Every day, productivity in the IT in Context office is threatened by a monster who wants to invade the premises and eat every piece of paper she can get her teeth on.

We call this monster Molly. (see left)

But Molly isn't the most dangerous paper munching document destroyer a work.

Believe it or not, there are machines with much more powerful jaws that do far worse damage. They may look small and cute, but they'll chew your life's work the second you turn your back.

Find out who these electronic monsters are, when we publish our first printer reviews in May.

Here's just two of the models being studied.

Samsung ML3310ND

Brother DCP-7060D Compact Mono Multi Function Printer, with Duplex printing

Which one is the puppy? You'll have to wait to find out.

Tru formerly known as Truphone, is a mobile network operator that promises you the option of making mobile calls and internet searches while you're abroad, without getting trollied by the mobile roaming charge racket. 

I bought one of these from EasyJet, just before we landed in Barcelona for Mobile World COngress. I hardly used the SIM card, but when I went back to Barca for next year's conference, all my credit had been wiped. So I had to spend another twenty quid. And guess what, that doesn't seem to be on the card either.

At least with the mobile roaming charge racket you actually get to make phone calls!

Anyway, Tru has promised to look into this. 

Still, for what its worth, Tru has a new offer.

If you are planning on travelling to either the US or Australia Tru can offer you mobile calls local rates. 

Even if you are not travelling to the US or Australia, Tru claims it will save you between 30-60% in Europe - and offers competitive rates all over the world too. According to them.

Hmmmm. 

Tru has offered to give us a trial Blackberry and SIM card. Which I'm sure would save money. 

As a customer though, the experience was questionable. 

Here, in the meantime, is the top line of the official version.

The Cloud Industry Forum and the Cloud Security Alliance, both not-for-profit organisations committed to championing the use of cloud services, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to partner on activities that will promote best practices and industry standards surrounding the commercial adoption of cloud computing in a manner that advocates security, transparency and trust between supplier and consumer.

Telecoms: you can't live without them, but you can cut your bills quite easily.

Or maybe you can't, if you're a dim-bulb IT manager.

Seven out of ten IT and Telecoms managers think their telecoms cost are out of control says a new report by MDS. Four out of ten want to save money. Six and a half in ten of every ITC managers says they're under pressure to save money.

Well, why don't they do something then? 

Here's an interesting statistic. Four out of ten are spending money on lines, phone and internet access they don't need. 

Can you see the answer, boys and girls?

For more context, here (below) is the original full fat piece with all the sclerotic attention blocking cliches about "the lifeblood of the organisation"

Recently conducted independent national research of 200 IT and telecoms managers by customer experience management experts, MDS, found that  gaining control of telecoms costs was the biggest priority (69%) for most telecoms and IT managers, followed by reducing overall spend (43%). Worryingly, in the last 12 months, 43% have paid for lines, telephones or internet access they no longer need, while 24% have been locked into contracts they don't want or need. But one of the main issues facing these managers is that they simply do not have the time to analyse their telecoms usage, and monitor where savings could be made. With telecoms managers dealing with an average of three Communications Service Providers (CSPs), and only 66% regularly checking their bills, there is a lot of progress to be made in simplifying billing outreach.

In addition, with 65% of telecoms managers saying they're under increasing pressure to cut costs, it's become more important than ever before for businesses to be able to effectively monitor employee communication usage. One of the key issues is that businesses are putting themselves at risk of breaking the law, as over a quarter (28%) of all UK businesses are struggling to separate employee's work and personal calls for VAT purposes, resulting in unnecessary time and expense expenditure for companies.

Employees are also happy to let their employers pay for calls wherever possible - 59% of telecoms managers believe that employees will do this, creating a huge impact on businesses at a time when many are tightening their belts. If employees are seemingly 'out to get' whatever they can from their employers in 'undisclosed perks', how can companies fight back? Not through rules governing telecoms usage - as surprisingly there is a detailed usage policy in place in less than half of companies (47%). With over three-quarters of telecoms and IT managers (79%) believing that employees are failing to disclose personal calls on mobile bills, this represents a huge potential revenue loss for businesses.

How can businesses regain control and ensure that they are back on the right track?

It all boils down to the same solution - being able to get a clearer, real-time overview of what's happening in your IT and communications estate. Businesses are keen to understand how their company operates, with a particular focus on business analytics and customised online dashboards. As many businesses are looking to consolidate their communications, a single consolidated dashboard offering an online overview of employee usage will be a key service differentiator - something that many communications service providers are now starting to offer.

Online dashboards enable employers to have a complete view of telecoms usage across the business, regardless of size or number of employees. Employers will then be able to flexibly manipulate the data for analysis in almost limitless ways, for example breaking down calls to specific regions, or to flag users who have charged an excessive amount in a given month. Employees themselves can update the system to exclude personal numbers they have called, thus rendering the previous problem of call separation null and void.

In addition, businesses should make it overtly clear to employees what acceptable behaviour is, regarding their telecoms usage - distribute clear guidelines to ensure that there are no grey areas and confusion about what is acceptable.

With the right steps taken, telecoms and IT managers will be able to regain control and put the power back in their own hands through powerful on-line analytics.

We've had our fair share of IT security disasters this year from Wiki Leaks to the Comodo digital certificates hack which hit Marks & Spencer

Venafi's CEO Jeff Hudson intends to bring more than a whiff of cordite and a new scale of threat to the proceedings of Infosecurity 2011 with his views on Weaponised Malware.

Remember the Stuxnet virus was designed to locate and operate a valve or control module that was a critical part of a nuclear facility's infrastructure? In other words: to act as a weapon. This is a significant step forward in the development of malware.

There's malware out in the wild which could blow us all to kingdom come at any time with numerous undetected instances still active. Venafi will demonstrate version 6 of its Encryption Director software. The company claims that this is the only software which can deal with all encryption certificates no matter what type.

Venafi is the inventor of the Enterprise Key and Certificate Management (EKCM) system. It's a response to all the high profile disasters caused by lost or missing encryption keys 

Venafi's stand is worth visiting, if only for the weapons of mass destruction they're promising to showcase. Talking of danger...

Look out for Calum MacLeod, Venafi's maverick EMEA director, who blew a hole in airport security by entering the country three times by waving a laminated card at immigration officers. 

SecureEnvoy could never be accused of tokenism.

As a result of the RSA hack some of the channel's finest have been making hay prior to their debut at Infosecurity 2011. One, SecurEnvoy, says it has had dozens of enquiries from potential customers (or should that be ex-RSA customers?) finally convinced that a small piece of plastic that looks like an Infosecurity stand gift circa 1975 has finally had its day.

A tokenless 2012 would be a nightmare for EMC, but how likely is it? Securenvoy started in 2003, the year that the Blu-Ray was invented. They say not using their tokenless authentication would be akin to still watching your favourite episodes of Midsomer Murders  on VHS cassettes instead of Blu-Ray or at least DVD.

SecurEnvoy will be launching its software-based tokens at Infosecurity. These can be used on all devices, allowing end-users the choice to switch between SMS or software based tokens at anytime, anywhere onto their iPhone, Android, Blackberry or their laptop.

This end user orientated approach gives added choice for users that want to run soft tokens on smart phones while keeping deployment and administration simple. It's a product that will certainly see RSA sitting up and taking note and one that resellers should at least take a look at. Securenvoy has had 100% growth every year for the last four years. This is made up equally of new adopters of authentication and ex-users of two-factor authentication who found they couldn't carry on affording the costs of replacing thousands of tokens regularly. And that's just replacements - that  doesn't include the ones that get lost which is at least 20% of them.

Now thanks to RSA there is a new reason to go for Securenvoy - unlike RSA and other 2FA vendors, they do not store any token records or customer encryption keys. Their approach randomly generates any required keys within the customer's environment. This approach means there is nothing relating to our customers security stored at SecurEnvoy and therefore customer details could never become compromised.

They say that SecurEnvoy is easy to install (so they say) and can replace 18,000 tokens in under one hour, any RSA SecurID customers that want a fast, secure and cost effective resolution can install and replace tokens within less than a day.

This is Securenvoy's seventh time at Infosecurity and yet they are still looking forward to it, apparently.

(Poor buggers. They'll learn one day - ed) 

They have a simple statement that encompasses what they do: "Lead where others follow. Set the standard of tokenless authentication and maintain our position as global authentication leaders. Innovate with solutions that re-use existing infrastructure therefore reducing costs and making them easy to use." 

What's the most over-used term in IT security? "Tokens are the future," says Andrew Kemshall, of Securenvoy. Maybe it's a cliche because it's true.