Cara Garretson

Every worker develops a few bad habits -- maybe more than a few -- as the years on the job add up. IT pros are no exception: They lose focus or jump to conclusions or put off niggling tasks that could be finished in minutes.

It doesn't have to be that way. Identifying and understanding bad work habits might require a bit of soul-searching, but the benefits of such introspection can be myriad, workplace experts say.

Three years ago, a luxury retailer with a growing online business faced a nightmare situation: The order fulfillment service provided by its SaaS vendor for online transactions went down for two days during the critical Christmas season. The retailer's website couldn't accept orders for a 48-hour period, resulting in frustrated customers and lost business.

In an attempt to mend relationships, "we ended up shipping big gifts after Christmas to customers [who were affected]," says a former senior IT manager with the retailer, who asked that his name and the name of the company not be revealed.

The potential for losing tech talent is on the rise these days. Thanks to an uptick in IT hiring and an increase in retirements among baby boomers, your A-team employee lineup may be in danger.

Rather than getting caught without star performers, you must constantly think in terms of establishing bench depth and grooming the key players of tomorrow, CIOs and other experts say. But with so much on IT managers' plates these days, it can be hard to make succession planning a top priority.

Information technology departments that practice asset management are learning to master the art of retiring hardware at the right time. But making the decision to retire IT gear is just the beginning; tech managers must then figure out what to do with the systems that are past their prime.

Artwork: Chip TaylorGone are the days when IT managers brought used laptops home to their kids or companies sent trucks loaded with old monitors to the local recycling center (or, in even earlier days, to the dump).

Defining the most ominous security threat to businesses today isn't easy; apparently there are just too many to choose from.

At The Security Standard conference held in Chicago last week, industry executives and experts took the stage to discuss the current threat landscape. Decade-old concerns about external threats such as malware infecting a network or intruders causing a data breach were still hot topics, joined by newer concerns about the insider threat.