So i am trying to buy a car. Nothing special Honda Accord Ex-L. Honda's website has this model with navigation listed for $28,040. I emailed their internet Rep and she sent me a best out the door price of $24,467.
On a whim, i got in today to see what they will give me for my trade and talk to a sales guy. Best offer he can do is $26,760. Not to mention they tried to give me $5,000 under book for my Infiniti. There is nothing more frustrating then buying a car.
After working for a couple SMB consulting companies in atlanta, i seriously think the owners had to have been car salesmen in an alternative life.
Anyone want to buy a used G35 coupe?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Great Case for password expiration
The next time you are slightly miffed or you have an employee complain about rotating our your passwords just point them to this Abcnews article:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5390020&page=1
In the story an employee was fired, and then accessed the system via backdoors he created. These are easily avoided traps if you system is designed in the correct way.
Using Active Directory, along with some sort of Two Factor Authentication would have saved the City of San Francisco millions. If your business is on a budget sticking with an unified account management plan and making use of Radius or Tacacs authentication could save you from a militant ex-employee. Just make sure to auto disable accounts that have not logged in within 30 days.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5390020&page=1
In the story an employee was fired, and then accessed the system via backdoors he created. These are easily avoided traps if you system is designed in the correct way.
Using Active Directory, along with some sort of Two Factor Authentication would have saved the City of San Francisco millions. If your business is on a budget sticking with an unified account management plan and making use of Radius or Tacacs authentication could save you from a militant ex-employee. Just make sure to auto disable accounts that have not logged in within 30 days.
Which Firewall is the Best?
Ughh this is always the first question a new customer asks me. Is there a correct answer to this? Most of the other SMB consulting guys will push them to what ever they make the most money on whether its right for the customer or not.
My answer is always the same, there is no Best over all. It is what is best for you. I have seen customers go from a Cisco Pix HA setup to a Watchguard setup and the Watchguard completely brings down there network. They had to completely redo their IP setup due to the fact that Watchguard will only let you Port forward from External Ports. This customer would have been much better served with a more enterprise level product but due to the owner of the company i was working for they didnt offer anything like that.
There are 4 models i generally stick to, and they can cover 99.99999% of customers i encounter. Checkpoint, Cisco ASA, Netscreen and IBM Proventia. The following features are generally what i evaluate them on.
1. Port Density
2. Scalability
3. Routing
4. IPS**
5. Features
6. Price
7. Management Platform
8. Updates
9. Maintenance Cost
10. VPN Capabilities
Unless the customer is selecting the IBM Proventia M firewall, i always recommend a seperate IPS. The Proventia M uses the same Engine as thair enterprise level G IPS.
My answer is always the same, there is no Best over all. It is what is best for you. I have seen customers go from a Cisco Pix HA setup to a Watchguard setup and the Watchguard completely brings down there network. They had to completely redo their IP setup due to the fact that Watchguard will only let you Port forward from External Ports. This customer would have been much better served with a more enterprise level product but due to the owner of the company i was working for they didnt offer anything like that.
There are 4 models i generally stick to, and they can cover 99.99999% of customers i encounter. Checkpoint, Cisco ASA, Netscreen and IBM Proventia. The following features are generally what i evaluate them on.
1. Port Density
2. Scalability
3. Routing
4. IPS**
5. Features
6. Price
7. Management Platform
8. Updates
9. Maintenance Cost
10. VPN Capabilities
Unless the customer is selecting the IBM Proventia M firewall, i always recommend a seperate IPS. The Proventia M uses the same Engine as thair enterprise level G IPS.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
In the begining
In the past 11 years of my professional IT career, i have worked from the small 15 man start up, to The ATT death Star, and the 380,000 person IBM Borg Collective. I have noticed one thing, the first thing that gets skimped on or dropped completely from small shop IT budgets is security. This is not a rule but its generally what happens.
So i have stepped out into the great beyond, in an effort to raise awareness and solve the issue of the void that is security in the small business market. In the coming months, i will be posting about different security related topics and the trials and tribulations of starting your own business.
Its a big world out there Charlie Brown.
So i have stepped out into the great beyond, in an effort to raise awareness and solve the issue of the void that is security in the small business market. In the coming months, i will be posting about different security related topics and the trials and tribulations of starting your own business.
Its a big world out there Charlie Brown.
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