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| ABN 23 114 975 772 | newsletter@quarkgroup.com.au | www.quarkgroup.com.au | issue 19 | april 2006 |
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Update Zone |
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The Latest Crimeware Information |
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Direct Marketing As the smell of chocolate from all those Easter eggs is still in the air, now is a good time to remind everyone that telemarketing calls are not allowed on Sundays and Public Holidays. Not that many of you actually use telemarketers - more like us, you tend to detest telemarketers breaking into your personal time. This is more of a "Woohoo - I'm safe on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday" - that's 3 days out of 4 and the only time in the year we have such relief except if Christmas falls on or next to a weekend! Direct marketing is a valid sales tool. Don't get me wrong. And most direct marketers are conducting their business practices in line with the Australian Direct Marketing Association's Code of Practice. It is just the rogue traders that continue to really make our evenings and weekends annoying. Anyone who uses any form of direct marketing needs to be aware of the National Privacy Principles, the Privacy Act 1988 and the Spam Act 2003. To help protect yourself against dinnertime calls from a telemarketing call centre, the Quark Group suggests that you contact the Australian Direct marketing Association and have your residential addresses and telephone numbers added to their "Do Not Mail" and "Do Not Call" services. This page shows exactly what these services will and won't stop you from receiving. For those who hate receiving junk mail in their letter boxes, placing a "No Junk Mail" sticker on your letterbox should stop this. If you still continue to get junk mail even with one of these stickers in clear view, you can contact the Distribution Standards Board on 1800 676 136 who will take action on your behalf if it relates to printed commercial material such as those from junk food outlets, tree loppers, real estate, local shopping centres, Victoria's Secret catalogs and so on. |
In addition to telephone and postal mail opt out lists, there are a few ways to opt out of electronic harassment. The first is the DoubleClick Inc Ad Cookie Opt Out. This will stop you receiving targeted advertising from the vast quantity of websites that are subscribed to the DoubleClick advertising services. The second is the Yahoo! Network Web Beacon Opt Out. This opt you out of being tracked across the Internet by Yahoo! for their advertising purposes. These electronic opt out procedures will have to be carried out on each and every browser that you use (such as Internet Explorer and Firefox) and also on every machine you use at home and at work. Quark IT is able to help protect your home and office computers against malicious programs and electronic tracking methods used to observe your habits and target advertising at you. We can provide solutions to enhance your privacy when using the Internet to ensure that you, your staff and your children do not leave too many identifiable traces while you work, relax and play. For more information on electronic privacy issues and practices
click here. |
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Mobility - Laptops |
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Desktop Workers Having a dedicated desktop is great for those workers who don't need to go offsite to visit suppliers, clients or prospective clients and who don't need to work whilst away at a course or when at home. If you have a Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 based network, these normally stationary users can get access to their emails via Outlook Web Access and can even access their office desktop through use of Remote Web Workplace as outlined in our April 2005 Newsletter. Mobile Workers For workers who do regularly perform some one their duties in places other than at their desktops, a laptop is often more cost effective than supplying a desktop at the office and another at home. Laptops are also useful for those staff who travel a lot as part of their job, or who visit clients and suppliers as a part of their job. Normally, when a worker disconnects from the network and travels away from the office they would be disconnecting from many of the resources they need to perform their duties, however there are a number of ways that a mobile worker with a laptop can continue to access these resources when they are needed. Internet Cafe An Internet Cafe is neck and neck with a University computer lab in the race to the most insecure computing environment known to man. Because you cannot possibly know what software is installed on the Internet Cafe machines, nor what viruses, spyware and other crimeware is lurking about, and in particular because you cannot tell what keystroke logging hardware and/or software is installed on these computers, any and every worker who logs into your network from an Internet Cafe computer should be fired on the spot. There is no excuse for bringing your network into such jeopardy. None. If your workers take their own laptop into the Internet Cafe and connect to the Cafe's network, then this is significantly safer. These workers should ensure their antivirus, firewall and anti spyware applications have been updated before leaving the office (or the last safe place they had connected at). Remember that it is your job also to ensure your staff keep your network secure. Your workers will need to take care to notice if anyone is watching as they type usernames and passwords and they must not, under any circumstance, leave their laptop unattended whilst logged in for even a second. If they need to go to the counter for another latte, they MUST log out of their laptop completely. Direct Dial In OK. Following on from the most insecure method of accessing your network is the next most insecure method which is where a worker gains access to your office network is by dialling directly into a modem somewhere on your network (generally on the server). This is something that Quark IT very strongly recommends against due to the security implications. There is one slight variation that we will support in certain instances, and that is where the server will connect, accept a username and password, then terminate the call and make an outbound call to a number determined by the system administrator such as the worker's home telephone number. This means that workers can only even dial in from the one location, however call forwarding can further reduce your network security. 
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VPN Another term that gets bandied about a lot is VPN which means a "Virtual Private Network". A VPN is basically a way to establish a secure channel to your office network across the insecure and untrusted Internet. Basically, a piece of software is run on your laptop that makes a connection to a piece of software running on a server or router in your office and the traffic between these two pieces of software is encrypted. The main issue with a VPN is the speed, or lack thereof. As a VPN is making a connection to your office network and connecting your remote laptop (or home computer) in the same way a desktop in the office is connected to the network, you can understand that this connection across the telephone line will be slower that a connection in the office. If you have a fast Internet connection at the office and at the remote location, this speed will be bearable, but if one end is on a modem dialup connection (not ADSL nor cable) then the speed will be close to intolerable. Another issue with a VPN is that it is connecting a remote computer directly to your office network in a similar way to dialling in directly and without expensive quarantine software, it isn't the safest way to gain access to the office network. Accessing Your Office Terminal Server If you are running a Terminal Server in your office then you can allow remote users access to this which will greatly enhance their ability to perform their duties. A Terminal Server is an additional server on your network that operates in a similar way to the early mainframes, allowing workers to run tasks on the Terminal Server instead of locally on their own computers. Because the Terminal Server is running the software and reading and writing the files on the local network, even when you connect to it from home or Hayman Island your experience will be similar to that when you connect in the office. If you are running an SBS based network, then the Terminal Server will appear in the Remote Web Workplace website. If an office has a number of workers who regularly travel and need access to the office network or has a number of "teleworkers" who work from home then a Terminal Server can be a good investment. In Car Access If your workers need access to the Internet between sites then there are a couple of options available. The most widely useful option is the Vodafone Mobile Connect card (or similar from other telephone companies) that is a PC Card device that accepts a regular mobile phone SIM card and will give 3G (faster) or GPRS (modem speed) access to the Internet from most places where mobile phone service is available. Another option is the iBurst wireless Internet connection. iBurst is kind of like your office wireless LAN on steroids. Coverage in Brisbane and the Gold Coast areas isn't bad, but once you move outside the heavily populated areas the signal is unavailable. The speeds available on an iBurst plan are faster than the VMC 3G plans mentioned above, but the coverage is much more limited. Summary Depending on the needs of your workforce, there are a number of options available for remote workers. Quark IT is constantly looking out for new or improved ways for your workers to be able to perform their duties whether in the office or remote from it. We ourselves use a number of the options listed above in our daily operations and therefore have operational experience with them as well as the technical ability to be able to deploy them for your own particular situation. If you are interested in discussing options for your remote workers or even if you just need to access your work email from home if you need to take the day off, please contact Quark IT and we can help work out a solution designed to suit your needs. |
Next Month |
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Home Control Aside from controlling your home lighting, our Clipsal® C-Bus™ Integrated Systems can be used to monitor and control blinds, windows, air conditioning and more. We'll outline some of these capabilities, giving you a better idea of what a well designed C-Bus™ system can help you achieve. |
Mobile Telephony We'll show you some ways that we can help you get the maximum benefit out of your mobile phone and the mobile network that covers most of Australia. Again, if there is anything you'd like to see covered in future Newsletters, please email us with any suggestions or comments. |
Signing off |
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That's about all we have for you in this April 2006 Quark Group Newsletter. The upcoming release of the HD-DVD and BluRay technologies will create another VHS vs Beta war in the movie industry. We'd have thought that these guys would have learned from their history, but apparently not. We'll bring you more news as the set top and computer based drives get closer. The new Intel Core Duo processors will finally allow Home Theatre PCs (HTPCs) to be both fast and quiet, meaning that a Media Centre PC is now something that we can all look forward to. If only Microsoft could get the Media Centre components stable, then we'd have a winner on our hands! Quark AudioVisual can now supply speakers and amplifiers from Earthquake Sound Corporation and speakers from the Danish Jamo company. These supplement our Miller & Kreisel, Polk Audio, Sonance, Sonus Faber, Rotel, Marantz and other ranges. If you know anyone else who would like to receive this Newsletter, please feel free to forward this edition to them and also ask them to email us requesting a subscription. Please contact us if you would like Quark Group to assist you in ensuring that your home as well as your office computing environment is as functional as it can be. | |
