According to a recent survey, people are obsessed with their smartphones. While this comes as no surprise (how many times have you heard “get OFF your CrackBerry!” while out at a restaurant?), some of the results of the survey are shocking. Twenty-two percent of respondents would rather give up their toothbrush than their phone for a week, and 20 percent of respondents would rather go shoeless than phoneless!

This obsession with smartphones and other devices such as iPads, Kindles (and the list goes on and on) has filtered down into the workplace more aggressively than anyone expected just a few years ago. Allowing employees to use personal devices at work – for example, connecting their iPads to the corporate network—is something that has come to be expected in recent years. This phenomenon, referred to as the “Consumerization of IT,” presents particular challenges to IT departments, which begs many questions—including how do you keep your network safe?

In a recent article from CIO, author Shane O’Neill cites another survey, one that asked IT professionals about the challenges that they face when employees use personal devices.  IT managers have more operating systems to manage and connect to corporate networks, which is time consuming and can put a drain on the network’s bandwidth.

We’ve worked with many companies who face these problems, and have helped them ensure their networks are staying safe and secure. Here are a few tips:

• Have employees connect through safe and secure networks—no “honeycombing”
• Have IT set up the connection for personal computers
• Use a VPN for secure access
• Extend corporate security standards to personal devices

If you’re an IT decision-maker, how do you best handle allowing employees to use personal devices? Share your stories below.

As August races to a close and the weather starts to cool down, summer camps have closed their doors, white clothes are packed away and parents rejoice because
it’s time to head back to school. The staff members at schools and universities all over the country begin to prepare for the influx of students by mowing the lawns, cleaning up the lockers and washing the windows—and the IT team is no different.

For the IT staff at secondary and higher education establishments, welcoming back students, teachers and staff for another school year is a large undertaking, especially with the number of technology advancements made in the last few years. Just a decade ago, students visited computer labs to finish their homework or work on research projects, and that provided the IT department with a high level of control. Nowadays, students insist on utilizing their own laptops, tablets and smartphones and access the school’s network to watch YouTube videos, browse Facebook, download music and more—things that can potentially slow and threaten the network, but are nownecessary to the learning process.

Given these challenges, we work with IT staff at a number of schools to ensure the traffic runs smoothly and efficiently through their networks. One of our products, Cymtec Sentry, instantly provides IT managers with cost-effective tools by rolling several different capabilities such as traffic visibility, bandwidth shaping, user enforcement and containment of network threats into a single device. Here are some of the benefits of Cymtec Sentry as it relates to schools:

• Prioritization: Just as students need to have it to get their work done in a timely manner, prioritization is a key benefit of Cymtec Sentry. Allocating and prioritizing bandwidth is critical in IT so that applications receive the service they need to perform.
• Knowing what’s happening: Being able to monitor what’s moving in and  out of the network is key to better and more efficient management of performance.
• Availability: Just as educators are always “on-call” for their students, the network needs to be up and running at all times.
• Contain threats: Like schoolteachers, the IT team wants to keep the bullies out by stopping malicious traffic from entering the network and consuming resources. With so many devices using the network, it’s inevitable that spyware, malware, BotNet and worm activity will occur, but the key is to be alerted and to stop them before they spread.

While it might be too late to make major IT changes ahead of the coming school year planning is always the key to success and these tips will help ensure the proper framework going forward.

We’re excited to shine the spotlight on a new partner:  Infinitech, a full-service IT consulting firm in the San Francisco area. Infinitech’s goal is to provide IT services to small and medium sized businesses to help them reduce IT staffing overhead. Infinitech has just recently signed on as a value added reseller and we connected with CEO Mike Sellai to learn more about the firm.

1) Tell us about Infinitech.

Infinitech is a full-service IT consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in providing IT services to small and medium-sized businesses who cannot afford to have IT in house or need additional support but cannot afford to hire additional staff. We provide service throughout the San Francisco and Bay Area and work with our customers to prevent networks from experiencing issues, rather than trying to profit from IT failures.

2) What are your main markets and what types of services do you offer?

Our clients are SMBs in a variety of markets, including advertising and marketing, real estate and development, legal and medical offices, food industries, financial services and many more.

We offer a wide-range of business tech support, including IT consulting, business network setup and relocation, business VoIP phone systems, virtualization services and more. Our most popular service is the IT Managed Service Packages, which provides fixed-rate, unlimited IT support allowing organizations to focus on their business not technology issues. Our managed service packages prevent problems to minimize downtime unlike traditional IT consulting which focuses on a break-fix model and an hourly rate.

3) Can you tell us about issues your customers face?

Recent legislation, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, increases the legal scrutiny companies are under. We want to make sure our clients are prepared for any regulatory mandates. In fact, legislation requiring greater network visibility and necessitating greater compliance is constantly evolving. As legislation is becoming stricter, it becomes even more critical to have the most up-to-date offerings for customers.

In addition, our customers also face bandwidth and optimization issues. Having the network down, or not performing optimally, can lead to loss of productivity and the loss of real dollars. Cymtec’s advanced plug-and-play solutions work seamlessly in the background, giving organizations peace of mind and allowing employees to devote time to other aspects of the business without dealing with network downtime.

4) Why are Cymtec offerings particularly attractive for your financial services customers?

In the financial services industry, information management and security is much more critical and often mandated by laws. Making sure we have the right tools for the changing needs of our customers is vital, and Cymtec’s solutions-based product line provides the control and visibility organizations need to keep their network secure. If a financial firm’s IT service is disrupted, it can be very costly, so it’s increasingly important that networks are always up and business critical functions are able to perform properly.

We are happy to be offering Cymtec’s products as part of our managed service contracts. Incorporating Cymtec will allow financial institutions to have peace of mind regarding their compliance, security, and technology without the worry of escalating costs month to month.

A representative in the West Memphis, Arkansas office allegedly passed personally identifiable information (PII) on to another person who then used it to commit identity theft. Christopher R. Thyer, US Attorney, Eastern District of Arkansas, stunned by the incident, says ”Identity theft is a serious crime. Government employees with access to personal identification information have a duty to the citizens of this Country to protect that information.” The investigation was conducted by the Social Security Administration – Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Secret Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jana Harris is prosecuting the case for the United States.

Unauthorized access to personally identifiable information is a major concern nowadays and Cymtec Scout is often able to detect, alert and report on this type of malicious activity. Enforcement of regulatory policies such as PII and PCI DSS is becoming an increasingly larger issue for organizations.  Unlike traditional IDS products, Cymtec Scout’s cloud-enabled delivery model dramatically reduces time-to-protection, simplifies deployment and reduces both annual costs and the requirement for needing a security expert to configure and maintain protection.

Data breaches have a significant impact on business.  For example, Sony Corporation’s recent breach represented a 12 percent loss in Sony’s share price, which is the equivalent of $3.6 billion in market capitalization, according to Cloud Times. Beyond the impact on stock value, regulatory and other potential legal implications can increase organizational costs even more. According to Money-Rates.com, a leading source of information on bank rates, personal finance and investing, ”thieves who steal credit card numbers and other personal identification information have started targeting small and medium-sized businesses in an effort to find out more about you, your bank credit card or other financial information.”

Although once an issue only for enterprises, data breaches are now a problem for organizations of all sizes.

Learn more about Cymtec Scout at: http://www.cymtec.com/products/cymtec-scout/

Read more about the security breaches at: http://www.justice.gov/usao/are/news/2011/July/Morgan_complaint_idtheft_072011.html

http://www.wreg.com/news/wreg-ssa-employee-leaks-dozens-of-social-security-numbers-20110729,0,7952668.story

Intrusion Detection Solutions (IDS) were once a popular feature for many corporate networks—reporting threats and giving IT a detailed and forensic security view of the network.

Over time, IDS got a bad reputation, criticized for being expensive to maintain and complicated to manage.  Companies slowly ditched the solution, not feeling it was a necessity to keep corporate networks secure and not wanting to pay the overhead costs associated with it.

Now, organizations are revisiting IDS, as these solutions provide the information and reporting functionality required to comply with regulations like PCI, Sarbox and HIPAA. However, traditional IDS solutions are still costly and complicated to manage.

Enter cloud-computing, which allows you to access data anytime, anywhere and removes costs associated with deployment and maintenance of physical infrastructures.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the cloud has become arguably the most talked about transformational technology deployment in the last five years. The benefits of the cloud are vast; the most important being that agile deployment of new technology is much easier when it’s hosted within the cloud—a big win for the future of IDS.

The ease of deployment associated with cloud-enabled technology removes several of the issues associated with adopting and maintaining traditional IDS applications.

It removes internal resource drains on the IT staff, guarantees uptime and performance, and provides the robust monitoring and performance reports organizations require to comply with today’s dynamic regulatory environments.

Cymtec Scout is the market-leading cloud-enabled network IDS, bringing together the efficiency and the cost-effectiveness of the cloud with a critical security technology platform for threat visibility and compliance reporting.  Integration of the industry-leading Sourcefire VRT rules and definitions within the Cymtec Scout platform ensure the best detection and the most up-to-date threat signatures.  By layering the optional compliance monitoring and reporting portal on top of Cymtec Scout, your organization is guaranteed to have the most robust IDS solution and the complete audit/compliance and regulatory reporting available in the market today.

Its clear this is the future of technology, and though cloud computing has been around for some time, have you ever considered deploying your IDS in the cloud?

We’re excited to spotlight a new partner: Coffer Group – an IT consultancy with a strong focus in the financial services industry. Coffer Group is dedicated to providing IT services to small and medium sized companies to help them reduce IT staffing overhead. Coffer Group has just recently signed on as a value added reseller, and we’re thrilled to have them work closely with us.

Read on to learn more about Coffer Group and their work with us from Principal Jason Coffer.

1) Can you give us an overview of Coffer Group?
Coffer Group, headquartered in San Francisco, provides information technology solutions to small and medium business in the San Francisco Bay area, and through partners in Boston and New York. We provide various levels of support to our clients based on their needs—sometimes we act as a company’s entire IT department, while in other companies we work alongside their IT department for special projects and staff augmentation.

Since 2007, our team has provided a variety of services to customers, including managed IT services, IT project management, architecture, design and implementation, business continuity and Disaster Recovery (DR) planning, IT staff recruitment and more.

Additionally, Coffer Group has strong strategic partnerships with other consulting firms to provide subject area expertise and additional project staffing, as necessary, to ensure our customers are receiving the highest level of counsel possible.

2) What markets do you mainly focus on and what services do you offer?

Our primary focus is the financial services market. About 70 percent of clients are venture capitalist, private equity, or hedge fund firms.

Because of our involvement in the financial services industry, we do a lot of work with Disaster Recovery (DR) plans and business continuity. DR is of the utmost importance to financial services firms because they are often legally required to have DR plans in place. If a firm’s IT service is disrupted, it can be very costly for the firm, so it’s increasingly important that networks are always up and business critical functions are able to perform properly.

3) What makes Cymtec’s products a good fit for your customers?

Over a third of Coffer Group’s clients have remote or branch offices. Offering Cymtec Sentry, a product designed for the branch and small office environment, will allow us to better service our clients with multi-office locations and provide network visibility and control offerings.

A firewall provides a locked door to keep intruders out, but an Intrusion Detection Solution (IDS) verifies that no one is actually breaking in (either by picking the lock or going through the back window)—which company management (and investors) like to know. Because of this, many of our customers are looking for an IDS. IDS is typically complex, expensive to manage and require a lot of involvement from IT staff. Cymtec Scout is simple and provides the security our customers need without the hassle of extra staff or resources.

4) Can you tell us about issues your customers face?

Regulatory issues can frequently be a gray area; in addition, recent legislation, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, increases the legal scrutiny these companies are under. We want to make sure our clients are prepared for any regulatory mandates. As legislation is becoming stricter, it becomes even more critical to have the most up-to-date offerings for customers.

Our customers also face bandwidth and optimization issues. Having the network down, or not performing optimally, can lead to loss of productivity and the loss of real dollars. Cymtec’s advanced plug-and-play solutions work seamlessly in the background of financial services firms, giving IT managers’ peace of mind and allowing them to devote time to other aspects of the business.

5) We’re seeing growth in distributed networks.  Do you agree?  What does this mean?
As companies expand, we have noticed an increase in the utilization of remote workers. The performance of the network is expected to be the same for all workers, yet for remote workers, it must be delivered with “thinner” connectivity and substantially less infrastructure.

The combination of remote sites and the consolidation/virtualization into the data center of critical applications and data have led to the network becoming a critical piece of the user’s experience. We’re finding that the local or remote data centers plus cloud computing are housing most of the critical data and applications. End-to-end connectivity, delivered reliably and managed efficiently, is critical to ensure a successful end- user experience.

As the weather heats up, employees of many organizations pack up their laptops and head out to pursue summer travels with families or friends. As employees prepare to spend time out of the office this summer, many won’t fully disconnect and will regularly check emails or access files and documents while on the road. Though working and connecting on the beach may seem like an innocent (if not conscientious) gesture, without the proper guidelines set in place it can compromise both network performance and security, despite the best intentions.

During this summertime lull in the office, IT teams need to gear up to avoid network problems. Here are a few guidelines to help maintain a secure network:

• Keep staff informed: Make sure everyone in the organization has a clear understanding of the company’s remote access policies.
• Connect mobile devices: If you allow employees to work off of mobile devices like iPads, smartphones or netbooks, ensure that you have policies in place about what devices are supported and how you plan to manage them as they touch the corporate infrastructure.
• Keep it professional: All network activity, regardless of where it comes from and the device it originates on is subject to the same restrictive company policies enforced in the office, so make sure employees keep activity to business-only matters.
• Be secure: Ensure employees don’t steal or “borrow” Internet from a neighboring connection. If an individual is traveling to a hotel or resort location, there are likely services to purchase the internet on an hourly or daily basis. Conversely, if the employee is on a computer at home, the Internet connection must be password protected to prohibit hackers from entering and consequently possibly having access to the company’s network.

If you’re in IT, have the talk with your entire organization and make sure they understand how serious a disruption can be to an entire enterprise. Ensure employees understand that working remotely is a right nowadays, but one that has to be managed carefully by everyone in the organization. For a deeper understanding of the value of network security and IT, plus additional steps you can take to remain secure, check out this recent Wall Street Journal article which offers a CEO perspective on a hacker attack.

If you’re a network manager, do you have any other summertime tips to keep your network safe?

On Friday, April 29, billions tuned in live to catch the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and of those “guests,” many did so online. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the wedding beat out the viewing of Michael Jackson’s funeral, the previous record-holder, by an enormous 21 percent.

Because the big event took place during normal business hours in Europe, as well as many parts of North American and Asia, many workers were driven to stream the ceremony online, on either the Royal Wedding YouTube channel or from one of the many news websites covering the ceremony.  Companies who did not take proper precautions before the wedding may have seen a decrease in network performance. But now that the Wedding of the Century is under our belts, check out these lessons learned from the most streamed event in history.

1. Get together – many organizations hosted “Royal Wedding” themed parties, where employees gathered in shared spaces to view the event together. This tactic reduces strain on the network and would allow for the work of those uninterested to be unaffected by slow response times. Plus, acknowledging that there were employees who did want to check out the ceremony by offering office-wide activities, like breakfast or hosting a Royal Hat Day, encouraged productivity after the couple said “I Do.”
2. Preparation is Key, even for BBC— If IT managers didn’t read our previous post on prepping for the big event, we suggested that IT staff remind employees of social media and usage policies to avoid network downtime or crashes. But even large organizations can run into major problems when they don’t properly prepare. We learned that during the event, the UK BBC website crashed, and the video feed that showed the wedding was replaced with an error message.
3. Be transparent – Ensuring your IT staff knows about significant events in advance is key to ensuring your network performance is maintained. While many folks were aware of the wedding, sending a quick reminder to your team could have prevented network issues.
4. Set expectations- Research agency Social Strategy 1 reported that YouTube saw around 1.3 million live viewers on the Royal Channel, but the video sharing website saw slow load times and at one point had only 74 percent availability during the ceremony. Sending employees a quick note about the possibility that networks may be slow may decrease disappointment for those unable to view the event correctly.

With proper visibility and control, organizations can still maintain productivity while interesting events are happening around us in real-time, whether they are athletic, political or culturally significant. Hopefully these lessons learned will help prepare for future events that garner a large streaming crowd – Prince Harry is up next!

When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, the nuptials set the world record for the largest TV audience. A week from today, on Friday, April 29, the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton is expected to easily shatter that record, with viewers able to tune in not only from their television sets but also from their computers with countless live audio and video streams planned across the web.

And for better or for worse, the big event is scheduled to take place during work hours in Asia, Europe and the eastern United States. As a result, most of the estimated 400 million online viewers will be tuning in from their computers at work—a fact that has the potential to turn the worldwide celebration into an international nightmare for companies that rely on the internet to conduct business (which nowadays is most businesses).

As you prepare to celebrate the so-called Wedding of the Century, we offer the following suggestions to stream the event and keep business up and running:

1. Plan a tea and scones viewing party – The strain on the corporate network will be tremendous if people stream the footage – plus weigh in on social networks, read real-time news reports, and the like—from their individual computers.  To avoid this, set up one computer and projector in a big conference room to stream the event for the group, and encourage employees to attend by treating them to tea, scones and other UK-inspired treats.  If you’re in Asia or Europe, consider serving fish and chips to accommodate the later time of day.
2. Keep an eye out for wedding crashers – Royal wedding network crashers that is. In anticipation of the big day, some staff may share their excitement by instant messaging with other enthusiasts, tweeting updates, or sending large emails with photos, links and multimedia—and on April 29, they are likely do all this while streaming the event. These users could be the sole cause of network downtime or crashes.  With effective network visibility solutions in place, IT can identify these people in advance, remind them of usage policies and if necessary, reallocate bandwidth to users who are making use of the network for business purposes.
3. Remember it is a global celebration – Because William and Kate have captured the hearts of people around the world, expect employees from remote and branch offices internationally to tune in. Often these offices have less IT oversight and dedicated resources, so they tend to be the most dramatically impacted.  In preparation, remind users of online usage policies and encourage them to plan their own viewing party.
4. Do not give IT staff a holiday – Because many IT issues are unforeseen, they can be near impossible to prepare for in advance. Fortunately, the date of the impending nuptials has been announced well in advance. Make sure IT staff are aware of the likely activity increase on April 29 and remain on-site that day not only to be part of the celebrations, but also to monitor network performance, flag any issues as they arise and immediately address problems before they impact business functions.
5. Make it memorable, for the right reasons – Many people look back fondly on where they were and who they were with when they watched Prince William’s parents marry, and the same will likely hold true for the latest Royal wedding. However, many people also remember the frustrations they felt when they could not successfully stream President Obama’s inauguration  or missed their team’s first round March Madness games due to overwhelming strains on the network. Additionally, network response times slow, productivity suffers and even those who are focused on business tasks suffer.

We’re excited to spotlight one of our top US-based partners: Align – a market-leading IT services and consulting firm based in New York City since 1986.  After working with Align for more than two years now, we can confidently say that they’re one of the best in the business. Read on to learn more about Align and their work with us from Align’s Integrate IT principal and network solutions expert, Scott Mayers.

1) Tell us about Align
Align has been in the infrastructure optimization business for 25 years. Our process, our people and our tools differentiate our approach – ensuring that companies gain the maximum value from our solutions to meet the needs of today and provide the scalability and flexibility for tomorrow’s requirements.

Over the course of Align’s evolution, we’ve developed a suite of powerful infrastructure transparency tools. These tools help us to best serve our clients by providing unparalleled insight into IT dependencies. With this knowledge in hand, organizations can reduce risk when embarking on an IT change event. Align’s subject-matter experts and proven process combine with these tools to help companies yield actionable business intelligence to plan for future change and growth.

With offices in New York, London, Chicago, Toronto and Princeton, Align assists clients of any size, location and industry. Over the years, our group of technology and project management experts has successfully managed some of the most challenging IT projects.

2) What’s an example of an interesting or challenging project?
One example that stands out is when a financial firm faced a security ordeal due to a virus outbreak that brought the company’s Windows-based desktop computers and servers to a halt. Malware began disabling applications, while also making thousands of connections to servers, saturating the network. Align was called upon to help sort out the mess, and pointed them to Cymtec’s Sentry product so that the company could monitor traffic and bandwidth usage more closely in the future, as well as enforce website policies and block malware.

3) What does Align look for when considering distribution partnerships?  What makes a good partner?
We constantly strive to offer our clients the highest quality tools and solutions. When reviewing Cymtec’s products, we were impressed by both the technology and their value proposition. However, a good partnership includes much more than a strong product. We selected Cymtec as a partner due to the sound support we received on both sales and engineering issues, which we continue to benefit from.

4) What makes Cymtec’s products a good fit for your customers?
We immediately knew our customers would benefit from the Cymtec promise of branch office network visibility and control, reduced network downtime, protection against internal propagating threats and significantly improved network and application performance. It’s a long list, but none of these capabilities can be overlooked. If one of our clients experiences vulnerabilities or their network shuts down for any amount of time, it could mean the loss of millions of dollars, particularly for the large amount of financial services companies that we have on our roster.

5) How are financial services IT issues different than in other verticals?
For these low-latency, high-transactional clients, security and information management is much more critical.  Cymtec’s advanced plug-and-play solutions work seamlessly in the background giving IT managers the peace of mind they need to devote their attention to other areas of their business.

6) We’re seeing growth in distributed networks.  Do you agree?  What does this mean for the data center?
As companies expand on a global basis, we’ve seen a substantial increase in the utilization of remote, branch and small office locations. The performance of the network is expected to be the same in these small sites, yet it must be delivered with “thinner” connectivity and substantially less infrastructure. Often times, the combination of remote sites and the consolidation/virtualization into the data center of critical applications and data will lead to the network becoming the “lifeline” of the user’s experience. We’re finding that the local or remote data centers and that cloud computing are essentially housing all of the critical data and applications. End-to-end connectivity, delivered reliably and managed efficiently, is critical to ensure a successful end-user experience.