Are you aware of the Stimulus Act of 2008?

Are you aware of the Stimulus Act of 2008?
Included in the Stimulus Act of 2008 is an incentive to encourage capital investments in the calendar year 2008. Similar to measures passed in prior years related to bonus depreciation, the Act may allow small and mid size business customers to immediately deduct from their taxable income up to $250,000* on qualifying purchases made in 2008 (a one year increase of the $125,000 limit). In addition to the $250,000 immediate deduction, the Act also provides for an incremental 50% bonus for qualifying purchases.

What is bypassing your Firewall?

That is an interesting question, isn’t it? I have seen a majority of companies and clients of my put in a firewall and take a set it and forget approach. I have news for you that are not a good practice these days.

Most applications are configured to find the open ports in a firewall; this port is port 80, which is what most websites are running on. Programs such as Instant Messenger can use port 80 as do various other programs. Also with web 2.0 more and more applications are running port 80. Applications such as gotomypc and logmein remote are examples of applications that use port 80 and are not always welcome in the enterprise and could cause security violations
SSH which uses port 22 is used for administrative purchase, also have uses that are less than the up and up. Some smart and savvy end user can use SSH to bypass web filtering or can be used to bypass firewall rules.

Security is one of my favorite topics and I am always looking for a technical edge to give to my clients and me. I think I have discovered it with the Palo Alto firewall. The Palo Alto firewall takes a different approach to things. Instead of just focusing on ports, it focuses on applications. It has the ability to identify applications based on an application id. Why is this so important? Instead of relying on ports to block applications, you can use the ID to block the application. This will make the firewall administration much easier and you network better secured.
This firewall can also allow outbound Internet access via username and password and integrates with Active Directory and LDAP.

I went to Palo Alto SE training in November and we now have a 2050 demo unit. If you would like to schedule a demo or find out more about this firewall, call the office at 414-455-0719 or email me at james@jsotechnology.com