I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: smaller companies fail more often than large ones after a disaster. I’m not just talking about tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. Those affect everyone. I’m also talking about small, one location disasters like a busted water pipe over the office manager’s PC or a small smokey fire near the file server. Only one room may be involved, but the company’s very existence is now at risk.

Oh… and let’s not forget the hard disk in the server dying. That may be the worst of all.

Disasters? They don’t have to be. This highlights one of the biggest differences between smaller and bigger companies: being prepared for the unexpected. Continue reading »

I am incensed. I am speechless. I am appalled. I am downright pissed.

The Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement with TJX Companies over their massive data breach last year (46 million credit card numbers exposed, over $8 million in fraud already attributed to it) in which TJX “agreed to have its information audited but avoided paying federal fines”! (Full article Companies Avoid Financial Penalties After Massive Computer Data Breaches, Dan Caterinicchia, WashingtonPost.com, March 28, 2008) That’s all well and good considering that the Payment Card Industry guidelines call for independent audits of their information security measures anyway! What a crock!

Here’s the kicker: “The FTC did not impose financial penalties against the companies because it lacks the authority to do so. The commission has asked Congress for such authority since 2005.” Continue reading »

An increasing amount of counterfeit Cisco equipment is being sold in the US by unscrupulous importers and dealers. Just read the recent article in NetworkWorld by Brad Reese “Giant counterfeit Cisco sale on eBay” and massive border seizures by US and Canadian customs officials described in a recent article by InfoWorld “Counterfeit Cisco gear seized by U.S., Canadian agencies”.

Cisco is loosing a bunch of money to the counterfeiters, but the threat to the rest of us is larger than that. As connected business people, we have integrated the Internet into our daily lives and operations depend upon it being up and running. Dependable. Reliable. Always there without thinking about it.

Now imagine a world in which sub-standard routers, switches and related communications gear that keeps information flowing fails early or doesn’t perform as it should and our Internet connection goes down Continue reading »

Spam really bugs me. I wish I were talking about the Monty Python song (love their dry British humor!), but that’s not the case today.

Spam - scourge of email users everywhere. I don’t know how many offers for Viagra (70% off!) I’ve deleted from my mailbox today much less over the last year. All of those offers for drugs, phishing attempts, male enhancement products, porn, cheap software… the list of things people think we will buy from firms we’ve never heard of goes on and on.

I read that experts believe some 97% of all email traversing the Internet today is spam. I believe that. I ran a little experiment last night and let my email pile up on the server from 1500 hrs yesterday to 0900 hrs today and then downloaded it all in one big burp. The numbers were astounding: out of about 590 emails:
- 519 were labeled spam straightaway
- 30 were from newsletters I read
- 15 were ads from legitimate firms I want to hear from (Dell, TechDepot, etc.)
- 10 were deleted (bad addresses / old employees), and
- The remaining 16 were from real people! AND about real things I’m interested in! Damn!

Continue reading »