Jun 29 2010

Video conferencing services which aid your organisations effectiveness

In these economically challenging times, most businesses are looking to reduce overheads and video conferencing can offer savings for a broad variety of businesses. If your organisation does not have the expertise to install video conferencing, there are companies offering video conferencing services, from supplying the equipment to enable video conferencing over IP, to offering a full consultation on your business’ long-term communications strategy.

Audiovisual hook-up has many advantages over traditional face-to-face meetings. Obviously travel costs for your staff can be hugely reduced but it also enables meetings to be arranged at short notice without the need for coordinating travel schedules and arranging expensive accommodation. Video conferencing can speedily pay for itself with some video conferencing services like Edge Vision reckoning to save you up to 60% of your business overheads. The impact of video conferencing on your business’ carbon footprint can also be a marvellous selling point.

You and your staff creative input from all players. Clearly being able to display figures, diagrams, drawings for this type of multi-location meeting but it is all possible using the latest AV services. Similarly, meetings can take place – essentially face-to-face – although without being actually physically present. This is significant since directness of communication is one of the key values in establishing trust and enabling all players to feel like stakeholders in the decision-making process. Although not perfect, the sorts of subtleties of communication which are present in face-to-face meetings but are absent in phone and email conversations can largely be retained; research suggests that these can make a huge difference.

If you have had negative experiences in the past with unreliable AV set-ups, video conferencing over IP will probably surprise you with its effectiveness and ease.  PDAs, mobiles and laptops can enable staff to join meetings from wherever they are. Clearly video conferencing enables more staff to work from home, saving running costs still further. Large-scale conferences can now use video conferencing services to enable key players to influence and motivate a large group of people without the ridiculously high cost of hiring off-site venues.

Please click http://www.edgevision.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.edgevision.co.uk/


Jun 28 2010

Penetration testing must be top quality in order to shield computer systems of businesses and services worldwide

Computer systems deployed to hostile environments are automatically at risk of having their vulnerabilities exploited, with disastrous economic, and even physical and humanitarian, consequences. It is therefore absolutely imperative that the vulnerability management industry stay on top of its game. Penetration testing and vulnerability assessment of the highest level is needed in order to avoid large-scale incidents of international importance, as well as countless problems for business resulting from hacking activities.

Companies and large organisations count ever-increasingly on technology to perform even the most elementary functions. This enables a maximal level of efficiency, but evidently it also introduces unprecedented levels of security risks. While dependence on technology expands and the level of sophistication of the technology rises, release cycles grow ever quicker, which makes the security environment an ever-changing landscape where the goalposts are constantly being shifted.

Good quality penetration testing can be a hugely rewarding cost-saving service. Attacks are simulated in a variety of ways, using various methods, in order to identify specific vulnerabilities in the system. Generally this is achieved by being able to recognise the way into the network that a black hat hacker would be able to take.

The risks represented by security breaches, of course, have effects upon not only businesses, but also transport and communications systems, water and energy supply systems, and nuclear power plants, in addition to a massive quantity of sensitive data locked in information technology systems.

An example of the latter occurred early this year, as the New York Times reported Google’s admission that hackers had successfully raided the internet giant’s Gaia password system. The information pertaining to Google’s various web services of millions of users and businesses are accessible through the use of a single password, and hackers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in the program. They managed to infiltrate the computers of several Google programmers in China. The incident started a huge amount of tension between the United States and China, and culminated in Google’s withdrawal of its services in the country, with massive financial effects. The attack was said to be aimed at accessing the gmail accounts of human rights activists. There is a risk, according to experts, that they were able to detect vulnerabilities in the system which Google itself is unaware of.

All types of measures are being devised by vulnerability assessment firms to cope with such a challenging situation. vulnerability management must be carried out with the use of all available means and resources, including black box, white box and grey box penetration testing in order to highlight future risks to computer systems.

Please click http://www.surecloud.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.surecloud.com/