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Small Business, Large Cybersecurity Risks?

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This article excerpt, by Tab Wilkins, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1qDXT1m
Is cybersecurity something you need to worry about as a small manufacturer? In 2011, 50 percent of small businesses thought they were too small to be a hacker target, while the Verizon 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report found that 62 percent of breaches impacted smaller organizations. In 2011, the average cost to a small or medium-sized business from a cyber-attack was over $188,000.
What can be done to try and limit such attacks?
Jim Watson, President of California Manufacturing Technology Consulting, Inc., (CMTC), the MEP Center serving southern California suggests several tips:
• Limit use and distribution of personal credit cards as payment method for company expenditures
• Train employees on security principles and practices and limit employee access to data and information
• Find and Install the most recent security software and make sure it is updated and current
• Secure wi-fi networks, password protect access to routers and change ALL passwords quarterly
• Install security apps on business cell phones
There are several web resources available that can help small businesses understand the cybersecurity environment and develop risk-management strategies.  Five of those include:
The FCC Small Biz Cyber Planner 2.0 helps companies develop a custom cybersecurity plan via an on-line guidance. The custom guide, while not a substitute for consulting with trained security professionals, can help benchmark current practices.
Another valuable website by the FCC includes additional tips for a small business dealing with cybersecurity as well as references to select articles and other websites with important information. Of particular note are 10 Cyber Security Tips for Small Businesses along with potential solution providers to consider.
StaySafeOnline.org by the National Cyber Security Alliance has current information on trending topics and how to stay safe on-line.  It offers opportunities to get involved in the cybersecurity community and has tips on teaching online safety.
Finally NIST has several tools and workshops to help companies better understand and respond to cybersecurity issues such as the Cybersecurity Framework within the Computer Security Division Computer Security Resource Center.  Planning is underway for a series of small business workshops to help owners and managers understand better risk management strategies.
While the Internet provides significant business advantages and opportunities to all companies of all sizes, every business should think about incorporating practices and tools to guard against cyber-attacks and significant losses.

Choosing Office 365 to Reduce the Stress of Starting a New Practice

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This article excerpt, by Dr. Vikram Gandhi, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/11yXkhp
When I finished my three-year residency in Periodontics at Texas A&M Baylor College of Dentistry, I didn’t think I would purchase a dental practice and remodel a new office that same year. But that’s what happened. When I bought Firewheel Dental Implants and Periodontics in August 2013, it was in an older building and staff used snail mail to communicate with referring dental practices.
I wanted to modernize the practice and work in a paperless office, so when the opportunity came along, I took it. Making decisions about permits and dental equipment took a lot of my time, so I wasn’t thinking much about business technology. I used Gmail and that was about it. I was living at my brother’s house, and one day he heard me complaining about how difficult it was to find a contractor’s email. Then, when I told him how expensive it was to hire someone to build a website, he told me about Office 365.
I’m not really a technology person. I like working with my hands and meeting people. That’s why I chose dentistry. So for me, Office 365 is perfect. I have everything I need at my fingertips: email and the Office applications for collaboration as well as web design and development tools. Everything is easy to use and familiar, and it’s cloud-based so I don’t have to worry about servers in the office. I have a professional-looking email address that includes our company name. And compared to Gmail, it’s so much easier to organize my business correspondence using folders that I assign to different topics and vendors. I’m saving a lot of time not searching through my emails. Office 365 is HIPAA-compliant and has email encryption capabilities, so I can send emails that contain patient data to referring dentists without worrying about breaching confidentiality regulations.
But the biggest surprise for me was how easy it was to build my own website using SharePoint Online. I saved approximately $5,000 USD in web development fees. In basically one weekend, I built a website (www.dentalimplantsandperio.com) that matched my expectations. There’s lots of educational content, with videos that walk patients through the procedures and pre- and post-op instructions. I don’t want people to leave my website to learn what a periodontist does or what a gum graft looks like because if they go back to search the Internet, my competition could pop up. Now I’m busier with my practice, but it doesn’t take long to add a new page or a new tab. Right now, I’m looking into creating a page where patients can provide reviews of their experience at Firewheel.
I have five computers and laptops with the latest version of Office applications on all of them, thanks to Office 365 ProPlus. This comes in handy when I teach at the dental school every Wednesday afternoon. I can store all my PowerPoint presentations and lecture notes online in OneDrive for Business, and if I tweak my notes or make a change to the presentation during class, they are saved the next time I upload the files. Now I never have to figure out which device has the latest version of a document.
This is especially true with OneNote. No matter what device I pick up, it has all my notebooks up to date. One of the ways I use OneNote is for employee reviews. We go over the review together, they sign it at the end, and I email them the OneNote page. It’s as easy as that. There are so many ways that Office 365 has simplified the first year of my practice, but the most important thing is that I’ve been able to devote more time to building the business instead of worrying about technology. I can’t see running my practice without it.

Choosing Office 365 to Reduce the Stress of Starting a New Practice

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This article excerpt, by Dr. Vikram Gandhi, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/11yXkhp
When I finished my three-year residency in Periodontics at Texas A&M Baylor College of Dentistry, I didn’t think I would purchase a dental practice and remodel a new office that same year. But that’s what happened. When I bought Firewheel Dental Implants and Periodontics in August 2013, it was in an older building and staff used snail mail to communicate with referring dental practices.
I wanted to modernize the practice and work in a paperless office, so when the opportunity came along, I took it. Making decisions about permits and dental equipment took a lot of my time, so I wasn’t thinking much about business technology. I used Gmail and that was about it. I was living at my brother’s house, and one day he heard me complaining about how difficult it was to find a contractor’s email. Then, when I told him how expensive it was to hire someone to build a website, he told me about Office 365.
I’m not really a technology person. I like working with my hands and meeting people. That’s why I chose dentistry. So for me, Office 365 is perfect. I have everything I need at my fingertips: email and the Office applications for collaboration as well as web design and development tools. Everything is easy to use and familiar, and it’s cloud-based so I don’t have to worry about servers in the office. I have a professional-looking email address that includes our company name. And compared to Gmail, it’s so much easier to organize my business correspondence using folders that I assign to different topics and vendors. I’m saving a lot of time not searching through my emails. Office 365 is HIPAA-compliant and has email encryption capabilities, so I can send emails that contain patient data to referring dentists without worrying about breaching confidentiality regulations.
But the biggest surprise for me was how easy it was to build my own website using SharePoint Online. I saved approximately $5,000 USD in web development fees. In basically one weekend, I built a website (www.dentalimplantsandperio.com) that matched my expectations. There’s lots of educational content, with videos that walk patients through the procedures and pre- and post-op instructions. I don’t want people to leave my website to learn what a periodontist does or what a gum graft looks like because if they go back to search the Internet, my competition could pop up. Now I’m busier with my practice, but it doesn’t take long to add a new page or a new tab. Right now, I’m looking into creating a page where patients can provide reviews of their experience at Firewheel.
I have five computers and laptops with the latest version of Office applications on all of them, thanks to Office 365 ProPlus. This comes in handy when I teach at the dental school every Wednesday afternoon. I can store all my PowerPoint presentations and lecture notes online in OneDrive for Business, and if I tweak my notes or make a change to the presentation during class, they are saved the next time I upload the files. Now I never have to figure out which device has the latest version of a document.
This is especially true with OneNote. No matter what device I pick up, it has all my notebooks up to date. One of the ways I use OneNote is for employee reviews. We go over the review together, they sign it at the end, and I email them the OneNote page. It’s as easy as that. There are so many ways that Office 365 has simplified the first year of my practice, but the most important thing is that I’ve been able to devote more time to building the business instead of worrying about technology. I can’t see running my practice without it.

Behind the Scenes on Goodyear’s Drive to the Cloud (Part 2)

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This article excerpt, by Jim McKinnon, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1D9RbbN
Jim McKinnon joined Goodyear as an IT intern for the company’s England subsidiary and spent the next four decades working his way up to vice president and CIO. McKinnon, who retires this month, isn’t ending his 40-year career on cruise control—instead he’s been in a pedal-to-the-metal drive to change IT at Goodyear.
The transition to Office 365 coincided with our move to a new world headquarters and an increasingly more collaborative company culture. We wanted IT to help enable that culture change. But updating the toolset doesn’t drive behavior modification. If you want projects to succeed, change management is very important.
At Goodyear, we have a mature, externally recognized project management process that delivers results. That process includes change management.
Our Office 365 change process began with executive sponsorship: essential support from the top to ensure proper governance. We established a steering committee of leaders from all business units, representing the key functions of human resources, communications, legal, project management, research and development, and engineering. We laid out the road map for detailed implementation. Very early, we had nearly 2,000 people involved—early adopters and change agents.
We also created a support network of approximately 100 IT professionals who provided online support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From anywhere in the world, our employees could ask a question via live chat and someone would pop up and answer it.
There were a few bumps, but Microsoft was a good partner and helped us along the way.
So far, the new tools are already making a big difference. Some of them are simple changes: working in the same document instead of passing files around, accessing documents from the web, a significant increase in instant messaging instead of emailing, more sophisticated calendaring and booking of conference rooms. We are using Lync Online for video chat, and soon we will ramp up with Skype for Business. We are also developing plans for how to leverage Yammer more to support our collaboration agenda.
Change is not just about data, processes, and systems—it’s also about people. I take great pleasure in developing teams and individuals, and since I joined Goodyear, we’ve started an IT development program to focus on emerging talent, leadership, and employees with a high level of potential. I wanted to build a great global team top to bottom: a group that works as a team, partners well with the business, and has the respect of the business. I think we’ve done that.
We’ve supported a number of business objectives during my time here, but employees are saying the move to Office 365 is one of the most visible changes for IT and the business. It’s truly a global project—it touched all our office workers, and it’s foundational for the future. 

Behind the Scenes on Goodyear’s Drive to the Cloud (Part 1)

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This article excerpt, by Jim McKinnon, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1D9RbbN
Jim McKinnon joined Goodyear as an IT intern for the company’s England subsidiary and spent the next four decades working his way up to vice president and CIO. McKinnon, who retires this month, isn’t ending his 40-year career on cruise control—instead he’s been in a pedal-to-the-metal drive to change IT at Goodyear.
I grew up a working-class boy.
My father was a tire builder at Goodyear. There was no work after the war in Dundee, Scotland, so he went south to England. He married a local girl, raised a family, and instilled strong values and principles in his children. I started as an intern at Goodyear in the IT department, as an analyst/programmer. It was a great job. It’s still a great job. I’m really proud that I’ve gone from IT intern to chief information officer of the company.
I like driving change. That’s where my passion is.
I’ve been driving change my whole career—especially the last five years. Within our global IT organization, we’ve improved communications and project management and deployed new tools to support the business. Technology is fast, and you need to stay current.
When I started as CIO five years ago, we needed more tools for mobility, productivity, and collaboration. Our legacy tools—Lotus Notes, WebEx, and Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007—no longer met our needs. We were frustrated with the old capital model where you purchase a toolset, then upgrade and make another big purchase two or three years later. Office 365 gave us the ability to track our licenses along the way—it’s more transparent and much easier to control.
We have approximately 67,000 employees globally, and we manufacture in 50 facilities spanning 22 countries. Across this geography, we have about 30,000 Office 365 users, and more than 13,000 are using Office 365 ProPlus. It’s a very diverse workforce representing many languages and cultures. Our Office 365 users are located at manufacturing facilities, offices, warehouses, and retail stores; they may be mobile or working from home.
Integration, communication and collaboration were some of the big reasons we made the move to Office 365. Microsoft cybersecurity capabilities gave our team peace of mind about the decision to shift to the cloud.
Watch for Part 2 next week

GE Chooses Microsoft Office 365 for Employee Collaboration and Productivity

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Microsoft Corp. and General Electric (NYSE: GE) have signedan agreement to deliver Microsoft’s cloud productivity suite, Office 365, toGE’s more than 300,000 employees across 170 countries worldwide.

“As we deepen our investments in employee productivity,Microsoft’s innovative approach to collaboration made Office 365 our firstchoice for providing scalable productivity tools to our employees worldwide,”said Jamie Miller, senior vice president and CIO of GE.

GE’s IT organization, which is recognized as one of the moststrategic and forward-thinking among large enterprises worldwide, selectedOffice 365 based on Microsoft’s ability to deliver rich productivityexperiences at massive scale across devices and platforms, as well as itsability to rapidly and reliably deploy to GE’s large global employeepopulation. Specifically, Office 365 will provide several key benefits to GEand its employees, including these:

• A comprehensive and integrated set of productivitycapabilities including email, Skype for Business calling and meetings,real-time document co-authoring, and team collaboration

• Extensibility of the Office 365 platform, which willenable GE to enhance the capabilities of critical line-of-business applicationsby connecting to Office 365 through open APIs

• IT controls and security capabilities that enable GE toprovide employees with secured access to information and full productivitycapabilities on a multitude of devices, while adhering to corporate policies,industry regulations and legal requirements

“Microsoft and GE share many values in common—openness,transparency, data-driven intelligence and innovation—all of which are drivingforces behind Microsoft’s own mission to help people and organizations achievemore,” said John Case, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office. “As one ofthe most innovative companies in the world, GE understands what it takes tounleash the potential of its employees. We’re delighted GE has selected Office365 as the productivity and collaboration solution to empower its globalworkforce.”

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”/@microsoft) is the leading platformand productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and itsmission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet toachieve more.

5 new Azure features you need to hear about

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This article excerpt, by Infoworld Tech Watch author Serdar Yegulalp, originally appeared here: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2996538/cloud-computing/5-new-azure-features-you-need-to-hear-about.html

Every public cloud offering is in constant mutation — adding features, revising old ones, revamping pricing, striving to stay ahead of the competition and to give existing customers incentive to stick around.

Microsoft’s Azure improvements are often incremental changes aimed at a specific subset of users. But over the past month, several new features — and expansions on existing ones — have bubbled up, all of interest to a wide variety of Azure users. Here are five of the most significant additions.

1. Azure’s close integration with the Akamai CDN

The idea is simple: Come early 2016, Azure users will be able to programmatically deploy content into the Akamai CDN and buy Akamai offerings through their Azure self-service portal.

Microsoft has its own CDN and has long enjoyed a close relationship with Akamai, but this takes the partnership to the next level. Apart from allowing Azure-deployed content to reach a broader audience (Latin America and Asia, in particular), it also means Microsoft can pit itself directly against Amazon CloudFront.

Pricing wasn’t announced for the Akamai deal, although CloudFront is automatically quite competitive — its free tier allows up to 50GB out per month, albeit only for one year for a new account. Let’s see if Microsoft can hatch something at least as appealing.

2. Azure’s PowerShell is almost ready for prime time

Build a better command line, and the world will beat a path to your door. Microsoft made a bid in that direction with PowerShell, the power and utility of which speaks for itself.

Integrating PowerShell with Azure has been in the works a long time, but earlier this month, a major milestone arrived: the preview release of Azure PowerShell 1.0. With it, the user can manage Azure resources and services from the command line instead of through a GUI — which most any veteran sys admin appreciates.

Be warned: It’s such a major change that the featured Azure Resource Management cmd lets break backward compatibility with previous versions.

3. Azure App Service supports Go, albeit experimentally

If you’re a fan of Google’s Go and want to use it on Azure, desire no more: Support for Go with Web apps was added to Azure earlier this month — even in the free trial. Azure will take care of configuring the  file if needed for the app, but you can supply your own if your deployment requires custom settings.

Right now, only Go 1.4.2 and Go 1.5.1 are supported in their 64-bit incarnations, and the whole package is considered experimental; deploy a production application at your own risk. For now, anyway — you have every reason to believe Go support on Azure will graduate to full support status before long.

4. Azure Backup backs up a lot more than VMs

Originally, Azure Backup was designed to back up Hyper-V VMs and their associated data volumes. Anything beyond that was the province of Microsoft Data Protection Manager. But of late, Azure Backup has grown to provide backup support for other Microsoft products as well. Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange, and Windows Clients are all protected.

Note that the cost of backups is two-fold: one charge for the size of the instance itself ($5 and up depending on the size of the instance), and charges for storage consumed by the backup. But the range of products covered by Azure Backup is likely to continue expanding.

5. Azure File Storage gives you SMB in the cloud

Sometimes you need to wait the longest for the simplest, most basic features because, counterintuitively, they’re hard to get right. Azure finally offered Azure File Storage, to perform conventional Windows file shares (via the SMB 3.0 protocol) in the cloud, at the end of September.

The idea is to support existing applications as they’re moved to the cloud, some of which might depend on SMB share mounts. An Azure File Storage share can be mounted anywhere, allowing on-prem and cloud applications to share storage and data in a familiar manner.

Note: Any clients that connect to an Azure File Storage share will be limited by their level of SMB support. For Windows 7, that’s SMB 2.1, which lacks support for encryption; SMB 3.0 is supported in only Windows 8 and up, as well as Windows Server 2012 and up. However, most recent Linux distributions support SMB 3.0 natively.