CompTIA Blog

Earlier this week, Facebook made one of the most costly mistakes a business can make—forgetting who its audience is. Whether the company was hoping to emulate the information stream of Google +, or just following their own unique direction, the changes they made to the popular social media site could prove to be a major misstep. With a streaming newsfeed and subscriber options that Facebook added in one fell swoop (with no notice ahead of time), it was a bit overwhelming for many of its members. ...

The social platform wars heated up this week, as both Facebook and Google+ launched new features to their sites. Google+ announced changes to their Hangouts video chat feature, introduced a search function within the platform (which seemed like a late addition from the leader in online search), and dropped the requirement for invitations to join the service. Facebook gave its users Smart Lists to organize their friends, rolled out the ability to subscribe to interesting people they don’t persona ...

Over time I've become quite the political junkie. I read loads of books, blogs and editorials and watch the Sunday morning political shows religiously, very often shaking my head at the stupidity of the bellicose pundits. But you know what gets me really riled up?! Rarely do any of these so-called journalists (political talking heads) ask the tough questions.Are the President’s numbers up or down? Is Congress loathed and by how much? The media's attention span doesn't go much beyond +/- 3 percen ...

A look at the week of September 19 in public advocacy for the IT channel: This week, agencies report doubts about the White House “cloud first” policy as cyberattacks continue to be a rising threat.  Government Health IT takes an in-depth look at the joint electronic health record (EHR) project that the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are working on.  As the job market in the U.S. continues to struggle, lawmakers consider programs to attract foreign investment a ...

The Cisco Learning Network, the Cisco certification social learning community, now features a dedicated page about CompTIA certification. The page educates IT professionals about how CompTIA and Cisco certifications help build strong career credentials for networking professionals. Vendor-neutral CompTIA certifications, specifically CompTIA A+ and Network+, frequently lead to either Cisco’s CCENT or CCNA certifications for a well-rounded resume. In addition, test results have shown that CompTIA ...

Getting Your Act Together…In the beginning it was serious training. What I mean by that comment is that when I started in the tech sector many years ago selling software/services/technology, I was lucky. The manufacturer I worked for not only had extensive  sales and product training resources, but an active management team that worked closely with small groups of salespeople. This was a sales-driven organization, where you had to start fast, could earn great money, and worked with true sales pr ...

CompTIA member Andrew (Andy) Harper is CEO of Gaeltek LLC, a managed IT services provider organization based in Manassas Park, Va. Founded in 2004, the full-service IT consulting firm supports a large number of business clients in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, and throughout the U.S. Andrew has been a contributor to several key industry projects over the years and is currently a member and proponent of the CompTIA MSP Partners Community.Andy has a rather unusual story to tell relating to ...

With more than half of 2011 under our belts, analysts and job seekers are still determining which IT industry forecasts had it right and which were way off.What is clear is that an abundance of job seekers are still seeking that elusive opportunity. Here are some facts and figures to take into account.Globally, IT revenue growth this year is projected to hit 4 percent, based on CompTIA’s quarterly IT Industry Business Confidence Index, an online survey of 1,118 IT companies at the end of 2010.Th ...

With more than half of 2011 under our belts, analysts and job seekers are still determining which IT industry forecasts had it right and which were way off. What is clear is that an abundance of job seekers are still seeking that elusive opportunity. Here are some facts and figures to take into account. Globally, IT revenue growth this year is projected to hit 4 percent, based on CompTIA’s quarterly IT Industry Business Confidence Index, an online survey of 1,118 IT companies at the end of 201 ...

Just a few short years ago when I was chief editor at a channel publication, almost every conversation included numerous references to the amount of margin a product or service could drive. It didn’t matter if I was interviewing a solution provider, vendor or distributor; that one word typically dominated the conversations. Margin was frequently part of the headline and featured in many manufacturers’ promotional information—it was truly the “buzz” word of the day.Has the transition of the chann ...

A look at the week of September 12 in public advocacy for the IT channel: This week, Obama revealed a new jobs plan with tax cuts targeted at small businesses.  Now that Congress is back in session, cybersecurity is topping their agenda.  The healthcare industry reports it is understaffed, in terms of its IT needs. Small Business Is Focus of Tax Cuts— The Wall Street Journal reports that President Barack Obama's new jobs plan seeks to coax wary employers to invest and hire ...

The President’s $447 billion jobs bill includes a number of provisions that would benefit small businesses.  This legislation, which was sent to Congress on Monday, would: Provide a 50-percent reduction in payroll taxes for the first $5 million in wages.  Approximately 98 percent of all businesses pay out less than $5 million in wages. Eliminate employer payroll taxes for small businesses that create jobs or give a wage increase from the prior year.   An employer that increases an employee’s wag ...

Earlier this year the U.S. Secret Service in coordination with Verizon and the Dutch National High Tech Criminal Unit released the 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report.An interesting outcome of the report is that in 2010 cyber attacks decreased significantly from earlier years, but the number of actual breaches was the highest ever. A possible reason for outcome is that hackers are no longer going after the big targets in large numbers, but instead are focusing their efforts on smaller and mor ...

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, (CFAA).  The CFAA was passed initially in 1986 to impose criminal liability for hacking computers and IT systems owned by the federal government and financial institutions.  Since then there have been numerous amendments to the CFAA, and most recently as a result of the enactment of the USA Patriot Act.The CFAA makes it a crime for any individual to access a federal or financial “computer” ...

We are delighted to have Julie Meyer, chief executive and founder of Ariadne Capital, original business development advisor in Skype and star of BBC’s Dragon’s Den Online, deliver the opening keynote at this year’s CompTIA EMEA Members Conference.Meyer will provide insight into the digital world and explain why establishing new digital business models has become the cornerstone for future business growth.  In her “Ecosystem EconomicsTM”, large organisations (known colourfully as Goliath) and the ...