ROI is one of those business concepts that is extremely straight forward and simple, at least until you have to measure the cost of whatever it is you are trying to calculate is “worth it”. In IT, one of the more difficult aspects of cost analysis is in measuring employee productivity.
ROI = The number of months or years it takes to break-even given the initial investment

The problem in the IT world is measuring the value of productivity.

If something has a price of $5000 and it will save you $500 per month because you replace or make obsolete something that costs $500 per month that’s an easy calculation: 10 Months!

But if it doesn’t directly consolidate or save anything but has a potential to do something like increase productivity, the calculation isn’t as clear. Do you spend $2000 on a laptop that is 30% faster than one that costs $1000? While it is a 200% premium up front, if that performance increase means a 5% increase in productivity on an employee making $50,000 per year and the asset life of that laptop is 3 years, that could equate to roughly 5% of that salary per year.
In this case the ROI of your initial $1000 investment paid dividends of $7500 in productivity or roughly 750% over three years.

Realistically there are other factors such as the natural decline in speed of the laptop over the three years. Or how much of the employee’s work day is spent on a computer.
This cost analysis is even more complex when introducing larger business initiatives like a centralized management software package for your sales team, accounting team, etc.

Tux is the Linux Mascot (he gets confused too)

When discussing technology the opportunity for miscommunication is enormous. Especially when you start throwing in abbreviations, for example, “I got my CCNA so I can RDP through a VPN via SSL”.

Maybe that is an extreme example, but even when you are talking in somewhat plain English, trip ups happen. So this time around I thought I would try to explain two concepts that are related but not necessarily the same.

I think of redundancy in terms of a hedge against problems happening. Whereas a backup is something you use after things have gone wrong, to get you “back up” and running. I will elaborate:

Raid 1 Configuration

Example for redundancy: You have two hard drives in your computer, when you work on your computer, everything you do is saved onto both drives. If one drive fails, the other keeps running as if nothing happened. (This is called RAID 1, and is very common for high-end workstations and servers). You can then wait until a more convenient time to replace the failing drive. *In this scenario, our remote tools would detect something was wrong and we’d come out after you were done working to fix the issue, preventing it from interrupting your productive day.

Example for backup: You have two hard drives, at the end of the day your drive copies itself to the other drive (a lot of people do this manually). If the primary drive fails, you have to restore the copy to a working drive. *In this scenario as soon as the primary drive fails, your whole system goes down, your entire day, or a portion of it is lost.  Our remote tools would also detect a problem, but you’d have to wait for someone to come out to fix it while in the meantime you or your staff are counting the ceiling tiles.

The Layout for a "Network" Backup for Multiple Laptops

In the end, you really want to have redundancies throughout your technology environment, but you also want backups in case those redundancies all fail! Of course the more redundancies you have, the less likely you are to need to use a backup, which means downtime and productivity loss, but you should still have a backup. To minimize human error, we recommend a combination of on-premise and cloud based backup. That way you have a device that is capable of acting as your computer in the event of failure, and you have a copy of your files somewhere besides your office just in case something happens to it there (theft, fire, etc). See our emergency planning and recovery section.

Moore's Law

If you have never heard of Moore’s law, it addresses the speed at which computer hardware progresses and how this has a relatively exponential characteristic as time goes on.

If you have ever been stuck  and unable to determine if you should buy a new phone, computer or TV now or wait because a new one might be just around the corner, you understand the dilemma that practically all organizations encounter with their technology.

The Pentium 4, once Intel's crown jewel has been left in the dust.

Technology (in general) is supposed to make an organization work better. So the newer the technology, the bigger benefit to your organization, right? Absolutely not (well not necessarily).

New technologies that haven’t been tested, may work just fine, but why bother taking that risk onto your organization? What is at risk if you do decide to take the chance? Do you have a solution that is at least functional right now in case you have to revert? How much more productive will the new solution make you versus a tried and true solution?

But you can have the best of both worlds. If you build a solid foundation for your technology, one that is flexible and part of a long-term strategy, you can achieve your immediate goals and begin reaping  rewards while positioning yourself to more easily adopt new technology!

Of course finding the right balance between new technologies and reliable ones is the key factor in determining the proper solution. This largely depends on your organization’s unique goals and needs, which should be addressed through a comprehensive needs assessment and interview. Then you can put together a plan that will address how it will all work together:

There is not 100% security in an auto-fill/password memory tool like RoboForm, but it is a lot more secure than the “Remember my password” options in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, all which are easily hackable. Actually, it is so easy, I don’t think it merits the word hackable. But RoboForm is different! Essentially RoboForm remembers all of your passwords, which can save you a lot of time since the average user has 25 or more. It can also fill out forms with you, which really does save time, even if you don’t have it remember your passwords.

RoboForm can be installed as an add-on for all of those browsers or independently to help with your password management. Well, it doesn’t just help, it actually does it for you, after you type in your master password. Of course if your master password is compromised, you’re in big trouble. The key would be to make a new and unique master password and change it frequently.

But nothing is uncrackable, even if you change your password every 90 days and it is 12 characters long with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, fingerprint/retina scanning, etc.  But at least you can make it more difficult and maybe get them to give up! I think IT people should do more posts on stress management….

A couple of notes:

*The Chrome add-on for RoboForm has some reported instability with flash (Youtube, etc) and can crash the whole browser randomly. I had this happen several times, not a very pleasant experience!

*There is a timeout in RoboForm that makes you re-enter your password. The problem with this is, if you walk-away from your PC during that time, someone could have access to all of your websites. They won’t be able to see your passwords, but they could login with them.

*Always lock your PC when you walk away by holding the Windows Key and hitting L, or just log out!

Recently another technician and I discussed password security and we came to the consensus that the only way to have 100% password security would be to… not have anything that requires passwords. Of course then it would be a lot easier for someone to assume your identity too…

Extra points to RoboForm for their cool vintage robot icon!

The cloud metaphor is great because it conveys all of these possibilities out there floating high in the sky, untouchable and positive.

Another appropriate comparison is how clouds are also not in our control. And in some cases they can become quite violent and dangerous!

Metaphors aside, some valid questions that business owners should ask before going into a 100% cloud environment are:

1) What is my cloud vendor doing to protect my data?

2) What would happen to my data if my cloud vendor goes out of business?

3) Who controls the data?

The first question is simple enough and most vendors utilize encryption of some kind, but you might be surprised at the lack of an answer your vendor provides.

The second question is a bit more complicated. There are many large companies out there that seem like they are “too big to fail”, but as we all know with the banking and insurance industries, that just isn’t true. Redundancy within a cloud solution is important, but redundancy with cloud solutions is also important.  This gets into the realm of “control” over your files too. If a data center owns the servers your files run on, how do you go about getting those back if something happens to that company?

The answer is to have  a plan in place,  a combination of emergency planning and disaster-recovery. To use solutions that are inherently redundant and remain in your control.

There are many options for these solutions, contact us if you are interested in evaluating what you are running! Remember, no one (Google, Microsoft, HP, etc)  is “too big to fail”.

Microsoft offers an excellent guide on making sure your passwords are secure, I’ve heard from other sources that you want your password to be at least 8 characters.  They kick up the requirement to 14 characters, but with 8 characters and following their other tips, like using a combination of upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols (!, @, $, etc) and avoiding easy to guess information like anniversary, birthday, etc 8 characters can be pretty secure.  Check it out here or check out some snippets below:

Keys to password strength: length and complexity

An ideal password is long and has letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers.

• Whenever possible, use at least 14 characters or more.
• The greater the variety of characters in your password, the better.
• Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often.

Test your password with a password checker

A password checker evaluates your password’s strength automatically. Try our secure password checker.

Protect your passwords from prying eyes

• The easiest way to “remember” passwords is to write them down.
  It is okay to write passwords down, but keep them secure. See 5 tips to keep your passwords secret.

Common password pitfalls to avoid

Cyber criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly decipher passwords.

Avoid creating passwords using:

• Dictionary words in any language.
  Words in all languages are vulnerable.
• Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.
  Words in all languages are vulnerable.
• Sequences or repeated characters.
  Examples: 12345678, 222222, abcdefg, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (qwerty).
• Personal information.
  Your name, birthday, driver’s license, passport number, or similar information.

]]> http://itforsmbs.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/the-importance-of-strong-passwords/feed/ 0 shanemcp HACK http://itforsmbs.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/data-backup-no-longer-difficult-or-expensive/ http://itforsmbs.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/data-backup-no-longer-difficult-or-expensive/#comments Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:43:03 +0000 shanemcp http://itforsmbs.wordpress.com/?p=48 ]]>

Don't wait for this to happen!

There was a time when data backup was a time consuming ritual involving manually exchanging tapes and cleaning tape drives. Even if you verified your data on a regular basis, you really never knew if it would be possible to get it in the event of an emergency. And as data became a bigger part of everyone’s office environment the tapes themselves were getting bigger and more expensive.

But now, with the power of cloud computing, encryption, co-location and high-quality software agents, the entire backup process can be automated. Eliminating human-error and the possibility of physical failure. Eliminating the risk of having your data in just one spot and securing it against unwanted eyes.

Still,  70% of SMBs are not backing up their files at all! And even the ones that are, use systems that may or may not be up to date or reliable in anyway and even if they are backed up, they aren’t encrypted and protected! The culprit here is usually USB flash drives, CDs/DVDs, External Hard drives and as mentioned previously, the tape drive.

Worse yet, if these “backups” are left onsite they could be destroyed or stolen with the original.  If they are off-site, they could be stolen, lost or destroyed by themselves.

So why bother risking it? Get a secure, redundant and automated backup system as soon as possible!

Extra Note: I would recommend avoiding solutions like Mozy, Carbonite, SOS Online and other “low-cost” solutions. Their data centers are often not redundant, secure or encrypted and many times are located overseas. Typically they cut-back on their operating standards (ISO, SAS certifications) and response time. Meaning if you ACTUALLY need the data, they may not have it or get it to you for weeks or months. We’ve heard many horror stories with delays, files that weren’t backed up that were supposed to be, etc. Besides, a quality solution through an IT professional really won’t cost that much more. Plus you actually get peace of mind.

As always, contact me for more information or for a recommendation on a solution or partner organization.

Other Scary Statistics: 93% of companies that lost their data for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.  Of those companies, 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately

Recently, we were going to make the switch back to Exchange, but then we thought about all the things we would have to do like:

1) Install Exchange

2) Use precious server resources to run Exchange

3) Configure our router and firewall so that we could access the webmail

4) Maintain the physical server that runs exchange

So now we are taking the approach of getting more applications off our premises and into the cloud. We’ve already done this with our CRM and support ticket management software.

The benefits of cloud computing solutions like Google Apps are numerous, but they also require proper delivery and their own type of redundancy.

For example, if you had an application that you used locally at your business, and it was run on the cloud, what would you do if you lost your internet connection? For businesses that can’t just go to a coffee shop (most can’t), the answer would be redundant internet connections and a business continuity plan.

Even with these extra requirements, the savings can be enormous. Contact us and we can help you save money utilizing these solutions: 800.859.8751

-Shane

• Enterprise is considerably faster, especially in a networked environment, it gives you the ability to add more customers, vendors and information, without a speed degradation
• Merchant services integrates even more organically – it maps your fees automatically and makes reconciliation and batching nightmares vanish.
• You can get a free upgrade to next years version
• It includes integration of third-party applications via the Intuit Development Network and Marketplace

Tips:

• View > Open Windows List (So you can actually see how many windows you have open)
• Create Custom Forms, Invoices, Estimates, etc with Lists > Templates
• Run it on a Linux server for a speed boost!

These are the programs that don’t hurt you directly, don’t relentlessly bombard you with ads (although you will see ads for them). You can often buy these programs in retail stores as well. They are registry cleaners and optimizers, defraggers and system enhancers .  They all run about $20 and usually they do absolutely nothing for your system performance, except tell you they are doing something.

The good news is (unless you’ve paid for them already), you don’t have to pay for useful tools like this. Auslogics offers a disk defrag tool and CCleaner offers a registry cleaner with other useful capabilities. These programs are better than most of the utilities that cost money.

A few other useful tools:  Cleanup! (temporary file cleanup), CDBurnerXP (free burning software),  Norton Removal Tool (… A tool that fixes misc problems…)

-Shane