The Australian Business Assessment of Computer Use Security (ABACUS) report on the state of security in small business caught my eye as we have been working on data protection with a number of our clients recently.
It's findings that 16% of small businesses don't have virus protection and 30% don't have firewalls is sufficiently alarming because these are essential protection measures, but the analysis is based upon the premise that having centrally installed anti-virus and a firewall is enough - which it is not!
Your office firewall is useless when you're computer leaves the office
Whilst it was once the case that a business would have all of its computers networked behind its office firewall and so protected from malicious access from the internet this is no longer the norm. With extensive use of laptops connected to home or public wireless networks, it is essential that every device has its own firewall and virus protection installed on the device itself. Only then is it protected everywhere it is used.
Once you distribute virus and firewall protection it needs regular management to ensure it is up to date. New viruses and data access risks are introduced on a regular basis and your protection is only effective if it's updated to detect these. It's not reliable to assume that each computer user will keep their device up to date so a way of monitoring is important.
Software as a Service (SaaS) virus protection changes the game
If this all sounds complicated or expensive, I'm glad to say it isn't. The recent Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings from some of the leading virus protection companies make installation, monitoring and management of anti-virus and firewall protection easy. Being Software as a Service, you only pay for what you need as you use it, rather than shelling out for annual licences and managing renewals device by device every 12 months.
Standardise and simplify your security solution for less than the price of a sandwich
Take Within Reach Software as an example. We've been buying laptops for each staff member as we've been growing. These come with 30 day trials of virus protection which we have used until they expire, then the path of least resistance is to licence that product for that device. So in a short time we have ended up with multiple different types of virus protection software, renewing on different dates and with no visibility of which devices use which software and when this needs to be renewed. Even though we're an IT consultancy and each user knows how to manage their own security, that's not an acceptable situation.
The solution we have implemented is SaaS Endpoint Protection from McAfee. Overnight we've achieved the following outcomes for our business
- At $3.30 per device per month, the cost is less than half of our previous licenced software
- We don't need to spend time organising renewals or refunding staff who've renewed virus protection with their personal credit cards
- All protected devices are visible in a central control panel showing when they were updated, and what detections have been found
- Security policies can be set and updated from a central point to each device via the internet to react to security threats, and to block or allow certain software or file types from use
If you would like to achieve the same cost benefits and peace of mind for your business through SaaS virus protection, contact Within Reach Software and we can implement the McAfee solution for you.
By not protecting tablets and smart phones you're data may be exposed
The variety of portable computer devices we use is becoming more diverse. Businesses now need to consider protection for tablets and smartphones in a similar way to desktops and laptops, with one added risk; that these devices are easier to loose (or steal).
Apple provides some inherent protection against viruses through the controls applied by the app store. Android and Windows are more open and hence firewall and virus protection for these devices is more important and there are both firewall and anti-virus solutions available in the android marketplace and of course for windows.
For all of these devices the killer application is email, and the good news is that this can come with inbuilt protection for mobile devices. Again, the Software as a Service (SaaS) model can put the emphasis to manage virus protection and spam with the service provider.
Remotely wipe email data from mobile devices via Exchange Online with Office 365
A good example of protecting mobile data is a client where we have implemented Office 365 including Exchange Online. This client has provided each of their staff with an iPhone or iPad to access the service. Included in Exchange Online within the Office 365 solution is fully managed anti-virus, fully managed anti-spam and mobile security. Malware will not reach the mobile device because it's intercepted and quarantined by Exchange Online and not sent through to the mailbox.
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In the management console each mailbox details any mobile devices that have been used to access it. Should any of these be lost or stolen then it's a simple process to remotely wipe email and calendar data from the device.
If you'd like to improve tablet and smart phone security, contact Within Reach Software for Software as a Service (SaaS) security solutions.
How are you going with your New Year resolutions? Are you finding it hard to change old habits and stick to the commitments you made to yourself about losing weight, better life balance, spending less, quitting the cigarettes or the booze? It's not easy, so no surprise that most of these resolutions fall by the wayside around now when the holiday period is over and we're back to the pressures of work.
It's a similar story with many business strategies. The good intentions are planned and the initial commitment is there; reduce overheads, improve corporate social responsibility, cut costs, improve health and safety. However, the urgency of business as usual can often overtake the importance of executing the strategic plan, and when we look back there is disappointment at how little progress has been made.
So how should we manage the strategic plan to make sure that everyone remains committed, that delegated tasks get done in a timely manner, and the outcomes of the business strategy are delivered? What gets measured gets done, so success starts there with a strategic planning framework that is heavy on traceability, outcomes and measurement.
1. Create and maintain a clear sense of purpose
Define a small number of long term objectives so that everyone understands the priorities of the business. The fewer and the simpler the objectives, the greater the chance of maintaining focus and commitment to them over time. The best strategic plans have between 4 and 8 top level objectives.
Break the objectives into smaller component parts and let individuals or groups take responsibility for delivery of their component of the strategic plan. Cascade this down through the organisation so the strategic plan is meaningful to everyone no matter what roles and responsibilities a stakeholder may have.
2. Measure progress towards goals
Your strategic plan hopefully has some SMART goals within it. To measure these, you'll need to know the starting point (baseline), the target, and the timeframe to reach the goal. Then measure periodically how close you are to reaching the goal. You might define interim targets to help with this, and the more frequent the measurement, the more focus will be maintained on the goal.
3. Measure contributing activity
If your goals are stretch goals, they wont be met by doing what you have always done, so attainment of a stretch goal will rely on change. Change will usually be the result of a succession of initiatives or actions needed to hit the goals. In an integrated business plan, each part of the business needs to change in unison or delays, frustrations and in worse situations blame and excuses will arise. Tracking the dependencies between initiatives and the progress within and between business areas is vital to managing the strategic plan as a unified team.
4. Engage your support group
Traditionally strategic plans are highly structured and can be difficult to change. Rigidity is a common cause of failure. With modern tools, using social interaction within your strategic management framework can help maintain relevancy of the strategic plan. Enabling discussion forums is an excellent way to measure engagement, relevancy, and to expose concerns or suggestions from the entire stakeholder group.
Once you have a defined plan that is easy to track and measure, you can use your management talents to incentivise, recognise and reward your teams' achievements rather than produce reports.
At Within Reach Software, we have tackled a number of the most common reasons why strategic plans fail in the design of our Delegation Manager solution.
By embedding your strategic plan into a web based management tool Delegation Manager provides a personalised dashboard for every contributor, and complete traceability of actions through to results. The automated reminder workflows keep actions on track, and real time reporting highlights areas of the plan requiring attention as well as contributors that may need help or resources to deliver their commitments.
Our solution was developed with, and proven by a major Australian corporate. It is now available for a low monthly cost to any organisation that has outgrown spreadsheets as their strategic management tool.
Thanks to a great team and fabulous clients we have achieved a Microsoft competency in Portals and Collaboration. This elevates our relationship with Microsoft to being a Silver Partner.
Most of our portal work has been intranet based using both SharePoint and SharePoint Online to deliver a multitude of business solutions.
Examples of Within Reach Software Portals and Collaboration solutions
We have implemented the tool that a major Australian corporate uses to manage it's corporate plan to ensure execution of its strategy remains on course; this solution has become the basis of our Delegation Manager product. Available for organisations large and small to track initiatives made up of many disperate tasks and to drive up to the minute statuse reporting Delegation Manager runs on the SharePoint and SharePoint online platform.
For a multi-national we developed their Asia Pacific Learning and Development Portal. This portal contains the online curriculum, booking process and interestingly supports 4 seperate corporate brands that are displayed dynamicall depending on the organisation unit of the end user. This SharePoint Portal was a good example of introducing rich media content such as video and interactive training.
A number of schools have used our SharePoint integration team to take class and timetable information from school management systems so as to dynamically manage membership to virtual classrooms as well as to provide a simple timetable lookup for staff, students and parents.
We have custom developed in SharePoint Online a process compliance management system for a professional services company. This solution uses an online wizard to create tailored workspaces where project teams manage their knowledge capital and feed project KPIs into the Project Management Office portal.
A slighly different compliance solution makes extensive use of workflows, custom SharePoint lists and Active Directory integration to manage Sarbanes Oxley complience for a large industrial organisation.
It never ceases to amaze us how versatile SharePoint is as a platform and the variety of problems that can be addressed using libraries, lists and workflows.
Now that SharePoint is available online for a small monthly fee as part of Office365 we are also working with many small organisations on simple document management and mobility solutions and will be reporting on some exciting business solutions in the coming months via this blog.
Find out more about Within Reach Software's SharePoint capabilities here.