Work Tech Recipes

10 Ways to Protect Yourself Online

2013-11-21T00:39:00.000-08:00

Know your enemy. There are two basic types of threatening individuals who are after your information. Most only have to worry about one but is equally important to prepare yourself in case the second strikes. The first type of threat is the hacker you hear about on the news. The kind of criminal who does not care who you are and targets businesses where they can steal massive amounts of information or phishes internet users to obtain their passwords.

The second is an individual who has specifically targeted you for one reason or another. This person may appear as a troll when they post random rude comments or pick arguments with you online. They are often trying to bait you into providing information. Sometimes this person never reveals themselves to you and only follows you on social networking sites gleaning information that you post until they have what they are looking for. This type of attacker has many of the same qualities as a stalker and will be as patient as necessary to obtain the information they seek. You can protect yourself from both of these individuals using a few techniques and remembering some of the stranger danger tips your mother gave you.

1. Keep your virus, anti-malware and any other protective software you have on the computer up-to-date.There are very good free versions of each type of security software available online and though no software is perfect they will significantly reduce the number of threats you face. Set them up to scan at a time when you won't be using the computer and you will never need to feel like your performance suffers or that the software is in your way.

2. Never give full trust to anyone when it comes to your computer or online accounts. This means that in addition to keeping your passwords protected, if a friend wants to use your computer then you should set up a guest account for them to login to. Do not give the account administrative privileges or the rights to install software. It's your computer, they do not need to download and store their information on it, nor do they need access to your account.

3. Don't use pirated software. Pirated software is "cracked" and that means someone put in some information to make it work without the legal password. So the software has been altered. That means they could have put in any kind of other malware or spy software that they wanted to and could be using it as a backdoor to gain access to your information or your computer. Only purchase software from trusted vendors. If you really need it, it is worth paying for.

4. Use separate accounts for your personal life and professional life. Each should have its own email address and different social networks. Your personal social networking has no place in your professional life. All of your coworkers should not be on your social networking sites with your family. This could cause problems for your work life as well as make it easy for an attacker to find people who are willing to share more information about you without you ever knowing about it.

5. Always include some random character in your passwords. Numbers are good, but characters are used less often and make it even harder to figure out. It's best not to use any real words at all in your passwords but if you must use them, then try something like this: "cr!baby" instead of crybaby or "cr&zy" instead of crazy. Just that one character will throw off a random troll and make it more difficult for a password cracker program to figure out as well. For even more protection, don't use the same symbol in all of your passwords. If you have a secure location to store passwords, use a password generator website to create something completely unique.

6. Use the privacy settings available to you in every account you have online. Professional institutions such as banks will likely have protection measures and extra security in place. When visiting these sites the address bar should always say "https" at the beginning. Never enter your banking, PayPal or bill passwords into a site that does not start with "https." On other sites, especially social sites, you will need to set up your privacy levels on your own. Use the settings to limit the information you share as much as possible. Set up limits so that your birthday, address, email or phone number is not shared publicly. If it's not necessary to put that information into the site, then don't add it to the account at all.

7. Never click a random link from an email saying you need to login to your account. If your bank or other business needs you to fix something on your account (except for password resets that you requested) then the information will be inside of your account no matter how you login. Visit the site by typing it in yourself or from the bookmark you saved earlier, or you can call them if you prefer. This eliminates any doubt as to where you are logging in to. Just like mom always said - if you don't initiate the contact, don't give out the secure information.

8. Don't add strangers to your social networking sites. Even though it seems innocent and harmless, you are going to give out information to these strangers about your personal life at some point in time without even realizing it. Even the smallest information, including "Yay! The Wildcat's won the playoff!" can be too much information to share with the wrong person. That statement lets others know what type of sport and what team you like but could lead them to your personal attachment to an education institution or the fact you are unavailable or occupied during games. Just like mom always said - Don't talk to strangers!

9. Never feed a troll. A troll is an individual who makes rude comments to you repeatedly just for the purpose of upsetting you in some way. No good will ever come from it and you may wind up revealing seemingly harmless information that they, or someone else, could use against you. It is unlikely you will remember to go back and delete these conversations later if posted publicly and over email you are allowing them to have some level of control over you and your life which feeds into their addiction. If you don't interact, they will become bored and move on.

10. Do not open unexpected attachments from strangers in your email account. Software can be installed on your computer without you ever knowing it was included with the attachment. This software can then be used to gain access to your computer, copy down every letter you type on the keyboard (which gives someone you usernames and passwords) and record other information. It has even been used to locate pictures on your computer that the attacker may want to use.

Link Your Information: Use MS Outlook and MS OneNote as a Team

2013-05-05T22:54:00.002-07:00

OneNote makes a perfect team with the other components of the Microsoft Office system. For example, you can create a diagram of your current quarter’s results in Excel and copy this page to the meeting preparation page in OneNote where, during the past few weeks, you have been gathering ideas that you want to discuss with your colleagues. Or somebody sends you a Word document containing a report summary that you insert as a picture. You use a text marker to highlight specific sections and comment with handwritten keywords (see the “How to add documents as pictures” procedure earlier in this chapter). During the meeting, you write down the results and all resulting tasks, and then make the page available to your colleagues in the meeting workspace of a SharePoint site as the meeting minutes. Afterward, you copy the tasks you are responsible for into your own personal task list in Outlook with just one click per task.

How to transfer tasks to Outlook

1. Right-click the paragraph in OneNote you want to transfer—it’s especially helpful to assign a tag to certain entries (such as tasks) as you write them by using shortcut keys so that you can recognize them immediately by their tags (or automatically jump to them or gather them from multiple pages, as explained earlier).

2. In the shortcut menu, click Outlook Tasks and then the option you want (or press Ctrl+Shift+1 to create a task that is due today (Ctrl+Shift+2 for tomorrow, and so on). The task has now been inserted into Outlook with the due date you specified.

3. If you select Outlook Tasks/Custom, an Outlook task form is displayed where you can enter the due date manually.

Changes to the state of completion and the due date are automatically synchronized between OneNote and Outlook. (Depending on the performance and settings of your system, it may take a few seconds or up to several minutes until the changes arrive in the other program.)

If you open the Outlook task in Outlook in its own window (for example, by doubleclicking it), you will see a link to OneNote in the note field. If you double-click that link, it’ll open in OneNote. In OneNote, you can right-click the small red flag in front of the task text to change the due date in the shortcut menu, mark the task as completed, delete the Outlook task, or open it directly in Outlook.

Important tip:

In Office 2010, later changes to the subject are not synchronized: If you change the task subject in Outlook, OneNote keeps the old text. In future edits, changes to the text in OneNote will also be ignored in an Outlook task that has already been created. Still, both entries remain securely linked: Changes to the due date and state of completion are still synchronized with the other program, and the link to the other program also works reliably (to open the task in Outlook/OneNote).

Outlook and OneNote also communicate the other way around:

■ In OneNote, on the Home tab, in the Outlook group, click Meeting Details and select one of the entries from today's calendar in the expanded menu or Choose a Meeting from Another Day to insert the location, participants, date, time, subject, and notes of a meeting request or an appointment.

Understanding the Cloud Approach to Services

2013-03-25T04:14:00.002-07:00

Today, there is a wide spectrum of services available in the cloud, including messaging solutions, collaborative solutions, identity management solutions, storage solutions, customer relationship management, and many more. Major vendors have also released cloud services based on their widely used on-premises software products. For example, Microsoft has released Office 365, which provides an online version of SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, and Lync Server. Microsoft also provides the Windows Azure platform, which makes the Windows Server operating system and other features available as services.

Notice how the Windows operating system (which the Azure Platform offers) and Microsoft Office server and client products (which Office 365 offers) are fundamentally different. An operating system provides a core set of functionality (hence the term platform) and what actually sits on top of it can be practically anything—from an e-commerce website to complex video processing software.

However, products such as Microsoft Exchange, which is a messaging solution, provide a welldefined set of features that target specific needs. This leads to an important observation: The number of ways and degrees to which a service is consumed and utilized can vary broadly. To address this in the world of cloud computing there are three different approaches to cloud-based services:

➤➤ Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

➤➤ Platform as a Service (PaaS)

➤➤ Software as a Service (SaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), you can basically outsource typical elements of infrastructure like virtualization, storage, networking, load balancers and so on, to a vendor of choice. The vendor offering IaaS bills you for the infrastructure services usage as per its service level agreement (SLA). One of the biggest benefits of IaaS is that it provides granular control, in which you can choose the core components for your infrastructure. With the launch of the VM Role on Azure, Microsoft has entered into the IaaS space along with vendors such as Amazon EC2, GoGrid, and OpSource, which already are key players in the IaaS market.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service (PasS) provides a core platform from which custom applications can deploy. With PaaS, you don’t have to work with infrastructure level elements and low level configuration of networking, security, and load balancers; all this is done for you by the vendor. The vendor provides you with a fully functional operating system with major platform software. For example, the Microsoft Azure platform provides support for the latest version of the .NET framework. This type of service offering means you can focus on deploying your custom applications on the platform and can easily configure your applications to scale up or down as demands change.

One of the key advantages of PaaS is that you don’t have to worry about performing operating system or application platform updates (for example, service packs) and hardware upgrades. The vendor regularly patches your operating system, whatever platform features are being offered (such as the core .NET platform or SQL database engine) and updates hardware on demand to meet your needs. Microsoft offers the Azure platform as a PaaS because it supports various types of Worker Roles and different types of applications. For example, you can run web applications with the Web Role, as well as host middle tier applications, such as Workflow, in the Worker Role. Similarly, SQL Azure provides Microsoft’s core relational database engine as a platform service.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

With Software as a Service (SaaS), the vendor manages everything from infrastructure, including load balancers and firewalls, to platforms, such as operating systems and virtual runtime environments like .NET and Java, all the way up to a complete line of business applications and services, such as e‑mail or a Customer Relationship Management product. SaaS provides you with fully provisioned and finished services with a well-defined feature set, which you can potentially later customize to a certain degree. Vendors usually provide browser-based interfaces so users can easily access and customize these services. APIs are also usually made available for developers. Microsoft Office 365 also offers these types of services, which currently include SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Lync Online, and Office Professional Plus. Most of these online services have subset of the features of their on-premises counterparts.

Collaborating with DropBox

2013-03-22T04:27:00.000-07:00

So exactly what is dropbox???...........

Well Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. Any file you save to your Dropbox will also automatically save to all your computers, phones, and even the Dropbox website. This means that you can start working on your computer at school or the office, and finish on your home computer. Never email yourself a file again!

A Dropbox Free accounts come with 2GB of space (deleted files and revisions won’t count against your limit). You can always check your usage by visiting your account settings page at https://www.dropbox.com/account. The various ways one can accumulate storage with this service. For the free accounts, every referral you make to a friend that eventually gets activated gets you 250MB additional storage. Its possible to scale this storage upto 16GB (plenty of free storage to allow you do you collaboration).

After you install Dropbox on your computer, a Dropbox folder is created. This folder is just like any other folder on your computer, but with a twist. Any file you save to your Dropbox folder is also saved to all your other computers, phones, and the Dropbox website. When you try dragging some photos or docs into your Dropbox. Then visit the Dropbox website at https://www.dropbox.com. When you log in, your files will be waiting for you!

With Dropbox a team of collaborators can jointly edit documents and theirs are changes get to be seen by all the team members in realtime (for as long as the all the changes are synced on the site).

And if you are wondering if dropbox can meet you security requirements as far as providing you with the required privacy of your files is concerned. Well Dropbox takes the security of your files and of our software very seriously. Dropbox uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and AES-256 encryption. AES-256 is the same encryption standard used by banks to secure customer data.

And when it comes accessing your content on the go, the Dropbox App is available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry. To install Dropbox on your mobile device, visit http://www.dropbox.com/anywhere. You can also get to your Dropbox at any time by visiting http://www.dropbox.com from your phone.

And just in case you find dropbox useful for you and need additional storage beyond that free provided by the free account, well then visit https://www.dropbox.com/ plans to view our avail able subscriptions.

MS Office: Using Layout and Design to Organize Your Content

2013-02-08T04:43:00.003-08:00

Design elements should help your content stand out. Good design and layout organizes and emphasizes your content. So, how do you make choices about what design and layout elements will effectively organize your important points? Following are a few suggestions to help you get started.

· Choose one or two complementary colors to use in heading text and to highlight key pieces of information, such as shading table cells or bordering a paragraph. Adding small details—for example, using one of your highlight colors for bullets or numbering (not the paragraph text, just the bullet or number)—can help lend organization and style to the page without overpowering the content.

· Use basic formatting, such as a border beneath top-level heading text or a left indent on body content, to help organize the page. Highlight colors, discussed in the preceding bullet point, can also help to organize the page when used for elements such as heading text and borders.

· Use graphics only when they help convey information more effectively. A picture is only worth 10,000 words if it conveys the particular 10,000 words that matter. For example, a chart of key data, a relationship or process diagram, or an image that demonstrates a core concept can convey much more than text. But using a piece of clip art just for the sake of adding an image to the page doesn’t emphasize your content—it detracts from it.

· Similarly, avoid graphics that talk down to recipients, such as block arrows on the page that do nothing but point to pieces of content. If the recipient doesn’t know how to read a document without those cues, creating the document is a waste of your time.

Program-Specific Layout Considerations

In addition to the preceding recommendations, keep in mind the following essential layout considerations for document-creation application like MS office.

· When working in Word, remember that tables are natural organizers. When you need a complex layout, it’s essential to keep it organized, or your important information is likely to get lost in the confusion. Using a table to lay out the page can help you do that with far less work and far better results than fussing with text columns or floating graphics.

· When working in PowerPoint, remember that the slide master and slide layouts exist to save you time and help keep your slides looking consistent. Slide layouts in PowerPoint 2010 and PowerPoint 2011 are customizable (functionality introduced in the previous versions of PowerPoint for both Windows and Mac), so you can alter layouts as needed to fit your branding or your particular document. You can even create your own layouts and copy them among presentations, templates, and themes.

· When working in Excel, remember that the document looks like a grid for a reason—it’s a spreadsheet. You can create beautiful layouts simply by placing a chart or PivotTable beside or beneath a table. But when you start adding tons of tiny columns everywhere to fudge a complex layout, or splitting and merging cells so that the grid is all but unrecognizable, the sheet will be difficult to manage for both you and the recipient and you’ll lose or complicate a fair amount of the most commonly used Excel features.

Top 10 benefits of server virtualization - Blade Server guide

2013-01-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

The use of blade servers in enterprise data centers continues to climb. Market analysts peg the growth of x86 blade servers at twice that of the overall server category. Blades have become an essential component of data-center trends such as network convergence, server virtualization and cloud computing over the past few years.

The high density, scalability, easy configuration, and lower energy costs offered by blades help to drive business innovation and eliminate server sprawl. What’s more, enterprises that deploy blades are enjoying significant savings—often more than 50 percent – when compared to traditional servers

So what are some the benefits virtualization of servers can be bring to organizations - Get further insights from the presentation below;

Smart Phones Buyers' Guide

2013-01-02T05:21:00.001-08:00

The smartphone has transformed communication between mobile workers and their offices but at a cost. Even Microsoft has realised it missed a very important trick not having a mobile operating system that can compete with the likes of the iPhone, Android and Symbian.

But how should CIOs and senior IT professionals manage this extension of corporate IT systems to the anytime, anywhere use? This eight-page Buyer’s Guide to Smartphones assesses the market and the latest developments.

smart phones buyers' guide

CLOUD COLLABORATION: Understanding the Options to Find the Right Fit

2012-12-16T23:44:00.001-08:00

Every CEO’s wish list includes a desire for tools that enable innovation, growth and boost the productivity of today’s increasingly distributed workforce. The question of how to bring the best resources together, facilitate the exchange of ideas, foster innovation and do it all without the lost time associated with traditional face to face meetings falls to the CIO to answer. As the market responds to this growing demand, the solution offerings available to the decision makers have made the task of selecting the right tools and platform complex, if not daunting. A Collaboration tool’s Integration with other systems must be considered. Today’s end users expect communication and collaboration tools to work together seamlessly and across a growing fleet of mobile devices. Tools can no longer be stand-alone applications that “bolt on” but don’t fully integrate with existing solutions. Add in the pressure to contain budgets and securely manage the network, then the selection process can become stressful, time consuming and delay implementation while decision makers focus on making sure they get it right.

The accompanying presentation herein, provides an understanding of the options to find the right fit, when it comes to cloud collaboration AST-0074297_cisco_cloud_collaboration

The Top Ten Myths about Recovering Deleted Files

2012-11-05T22:30:00.001-08:00

The fear of deleting files has waned over the years, based on the common assumption that easy-to-use tools are available to bring back almost any file. Many myths incorrectly make these “tools” seem more capable than they actually are. In this White Paper, many of the common, incorrect assumptions about file recovery and look at a software package, Condusiv Technologies’ Undelete, that actually fills many of the gaps left by other “recovery” methods are discussed.

The Top Ten Myths about Recovering Deleted Files

Understanding the Benefits of Office Web Apps

2012-10-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of good news to tell you about Office Web Apps. Many people believe that Office Web Apps are a replacement for the Microsoft Office programs on your computer, but that’s incorrect. Office Web Apps are companions to your Microsoft Office programs. They do not replace your desktop applications unless your content creation needs are extremely basic.

considering that Office Web Apps are quite new as of this writing, I think it might be useful to provide some different scenarios in which these applications can be particularly handy. You are likely to have your own to add to this list before long. But here are a few examples of how I’ve already seen Office Web Apps used to save time or simplify work:

· If you’re traveling or your job takes you out of the office, storing your files (or a copy of them) online gives you easier access. With Office Web Apps, you can view those files and even make quick edits without opening them in the Microsoft Office desktop applications. So you can get things done from whatever computer happens to be handy.

· When a company migrates to a new version of Microsoft Office, it can take time to move everyone over. In the past, migrations (especially in large companies) have caused a lot of pain and frustration when users in the same company are working on different versions and trying to share the same files. But if you have to share with users who are still using an earlier version of Microsoft Office, those users can edit your Office 2010 or Office 2011 files online.

· On many group projects, particularly with people who don’t work in the same organization, being able to share and edit files online helps simplify tasks and save time. You don’t need to be concerned with what version of Microsoft Office others use, or even whether they have Microsoft Office on their computers. And the files are always accessible to everyone on the team.

· When you don’t even have a computer handy and need to take a quick look at a document or find information in it, you can use the mobile version of Office Web Apps to access and view Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents right from the browser on your smartphone.

It’s also important to point out that Office Web Apps are young applications in their first version, with new features surely still to come. In fact, we’ve already seen some new features added in the months since the original release of Office Web Apps.

Multimedia Presentations: Insert a Video from a Website in PowerPoint 2010

2012-10-27T01:08:00.004-07:00

Well, it’s about time. No more packaging files to send your presentation to others or show it from a different computer, just because your slide content includes a video or two. No more worrying about maintaining paths for linked video files so that your media will play. If you’re a PowerPoint user, you might already know what I’m about to tell you: we can finally embed video in PowerPoint presentations.

In previous versions of PowerPoint, if you post a video to a website (such as You Tube) and then want to play it back during your presentation, you need to add a hyperlink on a slide to take you to that webpage for playback. But if you’ve needed this functionality in the past, you might have wondered if there was a way to play that video directly from the slide rather than opening it in a browser. In PowerPoint 2010, you now have the option to insert a video onto your slide from a website and then play it back during your presentation right on the slide—no hyperlinks or browsers involved. To do this:

1. On the Insert tab, in the Media group, click the arrow at the bottom of the Video command and then click Video From Web Site.

2. In the dialog box that opens, paste the embed code for the video you want to insert and then click Insert. If the video can be embedded, the embed code is typically available from the webpage where the video is posted. You might see an embed command on the page, or you might need to right-click the video to see that option, depending upon the site. Just select and copy the embed code when it displays on screen.

When you insert video from a website, keep a couple of additional points in mind:

· You must be connected to the Internet, and the video must still be available on the source website for it to play back during your presentation.

· Video that you insert from a website can’t be edited like the embedded or linked videos from your files and can't use some of the new formatting tools. For example, if you apply a video style, that style is not retained while the video plays.

Important to note is that If you see a message that PowerPoint cannot use the embed code you have pasted and you know that you copied it correctly, PowerPoint might require a different type of code. There are two types of embed codes available. The correct embed code type to use in PowerPoint starts with the object tag. That is, the word object appears after an open angle bracket: <object… To get this embed code if it is not the one first presented for the video, check whether the page offers an option to use an alternate or old embed code.

Of caution though is Keep in mind that this feature gives you the ability to insert your videos that are hosted on a website. It does not confer any rights. So, please be cautious and respectful of copyrights when choosing media for your presentation. Just because you can technically embed a video does not mean the copyright on that video allows you to do so for your purposes. For example, a video that someone else owns and posts on a public video site may provide an embed code, but that does not mean the owner has given you the right to use it for your marketing or other commercial content.

What Are the Next Big Things in Social Tech?

2012-10-22T04:40:00.000-07:00

One of the most critical roles a manager has is to be the person who guides the team toward a future vision of success. You simply cannot focus solely on executing today’s game plan without giving some consideration to what the future playing field might look like. The ability to predict what will happen over the next few years so that you can help your team have the best shot at succeeding is the essence of leadership. Without a picture in your head of what will happen in the coming years, you have no way of making solid decisions today that will be beneficial tomorrow. You can’t merely oversee daily activities; you must also be constantly planning for the changes that are sure to come.

This plays out in the reality of setting budgets, hiring and terminating employees, training people for future needs, providing expansion capabilities for office space, and being aware of the latest tools that can help reach the organization’s goals. These tasks require you to have a clear picture of where your organization and industry will move tomorrow.

When it comes to social technologies, looking ahead becomes a must because technology tools can be fads that cool off after too much hype (e.g., Second Life). Or at other times, they climb slowly into full usage by everyone (e-mail). Still others will explode onto the scene and climb rapidly to millions and millions of users (Facebook and Twitter). You need a way to gauge what’s going to be an accepted tool. Otherwise, you’ll be whipsawed between concerns over the risk of putting effort into things that don’t work or waiting too long on social tools that become standard.

For this reason, you must consider flexing your visionary wings when making decisions on adopting new social tools or running pilot projects. Your skill at predicting what you should implement and experiment with today versus leave off the list could seriously impact how you’re viewed by your boss.

There’s no need to consult a crystal ball when trying to look into the future. We can extrapolate from current trends and predictions about some of the twists and turns that will likely be coming. It really isn’t that difficult to figure out what will happen in the future, it’s just tough to know exactly when it will go mainstream. Everything on the list below will surely come to pass. The question is whether it will happen in one year or three:

Standardization of social tools.

Standards are lacking in the social space at the moment. This causes us to waste time on tasks like having to enter new passwords on sites over and over. We have to connect with friends and contacts on every new site we sign up with. When we write mobile applications, we have to create versions for multiple operating systems. The list goes on. As this field matures, we’ll have organizations that will suggest and promote standards that when accepted, will make using new tools much easier.

Portable profiles.

We currently have to enter profile photos and information with every site we sign up for. Soon we’ll have a way to create one profile and supply it to all sites we want to use. This eases the maintenance issues of updating multiple sites when something changes, and will make it easier to belong to multiple eCommunities.

Virtual worlds provide a 3D interface to the Web.

Don’t let the fact that Second Life was overhyped fool you. Virtual worlds and the virtual meeting spaces that go along with them will be back with a vengeance. We’ll one day turn the entire Web into a 3D environment instead of the 2D world it is now. As bandwidth gets more plentiful and 3D graphic technology gets more realistic, we’ll see a resurgence of virtual world tools.

Crowdsourcing explodes in volume of use.

There are billions of people in the world who will become Internet-enabled over the next five years. As they do, they’ll be able to make more money over the Web than they can in their local neighborhood. They will flock to crowdsourcing sites where they’ll bid on work and perfect the art of making money in the knowledge economy. Crowdsourcing will generate 100 times the volume of work that outsourcing does today.

People-rating sites grow quickly and have serious impact.

We’re very close to having people-rating Web sites where all of us will be listed and people will have the ability to rate us. This capability really does not exist today at scale, but it will very soon. When this happens, it will radically change how we learn about each other and the impressions we form at the beginning of relationships.

Immersive and filtered, real-time rivers of information.

We’re overwhelmed today with the vast river of information that the Web and social tools bring us. The answer won’t be to turn off the spigot, it will be to learn to filter and ingest information faster and easier. This will take lots of new forms as we search for better ways to get exactly the information we need, where we need it, and when we need it. In addition, we’ll develop sophisticated ways to build alerts that fill us in immediately with critical information, and then organize the rest into categories that we can access at will. Having a powerful river of information won’t be optional, and skills in setting these up will be looked at as a serious differentiator.

Communication profiles assist with contacts.

One of the biggest holes in our ability to communicate with each other is that no one provides a central profile of our methods for connecting. Sure, most of us have a cell phone, e-mail, and a LinkedIn address; many more have Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. Our mobile devices allow us to text and do video calls with each other. It’s wonderful to have all of these ways to communicate, but for the most part, we don’t know what people’s preferred methods are, what their current status is, or where they are physically. That will change soon because one of the major players will provide this type of profile. Then we’ll be able to look a person up, see what tools they use to connect, their preferences, and their status at that moment. Armed with this information, you’ll better know how to get in touch with someone.

Pay per mention becomes common.

With online reputations and eword of mouth becoming more critical to success, we’ll see an expanding list of ways to give incentives to people to say positive things about a person or entity. Whether it’s giving incentives to bloggers, twitterers, or Facebook powerhouses, the will to control your own public relations will drive this. Add to this the coming peoplerating sites, and we’ll see an explosion of methods for rewarding people for positive reviews.

At the same time, we’ll see an explosion of people who learn the power of the negative comment, and they’ll use it whenever they feel wronged. It will take years for us to sort out which comments are legitimate from those that are “sponsored” or coming from bitter people. We already have Web sites that facilitate people creating video advertisements and getting paid to send them to friends. Look for years of sorting out how we feel about being paid to leverage our networks as a sales channel.

Understanding How Font Choices Can Impact What Recipients See

2012-08-20T08:36:00.001-07:00

One of the most basic components of formatting documents in any program is also often one of the most problematic: fonts. You can choose beautiful, creative, and interesting fonts, but if they are not standard fonts and do not exist on the recipient’s computer, your document might look entirely different to the recipient. When a font does not exist on a computer, the program in which you open a document (such as Word or Excel) will substitute the closest font available. Often the closest font has differently sized characters from your original font, which can alter alignment of complex layouts, change pagination, or distort graphics.

Fortunately, there are ways to share your files that can help alleviate concerns about fonts, and those are addressed later in this section. But before we get there, it’s important to understand the limitations so that you can make font choices that provide the best results for your particular needs.

· A font may exist in the font list that you see in a given program on your computer, but that doesn’t mean that it was installed as part of Microsoft Office or that it will be available to recipients. Most software programs in which you can create content display all available fonts that are installed on your computer—whether they were installed by the active application, the operating system, or another application, or manually installed as a custom font.

· Available Office 2010 fonts also vary by edition. In particular, Office 2010 Professional (a retail edition) and Office 2010 Standard and Office 2010 Professional Plus (the volume license editions) include many more fonts than Office 2010 Home and Student and Home and Business editions. This is because the Standard, Professional, and Professional Plus editions include Microsoft Publisher 2010, which provides a large number of fonts. If you share documents with users of earlier versions of Office for Windows, it might be worth noting that Office 2010 Standard Edition is the first version of Microsoft Office Standard to include Publisher (and thus the fonts that ship with Publisher).

· Office 2011 includes the same fonts in all of its versions (Home and Student, Home and Business, and the volume license edition). However, fonts do vary by platform. That is, Office 2010 and Office 2011 have many but not all of the same fonts.

So what do you need to know about fonts for sharing files with users of earlier Microsoft Office versions? Some of the fonts in Table shown below, were introduced in Office 2007 and Office 2008 (such as the default fonts Calibri and Cambria). Gabriola was introduced in Office 2010 and Office 2011. These recently introduced fonts are included in the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, mentioned earlier in this chapter, that is available for users of Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 for Windows. For users of Office for Mac 2004, those fonts introduced in Office 2008 are installed with the File Format Converter for Mac. Additionally, for users of Office 2007, Gabriola is provided in Microsoft Office Updates. With the free compatibility pack and file format converter tools, users of earlier versions can open and work with documents that use the Office Open XML file formats.

Use Microsoft Office Effectively: Choose the Best Tools for the Task

2012-08-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

When you think of documents, do you automatically think of Microsoft Word? Word is certainly the best home for most documents that are predominantly text—usually regardless of the complexity of the layout or graphic elements you might need to include. But do you consider all of your options when you prepare to create a document? More and more, features are available across multiple programs (like new and improved picture editing tools that you’ll find in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel on both platforms).

And you’ll often benefit by using multiple programs together for the same document. But when it comes to determining where a document should live, consider not just whether you can accomplish the task, but also what will be the best tool for the task. Sure, you can do some calculations in Word, create text-heavy documents in PowerPoint, or draw diagrams in Excel, but despite their areas of overlap, each program still has its own forte. For all the ways that Microsoft Office changes from one version to the next, one key concept (and much of the functionality that supports it) remains very much the same: when you let the programs do what they do best, you will always do the least amount of work for the best results.

Word: The Organizer

A place for everything and everything in its place. This 19th-century maxim is truer for 21stcentury Word than perhaps anything to come before it. Word “likes” things to be as simple and organized as possible. In fact, if you do more work than necessary, Word just might rebel.

To “get along” with Word and keep your documents easy to manage, always use the simplest option for any task. For example, don’t use a table when a paragraph indent will do; likewise, don’t use a floating object or add a new section when a table will do.

PowerPoint: The Efficiency Expert

If you think of PowerPoint as a graphic design program, you probably don’t like it very much. Though you can surely get creative with PowerPoint, it’s not about graphic design at all. PowerPoint is a presentation program—it’s about precision, efficiency, and displaying your important information professionally. In fact, with PowerPoint, getting things perfect is always faster and easier than getting them “close enough.”

For example, use the Change Shape feature to change all the shapes in your diagram at once. No resizing, reformatting, or retyping needed. And what about the drawing guides? If the smart guides (dynamic guides) don’t get you where you need to be as you place objects, the Align and Distribute tools can help you position objects perfectly with a few precise clicks. And, when those tools won’t do what you need, use drawing guides to align with no trial and error, to measure distance, or to help lay out a slide.

Excel: The Logician

Whenever I’ve said that Excel can’t do something, I’ve been wrong. You don’t have to be a mathematician or an engineer to get more from Excel than you probably expect. Personally, I wouldn’t know what to do with an inverse hyperbolic cosine if it walked up to me and gave me a hug. But I have found functions, formulas, and assorted features that have saved me more times than I could possibly calculate. For example, here’s one of my favorite timesaving, troubleshooting miracles.

If a complex chart with hundreds of rows of data (such as a price/volume chart) gets disconnected from its data source, there’s no way to reconstruct that data from the chart itself, right? Wrong. If the chart displays the data, the chart still knows the data. A simple macro will extract that data in no time. In fact, it’s so commonly used that a macro is available with step-by-step instructions in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article—no programming experience required. That said, you don’t even need a macro for so much of what you can do with Excel. From conditional statements to concatenation to interpolation, features that might sound complicated are surprisingly quick and easy to use.

The most important advance in Office 2010 or Office 2011 is not the cloud capabilities, the interface, or any individual feature, but rather the way in which features and programs integrate more effectively.

How to sync Gmail with outlook 2010

2012-04-05T05:02:00.002-07:00

learn How to sync Gmail with outlook 2010 from this video;

Store Outlook email attachments in Cloud securely, reduce your Inbox size

2012-04-05T04:51:00.002-07:00

This video shows how to securely detach/re-attach Outlook attachments to/from the cloud (e.g Amazon S3) in order to reduce your Inbox Size.

Web-based business apps: Top Competitors to Google Apps

2012-04-02T05:38:00.001-07:00

Google Apps isn’t the first player in the field of Web-based business applications. It’s got some catching up to do with companies that have paved the way. By knowing who the other players are in the field, you can make a more informed decision about whether or not to sign up for Google Apps yourself, as well as whether or not to choose the Premier version.

Google Apps Versus Office Live

Google’s biggest competitor in the field of online computer storage and business applications is undoubtedly Microsoft Office Live. Both Google and Microsoft are offering individuals and small businesses a chance to achieve much of the functionality available to larger businesses. In both cases, documents and data are created by you, the individual user. If your business signs up for Google Apps, the other members of your workgroup will have access. Although you own your data, you store it on servers that are owned by the larger corporation, either Google or Microsoft. In either case, you rely on Google or Microsoft to protect your information. There are, however, significant differences between the two services:

· Cost. Office Live Basics is free but doesn’t contain any business applications, only Web page and e-mail tools. The two versions that do include applications, Essentials and Premier, cost a fee paid on annual basis. The regular (not Premier) version of Google Apps is free.

· Interface. Microsoft limits you to using the ultra-slow Internet Explorer browser to access Office Live. Google Apps supports Firefox and other browsers.

· Another Big Difference. Both the regular and premier versions of Google Apps can import and export Microsoft Word .doc and Microsoft Excel .xls files. Office Live does let you open and work with Word files, as long as you have Office 2003 or later already installed on your file system: it isn’t an online version of Microsoft Office, however.

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com provides its paying members with a software environment that allows users to access and share applications that everyone in your office can use. This alternative to Google Apps also incorporates the kinds of online applications that Google Apps provides.

Pros and Cons

Google offers huge server farms that are capable of handling huge amounts of data. Google has big ambitions that include taking business away from the leader in the desktop software market (Microsoft), so it has a vested interest in continually updating and improving the quality and range of the applications it makes available.

On the downside, Google has run into some security flaws. If you store your business data on its site, you do put a large measure of trust in its company and its servers.

How Google Docs differs from a conventional Office Suite

2011-11-22T23:22:00.001-08:00

Google Docs has all the benefits inherent in a SaaS solution, namely that no installation is required on the client, updates are periodic and automatic, and all data is stored in the cloud. There is also a possibility of sharing and collaboration, which provides significant productivity improvements when compared to a more conventional office solution.

Google Docs benefits from its integration with other Google Apps, the most important of which is Gmail, which allows using Google Docs for viewing attachments. Google's solution for creating websites, named Google Sites, also benefits from its integration with Google Docs, allowing inserting documents and spreadsheets in web pages.

For the time being, the features and the level of user-friendliness proposed by Google Docs do not yet meet the standards of a conventional suite like Microsoft's Office or Apple's iWorks. Current HTML technology does not yet provide drag and drop within a web page. For this reason, Google Docs is best suited in situations where the benefit of collaboration outweighs the need for a sophisticated layout or the need for advanced UI capabilities.

However, a number of solutions in the Google Apps ecosystem try to compensate for some of these deficiencies, including products such as OffiSync, Memeo Connect, Syncplicity, and Docverse. The above mentioned are either applications developed by Google (Docverse) or Apps that are available on the Marketplace.

Thus, Google Docs could be used, for instance, during the first phase of writing a document while collaborative work is particularly important. Once the text has been agreed upon by the collaborators, the document can be exported to one of the usual formats to be edited by a more conventional tool, to adjust its layout precisely and include sophisticated graphics.

Computer Security: Why you should Patch

2011-11-21T23:24:00.001-08:00

When it comes to maintenance and upkeep, your computer is more like your car than your toaster. Your toaster may not need any attention, but the car requires oil changes, new tires, tune-ups, and more, to keep it running properly.

In between releases of major versions of security software, software publishers typically release patches to fix what’s broken. There are different kinds of patches and it can help to know the difference between them because some are big fixes and others are small.

Once a month, Microsoft releases their new Security Bulletins identifying new vulnerabilities and providing the links to download the necessary patches. There is typically at least one vulnerability that could result in your computer being controlled remotely by an attacker and enable them to access your personal files and information, or hijack your computer to propagate viruses or mass-distribute spam e-mail.

These Security Bulletins are generally rated as Critical by Microsoft because they consider it fairly urgent that you apply the patch to protect your computer system. If your computer seems to be working just fine, you may wonder “Why bother upsetting the apple cart by applying a patch?” Simple: You should apply the patch as a sort of vaccination for your computer to keep it running smooth. Many viruses, worms, and other malware exploit flaws and vulnerabilities in your system in order to do their dirty work. Your system may seem fine now, but by not applying a patch you might be opening the door for malware or attackers to come in.

Some patches may fix a flaw in some particular service or underlying program that only a relative minority of users actually uses in the first place and which may not be urgent enough for you to bother downloading and installing. However, some flaws may expose your computer to remote attacks that enable the attacker to assume full control of your computer system enabling them to install software, delete files, distribute e-mail in your name, view your personal and confidential data, and more. Obviously, a patch for such a vulnerability has a higher urgency than the first one.

Patches that repair vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, in other words, from some other system, rather than requiring the attacker to physically sit down in front of your computer, are even more urgent when you consider that many viruses and worms take advantage of these flaws to exploit systems and propagate to other vulnerable systems. These vulnerabilities provide a relatively easy method of attack for malware authors, and the time frame between the patch being released and a virus or worm exploiting the vulnerability being released on the Internet is getting shorter and shorter.

IBM Lotus Quickr:Team collaboration beyond document management

2011-11-21T23:17:00.001-08:00

Document management is a key component of team collaboration. However, for effective social collaboration, mere document sharing is not sufficient. Teaming in today's world requires more flexibility in communication and expression.

Lotus Quickr was designed with today's mobile and digitally interconnected world in mind. Understanding that team collaboration needs to occur at the speed of information, and that the ability for a platform to provide notification through multiple channels becomes key. An example of when notification is crucial, can be when a document has been approved by a key stakeholder. Other instances include, key date or milestone update notifications, a task completed or updated requesting clarification, or even as simple as a new member being added to the team while another member switches roles.

Lotus Quickr is designed to meet you where you want to collaborate from. Lotus Quickr delivers its functionality through a Web-based interface as well as through your favorite desktop applications. The use of desktop applications is enabled through the Lotus Quickr Connectors. The Lotus Quickr Connectors are designed to provide seamless user interaction from within applications such as: Lotus Sametime, enables collaboration on a document in real time with cohorts across the world, Lotus Symphony, enables real time editing and publishing of artifacts from within the document editors, Lotus Notes, enables storing of e-mails as documents into a team place as well as solving the multiple e-mail attachment problem, known to plague e-mail system administrators. Lotus Quickr also provides similar Connector support for the Microsoft Office suite of products.

For additional access points, Lotus Quickr provides REST and Web services APIs that enable an Integrated Systems Vendor to provide added value. These APIs are designed and implemented to ensure that an integrated systems vendor is able to leverage the Lotus Quickr REST and Web services, regardless of the back office platform the Quickr services are provided from Lotus Domino or WebSphere Portal.

Lotus Connections social networking software makes your business world smaller by breaking down barriers imposed by geography, language, and demographics. The missing link in harnessing this new found advantage of a highly interconnected world is bridged by seamless team collaboration, through Lotus Quickr. Lotus Quickr team collaboration software delivers this capability by integrating with Lotus Connections to deliver a social collaboration platform that is ready for business.

Lotus Quickr team collaboration software leverages Social Software principles; integration with a rich set of out of the box capabilities, and the Web 2.0 paradigm in enabling diverse teams in an interconnected world. Lotus Quickr should not be viewed by IT managers as just another entrant to the document management space, but as a well executed social collaboration platform, that delivers the productivity edge needed to succeed in the digitally interconnected business world of today.

Lotus Quickr itself represents a set of capabilities allowing end users to effectively drive team based collaboration, both internally and externally, to the corporate network. These capabilities include the following:

• Team places to allow groups of end users to share information

• Templates for the quick creation of new team places

• Document and content library management services

• Integration with Enterprise Content Management services

• Connectors to provide desktop integration with existing productivity tools

Beyond the preceding list, is a set of various other features to meet the needs of a collaborative work environment such as calendaring, task management, and so on. Additionally, Lotus Quickr can be viewed as a solution, a platform allowing customers to define and address business challenges either directly or with a range of extendable development services.

How business can be supported by network applications

2011-11-21T22:33:00.001-08:00

Stated in general terms, networks support businesses and other organizations in all types of functions. These functions fall into the following major categories discussed below;

Discovery

The Internet enables users to access information located in databases all over the world. By browsing and searching data sources on the Web, users can apply the Internet’s discovery capability to areas ranging from education to government services to entertainment to commerce. Although having access to all this information is a great benefit, it is critically important to realize that there is no quality assurance on information on the Web. The Web is truly democratic in that anyone can post information to it.

For example, anyone can edit a Wikipedia page (with some exceptions in controversial areas). Therefore, the fundamental rule about information on the Web is: User Beware! In addition, the Web’s major strength—the vast stores of information it contains—also presents a major challenge. The amount of information on the Web can be overwhelming, and it doubles approximately each year. As a result, navigating through the Web and gaining access to necessary information are becoming more and more difficult. To accomplish these tasks, people increasingly are using search engines, directories, and portals.

Search Engines and Metasearch Engines.

A search engine is a computer program that searches for specific information by key words and reports the results. A search engine maintains an index of billions of Web pages. It uses that index to find pages that match a set of user specified keywords. Such indexes are created and updated by webcrawlers, which are computer programs that browse the Web and create a copy of all visited pages. Search engines then index these pages to provide fast searches. People actually use four main search engines for almost all their searches: Google (www.google.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), Microsoft Network (www.msn.com), and Ask (www.ask.com). However, there are an incredible number of other search engines that are quite useful, and many perform very specific searches.

Portals.

Most organizations and their managers encounter information overload. Information is scattered across numerous documents, e-mail messages, and databases at different locations and systems. Finding relevant and accurate information is often time-consuming and may require users to access multiple systems. One solution to this problem is to use portals. A portal is a Web-based, personalized gateway to information and knowledge that provides relevant information from different IT systems and the Internet using advanced search and indexing techniques.

Commercial (public) portals are the most popular portals on the Internet. They are intended for broad and diverse audiences, and they offer fairly routine content, some in real time (for example, a stock ticker). Examples are Lycos (www.lycos.com) and Microsoft Network (www.msn.com).

As their name suggests, corporate portals offer a personalized single point of access through

a Web browser to critical business information located inside and outside an organization. These portals are also known as enterprise portals, information portals, or enterprise information portals. In addition to making it easier to find needed information, corporate portals offer customers and employees self-service opportunities. The illustration below provides a framework for corporate portals.

Communication

The second major category of network applications is communication. There are many types of communications, including e-mail, call centers, chat rooms, and voice.

Electronic Mail. Electronic mail (e-mail) is the largest-volume application running over the Internet. Studies have found that almost 90 percent of companies conduct business transactions via e-mail, and nearly 70 percent confirm that e-mail is tied to their means of generating revenue. In fact, for many users, e-mail has all but replaced the telephone.

Web-Based Call Centers. Effective personalized customer contact is becoming an important aspect of Web-based customer support. Such service is provided through Web-based call centers, also known as customer care centers. For example, if you need to contact a software vendor for technical support, you will usually be communicating with the vendor’s Web-based call center, using e-mail, a telephone conversation, or a simultaneous voice/Web session. Web-based call centers are sometimes located in foreign countries such as India.

Electronic Chat Rooms. Electronic chat refers to an arrangement in which participants exchange conversational messages in real time. A chat roomis a virtual meeting place where groups of regulars come to “gab.” Chat programs allow you to send messages to people who are connected to the same channel of communication at the same time. Anyone can join in the online conversation. Messages are displayed on your screen as they arrive, even if you are in the middle of typing a message.

There are two major types of chat programs. The first type is a Web-based chat program, which allows you to send messages to Internet users by using a Web browser and visiting a Web chat site (for example, http://chat.yahoo.com). The second type is an e-mail–based (text-only) program called Internet Relay Chat (IRC). A business can use IRC to interact with customers, provide online experts’ answers to questions, and so on.

Voice Communication. When people need to communicate with one another from a distance, they use the telephone more frequently than any other communication device. With the plain old telephone service (POTS), every call opened up a dedicated circuit for the duration of the call. (A dedicated circuit connects you to the person with whom you are talking and is devoted only to your call.). In contrast, the Internet divides data into packets, which traverse the Internet in random order and are reassembled at their destination.

With Internet telephony, also known as voice-over Internet protocol or VoIP, phone calls are treated as just another kind of data. That is, your analog voice signals are digitized, sectioned into packets, and then sent over the Internet. VoIP significantly reduces your monthly phone bills. In the past, to utilize VoIP, you needed a computer with a sound card and a microphone.

However, today you do not need special phones or headsets for your computer. Skype (www.skype.com) provides several free voice-over IP services: voice and video calls to users who also have Skype, instant messaging, short message service, voicemail, one-to-one and group chats, and conference calls with up to nine people.

Unified Communications. In the past, organizational networks for wired and wireless data, voice communications, and videoconferencing operated independently, and the IT department managed each separately. This situation led to higher costs and lower productivity. Unified communications (UC) simplifies and integrates all forms of communications—voice, voice mail, fax, chat, e-mail, instant messaging, short message service, presence (location) services, and videoconferencing—on a common hardware and software platform. Presence services enable users to know where their intended recipients are and if they are available in real time.UC unifies all forms of human and computer communications into a common user experience. For example, UC allows an individual to receive a voice-mail message and then read it in his e-mail inbox. In another example, UC enables users to seamlessly collaborate with another person on a project, regardless of where the users are located. One user could quickly locate the other user by accessing an interactive directory, determine if that user were available, engage in a text messaging session, and then escalate the session to a voice call or even a video call, all in real time.

Moving from Microsoft Exchange Environment to Google Apps

2011-11-21T05:37:00.001-08:00

A number of ways are available for uploading data from an existing mail system to Google Apps. This article highlights the tools available for migrating from Microsoft exchange to google apps.

The migration of data from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps can be performed by an administrator or, alternatively, by users themselves. The administrators' tools perform batch processes. Users' tools on the other hand, can only upload data for one user at a time, namely the data of the user actually running the tool. For administrators, the standard tool for mail migration is Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange.

On the user side, the most complete tool remains Google Apps Sync for Microsoft. There are alternative solutions too, such as Google Email Uploader or Mail Fetcher.

Administrator tools

The solution developed by Google that allows migration from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps is named Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange.

The tool installs on the desktop of an Exchange administrator and is used as follows:

· Fetch the list of users to migrate by importing a CSV file containing the appropriate information

· Use the administrator's credentials to access the content of the Exchange server for each of the users defined in the CSV file

· Fetch the messages, contacts, and calendar events, as requested

· Convert the messages to the MIME format and upload the message to the associated Google account via HTTP

It is worthy of note that the process handles several accounts simultaneously and that the data is imported into the account from the most recent to the oldest item.

The illustration below shows the working principle for Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange

User tools

There are several applications that allow the migration of messages directly from a Microsoft Exchange mail system to Gmail:

· Google Apps Sync: This is the preferred tool when users are performing the migration. However, it requires Microsoft Outlook version 2003 or later, on which it installs as a plugin. The tool performs the migration of messages, calendar events, and contacts in one shot. It is able to extract data both from the local archive (.pst file) and from the Exchange server. Provided users download the plugin themselves, the workload for the administrator will remain very limited. The solution also offers the possibility to keep Outlook as the mail client and guarantees a thorough synchronization with the Google suite. with attachments larger than 20 Mb are not taken into account, importing journal entries, and Outlook tasks are, so far, not supported.

· Google Email Uploader is the preferred tool in those cases not covered by Google Apps Sync, especially if the version of Outlook is old or when only another mail client, such as Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird, is used. However, situations where an Exchange mail server is used but Outlook is unavailable on the user desktop are rather uncommon. This tool handles the importation of messages into Google. The tool runs on the user desktop and also handles the contacts and preserves folder structure. Let us note that the tool is Open Source (Apache 2.0 Open-Source Software license).

· Google Mail Fetcher is a minimal fallback solution that exploits the standard and most basic mail protocol, namely: POP. This protocol is supported by any current mail solution and could thus be useful when Exchange is not used.

Computer Actions to Prevent Malware Infections

2011-11-21T04:58:00.001-08:00

Many of the actions discussed in this article are common sense, but surprisingly large numbers of people do not pay attention to them. Taking these steps will help you prevent a malware infection of your computer system.

Test Your System.

It is a good idea to test your system. Several Web sites provide free security tests. These tests send different types of messages to your computer to evaluate how well your system is protected from a variety of attacks. Free testing Web sites include: HackerWhacker (www.hackerwhacker.com), Shields Up! (www.grc.com), Symantec Security Check (http://security.norton. com), McAfee MySecurity Status (http://us.mcafee.com/MySecurityStatus/), and AuditMyPC (www.auditmypc.com). Microsoft provides a scanning tool called the Microsoft Baseline Analyzer. This useful tool scans Windows-based computers for common security problems and generates individual security reports for each computer that it scans. The Baseline Analyzer is a free download available at this Web site: www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/mbsa2/default.mspx

You can also run free malware scans on your computer. Several companies will scan your computer to identify viruses, worms, and other malware, and also offer suggestions about how to clean your system if it is infected. These companies include:

• Trend Micro

• McAfee

• Panda Software

Install a Security Suite on Your Computer. Security suites are software packages that contain a variety of security products, such as anti-malware software, spam protection, e-mail fraud protection, spyware detection, intrusion detection, monitoring software, and others. As you can see, these suites provide a great deal of functionality in one package. There is a question whether the individual functions in a security suite can match the combined functions of a group of individual products. Therefore, we discuss individual products in the next sections. Well-known security suites include the following, but there are many others:

• ZoneAlarm Security Suite (www.zonelabs.com)

• McAfee Internet Security Suite (www.mcafee.com)

• Norton Internet Security (www.symantec.com)

• PC-cillin Internet Security (www.trendmicro.com)

Install an Anti-Malware Product on Your Computer.

You should install an anti-malware product on your computer and use it, ideally at least once per week. Remember that every time you scan your computer for malware with your anti-malware product, you must update your malware definitions before you scan. Typically, anti-malware product vendors automatically update your malware definitions over the Web. There are free anti-malware products and commercial anti-malware products. In general, the free products are adequate, but the commercial products offer more functionality. Thefreecountry.com is an excellent resource offering a great deal of information on free anti-malware products, as well as many other security products. For free anti-malware products, see www.thefreecountry.com/security/antivirus.shtml. Well-known commercial anti-malware products include the following, but there are many others: Norton Anti-malware (www.symantec.com),

PC-cillin (www.trendmicro.com), and VirusScan (www.mcafee.com).

Install a Firewall on Your Computer.

A personal firewall is software installed on your home computer that controls communications to and from your computer by permitting or denying communications based on your security settings. A personal firewall will not usually protect any more than the computer on which the software is installed. Nevertheless, firewalls perform essential functions. Essentially, firewalls should make your computer invisible. This means that your firewall should not respond to Internet requests to ports—that is, communications links to your computer—that are not used for common Internet use. In effect, your computer operates in stealth mode on the Internet. Firewalls also should alert you to suspicious behavior. They should tell you when a program or connection is attempting to do something unwanted, such as download software or run a program such as ActiveX. ActiveX (by Microsoft), which can execute programs downloaded from Internet Explorer, can be exploited by attackers trying to compromise your computer. Finally, firewalls should block outbound connections that you do not initiate. Your firewall should not let your computer access the Internet on its own. If your computer tries to access the Internet by itself, this is a sure sign that it is infected with malware. As with anti-malware programs, there are both free firewall products and commercial firewall products. Again, the free products are adequate, but the commercial products offer more functionality.

It is a good idea to test your firewall. However, it is best to use only those Web sites that are run by actual firewall or security software companies. A good firewall test site is the McAfee Hackerwatch site at www.hackerwatch.org/probe/. The Hackerwatch site allows you to do a basic probe test on your computer to see if your firewall is blocking ports that may be vulnerable.

Install an Antispyware Product on Your Computer.

As with anti-malware products and firewalls, free antispyware products are adequate, but commercial antispyware products offer more functionality. Free antispyware products include Ad-Aware SE Personal (www.lavasoft.com) and Spybot Search&Destroy (www.safer-networking.org). Well-known commercial antispyware products include the following, but there are many others: CounterSpy (www.sunbeltsoftware.com), Spy Sweeper (www.webroot.com), Ad-Aware (www.lavasoft.com), SpyCatcher (www.tenebril.com), and Spyware Eliminator (www.aluriasoftware.com). Several companies offer free spyware scans. Take a look at Spy Audit (www.webroot.com), Zonelabs (www.zonelabs.com), and Norton (www.symantec.com).

Install Monitoring Software on Your Computer.

Monitoring software logs keystrokes, emails, applications, windows, Web sites, Internet connections, passwords, chat conversations, Web cams, and even screenshots. Companies that offer monitoring software include SpyAgent (www.spytech-web.com), SpyBuddy (www.exploreanywhere.com), WinSpy (www.win-spy.com), and SpectorSoft www.spectorsoft.com).

Install Content Filtering Software on Your Computer.

Content filtering software performs many functions. It can block access to undesirable Web sites, and record and view all Web sites visited. It can also record both sides of chat conversations from AOL Instant Messenger (AIM and AIM Triton), Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger. This software provides many filter categories, enabling you to selectively filter content. Companies that offer content filtering software include Cybersitter (www.cybersitter.com), NetNanny (www.netnanny.com), and CyberSpy (www.cyberspyware.com). In addition, a free content filtering software product may be found at www.we-blocker.com. Internet Explorer’s Content Advisor utility allows you to block access to Web sites that meet specified criteria and to set your own tolerance levels for various types of Internet content.

Install Antispam Software on Your Computer.

Antispam software helps you to control spam. Well-known commercial antispam products include the following, but there are many others:

• Cloudmark (www.cloudmark.com)

• MailFrontier Desktop (www.mailfrontier.com)

• SpamKiller (www.mcafee.com)

• Norton Antispam (www.symantec.com)

• SpamGourmet (www.spamgourmet.com)

• SpamAssassin (http://spamassassin.apache.org/)

You might also want to set up multiple free e-mail accounts, such as accounts on hotmail and gmail. Then, as you surf the Internet and are asked for your e-mail address, you use one of these accounts and not your home or business e-mail account. When your free e-mail accounts are full of spam, you can close them and open new accounts.

Install Proactive Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software on Your Computer.

As we have discussed, anti-malware software is reactive in nature, leaving you vulnerable to zeroday attacks. For this reason, it is important to add proactive intrusion detection and prevention software to your defenses. One such product is Prevx www.prevx.com). You can download and install Prevx for free, and it will scan your computer for malicious software. If it finds any, it will activate a free 30-day clean-up account and remove the malware from your computer. Once this period runs out, Prevx will continue to scan incoming programs and protect your computer from them. However, if you subsequently get infected and want to continue using Prevx, you must pay for one year of protection.

Use an Operating System Other Than Windows. The two main alternatives to Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 are Apple’s Mac OS X and Linux. These two operating systems are not invulnerable but they are both based on UNIX, which makes them inherently more secure than any version of Windows. (UNIX is an operating system developed by AT&T in the 1960s and 1970s that usually

runs on servers rather than desktops.) In addition, Linux and Mac OS X have much smaller market shares than Windows and thus are less attractive targets for malware.

Use a Browser Other Than Internet Explorer.

You might want to use a browser other than Internet Explorer, such as Firefox (www.mozilla.org), Opera (www.opera.com), or Safari from Apple (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/). These browsers are not impregnable, but they are less prominent and hackers, at least so far, have paid less attention to them. Even if you decide to use a browser other than Internet Explorer, however, you should still implement all of the security measures discussed. You should also keep your browser updated. For browser updates of Internet Explorer 6, see this site: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/downloads/default.mspx.

Manage Patches.

You should download and install all patches immediately (for example, patches for Windows). Software patches are typically released to repair security problems. As soon as patches are announced and released, hackers use zero-day attacks to exploit them before unwary users react. Therefore, if you do not download and install patches quickly, your computer will be extremely vulnerable to attack. Microsoft provides an automatic method that checks for, and downloads, any new patches.

Strategies for Acquiring IT Applications

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Organizations must analyze the need for applications and then justify each application in terms of cost and benefits. The need for information systems is usually related to organizational planning and to the analysis of its performance vis-à-vis its competitors. The cost-benefit justification must look at the wisdom of investing in a specific IT application versus spending the funds on alternative projects. If a company has successfully justified an IT investment, it must then decide how to pursue it. Companies have several options for acquiring IT applications. Six common options are to (1) buy the applications, (2) lease them, (3) use open-source software, (4) use software-as-a-service, (5) outsource them, and (6) develop them in-house.

Buy the Applications (Off-the-Shelf Approach)

The standard features required by IT applications can be found in many commercial software packages. Buying an existing package can be a cost-effective and time-saving strategy compared with developing the application in-house. Nevertheless, a company should carefully consider and plan the buy option to ensure that the selected package contains all of the features necessary to address the company’s current and future needs. Otherwise these packages can quickly become obsolete. Before a company can perform this process, it must decide which features a selected package must have to be suitable. In reality, a single software package can rarely satisfy all of an organization’s needs. For this reason a company sometimes must purchase multiple packages to fulfill different needs. It then must integrate these packages with one another as well as with its existing software. The buy option is especially attractive if the software vendor allows the company to modify the technology to meet its needs. However, this option may not be attractive in cases where customization is the only method of providing the necessary flexibility to address the company’s needs. It also is not the best strategy when the software is either very expensive or is likely to become obsolete in a short time.

Lease the Applications

Compared with the buy option and the option to develop applications in-house, the “lease” option can save a company both time and money. Of course, leased packages (like purchased packages) may not exactly fit the company’s application requirements. However, vendor software generally includes the features that are most commonly needed by organizations in a given industry. Again, the company will decide which features are necessary. It is common for interested companies to apply the 80/20 rule when evaluating vendor software. Put simply, if the software meets 80 percent of the company’s needs, then the company should seriously consider changing its business processes so it can utilize the remaining 20 percent. Many times this is a better long-term solution than modifying the vendor software. Otherwise, the company will have to customize the software every time the vendor releases an updated version.

Leasing can be especially attractive to small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that cannot

afford major investments in IT software. Large companies may also prefer to lease packages in order to test potential IT solutions before committing to heavy investments. Also, a company with a shortage of IT personnel with appropriate skills for developing custom IT applications may choose to lease instead of developing software in-house. Even those companies that employ in-house experts may not be able to afford the long wait for strategic applications to be developed in-house. Therefore, they lease (or buy) applications from external resources to establish a quicker presence in the market. Leasing can be done in one of three ways. The first way is to lease the application from a software developer and install it on the company’s premises. The vendor can help with the installation and frequently will offer to contract for the support and maintenance of the system. Many conventional applications are leased this way. The second way is to use an application service provider (ASP). The third way is to utilize software-as-a-service.

An application service provider is an agent or a vendor who assembles the software needed by enterprises and packages the software with services such as development, operations, and maintenance. The customer then accesses these applications via the Internet.

Software-as-a-Service

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a method of delivering software in which a vendor hosts the applications and provides them as a service to customers over a network, typically the Internet. Customers do not own the software, rather, they pay for using it. SaaS makes it unnecessary for customers to install and run the application on their own computers. Therefore, SaaS customers save the expense (money, time, IT staff) of buying, operating, and maintaining the software. For example, Salesforce (www.salesforce. com), a well-known SaaS provider for customer relationship management software solutions, provides these advantages for its customers.

Use Open-Source Software

Organizations can use open-source software to develop applications in-house. Organizations obtain a license to employ an open-source software product and either use it as is, or customize it, to develop applications.

Outsourcing

Small or medium-sized companies with few IT staff and limited budgets are best served by outside contractors. Acquiring IT applications from outside contractors or external organizations is called outsourcing. Large companies may also choose this strategy in certain circumstances. For example, they might want to experiment with new IT technologies without making a substantial up-front investment. They also might use outsourcing to protect their internal networks and to gain access to outside experts. One disadvantage of outsourcing is that a company’s valuable corporate data may be under the control of the outsourcing vendor.

Develop the Applications In-House

A third development strategy is to build applications in-house. Although this approach is usually more time-consuming and more costly than buying or leasing, it often results in a better fit with the organization’s specific requirements. In-house development can make use of various methodologies. The basic, backbone methodology is the systems development life cycle (SDLC).

Protecting Your Portable Devices and Information

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Theft or loss of laptops, notebook computers, personal digital assistants, Blackberrys, and thumb drives, as well as the data on these devices, is a significant problem. There are many proactive steps that you can take to protect portable devices and the data on them, including: prevent the theft, use two-factor authentication, and encrypt your data. You can also take reactive steps after a theft or loss.

Before discussing these steps, there are two common-sense precautions that many people forget. First, keep your laptop in an inconspicuous container. Laptop cases with your company logo simply draw the attention of thieves. Second, do not leave your laptop unattended in plain view (for example, leaving it in your car where it can be seen). You should lock it in the trunk. To prevent theft of a portable device, you can use alarms. Laptop security systems operate by detecting motion, analyzing it to determine whether a threat exists, and implementing responses. They are battery-powered, they are independent of the computer operating system, and they operate whether the laptop is on or off. If a laptop armed with a security system is carried beyond a perimeter specified by the user, the alarm assumes the laptop is being stolen. It can then prevent access to the operating system, secure passwords and encryption keys, and sound an audible alarm. One company that provides laptop security systems is Caveo (www.caveo.com).

Two-factor authentication means that you must have two forms of identification to access your laptop or notebook. The first authentication factor uses a token or biometrics. The second factor is your personal password. A token generates a one-time password that you must enter within a specified time limit. This password typically consists of six digits, which appear on the token’s LCD screen. Companies offering tokens for two-factor authentication include Authenex (www.authenex.com), Kensington (www.kensington.com), and SecuriKey (www.securikey.com).

Fingerprints are the biometric used for two-factor authentication, by incorporating fingerprint

readers into the laptop itself. See IBM (www.ibm.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com). You can also use fingerprint authentication on your thumb drive with the SanDisk Cruzer (www.sandisk.com), the Lexar JumpDrive TouchGuard (www.lexar.com), the Sony MicroVault (www.sony.net), and the Kanguru Bio Slider (www.kanguru.com). Data encryption provides additional protection by turning data into meaningless symbols, decipherable only by an authorized person.

Beachhead Solutions (www.beachheadsolutions.com) and Credant (www.credant.com) also provide applications that allow you to encrypt files and folders. Another step you can take to improve your security is to encrypt your entire hard drive, including your applications. See Pointsec (www.pointsec.com), Mobile Armor (www.mobilearmor.com), SafeBoot www.safeboot.com), the Kanguru Wizard (www.kanguru.com), and the PCKey (www.kensington.com). If your laptop is lost or stolen, you can use laptop tracing tools or device reset/remote kill tools. For example, the XTool Computer Tracker (www.computersecurity.com), PC PhoneHome (www.pcphonehome.com), and LaptopLocate (www.laptoplocate.net) provide transmitters that secretly send a signal to their respective company control centers via telephone or the Internet. This signal enables the company, with the help of the local authorities, Internet service providers, and telephone companies, to track your computer’s location.

You can also use device reset/remote kill tools to automatically eliminate specified data on a lost or stolen laptop to prevent it from being compromised or misused. The solution works even when other security software or encryption methods fail. Examples of companies providing these solutions are Trust Digital (www.trustdigital.com), Intellisync (www.intellisync.com), and Beachhead Solutions (www.beachheadsolutions.com).