A job scheduler with full-fledged web services support brings the web's convenience to the scores of critical workflows that keep business up and running behind the scenes.

A denial-of-service attack is any attempt to interrupt or inflict downtime upon IT systems, but a basic DoS threat is smaller in scale than its DDoS counterpart. With the former, the influx of traffic may come from a single source, while in a DDoS attack, traffic comes from numerous sources – making it more difficult to deal with.

During an audit a few years ago, I revealed to the client’s security team that corporate payroll information on every employee, including the CEO, was being archived in an output queue (called PAYROLL) for weeks at a time. Due to poor configuration, this information was accessible to every employee.

For budding companies, server sprawl may be just one of many growing pains—a temporary inconvenience for a greater good. But if you’re struggling to complete processes on time, stalling with the auditors, and jumping from server to server whenever an error occurs, it’s time to ask the tough questions.