Author Archive
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Picture your corporate network. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Fortune 500 company or a medium sized business. You have a network with computers, printers, etc all coming together to make your business function well. You have some important stuff on there, right? Client lists, pricing, billing info, etc. Well, there are people out there who want your data and they will take it by force. Among the arsenal at your disposal for defense are an IPS and an IDS. Here’s how they break down.
IDS – Intrusion Detection System
An IDS monitors network traffic. It can be hardware or software based, but regardless, it scans all the data that goes in and comes out of your network. The big thing here is logging. An IDS is not designed to stop attackers or suspicious data packets from entering your network. Rather, it is designed to track them and let you know where they came from, where they were delivered, and plenty more information.
Open Source Options
AIDE
Bro NIDS
OSSEC HIDS
Prelude Hybrid IDS
Snort
Suricata
IPS – Intrusion Prevention System
An IPS, or Intrusion Prevention System, is a great start to network defense. An IPS employs several methods for protection, but the key difference here from an IDS is that the IPS will analyze all relevant data AND keep the packets out of your network. They key is placement on your network. An IPS setup in the DMZ (demilitarized zone – special area between the Internet and your local network) can work wonders for network security.
Solutions
Cisco Security Agent (originally by Okena formerly named StormWatch Agent)
Denyhosts
Fail2ban
Mcafee Entercept
So there it is. Talk about these options with your IT people and see if they are right for you. Remember, an IPS will cost you more, but it will also take care of some of your security concerns.
-Josh
CDTeK
Tags: business, data, IDS, internet, IPS, network, Security, support
Posted in Security | No Comments »
Friday, November 19th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Do you have an Information Technology (IT) department? Sure you do. You’re a medium sized company and with all the demand for technology in the workplace, you need someone to manage it. Well, the hardworking IT people in your office are often the unsung heroes, so here are some signs for you, the management, that IT is doing their job well.
Security Alerts
Your IT department is on top of the latest threats to the company network. As professionals, they stay up to date on all security measures, thus ensuring your company is kept safe from harm. They might simply send out an email cautioning users, but often times, they will take care of problems without even bothering you. Make sure to pay attention if, and when, they contact you about a problem.
Calls About Minor Issues
Everyone’s going to have minor problems when using a company network. Either passwords are getting forgotten/changed, someone can’t access a network share, or whatever it is, IT is there to help. The fact that they spend time troubleshooting these little tasks means that they network infrastructure they have in place is working. Small problems are to be expected.
Smooth Network Operations
Aside from the aforementioned troubles, think about your network. Do you have any trouble getting around on it? Can you access the data required for your job? Questions like these are important to IT. You see, the more planning and preparation that goes into the network at the start smoother network operations and fewer complaints.
-Josh
CDtek.com
Tags: IT, IT department, network, support
Posted in Computers | No Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
For anyone experienced in IT or experienced in dealing with IT knows that updates to the network can be a huge hassle. Either it gets done during the workday on one machine at a time, or it gets done overnight. Neither one of these options is especially attractive to either side. Well, there may be a solution to this problem: Virtual Desktops
Centralizing IT has been an important focal point for years. You need central management to prevent mistakes and keep everything organized. Well, a step further is virtualization of PCs. A lot of companies already do this for servers, and desktops are just the next step.
In this case, a user would log in to a terminal or with another PC and have full access to their machine anywhere. All of their preferences, etc., would be applied as a template to an existing image, therefore allowing for them to pick up work where they left off.
Now, in case you’re wondering, users can also work in an offline mode temporarily. When they reconnect to the Internet, any changes made by IT would take effect. This allows the users to do their job, while IT does what IT needs to do. Service calls would be easier to solve, and the amount of overtime/extra hours would be far smaller.
Just consider the idea of a virtual network for now. As time goes on, they’ll only get cheaper. However, as with most technology, some companies will adopt them and reap the benefits before others will. So does your business want to be on the cutting edge…or just keeping the status quo?
-Josh
CDTeK.com
Tags: Desktop, network, PC, stability, virtualization
Posted in Networking, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Anyone will tell you that a lot of business is done on the go these days. You’re out at a meeting or just traveling for work and you need to get some stuff done. Mobile devices go a long way in enhancing human productivity. However, it can get complicated when half of your staff wants one device and the others are splintered. It will be a nightmare for your IT department.
An important part of planning is setting up a standard for your business. Just like anything else, you need to have a framework in place to facilitate these areas of your company. It’s best to let the IT department work their magic here, but you definitely have input.
Stick with something that everyone can get their work done on. For some companies, it’s Apple’s iPhone. For others, RIM’s Blackberry line gets the job done. Both have perks and drawbacks for different types of businesses. Meet with your staff, if your company is small enough, or take a poll to see what your employees NEED, not want.
By establishing a standard for smartphones in your organization, you will prevent a lot of IT headaches. At the same time, you’ll squash the deluge of requests for personal phones or special requests for cutting edge tech.
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: business, IT, Mobile, Planning, Security, Small Business, tech
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Recently, Microsoft admitted that the open source, freely available productivity suite, OpenOffice, was a real threat to their software, Microsoft Office. This comes as something of a shock, since Microsoft, and most major companies, will rarely admit to an outside threat. Open Office is designed to provide users with a quality business productivity suite for the low price of free. While Open Office is free, does the old adage “You get what you pay for” hold true here? Let’s take a look at your two options.
Open Office
Pros
- Free to use
- Community support
- Includes Word Processing, Presentation, and Spreadsheet software
- Can save in multiple formats
- Microsoft Office
- Apple
- Other open formats
- Can read and edit other formats
- Available on PC, Mac, and Linux
Cons
- User Interface takes a little getting used to
- Not as tightly integrated as Microsoft Office
- Some formatting issues when importing documents from other programs
- No direct support
Microsoft Office
Pros
- De facto standard for office productivity.
- Tight Operating System integration
- Quality support
- Very stable
Cons
- Costly up front
- Only available on PC and Mac
- Uses different iterations
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: business, Linux, mac, office, open office, PC, Productivity, software, support
Posted in Business Tools | No Comments »
Friday, October 15th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Tech Support work isn’t cheap. Like most specialized work, it takes years of training and experience to make sure that you know all the ins and outs. Therefore, like calling an electrician, Tech Support costs a bit of money. However, it doesn’t need to break the bank. In the past, tech support calls would require someone to drive out from a central office to your workplace to take a look at the problem. Now, however, there is an easier and more efficient way to get support: Remotely.
Remote support allows for a technician to take control of your computer, with your permission of course, and solve the majority of software issues you are experiencing. This provides a myriad of benefits for both you and the technician.
First, there is no need to travel. This makes everyone’s lives easier. The tech doesn’t have to drive out and lug equipment with them and you don’t end up paying for travel time. Working closely with this is the fact that the tech will have all of his resources available to him at his office. There is no case of “I forgot X” or “I need to go back for Y”. Any software can be sent along online and with no need for physical media.
Another benefit is that you save money overall. Most companies will charge less as a result of being able to remotely support you. We do that here at CDtek. If we can help you remotely, it saves us a lot of money and we can turn that savings around to you.
-Josh
CDTek
Tags: internet, IT, Remote, support, tech, Technical
Posted in Business Tools | No Comments »
Friday, October 8th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Most business people use smart phones. You need them to stay connected to the world and deliver to your consumers. It could be email, the web, or any number of online services. Many users have Blackberries, and that’s what brings us to this discussion. Recently, the Blackberry backup service was cracked. Now, there are a few things you should know about why what happened matters to you.
The Good: The main benefit of this crack is that you can now get to backup data even if you’ve lost your password. Your Blackberry can be cracked and the data restored. Your IT crew will often keep tools like this around. I know one professional who uses a Linux crack to break administrator passwords when people get locked out of their PCs and do not recall their administrator password.
The Bad: Your Blackberry could now be vulnerable to attacks from cyber criminals. This is the classic debacle. While a new hack can help you out, the big risk of attack can create a lot of reasons to flee a particular service.
The Question: Should you stick with Blackberry? The reasons have been building up for a while now to leave the service backed by RIM. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS are valuable options that are often more powerful than Blackberry’s tools. In addition to productivity, the hardware in general is often more accepted publicly as user-friendly.
-Josh
CDtek.com
Tags: blackberry, internet, mobile device, Security, WWW
Posted in Business Tools | No Comments »
Friday, October 1st, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Knowing how your employees feel is crucial to any business’ success. If all of your employees are miserable, but you don’t know it, that will lead to big problems later. However, finding out how your people feel can be tricky, especially if you are a medium sized business. Gathering the opinions and viewpoints of all of your workers can be taxing. However, if you want to manage this easily, a great option is an internal poll hosted online.
Now, you can either have this hosted internally on a server, but if your business can’t pull that off, you can always go with an external provider and make the poll private. As we all know, people often feel pressured to say the right thing, especially when it comes from the boss. The best way to get around this is to make the poll anonymous.
Making the poll anonymous can give your workers the assurance that they can be honest without fear of repercussions. Once you have this data, you can determine how you need to make decisions that will affect your business. Ignoring feedback from subordinates can lead to problems down the road, so make sure to make use of this valuable resource.
Example Online Polling Resources:
ITLpoll.com (open source), MicroPoll.com, QuestionPro.com, SurveyMonkey.com, Zoomerang.com
-Josh
CDtek.com
Tags: Employees, Feedback, Medium Business, Polls, Small Business
Posted in Business Tools | No Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Getting support for your technology can be really troublesome at times. Finding the answers necessary can take forever and you might even have to pay for customer support calls. Well, here’s a suggestion for minor tech support needs in the future: join a tech support forum.
Whether founded by a specific company, such as Apple or Microsoft, or as a result of enthusiasts, forums can be a great place to get involved with a tech support community. Often users will be people like yourself as well as people with years of experience, looking for problems to solve. This mix of members allows for very interesting discussion.
Now, you should always be careful with what you post online. If you post all your servers’ IP addresses because you’re having a DNS issue, someone will likely take advantage. However, you can be less specific and still get the help you need.
Forums are essentially collectives of knowledgeable people. Everyone has different experiences and you might be surprised how you can help others and also help yourself.
-Josh
CDTek.com
Tags: Community, Forums, services, support, tech support
Posted in Internet, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Friday, September 17th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
Printing from a digital device is something that users have wanted for years. Lots of devices support this, and the number is growing constantly. Laptops have of course had this ability, but things like PDAs and Smartphones have notably lacked it. Specifically, Apple’s line of iDevices (iPad, iPhone) have been without this ability. Well, coming in iOS 4.2, AirPrint will enable these device to print wirelessly.
Since the iPad and iPhone can already view and edit documents, spreadsheets, etc, printing was a natural step. Why it has taken this long, no one can be sure. However, AirPrint will allow for users to take advantage of their mobile devices like never before. There will be two ways to use this feature. The easiest way will be to use a wireless printer that supports AirPrint. This might take a while, as this is a new feature. However, since I don’t know the intricacies of the Apple code for AirPrint, I could be wrong. In this case, your iDevice would connect directly to the printer to send the data. The other way to make this happen would be to use a utility on your computer to share the printer. In conjunction with AirPrint, your iDevice would not be able to send files the printer.
Both of these methods will be especially helpful in the home or office. If you need to print out an email, simply send it to the printer with your iPhone. Writing a short paper on your iPad and need to print it out? Done. By offering this technology, Apple takes another step closer to replacing netbooks and expanding their market share.
-Josh
CDTek
Tags: AirPrint, blog, internet, ios 4.2, iPad, iPhone, printing, Productivity
Posted in Business Tools, Printing | No Comments »
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