September 2009
In this issue:

● Do You BING? Part 2
● E-Mail Etiquette Tips
● Lock Up Your Servers
● Top Printing Tips

One aspect often overlooked when securing our information is physical security. The goal of physical security is to control who can walk up to the information and touch it. The idea is to prevent unwanted information disclosure, loss, or corruption, the same as when securing the information across the network or from the internet. The difference is that physical security deals with the “real world”.

For most of us, this doesn’t mean training your Chihuahua as an attack dog or outfitting your employees with dark shades, cheap suits and sleeve microphones; it simply means using some common sense.

Before we can take measures to physically secure our information, we need to know what type of information needs to be protected. There is no need to post armed guards around your product catalog after it’s been published: it’s meant to be seen by others. Before it’s published could be a different story as you may not want your competition getting a sneak peek. In other words, we need to classify our information.

Read more

Just for Laughs

Quote of the Month

A high school teacher
hung this sign under the
clock in her classroom.
“Time will pass . . .
Will you?”

‾James E. Myers

Do you BING? Version 2

You may recall in August I committed to use BING instead of Google for 30 days. Well 30 days has come and gone and I still use BING for 95% of my online searches. Some reasons are obvious, some more subtle. For example, if I search for video on a certain subject, just by moving my mouse across the video thumbnail on the results page the video and audio begin to play. I really like this because you don’t have to make the leap to a different site like YouTube, and the preview factor is great. My friend likes the fact that searches don’t return a lot of extra results you don’t care about (Along the lines of the TV commercials you see from Microsoft).

No doubt that Google is close on the heels of any advance Microsoft may bring to the table. This will be a long drawn out battle of feature by feature increments. This is good for us (the users) because we get much better products. I have a huge amount of faith in Microsoft as they have won this war before (remember Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect?). Today, the pace is much faster because of the online nature of the search engine.

I have tried the shopping and travel features as well and found it very interesting I could compare sites very easily.

Do you BING? Give it a try for 30 days and let me know what you think Mikego@sf-it.com

Mike

E-Mail Etiquette for Wireless Devices: 7 Tips

This isn’t another lecture about minding your e-mail manners. This is a story about a new subset of e-mail etiquette. Call it wireless politeness.

An increasing number of e-mail messages are being received on small, wireless devices with limited screen space — devices such as Windows Mobile-based Smartphones. Being polite is still important. But so are a number of other considerations, including brevity, diction and consideration for bandwidth.

Reader Terri Thornton aptly sums up the frustration with today’s wireless transmissions. “I hate checking my e-mail and having the subject line be so long that it scrolls forever until I can figure out what the topic is, or whether it’s important,” says Thornton, a Cincinnati marketing executive. “Worse is the one-word subject line that says nothing and you have to open it to find out what it is and discover it’s 30 lines of nothing.”

So what is the etiquette for sending e-mail messages to and from wireless devices?
Here are seven tips.

Top Printing Tips to Save Money

It’s a common sight in many offices: wastebaskets filled to the brim with paper. Look next to any desk or printer, and you’re likely to find a stack of misprints, extra copies and other discarded paper waste.

So here are a few things to keep in mind before you send that next job to the printer – and a few tips to keep costs down when you do need to print.

Do you really want to print that?
You should always consider whether what you’re about to print really needs to be printed. For example, if you have to share a document with a number of people at a meeting, are there other ways to display it without printing out a copy for everyone? If it’s a large meeting, maybe use a projector to display the information, or just display it on a notebook screen at a smaller meeting. You could also save the document to a shared folder and provide everyone with a link, or send it as an email attachment.

Conservation: waste not, want not
If you’ve decided you absolutely must print a document, there are some ways to reduce the cost and environmental impact. If it’s just for casual use, you can print in ‘draft’ mode and by reusing misprints by printing on the “clean” side of the page. Most important, when you print on both the front and back of each page, you reduce your paper use by up to 50 percent. You can make this easy by purchasing a printer with a built-in duplexer, and setting the default settings in your driver to “print on both sides”.

Implement recycling efforts
Recycling can take place at multiple levels of your business. First, the obvious point: have a recycling bin, and make sure any discarded paper goes into it rather than the waste bin. Simple in theory, but it’s easy to forget, so make sure you have bins strategically placed around the office and particularly next to the printer/copier.

You can also recycle printing cartridges and equipment. HP’s Planet Partners program helps you recycle any brand of computer equipment or HP printing supplies. HP’s state-of-the-art processes ensure that unwanted hardware or empty HP printing supplies are recycled responsibly. It’s simple and free, and it’s a great way to responsibly dispose of your old equipment and supplies.

Use recycled paper
Try to use recycled paper, which is made from materials that would otherwise end up in our landfills. By incorporating this “waste” into the paper manufacturing process and eliminating the energy use and production costs associated with virgin pulp and whitening agents, everybody benefits.

Keep energy costs low
Paper and printing supplies aren’t the only thing you can conserve. You can save energy and money simply by turning off printing equipment when it isn’t in use. Plus, consider investing in energy-efficient equipment such as HP Eco Highlights Products. For more on HP’s recycling programs and ways you can reduce waste and save money, visit the HP Eco Solutions website. Plus, learn how to calculate your carbon footprint.