Keeping Tabs On My Brother

It is amazing the technology advances in the last 10 years. My brother moved to Switzerland in 2006 and I thought it would be difficult to communicate with him. The first issue being the time difference (They are 7 hours ahead of the US), the second being my very busy schedule. It can also be expensive to call over seas and I am not a fan of 1010 numbers or calling cards. I get so busy, that I have a hard time getting a hard cut let alone stop for a phone card.

It has been easy to keep in contact with him. He established a blog called makeityourslave, which allows my family and I to keep up with him and see pictures of the places he sees and how life living abroad is. He also established a phone number with Skye that has an area code in the Wisconsin area. That phone number forwards to his Swiss cell phone. I could always Instant Message him, but I am not a fan of IM for security and various other reason.

If you think about it, this was not possible 10 years ago and possibly five years ago. We would have been stuck exchanging email's or snail mail. I would also not have been able to call him using a local phone number, I would have had to dial International (and remember the very long phone number).

He could also watch US TV if he wanted to if I would buy a slingbox. In Switzerland, most of the TV is in German and not all that Interesting. The slingbox allows you to watch TV anywhere you can get Internet, even a Treo Mobile phone.

The other item that has been made easier is travel. My wife uses various websites to find the lowest cost flight to Switzerland. She can also check what the cost would be a various times of the year. When we went to Paris a few years back, we even reserved a room using email. We can also research travel sites, buy Euro rail passes, etc.

Technology has made our life's easier and more productive. I just wonder what the next 10 years will bring.

Vmware Security

For many reasons, more and more people are turning to Virtualization these days. What people forget about is the security on a virtual machine. The idea as most people know is to take a single piece of hardware, but some virtualization software on it and have the ability to load multiple operating systems on it. Most virtualization software has a hypervisor.

The problem becomes when a security breach happens on the hypervisor. Since most virtualization software can host multiple operating systems also called virtual machines, a security breach to the hypervisor could lead to an attack on all of the virtual machines.

Vmware has had a few vulnerabilities in the past. To combat this, Vmware has announced VMSAFE. With VMSAFE, Vmware is opening up an API to allow vendors to write software to help secure virtual machines.

It will be interesting to watch this unfold as I believe we are going to hear about more virtualization security issues as more companies transition to virtual machines.

Growing The Business

I started out my business in 2002 as a one man band. Today were are 7 people. As I reflect back, running a business has been good and I have learned a bunch.

I started out knowing nothing about running a business, just guts and determination. The best thing I have done is bought numerous books to improve my business savvy. I also have went to conferences and have joined peer groups to see what is and isn't working.

Hiring our first employee was a little scary as I had more than myself to work about and I had some I had to manage. But well over 2 years latter it has worked out great and we continue to grow.

One of the best moves I did was to hire my administrative assistant. She helps with so many things I do not have time for, such as setting up this blog, sending out newsletters and marketing letters, follow up to phone calls. It has made me more productive, I should have done it years ago.

If I had one suggestion to make to someone starting or running a business, I would hire first hire an administrative assistant first. They can help with the small details allowing you to focus more on business development.

Printer Security

Most IT professionals place printer on the network without much thought on securing them. I read an interesting article on the topic in eweek that can be found here http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Printers/Multifunction-Printers-The-Forgotten-Security-Risk/.

Basically, most admins are placing the printers on the network with default settings. This leaves the printer open to worm attacks or even attacks by hackers or malicious internal employee's. They could use the hard drive on the MFP printer to store illegal downloads, music, etc.

When discussing this topic with my internal sales professional, he told me about a time that his former company found a printer hard drive that was hosting a pornographic website. The employee was let go, but the damage was already done.

That is why it is always a wise idea to make sure that you secure the device before it is placed on your network and change the factory defaults. It is also wise to preform a security scan and audit on the device after it is placed on the network to ensure that it is secure.