4 Questions to Ask When Selecting an Email Encryption Solution

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Email Lock
Once you determine who within your organization should be using email encryption to secure sensitive and protected information, you need to select from sea of vendors all claiming to be the “leading” provider.

Here are four (4) questions to ask when selecting an email encryption solution

1) Does the solution include a hosted, shared email encryption network?

Encrypting every email is hard, expensive, and does not accommodate the way most of us work. Using passwords and accessing portals are extra steps that take time and can create frustration. A shared email encryption network ensures that 100% of emails sent within the network are secured without any additional actions required by the sender or the recipient.

2) Does the solution offer policy-based encryption filters?

Most encryption solutions relying on users to trigger encryption by clicking a button or putting a tag into the subject line.  Even if users understand every scenario that warrants encryption, they are likely to miss a few along the way. Solutions with policy-based encryption filters scan and automatically encrypt messages that contain sensitive information. The best solutions provide standard heuristics for common regulatory requirements and let you create custom policies to meet your business’ specific needs.

3) Is the solution easy to use?

Email is a business tool, and email encryption is no different. Ideally, the solution should be easy to use for sender and recipient. Difficult processes result in mistakes, compliance breaches, lost productivity, and users circumventing the system. Easy to use solutions foster adoption and compliance by automatically encrypting message, decrypting inbound messages at the gateway, and ensuring that replies and forwards get encrypted as well.

4) Is the solution provider awesome?

Choosing an email encryption provider is a long-term commitment and the lowest price is not always the best deal. Make sure your provider is trusted by others in your industry. Check to ensure their infrastructure has certifications and accreditations, such as SysTrust/SOC 3 or PCI Level 1. Make sure the solution can be deployed quickly and that your provider supports your deployment technically and with user training. Verify that your provider will support you on an on-going basis and minimize the resources required from you and your team.

 

 We offer multiple email encryption solutions. Contact us to discuss your needs and explore the solution best for you and your business.

 

Take Another Look at ASUS

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ASUS Chromebook
When we started providing Chrome devices to schools, options were limited. Today, nearly every major and secondary workstation manufacturer has at least a small line of Chrome devices. While this gives you more options, the choices can be overwhelming.

Recently, we took a fresh look at ASUS, and we think you should as well. Here are 4 reasons why:

1) Quality
When ASUS entered the Chromebook market, they did so with a low-cost, low-end unit that had a spinning disk drive. The brand was perceived as not having the quality to survive the K-12 environment. Since then, however, ASUS has led the market with advances in the Chromebox and has released models like the C200 and C300 that are proving themselves in the real world.

2) Service and Support
ASUS is standing by its products. ASUS is the only brand that includes accidental damage in its standard 1 year warranty. The coverage covers one repair during the year, but can be customized to extend the number of years and/or incidents covered.  The need for 3rd party coverage is gone.

3) Creativity
Looking at ASUS’s line of Android Tablets and in their Windows products, we see ASUS bringing many of the same creative form factors (advanced touch screen, flip, and “2 in 1”) to the Chrome device market. And we reasonably expect these new devices to be price competitive with the bigger players on the market.

4) Market Position
While not a small company by any stretch of the imagination, ASUS is still a relatively small player in the Chrome device market. ASUS is eager to grow and makes it easier for resellers to create custom solutions for you, our customers.

Interested enough to kick the tires, contact us to arrange a free evaluation kit.

 

 

Beauty in the Box

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Asus Chromebox
It looks simple enough. A small form factor desktop computer running Chrome OS. In it’s native mode, the Chromebox lets you access any website and any cloud-based service with a web interface that you can imagine or ever want.

What makes the Chromebox really beautiful, however, is what it can do when assigned to special tasks.

Kiosks

Bundled with the Chrome Management Service, you can easily configure Chromeboxes to run as a single application kiosk. Whether providing information to customers in your store, allowing visitors to check in at the lobby desk, or to provide games for kids to play in your waiting room, the small form factor and easy setup make Chromeboxes an affordable solution to install and maintain.

Chromebox for Meetings

For less than $1,000, you can enable video conferencing in almost any small or mid-size conference room. Bundled with an HD camera, an HD conference speaker/microphone, and management software, you can link the device to the conference room calendar. Video conference setup is automatic and attendees can start the conference with a single press of a button on the remote control. Easier to use than traditional video conferencing, you can share presentation materials from any participant in the meeting.

Digital Signage

Combine the kiosk capabilities of the Chromebox with free or low cost tools, and your Chromebox becomes one of the most affordable digital signage solutions on the market. Securely manage display presentation and content remotely from any web-connected device without investing in expensive, proprietary systems.

If you are interested in or need kiosk, video conferencing, or digital signage solution, contact us to discuss your needs and evaluate solutions.

 

 

Email (is still) Like a Postcard

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Postcard
With all of the advancement in email servers, services, and cloud solutions, fundamentally, email is still like a postcard.

When you mail a postcard, the postal service will make its best attempt to get it delivered in a reasonable period of time.  While most postcards make it, occasionally a few get lost in the mail.

And while your message from vacation, your short message to a friend, or a quick thank you makes its travels, everybody that touches the postcard along the way can read it. Not that everybody, or even anybody will, but they can.

For the type of messages we send on postcards, we do not really care about privacy. Our email messages, however, often contain personal, sensitive, or corporate data that we want or need to keep private.

It is relatively easy for hackers to capture corporate data from emails as it travels across the public Internet. It is also easy for the staff at your MSP or IT service firm to read or intercept messages.

Yes, when we deploy Google Apps and other services, we put technology in place such as policy-based TLS encryption that helps mitigate risks and forced SLL encryption.  Many on-premise email servers have these features active as well.

But for many businesses, this is not enough. Government and industry regulatory requirements, including HIPAA, PCI, and PII, affect nearly every business with employees, that accepts credit cards, or keeps a customer file. Financial firms and publicly traded firms also face regulatory requirements from the SEC, FINRA, and Sarbanes/Oxley.

To meet increasing demands for data privacy and protection, you need message level encryption for at least those employees that deal with sensitive or protected information. If your solution is difficult to use, or inconvenient for recipients, employees will look to circumvent the system or opt not to encrypt messages, customers and partners will complain, and your business will suffer.

When looking at email encryption solutions, evaluate solutions that require little or no user involvement, make it easy for recipients to read encrypted messages, and work well on mobile devices. The good news, is that these solutions are affordable and can be deployed based on need.

For more information, contact us about selecting the right email encryption solution for you and your business.

 

Special Offer on Android Tablets / Play for Education Pilot Kits

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Nexus7
Working with a group of vendors and our distributors, we are pleased to offer qualifying districts* more than 50% off a comprehensive Android Tablet/Play for Education Pilot Kit.

With a retail value over $13,900, we are offering the kit on a first-come, first-serve basis for $6,480.

The Android Tablet/Play for Education Pilot Kit includes:

  • 30 Nexus 7 Tablets (16GB Model)
  • 30 Google Play for Education Management Licenses
  • 30 Higher Ground protective cases
  • 1 Ergotron Tablet Cart
  • 1 NEC Projector with DisplayNote Licenses
  • Deployment support from Cumulus Global and Google
  • Android Apps from Google’s Getting Started App Bundle
    • Explain Everything / Book Creator / We Video
      Tynker / Comic Strip It / Drawap
  • Professional Development from Educational Collaborators (2 teachers)

*As the number of Kits is limited, restrictions apply, including:

  • Limit one (1) kit per district
  • Sales are first-come, first serve
  • District student population must be at least 1,000 students
  • Offer is for new Android customers (30 or fewer existing Android tablets)
  • All sales subject to approval by Google.

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For more information, please contact our EDU Team.  Or, click here to request pricing and a quote.

 

Ransomware Still Crippling “Protected” Networks

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cyrptovirus
The rate of infections from crypto-viruses and other ransom-ware continues to rise. Even networks with traditionally strong malware protection are getting caught.

And while with good backups in place, it is possible to recover without paying the ransom, the process time consuming, frustrating, and expensive.

We outline the reasons for the broad failure of anti-virus/malware protection software in this prior blog post, providing 5 failings of most antivirus solutions.

Now, we are offering a risk-free way to assess if your malware protection is up to par.

The Offer

We will install Webroot Secure Anywhere Endpoint Protection, a cloud-based malware protection service that avoids the 5 failings of other solutions, at no cost for 30 days. Based in the cloud, Webroot will not interfere with your current protections.

At the end of the 30 days, you will see what malware, if any, was caught by Webroot that your existing solution has missed.

If your existing solution is not up to par, and you want better protection, we can activate a full subscription to Webroot for you $18 per year per device or less (more than 25% off).

Simply contact us if you are willing to see if your protection is enough, or if you would like more information.

Extended Benefits of Cloud Computing

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A Case Study in Network Efficiency

Changing the names to protect identities, let’s take a look at NE Company’s network history and design.  NE Company currently has 4 locations. The company’s headquarters are located in a suburban business park along with a second facility hosting R&D and some engineering functions. The third location for software development is a few miles down the road; the fourth location is a distribution center that is an eight hour drive away, across two state lines.

Generation One:

When NE Company only had the HQ and out of state locations, they connected the offices using point to point leased lines. Internet access was available from both locations. Because of slow performance accessing files, NE Company installed a local file server in the distribution center. While having two file servers fixed the file performance issue, email still suffered from the central location, they occasionally experienced file duplication issues, and the solution was costly.

Generation Two:

As NE Company added locations, they initially stuck to the point-to-point model, creating a hub-and-spoke network. Performance was an issue, as was managing router configurations such that Internet traffic moved to the Internet locally while application, email, and file traffic stayed within the corporate network.

To improve performance and to reduce redundancy and costs, NE Company transitioned to a MPLS, or Multi-Protocol Labeled Switching network.  A single connection to each office could no route inter-office traffic and Internet traffic through a single pipe.

Granted, NE Company increased it’s wide area network capacity by more than 80% while cutting costs in half, but the operational limitations linger. The company’s email server is still centralized at HQ, as are most of the files, and hosting for the company’s web-based management system. Users face performance delays often. The company has added local file services at all locations, increasing user confusion as to file locations and how to access information. The additional file servers have also complicated data backup/recovery services, which now require more administrative time and attention.

As the workforce has become more mobile, access to data and applications has driven an expensive investment in VPN services. VPN concentrators, client software, and management have been an expensive addition to the environment. While providing access, performance fails to meet reasonable user expectations and the support cost is high.

Generation Cloud:

If NE Company took a cloud-centric view of computing, email and file services would move to the cloud.  The company could move its on-premise CRM system to the vendor’s SaaS service, and could host its custom web-based management system in a cloud-based server environment.

In doing so, NE Company would

  • Provide all of its employees with equal access to resources and better performance
  • Replace the complex, managed MPLS network with direct Internet access connections at each office
  • Reduce wide area networking costs by nearly 80%
  • Provide direct access to files and applications from on-premise and mobile employees
  • Eliminate the need for most VPN services
  • Reduce its server footprint
  • Simplify the backup/recovery services
  • Reduce IT Admin time on basic infrastructure operations and maintenance

Conclusion

The impact of moving from on-premise systems to the cloud-based solutions is never as simple as the specific application or service. By looking at the integration points and indirect or secondary impacts, you can better understand the nature of the migration. As important, you can identify potential savings and other benefits as a result of the move.