‘Tis the Season

bcarambio Data security, Secure collaboration Leave a Comment

Think About Your Customer’s Document Security

Now that it’s October, fall is in the air (at least in the northeast US) and the leaves are dropping onto the lawns.  It’s time for change and time to think about getting ready for the coming winter.

It’s also a good time to think about changes and planning in your business.  Here are a few suggestions:


Call Your Customers
When is the last time you spoke to your customers?  If you do it regularly, great.  If you haven’t talked to them in awhile, give them a call.  Thank them for their business and see if they need any help.  Communicating through email, newsletters, Twitter and Facebook are all good things, but sometimes you need to talk to someone.Read More

The Case of the Killer eMail

Ron Arden Data breach 1 Comment

Have you ever sent a confidential e-mail to one or more people only to find out that the e-mail was sent to someone that should not be on the distribution list? One small mistake like this can have a devastating impact on your business! Just ask Rocky Mountain Bank what it will cost them, because there was no way for them to disable an Excel spreadsheet and other documents that were sent out in error.Read More

Loose lips sink ships

Ron Arden Data breach Leave a Comment

The familiar line from World War II is as relevant today as it was 65 years ago. The release of confidential information can have a devastating impact on an organization. In the normal course of doing business critical information will leak out into the wild. This may occur intentionally or unintentionally, but either way it is critical to know that a breach occurred at the earliest possible moment. Data Loss Detection enables companies to routinely perform customized profile searches that detect specific information on internet sites. The search crawler detects confidential data, files, posts and discussions that should not be in the public domain. Read More

Let’s Just Call It A Service

Ron Arden Secure collaboration Leave a Comment

The world of ____ (fill in the blank) as a Service is exploding. Especially the acronyms.  Here are just a few:

And how about Software + Services?  Last week I had a plumber come to my house to replace a corroded valve in my basement.  I could say I bought Plumbing as a Service (another PaaS).  When I pay my electric bill, I buy Electricity as a Service.  And when I pay my cable and internet bill, maybe I am buying Fun as a Service.  
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Privacy and Social Media

Ron Arden Privacy Leave a Comment

Sounds like an oxymoron, but this debate has been raging since the words social media popped into the ether.  “Don’t tell people anything or someone will get you” sounds like the old story of the boogeyman in your closet.  There of course is a legitimate concern about giving details of your private life away so people can steal things or harm you.  But how about in the business world?Read More

SaaS and Higher Ed

Ron Arden Secure collaboration Leave a Comment

I was listening to a podcast on Why the Internet will NOT tear apart colleges and I started thinking about using SaaS in Higher Education.  The podcast said people are worried that using Internet technologies will make going to college obsolete.  If I can do e-learning over the web, why bother going to some buildings to get an education?  They pointed out that there is a lot more to going to college than ingesting information.  Living away from home, maturing as a person, doing research in a lab, collaborating on projects, attending sports games and socializing are just a few of the benefits of actually being at a college.Read More

Private cloud is an oxymoron

Ron Arden Secure collaboration Leave a Comment

In Phil Wainewright’s recent column Survival of the fit-most he talks about sharing and collaboration on the Web versus keeping things private.  The essence and value of the internet is to make it easy to share information and collaborate.  People and businesses benefit most when we collaborate.  Many cloud and SaaS providers are providing a private cloud solution for customers who are skittish about moving applications to the cloud.  This seems to be a reversal of the benefits of cloud computing and SaaS.  If I create a private cloud in my data center using virtualization, is it really a cloud?Read More

Track it before it gets into the wild

bcarambio Data security Leave a Comment

I was reading an article in Information Week entitled 5 Security Lessons From Real-World Data Breaches that talks about data security and how companies can harden their external and internal defenses.  There was a lot of good information about security infrastructure, including firewalls, network intrusion systems, data loss prevention tools and numerous others.  Most of these tools address data at rest or data in transit.  They tend to exclude data in use.

What is data in use?  It’s what it sounds like.  If a hacker steals a document by exploiting inadequate defenses, they now can use the data they stole.  Most people focus on making sure the data doesn’t get out in the wild, but what do you do when it does.  Encryption techniques help ensure that if a sensitive document gets out, it is unusable by the hacker.  Read More