Mobile security

Almost everyone these days has a mobile phone. A significant number know what a problem it is if you lose your mobile. Some of these people only now understand how expensive it can also be if someone gets hold of your mobile and starts placing calls to Tibet and Greenland. But consider this, with more and more of our personal information on our mobile devices what security do we have in place to protect that?

 

Do your emails get delivered to your mobile? Do you have other sensitive information on there (i.e. PIN numbers, passwords)? What about customer information? Stop and have a think about what information your mobile would divulge if it fell into someone else’s hands. Now think about how much damage that information could do both personally and commercially.

 

Worried? Well you should be. Even the bosses at Telstra get their mobiles stolen and like this story highlights it can represent a huge commercial risk. Not only to you personally but also your customers. If you have a mobile device that holds data that you want to remain private then make sure you secure it. Make sure you know how to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. Many devices these days have the ability to be remotely wiped if needed but also look at things like encryption to protect sensitive data.

 

As more and more data ends up on mobile devices that get smaller and smaller (read easier to steal), then they become just like the PC on your desk. Now, you wouldn’t want that to fall into the wrong hands would you? So maybe it’s time to look at how secure that little computer you carry around with you everywhere is!

Live push

Interestingly, I’ve just come across this Live@edu site from Microsoft. IT appears to basically be the application of the Microsoft Live Services to the education market. Basically it is out sourcing a lot of the common IT components of education (emails, storage, etc) directly to Microsoft.

 

Can anyone else see where Microsoft is going with this? What’s to stop them offering Live for small business, medium business and even enterprise business? Nothing. I must say that I do use a lot of Live services and find they work really, really well so they get the thumbs up from me and I say bring on more Live services.

Facebook worries

It seems that Facebook have changed their Terms of Agreement according to this report:

 

Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

Now, most existing Facebook members probably won’t care but I believe it does illustrate the extent to which we have sold out our privacy. People blindly join Facebook and then upload every aspect of their lives not understanding that it is all going into one great database that Facebook is going to sell to make money.

 

People, companies like Facebook are commercial entities. They survive only by making money. Your information has value, otherwise why would they be selling it? Please think long and hard about the information (text, pictures, etc) you divulge on the Internet because once you do it becomes public domain and can never be made private again. Worse still, in this case, it actually ends up being owned by Facebook.

 

Remember that information about you has VALUE and should treated as such. We are giving away our privacy for effectively nothing in return. Don’t do it.

WSSOPS March update

The March update for my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide (due out soon) will give subscribers information about how to install and use the new Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3 that will assist in troubleshooting and optimization SharePoint performance. I’ve also included instructions on how you can embed Google maps into your SharePoint site (to see this in action go to the http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/ and scroll to the bottom of the screen).

 

The March update also has updated information for SharePoint Application Management about deleting SharePoint sites. As well, it includes how to vary the time that the !New icon is displayed (and even getting rid of it if you want!) and a whole lot more updated content.

 

The fact that my Guide is updated monthly is another benefit you get over other SharePoint sources. As the latest information and functionality becomes available I put it in the Guide. As a subscriber you receive these updates for a whole year.

 

For more information about the Windows SharePoint Guide see www.wssops.com.

Email addiction

Here’s an interesting article about what people are actually doing when they attend conferences.

 

The survey found that three quarters (75%) of all participants ignored requests to switch off their mobile devices during sessions. Of this 75%, a further 40% admitted to checking PDAs, BlackBerrys, iPhones and mobile phones at least every 30 minutes; and 10% said that they check their phones every 10 minutes.

and

 

More worryingly, 91% of those who check their phones every 10 to 30 minutes said that they felt anxious when unable to access emails.

How unproductive is that if you are checking email every 10 minutes when you are supposed to listening to a conference that someone has paid good to attend? Imagine what the routine of these people must be like in the office. How would they get anything done? You have to ask yourself whether emails are that important that they need to be checked every 10 minutes!

 

It is interesting that we carry around mobile phones that allow anyone to interrupt us at any time. Now that they are also email-enable we are also allowing any email to interrupt us at any time. It is a wonder that anyone gets anything done these days.

 

Take control of your mobile device. Turn it off and get some work done.

Chatswood course

I forgot to let people know that I’ll also be running my networking basics course at Macquarie Community College Chatswood campus tomorrow (Tuesday 17th February). It will run over 3 consecutive Tuesday nights and give you the fundamentals of networking computers together including information about TCP/IP, routers, firewall and the like.

 

Information about the course, including enrolment (it is never too late) can be found here:

 

http://www.macquarie.nsw.edu.au/index.php?action=course&course_action=detail&code=109C103

 

I look forward to seeing you there.

Envy

For many years Microsoft was a very successful business. It continued to experience stunning growth year on year. Then it reached middle age and discovered that it was under threat from all these new comers. So what was its response?

 

Firstly, it decided that it wanted to be like Sony so it brought out the Xbox in competition to the Playstation. Having not completely succeeded there it then decided that it wanted to be like Google by creating on line maps, Live Search, host applications and so on. Having even less success there it now decided that it wanted to be like Apple so it brought out the Zune as a competitor to the iPod. And this list goes on.

 

In its craze to be everything, except Microsoft, it has decided it will now open retail stores as this story highlights. Aside from the obvious Apple envy once again most people are scratching their heads and asking why? Especially in these economic times. Why?

 

Now I’m sure there is a really valid reason and it may or may not be successful but it certainly seems to me that Microsoft is spending far too much time trying to be things that it isn’t. That has led, I believe, to it falling down on things it should be (like making better desktop operating systems i.e. Vista). It’s hard enough to lead one life let along try and lead two!

 

There are things that Microsoft do real well. There are things that it can also do well that are extensions of these. However, diving into totally unrelated markets just because it can doesn’t mean it should. In the early day Microsoft could dominate the market and take the lion’s share but those days are gone. It doesn’t make sense to me spreading your resources as thinly as Microsoft must be doing to keep all these balls in the air.

 

The motto should be how to make things simpler, not how can I be like every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the business.