Temporary Absence. Kate Hartshorn will be conspicuously absent for an indefinite period while she is engaged elsewhere. Kate's contributions here were interesting and well-written, and will be sorely missed. I'm looking forward to her return as a constant and permanent addition.

Choices? I read an interesting article by Jason Brooks in the 6 May issue of eWeek titled OpenOffice.org: Serious Suite Alternative. It appears that Sun's StarOffice has an open source sibling called OpenOffice and it's growing into a serious alternative to Microsoft's Office suite of applications.

IT Audit and Security Resources. The following links lead to sites that make available a wealth of material on IT auditing, security, governance and related subjects:

• Ant's Security Page, which is an obscure personal page that contains interesting commentary and links related to governance and IT security. There is also a newer version of the site that is worth checking out.
• C-Cure, which focuses on BS 7799 and related topics (BS 7799 is the UK standard for IT security).
• IT auditing standards and resources from the Institute of Internal Auditors.

Compass America is another source of whitepapers that I've had bookmarked for a long time. The range of topics is wide and the papers will be appreciated by anyone who is interested in IT process improvement.