The folks at Tech Republic have assembled a list of today’s most valuable certifications. They include:

1. MCITP – Microsoft Certified IT Professional
2. MCTS – Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
3. Network+ – from ComptTOA
4. A+ – of hardware components
5. CSSA –Certified SonicWALL Security
6. CCNA – Cisco Certified Network Associate
7. ACTC – Apple Certified Technical Coordinator
8. ACSP – Apple Certified Support Professional
9. CISSP – Certified Information Systems Security Professional, and
10. PMP – Project Management Professional.

With the vast increases in computing power over the past decade, passwords have become much easier to crack through so-called “brute force” attacks, in which an application guesses character strings until the correct one is found.

The best defense: Use longer passwords, say analysts at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

A computer keyboard has 95 keys, so each extra character makes the password 95 times harder to crack. They recommend using passwords of no fewer than 12 characters.

Businesses should also avoid using dictionary words and phrases. A password of 12 characters is easy to crack, too, if it’s made up of common words.

Following the recent disclosure that U.S. military networks had been compromised in 2008, the folks at Panda cautioned that the folks who compromised national security were in the mainstream with their use of USB drives to suck sensitive data from those networks.

Panda estimates that 25% of all worms designed to spread through network storage drives use the good old USB devices to for their nefarious purposes.

And it’s small and mid-size firms that are getting hit the most. A Panda survey of these folks found that 27% of those hit by a malware infection in the last year reported that the attack had originated with infected USB hardware, primarily flash drives.

What’s the best option out there for protecting users against these threats? Suggestions?

Not really.

Nickolaisen, who’s CIO and VP of strategic planning at synthetic fuels industry reagent supplier, Headwaters Inc.,  in South Jordan, Utah, makes a good case for keeping good “customer” relations with the organization by avoiding chargeback schemes.

His reasons: The complexity and time consumed figuring out a precise formula are just too difficult.

And then comes the task of actually metering the use of IT services. Again, too tough.

The bottom line, he writes: “Chargebacks have the potential to erode the IT-customer relationship. Our internal customers have a hard time understanding all the costs required to support applications.

All this being said, the author lays out his own version of a workable chargeback scheme that’s worth looking at.

But what do you think? Should IT be spending the time and effort it takes to make chargebacks work? What are the real benefits and the real risks?

As the U.S. economy continues its sluggish recovery and worker morale sinks, the IT department needs to pay attention to moves that make users even more dissatisfied. One thing that’ll be sure to put ‘em in a bad mood: website blocking.

Workers blocked from various websites at work aren’t afraid to speak up about their frustrations, a new survey shows. Among CIOs interviewed recently, four in 10 said that it’s at least somewhat common for employees to complain about security measures that limit which websites or networks they can visit at the office.

The survey was developed by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing organization. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on telephone interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across the United States with 100 or more employees.

The CIOs were asked: How common, or uncommon, is it for employees at your company to complain about IT security measures that limit their access to certain websites or networks?

They said:

• Very common — 12%
• Somewhat common — 29%
• Somewhat uncommon — 29%
• Very uncommon — 29%
• Not applicable — 1%

Robert Half offers these tips on managing the problem:

• Make a business case. If employees can’t access a client’s website or a professional networking site that can generate business, it will probably be an easy case to make. However, if the case isn’t that straightforward, be prepared to discuss how access to a site or network will help the business grow and why it’s necessary.
• Listen. Even seemingly simple requests for access may be denied, but for good reason. It’s critical that workers understand IT security professionals are concerned with security across an organization. Allowing access to certain websites, even if justified from a business perspective, could be too risky enterprise-wide.
• Compromise when necessary. If you have a strong business case to relax a particular IT restriction, but your IT security team thinks the risk is still too great, be ready to ask if there is a suitable compromise. They might offer another solution, such as setting up a computer with Internet access, but not connected to the company’s network.

Here are some questions that must be answered when picking providers:

• Does the provider run background checks on its employees?
• Is support available 24/7?
• What happens if the provider goes out of business?
• How will data be protected?
• Who will be in charge of managing the relationship with the supplier?
• How will we measure ROI?
• What happens when guaranteed service levels aren’t met?, and
• What must be done to end the outsourcing agreement, if need be?

For more critical questions, visit here.

IT managers need to remember that communication matters. That’s the message from a recent survey by Deloitte, which found that 34% of employees plan to change jobs when more opportunities open.

The reason: They no longer trust the company, according to 48% of those workers. On top of that, 46% listed a lack of transparent communication from management as a main factor. Those findings are backed up by the results of another survey by office design firm Regus: 40% of employees say they’ll look for a new job once the summer’s over. And 40% of those folks say it’s due to a lack of communication from management.

For anybody looking at the bottom line, this is a big deal. Staff turnover, transition, recruiting and training can be a big drain on the bottom line.

It’s not too late to turn things around. To boost communication with staff, try:

• Delivering bad news honestly, directly and quickly, before rumors start to fly
• Seeking out top-level executives, including the CEO, to help explain really tough news, such as layoffs
• Asking for employees’ input in the department’s direction so they feel they have a say
• Avoiding e-mail when having difficult conversations — those topics warrant face-to-face discussions, and
• Offering more flexibility and telecommuting options — that’ll boost morale and show staffers you trust them.

Google Voice lets you choose a new phone number that is tied to you, not to a device or location. It doesn’t use the phone number of your existing mobile device or land line — users select a new number when signing up. That’s the number they can then use for all their phones.

If a user calls their Google Voice number it can set it to ring up to six different phones, Users  can manage which phones will ring and set custom voice mail greetings and call rules for their different contacts.

What impact will this have on traditional phone companies? It won’t be good for their bottom line, that’s for sure.

For more info on Google Voice, visit here.

There’s lots of grumbling among the tech rank and file these days because of wage freezes, layoffs and stagnant budgets. But the CEOs of many tech firms have little to complain about.

The top-earning tech CEOs were announced recently, and the take-home pay for these folks is pretty impressive.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison takes the No. 1 spot with a compensation package worth $84.5 million. Further back — way further — is BMC software chairman and CEO, Robert Beauchamp, who only managed an annual paycheck of $26.5 million.

While these guys’ organizations have done well, even badly behaving, disgraced and discharged CEOs in the industry didn’t do badly. Take the recently dumped Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd, who trotted off into the career sunset with a satchel full of money. At $24.2 million, Hurd came in No. 3 on the list that’s available on the IT Business Edge site here.

And Qwest CEO Edward Mueller took home $12 million a year despite the fact that his company struggled mightily in the second quarter of 2010. Not only did it lose another 700,000, or 12%, of its residential lines to mobile phones and Internet calling over the past year, but its revenue dropped 5.2% to $2.9 billion, down from $3.1 billion in 2009.

Meanwhile, many techies  — stressed-out over pay freezes and heavy workloads — are looking to jump ship as the economy improves, according to the latest IT Employee Confidence Index.

Harris Interactive surveyed 4,367 employed tech workers, including 241 in IT operations, in Q2 of 2010. It found that 38% think the economy is getting stronger, compared to 32% in the first quarter. (Technisource, Inc., a national staffing and recruiting firm, commissioned the survey.)

Breakout data from the survey indicates that many IT workers are already preparing to look for new jobs over the next year.

If they’re smart, they’ll set their sights on those CEO jobs at tech giants. We hear there’s an opening at HP.

Seems like the epidemic’s been going on for some time now. For more than a year, scammers have been slipping in unauthorized charges on iTunes accounts.

The folks at a number of online news sites and newspapers are reporting the scam, which sucks hundreds or thousands of dollars from iTunes account.

TechWorld confirmed with PayPal, which is often processing the unauthorized charges, that customers are being reimbursed for the fraud. But the PayPal folks also insist that the scam “is happening on the iTunes side.”

According to reports, scammers get access to the accounts using fake phishing email messages that trick users into disclosing their iTunes user names and passwords. Those credentials are then used to pile on charges for music or iTunes gift codes.

Apple told TechWorld recently that victims of the fraud have to work out these bad charges with their banks or credit card companies.

At the very least, folks, it might be time to change the password on your iTunes account.