NEWS: Dell Acquires SonicWall

Dell today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SonicWall, Inc., a leader in advanced network security and data protection. SonicWALL’s industry-leading Next-Generation Firewalls and Unified Threat Management (UTM) Firewalls complement Dell’s security solutions portfolio, enabling it to offer customers a broader range of enterprise offerings.

Customers of all sizes face increasing challenges in maintaining effective IT security, from the exponential growth of data and rapid adoption of cloud-based solutions, to the increased presence of consumer devices brought into the enterprise environment. SonicWALL expands Dell’s rapidly growing security portfolio, which includes Dell SecureWorks security services, cloud security solutions and data encryption solutions, and Dell KACE vulnerability and patch management.

Dell has taken significant steps to expand its enterprise solutions portfolio to offer customers a complete range of products and solutions to help customers simplify the management of their IT infrastructure. Dell remains committed to delivering complete security solutions using the most effective technologies and services from both Dell and from other providers.

Continuity Plan: Software or Templates?

With the increasing severity of natural disasters in recent years, many larger companies have started to develop and implement a continuity plan to ensure that they can still conduct business, no matter what happens. Businesses in the process of developing a plan will eventually need to decide if they want to use software or templates?

The decision between templates and software can be a tough one to make, as whichever one you choose, you’ll be using and relying on for a long time. To help you we’ve covered some pros and cons on both choices:

Using Software If you choose to go with a software program, you will be walked through the whole process allowing you to develop a useable plan. Another benefit of using software is that you’ll be able to develop reports if needs be.

The drawbacks of using software include cost, inflexibility and learning time. For the most part, business continuity planning software is not cheap, and at times can be inflexible due to limits within the program. If you have a niche need, the software may not cover it. In addition, as with mastering any program, the learning curve can be quite steep.

In general, using software would be advantageous for companies that have a bigger budget for the development of a continuity plan. Software is also a good bet if you don’t have staff who are experts in continuity planning, or if you operate in an industry where a continuity plan is necessary, e.g., companies working with healthcare insurance, or manufacturing companies that have introduced ISO 9000.

Using Templates If you feel that your company is not ready for software you can use templates to help you develop your plan. These solutions are mostly written plans that you adapt to meet your business needs. They’re useful if you’re just starting to do continuity planning, as they provide a normally solid foundation, and are generally a lot cheaper than software.

A limitation to using templates is that they can be a little too basic at times, and may not meet your needs. Granted, most plans will follow a basic structure and your developer will need to adapt some steps for your relevant region and industry.

As each industry is different, it’s hard to make a recommendation on what type of planning style companies should take. We recommend you take your time, do your due diligence and weigh out what’s best for your business. No matter which method you choose to go ahead with, ensure that it’s easy to implement, and that you’ll be able to teach your staff how to run the plan.

If you feel really lost or are not sure what to do, talking to professional consultants could go a long way in helping you develop a plan. If you’d like to learn more about business continuity planning please contact us – we are happy to help.

Stay Healthy at Work with these Tips

The computer and all its related gadgets is probably the most important device in business. Many of us spend our whole work day on the computer, we then go home and spend more time on another computer. One of the consequences to this is that there has been an increase in the number of computer related injuries.

The majority of injuries sustained while working with computers are not instantaneous, they happen over time. The most common form of computer related injury is the Repetitive Strain Injury, also known as RSI. Soft tissue, muscles, tendons, nerves and ligaments are all susceptible to RSI. With proper maintenance and knowledge, almost all RSIs can be prevented. If left unchecked, an RSI could lead to lost time and possibly irreparable damage.

Eye Strain Eye strain happens when you have overexerted your eyes. The most common symptoms include:

• pain around the eyes,
• dry eyes,
• fatigue,
• photophobia (sensitivity to light) and
• blurred vision.

Often, severe eye strain will also cause pain or tension in the neck and shoulders. The most common causes of eye strain are poor workspace layout and sub-par lighting conditions.

 

The good news is that in most cases, eye strain won’t lead to permanent vision complaints, but if left unchecked it could cause productivity problems. The easiest way to prevent eye strain is to work in a space with lighting that is neither too strong or weak, and have a light source that does not create glare. It is equally important to take short breaks from the monitor. Follow the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something (not another monitor) 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

Posture Related There are a number of related injuries to your posture, including: back pain, neck pain and headaches. These injuries typically come from bad posture, combined with sitting for an extended amount of time. It may not seem like you can injure yourself by sitting in a chair all day, but your muscles are not designed to stay in the same position for such a long period of time, and doing so can result in muscle pain. Poor posture at work can also lead to an increased chance of a herniated disc, commonly called a “slipped disc”.

There are a number of things you can do to minimize posture related injuries.

• Adopt a proper posture. Have a chair that pushes the small of your back (bottom) out, as this will promote a more natural spinal position. Try not to cross your feet, as comfortable as it is, as doing so puts pressure on your lower back.
• Get up and move around every 20 minutes to half hour.
• Stretch. Move your joints through their normal range of motion.
• If you have kinks or muscle pain, gently massage the area with a kneading motion.
• Get up. There is a rising trend of using a standing workstation – this could be another option.

Arm Related The most common type of injury to the arm is the well-known Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). This mainly happens in two places: the wrist and the elbow. CTS occurs when the median nerve (one of the main nerves) is compressed. CTS in the wrist is the most common RSI, and can be a costly injury. The median nerve also passes through the elbow. If compression occurs there, it can result in an injury commonly called “tennis elbow”. Symptoms include: numbness of the hand and arm, pain and weakness in grasping.

 

There are a number of things you can do to prevent CTS:

• Keep your mouse and keyboard close together.
• Type and hold the mouse gently.
• Remove your hands from the mouse and keyboard when not using them.
• Take frequent breaks to move your wrists and elbows through their natural range of motion. Be careful to not over extend.

With a combination of breaks, ergonomic workplaces, and other preventative measures you and your staff will see fewer injuries and higher productivity. If you would like to learn more ways to prevent injuries, or increase productivity please contact us.

Creating a Strategic IT Plan – Five Tips

In order for your IT department to be successful, you need a strategic plan that will both optimize your workflow and help to define your practice’s needs. The well thought out and executed plan will exhibit a focus on the experiences of your staff and patients. Here are five considerations that can help you develop your strategic IT plan.

 

1. Improve the patient experience. Many healthcare practitioners consider the patient experience a major challenge, yet don’t give much thought to how IT can improve it. Consider what you can do electronically to support patients, whether they’re in your facility or not. Electronic forms? Email and text message reminders and confirmations? Kiosks?
2. Consider best practices. Technology can help you get to know your patients better. The Web, for example, can be used as a first point of engagement. Ask a few questions of visitors, then tailor your responses to their needs. A patient interested in a first consultation would receive different information than one preparing for his or her first round of cancer treatment.
3. Don’t forget the staff! Your staff needs successful workflows to interact effectively with patients. Common errors are multiple devices and different logins. Keep in mind how clinicians work to develop efficiencies. Your staff needs to be able to provide clinical care without being tied to a PC.
4. Use social media. Social media often isn’t included in IT planning, as it’s usually more of a marketing consideration. Without thinking about how it will be used, it will become difficult for patients and staff to have a singular experience. Your IT department needs to work with other departments to develop a social media plan that will yield a consistent presentation to the end user.

Use integrative planning. Typically, IT does its strategic planning in isolation. Ideally though, IT would plan with other departments. This “integrative planning” allows for a consistent plan supported by all parts of the practice.

NEWS: Clock Is Ticking on XP–Time to Start OS Migration

Tick, tick, tick, tick. That sound you hear is the clock winding down on the life of the Windows XP operating system. As of today, you have less than two years left until Microsoft will no longer support the OS. Two years may sound like a long time, but if you haven’t even begun to consider migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, the pressure is on.

Your Windows XP systems will still work the same as they have for the last decade. But, as of April 8, 2014 Microsoft will no longer support the operating system, or provide patches or security updates. So, from that point forward the OS will become increasingly unstable and insecure. Essentially, you’ll be on your own.

If you haven’t already begun to migrate off of XP, the clock is ticking.With time winding down on Windows XP and Office 2003, software and hardware vendors may already jump ship. As time goes on, more and more new products will not include support for Windows XP or Office 2003, and third-party vendors will be less likely to support or update older products designed for these legacy platforms.

By the way, Office 2003 is on its deathbed as well. For larger companies, the process of testing and deploying a new desktop operating system to hundreds or thousands of users is a meticulous process that takes months, or even years.

On a site dedicated to the end of support for Windows XP and Office 2003, Microsoft states, “Based on historical customer deployment data, the average enterprise deployment can take 18 to 32 months from business case through full deployment.” Assuming that is accurate, those organizations that fall in the 24 to 32 month range for full deployment are already behind the proverbial 8-ball.

Windows 7 and Office 2010 both offer a variety of improvements and features that make them more secure by design, and enable users to work more efficiently and be more productive. And, the reality is that even Windows 7 and Office 2010 will be soon be replaced by Windows 8 and “Office 15” as the new flagship software from Microsoft.

So, there’s no time like the present to start looking at your options and planning your migration off of Windows XP and/or Office 2003. Should you move to Windows 7, or hold out and jump straight to Windows 8?

Microsoft offers a variety of tools and services that may make the transition easier. Windows Intune provides a variety of features for managing and maintaining Windows PCs from the cloud, and includes upgrade rights to the latest version of Windows. Subscribing to Windows Intune could be a simple way to move from Windows XP to Windows 7 to Windows 8 while getting some additional capabilities at the same time.

IT admins should also consider the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). The MDT is designed to streamline and automate Windows deployments, and MDOP has tools to address application compatibility issues and ensure a smooth transition off of Windows XP.

The clock is ticking. Start figuring out how to migrate off of Windows XP now.

Tips to Keep Your Laptop In Good Shape

Here are some tips to extend the life of your laptop for the long term and keep it in tip-top shape!

Despite the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, nothing beats the personal computer for general, all-purpose computing. But even so, many people today still prefer a portable computing device to one tied to a desk—thus explaining the popularity of laptops over desktop computers.

Laptop computers, however, can suffer more abuse than desktop-bound devices since they are carried around and used everywhere. Here are some tips to help you extend the life of your laptop, keeping it in tip-top shape for as long as possible.

Power

• Don’t overcharge your battery. Overcharging or leaving your laptop plugged in all the time with the battery on will actually reduce battery life over time. Batteries were designed to be fully used and then recharged from time to time. If you are not going to be mobile, remove the plug from time to time or, if your laptop is constantly on your desk, remove the battery.
• Manage the power settings in your laptop to extend battery life. Laptops nowadays have different power settings to extend battery life, such as reducing brightness, CPU speed, and other settings.

Storage

• Defragment your harddrive. Over time, a computer’s disk can become fragmented – meaning data written by the computer is scattered all over your harddisk. This makes your drive work harder, reducing its lifespan as well as slowing it down. Defragment your disks to have data written in contiguous spaces to reduce this effect.
• Offload unused data to another place. A better way of reducing the work your disk needs to do and increasing its life is by using an external storage device, such a USB memory key or external drive. Offload things like old documents, movies, and photos. If others need access to this data, store it in a place where content can easily be shared so that you don’t have to copy files back and forth. You can share files using a network attached disk (NAS) or a cloud storage service such as Dropbox or Google Docs.
• Use SSD. If you can afford it, or if you are buying a new laptop anyway, go for SSDs (Solid State Disks) which, unlike traditional Magneto-optical disks, have no moving parts and have longer lives – and are faster as well.

Other Components

• Avoid overheating. Laptops were designed to run cool, usually with heat vents or internal fans. Avoid obstructing these vents or fans by covering them up, such as putting your laptop on the bed or couch which tends to block them.
• Maintain cleanliness. Components such as the keyboard, mouse, and screen tend to get dirty over time with dust or sweat and oil from your fingers. Other things such as food and can spill over these components and ruin them as well. Make sure you clean your laptop from time to time, as debris tends to build up and damage electronic parts.
• Protection. Whenever possible, use protective gear such as covers and cases to protect your laptop from wear and tear when being transported. Avoid leaving your laptop in places where they can be sit on or stepped over as well.

500 Million Tweeters Tweeting Tweets

In late February 2012, Twitter hit 500 million users. This milestone has cemented Twitter as a major Social Media player. With this large user base, companies should be seriously considering integrating twitter with their marketing strategies. Benefits of integration include increased followers, brand awareness, and potentially a better bottom line. Here are some tips for increasing your followers.

Search for companies and people you know While it’s easy to use the search function in Twitter, it can be time consuming to search for people one by one. Instead:

1. Log into your Twitter account
2. Press the # Discover button at the top of the page
3. Press Find Friends
4. Log into the various accounts available
5. Add people as followers

This is a great way to rapidly increase your followers, and reconnect with customers and contacts you may have lost contact with.

Combine your Twitter and Facebook feeds You can combine your Twitter and Facebook feeds easily:

1. Log into your Twitter account
2. Select Profile Settings
3. Select Profile
4. Select Post your tweets to Facebook
5. Follow the instructions provided

Within minutes, your Tweets will show up in your Facebook status, enabling you to reach two platforms simultaneously. Be warned, this could spam your followers, causing them to stop following you – so it’s best to keep your Tweets or status updates to the most important information.

Join Twitter Ads for Small Business This recently announced service will be up and running soon, allowing small business owners to advertise on Twitter through Promoted Tweets. This service will be released in the near future, enabling businesses of all sizes to advertise.

If you are not on Twitter, would like to join, or know more please contact us.