Careers: What with the abundance of layoffs and mergers, many solid IT professional have ended up on the street and most of those invariably face the choice of taking a pay cut or holding out for a different job. The risk is determined by personal situations but, as Nick Corcodilos points out in this Ask the headhunter post, “some employers are capitalizing on this by hiring great people cheap. Is this unethical? No less than accepting a low-paying job while continuing your job search.” The question, of course, becomes whether taking a job for less money than the last one hurts your chances of getting back up to a higher salary. “What counts most in any job negotiation is what positive impact you’re offering to an employer’s bottom line — that’s what wins you more money.” Security: Thinking about a file encryption project? Before you begin, Roger Grimes suggests some ideas, questions, and caveats to consider. The first one, of course, is whether or not encryption is right for you. Others include where is your data? And what kind of a performance hit will you take? The list is long and comprehensive, and Grimes solicits more suggestions from readers in File encryption do’s and dont’s. Storage: Declaring FTP “new tricks for an old dog,” Mario Apicella points out in this week’s installment of Storage Insider that “file obesity doesn’t affect performance, thanks largely to the fact that the capacity of our storage devices has grown proportionally.” Naturally, though, there is a limit to everything, particularly as our data portion sizes grow. “Organizations that transmit or receive large quantities of very large files are finding comfort in an old friend: the FTP server. In fact, the breadth of companies embracing FTP these days is a little surprising,” he explains. Careers