Best of the blogs: The recent rise of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) has some lessons that can be applied to the world of IT. “The parallel to email filtering is striking. Every time we block these vermin, they mutate. It’s a losing battle,” Martin Heller writes in this Strategic Developer post. While drug companies scramble to find another antibiotic, the CDC says the long-term solution is to only use antibiotics when they’re really needed — a practice Heller points out sounds a bit like a stopgap, albeit one that rules in the tech realm, too. “The theory is that if the cyber-vermin can’t complete a sale, they can’t make money, and the junk email should then dry up.” Easier said that done. Podcasts: In this week’s episode of Storage Sprawl, two startups push the notion of “dispersed storage” as a means to protect data by breaking it into smaller pieces that are encrypted. “As with a shredded paper document, no single data fragment can give away the whole. Because of this, dispersed storage is inherently more secure than traditional methods. Only the owner can bring the data confetti back together.” Columnist’s corner: When someone says “backup,” Microsoft is probably not the first word that comes to mind, Sean Gallagher asserts in Spring ahead, Fall backup. And as for business continuity the company has thus far made life easy for third-party developers of backup software to earn their keep. “But Microsoft is starting to change that a bit.” Earlier this month, in fact, the software giant announced Data Protection Manager 2007 R2. “It’s not like there’s any lack of cautionary tales out there about what happens if you don’t check your backups and your media.” InfoClipz: These days, protecting against data loss is on just about all IT professional’s mind. “Every organization knows the location of its major repositories of critical data, but copies on desktops, laptops, backup tapes and elsewhere, both inside and outside the corporate network, may go unprotected.” The critical first step: a complete inventory. Next is data classification to determine levels of risk and apply appropriate security. Those and several other steps will get you started down the path toward that last line of defense. Watch it here. Security