My definition of CLOUD:  The most over used buzz word of recent times.  Putting that aside, some IT solutions just fit better with someone else hosting and maintaining that part of your business.  Today, I am focusing on email.  

Money: Yes, money talks.  You can host email offsite for as little as $4.17 / month / user and a maximum of $10 / month / user.  This isn't with some fly by night company either.  We are talking about Microsoft and Google.  Let's case study a company with 30 employees needing to upgrade their email server and say that the company replaces equipment precisely every 4 years.  Option 1: Purchase new server and replace.  Cost: Approximately $7500.  (Server + Software + Licensing) .  Option 2: Google apps domain: Yearly cost $1500 and total cost over 4 years is $6000 plus initial setup (man hours). Option 3: Microsoft hosted exchange: Yearly cost of $1800 and total cost over 4 years $7200 plus initial setup (man hours).  Option 4: Microsoft BPOS: Yearly cost of $3600 and total cost over 4 years $14400 plus initial setup (man hours).

With the last 3 options, the best news is that after the first four years, your company is purchasing new equipment.  You continue to pay your monthly fee and upgrades and improvements are added to your hosting solution in the cloud with out any intervention from your IT staff.

Maintenance:  I am in no way saying the cloud is maintenance free, but I am saying that your IT staff will spend much less time maintaining the email hosted in the cloud once the initial setup is done.  Think of this, the burden of backups, uptime, equipment and so on is now rolled up into a nominal fee you are paying.  

Reliability: Service Level Agreement!  What would it cost your company to place a redundant email system to a data center that offered very high speed internet and redundancy.  I have recently priced this and $20k - $30k for hardware alone.  Add on a $500 - $1500 monthly fee for the data center and internet.  All this exercise was to get your SLA up to 99.9%.  Or, when you buy a hosted solution, it comes with that SLA bundled in you low recurring fee. 

Eat our own Dog Food: Not only do we recommend these solutions, but we use them too. Our corporate email is hosted with Microsoft BPOS.  Personally, I have a Google apps domain for my family.  I like both products and they both are reliable and quality products.  

Ready to buy yet?   If this peaked you're interest and you are ready to switch, give Strickland Networks a call.  Not only can well help you chose the right solution, we can help you implement it as well.

So I run into more and more computers compromised by malware or viruses everyday.  With internet access ubiquitous and with computers connected to the internet 24/7 it's just a matter of time before some malicious hacker attempts to add your home computer to a botnet somewhere in the world.  And staying on top of all the required security updates can be daunting for a typical home user.  Our computers are supposed to make our lives easier, right?  They're not supposed to cause us headaches and give us a night job just keeping them secure.

One free tool that I have found invaluable for home networks is OpenDNS for free content filtering for the everyman.  I recommend this service to every home user.  This amazing service not only protects your computer, but it protects your kids as well by blocking viruses and malware, as well as filtering other yucky content like porn, drug references or other adult contet.  All for free if you're a home user.  They do offer businesses service as well for an incredibly cheap price.

They have great walk throughs on setting it up on their website (http://www.opendns.org), but to summarize, you configure your home router to use OpenDNS servers to resolve internet addresses instead of the DNS servers your ISP provides.  Most users will need to run a small piece of software on one pc on the network to update OpenDns whenever your IP address changes, but it's aslo very easy to set up.

I can't recommend this service enough - I've been using it for several years now.

Here is a great blog post that gives instructions on configuring many different types of home routers:

http://pixiescorner.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/otherusing-opendns-to-filter-unwanted-sites-to-your-home-network/

I read an article recently that said that FBI director Robert Mueller doesn't use online banking at all because he almost fell for a classic "phishing" scam.  According to the article, he received an email that appeared to be from his bank and began following the instructions in the email.  Fortunately for his credit score, he caught on to the scam at the last minute.  In a classic knee jerk reaction, he now refuses to use internet banking at all.  What does this say about the state of internet security if someone with as much access to world-class security software as the director of the FBI is susceptible to internet fraud?

I certainly understand there are high risks to using internet banking.  I've read tons of horror stories about people whose financial lives have been ruined by identity theft.  We've all seen the fake emails from our bank, or from the IRS that look almost legitimate.  Even so, the convenience of internet banking outweighs the risks for me - as long as my wife and I practice safe computing.

Here are some tips for safe browsing:

• Don't click on links or attachments in emails you aren't expecting.  If you need to do something at yoyr bank, go directly to your bank's website.
• Assume any message from your bank informing you that you need to sign in to update your information is junk.  Because of the prevalence of scans, most banks won't use email to communicate this type of information.  You'll get a letter in the mail or a pop-up on the website when you sign in.
• Patch, patch, patch.  Keep your operating system and security software up to date.
• Watch your account activity.  The best way to know if your accounts are compromised is to keep a close watch on the transactions.  The sooner you know about traffic that's not yours, the better.
• Use your annual free credit report.  We all get one free report a year.  Use it to see if any repair needs to be done.
• If you have wi-fi at your house, don't leave your computers on.  Wi-fi is a leaky vessel and embarassingly easy to compromise.  If you leave your computers sitting idle, connected to the internet for huge amounts of time, you're asking for trouble.
• Everyone needs a good firewall and good antivirus software.  There are plenty of free or cheap options available that do a pretty good job.