February 2007 - Posts
The Welsh Assembly Government is to withdraw support for the ICT Centre Network, an organisation that gives free advice to local businesses on technology and ecommerce and provides facilities to 'try before you buy'. It seems likely that more than 20 centres accross Wales will now close. According to the Welsh Assembly Government, the service is no longer needed. The decision takes effect when the ICT Centres' current contract expires on 30th March.
While this decision would seem to disadvantage Welsh business, it provides an opportunity for local ICT providers such as TiGra Networks to step in and take over where the ICT Centres leave off. TiGra Networks already offers free advice and recently announced a partnership with Microsoft Office Live that enables new companies to get online for free. Beyond a simple online presence, TiGra Networks also offers fixed-cost maintenance plans and a complete IT strategy planning service.
If you are a small business owner who uses computers, you probably know that Microsoft releases regular security updates through Windows Update. You might not know that if you have a server on your network, then you can automate this process and gain better control over it using a program called Windows Server Update Services (or WSUS for short). WSUS shows you which patches are available, which computers need the patch and which don't, and it allows you to approve the patches you wish to install and push them to the computers you specify. It also gives you reporting capabilities so you can see at a glance whether your network is fully updated with the latest security, all without any involvement from the computer users themselves.
Network security is a serious problem - don't take our word for it, see what IBM has to say. According to Get Safe Online, as many as 75% of all enterprises may be at risk. If you don't keep up-to-date with these security patches, then your network is not as safe as it 
could possibly be, which is a shame when WSUS is a free add-on to Windows Server software, including Windows Small Business Server. In some cases, being negligent with your customers' details can cost you and in relative terms keeping your computers up-to-date doesn't really cost that much - so why risk it?
If you don't want to be bothered with all this yourself, then why not consider our Eye of the Tiger managed IT plan? Amongst other things, we monitor the patch level of your network, we test the latest patches for you on our own systems then when we're happy, we approve them for installation on your network and ensure that all computers are in compliance. Our managed IT plan gives you trouble-free computing for one fixed, affordable monthly payment.
After the theft from an employee's home of a laptop computer last year containing confidential customer data, the Nationwide Building Society has been fine £980,000 by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
"The failure to manage or monitor downloads of very large amounts of data onto portable storage devices meant that Nationwide had limited control over information held in this way or how it was used, " said the FSA.
What information do YOU have on YOUR laptop computer that could affect YOUR customers if it were stolen? It is not impossible to prevent loss of equipment but, when it happens, your customers will expect you to have taken reasonable steps to protect their information. Not everyone is regulated by a watchdog like the FSA but your business could certainly suffer immeasurable damage to its reputation were you to leak confidential customer details. Have you considered hard drive encryption such as that provided by Windows Vista's BitLocker technology?
Full story from the BBC.
Talk to TiGra Networks today for free advice on how to secure your data.
Our new web site is based on the Microsoft Office Server System 2007 ('MOSS 2007') and features full content management and publishing features. The publishing feature in MOSS 2007 is a new addition to SharePoint that replaces the old Content Management Server product and makes it much easier to expose extranet and Internet content. It is also possible to set up different zones, with each zone having its own URL and authentication methods. It is possible to use forms authentication backed by an ASP.Net SQL membership provider, meaning that site users no longer have to be in Active Directory. This opens up some interesting possibilities for interacting with members of the public and partners. Almost the entire site was developed with no special web design software, meaning that contributing authors can easily develop content using only their web browser. The one exception was the site master page, which defines the overall style of the site and determines items that are fixed on every page, such as the masthead graphic. For that, we used SharePoint Designer 2007 (the replacement for FrontPage) and modified one of the example site templates with some very minor editing.
Although our needs at TiGra Networks are fairly modest, the experience we gained in deploying our own site on MOSS 2007 has been invaluable. It is easy to envisage how the system can scale to cater for large web sites with many authors contributing content, with approvals being driven by workflow processes and content scheduling and expiration managed automatically by the server. This would be a good solution for any organization that publishes dynamic content, press releases, news articles and similar non-static content and needs to be able to do so without special editing software while keeping control over content approvals.
Microsoft's Office Live service delivers a quick and cost-effective solution for small businesses and organizations wishing to create an online presence. One example is the Entrepreneuse Live web site, which showcases female entrepreneurs and was developed in association with TiGra Networks (other examples). Office Live is currently in beta, during which all the services are free. The basic service will remain free after the beta period and includes:
- Free domain name registration
- 25 email accounts with 2Gb storage each.
- 500Mb of web space
- 10Gb data transfer allowance
- Web reporting tools to track visits to your site.
The two premium subscriptions provide more email accounts, more web space and business applications: Office Live Business Contact Manager, plus online applications for managing customers, employees, projects, and critical business data.
For those who are not yet ready to buy a server, Office Live is a great alternative. TiGra Networks offers free advice and assistance getting your business online quickly with Office Live. Later, when you're ready to upgrade to your own server, we'll be ready to help you select and install your server and migrate your business data.
Try it today. With TiGra Networks and Office Live, getting online with email and a basic web site will cost you absolutely nothing.
The Get Safe Online blog has an article where a US teacher has been convicted of four counts of child endagerment, after her computer (which she claims was infected with spyware) showed popups advertising porn sites. As the blog says:
It illustrates, in an extreme way, the risks of virus and spyware infections. It’s not just a security risk, real people are affected by it.