Archive for August, 2010
August 31, 2010 at 8:15 am · Filed under Managed File Transfer
By Todd Doerr
Whether or not you are on the cloud bandwagon, all of the talk about quickly scaling up (or down) computing resources based on demand is intriguing and attention worthy. This capability to meet fluctuating capacity demands, whether increasing or decreasing, is often referred to as elasticity by cloud providers.
Traditional capacity planning aims to optimize computing capacity by providing margin to accommodate future demands. Take for instance the following real world examples of demand that affect computing loads:
- Seasonal demand increasing for a retailer (an expected short-term ramp up and ramp down)
- New business or revenue opportunity with a trading partner creates new demand (a quick ramp up)
- Periods of business growth from promotions and campaigns, increases in sales volume, new product launches (periodic ramp up and ramp down)
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August 24, 2010 at 4:17 am · Filed under Managed File Transfer, Secure Information Exchange
By Johnny Wright
Have you ever mailed a package to someone and the person tells you they never received it? Have you ever received a package that arrived torn or damaged in some way? Both of these scenarios have happened to me, and it seems to happen more often now than ever before. However, I would argue that sending email attachments isn’t any more reliable than snail mail, especially when you’re trying to send sensitive information or business-critical documents.
Just today I was waiting for a time-sensitive email from an external party after he said he would send it to me right away. A few hours passed and I still had not received it. Typically, when an email fails to arrive quickly, there could be any number of reasons for the delay:
- Emails with attachments (especially large attachments) could be blocked due to server or security issues.
- Emails from outside parties could be mistakenly considered spam and sent into the infamous ‘Junk’ or ‘Spam’ folders.
- Emails are sometimes simply overlooked by the email recipient due to the large amount of emails received on a daily basis.
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August 5, 2010 at 3:35 am · Filed under Risk Management, Secure Information Exchange
By Johnny Wright
Do all employees within your organization know what information they can and can’t share with external parties? Do you think your business and IT leaders would know if they inadvertently exposed sensitive company data to malicious parties?
Last weekend these questions were put to the test. A contest was held at DEF CON 18 Hacking Conference in Las Vegas to see if contestants could successfully call employees at real organizations to collect sensitive corporate information. Of the 140 calls made, only 5 employees declined to give participants the information they were seeking. If the employees declined to provide any information, the contestant simply called a different employee at the same company until they received the information they were looking for. The contest forbid contestants from attempting to gain passwords, IP addresses or other sensitive data, and instead challenged them to obtain data that ranged from the contact info for the employee that handles a firm’s tape backups to the browser versions being used by employees at the organization.
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