How to Protect Your Business In the Age of Technology

by Matthew Frank - Inside Sales Rep at MAC Source Communications

If you have ever watched the movie "Catch Me If You Can" you know that it was fairly easy for Leonardo DiCaprio's character to become someone else and steal millions of dollars from companies.  He was able to print his own paychecks, make new ID's, and then when all is said and done, he was able to disappear.  This all took place in the 1960s, before personal computers, before cell phones, before social media.  And the guy was less than 19 years old.  Oh, the movie was based on true events.

Now, its 2011, and we have things like personal computers, iPads, Cellphones, and Social Media.  In fact, we have so much technology, that people are constantly exposed.  What does this mean?  It means that people are just as exposed, if not more exposed than in the 1960's.

To combat this, you have a few options.  You can lock down all your electronics.  Password protect and encrypt every device you have and even then that doesn't give you 100% protection.  You can never go on the Internet again (although, lets be realistic, I would be crying after about 2 hours), or you can be smart about your technology.

The first thing to do is to look at your business and say "Am I properly protected?"  Do you have all your security features in place?  Is the wifi at your company secure?  Is your firewall setup properly?  Do you monitor everything your employees do online to make sure there is no malicious software coming through and people are being productive?  What about guest access to your wireless network?  Do guests have the ability to go on your network without having the ability to get into the private information on there?  Think about these questions for 2 minutes.  Good, now here are two solutions.

Next Generation Firewall:

Most companies have firewalls that block everything coming through a specific port.  The problem with this, is that it blocks things that are both good and bad.  Who wants to block the good?  Facebook for instance, is a great tool to use for marketing, but most companies can only turn it on or off.  They can't choose what features they want on, or what they want blocked.

With the Next Generation Firewall from Palo Alto Networks, you can control what applications and content come through on your network.  That means, that you can allow Facebook, but limit it.  Block games, but give employees the ability to read their messages.  Stop them from posting pictures (especially if you have sensitive information in your company that cannot be leaked) but allow them to post status updates or update the company page.  What about monitoring what sites employees are on?  Don't have time right?  Well, this firewall is a great device, in that it can generate reports for you in a nice and clean format so that you can see what is coming through your firewall.  You can see who is viewing something, what they are viewing, and how long they are viewing it for.  It also gives you graphs and tables, because lets face it, to many words can turn anyone away.

Social Media:

The second way to protect your company is by understanding how people get information.  Facebook is a staple in most people's lives.  The problem is that most people keep it open for anyone to see, and lets be honest here, will friend anyone.  To understand how people get information off Facebook and use it for bad intentions, you need to understand how to do it yourself.  On Tuesday September 13th, 2011, join MAC Source Communications and Information Security Expert and Penetration Tester, Steve Stasiukonis, to learn "How to Rob a Bank With Facebook."  Steve will explain how white collar criminals leverage the use of common people, processes and technologies to infiltrate the internal workings of your network. He will share his real world experiences on how he and his company used these techniques to breach the networks of numerous banks and other financial institutions.  This is a Webinar, so you don't even need to leave your office.

For more information on both ways to protect your business visit www.macsourceinc.com

Also, you can contact me at 585-368-2101 or Elizabeth Rizzo at 518-694-3904 for more information.

Juniper Networks Earns Back-to-Back Win and Receives Top Honors from Solution Providers for Superior Products, Support and Channel Partnership

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 30, 2011 — Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) today proudly announced it has earned the 2011 CRN Annual Report Card (ARC) "Company of the Year," sweeping the entire Enterprise Networking Infrastructure category. The coveted award marks the second year in a row Juniper Networks has won the ARC in this highly competitive category.

"This back-to-back win and sweep of the entire enterprise networking category offers a great testimony to the disruptive leadership, technical innovation and channel partnership that differentiates Juniper Networks from our competitors and helps us drive even greater business value for our channel partners worldwide," says Juniper Networks' Senior Vice President of Worldwide Partners Emilio Umeoka.

Umeoka and Juniper Networks Americas Partner Chief Frank Vitagliano accepted the honor at the 2011 XChange Americas Conference earlier this month in Denver, CO.

"This is a great win and a significant endorsement of the value, trust and respect Juniper Networks has earned within the Americas channel partner base and worldwide," says Vitagliano. "From breaking into the switching market four years ago with the Juniper Networks® EX Series, to the recent announcement of our QFabric data center solution, Juniper Networks continues to deliver the disruptive innovation channel partners need to meet the dynamic business and technology demands of the enterprise. These are exciting and defining times in Juniper Networks' history and we want to thank our channel partners for their continued advocacy and adoption of the new network."

Recognized as one of the IT channel's top honors, the CRN ARC serves as a definitive benchmark of relationships between vendors and their channel partners. The 2011 Everything Channel ARC research team surveyed more than 3,600 solution providers across 21 categories to evaluate their satisfaction with vendors' products, support and channel programs. The results serve as an industry standard for measuring excellence within the channel community.

"When it comes to the strength of relationships, quality of products and return on partner programs, solution providers want to hear from their fellow VARs about the IT vendors that consistently exceed expectations," said Kelley Damore, vice president, editorial director, Everything Channel. "The ARC gives solution providers the opportunity to share feedback and recognize the vendors who truly demonstrate channel excellence. We congratulate Juniper Networks for being recognized as the best of the best in the category of Enterprise Networking Infrastructure."

To view a slideshow of all the organizations named to the 2011 ARC visit www.crn.com.

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net).

Juniper Networks and Junos are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. The Juniper Networks and Junos logos are trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Need products from Juniper Networks?  Contact Matthew Frank at mfrank@macsourceinc.com or Elizabeth Rizzo at erizzo@macsourceinc.com

You can even check out MAC Source inc. at http://www.macsourceinc.com/

HP reports 56% jump in cybercrime costs

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

The cost to business and government organizations of security and recovery connected to cybercrimes has risen 56 percent in the past year, a study released Tuesday said. The report by Hewlett-Packard Co . (NYSE:HPQ) said cybercrime costs to organizations it surveyed have risen to a median of $5.9 million a year, ranging from a low of $1.5 million to a high of $36.5 million.

Recovery and detection are the most costly internal activities, the report said. Over a four-week period, the organizations surveyed said they experienced 72 successful attacks per week, an increase of nearly 45 percent from last year. More than 90 percent of all cybercrime costs were caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen devices and Web-based attacks.

The average time to resolve a cyberattack is 18 days, the report said, with an average cost of nearly $416,000. This is nearly a 70 percent increase from the estimated cost of $250,000 over a 14-day resolution period in last year’s study.

Results also showed that malicious insider attacks can be even more costly, taking more than 45 days to contain.

Read Hewlett-Packard's announcement of the cybercrime report findings by clicking here.

Written by Cromwell Schubarth.

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How Apple (unintentionally) revolutionized corporate IT

IT'S NOT ITS POSH DESKTOPS AND LAPTOPS THAT HAVE CREATED MAJOR CHANGES IN ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY. IT'S MOBILE.

By Aaron Levie, contributor

FORTUNE -- In 1997, Michael Dellfamously declared that if he were CEO of Apple (AAPL), he would close shop and return the money to shareholders. Steve Jobs has had plenty of reasons to gloat since then, but even just a decade ago, Apple was a footnote in the story of modern computing. Despite the company's comeback success with the iMac, the vast majority of 'knowledge workers' still relied on their staid WinTel (Windows + Intel (INTC)) platform, with the occasional marketer, designer or developer opting for Apple's sleeker products. Naturally, Windows PCs were also the familiar, mainstream choice for our personal lives. And so it seemed that Apple would be relegated to devices for the hip digital consumer and creative elite.

But right when we thought we had Apple's place in the market pegged, they changed the world... with a phone. The iPhone's revolutionary combination of powerful apps, full web browsing, and all the media you could consume created an entirely new mobile experience for consumers and workers alike. Apple fed its newfound momentum with a deluge of subsequent products, ranging from updated iMacs to the Macbook Air. And with the iPad, Apple changed the world yet again only 36 months later. Fast forward to today, and Apple sits in the computer world's top position of power, controlling developers, devices, consumers, and much of the industry's overall direction.

Maybe its biggest impact of all, however, was one that Apple didn't necessarily intend.

For the better part of twenty years, Microsoft (MSFT) and a handful of other enterprise behemoths pretty much dominated the vertical stack of solutions that are core to the Fortune 500 and beyond. But if you ask around, not too many individuals or IT leaders are happy about this hegemony. Workers are quickly recognizing the stark contrast between the computing that occurs in their personal lives and the business status quo. In turn, they're bringing their own devices and apps to work, driving the emergence of an all-new technology landscape. This landscape isn't being targeted by Apple in any real way; the complexity, scale, security, and nuances of serving enterprises – not to mention the inherent need to work with all the major (non-Apple) platforms enterprises use – tend to keep Apple from building for this market. But even without making any direct enterprise play, Apple has had a profound influence on technology with its latest string of successes and by raising our standards along the way.

So while Apple isn't intentionally leading an enterprise technology revolution, its products are nonetheless catalyzing one. For instance, 88% of the Fortune 100 are testing or deploying applications on the iPhone last year. The downstream effect of more iPhones and iPads in the enterprise is more sales of Apple's flagship products, with Mac worldwide sales growing by nearly over 28% year over year – as Tim Cook, Apple's COO, puts it, "iPad clearly seems to be creating a halo effect for the Mac."

Why does this matter? Well, once an enterprise adopts iPhones, iPads, and Macs en masse (as they continue to, judging by Apple's most recent quarter), or even Android devices for that matter, many of the existing applications – be it a communication tool from IBM (IBM), or collaboration from Microsoft – serve less productive purposes given the new way people are working. The toolset today's workers interact with on an ongoing basis is experiencing a wholesale transition – a transition that's introducing us to the iEnterprise.

Take, for instance, Procter & Gamble (PG), who came to Box.net in 2008 looking for a solution that could help employees connect to and collaborate on their content remotely, when no existing vendor would suffice. Fast-forward to 2011, and they're now deploying Box cloud content management to 18,000 individuals, in large part due to the proliferation of new platforms and devices that have emerged in just the past couple of years. The same story is true for businesses of all sizes and industries, ranging from Pandora (P) to Dole. It's why we've seen adoption in 73% of the Fortune 500. And we're clearly not the only ones benefiting from and driving this dramatic evolution of needs and demands in the enterprise.

The iEnterprise isn't, as the moniker suggests, about enterprises that just implement products designed in Cupertino. It's about a fundamental change in how our enterprise technology is supported, adopted, and consumed. It's about the technology in our personal lives influencing and changing expectations in our professional lives. The iEnterprise isn't necessarily the convergence of the tools we use in these two worlds, but rather the consistency of ideals.

While Steve Jobs introduces new products with words like "delightful" and "amazing," this vocabulary is nonexistent within the enterprise software set. There are a number of reasons for this. There's often a lack of passion, and even a bit of apathy, that shows in the final product. Applications and services feel bloated and uninspiring. The apps and hardware that we spend most of our waking hours with - and the most money on - tend to be the most complex, clunky, and unnerving.

But like Apple, the iEnterprise is about vendors building technology that excites and surprises users. It's about solutions that work together, and about open ecosystems. It's about marketplaces that compete to win, and innovate to compete – a major break from the status quo, where vendor lock-in enables long cycles of limited product enhancements, simply because the customer has nowhere else to go (Redmond, ahem).

We're especially seeing it show up in the changing mobility of our enterprise offerings. Mobility used to be defined by quick and easy access to email or a conference call, led by Blackberry in the '90s and early '00s. The iPhone and iPad took this much further, and dozens of popular Android devices are now even making their way into large corporations. We're further seeing it with HP (HPQ) and its WebOS platform. Businesses can enable access to critical data, projects, or content through services like Salesforce and Roambi, Basecamp and Yammer, or Box, respectively.

The iEnterprise is also about broadly useful, powerful platforms that connect and become enhanced through integration: cloud-delivered applications like Salesforce (CRM) to run your sales organization will connect to your business information on Box or HR information on Workday; Netsuite will plug into your social software from Yammer; GoodData will help visualize your client community results from GetSatisfaction; and Assistly plugs your customer support flow into Google Apps, which wraps all of this up in a robust marketplace for businesses. The mixing and matching of services that's common in our personal lives is now extending to the enterprise, and in turn driving vastly more open solutions that are changing the enterprise landscape.

No, the Windows franchise isn't going anywhere. Inertia alone gives Microsoft another decade as the de facto enterprise operating system and software provider. With minimal innovation this could be extended even longer, but Apple has already made a profound impact by pushing us to rethink technology's role in our lives. It's changing the whole industry, and will have a lasting impact on our businesses.

We have higher and more pronounced expectations for how technology can transform our personal lives – and now our business lives, making us more productive and connected than ever before. Welcome to the iEnterprise.

--Aaron Levie is the CEO and co-founder of Box.net.

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