We are not going to get into the deeper aspects of IT Security as that ends up being somewhat unique to each organization in knowing how to best protect different types of data. It also requires an assessment of overall risk along with evaluations of specific business processes to ensure the security model allows for the business to still run efficiently and effectively. What we will outline are the high level concerns with both inadequately protecting and over protecting your data.

Resolving issues of inadequate protections are often easiest to compensate for because it is easier for the business to comprehend what should be protected. However, there is usually a limitation on how much money can be thrown to address the key problems. Encrypting all of your data at rest as well as in transit are the best practice principles to deploy, but it can lead to slow downs to key business processes. Data encryption also leads to the creating of new business processes such as encryption key management and ensuring any business partners that you share data with to be able to securing receive the data and decrypt it when they get it.

This is why many businesses choose perimeter protections to build a wall around the data rather than worrying about internal threats to its loss by exfiltration. The issue with this implementation as the only protection is that today’s threats are more commonly through spear phishing and browser vulnerabilities. What this means is that the compromise ends up being from the internal user perspective. So once they have access to a user’s credentials and your organization has the “high wall, mushy center” security model, they have free reign to your network. The bad news becomes a matter of time at that point.

So what about over protecting your data?

Many would argue that statement doesn’t even sense. What we mean there is in regard to those new business processes you need to development. In small businesses IT departments are usually small or even a single individual. Giving all the “keys to the kingdom” to one person puts the business at risk for accidental or intention compromise. This is remedied with a checks and balance system of network management and security management. In large enterprises there are usually two groups, but creates the issue of the increased need for collaboration and business unit buy-in to overall process and procedures.

Generally speaking a one size fits all approach isn’t always the best way. Leaving all data at risk by having an open access policy to internal users is easy to manage (and why it is also so easy to steal), but locking all data away is costly and could lead to a quick end if a single encryption key is lost and you now no longer can even access your own data. This is where your time comes in. Whether you decide to take this on yourself or hire a consultant to assist, it will save dollars by understanding and mapping out where you data lives and how sensitive that data is. Protecting the most sensitive data adequately often meets business goals a bit easier. The frequent users of the business’ sensitive data are aware how sensitive the data is and will be more likely to understand why the extra protections are necessary. There will be less likelihood of violations to new security policies and this results to less risk overall.

So where does this leave the small business?

Leverage what you can and be aware yourself. As a business owner, understand your business. If you have alleviated yourself from any responsibility of the complex world of IT for your business you are at risk. There are ways for business owners to understand what it means to the business without being overly complex and getting into the weeds.

There are plenty of consultative services out there that can be a fraction of the cost of expanding your IT department. Your current IT department may not be fully aware of security architecture and best practices, but they can deploy these systems once a plan has been established by an expert in the field. There are also numerous lessons that can be learned from large organizations and even government.

The long standing organization for best practices, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has provided a wealth of information to government. Government organizations are measured against these best practices to ensure they meet a certain standard in protecting data surrounding the services they provide. These same principles are likely to be used to measure your business’ ability to protect data by any IT security consultant you may contract with. Taking the time to begin the mapping of your internal processes to these standards will save you money since the consultant will not have to interview to gather this same data.

So what else do the “big guys” do to save money in resolving this growing area of risk to their data. Believe it or not, they are trying to work together. Very large contracting firms are building consortium programs where large organizations they typically support can contribute funds to a common goal. In the past these same companies made a ton of cash by repeating assessments for organizations individually. In today’s climate, by the time these issues are resolved the threat vectors have already changed. The model had to change and it is changing.

Now companies can team together to create a higher level plan of attack to their IT security problems. They can leverage the same high level plan and then spend less to complete the picture for their specific organization. For example, rather than 100+ organizations spending IT dollars to test the best of breed firewall or to layout a layered perimeter security architecture, they can contribute much less to a central fund and have access to the same information. This same principle can be utilized by small businesses.

Small businesses have many common issues because of their size and lack of depth in many cases to a pool of IT professionals. Where some small business owners are looking to cloud providers to leverage their expertise in protecting data, many are still fearful (and should be) to just give up the control. In lieu of the cloud, there is still a great deal of opportunity to share ideas with other businesses suffering from the same overwhelming problems everyone is facing. If common problems are identified after speaking with fellow business owners, put a common plan together. If this plan cannot be created by IT personnel already employed by one or more of the companies, look into consultants that can be leveraged for their depth of experience in this field.

Once a high level plan is established more appropriate to your size and ability to fund, it should cost significantly less if additional services are needed to map out a plan with only your specific needs in mind. From there your consultant can take it all the way or your own IT staff can implement.

The key difference here is you, the business owner, are aware of the plan, can more easily ensure it has been implemented, and can get back to your core business. Having the high level understanding of what your IT means to your business, where the jewels are stored, and how they are being protected will make you a better business owner and in turn simply have a stronger business.

For current generations, however, you hear very similar stories, but with new age reasons such hard drives crashes, corrupted or damaged storage, or a dead iPod. With digital photography cutting the costs to take pictures, current day losses are much greater because we have many more photos than anyone could have afforded to shoot in the past. The evolution of the digital age has once again changed things for us.

Cloud service providers have leveraged the falling costs of storage and processing power to build ever growing stable computing environments. Giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple are creating offerings for the every day consumer wanting a low cost solution to home computing dilemmas. So for the hundreds of music files, the hundreds of home videos, and the thousands of photos cloud solutions are there to not only store and organize your digital library, but also to lessen the likelihood you may lose your prized possessions.

Recently, we have taken a closer look at Google’s offering Picasa. Picasa is a two piece offering – the client software you can download offers an efficient and intuitive way to manage photos on your PC while the cloud based storage provides a stable and trustworthy component to backing up your photos and sharing them with friends and family in easy to manage photo albums. For 25 cents per gigabyte of storage you can keep photos in the cloud as a secondary copy and a real sense of security.

The Picasa software also gives you an easy to navigate interface to backup photos to DVDs or other storage devices. The help guides online are very useful and worth the read. With this much to lose it is always best to prepare yourself by understanding fully what the different items mean so there is fewer chance for mistakes. For instance, if you do plan to use the cloud storage of your photos as your backup, make sure the setting for syncing them to the web are to sync the full file. By default the settings are set to optimize your storage and for viewing online. So a lower resolution copy would be uploaded in this instance. If you were to lose your original files due to a hard drive failure, for example, you would only have the inferior quality replicas.

You can modify these settings very easily and set them as your new default to upload the entire file for safe keeping. With storage this cheap it is probably the best way to go. If you think you are going to make regular copies to DVDs you may find yourself amongst the many with a tragic story of how you always meant to, but didn’t before that unfortunate day the hard drive decided to retire.

There are many options out there to consider like RackSpace cloud computing, so take the time, research to you find the right solution for you, and then do it before tragedy strikes. Leverage the cloud for peace of mind and security in keeping all of those fond memories for years to come.

For those that are still worried about what the cloud will offer from a stability and reliability standpoint there is at least a place to start. With Google and Amazon being the two biggest providers of cloud at this particular point in time, we have already entrusted much of our faith in these two giants. Whether you are a Google Apps user or have relied on Amazon to store your personal information for the most convenient checkout possible the road to the dependence and trust in the cloud has begun. Additionally, Dell.com cloud computing is quickly becoming one the more trusted places to store your information.

Ready to make the next step?

Amazon has just initiated a great offer for those music buffs that want to take their music with them. They have and still offer free storage services for users to maintain 5GB worth of music in the cloud. The 5GB is for your existing music alone as all new purchases once signing up for the service do not count toward your 5GB max. Furthermore, if you go above the 5GB you can conveniently upgrade for more space on an annual payment basis.

To sweeten the pot, Amazon is currently offering from now until the end of the year and additional 15GB (for a total of 20GB) for free for the first year if you purchase a full album from their MP3 store and choose to store it in the cloud. Not only is this a significant size for music you can use the storage space for any digital files. Their cloud frontend allows you to organize documents, music, videos, photos and more very easily as you come to expect from them.

So if you have just purchased that new Android phone that allows you to stream your music, give this offer a try, download their free Android app, and get into the cloud. It is a great way for any business owner or IT professional to start to get their feet wet and test out what will be the way we are all computing in the next few years.

Not everything is interoperable with VOIP. Most things can work over the digital line, but items like fax machines, dial out modems for services like the proprietary DirecTV Tivo, and the like don’t really get along without outright modification or hours upon hours of tweaking. And don’t think you will get any friendly support from either your VOIP provider or DirecTV.

With all of that said, I won’t ever be going back! After a long search I chose VOIPo. VOIPo is backended by one of the largest hosting providers in the world, Hostgator. The founder of VOIPo is an ex-partner of Hostgator and therefore has a solid relationship with the backbone of his service. This is always important.

The service has been flawless and the support has been incredibly responsive via email (which is my preferred communication method). The features are too numerous to mention here, but it is everything anyone else offers plus ten! I especially enjoy the white-listing of allowed call in numbers and the managing of times the phone can ring at all. Being able to track incoming and outgoing calls is cool, but not something I sit back and review.

When traveling, the real bonuses kick in. Being able to forward to any number and being able to get emails of voice messages, keep me in touch when on the go and make things extremely flexible for family and friends in not having to hand out temporary numbers. Everything is configurable using an easy to navigate Internet portal. You can even request local numbers for family that may reside in other states so they don’t get dinged with long distance charges. However, that won’t be a problem for too long as you will find yourself recommending they all switch.

Are you ready for the real kicker? It is less than half of the other guys even with all of the features and optional additional numbers. Check it out for yourself.

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