Bloomberg Businessweek recently released a list of the top five best and worst locations in the United States for a Data Center. Sioux Falls, South Dakota was ranked the number one least expensive place to build a data center based on total operating costs which are made up of annual labor costs, electric power costs as well as several others. With SDN in the final stages of planning a second site with some data center functionalities available it shows that SDN is committed to providing the best possible services at the lowest possible costs to its customers.
Two recent articles, one from InformationWeek and one from the Wall Street Journal, both site increased concern from IT staff about network threats and vulnerability of private customer information. By doing simple searches, web users were able to find personal information, such as social security numbers and credit card numbers that had been poorly protected or leaked online. Eighty percent of IT managers expect network-borne threats to increase throughout 2010 and 2011.
With the constant changing security landscape, should your company be concerned about network threats?
SDN has security experts on staff to help review your network and address any specific gaps in your system defense.
Julie Hoyer
Marketing Specialist
Technology has permeated most aspects of our modern society. Last week (April 13-14), SDN exhibited at the Infotec Conference in Omaha, NE (www.infotec.org). This gathering of IT professionals and technology connoisseurs highlighted the reach of technology into our society and the rising concerns new and ever-changing technology present for businesses.
Speakers from all areas of the country converged in Omaha to discuss various topics, including: information assurance, development and the cloud, IT service, project management, entrepreneurship and social media, healthcare IT, and IT talent recruitment and retention. These topics represent the leading concerns regarding technology today.
What are the top technology concerns your business is facing?
Julie Hoyer
Marketing Specialist
SDN Communications
Hackers target businesses large and small. Security breaches can have a major financial impact on your business and can also lead to lost consumer confidence in your brand, increased employee downtime, legal costs and public relations and marketing expenditures.
Often, small to medium businesses do not have the internal staff to proactively monitor and manage network security. Many of these businesses turn to Managed IT Services, like Total Care Solutions from SDN Communications.
Services like firewall monitoring and management, off-site data protection and server recovery, and network monitoring and management from an outside vendor can provide security for your valuable data. This allows you to focus on keeping your business running day-to-day.
Benefits of working with a managed IT service provider include:
· Access to Network Security Experts – providers that focus on network security have a team of experts that monitor against network threats 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
· Increase Consumer Confidence – consumers that know their information will be safe have more trust in your business.
· Simple, Secure and Cost-Effective Duplication and Storage of Information – never worry about losing your data again.
When you start thinking about the data you have about your customers, you begin to understand the value that it has. What do you want to make sure is protected? Credit card information, birth dates, and contact information, are all examples of data that have been compromised, placing a business and its customers at risk.
If you would like to visit with an expert to find out if outsourcing proactive network security solutions is right for your business, contact SDN Communications at 402-397-0695 or visit www.sdncommunications.com/total-care-solutions.
Julie Hoyer
Marketing Specialist
You hear from your office’s IT department all the time about how important it is to keep your computer safe while at work. That includes not opening email attachments you weren’t expecting, not sharing your password, and not using USB drives when you don’t know what is on them. What you might not hear as much is how important it is to continue these same safety measures in addition to further protection when you leave your company’s network.
For those of you that take your laptops home or on the road, click here for a great article about using wireless hotspots, including in your own home.
It describes some basic measures that you can take to protect your information when using public wi-fi hotspots, whether for personal or business use.
SDN’s supervisor of corporate IT, Amos Aesoph, also suggests the following:
1. Make sure your home wireless network uses a password
2. When entering your username and password on web pages, make sure the address begins with https:// so that the connection is encrypted
3. Do not use the same password you use to log into your company’s network for other online, less secure accounts.
Looking for more ways to keep your computer protected? Click here for 5 essential tips to keep your computer safe.
Ashton Hofer
Marketing Intern
The growth of wireless networks with organizations in last ten years has been astonishing to the point where wireless has gone from being seen as a convenience to a necessity. Users have come to expect wireless access throughout schools, business, warehouse facilities, and more.
Unfortunately, in the haste of deployment, security concerns can get overlooked. A wireless network is set up with encryption and it’s assumed to be secure from outside intruders. The truth is, only the most advanced levels of encryption (WPA2) are secure from outside intrusion as is seen from a recent ZDNet story that tells us not even WPA with Pre-shared Key is safe (well…it’s safe…for 60 seconds, which is how long it takes to be hacked). Add this to the fact that end users plug in their own wireless devices without IT approval (this does happen) along with the challenge to support legacy devices with limited encryption options, and the task of securing wireless can be downright daunting.
Read the attached story from ZDNet and call SDN if you have concerns about securing your wireless network and the integrity of your organization’s data.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=23384
Jered Schock
Senior Account Executive
I own a small business outside of SDN so I understand the hundreds of decisions that must be made every day. Between scheduling issues, budget constraints and the never-ending quest for new customers, the last thing I have time to worry about is whether my network firewall is protecting my business and if hackers are trying to access my customer data.
SDN recently came out with a new service that is very intriguing to me as a business owner. It is called Total Care Solutions and it is a suite of managed IT services. It means that SDN could monitor, manage and protect my network. They can take care of firewalls, virus protection, off-site data back up and everything in between. And, any service that provides one less thing for me to take care of or worry about is something I want to know more about.
Do you want to know more about how managed IT services can help your business? Click here for more information.
Julie Hoyer
Marketing Specialist
A big part of our focus at SDN is in keeping a vigilant eye on the security of our customer’s networks. One area that is difficult to secure and often overlooked is the personal email account that may contain sensitive company information or corporate user account passwords.
With the proliferation of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and the like, it’s now easier than ever for hackers to get access to personal information that can be used to gain access to this sensitive information
A recent article from PC World (http://www.pcworld.com/article/168678/could_you_be_hacked_like_twitter.html) talks about how a hacker broke into a Twitter employee’s personal Gmail account.
The hacker found a user’s Gmail account was linked to an old hotmail email no longer in use so he registered for the Hotmail account and used the password recovery feature in Gmail to get unauthorized access to the Gmail account and access over 300 private company documents.
The article encourages us to be vigilant in the use of complex passwords and secret questions/answers that only we could know the answers to. Access to personal information on social networking sites further complicates the problem as hackers may find info like your mother’s maiden name, home town, birth date, etc.
Additional ways to secure your personal information: lock down your Facebook account information to only people that you know. Limit the personal data on your public LinkedIn profile. And…if you ever find out that you are locked out of an email account or receive a request to change your password that you did not send, you can figure your account has been hacked and need to change your password immediately.
-Jered Schock
Senior Account Executive
SDN Technologies
