Solutions

The growth in capacity of the Internet is changing the way we communicate and do business with customers and suppliers. The days of web pages being pure static advertisements have gone. Users expect to search and interrogate web pages as a rapid alterative to telephone, fax or letter. Bringing the business database to web pages in a controlled secure manner brings businesses closer together. We can help your business get closer to your customers.

Microsoft, UNIX, Linux, Macintosh, Novell are but a few of the many server operating systems available. Dependent upon the business marketplace one may be more prevalent than another. The choice or availability of application software may preclude one against another. To us there is no one system that is "the best". Each offers advantages and disadvantages. Our role is to bring these forward with the best unbiased advice.

The choice of business application software may depend upon many factors including: industry preference, hardware, legacy purchases, cost and anticipated business growth. Businesses are made up of complex components called people. They are in various locations often on the move, with diverse skills and priorities. Add to this preferences for favoured departmental applications, makes the whole subject of integrating business applications very difficult. Building a map of all these factors as they apply to your business, extracting key functionality and benefits, is part of our skill set.

The growth in capacity of the Internet is changing the way we communicate and do business with customers and suppliers. The days of using web pages as a pure static advertisements has gone. Users expect to search and interrogate web pages as a rapid alterative to telephone, fax or letter. Bringing the business application database to web pages in a controlled secure manner is bring businesses closer together. We can help your business get closer to your customers.

The growth in the availability of low cost laptop, palm and handheld devices that are packet with functionality such as data storage, cameras, touch screens, etc. Coupled with increasingly low cost cellular radio capacity, makes doing business away from the office a practical reality. Integrating your business database with secure web pages, adds to the possibilities of doing business on the move.

Whilst information technology enables businesses to achieve more than ever before, it also brings opportunity for the unscrupulous and the malicious. Protecting your business information systems and communications infrastructure from the uninvited is a specialist discipline built into our thinking.

IT Security can be broken down into 4 areas in order of risk:

1          Employees and Users

2          Virus and Malicious Software

3          Network Intrusion

4          Eaves dropping, Line tapping and Sniffing

Employees and Users

By far the greatest cause of security compromise is behaviour, naivety and misuse of systems by users. Training and enforcement are the tools available to the business to educate staff and users to the vulnerabilities they represent to the business.

A short course to the techniques used by the unscrupulous to infiltrate the business to build awareness and good practice. These should be backed up by enforcement through contracts of employment.

It is very important for the business to be aware of some issues that might arise from their employees, workers or external contractors of the harm that can be done to their computer equipment.  Users of computers who have access to the internet or external devices have the ability to access internal information and to access external mediums that could affect your business.  Here are just a few examples:

Employees could access external websites such as social networking sites and blogging sites.  Consequently they could be posting information that is derogatory to the Company and therefore a proper email and internet policy is advisable.

Employees could access external websites and download information from them which may harm your network, for example innocently downloading a virus via an email attachment.  It is therefore important to restrict access to certain sites or to bring to the attention of the user that such access will be a disciplinary offence.  Displaying a policy on this could be kept on the desk top and regular email or memo reminders should be sent to staff.

Use of external devices such as USB memory sticks, CDs etc, must be prohibited or have restricted use.  Again, the use of such devices may mean an employee downloads information from an external device without knowing a virus is attached, or the act may be deliberate.  It is advisable to have an external device checked before it is introduced to the system or have a complete ban.

*From the outset of employment it is important to ensure that restrictions are included in their contracts of employment to prevent staff from stealing company information.  Company information may take the form of electronic data, including confidential proprietary information, supplier and customer lists. Drafting restrictive covenants is not easy, if the restrictions are too tight, then they may not be enforced, meaning you cannot rely on them.  It is advisable to take legal advice in these situations.

Furthermore use of online shopping sites during work hours should also be prohibited or restricted to say 1 hour during the lunch break.

Virus and Malicious Software

Viruses are pieces of active software code designed to modify the business system in some way; many and various. They are carried within or attached to normal legitimate software programs or media. Often they are carried by the innocent email, screen saver or game with the usual enticement of being free.

To combat these is the use and regular update of proprietary antivirus software. In addition, these should be checked and monitored regularly to ensure there good performance.

As many of these forms of attack enter the business network via email, email washing by an external supplier improves security by removing this form of attack before it enters the business network.

Network Intrusion

The business network Internet connection creates this form of vulnerability. The unscrupulous will attack the business network interface to test it defences and attempt to infiltrate and place malicious code inside the network.

The use of good quality correctly set up and maintained firewalls, reduces this risk. In addition, the software used to interact with and carry traffic through the firewall, should be proprietary, tested and approved to ensure these do not carry weaknesses creating open opportunities.

Eaves dropping, Line tapping and Sniffing

This form of security risk involves the unscrupulous listening in upon the business external network traffic and extracting data. For most business this form of security risk can almost be ignored, as most businesses do not transmit information of sufficient value to warrant this from of attack. This is the realm of the well resourced and highly trained IT engineer. However, this form of security vulnerability can be exploited from anywhere in the world.

**Where a risk is considered to exist IP tunnelling and encryption should used.

* The ICT Practice partner Vicky Edwards specialises in Employment Law and Contracts of Employment. If you wish to know more about drafting effective employment contracts please contact us.

**The ICT Practice partner Tirath Rai is accredited to NATO and has experience in testing and probing business network for data transmission vulnerabilities.

Bottom of this list, but top of ours. The proper management of a project with many contributors is essential if it is to be a success and our high levels of customer satisfaction is to be maintained.

Low Energy, Low Cost Solutions for Schools and Call Centres

One of the unfortunate effects of modern multi-core high performance PCs, is the rapidly increasing amount energy they consume. It is also true that the average PC spends up to 80% of its capacity and processing time in antivirus and other security related activities. This leads us to consider whether it is necessary for every office worker or school student to require such powerful machines to run comparatively small computer tasks.

Our brief for The Rosary Catholic Primary School, Birmingham, was to create an IT suite for 30 pupils with low energy use on a small budget. Following a study of the software in use, we installed a thin client solution using micro PCs mounted on standard multi media monitors. These where connected to a small entry level dual processor (8 cores) server running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Remote Desktop Services. Key to the solution was not in the server but in the use of free open source software to boot and run the 30 remote desktop connections. For this we chose a product called “Thinstation” available from www.thinstation.org. This has the advantage of not requiring a client operating system like Windows 7 or XP, as it contains the ability to boot from the network adapter or PXE from the server.

The result:

1          30 low energy client workstations using a fifth of the electricity of standard PCs.

2          Low cost of hardware

3          No cost in client operating systems

4          Low maintenance costs. Micro PCs running Thinstation require no hard drive, cooling fans and without operating system there’s little to infect or corrupt.

5          But the feature the teachers liked the most was the single switch on the wall. One touch and all the 30 machines turn on and are ready for use instantly.

Other Energy Saving Solutions for Work Groups

In locations where several PC users are working in close proximity, and particularly where their work entails light processor work as for example call centres, school classrooms, or office administration functions, consider using a shared PC. This is where up to 6 users, each with a separate screen, keyboard and mouse, can use the power of the modern PC in up to 6 separate sessions. This solution drastically reduces energy consumption by using one PC where 6 would have been. The solution called SoftExpand uses the WinLogon application within Microsoft XP to create up to 6 simultaneous user sessions each independent and without interference from other users.

Energy Saving Tips

Over the past 5 years machine average power requirements have almost doubled from 300w to 550w. Dual, Quad and 6 core processors with large RAM requirements, hard disc size and display sizes have increased almost exponentially to create the modern high performance but power hungry machine.

From a user’s perspective, tight controlled use of the operating system power saving tools is all important. Here, there are normally 4 elements which can be used to conserve power. These can be described in order of saving. A controlling factor in the use of these is the amount of time required to recover to full machine working:

1          Display brightness. Moderate the settings of the brightness and contrast setting to the minimum comfortable setting. Where available by the operation system, allow the screen to dim after a reasonably short period of time.

2          Screen Saver. Modern LCD or plasma monitors do not require screen saver, these was a requirement of Cathode Ray Tube heavy glass tube monitors. Using a screen saver has only a small effect on power consumption.

3          Display standby. Set the operating system power setting to go to monitor standby which will turn off the monitor back light. This is power efficient and quick to recover to a work machine. This should be done if the machine is left unattended for 5 minutes.

4          PC sleep modes. In most PC and laptop operating systems there are for levels of sleep. These are described as sleep states as:

S1 = Basic Standby (Shallow sleep). Typically wakes up in no more than two seconds 

S2 = Less power consumption than S1 and greater than in S3. Wake up is usually two seconds or slightly more.

S3 = Less power consumption than in S2. Wake up time is the same as S2.

These by degree reduce processor activity, store the RAM cache to hard drive, stop the hard drive from spinning and power down to hibernation.

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