Technology Meeting Place

Best practices for mobile users

Webmaster — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:31:01 -0600

Today's fast-growing highly mobile workforce is placing new demands on IT. As data growth increases, and that data increasingly finds its way onto laptops, the threats of data loss and security breaches have also increased.

To guard corporate data on endpoints at all times, companies can follow a number of data protection and data security best practices. Incorporating these best practices can help you control sensitive information to mitigate the risk of regulatory and financial exposure and keep IT costs in check.

What are the most common causes of disasters

Webmaster — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:13:47 -0600

Disasters can come in all shapes and sizes, from natural disasters (floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes) to emergencies resulting from an accident (burst water pipe), deferred maintenance (leaking roof), or negligence (fire or mold). An effective response will be determined by how well prepared you are to deal with a disaster.

Disaster planning is an essential component of preserving your enterprise's business recoreds. With a written disaster plan, business and not-for-profits institutions can reduce the risk of disaster and minimize losses. The Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template is perfect for small and medium-sized institutions that do not have in-house preservation staff. The template is valuable for enterprises of all sizes that need to develop separate but related plans for multiple buildings, locations, or branches.

Mac are under attack

Webmaster — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:30:45 -0600

More than half a million Macs are infected with the Flashback Trojan, a malware package designed to steal personal information, according to a Russian antivirus company.Security Policies are needed to help protect from these types of events.

The malware was initially found in September 2011 masquerading as a fake Adobe Flash Player plug-in installer, but in the past few months it has evolved to exploiting Java vulnerabilities to target Mac systems. A new variant that surfaced over the weekend appears to be taking advantage of Java vulnerability for which Apple released a patch yesterday.

Dr. Web originally reported today that 550,000 Macintosh computers were infected by the growing Mac botnet. But later in the day announced on Twitter that the number of Macs infected with Flashback had increased to 600,000, with 274 of those based in Cupertino, Calif.

Simply visiting a malicious Web site containing Flashback on an OS X system with Java installed will result in one of two installation routes. The malware will request an administrator password, and if one is supplied, it will install its package of code into the Applications folder. If a password is not offered, the malware will install to the user accounts where it can run in a more global manner.

Once installed, the Flashback will inject code into Web browsers and other applications like Skype to harvest passwords and other information from those program's users.

Creating an IT Infrastructure that works

Webmaster — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:59:22 -0600

With the explosion of technology into every facet of the day-to-day business environment there is a need to define an effective infrastructure to support operating environment; have a strategy for the deployment and technology; and clearly define responsibilities and accountabilities for the use and application of technology.

The IT Infrastructure, Strategy, and Charter Template is an essential strategic advantage for an IT team. It drives the implemetation of a cost effective IT Infrastructure that aligns with an organization's business strategy is essential to ensuring the success of the Information Technology function. For many IT professionals, the amount of time it takes to develop and implement such a infrastructure, and the unknown process required to complete it, makes infrastructure design and implementation a daunting task. The IT Infrastructure, Strategy, and Charter Template draws on the experiences of some of the best IT and business operations executives in the industry to provide you with the right shortcuts.

Windows 8 Compatability Check

Webmaster — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:12:30 -0600

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup will check to see if your PC can run Windows 8 Consumer Preview and select the right download. Setup also features a compatibility report and upgrade assistance. Built-in tools for creating an ISO or bootable flash drive are available for some previous versions of Windows (excluding Windows XP and earlier).

go to the download page at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download and run it on you PC. Note this could take significant time to complete.

Metrics are the new priority

Webmaster — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:59:20 -0600

With constantly lowering prices, many IT departments have chosen to throw hardware at performance and capacity problems rather than spend the time to manage what they have. In the past, that approach has worked, however times and management challenges have changed; demanding a different approach - Metrics and capacity management.

The CIOs biggest challenges is to justify staffing and spending levels as they strive to improve IT efficiency. When assessing comparative benchmarks, it is hard to know which metrics to start with. The Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology and Service Management HandiGuide helps CIOs to understand and pick the appropriate comparative benchmarks to justify staffing and spending, improving IT operations and demonstrating the value of IT to the business.

The Metrics for the Internet, Information Technology and Service Management HandiGuide is over 300 pages, defines 540 objective metrics, and contains 83 metric reports that show over 240 objective metrics.

Remote office backup is critical

Webmaster — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:04:17 -0600

Disk and server crashes pose a major and common threat, requiring specialized tools, talent and time in order to rebuild a disk or a server quickly and avoid business losses. Local disasters include fire, flood and other events that can make the office and its systems unusable for some period of time. If the data in the office is destroyed, companies need an off-site copy of the data and the ability to restore it in order to resume operations.

In addition there are regional outages such as power blackouts, major hurricanes and geo-political conflicts. To recover from these types of disasters, companies need backup facilities, systems, data and, in some cases,additional personnel in order to get back in business. When you consider each of these data loss threats in the context ofeach of your prioritized applications. What is the planned response to recover from each threat, based on each applicationor data type? Companies may have an adequate plan for your data centers, but what about for the important digital information inyour remote and branch offices?

MIT finds companies are concerned about green issues

Webmaster — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:47:54 -0600

According to the latest MIT Sloan Management Review, which surveyed nearly 3,000 companies from 113 countries, 66 percent of businesses now include sustainability as a part of their permanent plans. That's up ten percent from last year. Most of the companies also identified green practices as "necessary to be competitive" in the world economy.

The study found that sustainability is particularly beneficial to the manufacturing industry. "Resource-intensive" companies like product and automobile manufacturers, as well as energy companies, received the most benefits, like waste reduction and improved public perception, with the incorporation of sustainable practices.

With the economic success of sustainability and cloud computing, some companies are looking for ways to combine the two innovations. Data furnaces, for instance, could support cloud computing while improving sustainability.

Data Breaches at Outsourcers Impact Many

Webmaster — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:38:28 -0600

There have been major data breach impacting Google employees and patients of the Unniversity of Utah.

The data breaches did not result from cunning hackers penetrating a vulnerable corporate network. It is just another case of computers getting up and walking as a result of an old-fashioned burglary.

It was reported that Google employees hired before Dec. 31, 2005, received notices that their personal data, including Social Security numbers and birth dates had been compromised by a break-in at an Outsourcing Services, a payroll and human resources outsourcing company.

The break-in occurred at Colt Express and Google informed employees on June 9 about the breach. As a result, employees are getting a free year of identity theft protection.

Google employees looking to get an explanation from the outsourcer will find the company's Web site is no help. The site only reports that the "home page will be reconstructed."

The likely reason for the site being down is that Ceridian, the giant payroll processing and human resources company that serves more than 25 million employees, announced in early February 2008 that it had acquired "certain assets" from the outsourcer. Ceridian's benefits services division is now providing services to outsourcers' clients.

In the case of University of Utah the backup tapes were taken from an employee of another outsourcer.

This latest cases demonstrate again that poor physical security is a more common cause of data breaches than remote hacking attacks. Most of the biggest data breaches reported over the past couple of years have resulted from laptop computers being lost or stolen.

Small and mid-sized business disaster and business continuity planning

Webmaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:27:45 -0600

Many small to medium business cannot afford the complex infrastructures that are required to create full-fledged protection mechanisms for business continuity. They try to rely on backup tapes, backup software and offsite vaults, but everyone knows that backups arent any good unless they are tested and that takes a lot of time, effort and resources, most SMBs just don't have. That's where the Janco Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Template comes in.

With the template and the electronic forms that it has it is much easier to implement a Cloud solution. Cloud service providers can easily store duplicates of all your data and content, and all for a fraction of the cost it would take to manage the process yourself. Relying on the cloud in this way is the easiest and fastest path to recovery in the event of a situation. Given the maturity of the cloud today, you can safely and securely rely on this environment to protect all of your business assets; in fact, it is the future of business continuity and the core of disaster recovery.