With time, thanks to the rise of cloud computing, businesses don’t have to invest in hardware, software, and data centers (and all the auxiliary equipment that comes with managing a full-fledged datacenter). Instead, businesses pick and choose vendors who’d do all the heavy-lifting leaving businesses to focus more on business functions instead of the IT infrastructure that helps these business functions stay alive.

See how some crucial business functions transformed:

Finance and accounting

Having shown the maximum amount of resistance in moving to the cloud, hundreds of vendors launched products backed up stocked-up vendors that deal with finance and accounting functions on the cloud for businesses to plug in to. Companies such as  INTACCT, FreshBooks, and even NYSE’s Capital Markets Community Platform  have moved to the cloud. Plenty of vendors exist today who can take your financial processes, auditing, and accounting online.

Social Communities and Engagement

First, there was the birth of a new, powerful media for consumers: social media. Following that, there was – and still is –an increasing number and instances of communication online about companies and brands that users get into.  So it was inevitable that companies get a foothold into this conversation, community engagement, and social chatter which could take a brands name or a company’s reputation north or south, depending on how good your products are and how well you respond to community conversation, feedback, and questions.

You have solutions on the cloud that help you manage this better, of course: Social Enterprise from Salesforce.com, Radian6, Nimble, and many more vendors now provide solutions to streamline social media conversations for businesses. 

CRM

Managing customers towards profitability has always been an important aspect of running a business. Businesses, however, don’t have to depend on unreliable spreadsheets to keep track of customers. Spreadsheets aren’t particularly good at tracking leads generated, how these leads are nurtured, etc. They could be lost, stolen, or corrupted. CRM solutions are aplenty in the market today. Starting with free CRM solutions to powerhouse CRM solutions such as Salesforce.com and SugarCRM are leading the roost with hundreds of other solutions.

Cloud computing holds promise not because it’s a fancy new thing to hit the technology grapevine; it’s a phenomenon because it changes the way you do business, forever.

What’s your pick? What are your favorite solutions on the cloud?

Policy or not, it’s MY device

It’s tough to convince employees to surrender personal devices when there’s a need for employees to do so (let’s say, about the time when they exit the company and data has to be taken off their iPads). It’s a foggy world out here with employees who have a right to their personal information and data and employers who have an equal right towards anything corporate stored in the same device. Food for thought: how does your enterprise policy handle this?

Making Policies is your Job; dodging them is ours

In a survey covering more than 4000 mobile and tablet users, conducted by Juniper Networks, a whopping 41% of all users surveyed circumvent company policies while using their personal devices at work. While some companies might even know this and relegate to the fact that it might not be harmful, we think: “Who can tell what happens next?”

Remote Wipe? Isn’t that dangerous for the company?

What if a company chooses to wipe data off an employee’s tablet or phone and personal data is wiped out accidentally? Who is culpable for that? Would corporate BYOD policies explicitly state who’s to be blamed in an event like that? Would the employees have a reason to go to court?

Rogue everything – employees, devices, and intentions

BYOD makes great sense, at the outset. Policies are great; they instill a sense of discipline and process. Employees can work more and be more productive this way. What about rogue employees? What about malicious software embedded in devices? If personal devices can be used at work, what is stopping employees from data theft, pilferage, unauthorized access or sharing, etc.?

Finally, there’s trouble when companies go sneaky. Tablets and phones that belong to senior management or middle management executives can be tapped (to prevent leakage). If it’s a personal device, where’s privacy? Companies now have access to employees’ social media accounts, any personal information stored on the phone or tablet, and much more.

As you can see, it’s a murky river out there while it continues to flow. While we are excited about BYOD and what it can do for businesses, we are also wary about the consequences.

What do you think? Is BYOD a vulnerable, shot in the dark?

Attacks are where the activity is

IT departments and companies continue to fight it out. While onsite asset protection is still on, as active as ever, new threats have emerged — the use of mobile phones and tablets to connect with the enterprise networks or the use of Internet, the increasing use of social media, the ever growing applications of video for marketing and the subsequent growth of Youtube as a channel, the proliferation of portable disk storage, and the cloud-based services.

A whopping 700,000 android phones are activated per day, all over the world. Facebook now has more than 850 million users sharing information and putting up content numbering upwards of billions.

As such, there are billions of new hacking opportunities today, so to speak. The good thing, according to M86 security labs, is that while the threat hovers around mobile and social media, the attacks are fairly sparse and untargeted. Also, the social media networks such as Facebook also combat spam, Trojan, or malware on their own by scanning clicks, user data, and self-blocking 200 millions posts that carry malicious links or files.

All Solutions, Converge

We, at Network Pro, now realize that the situation is going to be such that there’s another sort of security protection convergence that’s in the making. Along with the traditional network protection tools and solutions, we will increasingly see a plethora of new tools combining and converging right into the mix of security arsenal. MDM solutions, mobile protection, heightened levels of scrutiny over Internet usage, freshly baked policies to cover trends such as BYOD (Bring your Own Device), enhanced endpoint security, etc.

Combating Cyber threats is an ongoing endeavor

Start with building a strong, lasting relationship with your IT services vendor so that they strive – along with you – to focus on your security needs. Start with basics such as to keep your software updated, changing passwords, putting the firewalls up, and drawing out basic security policies to enforce on company staff. Remember that information security is not just the work of the IT department; it’s everyone’s responsibility.
With the right help, technology, and a heightened level of preparedness, every business can combat with threats.

If you’d like to find out how to protect your networks, devices, and your activity over the Internet, do let us know and we’ll be glad to help.

What data exactly?

Before setting up policies for data protection, you’d want to define data you need to protect. There’s critical data, there’s redundant data, and there’s temporary data that you’d probably need to access or use once. It’s the critical data that you’d need to protect on priority. For most businesses, it’s the customer data – which could include demographic information, proprietary details of products and services, credit card numbers, sales information, company information, and any form of Intellectual property.

Data protection policies should start from here.  From our experience, we know that some of the older companies don’t even have this data in one, secure place what with data strewn all over the company network (including employee desktops, USB drives, and external hard disks).

Monitor data use

It goes without saying that you’d need to have systems in place that let you know where your data is stored, when this data is accesses, how often – and with whom – data is shared, etc.  Data monitoring isn’t a choice; it’s a mandatory operational, recurring process on which your business depends. Data monitoring ought to work across the network which includes e-mail, web browsing, social media interactions, document collaboration, project management, instant messaging, and virtually every aspect of communication – both internal and external – your business uses.

Enforce the policy, throughout

No holds barred. Deploy your data security and protection policy throughout the company and make sure all employees read it and then sign it. Including data usage, monitoring, use of data, confidentiality agreements, Non-disclosure agreements, etc.  Ensure that your data protection policy also covers how data inflow occurs; how data is created; how data is stored, accessed, consumed, and shared. Needless to say, data security also goes into your policy.

Devices, virtual networks, and data

Most companies are now embracing change. A large part of this change has employees using mobile devices – in all its forms and functions such as corporate devices, VPN (Virtual Private Networks), Wi-Fi, and data storage on portable data storage devices such as USB drives, laptops, tablets, and external hard disks. Make a special mention on your policy with regards to use of data outside the secure walls of your corporate network.

Network intrusion is a reality and many businesses now look to set-up network intrusion detection systems to prevent varying types of threats to networks. Here’s what you can keep in mind before deciding the right systems for your business:

Making the choice

Although crucial, it’s not easy to choose the right vendors, technology or even be able to make a choice between the various methods available for network security such as Unified Threat Management, firewalls, etc. What should you actually pick for your business? Would Intrusion detection system be the best choice? Before you decide, you need to know what an Intrusion detection system actually does and how it helps your business. To know more about IDS and what it does, please visit our previous post on Intrusion Detection Systems.

Applications can be your Achilles’ heel

Increasingly, business applications have become the soft-target for many hackers who have an intention to attack. E-commerce applications, databases related to business applications, and other applications you use for business are an easy access path for hackers. Of course, vendors did come out with preventive measures taking this into account such as using new, state-of-the-art Intrusion detection systems with specific emphasis on applications for business networks. This intrusion prevention or detection also extends to other processes such as email and VoIP.

IDS Maintenance, configuration, fine-tuning, and upkeep

Intrusion detection systems are, by no means, set-up and forget systems. Installing and configuring these systems are a critical part of using these systems. Further, algorithms change, new threats emerge, and technology evolves. Upkeep, maintenance, and fine-tuning your IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems) are recurring; long-term processes that demand trained IT manpower, know-how, expertise, and time. You can always have consulting vendors to do this for you on a regular basis. For years, we, at Network Pro, have been setting up, managing, and maintaining networks – and all the bells and whistles that come with network management such as Intrusion detection, stalling network threats, etc.

If you’d like us to help you to set-up a network prevention or security strategy, maintain your network for you, or manage specific IT functions, we’d be glad to help you out.

Get your network ready for mobile use

You don’t want to be the company that’s playing “Catch-up” when using mobiles or tablets at work becomes as ubiquitous as the Internet itself. First, you’ll have to worry about is to set-up your infrastructure and make it mobile enterprise ready. Start with crafting employee mobile usage policies, bring in the necessary investments to gear up your infrastructure to handle or support the incoming traffic of roving devices. Ascertain levels of access to corporate data and deploy applications that make it possible for your employees to work on their devices while feeding off on your corporate network.

Roll out Deployment, phase-wise if you would like to

The actual deployment of technology to support use of mobile devices would take time depending on the size of your company. Whether you intend to supply mobile devices (corporate owned and configured, such as BlackBerry) or follow the BYOD trend, the IT department will have to install the necessary applications on the network, mobile-centric applications on mobile devices for secure access, etc. If your company is large, you might even need Mobile Device Management applications (MDM).

Establish Security protocols

As it was with networking, and then with cloud computing, mobile device usage deployment will also have to contend with security issues – it’s likely to be the biggest concern for companies. How do the employees access corporate data on their phones? What kind of security protocols are you going to use so as to not allow data theft or loss? How will you establish systems to prevent hacking or attacks? Are you going to use SSL (Secure Socket Layers)? How about full-disk access, encryption, and remote management of devices?

This is an area of deployment where you’re likely to spend a lot of time by devising strong, accurate, and strict usage protocols and employee policies.

If you’d like help with rejigging your network or to deploy mobile use for your employees, do feel free to contact us and we’d love to help you.

In most cases, businesses depend on data for everything (think Banks, financial Institutions). That’s when Enterprise Data back up gets into the list for crucial considerations for managing your business. Here are some reasons why our Net Store IT (NSI) is a good choice:

If there’s risk, you’ll have to manage it

Your growing business will eventually begin to glean a lot of data. You’ll not only need to work this data but also be able to back up this data regularly.  Malicious attacks, data loss, data theft, and the possibility of your network being hijack are glaringly possible events that could literally throw your business out into a deep ravine. The days of tape backups or still use in-house servers to do this job for them which is admittedly more complex than it should be.  It’s important that you manage risk, but you don’t have to make it harder than what it actually takes.

All systems, one go

With a simple solution like Net Store IT (NSI), you can have us install our proprietary Net Store IT application on your network. Network administrators or users will then be able to specify specific data that needs to be backed up, retrieve lost data protect this data, and even run regular data back-up sessions at specified schedules. The way our service works is that after it’s installed and set-up, it runs a full back up. From the next time you run the back up, it’d just pick up where it left off and back-up new entries into folders, new files, and all other changes that occurred from the time since the previous back-up. Guess what? All of this can be automated.

You don’t ever have to worry about compliance

As a business, you primary focus should be to market your business and manage your business well. Instead, most businesses worry about federal statutes, compliance requirements such as GLB, HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley. We won’t say compliance is not important because it certainly is.

The smart thing to do would be to pick on solutions that play right into these compliance requirements. Our technology meets all regulatory requirements, encrypts your data using our state of the art AES 128 bit encryption. Our data centers are SAS 70 compliant. In simple terms, there’s no way your data can ever be compromised, lost, stolen, or corrupted while on our watch.

It’s all about your convenience and flexibility

Locking into long contracts could be a self-destructing sequence initiation, so to speak. We, as a business ourselves, don’t approve of it. Our NetStore IT application allows you to plug into our resident data centers (you don’t have to buy equipment), use our highly secure encryption for your data, install software (just once), and only pay for what you use.

If you’d like to know how this simple technology works for your benefit, please don’t hesitate to give us a ring, email us, or chat up with us. Even a comment here will do.

The reason most businesses go for Open Source is pretty obvious: The license is free of charge and there’s a huge community that believes in the product. The open source community is one big, happy family.

The Open Source cloud, or any other open source project however, is not a completely free affair. The license for the software or application is indeed free but the technical know-how required to use and implement the software requires skilled labor, which doesn’t come cheap.

Further, you can’t expect to depend on the ‘open source community’ alone since no one person from within that community has any obligation to help you (although they might. In critical business scenarios, you couldn’t possibly wait for good Samaritans to show up, could you?

One smart way out of this predicament is to go for what’s known as “Partially closed Open Source Offering” – an offering that comes with the free Open Source Software or Application but also comes with vendor support and resources. Now, that’s an offer most proprietary vendors will have to put up a fight against to compete.

Decisions about what kind of cloud you should be using should primarily start from what part of your business you are going to apply the cloud to. Which function exactly? Why are you going to the cloud and How critical is going to the cloud for you? Depending on the answers to these questions, you’ll have a lot of analysis, number crunching, and decision-making to do.

You could always reach out to us for help. We’ll be happy to help you out with any strategic initiative you’d like to take for your business, as far as IT implementation, IT assets, and networking strategy is concerned.

BYOD is certainly a happy way to work. Just as it is for most things, there are security risks, issues, and possibility of a breach too. Tom Kaneshige of CIO.com has an interesting story about a man who happened to gain access to an executive’s phone. He then called up a company and threatened to expose company data while demanding $50,000 as “ransom”. He eventually got caught but you do know where we are getting, don’t you?

The security risk was coming; it’s time we notice

Be it just a single computer, an entire network, cloud computing, or the use of mobile devices for corporate work – security risk is expected, it evidently exists, and the battle rages on. Plenty of companies are already getting on the BYOD bus and pretty soon, it’ll be hard to ignore the ubiquitous mobile device. On the other hand, security breach on these consumer devices is just much a reality though. A survey finding based on 600 IT departments’ responses the incidence rate of breaches on consumer devices is unbelievably more than 50%. We knew it was coming. Preparation is the key.

The bigger problem at hand

We run a business. We hire employees. We let them bring their own devices to work. The trouble isn’t about security – at least not as much as nonchalance to best practices. Employees who bring their own devices have a tendency to put off any sort of preventive action to protect data or their device or both, when using or accessing corporate data, until it’s too late. Further, since these are personal devices, employees feel empowered to download files from the Internet, play games, visit social media sites, and pretty much do anything they want to – all of which could be another possible window for security risk.

BYOD Security prevention isn’t like PC anti-virus

There isn’t anything new about mobile anti-virus software. The trouble is that most mobile users don’t consider using these until something actually goes wrong. A slew of new devices, across various OS, have spawned a new vertical for mobile security, if only users feel compelled enough to use them as a first wall of defense. While the market isn’t as busy as the anti-virus software market is, the scene is changing rapidly. Plenty of vendors have come up with products for these mobile devices and tablets.

So, should companies enforce basic security measures for personal devices? We’d love to hear from you.

While it’s still not easy for companies to espouse online file sharing on the cloud, businesses have opened their arms for embracing the new technology to lower costs – otherwise associated with VPNs, hosting servers on their own, or by using tapes.  From both managerial and financial standpoint, collaborating on the cloud seems to be the most cost-effective option yet.

The growing importance of seamless collaboration and the addition of new handheld devices and mobile devices – take your pick from smartphones to tablets, across OS such as Mac, Windows, and Android – is all pushing the need for online file sharing more than ever.

The traditional NFS (Network File Sharing) systems, servers, and VPN technologies are almost rendered useless thanks to the ever increasing challenge to adopt to the growing mobile workforce whereas the cloud just falls in, at the right time, to cater to this new trend.

A Market Landscape Study  – as referred by Techtarget.com – claims that the benefits of file sharing service are primarily low costs, ease of use, and the ability to support any end-device (meaning mobile devices, tablets, etc.)

Yet another benefit is seamless collaboration – suddenly, every device can connect, files can be shared instantly, all data is instantly backed up and synchronized. In short, document sharing is a breeze today.

With the encryption in place, and a relentless pursuit of more solutions for total security on the cloud, document sharing over the cloud is secure too.

Is your company geographically dispersed? Do you have too many departments between which documents must be shared? Are you worried about loss of data? Have you been thinking about collaboration between teams, and within teams, across your organization? File sharing over the cloud could just be the thing that could answer all of your questions above.

Have you taken to Cloud Computing yet? Do you use File Sharing on the cloud? How has your experience been?