The tough economy is taking its toll on small businesses and organizations and many are still using old hardware and operating systems simply because they cannot keep up with the high cost of licensing, or the perpetual upgrade fees.
Believe it or not, some organizations are still using Windows NT 4 Servers and Windows 98 desktops. A few are still on Exchange Server 5.5 and a lot of print shops are tied to the Novell Netware and Solaris systems their vendors installed decades ago.
For the cash-strapped small organization, there are a few options provided by the open source community that they may not be aware of. What makes these options even better is that unlike the scary days of command-line only access for system management, most of these systems can be managed via a web browser.
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As more companies with national security interests come forward with admission of breaches related to the hacking of RSA’s SecurID technology, one wonders if it is time for RSA to break its stubborn refusal to tell the public what exactly was stolen or when the breach actually occurred. At this stage, it is not just enough to tell the public that it had been hit by a phishing email exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader.
Most companies provide their senior executives with laptops or netbooks and tablets so they can be productive even when on the road. This is even more true of corporates executives who sometimes demand anytime, anywhere access to data residing on corporate servers. The big corporations can afford to spend millions of dollars on data protection hardware and software.
The same cannot be said of executives in small and medium-sized organizations, especially when it comes to loss of personal information, including credit card data, patient records or other financial information, stored by the company. Data breaches happen and information is lost every day due to small mistakes that could have been avoided. For small businesses, these events can be devastating.
Have you ever tried to sign up for a “free” webinar only to be bombarded with a five-page interrogation sheet that asks you for all kinds of information that you find yourself saying “I just wanted to watch a presentation”? Did you come across a report or whitepaper you wanted to look at only to end up spending two to three minutes taking an exam and then the “report” turns out to be a two-page sales sheet? How about that eBook you saw and thought would be a good read until you were made to fill out a police report on why you are trying to get educated?
This issue has bothered me for quite some time. It is the practice of vendors, publishers and everyone in between offering “free” software, whitepaper, Mp3s, “special” reports and useless one-page drivel that makes you want to do some harm to the producers of such garbage in exchange for your personal information.
Posted in Email and Spam Ethics Featured Regulations Web Technology by .
This is truly the age of information at your fingertips and most users may not even be aware of the vast array of tools available on the Internet – from tutorials on paper and video to easy to use applications that can do everything, even make coffee.
Most home users or even business users without dedicated IT support usually find themselves calling technical support or local providers of support services for computer problems they can easily fix themselves if they take a minute to get online and search for answers.
Posted in Cloud Computing Featured Operating Systems Small Business Training Web Technology by .
Backing up critical corporate data is important, especially for small business owners. Learn what is involved and needed to analyze your backup needs and engineer a cost-effective way to protect your data.
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