiveness, or even for...

IT Unemployment Keeps Growing; Automation is One Likely Culprit
October 14, 2009 In a recessionary era such as this, unemployment figures gain tremendous importance to most as an indicator of how badly or...

Maintenance Cutbacks a Dangerous Game for Insurance Enterprises
October 6, 2009 Have you been hearing those rumblings lately about the economy improving? Just take a look at the performance of the Dow in...

Why Millennials Don’t Trust the Rest of Us
October 5, 2009 Obviously, those of us who have helped create the world as it now exists haven’t solved many of its major problems. But...

Senate Kills Accountability for Cyber-Security ‘Czar’
September 29, 2009 One of the best things about covering the technology industry is that one doesn’t usually have to sully oneself with the...

Don’t Gamble More than You Can Afford to Lose on 2010 IT Budget
September 28, 2009 Anyone who has ever attempted to handicap a horse race can tell you that trying to strike a balance between minimizing risk...

Mainframes a Rock in a Cyber World Starved for Stability
September 24, 2009 IBM has been working hard to keep the mainframe computing paradigm interesting and attractive for IT managers

See? I Told You So
September 18, 2009 Despite cautions, some have chosen to look the other way and ignore the security threat. This latest announcement from IBM,...

Cyber-crime: Something’s Got to be Done, But By Whom?
September 16, 2009 How far should the government go in regulating things such as health care, privacy, free speech, etc.? In other words, where...

Twitter Study Reveals Loneliness Behind Social Media Boom
September 10, 2009 Social networking is by far the biggest technology trend to hit the market in years, and even the normally culturally...

Readers React to Rant on SaaS for Insurance
September 1, 2009 When I penned my recent rant on the inadvisability (at least at present) of SaaS for core systems in insurance, little did I...

Is SaaS a Viable Option for Core Insurance Systems?
August 21, 2009 Is the insurance industry ready for a software as a service offerings around the core systems?

Over-Reliance on Technology is an Ever-Present Danger
August 18, 2009 Technology is—and has been—a blessing, but before we go to that well too often, we also need to realize that it is...

White House Cyber-security Czar: The Job No One Wants
August 14, 2009 It seems that finding a person with the required political and technological skills, and a strong reputation in the technology...

Are Homegrown Insurance Systems Extinct?
August 11, 2009 Previously, if a company wanted to acquire a specific data processing functionality, it had to hire programmers and systems...

Windows 7: Are We Ready?
August 10, 2009 New technology products always create buzz and excitement, but when a product is so basic to our systems that it significantly...

When It Comes To Buying Technology, Relationships Are King
August 7, 2009 In an age where the daily pace of technology development outstrips our ability to comprehend it, something new—and yet...

Mobile Malware Ups Stakes for Data Security
July 28, 2009 Just when you thought your mobile devices were safe, a new botnet has appeared to change the paradigm

Mammoth Data Capacity is a Two-Edged Sword
July 24, 2009 One look at the Internet is enough to convince most people that there is a massive amount of information out there, and that...

Economic Downturn Juices Market for IT Freelancers
July 20, 2009 How do insurers and other companies maintain IT programs and embark on new initiatives with fewer people and diminished...

How Much Information is Too Much Information?
July 15, 2009 For some years now, I've held the opinion that privacy on the Internet is a joke; but if these last few years have shown me...

Timing on Breach Announcements is Disturbing
June 30, 2009 When financial systems are compromised, we may not even hear about it for months

Why Aren’t We Paying More Attention to Data Quality?
June 22, 2009 In a recent study by The Economist Intelligence Unit, about 41 percent of respondents agreed that data quality and...

Should We Just Shut Up About Data Security?
June 12, 2009 Some people may be tired of talking about it, but the temptation to give up must be fought at every turn

Insurers Embrace the Magic of the Dashboard
May 22, 2009 It wasn’t the Mickey Mouse magic that caused those on the show floor to embrace the magic at Orlando-based ACORD/LOMA...

Artificial Intelligence vs. Humans: Is AI Up to the Challenge?
May 15, 2009 It’s computer vs. Jeopardy champs in planned contests, but AI has some growing up to do

“Inappropriate” is the New Appropriate
May 6, 2009 Risky behavior has become the norm for this generation of computer users

The Dangers of the Virtual Environment
May 1, 2009 Virtualization offers significant financial benefits, but it may also involve significant risk