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Business intelligence is getting a lot of attention amid the economic downturn as organisations try to use data they gather to become more efficient and compete more effectively with rivals. With this in mind, silicon.com has picked the brains of analysts specialising in BI to come up with some top tips about how you can make the most out of this growing area.

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The security of Google Docs has been compromised after a bug caused documents to be shared with the wrong people. The bug, which gave some Docs users access to documents they weren't entitled to view, occurred between people with whom the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document.

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The Ministry of Justice has said it wants to rethink a clause in a bill that critics have said could have undermined the rule of law. Justice Secretary Jack Straw has approached the cabinet to withdraw the clause from the Coroners and Justice Bill, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK on Monday. A-Zs… 1. Security from A-Z… 2. Biometrics from A-Z… 3. Broadband from A-Z… 4. Wireless from A-Z… 5. Green IT from A-Z…

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Adobe Systems on Tuesday issued a security update to fix a critical vulnerability in Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9, which has already been exploited by malware writers. The vulnerability could allow an attacker to take complete control of a computer, and exploits for it have reportedly existed in the wild for nearly two months.

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Symantec released a patch for some of its older Norton products on Monday night that did not identify its origin, and therefore triggered alerts on user firewalls, the company said Tuesday. The patch for 2006 and 2007 versions of Norton Internet Security and Norton Antivirus, a program dubbed "PFST.exe", was distributed to collect anonymous statistics on matters such as how many computers are using the products and what operating system they are running, Jeff Kyle, group product manager for Symantec consumer products, said Tuesday.

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More than 10 million internet users worldwide were hit with identity fraud-related malware last year, according to a new estimate from Panda Security. The number of computers infected with active programs designed to steal personally identifiable or financial information that can be used for identity fraud, such as Trojans for stealing bank account information, rose by 800 per cent from the first half of the year to the second half, the study found.

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Doing more with less and proving the IT department is vital to the business during the downturn are two of the many challenges that CIOs are facing in 2009, according to silicon.com's exclusive research. Now in its fifth year, the silicon.com CIO Agenda surveys UK technology chiefs on a number of areas including their business and technology strategies. What does the recession mean for your job?Recession making techies do more unpaid overtimeHard times hit BangaloreTechies still hunting new jobs despite recessionNaked CIO: Time to ask for helpSoftware, systems techies 'have least stressful jobs going'Naked CIO: Job searching tipsDrunk Facebook photos killing your job prospects?Two-thirds of UK's top IT security jobs unfilled

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The European Commission has called on member states to use information and communication technologies to improve energy efficiency, in an ongoing regional push to combat climate change and aid economic recovery. In addition, the Commission will introduce concrete measures to encourage the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to reduce emissions, it said in a statement on Friday. Green IT from A to ZClick on the links below to find out more... A is for AbroadB is for BladesC is for Carbon footprintD is for Data centresE is for Energy sourcesF is for FreecycleG is for GovernmentH is for HomeworkingI is for Ice capsJ is for Jobs (Steve) K is for KilowattsL is for LandfillM is for MercuryN is for NanogenerationO is for OffsettingP is for Paperless officeQ is for QueenR is for RecyclingS is for SmartPlanet.comT is for TravelU is for UpgradeV is for VirtualisationW is for WEEEX is for XmasY is for YouZ is for Zero emissions

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With employees working away from the office, at home, at client sites or simply on the road, Anthony Plewes wonders if they should rethink the problem of data on the move. According to the most recent annual survey from the Computer Security Institute (CSI), the third most common security incident experienced by companies was the theft or loss of mobile devices, behind virus infection and insider attack.

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Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said that the Semantic Web will make the privacy of online communcations stronger, and will allow people to control who can use their data. The Semantic Web, a project overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), seeks to make the world wide web intelligently interpret what people are looking for when they are searching the internet. For example, computers would data-tag photographs and combine those tags with information from a desktop calendar, so people would be able to ask the web what the people in the photograph were doing on a particular day.

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Security experts warned on Monday of a new insidious email scam that features false information about a bomb explosion in the recipient's hometown and leads to a malicious website. The subject lines include "Take Care!" and "Are you and your friends in good health?" The email includes a link to what looks like a news article on a Reuters page about the bombing. But the web page and the news are fake, according to email security provider Marshal and antivirus firm Sophos.

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UK organisations are still not doing enough to ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster or IT failure, a new report has warned - despite fears over online attacks and disease. According to a report by the Chartered Management Institute and Cabinet Office, fewer than half (38 per cent) of survey respondents said their organisation has plans in place to cope with business disruption.

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The cost of online banking fraud more than doubled last year. According to figures from payments industry association Apacs, online banking fraud reached £52.5m - an 132 per cent increase on 2007's figure of £22.6m.

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Consolidating IT infrastructure and trimming the financial fat are among the key objectives for CIOs this year. When asked what their top business or strategic issue is this year, cost cutting was the subject mentioned most often by IT chiefs who responded to silicon.com's fifth annual exclusive CIO Agenda 2009 survey.

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The City of London Police (Colp) force has launched £1bn-worth of computer crime investigations over the last year, it was revealed this week. During its first year in operation as the National Lead Police Force for Fraud it has hired 50 new investigators and taken on 70 new cases of suspected fraud involving computers, the e-Crime Congress 2009 event heard today.

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The Travelodge hotel chain has launched an iPhone app called Travelodge iBooker (pictured above), which lets travellers locate their nearest Travelodge and book a room. Photo credit: Travelodge

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Computer systems at Westminster have been infected by the Conficker virus. The outbreak first came to light after an email by the parliamentary director of ICT was leaked online last night.

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London-based broking firm Martin Brokers has saved money and improved the management of critical data by moving to a new online back-up provider. The firm is on course to save around £63,000 per year in storage costs and has a much more reliable system for dealing with critical data, following its switch to vendor oncore IT.

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Building a business intelligence system is a complex and daunting task, and yet executives need that data, especially in dire economic times when all of the information could help make their businesses more efficient. Here are silicon.com's top five tips for implementing a successful business intelligence project.

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Business intelligence is due for a renaissance, says Danny Bradbury. Here's what it might look like in a few years' time. It's Thursday. The CEO wants a plan to boost revenues by five per cent by the end of the week, and your retail manager hasn't got a clue.

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What's in the works at Westminster City Council? Jo Best speaks to the CIO about the latest trends and projects. After a career in IT and government spanning more than 20 years, Westminster CIO David Wilde doesn't appear to have lost his enthusiasm for the latest IT trends.

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Derbyshire County Council has inked a £5.6m deal with Capgemini. Under the deal, the outsourcer will be responsible for refreshing Derbyshire's tech, replacing its mainframe-based IT systems with SAP.

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How can business intelligence help your organisation? Andrew Donoghue speaks to three very different businesses to see what BI does for them. While issues such as return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) always figure highly in the negotiations around any new IT implementation, tough economic conditions mean those three letter acronyms are even more pertinent than ever.

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'Business intelligence'? Is this just another oxymoron, like police intelligence or military intelligence?Don't be so harsh, though the basic principles of all three are certainly the same - gathering information and making informed, critical decisions. OK. So what kind of information?Almost anything really - any data that a business creates and which could give it a strategic insight into what it is doing well, what it is doing badly and more importantly what it could do better. One area where this is proving useful is in retail.

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The silicon.com CIO50 has now been revealed - and a quick comparison of this year's list with those from previous years throws up some interesting trends. One is the enduring influence of a number of CIOs: this year's silicon.com CIO50 includes 11 impressive CIOs who have featured in all three of the lists since the CIO50 was first published in 2007.

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Every year, the silicon.com CIO50 gathers the opinions of the UK's top CIOs to create the definitive list of the country's most influential heads of IT. CIOs are asked to vote for their peers anonymously on the basis of their performance during the last year, taking into account their leadership ability, delivery and execution record, innovation and influence.

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While no panacea, business intelligence tools can give organisations the info they need to ride out the recession, says Andrew Donoghue. Tough economic conditions have put pressure on corporate budgets in the private and public sectors alike - with tech spending under scrutiny like costs from every other department. CIOs are being asked to justify investments in IT for their ability to add to the company's bottom line and help drive increasingly tight margins.

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Business intelligence has enjoyed a boom despite the less than healthy state of the global economy. According to analyst house Gartner worldwide revenue for technology related to business intelligence, analytics applications and performance management grew by 22 per cent in 2008.

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Business intelligence is often touted as a way to boost profits. But how? Here Jesper Thorlund explains his innovative technique of turning lost trades into future deals. Let's begin with a real life example that I observed as a BI consultant a few years ago.

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Amid the difficulties the economic crisis inflicted on the computing industry, there's also been a silver lining: business intelligence software that's designed to help companies understand what's going on and make more informed decisions. BI software certainly hasn't been immune to the spending clampdown on corporate computing. And it's not technologically flawless but the technology is helping those who have taken the BI plunge to adjust to today's new business realities.

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