Technology Advisor Blog

One of the questions we're hearing more and more from our small business clients is how to get control over out-of-control web usage in the office.  So much business is conducted on-line that employees need to be connected to the Internet, but in some cases, things can get out of control when some employees spend too much work time on personal web usage such as shopping, Facebook, or going to sites they're not supposed to.  If web usage can't be controlled through other management techniques, or if your business has compliance requirements, it's time to think about content filtering for your site.

One of the strong recommendations we're making to our small business clients is to invest in gateway security to protect the perimeter of their network.  Everyone these days knows how important anti-virus and anti-spyware protection are at the desktop, but far too often, small businesses only have a basic router protecting the entry to their network. With more sophisticated security threats cropping up daily, this level of protection just simply isn't enough. 

It seems there's always a new computer threat to watch out for, and the most recent breach in the news is really scary.  Dutch Certificate Authority (CA), DigiNotar, was recently hacked and the result is that fake SSL security certificates were issued.  This is the Internet equivalent of impersonating a police officer.  We're all taught to be careful on the web and a look for an https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) connection so we know we're safe when transmitting data.  But when the certificate itself is fake, we can easily be fooled.