When employees are properly trained, they are more efficient and productive in their daily tasks. If employees know what is expected from them on a daily basis, they will be both happier and better at their jobs. With proper training, new employees can hit the ground running and produce results immediately. This will lead to the meeting of quarterly and annual budgets, increased revenues across the board, and less time spent on additional training. Continue Reading»

Studies show that more than 94% of Fortune 500 and a rapidly increasing share of SMBs are using iPads, making the device a critical platform for decision-making among executives. As  corporations continue to see tablet and smartphones as business tools and a source of potential business advantage in the form of improved customer engagement, adoption of Mobile Apps in the enterprise will accelerate. Continue Reading»

BYOD increases the enterprises security risk. The increased risk is created in four areas. First area is caused by employees downloading insecure applications or rogue applications that can leak data from real business application. Second, with carriers moving away from unlimited data plans, more people are connecting by Wi-Fi connections. These connections can be insecure allowing the bad guys to capture information being sent from the mobile device. Third, BYOD devices need to be protected if stolen. Devices contain local data storage can expose proprietary/sensitive information. Last, BYOD devices might not be patched properly created by bad user habits. Improperly patched systems can leave security exposure’s that could be exploited. Continue Reading»

To prevent employees from using their own consumer mobile applications, the first step is to eliminate the need for users to turn elsewhere. That means providing a mandatory alternative that allows individuals to easily share and access files and that allows IT to know what’s being shared, where data is stored, and that corporate data is indeed secure. But, rolling out a new enterprise solution isn’t always met with employees’ cheers. Any file sharing solution of choice has to be easy to use or employees simply won’t use it. Continue Reading»

Most power protection systems for virtualized server environments come with their own command console. As a result, technicians must use one tool for virtualization management and a separate one for power management, weakening their productivity and delaying their response time during utility failures. While server virtualization software vendors offer “live migration” products that can transfer virtual machines from one host server to another for load balancing purposes or when the original server experiences operational problems or requires maintenance, none of those systems include built-in functionality for responding to power outages. Continue Reading»

CEOs today must invest in their employees, as they are the engines that drive the growth of the company. I advocate being more open and more trusting of your employees. Be visible to them, give them the authority to make decisions and don’t micromanage. Help to guide them into the career that they envision and foster employee initiatives that have a positive impact on their community. This kind of model fosters teamwork, and to be successful, you have to work together, because no matter how much you may want to, you can’t do everything yourself. Continue Reading»

As mobile devices proliferate, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has been another large trend that has affected enterprise mobility. Companies, of course, see the benefits of having employees connected while on-the-go, but are working to resolve security and compatibility challenges that arise from having employees introduce a multitude of different devices and operating systems to the corporate network. From a communications standpoint, too, it’s important that corporate content can render correctly on all the different devices accessing it. Continue Reading»

End-users are empowered to a greater extent than ever thanks to the consumerization of IT. It used to be that IT departments drove the type and timing of end-user technology resources. However, as technology changed people’s everyday lives outside of the office - where we’re now used to getting the products and services we want instantly, and often self-provision them online - workers have come to expect the same level of responsiveness while at the office. They see no reason not to get that level, even in the face of increasingly complex corporate application environments. Continue Reading»

The list of anonymizer sites and circumvention tools is ever increasing, and the tools are continually evolving to avoid detection and filtering. Funding from government entities and charitable political organizations for tools that bypass government censorship result in sophisticated and readily available software and methods for evading web security. For example, Ultrasurf is an application that allows the users to encrypt their traffic to hide it from detection and can be run from a thumbdrive without being installed on their workstation. Continue Reading»

Leverage Technology to effectively compete with the largest competitors in a global marketplace. For example, utilizing SYSPRO’s powerful breakthrough framework, “Quantum Architecture” mid-market manufacturers and distributors are able to solve problems that have plagued ERP solutions for years and that have often crippled the ability of mid-size businesses to compete effectively. Continue Reading»

If you don’t need to buy, replace, maintain warrant and license software and hardware to enable the delivery of content around a global organization, you can accomplish the business and compliance goals in less time, enabling more productive workers, and for much less money – get the job done, get it done right, fast and without added costs to do it. Continue Reading»

CIOs would benefit from recognizing that BPM can grow organically across an enterprise, driven by business need, available budget, and technical maturity. The familiar top-down initiatives required to push CRM, ERP, and other big-ticket corporate solutions are unnecessary—even counterproductive - when it comes to BPM. By enabling business units to determine when they are ready for BPM (and then assisting them to adopt the technology), the CIO can keep costs contained and score some early victories. Continue Reading»

Typically organizations perform a “point in time” check of their security and compliance requirements and then fix whatever problems they find at that time. Innovative IT performs programmatic assessments that look at the processes and governance of your organization to determine if those “point in time” checks are being maintained throughout daily operations. Security Awareness Training is the number one recommendation for improving the security posture of your organization. Continue Reading»

MonetizeDigital has several platforms that allow publishers to convert traffic into revenue. Our two premier solutions are The Spotlight Tool and The Content Locker. The Spotlight Tool presents website visitors with advertisements in-between pages that they can then interact with or bypass until arriving at the content of their choice. This is really great for targeting. The Content Locker is an alternative to a paywall or digital subscription, giving users a way to view premium content without paying a fee by instead interacting with a brief advertiser-sponsored survey, quiz or game before viewing the content. Continue Reading»

From a management and protection perspective, cloud systems need at least the same processes and controls as traditional systems. On top of availability contingencies, like disaster recovery plans, they need strong authentication so that only the right people get access, they need strong authorization so that authenticated users have access to only the right resources, and actual access activity needs to be monitored and reportable. Content needs to be monitored to make sure that regulated content is stored appropriately and accessible to only the right users. Continue Reading»

For many organizations, the essential questions about cloud security, compliance, visibility and end-to-end control of data remain unanswered. Organizations should start by looking at the sensitivity of the data involved. They need to define and systematically adhere to a sound data classification policy to determine the control mechanisms needed to protect sensitive data. While this principle also applies to on-premises systems, risks derived from having no data classification policy or one that is incorrect are greater in the cloud because data might not be afforded the appropriate protective measures. Continue Reading»

Great companies have amazing cultures consisting of teams that are collaborative, creative and driven to solve problems unconventionally. I learned early-on in my career as a CEO to not micro-manage, but to empower my team to take calculated risks and to push the envelope when it comes to problem solving. Recognition of individuals and teams goes a long way. In terms of best practices, don’t get ahead of yourself in terms of financing. Continue Reading»

Building a global business is very challenging with differing geographies, languages, cultures and schools of thought. Today we live in a connected world, so one really has to customize to each particular part of the world. Many established brands have learned hard lessons by trying to implement their U.S. processes in international waters. My advice would be to really have a slow and measured growth strategy and hire people locally to help deliver. Continue Reading»

ERP is a perfect target for cyber weapons because it is much easier now to find bugs and to exploit them, comparing to OS or browsers. Those are the targets of many cybercriminals and it is harder with every year to find something useful. ERP systems also store all data that you need so you do not need to design special payload or complex exploits such as Stuxnet. Speaking about the attacks that were described in public, the hot news from November about Anonymous attack on Greece finance ministry are worth remembering. They used an exploit on the SAP system and published critical inside documents. Continue Reading»

End users who don’t manage their computer configurations will not see any difference. For all they know, their computer is on the internet, they can browse and reach websites, they can download emails, chat with friends and tweet at will, so everything is business as usual. The ones that will be heavily affected are the IT people, who deal with 2 protocols, lack of interconnectivity, transition issues, incompatibility of the existing devices, issues with the firewalls, and who knows how many more problems that we can't even think of at the moment.  Continue Reading»

Traditionally, the ERP system functionality within an organization stops where the shop floor takes over and the products actually get produced. Therefore, there is no visibility within the ERP system, or the organization as a whole, into what is happening on the shop floor related to rates of production, quality issues, downtime, etc. The MES software gives an organization this visibility by getting data directly from the shop floor and making it visible to the rest of the organization. When the ERP software is properly combined with an MES, then data in the ERP system is accurately updated based on what happens on the shop floor, which is the best world for a manufacturer to be in. Continue Reading»

Whenever someone uses their administrative-level privileges, you should always know that and be able to track and report on how privileges are used. For example, when an administrator creates a policy or uses his privileges to create an account, there should be a corresponding audit log that tracks the administrator’s actions and activity. This way, audit teams gain a clear understanding of which privileges are being utilized by the IT team. During a corporate audit, it is critical to have the ability to identify the administrators who are enforcing your privilege policy rules. Continue Reading»

As UC takes off, many enterprises are struggling with the security, quality of service (QoS) and ongoing maintenance requirements of extending their headquarters-based UC solutions to remote employees. Traditional NAT/firewalls block calls and do not provide voice or video aware security.  In many cases, enterprise IT is reluctant to make changes to the sometimes thousands of existing firewall policies that have been handcrafted over years. Additionally, the QoS configuration required in all of the network elements to prioritize real-time IP communications over data is difficult to implement.  Continue Reading»

The most important and central fact that organizations must remember is that Technology can never fix a process problem. The journey always begins with understanding current processes, and also understanding how the introduction of Technology can streamline and improve the efficiency of those processes. And therein lies the most fundamental role that Technology can play. Technology is the enabler for an organization to automate, streamline, increase the efficiency of the hiring process. This fundamental role that technology can play is just that, fundamental, and is the first step in the process of introducing technology into an organization. Continue Reading»

The main factor that makes cyber-attacks on ERP systems easy is that still some organizations have not yet implemented an holistic ERP application security risk management process. In the first place, as many of these systems are shipped with default insecure configurations and customers do not know how to protect them, they are currently widely exposed to technical attacks with big business impact. Secondly, ERP customers are struggling with applying vendor-provided security patches promptly. This further exposes platforms to exploits which are many times found in the public domain. Continue Reading»

No doubt, the cloud is here to stay, but full-scale transitions to the cloud to support an organization’s entire range of service management functions is not only unlikely, but there are clear instances in which on-premise solutions simply make more sense. The same holds true for cloud-based ITSM offerings; there is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy, but rather one that is “fit-for-purpose.” Additionally, Hybrid ITSM offers the most flexibility. It’s hard to quantify this, but its value is huge because technologies evolve, with virtualization, mobile device management, a proliferation of smart phones and we don’t know what’s next. Continue Reading»

Whether it is the disparate data collection of new and old buildings on a college campus or the critical energy needs in a healthcare facility, there are always opportunities to increase efficiency, save money and become more sustainable. IntelliFace is the only energy resource management system that can easily communicate with the variety of systems and multi-building properties to provide a comprehensive view of energy and resource consumption. The customized Executive Dashboard allows the staff to monitor all the utilities, view the baselines, the usage per occupant and square foot, view an historical analysis, track energy savings and identify critical issues. Continue Reading»

Insider threats are on the rise. Insider breaches are a result of an individual – usually a current or former employee, vendor or contractor – with improper access controls. The scary truth is many government agencies and organizations haven’t invested in adequate technology to manage insider threats. As a result, they’re falling victim to unnecessary breaches. WikiLeaks is a perfect example of a breach that could have been prevented with proper access controls. Access controls are critical to fighting insider threats. Least privilege and roll-based access controls, logging and policy enforcement technology all help detect malicious insider activity before it’s too late. Continue Reading»

As companies continue to embrace cloud applications and cloud deployment strategies, the need to port their ERP systems from an on premise to an on demand environment quickly and without risk, will become increasingly important and a competitive differentiator in choosing an ERP provider. QAD is pleased to be the only company, we believe, to deliver both deployment independence and deployment portability. QAD Enterprise Applications’ scalability allows companies with as few as five users and as many as thousands to use the same applications and levels the playing field for local companies to operate the same as global organizations. Continue Reading»

Companies which operate in highly commoditized markets, consumer packaged goods, pharma, and banking, for example, have begun to demonstrate they can really pull away from their competitors using social innovation tools. They’re the ones who understood first that crowds can help them in a way that their old-paradigm research and development functions couldn’t. Our observation is that most other industries have begun to follow their lead now that results are coming in. Not only does social innovation encourage engagement at scale it also gives the employees a sense of purpose which increases productivity. Continue Reading»

Signature and statistical-based security technologies, operating on assumptions of either a need for attack foreknowledge or using a narrow scope of analysis always will be chasing the attacker. Even so-called “malware protection systems” simply employ basic techniques to look for certain behavioral attributes in a sandbox and create IPS signatures, but they too miss many types of attacks. Security must be data-centric to be effective both today and in the next three years. All network-based security will operate from the perspective of full access to all network traffic and the ability to perform various types of real-time and specialized analysis. Continue Reading»

There are a surprisingly small number of enterprises that have a mobile device policy or actively enforce it. Overlooking the need for a mobile security policy can lead to outrageous costs and damage to an enterprise resulting from data leakage. Just this week it has become public that Visa and MasterCard may have suffered a breach with over 10 million compromised card numbers. A professional cyber criminal will hack into IT systems, silently compromise data, and leave the enterprise oblivious that information is now for sale in the cybercrime marketplace. Continue Reading»

As mobile malware continues to grow, Android malware will become more sophisticated, more dangerous and will begin to make money for the cybercrimnal as part of the underground economy. Rootkit technology will be used to conceal the malware and command and control (C&C) protocols will become more robust. This mobile malware will evolve so it can disable security features on the device and protect itself from removal. We’ll quite likely see the first Android malware that can exploit vulnerabilities in a network app to allow phone-to-phone infections via the Internet connection on Android devices in 2012. We’ll also see stealthier botnets next year too. This year, we saw the takedown of the largest botnet, DNSChanger, to date, but this was only the tip of the iceberg. In 2012, we will see more super-bots that spread silently using existing infection vectors, bury themselves using stealth rootkit techniques and make every effort to remain undetected. Continue Reading»

Traditional authentication technologies have been costly to deploy, but this may not be the main barrier if the same identity and authentication token can be re-used across multiple devices and applications. To address this, the world needs a global open identity standard where the range of authentication technologies, on a competitive market, can be re-used across any number of services. An easy and secure way for individuals to get in control of their online identity and Internet passwords is to use a password manager supporting two-factor authentication. Continue Reading»

The greatest barrier to managing security in the cloud is elasticity. Traditional security has never been designed to scale efficiently. Sure – it’s been designed to support large infrastructure; but it hasn’t been built to scale on-demand. Hence, traditional controls are not nearly as elastic as the cloud infrastructure, which presents a nightmare scenario for IT security professionals. Take the firewall, for example. In a traditional datacenter you might have 100 servers behind a single, perimeter firewall. In the cloud, however, there is no perimeter, so instead of managing a single perimeter firewall you’re managing the firewalls for all 100 servers. Continue Reading»

Firetide has built a reputation as a leader in providing a reliable and secure wireless mesh infrastructure uniquely capable of meeting the demanding performance requirements of real-time video applications. While our mesh products are an excellent solution for environments where video surveillance is required, the mesh infrastructure is a foundation for additional network-based applications. This single infrastructure is used to support multiple applications simultaneously for homeland security and public safety; transportation; municipal services; and industrial applications. Continue Reading»

Beyond reliability, as the network demands continue to increase for both work and pleasure, understanding how different networking products can maximize bandwidth, reception and access is also important. For instance, if a consumer is in a three story home with the wireless router on the third floor, and they wish to stream HD video or play online video games to the first floor, it’s important to know what option would best fit their needs. If the distance of the router is far, or if the material of the home is not conducive towards wireless transmission, then we need to educate them about what options they have. Continue Reading»

The rapid development of Software Defined Networking (SDN) - a viable solution to security, virtualization, manageability, mobility and agility needs in today’s networks. We see the rapid bandwidth growth along with the evolution of content delivery networks, as more and more companies are moving their infrastructure into the cloud. The end-user expectations for speed and reliability are growing fast, while service and content providers are trying to automate their operations and improve performance in order to satisfy their clients’ demands. Continue Reading»

No one service provider has ubiquitous coverage; therefore, service providers always have a need for off-net access circuits. Services are often procured through a manual process with multiple off-net vendors that have network available within a needed target footprint. Most providers establish interconnections with multiple suppliers to ensure they have the greatest reach. The complexities associated with the management of multiple vendor interconnections, building lists, and rates slow down the sales process of getting timely and accurate network designs and prices for proposals. Continue Reading»