Security via Interguard

I have just had the heads-up from a good friend of mine to let me know that he will be sending over my copy of Interguard software for home, laptop and corporate security.  All being well I should have the stuff over this evening and all things being equal will get something posted up over the next couple of days.  As products go this is shaping up to be a great product with a very comprehensive range for features for such things as monitoring web access.  DataLock which helps prevent data leakage from a business as well as laptop security so should your beloved laptop be stolen or lost then it can located, data retrieved and the notebook disabled from ever working again.

Awesome stuff so you’ll have the review as soon as I have it.

Silence is golden…

As you will see things have been extreemly quiet of late.  Due to some personal stuff that was happening throughout May/June I had to focus my attention elsewhere for a while, then of course we have had the kids summer holidays which is always great.  You get to see the kids more but then after about……2 hours you wish they were back at school and you can clearly remember why you hate the summer holidays!

We have also just returned from a weeks holiday in France which I have to say was an enlightening experience.  It is some years now since I travelled abroad so I was a little green about these things but I knew all the normal stuff that was required (passport, GB plates etc).  However, being a devout techy I had to take some essentials to ensure that I didn’t loose connection with the world.  First stop was with T-Mobile to see what it was going to cost me in terms of mobile phone calls, should clients need me then I want to know how much it will cost me and also to ensure that it was enabled for "roaming".  I was told that it was indeed enabled for "roaming" and to make a call back to the UK would cost me "38p per minute" and to receive a call would cost "19p per minute", not too bad however I was then told that I would also be charged "19p per minute" for someone to leave a message and then "38p per minute" to collect them!!  Not too much of a piss take.  I then asked what the rates were for data usage while abroad…this just go better again.  I was told that it was much cheaper than it used to be as previously it cost £7.00 per MB but now it was only £1.60 per MB.  Now obviously the young lady that I was speaking to but I am afraid that I do not agree I mean come on, on one hand we are told that we are part of the EU, the European Union, but all that goes out then window when the mobile companies have the opportunity at a pound of flesh.  Needless to say I decided to see how much the Wi-Fi would cost on site.  During the ferry crossing my mobile picked up a network called "On-waves" which is the maritime network between then English and Franch coast, what a fantastic service.  However, when my mobile joined the network I was greeted with the following message:

Welcome to Maritime.It will cost you /min to make and /min to receive calls here.  You can send a text for 40p a message and a picture message for 20p. To speak to T-Mobile Customer Services call +44XXXXXXXXXX from your mobile.

Now this was a nice message to get however it failed to provide a clue as to the cost of calls on this network.  However, on my HTC TyTn which has a T-Mobile 3G data only sim inserted I received the following message:

You have latched onto a maritime network.  Please note making and receiving calls are charged at £1.80/min from this network.

Slightly more dramatic costs for calling, I mean come on £1.80 per minute to make or receive a call you might as well just butter me up and stick it to me!!!  Once in france another SMS was received confirming that call costs that I had already been notified of prior to leaving.  Once we were at the site it transpired that Wi-Fi usage is charged at 8€ per hour which I just wasn’t prepared to pay, I mean it just doesn’t cost that much to buy it so I ended up spending the week with no Internet access whatsoever which was really quite surreal but oddly pleasant.  Some would call me a tight git but I refuse to pay unreasonable rates for services such as this, what do you think?

Better safe than sorry (part 2)

Yesterday I wrote about encrypting data on your notebook computer when you are carrying data around. Within that posting I mentioned TrueCrypt as a program which can be used for this task so for those of you that are interested in it, I mean who wouldn’t as it’s open source, here’s a brief tutorial. Read the rest of this entry »

Better safe than sorry

Over here in the UK there has been a lot in the paper recently about the data losses by some of the key government agencies such as HMRC as well as businesses such as Skipton Building Society much of which was not encrypted data. As you will know there has been much public outcry and quite rightly so but do we have any room to talk?

The fact is that almost every business today owns at least 1 notebook computer and typically that will be taken out to meet clients, to work from home etc. On that notebook there will typically be a great deal of data regarding either your own business or possible about your clients data so do you encrypt your data? The answer is almost certainly no, so how on earth can we complain when other organisations do they same. While I understand that these organisations should know better as they have much larger funding budgets to get people onboard that should be telling them this but the fact of the matter is that very few businesses do this themselves. Recent figures show that the public is 80% more cautious with their personal data than before the HMRC data loss which is a positive move for security. You may think that the data on your notebook is of no value to anyone else but lets just assume for one minute that you loose your notebook and you have the following on it:

• On it is the payroll figures as you needed to work on them tonight
• You also have the sales figures for your clients
• Details of a new proposal for a potential client
• Documentation regarding a client(s) site, not including passwords

So what is the value of this to anyone else:

• The payroll data would be invaluable to a headhunter for example. If you had a member of staff who had some very coveted knowledge then they would be able to know where to start with pay offers
  • If the payroll figures included home addresses of employees then this would also be of interest to criminals for identity theft.
• Sales figures would be of great interest to your competition as they would be able to ascertain the financial value not only of your own company month in month out but also the value of each of you clients each month.
• Details of a new proposal would again be of interest to your competition as they would then know what you are proposing but more importantly what you are planning to change for this fantastic service. If this proposal is for an IT system this may also be of use to a potential hacker as it may provide information regarding internal systems or security information.
• Documentation regarding a clients site would almost certainly hold value to a potential intruder if it was technology documentation as it would provide valuable insight into what internal systems they had. If it related to equipment such as phones, plant machinery then again it would have value to competitors or companies in that field.

Read the rest of this entry »

The “business” phone

As many of you will have seen from my earlier posting ActiveSync for Exchange server is now available on the iPhone which is supposed to make the unit more appealing to the business user. With this in mind I contacted a friend of mine to let him know of the update as he had been keen to get one of these previously but had been stopped by the lack of support for Exchange Server.

However, I got a call later from him telling me that after contacting O2, whom their current business contract is with, they were unable to supply him with one under their current contract. Basically speaking he was told if he wanted one he would have to go to the local O2 shop and purchase on one of the special tarrifs and have his number ported over to the new contract. Now this seems ok however as with many businesses he has a shared tarrif, i.e. 2000 minutes shared between 3 handsets with free calls between handsets. So by doing this he would then loose the free calls between handsets and also incur another invoice each month, again not too bad for the small business. But if we take this to the enterprise, something Apple are keen to do, it gets more complicated. Let’s say for example we have 100 users in the business and all of them want to have the iPhone as it is “the” business phone to have; this would mean under this system they would have to have 100 separate contracts, 100 invoices sent each month and 100 direct debits to their account…..complete madness.

I mean come’on O2!! You need to look at this properly and create a system that works for the business users whom this product is so clearly targetted. If this is going to continue to be the case then I can see the slow takeup of the iPhone continueing for some time yet.

If anyone has any further information on this or package details which O2 did not want to reveal then please spill the beans I’d be interested to know.

ActiveSync arrives on the iPhone

It would seem that Apple have been a busy bee working to make the iPhone more appealing to the discerning business users. Many business people that I know have been held back from the iPhone due to the lack of support for Microsoft Exchange which is found in the MS SmartPhone by means of ActiveSync. However, it seems that Apple have been able to come to an agreement with Microsoft and license the ActiveSync technology for use on the iPhone. So what does this mean? Basically it means that everything that you could sync previously on an MS SmartPhone you can now do on the iPhone which means you can sync contacts, calender, push-email and most important it will support remote wiping of the unit should you part company. All of this adds up to a very interesting product which is likely to be able to gather further momentum and likely leave Microsoft standing in the mobile marketplace. The full article is available here.