Consumers are the beneficiary of slick now online storage tools that allow a user to store data on the internet and access it from several devices.  For example, data stored on Dropbox or SkyDrive can be accessed from iPhones or iPads or Android phones (with a 3rd party application) as well as PC’s.

Using these file sharing services are very convenient in the business world when working with very small businesses or independent contractors.  Need to share a graphic design and control versioning?  One of these tools handle the job nicely.  Need to store a lot of data that can really slow down email transmissions?  An online storage tool that syncs to a folder on your desktop can be very helpful.

Avoid Using Online Tools For Certain Applications

With the business model for many online services focusing on traffic generation and potential advertising possibilities or small subscription fees the service provider hopes to make up the costs of the business in sales volume.  Anyone responsible for IT management needs to keep this information in mind when evaluating how and when these services can be used.  The reason the provider’s business model is important is because it will reflect how secure your data really is.

For example, what if one of these online services has a small outage and a backup fails?  Is there any way to get someone on the phone at Google and explain that these are all the family photos and the collection would be worth several hundred dollars to you if it could be restored?  Not a chance.  The business model rely’s on volume and if a few hundred or a few thousand people end up with corrupted or lost data – ‘oh well’.  There are still hundreds of thousands of other users worldwide that are using the site and your loss of traffic to that site won’t mean a ham sandwich to the site owners.

One other risk comes from sharing.  Share data with another user and they can often share it with anyone and everyone.  This means you no longer have control over the documents that are stored even if they are stored in your personal sharing location.

My recommendation is to use these services if they are helpful but don’t store anything that would cost you money or grief if it was lost or corrupted.  Some examples of usage scenarios are letter templates, business related pictures, marketing material, or any data that isn’t critical to the business or your network’s security.  Organizations with several users (5+) will likely find that an internal storage system like a server or Network Attached Storage device is a much quicker and secure service that offers the same functionality or more than any of the leading services today.

Reading through the reviews of various services it seems like Dropbox or SkyDrive are the most respected.  I have used both Dropbox, SkyDrive as well as box.com’s services.  In fact, on my current PC all three are installed as various contacts prefer one service over the other.

(Those network cables and wall jacks may be a big bottleneck in productivity or functionality.)

Getting the right network cabling and the little components that connect to the cabling is a commonly overlooked key to getting the best performance out of a network.  In summary, there is a strong business case to use Cat6 cabling and Cat6 rated connections as a minimum standard.  This will help any organization ensure they are ready for technology needs today and those just around the corner.

Cat 6 cabling as of the spring of 2012 looks on the surface to be a money drain compared to Cat5e.  The cabling is roughly $100 or more per 1000 m extra and the connectors are roughly double at $11 compared to $5.50.  So what is the big deal because Cat5e is rated for 1000MB\s or Gigabit speeds the same as Cat6 is rated for 1000MB\s?    Both have significantly more throughput capability than Cat5 cabling which is rated for 100MB\sec.  Cat 6 is still a much better buy than Cat5e because of how effectively it handles Gigabit transmissions.  There is less cross talk, faster data transfers, and twice potential bandwidth of Cat5e cabling.  The difference may be only incremental today but there is a difference.  In summary, both Cat5e and Cat6 can handle Gigabit speeds but Cat6 does it better.

Voice and Video- Be a Leader

The other key consideration is how much streaming and especially video traffic applications are improved when building a Cat6 rated network.  The difference can be substantial.  Even though many organizations in Northern Alberta don’t leverage video conferencing yet this technology is being adopted at a very high rate worldwide.  Building any new network cabling that is ready to handle this technology can prevent performance and compatibility problems down the road.

Watch the Details

To ensure the extra money spent on Cat6 isn’t wasted all of the wall jacks and connectors at the patch panel also have to be rated for Cat6.   Though this can add to the budget of any project specifying the type of connectors used isn’t the biggest cost to any cabling project.  The much bigger cost is the installation labour. 

No Difference?

In an ideal situation, over short distances, the maximum bandwidth throughput between the two cable typesCat5e and Cat6 the realistic throughput may be the same at 350 Mbps.  (Though a cable is rated for Gigabit speed a lower value is what is normally achieved.)  However, with longer distances or electrical interference present the Cat6  cabling can achieve better results.  In other words, the performance differences between the two cable types are more likely noticeable in a slightly adverse environment.  Since the quality of the environment can be an unknown and can also change over time purchasing the higher grade cabling can ensure peak performance now and eliminate troubleshooting or performance issues down the road.  Proper network management includes a quality review of current cabling performance and a cost\performance analysis of the upgrade costs.  Our recommendation would be to gather this information annually or at least every three years.

As a company working hard to give our customer’s a technological edge pcit has reviewed an exhaustive list of options to deliver data backup and quick disaster recovery.  After testing several options we are very confident that the Data Safe backup system we have developed in conjunction with industry leading vendors is the most competitive in the market.  Below is an overview of how the offering may benefit any organization.

Pcit Data Safe data backup and restore system is unlike many traditional data protection tools in that it does NOT require any human assistance beyond the initial installation and setup.  There is no media to install, remove, protect, or replace.  Data Safe backup is also highly secure and only you have access to your data.

How would I Restore My Data?

The Data Safe Backup client has all the capabilities to restore your data when and where you want it.  You simply launch the Data Safe Backup Restore Wizard and follow the simple yet powerful wizard. Point and click to choose what to restore in an explorer-style interface. Choose to restore the current version of your data or perform a point-in-time restore simply by selecting the date. Data can be restored to their original locations or to an alternate location.

 When restoring, choose to restore from either your local backups or the remote backups from an easy drop down menu. Enjoy peace of mind knowing that your data can be restored lightning fast from your local backups after minor emergencies, but that your data is also safely stored off-site after real disasters. You get the benefits of both worlds, all for the same price!

What pcit Data Safe Delivers…

Backup from Anywhere – Secure backups can be accomplished from any Internet connection.

Flexible Version Control - Provides unmatched flexibility in storing multiple versions of the same document.   Definable down to the individual file.   Easy to recover a previous version.

Secure Off-Site Storage – A redundant copy of all of your critical information is stored in our secure data center.  If your system crashes or your laptop is stolen, your important information is still safe and easily restored at any time day or night.

No Hardware to Fail or Maintain – No bad media, broken tape drives, misplaced tapes or faulty CD drives.  Your secure backup process is completely software driven and your backup is stored off-site without the hassle of putting tapes or CDs in another location. 

Automated Processing - Be sure your data is being backed up correctly with our easy to use automated system.   No operator error or forgotten backups.   You even receive automatic reminders if you forget to backup your data!

Get A Performance Upgrade!

Lenovo ThinkPad T Series notebooks offer the best combination of mobility, manageability and security. For a limited time  upgrade to a notebook installed with a Solid State Drive over a hard disk drive to increase your performance capabilities for only $100 more.  Lenovo X 220 series laptops also qualify for this great promotion.  The X 220 is smaller and lighter with all of the other award winning features in the T series notebooks.

If you’ve accidentally closed a tab in your browser, most modern browsers let you reopen that tab with this command:

CTRL + SHIFT + T

Run the command again and it will open the tab that you closed before that.  And so on.

To open a new Tab in most browsers use:

CTRL + T

It doesn’t matter how solid your security system is –any hacker or online thief can figure out a weak password in a couple of hours through trial and error. Don’t risk being a victim of a security breach and data theft. Avoid these passwords that are especially easy to crack.  For example, if you think using ‘password’ as your password is no big deal, then it’s time to rethink. 

Security experts have recently compiled a list of the worst passwords users by sorting through millions of stolen passwords hackers had posted online.  They found the word ‘password’ at the very top of the list.

To help you avoid common password choice mistakes that users make, management application provider SplashData has compiled a list of the 25 worst passwords to use:

1.  password
2.  123456
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football (hockey in Canada?)

Make a smart password choice. Experts advise using a combination of letters and numbers when creating your passwords, and to avoid things that anyone might be able to guess, such as birthdays and anniversary dates. Passwords with eight characters or more are safer and it’s best to use different passwords for different accounts and websites. One other suggestions is to create longer, more secure passwords that are easy to remember by using short words with spaces or other characters separating them. For example, “eat cake at 8!” or “car_park_city?”  Use a password manager to help you keep track of all of your passwords if you’re finding it difficult to remember them all.

No matter how sophisticated your security system is, a weak password gives hackers and online thieves an advantage. Helping all the users in your organization understand the importance of password strength will help you secure the IT systems in your organization.

If you’re interested in learning more, please contact us so we can develop a comprehensive and custom security blueprint that meets your specific needs.

A worldwide shortage of hard drives is affecting the Technology Industry as many of the Thai-based factories continue to struggle with the damage and effects from flooding.

The majority of the world’s hard drives are produced in factories located in Thailand, where the flood crisis has put a damper on many industries, hard drive producers included. 

According to reports, the shortage is already driving hard drive costs up and may just be the beginning of that trend. Prices for hard drives began to increase as early as November 2011 and can add as much as $150 per drive to the cost of business class servers.  Some manufacturers such as Lenovo are forecasting shortages in the near future but have managed to maintain price levels up to this point. With flooding still an issue for some producers the shortage could expand.  If there is limited ongoing damage it is estimated the industry could recover as early as the summer of 2012 up to full capacity.

As of now, there is still no concrete solution in sight for the problem with the supply of hard drives in the world.  While reconstruction efforts in Thailand are ongoing, getting the hard drive industry on its feet will take a while. One manufacturer, Lenovo, has begun to offer a creative solution to this problem by discounting the price of Solid State Drives (SSD) as a replacement to the traditional hard drive.  The promotion currently in place offer’s upgrades to the SSD drive for as little as $100.  SSD’s are not in as short of supply and this may help alleviate the impact on customers.

New technology is making a significant impact on how fast laptops, computers and even servers perform common tasks.   Our experience is that anyone who has already used this technology would not consider going back to the old standards because of the negative impact it would have on their productivity.  The technology is located ‘under the hood’ of these devices and is a storage drive that offers several significant advantages.

Solid State Drives or SSD’s are a new type of computer Hard Drive that offers several

Comparison of SSD and HDD characteristics

benefits compared to the computer hard drives that have been an industry standard over the last 10+ years.  The significant advantages over the old technology are:

Greater Reliability & Durability

• No moving parts to break
• Less likely to lose data due to shock and vibration
• SSD Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is 2X that of a HDD
• HDDs degrade after 4 to 5 years, SSDs have been shown to last 7 to 10 years

Faster Performance

• Faster startup
• boots up 1.5X faster|
• Faster data retrieval
• More than 1.5X transfer rate

More energy efficient (longer battery life)
Approximately 20% less power
Intangibles
Less heat generated
Quiet operation