Tag archive for "general articles" | Sarsfield Technology (page 6)

Cloud Computing 101

With more and more people and organizations accessing the Internet, and as the potential uses of the web grows, the way business is done is naturally evolving as well. One example of this is the emergence of cloud computing services. In essence, this is the outsourcing of an organization’s IT services to a different company. Everything is managed through the Internet – through “the cloud”, hence the term. There are three things that make cloud computing services different from usual hosting services: The company only pays for the resources they use. Subscribers can adjust the amount of service they get based on their need. The service is completely managed by the service provider. Cloud computing services also include providing virtual data storage – meaning you store your data off site on the cloud service provider’s secure servers. You can, however, still access your data through the Internet. There are both private and public cloud services. A public cloud service is available to everyone on the Internet, while private services are only available to specific clientèle. Some cloud services use public clouds to provide private service, making them a virtual private cloud computing service. The increasing use of the web in our personal and social lives as well as in business gives the trend of cloud computing services vast potential. However, this service is not for everyone – for instance, if you have reservations about keeping sensitive information in a location outside your organization, you might want to pass. Want to learn the pros and cons of cloud computing services for your business model? Give us a call – we’d be happy to discuss a possible cloud computing road map with you.

Five Reasons to Consider Managed Services

Managed IT services are the technology solution of choice for large businesses, but many small and medium businesses remain resistant to considering this approach. Below are five reasons you may want to change your mind. Reason #1: You need to control costs. In today’s economic environment, IT budgets have been slashed—but a cut in IT spending doesn’t come with a cut in demand for IT services. As a result, you have to do the same amount of work with fewer resources. Although managed services might cost more in the short-term, they cost far less in the long term once you account for the domino effect of lost productivity and customer dissatisfaction. Reason #2: IT complexity is increasing. The breadth of information technology a company requires places small- to mid-sized businesses at a distinct disadvantage. Equipment is constantly upgraded in the market, and new IT-related specialties are emerging in a variety of areas, from telephony to networking. It’s difficult for small businesses to maintain the expertise necessary to properly manage these new technologies. Reason #3: You’re more dependent than ever on IT. At the same time, companies have become dramatically more dependent on IT in the past few years—and increased use of IT leads to increased outages and greater loss of productivity. Reason #4: Your existing solutions are inefficient. In today’s world, a one- or-two person in-house IT department or consultancy simply cannot handle the occasional IT breakdowns that are bound to occur. In many cases, employees have to wait in line to receive help. As a result, not only are your employees less productive, their morale is also decreased—and unhappy employees are less productive employees. Reason #5: You need to maintain compliance. More and more companies are finding themselves subject to regulatory compliance, from Sarbanes-Oxley to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)—and most small businesses don’t have the resources to fully understand the requirements of these regulations, let alone comply with them. Of course, the best reason to consider managed IT services may be that IT isn’t your specialty. If managing IT infrastructure has absolutely nothing to do with your core competency, why wouldn’t you outsource it to an expert? By implementing managed services, you can utilize your internal IT resources for other purposes, such as supporting your strategic business objectives.

Backup, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: 3 plans you can’t afford NOT to have

Small and medium-sized companies sometimes think that disaster planning is only for larger corporations, but recent changes in technology make such planning affordable for almost all business sizes. In fact, small businesses today can’t afford to be without such planning. As a small business owner, you should have three goals when it comes to disaster planning: ensuring that you never lose critical data, minimizing downtime, and recovering as quickly as possible in the event of a disaster. Those actions fall into three different categories: backups, disaster recovery, and business continuity. What’s the difference? Backing up is the process of safeguarding your data by copying it to a safe medium for recovery in the event of loss. Disaster recovery is the process of restoring operations that are critical to your business after a disaster occurs. Business continuity is the creation of a plan that details how your organization will recover and restore interrupted functions after a disaster. Business continuity is the most comprehensive of these three functions, because it involves much more than just a discussion of IT issues – it’s a detailed action plan. Certainly, you need to consider how you protect your IT infrastructure and data, but you also need to consider what you and your employees should do if a disaster occurs. Do your employees know where to meet in the event of a building evacuation? Do you have a plan for reaching out to all employees and their emergency contacts to communicate critical information? Do you have a way to communicate to customers when and how you’ll resume providing products or services? What will you do if one of your major suppliers experiences a disaster? It’s hard to underestimate the importance of these three plans, but many small and medium businesses do. That’s because when most people think of disaster, they think of floods, earthquakes, and fires. They may even consider equipment failures. But there are human-induced disasters as well—for example, disgruntled or incompetent employees who delete critical information, or hackers. It could easily happen to you. Perhaps you have a backup system in place. Maybe you even have backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity plans. But because business goals and environments change, any plan needs to be re-evaluated from time to time to make sure it’s still meeting all of your needs. We can help you evaluate your current plans, or sort through the options if you don’t yet have plans. Contact us for today for details.

Despite bad weather, the show must go on

The prevailing bad weather in the United States and Europe has caused varying degrees of production delays in all sorts of industries and business. In circumstances like these, communication is especially important – when all members of the organization need to stay connected to keep operations coordinated and moving forward. Bad weather or not, there has been an increased demand to maintain constant communication and continue productivity outside the office. With remote and mobile accessibility between all links in a company, efficiency can be maintained through working from remote locations. Your company’s employees – from the worker-bees out in field to supervisors, managers, and CXOs – no longer need to be limited by dependence on in-office resources. Our services provide solutions that allow people to maintain communication regardless of the weather and other productivity-stalling circumstances. We realize the importance of being able to keep in touch, especially in critical situations such as the current weather conditions. Please contact us to learn more about our communications solutions.

Assessing and Documenting Your IT Needs

You expect your computer to work when you turn it on. The last thing you want is to waste valuable time trying to get your email running or wrestling with a web browser that won’t load. These are frustrations you surely have experienced, and chances are you will again. But you don’t have to. Or, at the very least, you can make them as rare as your refrigerator breaking down or your car battery dying. To get there, you need to understand how well your IT environment is running. No, we’re not suggesting that you look under the hood to figure out what does what and how. Leave that to the IT people. What we’re proposing is a comprehensive endeavor to document all your IT processes and inventory your IT assets. Identify your best practices – those processes and functions that experience has proven to run efficiently and produce the most desirable results – and document them as part of your overall business practices. During the process of documenting your IT processes and functions, you’re bound to discover your IT environment isn’t as efficient as it should be – hence, your computer-borne frustrations. You’ll also identify needs that you weren’t aware of. Left unaddressed, these needs cut into productivity (and therefore profits), and can sometimes lead to costly IT network emergencies that would have been a lot less expensive with the right technology and proper maintenance in place. Let us help assess your needs through this documentation process, and identify solutions that will bring you peace of mind. Some common solutions include outsourcing some of your network functions such as security, backup and recovery, or email, so that they are maintained and updated to keep them running smoothly and prevent costly downtime. You expect your computer to work when you turn it on – and that is what we want to make sure happens.

New Study Reveals Extent of Losses Due to Phishing Attacks

Trusteer , a security solutions vendor, recently released the results of their study which shows how successful phishing attacks are, how many users respond to phishing attacks, and how many users submit their login information to criminal websites. The results are alarming. Among them: Each phishing attack involves a very small percentage of customers (0.000564%), but due to the large number of phishing attacks, the aggregated number is significant 45% of bank customers redirected to a phishing site divulge their personal credentials 0.47% of bank customers fall victim to phishing attacks each year, translating to $2.4M-$9.4M in annual fraud losses per one million clients Each financial institution was targeted, on average, by 16 phishing websites per week, translating to 832 phishing attacks per year per bank brand Despite efforts by browser developers and security vendors to protect users from phishing attacks, a small number apparently are still able to bypass anti-spam/phishing protection – and when they do, the results can be damaging. Let us help you protect yourself from phishing attacks. To find out more contact us today. Related articles: Garlik’s UK Cybercrime Report 2009 Released (pindebit.blogspot.com) Chat In the Middle Online Banking Threat (pindebit.blogspot.com) PC Users Targeted As Online Fraud Soars (news.sky.com) Less than 0.5% of online banking clients fall for phishing scams each year, report says (seattlepi.com)

Piracy Brings Malware According to Microsoft

Quoting research from various industry analysts, Microsoft warned that users who install unlicensed or counterfeit software on their PCs are 73% more likely to suffer data loss or damage than users of legitimate software. The company also cited a 2006 IDC study that found that 25% of counterfeit software attempted to install unwanted or malicious code when downloaded. In response, Microsoft is launching a series of educational initiatives and enforcement actions in over 70 countries to combat the threat. Microsoft is calling its anti-piracy campaign Consumer Action Day. Microsoft has posted additional information about the risks of counterfeit software and its efforts to fight the problem at microsoft.com/howtotell . Related articles: Counterfeit reports climb (robbiz1978.blogspot.com) Microsoft launches attack on pirates, counterfeiters (seattlepi.com) Microsoft Links Malware Rates To Pirated Windows (news.slashdot.org)

Web Application Security a Growing Threat for Businesses

A new report by security vendor Cenzic shares research indicating that security flaws found in Web applications continue to grow and should be a major concern for many businesses, including SMEs, as more and more depend on the Web for their business. According to the report, almost 80 percent of more than 3,000 software security flaws publicly reported this year have been in web technologies such as web servers, applications, plug-ins, and web browsers. That number is about 10 percent higher than the number of flaws reported in the same period last year — and 9 out of 10 of the flaws were found in commercial code. The top 10 vulnerabilities for the first half of 2009 included familiar names such as Sun, IBM, Mozilla, Apache, and Safari, where most Web applications were found to have vulnerabilities related to information leaks and exposures, Cross-Site Scripting , and session management. Are you using the web for your business? Concerned about the security of your data and information? Contact us and see how we can help. Related articles: Web application security is growing problem for enterprises (infoworld.com) Firefox flaws make up 44% of all browser bugs? (theregister.co.uk) Vulnerabilities Whitehat Security (ecombizcenter.blogspot.com)

Entrepreneur Magazine Shares 10 Reasons for Small Businesses to Use Windows 7

Entrepreneur Magazine ’s Scott Steinberg shares in his online column Top Ten reasons why Small Businesses should use Windows 7 . Among them: lower system requirements than Vista, better multitasking, and enhanced security. And while he says not everything is perfect (for instance, confusing multiple versions, and separate download and installs for email and calendar programs) he says “ Windows 7 provides a welcome evolutionary step forward for the platform, significantly improving security, stability and everyday convenience.” Also check out an online slideshow from bMighty.com which shows 10 Windows 7 Features SMBs Should Love which provides a more visual guide for businesses evaluating whether to upgrade to the new Windows Operating System. Need help evaluating or migrating to Windows 7 for your business? Contact us today! Related articles: Transfer files and settings from XP to Windows 7 (helpdeskgeek.com) Windows 7 may be secure, but are Windows users safe? (infoworld.com) How To Reduce Aero Peek’s Delay Time (techie-buzz.com)

What You Should Know Before Embracing Social Networking

If you have decided to use Social Networking technologies for your business in your marketing, public relations, employee relations, or any other initiative, congratulations – it’s a good move. However, bear in mind that there are some issues you should be aware of before starting. As we pointed out in a previous post, social networks allow people to create communities on the Internet around shared relationships, interests, and activities. In business, social networks can be used as tool for marketing, public relations, sales, customer service, employee relations, and more. Many case studies show how companies are able to use social network services to generate new leads, strengthen relationships with customers and employees, and improve their business operations. Here are some guidelines for avoiding pitfalls when implementing a social networking campaign: Filter information. Actively filter personal or private or sensively information about yourself, your company, your employees and partners, and your customers from the information you or your employees post online. Make sure that none of the information you post is covered by any non-disclosure, patent applications, or contractual agreements, which could quickly get you into hot water. Provide value. Post only information relevant to your audience online. Before any post, ask yourself: Is this information interesting and useful to my audience, or does it only serve us? Your audience will quickly tune you out if you continually post marketing fluff and self-serving promotional ads. Be truthful. Be as forthright and honest as possible. Remember that these types of media are interactive and can quickly get around. You’ll find that unhappy customers and disgruntled employees are not shy in posting negative comments about you and your company for all to see – especially if they find you evasive or less than truthful. Be vigilant. Social networking sites are a target for malware, hackers, and all sorts of online fraudsters. Before joining a social networking site, make sure to read their terms of use and privacy guidelines. How secure is their setup? Are they vetted by third-party security and privacy assurance services? Will they share your information with third parties? Do mechanisms exist to allow you to control who can and cannot see what you share online? Find out and to protect yourself. Provide clear guidelines. Take a cue from IBM and provide clear guidelines on what is and what is not acceptable, and who does and does not speak in behalf of your company. Make sure your employees know the guidelines and follow them. Let them know that whatever they post online can remain there for years to come and could come back to haunt them later on. Despite the risks of using social networking services, there are risks of not using them as well. If you don’t shape your image on the Web, people will do it for you. Social networks make it quick and easy to set up a basic profile, and that’s the first step toward gaining control of your business’s reputation online.

Prev 1 … 4 5 6 7 8 … 12 Next