While large enterprise networks have no shortage of options for safely interacting with the outside world, smaller companies sometimes have to be a little more creative. Fortunately, with a little planning, it?s not all that hard for even the smallest companies to run their own public-facing servers from their own computers?and their own offices?without making the entire network vulnerable.
Even the most run-of-the-mill home routers now include support for a DMZ. Short for, you guessed it, demilitarized zone, a DMZ lets you set one or more computers outside the protection of the router?s firewall so it can have unfettered access to Net. This feature is commonly available on all sorts of routers from D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, and others, and takes only a moment to configure.
The hardest part of setting up a DMZ is deciding whether this is really the best option for you in the first place. Some reasons to do this might include running your own Web servers, your own FTP servers, or getting around firewall restrictions that interfere with some communications programs. Typically, a DMZ only makes good sense if you need to allow several applications to function outside the firewall and it?s not practical to rely on simple port forwarding. But you should be aware that, by setting a computer outside the router?s firewall, you expose it to additional threats that can quickly bring an unprotected computer to its knees and expose its data to interlopers. For this reason, if you do decide to set up a DMZ, it?s vitally important to run a software firewall on each of the PCs in the DMZ and keep them vigilantly updated.
On most home routers, setting up a DMZ is as easy as opening up the router?s admin interface in a web browser and selecting which of the connected computers you?d like to place outside the router and assigning an IP address to the DMZ host.
The benefit of a DMZ is that it isolates public-facing machines outside your network, preventing threats that may affect those machines from reaching the rest of your PCs. For this reason, it?s important to carefully monitor the systems on your DMZ for viruses and other malware regularly, and diligently back up those systems.
The specific configuration steps for a DMZ vary greatly from router to router. So be sure to check the company's website for detailed information and advice before altering the DMZ settings in your router.
Last month, Sprint announced that it would roll out a long-anticipated wireless broadband network using an eagerly anticipated -- but scarcely seen -- technology known as WiMAX. And even more surprising than the announcement itself was the expectation that we'd actually see the new network before the end of 2007. With Thanksgiving upon us and no WiMAX in sight, is Sprint likely to live up to its promise?
Last week, Sprint terminated its partnership with Clearwire, which had been signed on to help deploy the new WiMAX network, citing an inability to "resolve complexities associated with the [letter of intent]," which could mean a major setback in the WiMAX rollout. Even so, Sprint remains resolute that it will deploy WiMAX under the brand name Xohm in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington before 2007 fades into history.
If Xohm does come to market by 2008, it could ring in an era of more ubiquitous connectivity for businesses of all stripes. By covering vast metro areas with easily accessible, high-speed wireless, WiMAX might just live up to the hopes its creators have pinned to it since the dawn of this decade. And that could spell cheap connections for your business before 2009 rolls around.
But in the years we've been waiting for WiMAX to come around, high-speed cellular broadband has become nearly ubiquitous in metropolitan regions, with major vendors like Dell and HP building wireless broadband support into their business laptops. All this readily available internet connectivity may ultimately have stolen whatever thunder WiMAX had left. So, what do you think? Is it too little, too late for Sprint's WiMAX effort? Let us know in the comments section.
As the data transfer speed is about 4 times to that of 3G, So a delay of 3-4 months is not a big deal. But Sprint should be careful not to delay more, else the complementary products for WiMax like for mobile chips would get delayed and the vendors would be hesistant to invest in WiMax technology. Once WiMax is deployed as being said by Sprint that it would reach 10million people at the end of 2008, then this advanced and the better technology would outcompete 3G for sure. What do yiou think???
IBM and Google have both announced high-flying research projects in cloud computing -- creating virtual supercomputers to power distributed applications that customers like you can access over the Web. This idea isn?t new, but it appears to be different this time. Today?s blend of high-speed networks and fast servers have already led to the rise of the Web app, and end users are getting accustomed to running apps over the Internet.
Still, ordinary businesses will have to wait a while if they want access to these computing clouds, because IBM is grooming its services for the larges business, research, and government usage models and Google is currently only working with universities on its cloud. Eventually, though, cloud computing will trickle into the mainstream. Here?s what it could do for you.
Mobile Business
Distributed computing means you never have to say you?re stranded. Because cloud computing makes large server clusters available over the Net, you?ll eventually be able to access intensely powerful customer service and commerce apps from the road, without compromising security. Your sales reps will be able to perform high-level business analysis from their cars, rather than waiting for leads from the home office. This will make smaller businesses more agile than ever before.
Data Mining
For the largest companies, sifting through the endless stream of online activity for meaningful user trends is an expensive ? but rewarding ? challenge that gives them an edge in understanding the markets. In the coming year, cloud computing will likely make it easier for them. And once computing clouds fall into the hands of regular folks, we?ll all have that power.
Easy Virtualization
Large businesses are rapidly awakening to the power of virtualization, cutting hardware costs while making a more diverse application set available to their users. Cloud computing will make it easy for the very smallest companies to leverage virtualization just like the big kids.
Social Butterflies
Last year, every business in America decided it was hip to jump into MySpace. But, despite what a few companies? PR firms have claimed, most of the hipsters they went there to court were unimpressed by the effort, largely because the static tools of the social network made for a bland customer experience. Cloud computing will enable more sophisticated social apps, giving businesses the tools to attract customers in dynamic, entertaining ways.
Virtual Worlds
Second Life, while interesting, has done even less for the businesses that have hopped into it than MySpace has. But once cloud clusters go mainstream, they?ll enable more immersive VR environments and, just maybe, draw more credible numbers of users into the virtual world. That could finally activate some real commerce in virtual places like Second Life.
Some small business owners who invested in a little cheap storage may find themselves in a panic today, as Maxtor has announced that some of its drives shipped with a data-compromising virus. The affected drives are part of the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 line, particularly those sold after August 2007.
Fortunately for those who bought the drives strictly for business use, the virus -- namely Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah -- is designed to attack gamers by stealing game login information for World of Warcraft accounts. For more on this virus and the products affected, click HERE.
At the time of this writing, major antivirus vendors such as McAfee, Symantec, and Kaspersky have all included detection support for this virus, so if you own one of these drives and haven't run a virus scan on it, now would be a good time to do so.
For the rest of us, this incident is just a friendly reminder that any peripherals we add to our networks -- no matter how seemingly benign -- have the potential to impact the security of our entire network. So before adding any new drive or system to the network, it's a sensible idea to scan it first.
London-based SoftScan announced this week that 96.10% of the e-mail its customers received in October of this year was spam. If that number is even remotely representative of global messaging trend -- and, based on the load of junk that hits my own spam filter each day, I see no reason to suspect otherwise -- it raises serious questions about the future of electronic messaging as we now know it. Of course, good ol' e-mail isn't going away anytime soon, so holding back the tide remains one of the most important jobs of IT managers everywhere.
The lowest levels of spam reported by SoftScan in the month of October, found during the early part of the month, still topped 93%. Of the nefarious messages received, 66.16% were phishing e-mails, which means businesses would do well to educate their users about the nature of phishing threats.
While properly updated anti-spam and anti-virus software can significantly reduce the number of threats that make it into end-user inboxes, any absent-minded intern (or CEO, for that matter) can compromise your network by following the links in some phishing messages.
For more on protecting your PCs from phishing and other threats, click HERE.
Thanks to technologies like VoIP, colocation, and virtualization, smaller companies can act a whole lot bigger than they are. But all that traffic flowing across a tiny network can mean big problems for companies on small budgets. That?s when makeshift IT managers have to turn their attention to network components they may have previously overlooked.
One of the most frequently forgotten components of any small business network is the switch. Quiet and unassuming though these simple little boxes may be, an aging switch can easily put your entire network in a chokehold as you add new devices and services, bringing a growing infrastructure to its knees. Fortunately, high-bandwidth gigabit switches are rapidly getting smaller, simpler, and more affordable.
3Com?s new OfficeConnect Managed Gigabit PoE Switch is small enough to sit on the corner of a desk, but powerful enough to keep up with daily VoIP traffic and the demands of a busy business network. The OfficeConnect is ready to run right out of the box, so business owners can put on their IT hats, connect it, and get back to their day jobs quickly. Once it?s up, routine management is easy through the web-based interface.
While the $400 OfficeConnect is small and simple, it also includes features that IT types look for, like Power over Ethernet (PoE) support, network traffic prioritization, a command line interface for quick over-the-network management, and support for SNMP management software.
