Mary Brandel

Thanks to increasingly sophisticated technology and ongoing economic uncertainty, all types of fraud are flourishing today, including check fraud. The prevalence of mobile and wireless technologies and the increasing ease of access to high-quality printing and duplication technology are making it easier for criminals to steal credentials, alter check numbers and create counterfeit checks.

According to a December 2011 survey published by the American Bankers Association, 73 percent of banks reported check fraud losses in 2010, totalling approximately $893 million in losses.

Companies often talk about their "dream" IT job candidate -- the type of worker they'd most like to have on their staffs. But what about the IT workers themselves -- what type of company are they most interested in?

Computerworld asked 431 IT workers where they dream of working someday. Here are the four companies that came out on top, along with snapshots of what type of environment IT workers will find themselves in if one of their wishes does come true and they do end up working at one of these "dream" employers:

Security may be a hot-button issue for business executives, but in an environment of ongoing economic uncertainty, support for security initiatives isn't always easy to come by.

Whatever's standing in the way--be it politics or personal agendas, inflexible budgets or outright adversaries--security professionals need to work hard to loosen the purse strings and get funding for the programs they believe in.

"Like the Wild West" -- that's how Dave Rettig, a senior manager in the strategy and technology alignment group at Raymond James Financial Inc. , describes the firm's first implementation of SharePoint 2003. "It was a free-for-all. Everyone just sort of jumped in," Rettig says.

SharePoint is Microsoft Corp.'s software for collaboration, file sharing and Web publishing. "People saw it as just another file server," Rettig says, "and it ended up like someone's garage or attic."

In its 16 years of business, DataServ Solutions has relocated five times. That makes David Berndt, CIO at the document-digitization and process-automation company in St. Louis, Mo., something of an expert on the topic of securing corporate moves. "By now, we've got a good process," he says. In the most recent move this past February, nothing was lost or damaged. "We shut down the office at about 2:30 on Friday, and we were up 100 percent on Monday, with no disruption for our clients and no service levels missed."

But with all the planning involved in ensuring your most valuable data and other corporate assets get from one location to the next without incident, it takes a few relocations, he says, before you can feel confident you've got it right. Topping his list of lessons learned: Create a cross-departmental moving team, start shredding unneeded documents months ahead of time and, during the move, never take your eyes off the movers themselves. "You have to be very granular in your planning," he says.

People react to the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes in one of three ways: Some hope that the next knock on the door will be a member of the company's Prize Patrol carrying a giant check; some think the whole thing is a joke; and others exploit its brand for scams.

Tracking the buzz from all three types -- and responding to it -- has grown ever more complex with the spiraling growth of social media, says Josh Glantz, vice president of Publishers Clearing House Online, the Internet arm of the company that claims to have awarded more than $200 million in prize money in the past 30 years.

For members of the Bush administration, Jan. 20, 2009, marks the end of a job. However, for the staff of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), it's just the beginning of a project unprecedented in size and scope: sorting, indexing, preserving and ensuring access to all the records, both paper and electronic, created by the administration over the past eight years.

In some ways, this is nothing new. Since 1978, when the Presidential Records Act was established, NARA has been tasked with taking custody of, controlling, preserving and providing access to all presidential and vice presidential records that have administrative, historical, informational or evidentiary value. The act requires that the day the president leaves office, presidential records become the legal responsibility of the archivist of the U.S.

All areas of the country are not created equal when it comes to compensation increases. For instance, according to Computerworld 's 2008 Salary Survey , total compensation increased more substantially in San Jose (an average of 5.8%), San Francisco (5.2%), Atlanta (4.5%) and Las Vegas (4.4%). But if moving to a higher paycheck doesn't appeal to you, consider a place where tech jobs are growing and where you can stretch your paycheck further.

One such place is Hartford, Conn., where the cost of living is 10% lower than it is in San Francisco, according to Salary.com Inc.'s cost-of-living wizard, and the average salary is about $74,000, according to Dice's salary survey. Thomas Silver, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Dice Holdings Inc., says that's close to the national average for IT. Similar dynamics exist in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, he says.

Companies may be slowing or even stopping the flow of bonuses, according to Computerworld 's annual salary survey -- but many are happy to award cash to employees who make successful referrals of job candidates. In fact, many sources contend that these rewards cost less than recruiting and attracting new workers.

Although some referral bonuses are in the low hundreds of dollars, other companies hand out more than US$1,000. In addition, some companies enter referring employees into raffles and lotteries that promise goodies such as home entertainment systems, cars and trips overseas. Others double their bonus offers for hard-to-fill technical positions.

Eighteen months ago, Serena Software Inc. began exploring the feasibility of supporting Apple MacBooks as an option for its users, most of whom are developers. It was interested in lowering support costs and increasing satisfaction among employees who used Macs at home, including the CEO.

Today, half of Serena's workers opt for the MacBook over a Lenovo laptop when they're hired or due for a hardware refresh, bringing the number of Apple users to about 100 out of 800 globally, according to Ron Brister, senior manager of worldwide IT operations. Not only have support calls declined, but users are also grateful for the choice.

When the computer industry buys into a buzzword, it's like getting a pop song stuck in your head. It's all you hear. Worse, the same half-dozen questions about the hyped trend are incessantly paraded out, with responses that succeed mainly in revealing how poorly understood the buzzword actually is.

These days, the hottest buzzphrase is "cloud computing," and for John Willis, a systems management consultant and author of an IT management and cloud blog , the most annoying question is this: Will enterprises embrace this style of computing?

A funny thing happened on East Carolina University's journey to creating a data-retention strategy. As part of a compliance project launched one and a half years ago, Brent Zimmer, systems specialist at the university, was working with attorneys and archivists to determine which data was most important to keep and for how long. But it soon became clear that it was just as important to identify which data should be thrown away.

Zimmer was aware of the importance of being able to quickly produce required information during litigation, "but the thing we never thought about was keeping data too long," he says. The risk is keeping data that you wouldn't otherwise be required to produce, but as long as it's discoverable, it could be used as evidence against you.