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February 2014 Vol. 12 Iss. 02 | pctoday.com

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Crucial Mobile Strategy
Advice For Organizations
Large & Small
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 IN THIS ISSUE

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 IN BRIEF
TECHNOLOGY NEWS

SMALL BUSINESSES EXECUTIVES WEIGH IN ON BIG DATA

OPTIMISTIC ABOUT 2014, ➤ According to a survey of executives conducted by uSamp, most execs
feel that big data will reach its potential in the future (35% say by the end
ESPECIALLY TECH of 2014, 44% in the next five years, and 6% in the next 10 years) while few
➤ According to the December (12%) think big data has already peaked. So why haven’t some companies
2013 “Semi-Annual Small Business jumped on the big data bandwagon? This chart shows why the surveyed ex-
Survey” from Rocket Lawyer, small ecutives think companies have yet to adopt big data solutions.
business owners in the U.S. entered
the New Year on an upbeat note. Need more education on how
Of those surveyed for the report, 62% big data solves business problems
80% stated they believe 2014 will Need big data solutions to better
be better than last year. Significant 53%
address the needs of business users
worry about the economy remains, Need simplified solutions for big
49%
according to the report, with 50% data with fewer moving parts
reporting that their outlook is tem-
47% Need better time to value for big data
pered by economic concerns and
30% saying they are concerned
40% Need prices for big data solutions to come down
about the economy in general.
However, business owners antici-
1% They aren’t holding out on using big data
pate strong opportunities for certain
industries, particularly technology 1% Other
(No. 1 at 36%) and health care (No.
2 at 27%). 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

CHIPMAKERS HAVE A BYOD MOMENTUM MAY MIXED CIO REACTION TO

GOOD 2013
➤ Semiconductor and electronics
OEMs have done a better job man-
aging their inventory levels, and
that work paid off in strong rev-
enues last year. Research from IHS
shows that Q3 2013 revenue among
OEMs reached $493 billion, up 7%
from the second quarter; fourth-
quarter revenue is expected to top
$540 billion, or 10% quarter-over-
quarter growth. After correcting for
an unexpected drop in demand in
the second half of 2012, invento-
ries have been lean throughout the
channel in 2013, says Sharon Stiefel,
IHS senior analyst, semiconductor
market intelligence.
BE SLOWING
➤ Although the BYOD (bring your
own device) trend may be slowing, it
continued apace in 2013. According to
Strategy Analytics, the number of new
smartphones corporations purchased
for employee use grew throughout
2013. In Q3, for example, more than
35% of smartphones sold for business
purposes were corporate-liable; that’s
up from 32% in the year-ago quarter
and 31% in Q1 2013. North American
companies have been among the
quickest to accept BYOD, but Q3 2013
sales of corporate-liable smartphones
were up 13% from the year-ago
quarter after flat to declining volume
for much of 2012.
THE POWER OF MOBILITY
➤ According to a recent independent
survey of 300 IT decision makers in the
U.S. and U.K., 78% of CIOs reported
that their businesses have a mobility
strategy, but a majority of respon-
dents see problems with mobility. For
example, 72% find it too costly to in-
tegrate mobile solutions with existing
applications, 86% think their businesses
haven’t optimally used mobility to
expand business, and 66% think mo-
bility solutions are simply too complex.
According to study sponsor Mobile
Helix, companies are now finding the
most benefits in mobility from secure
offline/remote access, device storage,
and push updates.

4 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com


STUDY LOOKS AT IMPACT
OF HEALTH IT
➤ There has been much talk about how
using health IT—electronic health re-
cords, clinical decision support, order
entry, and Web portals—can benefit
providers and patients alike. A new
study by Health Affairs indicates how
big that impact could be. For example,
if just 30% of community-based physi-
cian offices fully implemented health IT,
there would be a 4% to 9% reduction in
the demand for physicians; this could
be further reduced 4% to 7% by del-
egating care to nurse practitioners and
physician assistants. One of the biggest
gains could be in solving regional physi-
cian shortages as the implementation of
health IT could enable up to 12% of care
to be delivered remotely or asynchro-
nously. Health Affairs expects that 30%
of physicians’ offices will fully imple-
ment health IT in the next five years.
TOUCHSCREENS IN
LAPTOPS HERE TO STAY
➤ Although less than 11% of note-
book computers manufactured
worldwide in 2013 featured touch-
screen displays, recent research
from NPD DisplaySearch indicates
that the percentage is increasing.
Furthermore, the research firm
projects a steady upward trajec-
tory over the next four years. NPD
DisplaySearch expects that roughly
18% of the laptops manufactured
in 2014 will include touchscreens,
25% in 2015, 35% in 2016, and 40%
in 2017. That’s 64.2 million touch-
screen laptops expected to ship in
2017 compared with 19.8 million
units in 2013.
IN BRIEF
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
IT SPENDING TO HIT $3.8 TRILLION THIS YEAR
➤ Gartner expects global spending on IT products will increase 3.1% over the
$3.7 trillion total from 2013, reaching $3.8 trillion this year. Enterprise software
represents the strongest growth area, according to Gartner, with help from
business interest in analytics in general and B2B/B2C (business to business,
business to consumer) analytics in particular. And despite declines in the per-
sonal computer and devices markets last year, those markets will return to
growth in 2014. Other prominent growth areas include CRM (customer rela-
tionship management) and SCM (supply chain management). This chart shows
the expected breakdown of IT spending for 2014.
$697 Devices....................................................................................................... 4.3% Growth
$143 Data Center Systems......................................................................................... 2.6% Growth
$320 Enterprise Software.....................................................................................6.8% Growth
$963 IT Services ..........................................................................................4.5% Growth
$1,653 Telecom Services ..............................................................1.2% Growth
$3,777 Overall IT.................. 3.1% Growth
0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000
Spending (in billions of dollars)
SMARTPHONES GARTNER: BYOD IS AN
CONTINUE ASCENT APPLICATIONS STRATEGY
➤ There were 455.6 million mobile ➤ Companies need to take a broader
phones sold around the globe in Q3 approach to BYOD (bring your own
2013, amounting to a 5.7% increase device), looking at applications and
over the year-ago quarter, according strategies designed for today’s world,
to Gartner. Of those 455.6 million mo- according to research firm Gartner.
bile phones, 55% were smartphones, “For CIOs to consider BYOD activi-
indicating a continued acceleration ties within their organization to be a
of smartphone purchases and a cor- temporary problem generated by a
responding decline in standard mo- few disaffected employees would be
bile phone purchases. According to a tragic mistake,” says Darryl Carlton,
NPD DisplaySearch, smartphones will research director at Gartner. Most or-
constitute 80% of the overall mobile ganizations have diverse workforces,
phone market by 2017. In terms of op- combining full-time and part-time
erating system market share, Gartner staff, contractors, and independent
says Android had 72.6% market share professionals. There is no longer an
in Q3 2013, compared to 14.3% for iOS exclusive user base that can be con-
and 5.2% for BlackBerry. trolled with standards, Carlton adds.
PC Today / February 2014 5
 IN BRIEF
TECHNOLOGY NEWS

TABLET SHIPMENTS EXPECTED TO SLOW BY 2017

➤ Research firm IDC has slightly lowered its worldwide tablet shipment forecast due in part to the increasing size
of some smartphone models and the decreasing size of some tablet models. “In some markets consumers are already
making the choice to buy a large smartphone rather than buying a small tablet,” says Tom Mainelli, research director for
IDC, “and as a result we’ve lowered our long-term forecast.” IDC expects tablet shipments to grow 22.2% in 2014 com-
pared to 53.5% in 2013, the year tablets truly began captivating consumers and business users alike. Mainelli adds that the
trend toward bigger phones is less pronounced in the U.S., where, he says, “we’re less concerned about big phones canni-
balizing shipments and more worried about market saturation.” Among other trends to watch, IDC expects Windows to
take more market share in the coming years, as these charts illustrate.
Android iOS Windows Other
0.9% 1.4% 0.8% 0.4%
3.4%
10.2%

35%
45.6% 30.6%
52%
60.8% 58.8%

2012 MARKET SHARE 2013 MARKET SHARE 2017 MARKET SHARE

WINDOWS CHANGING OF DEVICES TO BOLSTER CLOUD CONTINUES TO

THE GUARD
➤ The latest Windows operating
system statistics from analytics
firm Net Applications show that
Windows XP usage, which had
begun to decline in 2013 and then
stabilized temporarily, has again
begun to decline; as of December,
the OS was used on 29% of desktop
and notebook computers world-
wide. Windows 8, on the other hand,
which got off to a sluggish start
and caused worries for Microsoft
through much of 2013, rallied at
year’s end; Windows 8 and 8.1 com-
bined were present on 34% of com-
puters in December, up from 28%
in November.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
➤ Think of the Internet and all of
the devices connected to it, and then
imagine that countless sensors—
in machines, factories, appliances,
wearable devices, and elsewhere—
were also connected. That is the IoT
(Internet of Things), which Gartner
expects will grow from including 1
billion to more than 25 billion de-
vices by 2020. According to Gartner,
mobile devices will grow along with
IoT and will account for more than
25% of the “things” connected to it.
Vertical markets contributing most
to IoT are manufacturing (15%),
health care (15%), and insurance
(11%), says Gartner.
IMPACT SERVER MARKET
➤ Cloud service providers may be
keeping server manufacturers happy
with continued purchases, but the
many businesses that are in the pro-
cess of shifting from on-premises to
cloud computing are contributing to
an overall decline in the worldwide
server market. That shift to cloud com-
puting, coupled with decreased de-
mand for Unix servers in particular,
have resulted in a 3.7% drop in 2013
Q3 global server sales compared to the
year-ago quarter, according to figures
IDC released in December. The decline
was part of a three-quarter streak, but
IDC expects a “refresh” in early 2014
will lift server revenues somewhat.

6 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com

 IN BRIEF
TECHNOLOGY NEWS

STARTUPS

SOCIAL MEDIA, BUILT WEBSITE SEARCH STARTUP SWIFTYPE

FOR THE ENTERPRISE
➤ According to the Pew Internet &
American Life Project, 73% of online
adults use a social media service, and
42% use multiple services. Percentages
that are this high and rising have
begun tantalizing even the most anti-
social of big businesses and are luring
an increasing number of enterprises to
promote their brands in the expanding
social universe. Based in Austin, Texas,
Spredfast is among the fastest growing
companies to enter this market; its plat-
form helps businesses engage with its
customers and understand their behav-
iors and desires. Spredfast recently se-
cured $32.5 million in growth capital,
which the company says it will use for
“talent acquisition, product develop-
ment and global expansion, and [to]
solidify its position” as a market leader.
IS A COMPANY WORTH WATCHING
➤ While major Internet search players leave virtually no space for would-be
upstart competitors, there appears to be room for improvement in the web-
site search business. Despite steady advances in website design, providing
decent site search functionality remains a prominent sticking point for com-
panies of all sizes. This is the problem San Francisco-based startup Swiftype
strives to address. By targeting the business need for better site search and
providing a
solution that
is easy to use
(little tech ex-
perience re-
quired) and
over-delivers
on features (mobile site search, search term customization, and real-time
analytics), Swiftype does seem poised to dominate the site search market.
Founded in 2012, the company raised $1.7 million in seed funding in
August 2013 and $7.5 million in Series A funding just one month later. Now
the company is focused on recognition and growth. To accomplish this,
Swiftype is promoting a message that is welcome to many businesses: you
can easily gain full control over your own website’s search results.

MOBILE PAYMENT SCHEDULING STARTUP STARTUP PURSUES

STARTUP RAISES $10M
➤ While contactless mobile payment
systems for smartphones expand in
reach at a snail’s pace, consumers
interested in making mobile phone-
based payments are left with few op-
tions and still can’t entirely shed their
plastic cards. LoopPay seeks to ad-
dress this market gap with its Loop
system, which enables users to load all
of their credit, debit, and loyalty card
information on to their smartphones
and use the Loop Fob to make pay-
ments at POS (point of sale) locations;
retailers don’t have to change their
systems for this to work. LoopPay re-
cently received $10 million in angel
round funding to expand.
GETS A NEW OWNER
➤ Who wants to talk about sched-
uling? Anyone? For organizations
of any size, scheduling is something
that must be done but can be mind-
numbingly difficult to accomplish to
everyone’s satisfaction. This is where
Doodle comes in, a service offered
by the Swiss company of the same
name; it provides a simple but effec-
tive Web-based interface for business,
group, and individual scheduling.
The startup recently announced it
will be acquired this year but was
tight-lipped about the terms of the
deal. Doodle claims to be growing its
customer base to the tune of 15 mil-
lion new users per month.
3D REAL ESTATE VISION
➤ Three-dimensional views and vir-
tual tours are big draws for real es-
tate shoppers. New York City-based
startup Floored, which specializes
in 3D floor plan modeling, seeks to
capitalize on real estate agents’ thirst
for visualization tools that will wow
potential buyers. Care for a realistic
walk-through of a home, complete
with your furniture? Floored of-
fers just this type of 3D interactive
experience. Floored also serves the
architecture, furniture, and interior
design industries. The company now
has $5.26 million in Series A funding
to add to its coffer as it pursues the
commercial real estate market.

8 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com

 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS

Total Mobility
Advice For Organizations Large & Small

Whether the organization is a
10-person shop or a multi-national
corporation with thousands of em-
ployees, implementing a strong mo-
bile strategy has become a major
factor in driving future success.
Whereas desktop and laptop com-
puters used to be the primary tools
for workers, smartphones and tablets
are now blurring the performance
lines and proving they can handle
almost any task you throw at them.
While this is a great thing for em-
ployees who either prefer a mobile
office approach to business or want
to use their personal devices for work
purposes, mobility in general intro-
duces new challenges for SMBs (small
and midsize businesses) and larger
enterprises alike. And to fully support
this mobile evolution, you need to
determine what devices you want to
support (whether company-issued or
consumer-owned), how you plan to
manage those devices and control ap-
plication usage, and what you need to
do to properly secure the devices and
data that flows through them.
DEVICES
The first step in choosing what de-
vices to offer employees, or which
types of devices to allow in a BYOD
(bring your own device) scenario, is
to “take a look at your workforce and
try to understand what the jobs are,
what the requirements are for that
job from a technology perspective,
and where mobile fits into that,”
says Christian Kane, an analyst with
Forrester Research (www.forrester.com).
Kane stresses that having a mobile
device “isn’t going to have the same
value for every employee” and that,
for instance, “the needs of someone
on an oil rig will be different from
those of a salesperson or home health-
care worker.” Start by determining

Successful business mo- Implement an MDM Data protection is In terms of application

bility planning involves
striking the right balance
between company-issued
and employee-owned
Key devices, and ensuring
Points they are secure.
(mobile device manage- paramount. Make sure control, small and midsize
ment) or EMM (enter- employees only use businesses can rely more on
prise mobility manage- supported file sync and policy, but larger enterprises
ment) solution to provide file sharing solutions may want to consider build-
an adequate level of and support natively ing a private app store for
company control. securable devices. increased control.

10 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com

 ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
which employees in your company
will benefit most from having a mo-
bile device and then go from there.
David Willis, chief of research, mo-
bility and communications, and se-
nior research board leader at Gartner
(www.gartner.com), adds that while
companies used to only have to worry
about the functionality of devices for
the business, now, “with the rise of
BYOD, employees have an expecta-
tion that they will have some choice in
the device they’d like to use.” The con-
sumer market is built on variety and
giving users options, so now “compa-
nies have to offer a wider range of op-
tions to employees,” whether it’s part
of a BYOD or company-issued ap-
proach, Willis says. He recommends
focusing on flexibility so that a mobile
device is “able to work with a number
of different third-party cloud services”
and to make sure the device is secur-
able “with native capabilities built into
the OS or with containers . . . layered
on top of it with software.”
When it comes to device specs, it’s
more important to make sure the device
will support your chosen applications
IS THAT DEVICE
SECURED?
According to Juniper Research,
80% of enterprise and consumer
smartphones are currently not
protected by security software.
Number of mobile devices with
security software installed, ac-
cording to Juniper:
1.3 billion
325 million
2013 2018
and software than it is to ensure the de-
vice has the newest bells and whistles.
Mike Battista, Ph.D., senior consulting
analyst at Info-Tech Research Group
(www.infotech.com), says the “most im-
portant features center around produc-
tivity, security, and manageability. Can
the applications enhance users’ ability
to do their jobs run on the device? That’s
where it comes down to the size of the
“Start with a few popular devices eligible for BYOD.
Limit support to connecting enterprise apps
to enterprise resources.”
app store associated with the platform.”
Fortunately, as Battista points out, it
may not be as big of a headache to give
your employees options. In fact, he says,
“supporting any or all of the top 10 or
20 devices from the last few years will
cover 95% of what users want and 95%
of what IT needs.”
BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE
While many companies still struggle
with the question of whether or not to
allow employees to bring their own
devices into the workplace for business
use, the fact of the matter is that the
decision should primarily come down
to how heavily regulated your orga-
nization is and whether or not your
geographic region will let you have
enough control over the devices. For
instance, Kane says, companies in the
financial industry that have credit card
payment information on file may not
be able to properly institute a BYOD
policy because they can’t risk a data
leak. And, he adds, some countries in
the European Union “have very strong
workers’ protection rights, so you can’t
do things like location tracking, which
would change some of the policies
you have in place and how effectively
you’re able to monitor and maintain
those policies.”
The amount of control you require
may also depend on the size of your
company. Larger companies, Kane
says, “probably have some leverage
as they’re transitioning into a BYOD
model because they already know
they’re going to pay for this person’s
phone, but not [that] person’s phone”
based on previous reimbursement
policies. But he also adds that SMBs
“are usually a bit more flexible in
their policy and are a bit less stringent
than in larger organizations.” For that
reason, smaller companies may not
have to worry as much about in-depth
management tools and can instead
focus on employee education programs
more than potentially limiting tech-
nology. Still, larger companies do have
to worry about this issue and will have
to come up with a strategy for what
types of devices to allow.
“One of the top risks with BYOD is
that support cost and complexity get
out of control,” says Battista. “More
variety means more support, so or-
ganizations with limited resources
can either reduce variety or reduce
support. I usually recommend mod-
eration in both variety and support.
Start with a few popular devices eli-
gible for BYOD. Limit support to con-
necting enterprise apps to enterprise
resources. If that works out, expand
the BYOD program to more devices.”
DEVICE MANAGEMENT
Company-issued devices are rela-
tively easy to manage because you can
have as much or as little control over
them as you need. You decide what
applications go on those devices and
you configure them to be used specifi-
cally for business purposes. BYOD, on
the other hand, is throwing a wrench
into the management approach of many
organizations. By taking on the develop-
ment and implementation of a BYOD
policy, organizations have to deal with
PC Today / February 2014 11
 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
a wide variety of devices and keep in
mind that employees also configure
those devices for personal use away
from the office.
This is where MDM (mobile device
management) comes into play. MDM
solutions give you “some policy con-
trols on the device, like security mea-
sures, whitelisting and blacklisting
applications, and that sort of thing,”
says Willis. However, he adds, many
vendors are moving away from sim-
pler MDM setups to focus on adding
more EMM (enterprise mobility man-
agement) capabilities, such as con-
tainerization. Containers essentially
let you provision a mobile device so
that the business and personal aspects
are separated. This is a great way for
companies to implement security and
management policies on certain appli-
cations and data sets while leaving the
rest of the device free for personal use.
Kane agrees that MDM solutions, or
more feature-rich EMM alternatives,
are a great place to start because they
COMPANIES THAT
USE BYOD
According to Gartner’s 2013
CIO survey, the percentage of
companies worldwide with
BYOD (bring your own device)
policies will increase dramatically
in the next two years.
45%
38%
6%
2013 2016 2020
12 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
“. . . take a look at your workforce and try
to understand what the jobs are, what the
requirements are for that job from a tech-
nology perspective, and where mobile fits
into that.”
Christian Kane
analyst, Forrester Research
“. . . with the rise of BYOD, employees
have an expectation that they will have
some choice in the device they’d like
to use.”
David Willis
chief of research, mobility and communications, Gartner
can “give you a security baseline” in to snuff, too,” says Battista. “It doesn’t
addition to management. This can help need to be a full enterprise container
you make sure that regardless of what for everything, though. For simpler
device an employee uses, you can en- needs, it can just be making sure com-
force a “4-digit PIN” or make it so that pany email is secure, then branching
the device can be “locked or wiped out from there.”
if they’re found to be lost or stolen.”
That’s one of the biggest benefits of an SECURITY
MDM solution, but one you need to In addition to basic management ca-
adequately explain to your employees, pabilities, companies also need to focus
especially if you support BYOD. If you on security. MDM is still a good start
do, it’s important to ensure that every because it can give you those remote
employee understand that the com- wipe capabilities and let you block or
pany is willing to support his device allow certain applications, but it may
and let him use it for business as long not be enough for every company. For
as he agrees to the remote wipe pos- example, you may have employees
sibility. That way, employees will re- that want to use file sync and share
member to back up their personal data programs where you essentially up-
in case of loss or theft. load documents to the cloud and then
Battista recommends taking a step- have the ability to access them any-
by-step approach to things such as where with almost any device. While
MDM and containerization specifically. this is a great features for the indi-
He says that “companies have some vidual, it opens up major security vul-
obligation to keep their own data safe nerabilities for the company.
without messing too much with using Kane says that because of file syn-
the device for other purposes,” but if chronization and file sharing solutions,
you can meet your separation goal, “data protection is definitely a big
you can then move on to other aspects piece.” He says that a lot of companies
of device management. “Keeping that are thinking about providing an enter-
company data safe necessarily involves prise version of a file sync and share
getting security, app management, de- option so employees can still get the
vice management, and policies all up benefits of that but the organization can

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
manage and monitor the files and have
a little more control in that department.”
This is an example of a company
understanding the needs of an em-
ployee, determining that a certain
service simply isn’t secure enough,
and then making strides to offer
something similar to improve em-
ployee effectiveness and produc-
tivity. “Many companies have come
to this place where pretty much all of
the applications they want to deliver
need to not only be aware and take
into account security needs of the
company, but also have a great expe-
rience so that employees are willing
and want to use them and are not
willing to circumvent IT to get some-
thing from the app store that they
like better,” says Kane.
Battista adds that email applica-
tions should also be an important
focus and that integration with the
company’s email and sync solutions
“is critical.” The company should be
able to enforce encryption policies for
emails and have control over what
data is synced, downloaded, or up-
loaded to and from a device. Once
again, an MDM solution will provide
most of these features, but it’s up to
the organization to properly imple-
ment them and explain to users why
they are so important.
For Willis, the most important
thing to recognize when it comes to
security is that “not all devices are
equal.” Some devices “are more
easily and natively securable, and
others have such a bad security
profile that you wouldn’t want to
allow for any applications to run on
them,” he says. If for some reason
your employees need to use devices
that aren’t easily securable, Willis
says, then you may want to opt for
a “virtual desktop type model where
nothing at all is on the device itself,”
“For smaller companies, the app store verification process may be enough for security
purposes, especially if employees only use basic applications . . .”
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
“Start with a few popular devices eligible
for BYOD. Limit support to connecting
enterprise apps to enterprise resources. If
that works out, expand the BYOD
program to more devices.”
Mike Battista
Ph.D., senior consulting analyst, Info-Tech Research Group
but you have “strong authentication.” applications they want to be able to
However, he says this should be a use and then determine whether or not
last resort because “it’s very rare” those fit into your business strategy. If
that a virtual desktop experience is you’re open with your employees and
actually good. Instead, you should let them use applications, as long as
focus on supporting devices that are they’re safe, then you shouldn’t have
more securable, so “you can have a to worry about implementing a private
lot of policy controls for native ap- app store or something similar.
plications” from the start, Willis says, Larger organizations that have to
and then take other third-party apps manage hundreds or thousands of de-
on a case by case basis. vices, all with unique operating sys-
tems and applications, may not be able
APPLICATION USAGE to fully trust app stores. Such organi-
Another major part of manage- zations could opt instead for building
ment and security is determining a private app store where they can cu-
what types of applications should rate applications and only offer secure
be allowed on the device. Willis says software for their employees to install.
that companies “certainly would Private app stores are also great for
want application policy controls on enterprises that frequently build their
the device,” especially if they are own apps and need a delivery model
using more open operating systems for their employees. You can also con-
that are traditionally more vulnerable figure your company app store so that
to security breaches. Some app stores you can deliver updates to devices au-
have in-depth classification and vali- tomatically.
dation processes that ensure applica-
tions are safe to use and don’t contain STRIKE A BALANCE
viruses or other malicious software In the end, the key to proper ap-
hidden underneath the surface. plication control is balance. You have
For smaller companies, the app to make sure that your employees
store verification process may be have access to the apps they need to
enough for security purposes, es- properly perform their job. If an ap-
pecially if employees only use basic plication is safe to use, increases pro-
applications, like email, calendars, ductivity, and fits into your business
contacts, etc. You can always listen plan, then it is worthy of your organi-
to your employees to find out which zation’s support efforts. ●
PC Today / February 2014 13
 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS

Redefining The Landscape

VMware Is Reshaping Data Center Infrastructure Through Virtualization

Few, if any, technologies in recent
years have had a more positive in-
fluence on data centers (and argu-
ably on enterprises as a whole) than
virtualization. The technology is
redefining how enterprises operate
and set themselves apart from the
competition, in part by revamping
the very data center infrastructure
(servers, networks, storage, etc.) upon
which companies build their busi-
nesses. Virtualization also makes it
possible for businesses to acquire re-
sources and launch new initiatives
more quickly, with greater ease, and
more efficiently than ever.
VMware (www.vmware.com) didn’t
invent virtualization (as the Palo Alto,
Calif.,-based company even points out
on its website), and it isn’t the only
provider of virtualization solutions.
What VMware has done, however,
through numerous advancements,
partnerships, acquisitions, and other
accomplishments since its founding in
1998, is to make the name “VMware”
practically synonymous with “virtual-
ization” in the minds of many people.
Despite this fact, VMware (and
virtualization) is far from reaching
its apex. In coming years, the com-
pany and its virtualization-based
technologies promise to only play
a greater role in helping companies
add more flexibility, efficiency, and
proficiency to their business opera-
tions, including where data usage,
cloud computing, applications, au-
tomation, and other possibilities are
concerned.
COMPANY ORIGINS
VMware may not have originated
virtualization but it was the first
company to deliver the technology
for x86 platforms in 1999; it did so
with VMware Workstation, a product
that essentially enabled users to run

Since the company’s
founding in 1998, the
Palo Alto, Calif.,-based
company VMware has
grown into the market
Key leader in the server virtu-
Points alization arena.
A current VMware VMware has more VMware’s flagship product is
focus area is the SDDC than 2,200 partners it VMware vSphere, a platform
(software-defined data works with to certify for constructing cloud infra-
center), which enables their products to run structures. Other solutions
a completely automated with VMware vSphere, target cloud management,
infrastructure for appli- which is certified on storage, and desktop virtual-
cations and hardware. 1,500 server models. ization.

14 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com


EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
multiple operating systems on one
PC. In addition to producing prod-
ucts aimed at personal desktops,
VMware’s current array of products
covers data center virtualization, data
center and cloud management, IaaS
(infrastructure as a service), desktop
virtualization, mobile computing,
and cloud-based data management,
among other categories.
Through its virtualization technol-
ogies and products, VMware’s reach
over the years has spread to include
legions of companies spanning a di-
verse array of industries. In fact, the
company claims that 100% of Fortune
100 companies and 98% of Fortune
500 companies use VMware technol-
ogies. Overall, says VMware, more
than 500,000 customers use its prod-
ucts and solutions in some capacity.
Mike Adams, VMware director of
product marketing, says virtualiza-
tion provides these customers with a
“tried and true formula.”
“Virtualization became main-
stream between 2011 and 2012 when
it crossed the 50% penetration mark
across our customers’ environments,”
Adams says. Typically, companies’
initial virtualization efforts involve
consolidating and virtualization
servers. Adams says that as cus-
tomers continue to expand beyond
their core virtualization initiatives
and move into cloud computing
implementations, virtualization en-
ables achieving “large savings” in
terms of CAPEX and OPEX. Further,
in addition to the true costs savings
virtualization makes possible, the
technology helps deliver a competi-
tive advantage, Adams says.
HOW VIRTUALIZATION HELPS
VMware describes virtualization
as something that helps IT confront
its most difficult challenge: “the in-
frastructure sprawl that compels IT
departments to channel 70% of their
budget into maintenance” and thus
leaves few resources to focus on
developing business innovations.
Specifically, virtualization enables
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
an x86-based computer to run more
than one OS and one application
simultaneously. So, rather than
having to dedicate one server to
just one application—an inefficient
approach that underutilizes much
of the server’s overall capacity—
virtualization allows for essentially
doing more with less. The benefits,
according to VMware, include up to
80% greater utilization per server,
which reduces CAPEX and OPEX
expenses by half with yearly sav-
ings of $1,500 or more per virtual-
ized server, and acquiring robust
and affordable availability.
While VMware is generally consid-
ered to have pioneered server virtual-
ization, the company products have
expanded in scope through the years.
Presently, Adams says VMware’s
core business model revolves around
three key areas. These include SDDC
(software-defined data center), hy-
brid cloud computing, and end-user
computing. Each of these areas con-
tains various solutions and/or ser-
vices that are focused on helping
companies meet and solve key busi-
ness challenges.
SDDC in particular is an area that
has been generating significant buzz
of late due to the considerable poten-
tial it promises. VMware describes
SDDC as architecture that “enables a
fully automated, zero-downtime in-
frastructure for any application, and
any hardware, now and in the fu-
ture.” In terms of addressing business
challenges, Adams says an SDDC
provides efficiency, control, agility,
and choice to customers by “virtu-
alizing all infrastructure,” which is
delivered as a service and enables
automated control of the data center
via software.
SDDC differs in numerous ways
from the hardware-based ap-
proach enterprises have tradition-
ally taken. Where delivering “the
true promise of the cloud” is con-
cerned, for example, Adams says
the traditional hardware-based ap-
proach alone isn’t sufficient. “We
regularly see customers that look
at the hardware approach solely
A current strong area of
focus for VMware is the
SDDC (software-defined
data center), an approach
that seeks to virtualize the
entire data center.
running into two key issues and
challenges,” he says. The first is in-
efficiency, including in terms of
CAPEX and OPEX costs that are too
high, the existence of too much com-
plexity and too many silos, and the
presence of operational inefficiencies.
The second issue and challenge
is downtime. Here, traditional
hardware-based infrastructure can
produce challenges in meeting SLA
(software license agreement) terms,
identifying and resolving problems
in a timely fashion, and addressing
security and compliance issues,
Adams says. “Our software-defined
data center strategy breaks free of
these issues by focusing on four main
PC Today / February 2014 15

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
components: compute virtualization,
network and security virtualization,
software-defined storage and avail-
ability, and management and auto-
mation,” he says.
Via these components, an SDDC
can extend virtualization efficiencies
from compute to all domains of the
data center and enable automating op-
erations; deliver control via abilities
that provide the right availability and
security for every application or service
with policy-based governance; become
agile through abilities that automate
application provisioning and enable
self-service on diverse platforms; and
provide IT choice by offering the ability
to run new and existing application
across multiple platforms and clouds.
“These capabilities are the ingredi-
ents that deliver the transformational
benefits of the software-defined data
center,” Adams says.
Adams says businesses can de-
rive benefits from VMware’s SDDC
products and technologies in four pri-
mary ways. First, by bringing together
virtualized compute, storage, net-
working, and security with analytics-
based operations management, SDDC
offers efficiency. Second, SDDC “de-
livers control by enabling the highest
levels of application uptime through
automated business continuity along
with virtualization-aware security
and compliance,” Adams says. This
helps reduce the downtime of Tier 1
applications and enables a cloud in-
frastructure that runs on IT’s terms in
the sense IT can define availability and
security for each application.
Third, SDDC provides agility by
enabling on-demand, policy-driven
deployment of IT services. This helps
increase IT productivity, which leads to
“production of apps and services at the
speed of business”; increased customer
satisfaction; and less risk of “shadow
IT,” or workers bypassing IT to build
“. . . rather than having to dedicate one server to just one application . . .
virtualization allows for essentially doing more with less.”
16 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
or acquire solutions without official au-
thorization. Fourth, Adams says, SDDC
provides the benefit of choice, which, he
says, “can be instantiated as a private,
hybrid, or public cloud and the freedom
to use multiple hardware or software
stacks, which leads to IT having the
choice to have any app on any platform
or cloud.”
ADAPTING TO THE TIMES
VMware’s flagship product is
VMware vSphere, a platform that en-
ables constructing cloud infrastruc-
tures; it contains vSphere ESXi, the
“virtualization layer that abstracts
server hardware resources” to enable
multiple virtual machines to share
them. VMware has expanded beyond
VMware vSphere, Adams says, to de-
liver solutions designed for cloud man-
agement, storage, availability, desktop
virtualization, and more. “Most product
lines are updated annually in order to
provide innovative capabilities to cus-
tomers on a continual basis,” he says.
Over the years, VMware has continu-
ally worked to enhance and broaden
its product lines by ensuring it stays fo-
cused on how the market and customer
needs evolve, Adams says. “Our recent
acquisitions and the advent of cloud
computing are clear examples of this
attention to detail when it comes to the
market,” he says. “In particular, cloud
computing has changed how we deliver
our products and also how we look at
the overall infrastructure market.”
VMware vCloud Hybrid Service is
the company’s secure IaaS hybrid cloud
offering and is built on a vSphere foun-
dation. The service supports existing
workloads and third-party applications,
as well as new application develop-
ment. Those abilities give IT a common
platform on which to seamlessly extend
their data center to the cloud, Adams
says. “Unlike public cloud services that
provide a commodity platform in a best
efforts model that’s less compatible with
existing applications and less reliable
to operate, VMware provides a trusted,
high performance, and resilient hybrid
cloud platform leveraging the same
tools and processes organizations use
today,” he says. “Organizations can ex-
tend to the cloud with confidence, lever-
aging VMware enterprise support and
a robust ecosystem of trusted partners.”
VMware partners include more than
2,200 server, processor, storage, net-
working, software, peripheral, and con-
sulting companies that VMware works
with so that their products are certified
to run with VMware vSphere. Overall,
VMware states its technology works
with more guest OSes than its competi-
tion. vSphere, meanwhile, is certified
on more than 1,500 server models, and
more than “2,000 software vendors have
explicit support statements for 3,500
applications” that run on vSphere, the
company states.
In terms of mobility and enterprises’
increasing focus and reliance on it,
VMware is making it easy for IT ad-
ministrators to support mobile workers
and BYOD initiatives through innova-
tive, proven technologies included in
VMware Horizon Suite, Adams says.
Focused on workforce mobility, the
platform connects end users to their
desktops, data, and applications via
any device and does so without sacri-
ficing IT security and control, Adams
says. Overall, VMware Horizon Suite
“simplifies operations by turning dis-
parate operating systems, applications,
and data into centralized services de-
livered on any device; helps manage,
secure, and back up end user assets and
applications from one place to protect
against compliance risk with policy-
driven access; and empowers end users
by delivering a consistent, intuitive, and
collaborative computing experience
across all devices anytime, anywhere,”
Adams says. ●

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
VMware
Cloud Infrastructure
vSphere Offers More Than Just A Standard Cloud Environment
Public cloud offerings sometimes
don’t give companies all of the fea-
tures they need, and it can be time-
consuming and expensive to develop
an internal private cloud indepen-
dently. For companies in this situation,
VMware offers something of an all-in-
one cloud infrastructure solution that
provides complete control over how
resource are used, where virtual ma-
chines can and should be stored, and
who has network and storage access
privileges. Instead of leaving it up to
you to put the pieces together, vSphere
equips you with every tool you need to
build a proper cloud environment, pro-
tect it, and maintain it for years to come.
VMWARE VSPHERE
VMware’s vSphere comprises six pil-
lars: computing, networking, storage,
security, availability, and automation;
these are designed to work together to
provide the most reliable virtualized
and cloud environments. On the com-
pute side, vSphere ESXi Hypervisor
provides a virtualized layer to improve
the utilization efficiency of your phys-
ical hardware resources and make them
available to as many virtual machines
as you’re able to support. vSphere also
helps with load balancing, preventing
application downtime with scheduled
server maintenance and virtual machine
migration, and implementing big data
platforms such as Hadoop.
VMware understands that fast and
reliable storage is the backbone of any
cloud environment, which is why
vSphere has a tool specifically purposed
for load-balancing and placing virtual
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
machines on certain systems based on
available resources and storage capacity.
vSphere also supports thin provisioning,
which is another way to ensure your
data and applications utilize physical
resources in the most efficient way pos-
sible. You have complete control over
your storage with easy-to-use migration,
provisioning, and I/O control tools. And
to help alleviate stress on your IT team,
vSphere features automation tools for
patching, updating, and tracking all of
your vSphere hosts.
For networking, vSphere enables your
organization to control what resources
are available to what users based on in-
ternal policies. You can also manage and
monitor the network using a centralized,
distributed switch. To make sure you
always have access to your network, ap-
plications, and storage, VMware built
high availability tools into all of the
vSphere service. This empowers you to
detect application and operating system
failures as soon as they happen, prevent
data loss from system crashes, and repli-
cate data without a third-party solution.
VMware also provides a variety of
security tools built to protect every as-
pect of a cloud environment. vSphere
prevents the installation of unauthor-
ized applications, provides a firewall
that prevents access to vSphere hosts,
and more. The main component of the
vSphere security approach is the vShield
Endpoint, which consolidates and cen-
tralizes endpoint security for virtual ma-
chines, simplifies antivirus monitoring,
and logs all malware activity.
VOLKSWAGEN IMPROVES ITS
MANUFACTURING PROCESS
Automobile factories can’t afford
downtime because they are expected to
produce a massive amount of vehicles
over a set period of time. Volkswagen
India is no different and is capable of
building up to 150,000 vehicles per
year. But with technology changing
so quickly, the company was having
trouble keeping up, so it turned to
VMware and vSphere.
Using vSphere, Volkswagen India
was able to take advantage of the vMo-
tion and High Availability tools to avoid
application downtime during server
maintenance or system failures. The
plant is able to add virtual machines
when necessary to help support demand
without needing to add any extra phys-
ical resources, which has also aided in
consolidation. In fact, Volkswagen India
now has a one-to-eight ratio in terms of
server consolidation and has driven utili-
zation rates from 10% up to 80%. ●
PC Today / February 2014 17

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
VMware
Operations Management
Get A More Holistic View Of Your Physical & Virtual Infrastructure
In addition to using more indi-
vidualized solutions, you should also
consider the big picture of your busi-
ness. You need to implement systems
designed to give you a more holistic
view of your infrastructure and help
automate operations-based tasks as
much as possible. Doing so not only
frees up resources for your IT team
and speeds up operations processes, it
also helps remove human error from
the equation. VMware provides the
management products you need to
monitor and control your infrastruc-
ture and everything attached to it.
IMPROVED VISIBILITY
VMware’s vCenter Operations
Management Suite will help you im-
prove the performance and efficiency
of your physical or virtual infrastruc-
ture. You can keep track every aspect
of your data center as well as your
overall technological footprint by
monitoring not just the physical and
virtual infrastructure assets, but also
your applications, operating systems,
storage, and more. With one central-
ized management platform, you can
monitor and manage key performance
drivers to make sure your hardware
and software solutions are running at
the highest possible level. Plus, you
can implement more automation into
your operations using in-depth anal-
ysis about your workflows to achieve
maximum efficiency.
Speaking of analysis, VMware’s
vCenter Log Insight is a key piece of
the puzzle that helps automate log
management and provides access to
18 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
vital information much more quickly.
vCenter Log Insight enables you to ana-
lyze data from more traditional sources
as well as gain insight into unstructured
data flows and log files. And if you al-
ready have VMware solutions in place
or have built an extensive VMware
virtualized environment, then vCenter
Log Insight will integrate perfectly and
get your log management processes up
and running almost immediately.
As a complement to these solutions,
vCenter Server offers more visibility
into an organization’s vSphere imple-
mentation. Its centralized control con-
sole provides access to an on-premises
solution as well as a Web-based client.
Using this client, you can optimize re-
source utilization, properly allocate
those resources, and much more. And
vCenter Server is flexible and scal-
able, meaning that regardless of the
size of your company and vSphere
implementation, you can monitor and
manage your company’s virtual ma-
chines with ease.
VMware’s vCloud Director helps
you take control of your software-de-
fined services and provision them as
virtual data centers so you can main-
tain your virtualized assets and im-
prove the efficiency of your resource
allocation. Each virtual data center can
only be accessed by users with proper
administrative rights. It’s a great way
to further provision your virtual ma-
chines and helps you break larger
implementations down into more
manageable portions.
VCLOUD DIRECTOR PILOT
The National Democratic Institute
uses multiple VMware solutions, in-
cluding vSphere, ESX, and vShield, but
it recently implemented a pilot project
for vCloud Director. Because the NDI
works with groups in 70 countries and
needs to be able to monitor elections,
track legislation, and perform other
tasks, it was readily apparent that the
organization needed a strong cloud-
based backbone.
Using vCloud Director and other
VMware solutions, the NDI will be
able to offer applications and services
to clients across the world through the
cloud, but they will also give users the
option of downloading clients from the
cloud and running them locally. The
NDI is also using vCloud Director’s vir-
tual data center approach to essentially
silo off separate applications, give them
access to their own resources as needed,
and improve overall performance for
all of its clients. ●

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
VMware
Desktop Virtualization
The Control Companies Require & The Flexibility Employees Demand
Employees today demand a lot
from their technology and want the
freedom to work from home or on
the road just as efficiently as they
do at the office. However, this can
cause some problems for compa-
nies that require more control over
their resources and aren’t comfort-
able with sensitive digital assets
being stored in multiple locations.
VMware has a solution for these is-
sues that offers employees the flex-
ibility they want while providing
companies with the control they re-
quire.
The VMware Horizon Suite con-
sists of the Horizon View, Mirage,
and Workspace solutions. These are
all designed to enable companies to
provide a secure and reliable VDI
(virtual desktop infrastructure) for
their employees.
SEAMLESS VIRTUAL
WORKSPACE FOR EMPLOYEES
Horizon View is the backbone
of the Horizon Suite and defines
the user experience for employees.
Companies can centralize manage-
ment over their applications and
data and control how much access
is given to employees. On the em-
ployee side, the user experience is
designed to give employees a full vir-
tualized desktop much like the one
they would use in the office. Instead
of taking work computers home or
on the road, they can take almost any
device, connect to the cloud, and ac-
cess their virtual desktop to complete
tasks and meet deadlines.
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
Where Horizon View provides
the virtual desktop itself, Horizon
Mirage helps protect it and make the
migration process as seamless as pos-
sible. You can grab desktop images
or take snapshots of your endpoints
and use those to either partially or
fully recover a desktop or to trouble-
shoot a problem. You can also use
Horizon Mirage to push updates
out from your central location to
branch offices. And Mirage makes
it easier for companies to move
from Windows XP to Windows 7 or
to migrate a user profile from one
Windows 7 machine to another.
Horizon Workspace is another
important part of the Horizon Suite
because it lets you take application
and data from a variety of places
and bring everything together into
a single space for easier access. And
to help companies overcome poten-
tial security and control concerns,
Workspace lets you separate corpo-
rate data from personal data to en-
courage employees to use their own
devices while accessing their virtual
desktops. The company maintains
control over the users, regardless of
what device they’re using, and de-
cides whether or not certain files can
be shared.
The Horizon Suite brings all of
these separate solutions together in
one platform, and adds the VMware
vCenter Operations Manager
for Horizon View. The vCenter
Operations Manager enables compa-
nies to monitor the efficiency, perfor-
mance, and health of their VDI, and to
make sure it is always functioning at
peak efficiency.
USING VDI TO IMPROVE
HEALTH CARE
The Gangnam Severance Hospital
in Seoul, South Korea, is a large health
care organization that is home to 804
treatment rooms that are part of 36
distinct departments, as well as mul-
tiple specialized treatment facilities.
by using VMware’s Horizon View,
GSH was able to get a grip on the
ever-changing privacy laws affecting
health care facilities, and also to de-
liver medical information to devices
in a much more efficient manner.
GSH claims that its VDI performs just
as well on older devices as it does
new ones, which has allowed the fa-
cility to reduce hardware expenses.
Using VMware’s solution saved
valuable disk space for GSH and im-
proved mobile functionality. ●
PC Today / February 2014 19

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
VMware
Software-Defined Storage
Virtualized Resources, Centralized Management, Data Protection & Recovery
Software-defined storage follows
its technological cousin, software-
defined networking, as a way of fur-
ther virtualizing server resources in
order to achieve maximum efficiency
and improve overall storage manage-
ment. Instead of going from server to
server to manage capacity and manu-
ally determine where every applica-
tion or piece of data should be stored,
you get a centralized view of your
entire environment and have access
to every disk as needed. Fortunately,
this technology is as easy to im-
plement as it is to use thanks to
VMware’s many solutions designed
specifically for software-defined
storage purposes.
FOUR-PRONGED APPROACH
VMware’s vSphere Storage Appli-
ance makes it possible to turn you
existing server storage into virtual-
ized data stores without the need of
any additional hardware. Installation
is quick and easy with the included
wizard, your virtualized storage
will be highly available and resilient
with mirroring capabilities, and the
vSphere Storage Appliance supports a
wide range of hardware and applica-
tions, so it’s a fit for most businesses,
including small and midsize busi-
nesses with relatively few resources.
Similar to how software-defined
networking centralizes management,
VMware’s Virtual SAN (storage area
network), which is currently in Beta,
is intuitive and versatile. With Virtual
SAN, your IT team will have full con-
trol over your virtualized storage and
20 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
be able to load balance and provision
as needed; they can also set up certain
automation configurations to monitor
and manage the capacity and perfor-
mance of each individual data store.
Virtual SAN helps prevent downtime
due to hardware failures; instead of
a single drive failure or even multiple
drive failures bringing down the en-
tire system, failed hard drives can be
replaced on the fly without impacting
the rest. Balancing storage utilization
also unlocks secondary benefits, such
as improved cooling and energy ef-
ficiency, which saves money.
To ensure that your virtualized
storage is always available to you,
vSphere Data Protection Advanced
and vCenter Site Recovery Manager
work hand-in-hand to provide re-
liable backups and fast disaster re-
covery. The vCenter Site Recovery
Manager provides administrators
with one-click recovery, so in the
event of a disaster, you can get the
ball rolling as quickly as possible.
Long before a disaster occurs, you can
perform recovery tests to make sure
you’ll hit your recovery time objec-
tives and minimize downtime. And
with the VMware vSphere Replication
solution, you can make sure that
every single virtualized application
in your environment will be properly
backed up and available for recovery
when necessary.
DISASTER RECOVERY FOR
VIRTUALIZED SYSTEMS
QIC is a large financial services
institution in Brisbane, Queensland,
Australia, that already used multiple
VMware solutions to help virtualize
its data center infrastructure. In fact,
95% of the company’s test and devel-
opment environment and 80% of its
Windows Server systems are virtual-
ized. Prior to implementing VMware’s
vCenter Site Recovery Manager, how-
ever, disaster recovery took hours and
a large number of staff just to get 50
servers back up and running.
Understanding that this figure
wasn’t good enough and that re-
covery time objectives were not
being met, QIC opted to begin using
vCenter Site Recovery Manager. This
solution has given QIC the ability
to fail over 100 virtual machines in
an hour as opposed to the previous
figure of 50 machines in several
hours. But perhaps more importantly,
QIC is able to fully recover without
impacting the experience of its cus-
tomer base. ●

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
VMware
Application Virtualization
Platform-As-A-Service & Data-Intensive Application Support
It can be difficult to manage ap-
plications and make them easily ac-
cessible to the employees that need
them, but virtualization can provide
those benefits and also give you the
opportunity to optimize your appli-
cations for virtualization and help
you better utilize available resources.
However, a move to application
virtualization can be a significant
change for both the company itself
and the IT team in charge of imple-
menting it. To help improve this pro-
cess, VMware offers the Pivotal CF
and vFabric Suite solutions, which
are designed to provide an applica-
tion platform customized to your
needs as well as support particularly
data-intensive applications.
PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE
& INCREASED JAVA SUPPORT
Pivotal CF is a PaaS (platform as
a service) solution that makes it sim-
pler to develop and deploy appli-
cations. Because it’s built on Cloud
Foundry and runs on vSphere, orga-
nizations can scale applications up
or down depending on their present
needs. In terms of everyday use, one
of the major benefits of Pivotal CF
is its intuitive user interface, which
helps IT employees implement up-
dates and upgrades quickly, as well
as create hundreds of instances of
virtualized applications in a matter
of seconds.
Pivotal CF is also a standardized
platform, which makes integration
and management less of a headache.
And once you have your applications
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
virtualized and up and running, you
can continually monitor their health
to know whether the application is
running as intended or has crashed.
In the case of a crash, you can quickly
restart the application or create an en-
tirely new instance, if necessary.
For companies that use data-inten-
sive applications that require quite a
bit of resources, either in the cloud or
on premises, VMware also offers its
vFabric Suite, which consists of mul-
tiple components designed to build
and manage such applications. The
vFabric Suite is optimized to work
with the Java Spring Framework,
which translates into speedier inte-
gration. And Java virtual machines
can actually share memory and
resources without impacting indi-
vidual performance.
In addition to Java support, the
vFabric Suite features the GemFire
Application Cache Node, which
caches frequently used data and
makes it accessible to every in-
stance of a given application; this
is another example of how the so-
lution improves speed of perfor-
mance. The vFabric Suite also offers
the VMware Application Director,
which makes it much easier to con-
figure and deploy applications for
more efficient implementation. And
if you use Web applications, vFabric
Hyperic lets you monitor them,
whether they are physical, virtual,
or hosted in the cloud.
HELP FOR THE CITY OF
CHICAGO’S WEBSITE
& APPLICATIONS
The City of Chicago used a va-
riety of individualized networking
and monitoring solutions to manage
its website and monitor applica-
tion usage. Since all of the solutions
weren’t well-integrated, however,
the city couldn’t develop any auto-
mated processes to determine a per-
formance baseline and gain more
insight into how users were inter-
acting with applications.
To overcome these challenges, the
City of Chicago deployed a vFabric
Suite implementation with a strong
focus on the Hyperic solution. Using
this product, the city was able to
improve application and website
availability, as well as overall per-
formance; offer a better end user ex-
perience; and make it much easier to
plan ahead through the use of per-
formance baselines and application
monitoring. ●
PC Today / February 2014 21
 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS

BI & Security
Take Caution Of The Looming Dangers

Better use of resources. Enhanced
decision making. Greater cost sav-
ings. More opportunities to generate
revenue. For these benefits and others
increasingly more businesses are im-
plementing BI (business intelligence)
solutions. Still, despite the promises
solutions offer in terms of extracting,
analyzing, and using data better in plot-
ting strategies and decision-making,
trepidation remains regarding security
and privacy concerns related to com-
pany data, including the risks associ-
ated with cloud-based solutions and
mobile components of BI solutions. The
following explores such security and
privacy concerns with BI solutions the
data types involved, and more.
BI EXPLAINED
BI solutions are gaining steam for nu-
merous reasons, including the ability to
improve customer service, increase sales,
reduce costs, enhance operating efficien-
cies, and explore new opportunities.
Using the technologies, tools, processes,
methodologies, and applications that BI
involves, companies can dive into their
raw business data, pull out and analyze
what’s applicable, and present the anal-
ysis in ways a spreadsheet can’t. The aim
is to use what’s presented to make better
decisions and form better business strat-
egies, and BI solutions expand greatly
on the abilities of spreadsheets to do this.
Michael Lock, vice president and
principal analyst with Aberdeen Group
(www.aberdeen.com), says if we accept that
all companies regularly make impor-
tant decisions and are fueled partially
by data, BI helps to ultimately improve
business outcomes. There’s much to
gain, he says, from basing decisions on
cleaner, more relevant data that you can
access and transfer faster, all of which
makes data analysis easier and more
intuitive and displays key insights in a
more visually engaging way.

BI solutions provide The types of data that Security and privacy Security has become a key
businesses numerous companies are using risks associated with focal point of BI solution
benefits, but dealing with BI solutions are mobile BI tools and vendors. In general, many
with security and pri- expanding to include cloud-based BI solutions concerns businesses have
vacy issues concerning numerous external are often cited as a top always had with sharing
Key company data is data sources, including concern when adopting data still exist with BI
Points a trade-off. social networks. a BI solution. solutions.

22 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com


EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
In operational terms, Lock says
a sound BI environment can use data
to identify inefficiencies in processes
that cut waste, save time and money,
and boost profitability if addressed. In
a sales environment, meanwhile, BI
could highlight cross-selling and up-
selling opportunities, accelerate the lead
qualification process, and improve cus-
tomer-win percentages, all leading to
organic revenue growth.
Some organizations, says Lyndsay
Wise, president and founder of Wise-
Analytics (www.wiseanalytics.com), have
trouble pinpointing a measurable
value from BI usage because a direct
correlation between analytics and
profit is missing. However, she says,
by sifting through data, creating re-
ports, and so on, organizations stand
to gain better visions of operations,
where time and resource savings are
possible, as well as opportunities and
challenges. More effective activity
forecasting, support planning, setting
and measuring targets, and sales mon-
itoring is also possible.
THE DATA THAT MATTERS
Historically, says Cindi Howson, BI
Scorecard (www.biscorecard.com) founder,
companies have used data they created
and captured themselves (an accounting
system, for example) for BI applications.
Although the transaction system’s pur-
pose is to process the transaction, she
says, “for BI the purposes are to mon-
itor, understand, or explore the data—
perhaps to understand which products
are selling the best and where.” In to-
day’s big data era, businesses are cre-
ating and capturing data from many
more sources.
How much data and the types of
data a particular BI solution uses de-
pends on the company. Some compa-
nies might use one data source, Wise
says; others might decide to consolidate
data across the entire company to look
at customer, ERP, finance, accounting,
supplier, partner, and other data types.
External data types can also factor in.
According to Aberdeen Group re-
search, Lock says, the average company
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
Which strategies to adopt “is a function of
security, privacy, audit, compliance, and
business value on one side and the cost
and productivity implications of the con-
trols on the other.”
Derek Brink
vice president, Aberdeen Group
Most vendors “develop their platform
with security in mind. This can include
user group or user restrictions or making
sure that compliance requirements are
met depending on the industry.”
Lyndsay Wise
president and founder, WiseAnalytics
pulls data from 15 unique sources. needs to be protected, as does access
Consequently, current BI solutions are to databases and the ability to change/
pretty adept at handling data from dif- modify information,” Wise says. The
ferent sources. Most pundits, though, ramifications otherwise could be legal
believe “the real data explosion” has or a fine or in the case of healthcare in-
barely begun, says Lock. Eventually, surance, fraud, she says. Another pos-
data will stem from less-traditional sibility is the customer doesn’t receive
sources (text-based social, machine, proper care. No matter the sensitive
audio data from Internet-based phone data involved, business should take pri-
conversations, etc.). To handle this vacy seriously and manage data appro-
“massive wave of non-traditional, often priately, she says.
unstructured data” numerous cutting- Derek Brink, Aberdeen Group vice
edge BI/analytical solutions and bur- president, says at the highest level, if
geoning open-source technologies are businesses are going to share data via
creating tools, Lock says. BI solutions, the privacy/security is-
sues they must recognize are simply
THE SECURITY WORRIES “the same as always.” That means
Anytime company data is involved, confidentially (ensuring data is acces-
privacy and security concerns aren’t sible and intelligible only to those au-
far away. With BI, these concerns re- thorized), integrity (ensuring data isn’t
late to who can access email archives, altered), and availability (ensuring data
intellectual property, patient records, is accessible at the desired time, location,
and other sensitive data and how and device).
those with access are using data. Most Important to note is that not all data
security issues related to BI solutions, deserves or requires the same protec-
Wise says, involve ensuring that only tion. Brink says this underscores the
those required get to see and access importance of businesses classifying
specific data. their data, or distinguishing what re-
Access to customer-related data, say, quires protection and what doesn’t.
social security data in banking, finance, Basic elements involved include de-
and insurance industries, is one ex- fining your classification levels, setting
ample. “Customer/patient information criteria for how to classify data, and
PC Today / February 2014 23
 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
“As soon as you start allowing BI content
to be accessible via a smartphone, you
need to be sure to have a formal plan for
mobile authentication. User ID and pass-
word security may not be enough.”
Cindi Howson
founder, BI Scorecard
determining the controls each classifi- hosts, storage, and applications in com-
cation level requires. Controls can in- panies’ server rooms or data centers.
clude the assurance level required for It now also refers to virtualized IT in-
end-user authentication, the rules or frastructure, whether on-premises or
roles that govern end-user access, and cloud-based. Similarly, “networks”
the protections to implement or obtain now also refers to social connections
appropriate confidentiality, integrity, and collaborating, and “endpoints”
and availability levels, Brink says. encompasses both devices that IT
centrally procures, provisions, and
MOBILE & CLOUD CONCERNS manages and the distributed, highly
Often cited as being specific con- mobile devices employees are increas-
cerns among businesses where privacy ingly procuring, provisioning, and
and security are concerned risks as- managing themselves. The result is the
sociated with cloud-based BI solutions confidential data and intellectual prop-
and mobile BI components. A 2012 erty companies are trying to protect is
study related to the cloud BI market increasingly likely to flow from back-
that Dresner Advisory Services con- end systems the company doesn’t con-
ducted, for example, found that 59% of trol through networks it doesn’t control
respondents named security and pri- to endpoints and end users it doesn’t
vacy issues as being major issues with control, Brink says. Thus, while privacy
adopting cloud BI solutions. and security issues might be the same
Wise, however, says most BI solu- as always, the underlying infrastruc-
tion vendors have developed their ture is much more complex, making
platforms with security first in mind, data protection more difficult.
meaning many concerns businesses
have “don’t have much merit any- TAKE PRECAUTIONS
more.” Overall, the same worries (lost Prevention is one means of ad-
devices, data breaches, etc.) that com- dressing security and privacy worries
panies typically have concerning data related to using BI solutions. In the BI
sharing still apply to BI usage. world, Howson says, “as soon as you
With cloud solutions and mobile start allowing BI content to be acces-
components, Howson says, it’s about sible via a smartphone, you need to be
who controls the data and where. sure to have a formal plan for mobile
Mobile apps on users’ devices in par- authentication. User ID and password
ticular can introduce many security security may not be enough.” Instead,
holes in a BYOD world, she says. she says, consider specifying unique
Individually, users should take cau- mobile identifiers and be able to selec-
tion with apps they download and note tively wipe remote data. Elsewhere, un-
who created them and what security derstand compliance requirements and
permissions the app is granted. ensure the BI vendor supports required
Increasingly, Brink says, “back-end compliance levels and associated regu-
systems” refers to more than networks, lations. Additionally, understand the
24 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
varying levels of data access needed
and data to and not to share.
Aberdeen’s research in recent
years consistently shows where safe-
guarding sensitive data is concerned,
several general steps related to top
performance surface. They include
identifying and classifying data, prior-
itizing security control goals for data,
setting consistent policies within an
overall approach for protecting sensi-
tive data wherever it stems from, and
enacting appropriate security controls
per classification level.
What are appropriate security con-
trols? Brink says there’s no single an-
swer. In fact, he says, there are at least
six high-level strategies toward pro-
tecting sensitive data that may be ap-
propriate. These strategies include doing
nothing because “not all data is worth
protecting”; controlling access to the
data; and monitoring and filtering data.
The strategies also include protecting
data (via encryption in the back-end,
encryption/decryption at endpoints);
substituting data (replace or trans-
form sensitive data so it can be used
in existing business processes without
being exposed); and protecting actions
on data (a “persistent” control, say,
rights management, travels with the
data, governing what’s possible after
someone accesses the data). Which
strategies to adopt, Brink says, “is
a function of security, privacy, audit,
compliance, and business value on one
side and the cost and productivity im-
plications of the controls on the other.”
As for BI vendors, Howson says
they provide their own user ID and
password security. Where mobile de-
vices are concerned, most vendors
assume the company has a separate
MDM (Mobile Device Management)
solution, she says. Additionally, she
says few BI vendors provide addi-
tional device-based authentication.
Wise adds that most vendors “de-
velop their platform with security in
mind. This can include user group or
user restrictions or making sure that
compliance requirements are met de-
pending on the industry.” ●

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
Hacker Target: SMBs
Tips To Combat Common Threats & Secure Your Business
Every business would love to protect
its network with the best possible set
of security tools, but for SMBs (small
and midsize businesses), business func-
tions are sometimes more important
than the security setup. And without
the proper tools or technology, there
may be vulnerabilities within your com-
pany’s network or PCs that a hacker
could use to steal sensitive information
or cause a computer virus outbreak. The
latter could be almost as bad as a net-
work breach because of the downtime
associated with the afflicted computers
and servers. We explored some of the
common threats you may face and pro-
vide tips for affordably preventing such
break-ins.
VECTOR ATTACKS
Cybercriminals are well aware that
SMBs often have a security infrastruc-
ture that’s not as strong as what is in
large enterprises. A vector attack is one
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
where a cybercriminal researches which
SMBs work with larger companies, and
then targets the SMB as a way to cloak
himself and sneak into the larger busi-
ness. In this fashion, the hacker can pro-
duce a series of advanced persistent
attacks that fly under the radar of the
larger enterprise’s security. “In the last
year and half, we’ve seen a lot more of
advanced persistent attacks that have
been going down market,” says James
McCloskey, senior research analyst at
Info-Tech Research Group (www.info
tech.com). “The large companies, which
had traditionally been targets, have
better security defenses, so there are
opportunities in SMBs for hackers to
move laterally.”
Larry Ponemon, founder and chair-
man of the Ponemon Institute (www
.ponemon.org), says, “A big difference
in a middle market is that security
doesn’t always have proper governance,
and the IT people in the trenches may
not have a complete understanding
or may misclassify a security event. In
some cases, they might have thought
that a threat has been fully remediated,
but it hasn’t.” He says this is a problem
especially with such things as advanced
persistent threats where the bad guys
are using entry points through small
companies to reach big companies. “For
example, if the ultimate target is a de-
fense contractor, they’ll find a vendor
that works with the contractor and
enter through the vendor’s system to
get into the primary target,” Ponemon
says. “We are seeing companies that are
completely unaware that they were con-
stantly attacked.”
Tips for prevention. To prevent
vector attacks, McCloskey says it is im-
portant to understand what the threat
landscape looks like. “This will help
you to determine if you are potentially
a target for these persistent attacks,” he
says. “If you are, then you’ll really need
PC Today / February 2014 25
 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
“A lot of small companies haven’t em-
braced security, privacy, and data protec-
tion to the extent that they need to. And
historically, attacks haven’t been targeted
at SMBs. I think that is not true anymore,
and SMBs are starting to realize that secu-
rity is important.”
Larry Ponemon
founder and chairman, Ponemon Institute
to make a business case based not only your inbox. McCloskey says it is also
on the value of your personal informa- important to remind employees that
tion, but also the value that gaining a no one will ever ask them for their IDs
foothold in your organization could or passwords. “System administrators
provide to the attacker looking up- have no reason to ask for it, and anyone
stream.” He adds that this also gives a else who asks for it is violating policy,”
context for a business case where you he adds. Also, refrain from clicking
can analyze the damage if you were the website pop-ups and links in emails
vector of an attack on one of your busi- from unknown entities, because mali-
ness partners. cious software can deploy when you
Ponemon says “SMBs can afford inadvertently install programs sent to
some low cost hardware that might stop you in email messages.
80% of the attacks, but the remaining
20% are very dangerous. You just need SPYWARE
one bad attack to create a really bad day Any software that collects infor-
for you,” he says. “A lot of the small mation from a person without his
companies just don’t have the phys- knowledge is known as spyware. A
ical security tools. Instead of buying keylogger is one of the more dan-
the tools, many small companies are gerous spyware types, because it is a
now renting security through the cloud, malicious utility that transmits what
which levels the playing field with se- you type on your keyboard back to
curity risks. With the cloud, it becomes the hacker. Because usernames and
more affordable, because you’re renting passwords are likely some of the most
a seat rather than making a long-term repetitive types of content you type, it
investment in a product.” won’t take a hacker long to figure out
a component of your login informa-
PHISHING tion for at least one of your accounts.
Phishing often takes the form of a Once a cybercriminal gains access to
spoof email that indicates you’ll need one of your accounts, he can then use
to take some kind of immediate action that authentication as he attempts to
that requires clicking a link in the email. guess your other username and pass-
Alternatively, it may ask you to provide word combinations.
a username and password to quickly Tips to prevent spyware. You’ll want
resolve a problem. to ensure you have security software in-
Phishing fixes. To avoid becoming stalled on all of your devices, including
a victim, you can turn to anti-phishing PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Security
tools that monitor your messages for software is often the first defense
links that may lead to malware-filled against online threats, and it can detect
websites. A strong security suite can and block most spyware threats before
prevent phishing content from reaching they appear on a device. McCloskey
26 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
suggests having a behavioral based
Web-content filtering solution at the
perimeter, as well. “A lot of the sites
that propagate keyloggers and spyware
would get blocked by a Web content
filtering solution,” he adds.
Ponemon says “You need something
that can pinpoint anomalies and things
that are not in your normal-looking
activities. Things like intrusion detec-
tion capability in your firewall, like a
next-generation firewall, can be very
helpful. And it’s not really a large cost,
nor a huge investment, so if you’re a
smaller company you can pay X price
for a given number of seats. Network
and traffic intelligence becomes really
important in a SMB, as it makes you
smarter about the bad things infiltrating
your system and creating problems.”
BRUTE-FORCE ATTACKS
Cybercriminals don’t have to infil-
trate your PC with a spyware program
to break into your online accounts. They
can utilize password-cracking soft-
ware to attempt thousands of logins
(using various combinations of common
words and numbers) in seconds. If your
password is weak or based on a dic-
tionary word, the brute-force style of
attack is an easy way for cybercriminals
to crack your password.
Brute-force fixes. To lessen your
chance of becoming a victim of a brute-
force attack, be mindful of your pass-
words. If you are like some people and
use the same password for all of your
online accounts, we suggest you change
your ways. If a hacker happens to steal
one of your passwords, even if it is a
very complex password, he can use
it in his attempts to access your other
accounts. “This, unfortunately, is the
worst news that people want to hear,”
says McCloskey, because it means they
will need to come up with stronger
passwords they need to change regu-
larly. “The reality is that unless the main
password database has been exfiltrated
and is being brute forced as a whole,
the complexity of the passwords will
protect against most any password
fraking,” he adds.
 ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
VIRUS VULNERABILITIES
A virus within shared files can be
catastrophic to all PCs on the local
network. SMBs typically can’t afford
segmented network protection where
access to sensitive information is limited
to only those who need it. All it would
take is one virus to get inside a PC, and
when the employee connects to shared
network locations, the cybercriminal
could then plant other viruses within
the network files.
Virus fixes. The obvious solution is
to have solid security software that’s
running and up-to-date on all the com-
puters and mobile devices connected to
the network. However, it’s important
to note that you’ll need more than just
antivirus protection, because hackers
can use a variety of methods to infiltrate
networks. We recommend investing in
a security suite that includes more of an
all-around defense.
In particular, choose a solution with
an IPS (intrusion prevention system) to
look for signs of malicious activity deep
within the network traffic entering and
leaving your computer. McCloskey says
“SMBs can utilize intrusion detection
and prevention technology to work as a
network-based signature detection tool
that allows you to detect the zero-day
attacks as they are happening, which
gives you an opportunity to employ ad-
ditional defenses before a patch is avail-
able for your security software.”
Ponemon Institute’s “The Risk Of An Uncertain Security Strategy” report found that there
are many different types of attacks that SMBs should be worried about.
“Another thing that you should be aware
of as an SMB is just the importance of
physical security. The fact is, if I can get
physical access to one of your machines, I
can plug in a USB key and odds are, it will
never be detected, because how often do
you look behind the ports on a PC.”
SOCIAL CONCERNS
Many people realize that it can be
disastrous if a hacker gains access to
their online banking. It can be just as
dangerous if a cybercriminal accesses
your email or social networking ac-
counts, because an attacker can use the
information he gains to verify other ac-
counts or reset passwords. McCloskey
says “There’s a sort of industrializa-
tion of attackers now with different
people performing different roles in
a capitalist model where everyone is
specializing. One of those specialties is
mining publicly available information
for the purposes of doing phishing at-
tacks. There’s a lot of good informa-
tion on the company’s employees on
the business website, Facebook, and
LinkedIn where you can find informa-
tion about the employees that would
SOURCE: PONEMON INSTITUTE
James McCloskey
senior research analyst, Info-Tech Research Group
allow someone to impersonate the
employee and fool a help desk type
of person.”
Break down social engineering.
Make sure the passwords for all your
social, email, and banking accounts are
complex and that you change them
every few months. Similarly, educate
your employees about security risks tied
to giving out their usernames and pass-
words, and remind workers that it is
their duty to protect information within
the business.
A REMEDIATION PLAN
“Even a small company should
have an incident response plan,” says
Ponemon. In the event someone hacks
or steals company information, the re-
sponse plan will give you an idea of
how to respond and remediate. The
slower you are to remediate, the more
costly the event, he explains. When cre-
ating a remediation plan, you’ll want to
start with a forensics step where you lo-
cate the cause and shore it up as soon as
possible. “Forensics requires the right
people and right tools. If you don’t do
it, your company will be constantly
compromised,” Ponemon says. “Next,
you’ll need to figure out who are the in-
jured parties and does it require disclo-
sure to regulators, especially if the data
is PCI data that’s regulated to business
partners. A good step after everything
is back to normal is to figure out what
went wrong in the system. Then, make
some decisions about how to improve
your infrastructure.” ●
PC Today / February 2014 27

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
Social Strategies
Enough With 10-Step Social Media Plans! Learn What Works & What Doesn’t
Not long ago, businesses didn’t con-
cern themselves with social media
Today, the thought that any business
hasn’t at least contemplated a social
media strategy, let alone enacted one,
seems almost ludicrous in light of the in-
creasingly celebrated benefits afforded
to organizations that wisely leverage
social media opportunities. The long
list of positives includes enriching re-
lationships with existing customers
and reaching new ones, as well as pro-
moting new products and initiatives at
the speed of light.
For some companies, however, social
media has not met expectations. Maybe
they didn’t accurately forecast the
amount of time, effort, and resources
social media would involve. Or they
didn’t provide enough relevant content
to engage customers. Or they failed to
thoroughly define their objectives. In
any case, it might be time to rethink and
refocus your efforts.
28 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
DO GET STARTED
A seemingly obvious but vital point
is to simply realize social media can’t
be ignored. Maribeth Ross, Aberdeen
Group (www.aberdeen.com) senior di-
rector of research, marketing effective-
ness and strategy, says the monumental
impact social media has had on the B2B
and B2C spaces has produced a new
sector of supportive social technology.
Customers, she says, now expect brands
to be engaging via social media, and
this isn’t going to change. “The time has
come for the holdouts to jump on the
bandwagon, if they haven’t already; it’s
a marketing non-negotiable,” she says.
DON’T SKIP THE STRATEGY
Closely related to embracing social
media is addressing it with a strategy,
Ross says. “Social isn’t as easy as asking
all your employees to tweet, like, or
share content,” she says. “Social needs
to be tied to thematic messaging as part
of the overall marketing strategy and
brand.” Depending on the breadth of a
social strategy, this may require adding
technology to the marketing tech stack to
enable social activity, listen socially, and
plan and analyze social activity, she says.
DO SCRUTINIZE
Dave Ensing, Ph.D., vice president of
voice of customer integration for Maritz
Research (www.maritzresearch.com), says
most companies that collect social media
data for research purposes obtain a lot of
information that doesn’t pertain to the
question they’re trying to answer. “This
information not only dilutes real find-
ings, it can also lead companies in the
wrong direction,” he says. For example,
a company might conclude that con-
siderable social media activity around
a product currently being advertised
proves that consumers are responding
well to the marketing campaign. A
closer look at relevant data, however,

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
could reveal that the company’s own
social media marketing activities are
generating the social response and not
consumer interest. Ensing recommends
companies set social media filters to be
very specific to the information they’re
trying to collect, and scrutinize and
clean the data before analyzing it.
DON’T LOSE PERSPECTIVE
Ensing says companies should stop
viewing social media as “the world’s
largest focus group.” Social media and
focus groups are very different, he
says. “In particular, compared to focus
groups, social media is extremely un-
focused,” he says. “Not only do people
talk about anything and everything in
social media, much of social media isn’t
made up of ‘people’ at all. It consists
of advertisements, marketing material,
spam, etc.” Information shared in social
media is also much “shallower” than
that shared in focus groups.
“A lot of social media contains cus-
tomers’ views about a product, com-
pany, or service, but no reason for these
views is given.” Often, he says, “we see
rants like, ‘I hate XXXX company,’ but
that is all. Information like that is dif-
ficult to act on, except by following up
with the specific customer,” he says. A
more apt analogy for using social media
to glean business insights is “mining for
gold,” Ensing says. “There are probably
some valuable nuggets in there some-
where, but you’re going to need to sift
through a lot of stuff you don’t want to
find [the gold].”
DO GRASP THE COMPLEXITY
Michael Bryars, senior vice presi-
dent and general manager at evolve24
(www.evolve24.com), a Maritz Research
company, says “it’s no secret that
“. . . when you bind yourself so closely
to any one platform, you risk being held
hostage to that one platform . . . .”
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
“Social needs to be tied to thematic
messaging as part of the overall
marketing strategy and brand.”
social media represents the largest
source of consumer data in the history
of the world.” Still, most companies
haven’t scratched the surface in terms
of using the information to improve
consumer loyalty, “which is the ulti-
mate goal of any company.” Bryars
recommends marketers keep in mind
that people “have attitudes, emotions,
beliefs, ideals, and values that com-
prise who they are, how they behave,
and which brands they trust,” he says.
Emotion drives behavior, he says, and
“strong, positive emotional connections
create loyalty.”
Customers that differentiate their
brands by strengthening emotional
bonds with customers earn true loy-
alty, Bryars says. A first step is under-
standing the complexities of the brand’s
audience and the gaps between how the
audience perceives the brand and how
the brand wishes to be perceived. Social
media intelligence companies can help
here by using social data and natural
language processing tools to “extract
emotions from conversations to help
inform brands on where to focus,” he
says. “This intelligence drives strategy,
messaging, and helps benchmark and
measure future campaigns.”
DON’T WORK IN SILOS
The most-loved brands, Bryars says,
are developed by businesses that are
capable of strengthening connections
John Yunker
co-founder and president, Byte Level Research
Maribeth Ross
senior director of research, Aberdeen Group
with customers based on empathy,
trust, and positive emotional connec-
tions. This isn’t easy because most
corporations operate in a traditional,
segmented structure, he says. “Yet the
recent focus on big data and its impact
on business has opened the doors for
C-suite executives to look across the
table to form collaborative, mutually
beneficial partnerships that will move
the entire business forward,” he says.
“CMOs especially, given their prox-
imity to the consumer, can implement
a ‘center of intelligence’ that aggre-
gates various social data . . . and dis-
tributes actionable insights across the
organization.” While the process can
be complex, he says, it’s doable, and
“executives are taking note.”
DO USE LOCAL LANGUAGE
John Yunker, Byte Level Research
(www.bytelevel.com) co-founder and pres-
ident, says many companies cling to
a notion of using “global English lan-
guage” in Twitter and Facebook feeds.
Though such feeds may be effective
with English speakers located globally,
he says, the feeds “can only go so far.”
One large retailer, for example, manages
more than 30 Facebook pages that are
country- and language-specific, Yunker
says. “While the number of ‘likes’ may
be considerably lower than the global
English page, the level of engagement is
generally quite higher,” he says.
DON’T SINGLE OUT
Yunker cautions against going all
in with just one social media platform.
“Not long ago, many pundits made
the case that a company didn’t need a
website any longer and could simply
rely on Facebook,” he says. “But when
you bind yourself so closely to any one
PC Today / February 2014 29

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
platform, you risk being held hostage
to that one platform and less able to re-
spond to new and emerging platforms.”
Instead, he advises a more opportunistic
approach to social activity, particularly
when going global, that takes advantage
of networks that dominate respective
countries, which aren’t always Twitter
and Facebook.
DO BE OPEN
Alan Lepofsky, vice president and
principal analyst with Constellation
Research (www.constellationrg.com), says
one thing companies should do differ-
ently is “be open about things, even
when something has gone wrong.”
Sometimes, companies mistakenly
consider social media a “channel for
cheerleading about their brand” in-
stead of a place for open dialog.
“That’s what makes ‘social’ different
from print or television marketing,”
he says. “With ‘social,’ brands can
have conversations with their cus-
tomers and even competitors. Honesty
can win over customers and build
lasting relationships.”
DON’T ARGUE
Something companies should stop
doing is engaging in arguments on-
line, Lepofsky says. “There are always
going to be people who have nothing
but negative things to say,” he says.
“These people are often referred to as
‘trolls,’ and the advice goes ‘don’t feed
the trolls.’” Instead, take the high road
by factually addressing concerns once,
not letting emotion get in the way, and
then moving on, he says. “Don’t get
into a ‘have to have the last word’ type
of banter, as these folks have too much
time on their hands, and they will not
back down,” he says.
“. . . what’s really important: the relation-
ships that can be created and deepened
through these social technologies.”
30 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
“With ‘social,’ brands can have conversations
with their customers and even competitors.
Honesty can win over customers . . .”
vice president and principal analyst, Constellation Research
DO FOCUS
Charlene Li, Altimeter Group (www
.altimetergroup.com) founder and man-
aging partner, says based on her orga-
nization’s research the most important
thing companies should do differently
regarding social media strategy is shift
focus away from managing social
media channels (Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, etc.) to managing relation-
ships with customers and employees,
wherever they’re located. “Given the
great diversity of what you can do
these days in social media, it’s easy to
get sucked into the mechanics,” she
says. “What we see needed is a re-
focus on what’s really important: the
relationships that can be created and
deepened through these social tech-
nologies.” Doing so, she says, can also
introduce more flexibility in what’s
possible.
DON’T MEASURE
Li encourages companies to not
focus only on measuring how many
fans or followers their social media
outlets have. “If relationships are
what’s important, then what are the
metrics that you should be using to
measure the depth and strength of
those relationships? Volume metrics,
like the number of fans, will be less
important than what you’re doing
with those relationships,” she says.
Arguably, companies would be better
Charlene Li
founder and managing partner, Altimeter Group
Alan Lepofsky
off with one-tenth the fans/followers
but doing 10 times more with them,
she says.
DON’T OVERLOAD
Brian Blau, Gartner, research di-
rector with Gartner (www.gartner.com),
says the point of social networking isn’t
bombarding customers with updates
or marketing campaigns but rather
becoming a participant and informa-
tion channel in their daily lives when
they’re online. “This means a broad-
reach strategy that has your efforts fo-
cused on where your customers are,
and that will entail using as many so-
cial and community sites as necessary,”
he says. Rather than restrict a “multi-
channel” approach to marketing, use it
to help with customer support, product
development, or communication that
reaches customers and helps keep
them engaged.
DO EXPERIMENT
Today, Blau says, there are many
new social networking and commu-
nications apps and services. While
some messaging platforms are quickly
becoming the next go-to ones, new
ones will always rise up and become
popular. “While these new platforms
don’t yet support standard adver-
tising, they are a hotbed of activity,
and with careful planning and a bit
of experimentation they can become
valuable resources, and learning from
them will help you better understand
why these services are becoming pop-
ular,” he says. He recommends man-
aging these efforts, preparing for any
level of success, and use your experi-
ences to help guide efforts to “contin-
ually find and attract and interact with
your next new customer.” ●
 ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS

Cooler Data Center,

Better ROI
Save Money By Monitoring Your Environment & Maximizing Efficiency

When companies look to maximize
their ROI (return on investment) for
various purchases or projects, they
often explore things such as consolida-
tion, virtualization, or implementing
more efficient servers. While it’s true
that these approaches will lead to sav-
ings, you should also consider your
cooling system before making wide-
spread upgrades or refreshes. After all,
you could implement the most efficient
servers in the world, but if they’re not
cooled properly, your company may not
necessarily benefit from the upgrade.
Fortunately, improving your cooling
system doesn’t always require further
equipment purchases. In fact, you may
be able to maximize efficiency, as well
as your ROI, with a few changes to your
cooling philosophy.
MONITOR & MEASURE
When measuring the ROI of any
given purchase, some companies forget
to determine baselines, so it can be
nearly impossible to know whether a
purchase has the desired financial effect
if you don’t know where you started.
“You can’t manage what you don’t mea-
sure,” says Darin Stahl, lead research an-
alyst at Info-Tech Research Group (www
.infotech.com). “About 25% of the orga-
nizations out there that are customer-
based do not know their total data center
capacity and couldn’t describe it, and
about 73% don’t have any visibility into

Don’t go overboard on Don’t be afraid to con- Take time to monitor The cooling industry is
cooling. Only add the sult a professional for your data center’s evolving right alongside
cooling capacity you guidance. As your data environment so you servers and storage solutions.
need to maintain operat- center changes, you can get a baseline and Research the newest cooling
ing temperatures and cut need to change your spot potential prob- techniques and implement
Key unnecessary costs out at cooling approach, as lem areas that require what works best for your
Points the beginning. well. improvement. company.

PC Today / February 2014 31


EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
the energy bill, specifically for the data
center, and especially at the rack and
row level.”
Stahl says the numbers only get
worse from there; however, there is a
simple approach companies can take
to improve these odds. “When we ask
about success around metrics and bet-
ter ROI for investments in standby
power, cooling, or any of that kind of
stuff, what we find is organizations that
actually use efficiency metrics and per-
form cheap and cheerful monitoring
are 35% more successful in terms of
costs and satisfaction,” he adds. Those
companies don’t simply implement a
cooling system with a 10- to 12-year
refresh rate and just assume they’re
getting the highest possible efficiency.
Instead, they put monitoring solutions
in place that provide hard evidence.
“It is vital to have environmental
monitoring where it is critical, which is
at the inlet of the IT equipment,” says
Matt Burkle, national IT channel man-
ager and sales engineer at HM Cragg
(www.hmcragg.com). “A lot of changes can
happen to the temperature of air from
the point where it is supplied to the front
of the rack. Having a grasp on the exact
state of the air where it enters the server
allows you to both eliminate problem
hot spots, and to set the temperature cor-
rectly at the air conditioning unit.”
Burkle adds that companies can also
utilize the features of DCIM (data center
infrastructure management) solutions,
which “give a graphical state of the data
center and allow information gathering
and trend analysis.” Using DCIM tools,
you can evaluate environmental data to
get a more in-depth view of your data
center and adapt to changes during dif-
ferent processing cycles.
MATCH COOLING CAPACITY
TO EQUIPMENT
Stahl says some companies have the
mind-set to always buy the newest,
most-advanced technology without
stopping to think about whether it ac-
tually matches their workloads. While
there are some larger enterprises that
require the biggest and best servers to
32 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
“Many people think that adding . . . cool-
ing capacities to a data center will fix hot
spots. This is not necessarily true and
many times heat buildup can be addressed
by simply managing the heat that is creat-
ed without adding any additional cooling.”
Matt Burkle
national IT channel manager and sales engineer, HM Cragg
“Data centers have two main issues today:
how to increase the cooling capacity of old
centers to take higher densities, and how to
construct new data centers to be environ-
mentally friendly whilst still pushing the
envelope of design with increased density,
reduced space, increased resilience, and
low power usage effectiveness.”
Simon Davis
director of engineering, Q Cooling
thrive in their respective industries, mission-critical nature. Those compo-
that shouldn’t necessarily extend to nents may be able to “run at a hot tem-
the cooling space. “Think about ‘just perature,” but the one “mission-critical
good enough’,” Stahl says. “Often, box can’t,” which essentially “erodes
we’ll want to buy the newest, fastest, any potential savings that those seven
and shiniest piece of hardware ever, hotter boxes could have given me.”
but meanwhile the workload doesn’t The piecemeal approach to up-
require it. If we can actually work on a grading equipment and cooling sys-
server that will run at a little less perfor- tems stretches out to other areas, as well.
mance, because that might be a trade- Stahl says some companies may want to
off for the additional heat based on implement a closed rack cooling system,
ASHRAE [American Society of Heating, where the back door of a rack is kept
Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning closed to prevent cool air from escaping.
Engineers] guidelines, then we should However, he says while some equip-
do it.” ment will fit in a standard 19-inch rack,
This plays well into maximizing ROI they may stick out of the back. This is
because if you can keep servers and a situation where innovation in one
other pieces of equipment for longer area diminishes innovation in another.
periods of time without negatively af- That’s why it’s so important to plan
fecting performance or efficiency, then ahead with your refreshes and consider
you can push refresh times further out cooling at every step along the way.
and match them up across the board. The key is to match your cooling
Stahl explains further, giving an ex- capacity with the equipment you use
ample of a company that upgrades most. Stahl says data centers need to
seven components inside a rack while move away from the “flood-the-room
keeping one component due to its approach” where you just “slap a unit or
 ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS

two in there and flood the whole place and hot air is vented out into the room air mixing isn’t necessarily a new idea,
with cold air.” Instead, he says compa- and returned to the air conditioning but it’s one that helps counteract those
nies need to consider a precision-based unit where it can continue the process. challenges of “unprecedented power
model, such as rack and row cooling, By “supplying the exact temperature of densities due to technologies like blade
so they can “more discretely cool par- cool air to the front of the rack with no servers and virtualization.” And those
ticular racks of equipment.” With this air mixing,” it “allows you to set the air power densities are affecting new and
approach, you can provide more cooling conditioning unit to a precise tempera- old data centers alike, which makes it a
for network gears, for example, that run ture set point,” Burkle says. And by much more fundamental design issue.
constantly and almost always at peak improving the accuracy of your air con- According to Simon Davis, director
temperatures. You can also provide vari- ditioning system and airflow cycle, you of engineering at Q Cooling (www.qcool
able cooling for servers that have peaks can make sure all of your equipment is ing.com), a Rackmount Solutions (www
and valleys in their operations. Proper running at peak efficiency and proper .rackmountsolutions.net) partner, data cen-
cooling efficiency, which leads to better operating temperature. ters have duel challenges of meeting
ROI, depends entirely on balance. It’s important to remember that high-density cooling demands and
even though you may have the perfect doing so in the most environmentally
FOLLOW COOLING BEST system in place for your existing config- friendly way possible. Data centers are
PRACTICES & SEEK ADVICE uration, things will change. That’s why simultaneously trying to consolidate
WHEN NECESSARY Stahl says “it’s not a bad idea to bring in their infrastructure, while still trying
Burkle says that even though there professional firms to review your room, to provide the highest level of perfor-
are a variety of new cooling systems perform some kind of computation of mance. This approach obviously creates
and techniques out there, some of fluid design, and look at the airflow.” some cooling challenges that require
which are rather futuristic, it’s always An expert can help validate your ROI new ways of thinking.
a good idea to follow some of the basic findings and show you more ways to One example of newer technol-
tenants of proper cooling. For instance, improve your overall cooling efficiency. ogy designed to improve data center
he says it’s always a good idea to “have “Don’t hesitate to do that because it’s cooling is Q Cooling’s ColdLogik sys-
rows of racks arranged with hot and not that expensive to bring them in for tem. Not only can the ColdLogik
cold aisles,” because “if all the racks a short engagement with a tightly de- solution provide backdoor cooling
are facing the same direction, hot air signed scope,” says Stahl. “Those sorts at the rack level, but it can also “op-
exhaust from row one will feed the inlet of activities might seem . . . trivial, but erate at temperatures of up to 80 de-
of row two, thus creating a potential it’s a month after month benefit that grees Fahrenheit,” Davis says. Plus,
heat buildup issue.” continues to grow.” ColdLogik can be used with a tradi-
In addition to hot aisle/cold aisle tional air conditioning system or as part
containment, Burkle recommends that INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY of a free cooling approach. It’s just one
data centers consider the path that the REQUIRES INNOVATIVE way to improve your ROI while also
hot air follows. The idea is to create a COOLING keeping the environment in mind.
cycle where the coldest air enters the Burkle’s recommendation of creating But data center cooling innovation
rack to maintain the ideal temperature a hot air/cold air cycle that prevents doesn’t stop there. For instance, Stahl
says there’s a company developing a
liquid-cooling system where instead
of using air or water, “you take your
“You can’t manage what you don’t servers and essentially dunk them in
measure. About 25% of the organizations goo.” The liquid is treated in a way that
prevents damage to components, but
out there that are customer-based do not
Stahl admits that even with this caveat,
know their total data center capacity and “there’s still a big psychological barrier
couldn’t describe it, and about 73% don’t to that.” Just because futuristic solu-
tions like this are available doesn’t nec-
have any visibility into the energy bill,
essarily mean you need to implement
specifically for the data center, and espe- them. The best approach is to keep an
cially at the rack and row level. And the open mind and do your due diligence.
You never know when a company
numbers just get worse.”
might introduce a new cooling ap-
Darin Stahl proach that’s inexpensive and delivers
lead research analyst, Info-Tech Research Group a solid ROI. ●

PC Today / February 2014 33


EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
After The Damage Is Done
What To Do When A Data Breach Occurs
Companies essentially have two op-
tions for approaching data breaches.
One, they can bury their heads in the
proverbial sand and hope the day
never comes when they might face
lawsuits, fines, hefty blows to reputa-
tion, customers and partners forever
lost, and potentially paying millions
in costs. Two, they can accept the fact
a data breach occurring is entirely
possibly and do everything within
their means to prevent it but be able
to act promptly and responsibly if
one should.
HOW TO REACT
Perhaps the best motivation a com-
pany can have to begin putting itself in
a position to ably react to a data breach
is to know exactly what could happen
if it doesn’t prepare. Statistics from the
recent Ponemon Institute (www.ponemon.
org) “2013 Cost of Data Breach Study,”
based on the data breach experiences of
34 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
277 global companies in nine countries,
provides some evidence. According to
the study, the average consolidated cost
of the countries per compromised re-
cord in 2012 was $136. The United States,
meanwhile, had the highest total av-
erage cost per data breach at more than
$5.4 million.
Heavily regulated industries (health
care, financial, pharmaceuticals, trans-
portation, and communications), the
study reveals, had “per capita data
breach costs substantially above” that
$136 mean. Primary root causes of
breaches, meanwhile, included ma-
licious or criminal attacks (more than
37%); human errors, such as negligent
employee and contractor mistakes
(35%); and system glitches, such as IT
and business process failures (29%).
The survey identified several factors
that influence the cost of data breaches:
whether a business had an incident
management plan and “relatively strong
security posture” in place when the
incident occurred and having a CISO
(Chief Information Security Officer) or
someone in an equivalent position to
take overall responsibility for data pro-
tection. After a breach, quickly notifying
victims and engaging consultants to help
the company respond and resolve the
breach were other factors.
The first order of business for compa-
nies following a breach is containing the
leak “by taking the vulnerable system
offline and locking down affected sys-
tems” to avoid further damage or loss,
says Michela Menting, ABI Research
(www.abiresearch.com) cyber security se-
nior analyst. Depending on the type
of data lost and compliance require-
ments involved, companies may need
to inform regulatory authorities, such
as HIPAA. “Notification is extremely
important in these cases, as failure to
notify the relevant authority could result
in significant fines for the organization,”

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
Menting says. Additionally, companies
should immediately inform employees
of breaches to ensure they’re aware of
a threat and don’t exacerbate the situa-
tion, she says.
Eric Ahlm, Gartner (www.gartner.com)
research director, believes there’s a cor-
relation between data security practices
(or incident response and investigation),
and corporate risk reduction (or how
not to lose additional money after a
breach), but these entities are “distinctly
different” and typically managed by dif-
ferent company teams.
A good incident response practice
should generally include resources (or
partner networks) required to “techni-
cally determine if a significant breach
has occurred and determine the mag-
nitude and scope of the event,” he
says. This includes determining how
much data was lost, in which countries,
among which users, and more. After the
incident response team pinpoints the
scope and magnitude of a breach, he
says, “the next steps really come from
legal or corporate risk managers.”
Overall, Ahlm says the data breach
isn’t the real loss for a company that has
lost data. “The loss comes from class-
action lawsuits from those affected or
from various state/federal fines or in
brand devaluation,” he says.
ASSESS THE DAMAGE
Following a breach, Menting ad-
vises companies attempt some form
of digital forensics. While smaller
companies may lack resources to con-
duct a full investigation, there are
third-party services to help with this.
“Collecting and going through log in-
formation . . . can be extremely helpful
in finding out relevant information
about the breach,” she says.
Often, companies will need to
remedy a faulty system involved, Men-
ting says. If the fault is technical in
nature, the remedy might include ap-
plying patches. If social engineering was
involved, the company will need to in-
form employees. “Then there is dealing
with the fallout—notifying external
clients if they’re affected and what
ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
“I think that timely, updated, and continuous
information-sharing about the breach and the
next steps [for affected parties to take] is very
important in mitigating negative perception
and preserving good reputation.”
Michela Menting
senior analyst, cyber security, ABI Research
A good incident response practice should
generally include resources (or partner net-
works) required to “technically determine if
a significant breach has occurred and deter-
mine the magnitude and scope of the event.”
Eric Ahlm
research director, Gartner
steps they may need to take in order Ultimately, the more transparent
to deal with potential fallout from the companies can be with clients, af-
data loss,” she says. Failing to inform af- fected parties, employees, national
fected parties in a responsible timeframe agencies, and others, the better the
and manner can result in devastating reaction will tend to be, Menting says.
consequences for a company. “I think that timely, updated, and con-
Ahlm says in addition to helping tinuous information-sharing about the
companies determine the impact of a breach and the next steps [affected
breach, providers of breach services parties to take] is very important in
can help organizations “cater to af- mitigating negative perception and
fected users with credit monitoring preserving good reputation.” This
services and set up notification and doesn’t mean companies must reveal
help desk operations to meet the expe- all technical details about a hack, she
dient notification timelines that tend says, but they must indicate to those
to be state specific.” Additionally, involved what they’re doing, how
some providers can assist companies they plan to fix the problem and pre-
with public relations and other efforts vent future leaks, and “above all be
“to ideally help reduce further losses able to respond in a timely manner to
due to a data breach.” requests for information.”
Menting says the “affected party”
in data breach incidents first and fore- LEARN FROM THE PAST
most is the organization and employees. The worst thing a company can do
Secondly, depending on the data lost, if after a data breach is do nothing to
the breach relates to clients, other orga- remedy the cause, whether that means
nizations, individuals, or other external readdressing and improving policies
parties, the organization should inform and processes or implementing new
them of the breach and the steps they security technology. In short, companies
should take to pre-empt any backlash. that simply pick up the pieces and carry
If regulated data is involved, she says, on without analyzing the root causes,
“the competent national authority needs fixing them, and then continually evalu-
to be involved and sometimes even law ating their preparedness, may very well
enforcement.” see history repeat itself. ●
PC Today / February 2014 35

EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
Don’t Be A Spam Target
Steps To Protect Your Employees From A Spam Avalanche
Spam refers to any unwanted online
communications that show up as unso-
licited email, text messages, instant mes-
sages, robocalls, and social networking
messages. Spam is a daily occurrence
for businesses and individuals alike;
much of it amounts to poorly worded
and utterly random sales pitches that,
while annoying, pose no real threat.
Some of these unwanted electronic mes-
sages, however, are designed to steal
your identity, breach the network,
force servers to go offline, and spread
malware far and wide. Only when or-
ganizations accept that any spam has
the potential to risk corporate data and
threaten the bottom line will they have a
chance of stemming the tide.
REIN IN EMAIL
A majority of the spam that crosses a
network’s threshold comes through the
email inboxes of individual employees.
To slash the amount of email that gets
36 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
through, your company needs email
software that’s capable of detecting and
filtering spam. Many of the commercial-
grade email programs feature some
form of automated spam filtering, so just
make sure those features are enabled for
every account your business supports.
Ideally, spam should never show up in
an employee’s inbox, but if it does, it’s
important that he be able to access the
junk mail folder to catch false positives,
which are safe messages mistakenly
flagged as spam. The ability to add safe
senders to a white list can also reduce
the number of false-positives that occur.
One effective way to combat spam is
to only display emails as plain text. This
way, the sender of a spam message can’t
determine whether the recipient opened
the message.
BASIC TRAINING
Teaching employees how to handle
spam should be part of a business’s
overall cybersecurity policy. Even the
most thorough spam filter will occasion-
ally let a few messages slip through,
which is why it’s vital to educate em-
ployees about how to spot and handle
spam that appears in their inboxes. Tips
to emphasize include never opening
unsolicited emails in HTML format
(plain text only), never responding to or
forwarding suspected spam, avoiding
using the “unsubscribe” link, and never
clicking or visiting URLs listed in poten-
tial spam messages.
It is possible to disseminate email
addresses and phone numbers in such
a way as to prevent data harvesting
bots from being able to access that in-
formation from websites, social net-
working sites, profile pages, forums,
chat rooms, and blogs. On the phone
side, for instance, you can eliminate
robocalls effectively by having an au-
tomated call router that prompts the
caller to press a number to access his
 ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
desired department or dial up an em-
ployee directory. Spambots scan the
Web for any text that surrounds the
@ symbol, so another effective way
to thwart spammers can be to spell
out the symbol, for instance, john-
smithatbusiness.com. This may not
work against a cybercriminal bound
and determined to collect email ad-
dresses, but it will keep you and your
employees from becoming the low-
hanging fruit that a vast majority of
spammers and their automated tools
actively seek out.
Assuming your organization has an
email application that includes spam-
blocking technology, you’ll need to
teach employees the ins and outs of
An effective spam filter will intercept potential spam but still let
you examine the message in plain text.
adding senders to the blocked lists and
disposing of emails they suspect are
spam. The latter task involves dropping
suspected spam messages into a desig-
nated junk mail folder.
Individuals can avoid risking expo-
sure to spam by using disposable email
addresses expressly for the purposes of
logging into sites that have less-than-
stellar spam-prevention policies.
Another important topic to cover is
spoof detection; spammers are willing
to pretend to be any organization (in-
cluding the FTC) that they think will
get you to fall into their traps. Being
able to determine if emails are genuine
can be tricky, but there are usually tell-
tale signs, such as misspellings, poor
grammar, disguised hyperlinks, and
absurd premises.
BE B2B WARY
If possible, it’s important to deter-
mine how the organizations you and
your employees do business with
handle sensitive information such as
mailing lists and payment data. If an
organization can’t deliver proof of com-
pliance or doesn’t live up to your ex-
pectations, or if you can’t find out how
safely it stores your sensitive data, then
you might consider taking your busi-
ness elsewhere. A firm that requests
that you sign up for an account of some
kind but does not have an easily acces-
sible privacy policy should throw up a
red flag. However,
don’t just blindly
trust those that
do post privacy
policies; read the
policies with a crit-
ical eye. Some less
scrupulous firms
may even regularly
sell their mailing
lists to spammers
for profit, and they
get away with it by
stating clearly in
their privacy poli-
cies that they may
share your infor-
mation with “part-
ners.” As you develop standards for
the businesses you interact with, make
sure your firm also acts in good faith
regarding the private data that others
share with you, posting policies and
remaining compliant with regulations
where applicable.
LOCK DOWN THE NETWORK
As we previously mentioned,
spambots are constantly trawling the
Web for email addresses and phone
numbers, and any hits they get will
show up on the doorsteps of orga-
nizations with questionable sales
tactics and criminals with nefarious
intentions alike. To prevent this from
happening with your data, make the
direct email and phone numbers of
your employees harder to access from
the public-facing website without the
potential customer first initiating a
secure session.
You may also want to institute strict
access control mechanisms that priori-
tize sensitive data, track when and how
employees access that data, and can
pinpoint a breach the moment it oc-
curs. This is particularly important for
organizations that deal with payment
card information or areas of the busi-
ness that have a high potential for theft
from external sources or from a dis-
gruntled current or former employee.
It’s critical that the software (par-
ticularly security software and a fire-
wall) running on PCs, notebooks,
and any other devices with network
access remain as up-to-date as pos-
sible. Spammers regularly find and
exploit software vulnerabilities, and
all they need is one outdated device on
the network to get a foot in the door.
Popular software targets for spammers
and cybercriminals are those software
utilities that update frequently and
are most likely to be ignored by indi-
viduals. Web browsers and operating
systems are also common attack vec-
tors, so make sure they’re always up-
to-date.
LAYING TRAPS
Organizations with websites that
suffer from frequent spambot attacks
can create a spider trap that works
kind of like a reverse DDoS (distrib-
uted denial-of-service) attack. It con-
sists of a series of pages and links that
force the spammer’s Web crawler
to attempt an infinite number of re-
quests, often slowing down and some-
times even crashing the spambot.
COMMUNICATION IS CRITICAL
In short, the best way to protect your-
self and your organization is to become
critical of all communications that come
into the network. Blind trust is the
enemy. As long as you and your em-
ployees learn that lesson, spam is much
less likely to become a problem. ●
PC Today / February 2014 37
 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS

ENERGY-CONSCIOUS TECH

The technologies DISSOLVABLE BATTERIES COULD BE SPECIALLY

that make our lives DESIGNED FOR HEALTH CARE APPLICATIONS
➤ According to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, cuttlefish ink
easier also produce
may hold the secret to safer, biodegradable batteries that could be used in a
some unwanted side variety of medical applications. The battery prototype includes a manganese
effects on the envi- oxide cathode and a melanin anode, which is derived from cuttlefish ink. The
materials that compose the battery are biodegradeable, which opens them up
ronment. Fortunately,
for more uses than conventional batteries, which are unsafe in the body if not
many researchers, housed in a protective case and must be surgically removed.
manufacturers, and CMU scientists say there is potential for these batteries to power smart pills,
which can be designed to dissolve after reaching a certain part of the body. The
businesses are work-
possibility also exists for dissolvable batteries to power sensors that monitor
ing to create solutions a person’s heart rate or the progression of a disease. CMU’s prototype battery
that will keep us has a relatively low power output and, although that doesn’t necessarily limit it
uses, researchers will continue to experiment with other designs to improve per-
productive while
formance and capacity. Future experiments will involve researchers studying
reducing energy different types of melanin to determine which form provides the best results.
demands to lessen
our impact on the
environment. Here,
we examine some of U.S. NATURAL GAS PRODUCTION ON THE RISE
➤ According to the 2014 Annual Energy Outlook from the U.S. Energy
the newest “green” Information Administration, the United States will increase its national gas
initiatives. production figures by as much as 56% between through 2040 to 37.6 trillion
cubic feet. The growth will also have a positive impact on carbon emissions,
which is expected to remain below 2005 levels for several years. Much of this
increase in production is due to recent hydraulic fracturing policies and could
push natural gas to make up one-third of all electric power in the U.S. by 2040,
according to the EIA.

DYED PLASTIC MIGHT MAKE SOLAR LESS EXPENSIVE

➤ Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed
a flexible, dyed plastic that, when used with gallium arsenide solar cells, is ca-
pable of absorbing sunlight much more efficiently. Current experiments have
shown great success with one solar cell, but researchers plan to scale the project
out and place multiple solar cells onto a larger sheet of the thin dyed plastic.
This technology is particularly interesting because the resulting plastic is bend-
able, which makes it suitable for more use cases than static solar panels.

38 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com

 ESSENT IAL BUSINESS TECH
EXECUTIVES, PROFESSIONALS & ENTREPRENEURS
SOLAR POWER IS
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR
TO NEW ENERGY
GENERATION
➤ Although natural gas is still the
biggest overall contributor to new
energy capacity in the United States,
solar had a huge October in 2013
by contributing 72.1% of the total
utility-scale electrical generating ca-
pacity, according to the most recent
monthly report from the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission. This
significant increase is mostly due
to new solar projects starting up in
several locations across the U.S., in-
cluding a 280-megawatt station in
Arizona as well as other installations
in California, Nevada, and Indiana.
From January through October 2013,
the U.S. added 2,528 megawatts
worth of capacity, which is twice as
much as the 1,257 megawatts added
over the same period in 2012.
BETTER APPROACH TO
TURN CARBON DIOXIDE
INTO FUEL
➤ Researchers have been working
on ways to turn carbon dioxide
emissions from power plants and
other facilities into usable energy.
To date, there have been some suc-
cess stories involving the use of
catalysts such as silver in certain ap-
plications. However, researchers at
the University of Illinois at Chicago
understand that silver is too expen-
sive to use as a catalyst in larger
scale projects, and they plan to re-
place the silver with carbon nanofi-
bers that are not only less expensive,
but can also produce carbon mon-
oxide at a faster pace. The next step
for these UIC researchers is to find a
way to produce the fibers on a mas-
sive scale as well as find industrial
partners that will help support fu-
ture experiments.
WINDPODS OPEN DOOR FOR URBAN WIND POWER
➤ One of the big-
gest challenges as-
sociated with wind
power is that it re-
quires quite a bit of
space, often away
from urban centers,
because of the large
wind turbines. With
Windpods, how-
ever, communities
could place several
smaller turbines on
the tops of build- A10kW Windpod installation in the City of Cockburn in
ings and under- Perth, Western Australia.
neath bridges, or
build them into the walls of certain structures. The City of Cockburn in Perth,
Western Australia, recently installed a 10 kilowatt Windpod system on the
roof of its administration building that can generate as much as 4.5 megawatt
hours of energy each year and make the facility more energy efficient.
Windpod systems can be installed in a wide range of locations and at
a variety of angles, which makes them flexible enough to fit into more
urban settings. They are designed to remain stable in particularly turbulent
environments, too, which makes them well-suited for placement around
buildings. Each Windpod turbine is divided into three sections, each with
two blades, with an outer frame that holds the system together. The City of
Cockburn’s installation has 20 Windpod turbines, but each system can hold
more or less depending on the facility needs and available space.
NANOSCALE SWITCHES PROVIDE ENERGY
EFFICIENT PERFORMANCE IN A TINY PACKAGE
➤ Smartphones, tablets, laptops, and many other electronic devices use
billions of tiny switches to perform tasks. Each switch flips on or off de-
pending on the function being performed. And while switches have im-
proved more and more over the years, scientists at Case Western Reserve
University are trying to take things to the next (nanoscale) level.
They are using tiny silicon carbide switches that differ from traditional
alternatives in part because they don’t leak any power. Switches commonly
used today tend to leak between 1 and 10 nanowatts of power apiece, which
can lead to significant losses as usage scales up into the billions. By contrast,
the switches from Case Western Reserve University retain their energy for
greater efficiency and are capable of extending the battery life of devices.
Plus, the switches can help cut cooling costs in data centers because there is
less of a chance transistors will overheat.
But these findings aren’t only relevant to your phone or personal com-
puter. The switches in question can actually stand up to intense heat and
perform 10 million cycles without any performance loss. This opens up possi-
bilities for use in jet engines or even nuclear reactors where traditional silicon
transistors simply can’t hold up.
PC Today / February 2014 39
 MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD

File Sharing Facts

Why Employees Use Cloud File Sharing Services & What To Do About It

Sometimes the traits that work-
ers want most from the applica-
tions they use are ease of use and
convenience. Especially in this
age of mobility and BYOD (bring
your own device), when employees
perceive IT departments can’t or
won’t provide applications with
these abilities they’ll go outside the
organization and search for alter-
atives. Consumer-oriented cloud
file-sharing and document-collabo-
ration services are prime examples.
Beyond making it easy to store
personal and work-related files in
personal cloud containers, these
services also make it easy to access
those files anytime and anywhere
and share and collaborate on them
with others.
Despite the definite productivity-
related benefits that these ser-
vices can offer workers, they also
introduce numerous security and
data-loss worries for businesses
in terms of files potentially con-
taining sensitive company infor-
mation (customer data, marketing
plans, intellectual property, etc.).
Given the large number of workers
that are using these services, what
can and what should businesses do
about them? The following explores
the issue.
WHY EMPLOYEES DO IT
Research concerning employees’
use of cloud file-sharing and doc-
ument-collaboration services often
points to a common conclusion:
Many employees believe that to do
their jobs today, they need access
to their documents away from the
office. Couple this with so many
employees now using their own
smartphones and tablets for work
and it’s logical they turn to familiar
consumer-friendly apps.

Keep in mind that employ- On the other hand, recog- More popular cloud- It’s important to implement
ees often use consumer- nize that employee usage based file-sharing and policy that clearly states
oriented file-sharing and of consumer-oriented file- document-collaboration acceptable use of file-sharing
collaboration services sharing and collaboration vendors are focus- and document-collaboration
because they’re easier to services for work purposes ing increasingly on services and the ramifica-
Key use and more convenient can pose security risks for security features for the tions that non-compliance
Points than enterprise tools. the company. enterprise. carries.

40 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com


According to a 2012 SkyDox
study involving roughly 4,100 re-
spondents, 77% indicated they re-
quire access to documents away
from the office, and 66% reported
using free file-sharing platforms to
share corporate-related documents.
Employees in professional and fi-
nancial service fields reported the
highest usage. A Harris Interactive
2013 study involving about 2,000
U.S. adults, meanwhile, included
findings worrisome to businesses,
including that 27% of file-sharing
service users indicated having
access to documents from a pre-
vious employer, and 38% of pre-
vious and current users reported
they’d moved sensitive files via
non-IT file-sharing service at least
once and 10% more than six times.
Additionally, 46% reported taking
sensitive documents to another
employer would be easy via a file-
sharing service.
Beyond their ease of use, says
Apoorv Durga, senior analyst with
Real Story Group (www.realstorygroup
.com), consumer-oriented file-share
services are fast and available any-
time, everywhere, and on employees’
device of choice. Because employees
are already using these services, he
says, they are a natural choice for
work. Many employees simply prefer
tools that make file-sharing simple.
However, says Bud Porter-Roth,
principal consultant of Porter-Roth
Associates (www.erms.com), many
enterprise-level “legacy” systems
aren’t simple. Further, they don’t pro-
mote collaboration and don’t make
collaboration easy outside the com-
pany. Online storage services “make
it happen quickly with virtually no
learning curve on either end,” he says.
“Second, the user is in control and can
avoid the typical IT ‘No, we don’t sup-
port that’ or ‘Yes, but it will take two
months to program.’”
Tim Banting, Current Analysis
(www.currentanalysis.com) principal ana-
lyst, says that workers sometimes just
want to access a file from alternative
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
“Once your users turn to these cloud ser-
vices, the enterprise control over data is
largely gone, and you’re entrusting your
security to the users and their choice of
service. So there’s a tremendous amount
of risk in that.”
Jeff Boles
senior analyst, Taneja Group company
“Cloud-based storage is encountering a
push-pull between an individual user’s
convenience and need for security and
regulatory compliance,” he says. “IT
managers are going to have to make some
very difficult decisions about privacy this
forthcoming year, given recent events.”
Tim Banting
principal analyst, Current Analysis
devices, such as their own tablets “really ahead of the curve on mo-
or smartphones. Thus, they’re bility access,” he says.
circumventing IT departments (and Jeff Boles, Taneja Group (www
security and policy mandates) to .tanejagroup.com) senior analyst,
make their lives easier. “Tradition- describes the “fairly innovative
ally, teamwork solutions have been level of data access to unstruc-
fairly complex to work with,” Ban- tured file data” that cloud services
ting says, including for reasons in- have unleashed as a “far departure
volving checking documents in and from what the enterprise has typi-
out; version control; and accessing cally enabled in the past.” A tra-
files through VPN (virtual private net- ditional enterprise infrastructure
work) connections, which may only be in which file access is probably
possible on company-owned devices, limited to on-premises or perhaps
such as laptops. remote access or VPN, he says, is
Ben Dickie, Info-Tech Research a world away from having file ac-
Group (www.infotech.com) senior cess at your fingertips via multiple
consulting analyst, sees the gravita- platforms. Boles says companies
tion of employees to these services should realize that whether they’ve
as a form of backlash against tra- formally implemented BYOD or
ditional content-management-type not, many users are operating in a
tools that are more complicated BYOD manner and know how to
and that alienate users. Mobility is use services to enable data access
another factor, he says. Although to get their jobs done. “We’re in a
traditional enterprise-type applica- global workplace, and 24/7 work
tions or network file shares made is going on around most of us. So
file access from mobile devices dif- it’s not a malignant behavior but
ficult, consumer-type services were an empowerment behavior, and
PC Today / February 2014 41

“You’re not going to get user compliance
unless you specify what the penalties are
for uploading or abusing a cloud file-shar-
ing solution.”
senior consulting analyst, Info-Tech Research Group
users are trying to empower them-
selves,” he says.
THE RISKS
An often-cited negative of con-
sumer-type file-sharing/docu-
ment-collaboration services is
they weren’t built with businesses
in mind and lack the control and
governance businesses typically
require. “Once your users turn to
these cloud services, the enterprise
control over data is largely gone,
and you’re entrusting your secu-
rity to the users and their choice of
service,” Boles says. “So there’s a
tremendous amount of risk in that.”
Boles says businesses ultimately
must bear some responsibility for
employees turning to such ser-
vices. “If they have the support of
the users in the first place, users
are more likely to follow policies,”
he says. “If the business has been
forward-thinking enough to estab-
lish policy, and they have the users
on their side, [then] they probably
don’t have that big of a problem.”
Some businesses, however, lack
infrastructures agile enough to
respond to users’ needs, he says.
Overall, he says, “it really boils
down to a capability of significant
benefit that can’t be had from the
business right now that’s driving
users to turn to these types of ser-
vices.” An easy re-address is en-
abling the capability and ensuring
that employees understand the risks
and comply with policy, he says.
“It’s much harder to make users
comply when the compliance says
they can’t do their job,” Boles says.
42 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
Ben Dickie
Banting says when users take IT
into their own hands and circum-
vent security policies, numerous
“legal and compliance implications”
begin to surface. “Cloud-based
storage is encountering a push-pull
between an individual user’s con-
venience and need for security and
regulatory compliance,” he says. “IT
managers are going to have to make
some very difficult decisions about
privacy this forthcoming year, given
recent events.”
A major hurdle preventing ex-
ecutives from deploying consumer-
like file-sharing solutions is “cloud
aversion,” Dickie says. This has
lessened recently, he explains, but
“information security” is a stum-
bling block for some CIOs who
don’t want sensitive data, trade se-
crets, etc. in the cloud. Positively,
he says, many vendors are ap-
proaching file sharing from a more
security-minded standpoint, both
by offering strong in-transit and
at-rest encryption and offering ad-
ministration tools for policy en-
forcement. One particular solution,
for example, enables configuring
automated policy enforcement so
that if a user tries to upload a cer-
tain file type or a document con-
taining a sensitive word, the file is
automatically quarantined.
Porter-Roth says that although
file-share/document-collaboration
services are “usually” secure, users
aren’t necessarily security-aware
and may inadvertently send a
link to a person who grants root-
level access to an entire directory.
Additionally, many services are
mobile-enabled, meaning “if I
picked up someone’s phone, I could
go to their file share and see, down-
load, [and] email any of their files,”
he says. Elsewhere, using file-share
services effectively allows for the
creation of information silos, he
says, because a user might have
copies of a file saved to a local hard
drive, in a company document-
management system, to a cloud ser-
vice, and in any number of other
services the employee deals with.
TAKE CHARGE
In recent research Info-Tech com-
piled on eight cloud file-sharing
vendors, the firm noted that knowl-
edge workers are taking to such
solutions faster than other content-
collaboration tools because they’re
immediately mobile-ready and
employees understand the “file-
folder” approach many services
take. Info-Tech notes, however, that
half the vendors now support full
IT administration, security, and
audit controls and some support
private/public data storage op-
tions, although private, enterprise-
controlled cloud encryption is still
missing. Vendors, Info-Tech re-
ports, are also focusing more now
on social collaboration via features
such as threaded discussions, per-
sonalized activity streams, tasks,
and synchronous file editing. As
such, Info-Tech predicts the file-
sharing and collaboration mar-
kets will see convergence in the
coming five years, and managed
file-transfer and cloud backup ven-
dors will make major moves into
the cloud file-sharing market in the
coming 18 months.
Dickie says many very strong
enterprise solutions are now avail-
able, and many are positioning
themselves as secure enterprise al-
ternatives. Businesses considering
purchasing such solutions should
ensure they provide the admin-
istrative controls the enterprise
needs, he says. Currently, there’s

a fairly broad spectrum of security
features within solutions, he says,
including some being pure-play se-
curity options and others relying
on their partner ecosystems. “As
an enterprise it’s kind of a matter
of knowing what your risk toler-
ance is and then matching that to a
vendor in the space that provides
those types of security,” he says.
Banting recommends companies
consider restricting employees to
using only centrally managed file-
sharing services. Too many busi-
nesses today turn a blind eye to
employees’ use of file-sharing ser-
vices, he says, and IT must examine
why users want to use the services
and address the issues with a cor-
porate alternative. “Additionally,
businesses should look to protect
the documents themselves and
not just the places where they’re
stored,” he says. IRM (information
rights management), for example,
can protect sensitive documents
from being viewed, edited, or
distributed by unauthorized per-
sonnel, he says.
Porter-Roth recommends deter-
mining as a company which service
is right, obtain a company subscrip-
tion, and then request all company
business is done on that company
edition. While companies can ban
personal sharing services from in-
ternal networks, usage isn’t likely
to stop, he says. “The best way is
to allow a file-sharing service by
making it a company standard ap-
plication,” he says.
Durga says when evaluating solu-
tions, involve key IT staff to address
critical data management, security,
and integration challenges; involve
key business stakeholders to en-
sure the solution addresses practical
needs and is relatively easy to use;
look at security holistically (include
consideration of authentication, au-
thorization, encryption, data center
security, and physical security); en-
sure the company has a firm grasp on
SLAs; perform a content inventory if
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
While companies can ban personal
sharing services from internal networks,
usage isn’t likely to stop. “The best way
is to allow a file-sharing service by mak-
ing it a company standard application.”
required and categorize documents
in terms of confidentiality and secu-
rity requirements; and anticipate data
and process integration points before
getting started.
SET POLICY
Also regarding file-sharing and
document-collaboration solutions
is ensuring clearly defined ac-
ceptable usage policies are imple-
mented. Policies should specify
content that can and can’t be up-
loaded, Dickie says. “Obviously,
more sensitive information you’re
going to want to keep on premises
and discourage employees from
uploading,” he says. Some solu-
tions can help enforce areas of an
AUP (acceptable use policy), but
end-user education must also occur,
he says. Further, ensure policy has
teeth. “You’re not going to get user
compliance unless you specify what
the penalties are for uploading or
abusing a cloud file-sharing solu-
tion,” Dickie says. For example,
policy might state that uploading
prohibited content can result in
sanctions up to termination.
Also ensure that employees read
the policy and sign off on it. Then,
Dickie says, enforce policy in all
instances of non-compliance. “As
Draconian as it sounds, I’d say that
sometimes you have to publicize
those instances of non-compliance,
as well,” he says. Overall, any AUP
should help “create a balance be-
tween protecting the enterprise but
not make the policy so restrictive
that there’s no point in going down
Bud Porter-Roth
principal consultant, Porter-Roth Associates
this road with deploying CFS types
of solutions anyway,” Dickie says.
Porter-Roth’s experience is that
policies typically aren’t very effec-
tive because cloud-type applica-
tions can and are used on personal
devices that escape corporate poli-
cies. “Even with a policy, most com-
panies don’t monitor or limit the
use of these applications,” he says.
Because some companies don’t en-
force policy, Porter-Roth says, three
or four different file-sharing services
may be in use within the company.
For companies considering using
a cloud-based file-sharing service,
Boles generally recommends exam-
ining if the challenge they’re facing
can be appropriately addressed
with a cloud service. If users are
turning to such services, he says,
there’s likely a need for greater
collaboration and data access.
Companies should also consider the
benefits of these services (low cost,
global accessibility, low commit-
ment required, etc.) and whether
the company is culturally geared
to trust a public cloud service or
should consider a more enterprise-
focused solution. If building a solu-
tion internally, determine the target
usage and scope, and how extensive
security requirements must be, he
says. “It’s really as simple as that:
Recognizing whether there’s a need
out there and recognizing if you’re
going to try and address it within
the enterprise, and then determine
whether the public cloud is an op-
tion based on compliance and other
factors,” he says. ●
PC Today / February 2014 43
 MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD

Tablets For Enterprises

How The Device Stacks Up Against Smartphones & PCs For Business Purposes

An ever-increasing amount of
workers are bringing their personal
tablets into the workplace, and
many who aren’t want their enter-
prises to deploy them. Despite this,
some executives have doubts about
what tablets can offer their compa-
nies. Some also question whether tab-
lets can provide more services or give
users the tools necessary to complete
more tasks.
Plenty of experts believe that tablets
definitely deserve consideration from
executives, including in terms of even
potentially temporarily or permanently
replacing PCs throughout a company.
TABLETS VS. THE FIELD
There’s no question the popu-
larity of tablets is swelling among
consumers and businesses. Forrester
Research (www.forrester.com) data from
late 2013, for example, predicted a
global installed base of 327 million
tablets by the end of 2013 (905 million
by 2017), with 39 million being tab-
lets enterprises purchase. Key drivers
include portability, ease of use, end
user preferences, senior executives’
desires, enhanced productivity, and
better customer experience. Forrester
states some verticals, such as health-
care, are supplanting laptops with
tablets (or hybrid, dockable devices
functioning as tablets and laptops).
Forrester expects business-owned tab-
lets to increase to make up 18% of the
tablet market by 2017.
Still, a belief lingers that tablets
lag behind PCs in certain busi-
ness-specific respects, including
when performing processor-inten-
sive tasks, working with complex
data, and creating original content.
Andrew Borg, Aberdeen Group
(www.aberdeen.com) research director
for enterprise mobility and collabo-
ration, says there are caveats to such
generalizations. How we discussed

Currently, tablets can Tablets possess several Due to compatibility In 2014, tablets should
provide an ideal tool for features that many ex- reasons and technical be lighter and thinner and
certain positions and perts find advantageous capabilities, some provide more powerful
departments, but many over smartphones (screen experts view Microsoft processing abilities, more
experts don’t view them as sizes, content, etc.) and tablets as being able to integrated memory, and other
Key being able to replace PCs laptops (weight, portabil- provide several enter- abilities that make them more
Points companywide yet. ity, battery life, etc.). prise-related benefits. business-ready.

44 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com

 MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD

“Only if there are supporting applications
and apps that make the tablet relevant to
a task or job will tablets become effective.”
Bob Egan
CEO and founder, Sepharim Group
to justify tablets is like buying a lake
in order to have a glass of water.”
Tablets do integrate well, Egan
says, in such areas as the boardroom
to replace paper, for presentations, to
provide “roving” IT support, for sales
departments, and audio/video/pre-
sentation conference calls.

PROS & CONS

tablets toward the end of 2013
might be very different from what
we talk about as 2014 progresses, he
says. Quad- or octa-core processors
could do away with the question
of processing ability, he says, while
all tablets can access some version
of Microsoft Office now, thus doc-
ument and content creation is no
longer a differentiator.
Business-wise, where tablets fall
short when compared with laptops
is in their OSes. A tablet’s OS is op-
timized for battery life rather than
“multi-mode fluidity,” or easily
moving content among apps, which
is required in file management.
Exceptions include Windows Surface
and Pro tablets, Borg says, which
from a technical-abilities perspective
don’t suffer from such limitations
and can handle content creation and
dynamically or fluidly move con-
tent between tablet apps. What’s not
clear, though, is if “the enterprise is
looking at Microsoft’s tablet strategy
as the answer,” he says.
Charles Brett, Freeform Dynamics
(www.freeformdynamics.com) prin-
cipal analyst, says he believes tab-
lets “almost certainly” can’t replace
PCs companywide, and to what
extent they can replace PCs at all
relates to individual needs. For
jobs requiring minimal movement
(traders, call center operators, etc.),
he says PCs still satisfy associated
requirements most cost-effectively,
he says. Brett explains that tablets
are more relevant to such enterprise
workers as sales people and execu-
tives, though an executive’s desire
for tablets may be based on image
vs. needs. “Then there are those in
between. Even in the latter cases,
usefulness—measured in ROI—will
only occur if there are supporting
applications and apps that make a
tablet relevant to a task or job,” Brett
says. “Such applications and apps
don’t happen overnight. Remember
that PCs already work and thus may
be cheaper for obtaining short-term
benefits. Always ask who is going to
use what and why.”
Bob Egan, Sepharim Group (www
.sepharimgroup.com) CEO and founder,
also believes tablets can’t yet replace
PCs companywide. Companies that
have tried end up buying keyboards
for the tablet but find the tablet-key-
board “combination isn’t as comfort-
able or productive to use as a PC,”
he says. Egan says he sees tablets as
generally augmenting PC installa-
tions, not replacing them. “Tablets
are mostly being used by high-level
execs and field force personnel, espe-
cially sales,” he says. “Tablets are not
PC replacements.”
In terms of integrating with en-
terprise applications, Brett says it
is possible, but the process is rarely
simple and not yet as easy as it is
with PCs. Acquiring tablets isn’t just
a question of buying them and ob-
taining enterprise benefits, he says.
“Only if there are supporting ap-
plications and apps that make the
tablet relevant to a task or job will
tablets become effective,” he says.
Purchasing tablet-optimized applica-
tions can accelerate the process, but
he explains that doing this “in order
Among the pros tablets possess
over laptops is weight. Even com-
pared with the lightest laptop, Borg
says tablets win out. Further, at least
historically, tablet battery life has
been 10 times greater than that of
the traditional laptop, though this is
changing, he says. Having a work-
oriented mobile device that’s easy
to carry, offers long battery life, and
can provide full connectivity while
in motion translates to something
workers can use in many more en-
vironments than otherwise possible,
says Borg. Conversely, the “mo-
bility” of laptops essentially means
carrying them to meetings and con-
ference rooms and using them at a
desk or table. Where meetings with
customers and colleagues and trav-
eling are concerned, the “difference
between 3.5 pounds vs. a pound or
less with much longer battery life is a
big deal,” adds Borg.
Beyond weight, Egan counts
tablets’ instant-on ability and
form factor as advantages, though
he notes similar features are
showing up in Ultrabooks and
convertibles, too. Compared with
smartphones, though, few people
want to hold a tablet up and use it
like a phone, he says. Brett says be-
yond providing a “small measure
of fashion,” tablets’ larger screens
generally make them better for Web
browsing and other applications than
smartphones. “Tablets can be too
big or too small, as well,” he says.
“A classic iPad isn’t something you
might want to carry when surveying
a large physical site,” he says.
Borg says a smartphone’s screen
size regulates it to being more of a

PC Today / February 2014 45


“personal device." Sharing content
with one person is difficult, he says,
but “forget about sharing content
in person with more than one per-
son. You can’t.” Tablets are ideal for
collaboration and sharing, he says.
“Two, three, or even five people can
gather around a tablet and actually
get a lot of work done” in terms of
sharing information, viewing data
analysis, and consuming media,
he says.
Compared with tablets, Borg
believes Ultrabooks present some
benefits (sleekness, long battery
life, business-ready qualities, etc.)
although they’re a bit pricey cur-
rently. “They’re definitely an exec-
utive toy,” he says. “The question
is, for the majority of your workers,
are you going to buy an Ultrabook
for a premium price or a tablet?”
Executives may get both, but it’s
doubtful the rest of the organiza-
tion will get two pieces of hard-
ware to replace a laptop, he says.
If Ultrabook pricing comes down,
however, a true three-tier ecosystem
could develop in 2014, he says.
Brett sees Ultrabook and tablets
on a probable collision course, “at
least until a tablet has Ultrabook pro-
cessing requirements.” Essentially,
the devices fill a similar space, he
says, though Ultrabooks are more ex-
pensive but with better processing
ability. “Remember that PCs already
work and thus may be cheaper for
obtaining short-term benefits. This
is the Ultrabook’s real advantage,”
he says.
THE MICROSOFT EFFECT
Although sales of Microsoft tab-
lets have trailed those of Apple and
Android tablets, many pundits be-
lieve that at least from a business
and IT outlook, Microsoft tablets
provide a few notable advantages
over the other two platforms. One
advantage is compatibility, because
a vast number of businesses already
run Microsoft OSes and business,
productivity, enterprise, and other
46 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
There will come a point when “we
have to talk about what comes after
tablets.”
research director for enterprise mobility and collaboration, Aberdeen Group
software. Egan says a big challenge
with iOS and Android tablets is nei-
ther have a solid file management
system, “especially one that meets
the generally accepted principles of
legal and audit compliance trails.”
Brett says with some changes (“cur-
rently Windows 8 devices remain too
large, too heavy, and too landscape in
orientation”), the financial and prac-
tical advantages of using Windows
tablets could be significant for enter-
prises in terms of “using the same
infrastructure, applications, and de-
velopment skills without having to
adopt iOS and Android ones.”
From a technical and capability
perspective, “Microsoft’s strategy
is probably the most well thought
out, most tightly integrated strategy
for both OS and business applica-
tions available on any tablet,” Borg
says. Although Surface Pro is stable
technology that’s business-oriented,
well-integrated, and offers tremen-
dous potential, Microsoft’s initial
technology integration and its recent
marketing and evangelism “has been
lacking,” he says.
Borg says current Windows tablet
business adoption is “miniscule"
vs. Apple and Android adoption.
Aberdeen Group research, however,
indicates when asking business-re-
lated respondents of their plans and
budgets for tablets for 2013, “the ratios
involved almost invert themselves.”
Specifically, 35% of respondents indi-
cate plans to adopt Windows Surface
tablets. Adjust for the “Microsoft mo-
bile reality factor,” or viewing over
past years what respondents indi-
cated vs. actually acquired and the
2013 projected adoption drops to 4%,
with employee demands for other
Andrew Borg
tablet platforms, cost-effectiveness,
and other factors playing roles. Still,
while iPad dominates the U.S. busi-
ness market currently, Borg says, there
will come a point when “we have to
talk about what comes after tablets.”
Other form factors will surface that
will “matter as much or more” than
tablets, he says.
TABLETS IN 2014
Moving into this year, Borg sees
two extremes developing for the
tablet market. At the low end, he
expects tablets to follow a trend now
occurring with smartphones in that
low-end models are becoming very
affordable. At the very high end,
Borg says tablets could emerge with
a minimum of quad-core processing,
more integrated RAM, longer bat-
tery life, higher resolution displays,
even thinner and lighter form fac-
tors, as well as more mature enter-
prise ecosystems to support and
manage them.
Borg says while initial tablets were
dismissed as not having business-
ready tools available, “with security
ecosystems and cloud effectively
built into tablets, that argument is
dissipating, if not dissolving. With
high-end tablets widely available
in 2014, we should move past the
argument that tablets aren’t busi-
ness-ready,” he says. For compa-
nies facing, say, a three- to five-year
laptop refresh cycle in 2014, Borg
says the question is “are you going
to buy all your users laptops or may
you buy tablets for field sales, execu-
tives, and applicable groups?” He ex-
pects we’ll start to see “tablets begin
to replace laptops in their normal
acquisition cycle in 2014.” ●
 MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD

Trend To Watch: BYOS

If Employees Can Bring Their Own Devices, Why Not Software?

In a “Future of Work” report out-
lining enterprise trends to watch for in
2014, research firm Ovum (www.ovum
.com) quotes Canadian philosopher
Herbert McLuhan, who died in 1980,
as saying “our age of anxiety is, in
great part, the result of trying to do
today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools.
We shape our tools, and thereafter
our tools shape us.” Fast-forward to
2014, and those words echo with what
many enterprise employees currently
feel. As Ovum puts it, “employee frus-
tration and operational latency are in-
creasing” as workers try to perform
their jobs using old tools. As a result,
“empowered employees are self-se-
lecting applications on their own de-
vices and using cloud services to get
the job done.”
Generically, employees bringing
software into the workplace is known
as BYOS (bring your own software/
services) or BYOA (bring your own ap-
plications). A component of the larger
“consumerization of IT” trend that also
includes BYOD (bring your down de-
vice), BYOS is picking up considerable
steam but holds positives and nega-
tives that enterprises, whether they
want to or not, must decide what, if
anything, they must do to address.
THE NATURE OF BYOS
Rob Enderle, principal analyst with
Enderle Group (www.enderlegroup.com),
says BYOS essentially plays to an idea
“that certain employees need their
own unique tools.” Years ago, secre-
taries brought or demanded the word
processing program they needed, for
example. “I used to use my own presen-
tation software in the 1980s, and it’s not
uncommon for designers and graphic
artists to bring their own software tools,
as well,” Enderle says.
Today, says Avni Rambhia, Frost &
Sullivan (www.frost.com) digital media
industry manager, BYOS involves

Often, employees bring While BYOS might BYOS can introduce Security and data loss are
their own software into seem a new occurrence several benefits both among more obvious risks
the workplace because much like the BYOD for employees and associated with BYOS,
they feel an applica- phenomenon, it’s not. enterprises, including as third-party apps that
tion is the tool that best The practice actu- enhancing collabora- employees install may store
Key helps them perform ally dates back several tion, innovation, and company data in public
Points their jobs. decades. productivity. cloud space.

PC Today / February 2014 47


employees accessing company data
and possible company apps on de-
vices and computers on which per-
sonal, third-party apps the company
hasn’t vetted also reside. An em-
ployee, for example, might access
company email on a smartphone also
running a music streaming app.
Richard Edwards, Ovum principal
analyst, says BYOS and BOYD both
generally involve employees and not
IT deciding the tool, app, or service best
for a given job. BYOS, he says, dates to
the arrival of PC spreadsheet and da-
tabase applications in the 1980s, which
enabled employees to build or acquire
business applications the organization
didn’t necessarily manage or formally
sanction. Unlike today, however, Web
services didn’t exist then, thus com-
pany data stayed relatively on-prem-
ises. As PC numbers grew and Web
access arrived, the subsequent lack of
control organizations felt led to more
Draconian measures, Edwards says.
“This inadvertently has partially fueled
today’s BYOD/BYOS market and is a
natural response to the beleaguered/
overworked employee who is simply
trying to get the job done,” he says.
Peter Crocker, Smith Point Ana-
lytics (www.smithspointanalytics.com)
founder, sees the current drive toward
BYOS as being different than BYOD, a
trend that executives essentially drove
through expectations of using “flashy
and powerful devices.” BYOS is a
more grassroots trend, he says, as em-
ployees all across the organization are
experimenting with new apps. Whereas
variables with BYOD are more limited
and the industry is standardizing on
iOS and Android, he says, the array of
apps employees can bring into work is
endless, meaning more chaos. In short,
SaaS and mobile apps are providing
easy and cost-effective access to a wide
range of apps and fueling the entry of
consumer-grade software into business
environments, he says.
Ben Dickie, Info-Tech Research
Group (www.infotech.com) senior con-
sulting analyst, says mobility is another
factor. In the past, when a knowledge
48 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
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Primarily, BYOS enables employees to use
“their” tools, ones they “specified for the
job and/or know how to use.”
Rob Enderle
principal analyst, Enderle Group
While IT-savvy employees tend to
adopt BYOD/BYOS to enhance their
own workplace usefulness, “employees
aren’t always best placed to consider
long-term effects in terms of IT gover-
nance, business risk, or industry/author-
ity compliance.”
Richard Edwards
principal analyst, Ovum
worker came into a company, she was apps, meanwhile, can particularly
fairly limited to applications provi- benefit companies with international
sioned or imaged on her machine. With customers, clients, and employees and
the rise of the cloud and mobile devices, prove more convenient and cost-effec-
Dickie says, it’s much easier for em- tive alternatives than trying to set up a
ployees to bring in applications. For ex- conference call bridge, she says.
ample, IT might install Google Chrome Elsewhere, the vast choice of apps
on an employee’s system, but the em- employees have enables them to select
ployee can likely install Web apps to the newest and most innovative ones
the browser without gaining adminis- that are best for them and how they
trative permissions. work, Crocker says. Most employees,
however, need to collaborate with co-
PROS & CONS workers, and the variety of applications
Primarily, BYOS enables employees potentially in use among co-workers
to use “their” tools, ones they “specified can make collaboration difficult, let
for the job and/or know how to use,” alone IT supporting each, Crocker says.
Enderle says. This can provide an ad- Another BYOS concern is the enter-
vantage vs. using enterprise-deployed prise’s ability to secure company data
tools, because employees believe their used in consumer-based apps lacking
tools are best for the job, and “they enterprise-level control and that store
are often closest to that job,” he says. data in the public cloud, he says.
Downsides can include how the enter- Edwards says BYOS can provide
prise will manage support, integration, a simple workaround to inhibitors
and recovering data if an employee gets or perceived hindrances, as well as
sick, dies, or leaves, he says. prove an innovative form of informa-
Productivity and collaboration tion and communication technology.
are other often-cited BYOS benefits. While IT-savvy employees tend to
Online calendars, for example, enable adopt BYOD/BYOS to enhance their
team members to coordinate sched- own workplace usefulness, he says,
ules whereas an enterprise solution “employees aren’t always best placed
may not, Rambhia says. Video chat to consider long-term effects in terms
 MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD

“There’s also the risk of ongoing main- this innovation trend but need to do
it the right way.”
tenance. If a BYOS title gets locked into Crocker adds that IT managers can
company workflow but the vendor and use BYOS to their advantage by un-
company don’t have an SLA agreement, derstanding what consumer software
employees are using and seeking ways
there’s a real risk of downtime or data loss in which to support and integrate the
should the third-party vendor flounder.” software. If some employees are more
Avni Rambhia productive using consumer software,
it’s likely others may also benefit, he
digital media industry manager, Frost & Sullivan
says. For this strategy to work, IT man-
agers and users must understand and
take responsibility for the risks/ben-
of IT governance, business risk, or in- Those risks, she says, include data efits and make decisions case by case.
dustry/authority compliance.” files covered by regulations or NDAs For example, he says, storing sensitive
Dickie’s security advice to CIOs or other contracts “exiting the pur- company data in a consumer cloud file
and CTOs is to not act in a knee-jerk view of data leakage prevention or sharing service vs. enterprise solution
manner. “I think that’s a trap that a other security systems and potentially is a different scenario than using an
lot of CIOs fall into,” he says. After leaking.” Less obvious risks include enterprise-oriented social network to
discovering an employee is using her inconsistent document formats, such find new leads vs. using the corporate
own application without formal IT as when an employee creates docu- customer management system.
authorization or support, they may ments using a third-party app in a As a security purist, Rambhia be-
view it as something that needs to be format the company-wide standard lieves BYOS is never a good idea,
locked down, he says. Instead, look at can’t effectively leverage. “There’s especially on platforms where sensi-
the underlying reasons employees are also the risk of ongoing mainte- tive data, code, designs, etc. reside.
bringing in apps, he says. Often, it’s nance,” she says. “If a BYOS title gets “From a practical perspective, how-
because they aren’t getting the sup- locked into company workflow but ever, BYOS is unavoidable,” she says.
port needed for existing applications or the vendor and company don’t have “Acknowledging that BYOS will be
aren’t successfully enabled to complete an SLA agreement, there’s a real risk present and ensuring employees are
their jobs with existing applications. “I of downtime or data loss should the well educated in safe ways of using
think the senior IT leaders need to do third-party vendor flounder.” and sharing data is critical,” she says.
almost a little bit of soul searching,” Ultimately, Rambhia adds, “security
he says, by finding where the gaps are WHAT TO DO is nearly always a person problem,
in the software they’re providing and Edwards sees two angles for BYOS and it’s best solved with person-cen-
then looking at formal licensing or for enterprises. One, BYOS can pro- tric solutions.” While it’s incumbent
formal support of BYOS-type apps. vide a useful but generic/commodity on managers to get IT to buy in “be-
Rambhia says while the cloud and service for all employees, such as file cause breaks will happen, and they will
devices are changing how people sharing/syncing abilities they aren’t happen at the worst possible time,” she
think, interact, work, and store data, currently provided. Two, BYOS can says, IT should look at what software
companies are often slow to incorpo- provide a useful LOB (line of busi- is being installed most often and de-
rate new technologies into the range ness) application that IT might con- termine if it can bring it under a com-
of devices their employees use. A com- sider too low-priority to source or pany-managed umbrella.
pany, for example, might use a corpo- develop, such as an app that lets an Ultimately, Edwards advises CIOs
rate chat client that doesn’t support engineer view CAD files on a tablet. and business managers to determine
smartphone use. Thus, an employee Crocker points out that much in- the motivation behind BYOD/BYOS
either sacrifices connectivity with team novation in technology markets and react accordingly. “The consum-
members on a group conference call originates in the consumer segment erization of IT is being driven by
when he’s on the smartphone or he because of enterprise adversity to ubiquitous, consumer-friendly, com-
installs a third-party app that interfaces risk. Many consumer-grade apps are munication and computing capabili-
with the corporate client. While IT may entering enterprises via “new hires ties. This is unprecedented,” he says.
be understandably worried about this, out of school who have limited at- “As a result, we are likely to see more
she says, it’s a calculated risk on the tachments to legacy software and change in the remaining six years of
employee’s part that brings about secu- thrive on trying new things,” he says. this decade than in the 30 years that
rity risks. “Enterprises can take advantage of preceded it.” ●

PC Today / February 2014 49


Portable Storage Guide
Compare Features To Find The Right Solution
Whether it’s a desktop, laptop,
tablet, smartphone, or camera,
you’re bound to reach a time when
the device gets dangerously close
to reaching maximum storage ca-
pacity. And while you may use the
opportunity to clean off your hard
drive to free up some space, it isn’t
always possible or convenient to do
so. Fortunately, there are quite a few
portable storage options available
that can give you the extra capacity
you need without having to upgrade
your device.
EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES
External hard drives are a fit
for people who want a lot of extra
storage capacity, but also need
something portable that doesn’t re-
quire internal installation. You will
most commonly find external hard
drives in sizes ranging roughly from
160GB to 2TB, but that certainly isn’t
50 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
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the limit. Some vendors offer hard
drive enclosures that can be used to
transform internal hard drives into
external ones, and some enclosures
support multiple hard drives. For that
reason, you could conceivably hit ca-
pacities of up to 20TB or more in the
future, which would almost amount
to a portable server.
In addition to hard drives, which
are great for mass storage, many ven-
dors are also releasing portable SSDs
(solid-state drives), which provide
faster read and write speeds and typi-
cally more capacity than hard disk
drives. SSDs, and portable models
in particular, have historically been
more expensive than hard drives,
but prices are dropping every year.
Still, in order to buy a 1TB SSD, for in-
stance, you could end up paying up-
wards of $1,000. So, for mass storage
purposes, hard disk drives remain the
most affordable option.
Whether you are contemplating
the purchase of a hard disk drive or
an SSD, another consideration is data
transfer speeds. Determine what in-
terface the device uses and the speed
it provides before buying. The most
common interface is USB (Universal
Serial Bus), with most current products
supporting USB 2.0 (with speeds up to
480 megabits per second) or the newer
USB 3.0 (up to 5 gigabits per second).
Why you need it: External hard
drives are great for storing media,
like videos, music, and photos, be-
cause those files often take up a quite
a bit of space on your device’s internal
memory. Then, you can either choose
to view or play the media straight
from the hard drive or move it back
onto your desktop momentarily, if
necessary. If high speed is important
(as is the case if you intend to install a
program on a portable drive), an SSD
is likely the best choice.

USB FLASH DRIVES
External hard drives do have
a larger capacity, but sometimes a
smaller storage device might be the
solution to your problem. USB flash
drives are often much more compact
than external hard drives and are also
quite a bit less expensive, depending
on the capacity. As with SSDs, the
higher you go in capacity, the bigger
the price jump will be. The sweet spot
for flash drives in terms of a cost-
benefit analysis is often in the 4GB to
64GB range.
But where they lack in mass storage
potential, they make up for in design
innovation. The typical flash drive is
about the size of a pack of gum, but
there are also super compact alter-
natives that are about the size of a
quarter or even a memory card. And
you can also find USB flash drives that
attach to a key chain or are part of a
Swiss Army Knife.
Why you need it: Because USB
drives are more portable than hard
drives, they offer a few different use
cases. For instance, you could use a USB
flash drive as a short-term backup solu-
tion or to transfer small datasets from
one computer to another. You could
also upload an entire presentation to the
drive and access it on any computer due
to its plug-and-play functionality.
MEMORY CARDS
Memory cards are about as small
as it gets when it comes to portable
storage. Traditional SD (Secure
Digital) cards themselves are ap-
proximately the size of a quarter, but
there are also much smaller microSD
cards. The price-to-capacity ratio for
memory cards is similar to that of
USB drives. 1GB and 2GB cards are
often less than $10, whereas 64GB
high-capacity cards can cost around
$60 to $200 or more.
Consider a portable storage device that uses the USB 3.0 interface
in order to enjoy super-fast data transfer speeds.
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Memory cards also have different
read and write speeds that will affect
performance. For instance, a Class 2
memory card will have a minimum
speed of 2 megabytes per second
and a Class 10 memory card will
have a minimum speed of 10MBps.
If you’re mainly aiming for addi-
tional storage capacity, these num-
bers might not concern you. But if
you’re buying a memory card to re-
cord HD video or take high-quality
pictures, the faster read and write
speeds will translate into signifi-
cantly better performance.
Why you need it: In addition to
using memory cards for cameras, you
can also use them to expand memory
in a mobile device. Many smart-
phones and tablets have memory
card slots and can support additional
memory of 16GB, 32GB, or more.
Memory cards can be used in a va-
riety of other devices with slots as
well, including printers, televisions,
Blu-ray players, and more.
SHARED BENEFITS
While every portable storage solu-
tion has its unique traits, they also
have a lot in common.
➤ Ruggedization. External hard
drives and USB drives may be built
for harsher conditions and have
ruggedized features for better du-
rability. SSDs and flash drives don’t
have moving parts, so ruggedized
versions of those devices will have
quite a bit of durability. But if you
really want the mass capacity of an
external hard drive and need to pro-
tect it from the elements, you can
always purchase an enclosure for
extra security.
➤ Security. Many hard drives,
USB drives, and memory cards fea-
ture encryption settings to protect
your data. Some portable storage
solutions will let you encrypt the
entire drive or select certain files
on the device you want to protect
more than others. It’s also pos-
sible to partition or segment a hard
drive into separate parts and put
sensitive information in a container
away from other data. You can
then encrypt or even hide that part
of the drive while leaving the rest of
it unencumbered.
➤ Wireless. Another feature that
external hard drive, flash drives, and
now even memory cards share is the
ability to connect to other devices
via a Wi-Fi connection. This allows
you to transfer data from one loca-
tion to another without requiring
a physical connection. But perhaps
the most common use for Wi-Fi in
portable storage is to stream content.
For instance, you could load a video
onto a hard drive, connect it to your
wireless network, and then stream
it to any connected computer or Wi-
Fi-capable television. This is particu-
larly useful for business travelers
because it provides the ability to
stream a video presentation or slide-
show without requiring the user to
install it on the host computer. ●
PC Today / February 2014 51

Internet Tracking
How Websites & Companies Glean Information From Your Web Browsing Activity
Nearly every website you visit
uses cookies or some other form of
Internet tracking technology to store
information about your browsing
history and your Web behavior.
Although this sounds potentially
nefarious, the reality is that many
websites simply use this data to help
you save time and provide you with
relevant information the next time
you visit. Internet tracking has grown
much more sophisticated over time,
however, as companies try to use
the technology to gather more data
about customers and their online ac-
tivity. It’s important to not only know
where this phenomenon is going, but
also how and why it originated.
HTTP & FLASH COOKIES
The use of cookies traces back to the
1990s when Web browsing became
prevalent. A computer services com-
pany wanted a way to check whether
52 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
visitors to its website had stopped
at the site previously. “At that time,
there was no such technology to do
that, so the website companies devel-
oped cookies to track users and their
activities,” says Alan Tang, senior con-
sulting analyst at Info-Tech Research
Group (www.infotech.com). HTTP or
browser cookies are simply “small
pieces of data sent from a website
and stored in a user’s Web browser,”
Tang says. Each time the user visits the
website, Tang explains, “the browser
sends the cookie back to a server to
save information about [his] previous
activity.”
HTTP cookies are commonly
used by online retailers for person-
alization and customization pur-
poses. For instance, if you visit an
online store and search for books
about football, the next time you
visit that online store, you may see
recommendations for more books
and other football-related products.
Websites can also use cookies to
store passwords or track browsing
history and user behavior.
However, traditional HTTP cook-
ies are limited to a degree because
they can only store about 4KB of
data. For companies that want more
storage space to keep as much infor-
mation as possible about the people
visiting their websites, there are
Flash cookies. Created in 2000, Flash
cookies, also known as local shared
objects, take advantage of the Flash
technology that some websites use,
and they are capable of storing as
much as 100KB of data. This gives
websites the ability to not only store
more data at once, but to also get
more context from that data.
You can store Flash cookies on
your computer rather than your
Web browser, and some websites
will even back up traditional HTTP
 MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD

for those items or retailers begin to

“Cookies are your friends, but they can appear as you browse other web-
also be used against you. You can get sites. This is often the work of a
information that’s more relevant to you, marketer trying to target you with
ads and increase the chance of a
but [cookies] can also be leveraged by sale by maintaining your awareness
malware to steal information from you. even when you navigate away from
The most important thing from a security the company’s website.
Internet tracking doesn’t stop
perspective is that the technology isn’t there. Companies including Google
necessarily bad, but the collection of this and Microsoft continually look
information should be more transparent for ways to move away from tra-
ditional cookies and even digital
to the end user and the customer should fingerprinting, which tracks only
have control over it.” one platform at a time, to platform-
Alan Tang independent tools that track your
profile regardless of which device
senior consulting analyst, Info-Tech Research Group
you use. Tang says the ultimate
goal for profile-tracking technology
is to “bring data from different plat-
cookies to those local shared objects. The next step is to research and keep forms together and take the perfor-
That way, even if you delete a cookie your anti-malware applications and mance and accuracy of information
in your browser, a Flash website can browser up-to-date. Every time you collection to the next level.”
still grab information from a Flash visit a website, it could be tracking Using Microsoft as an example,
cookie saved on your computer. your information. There are tools Tang explains that this approach
This can raise security concerns for that will give you a full list of web- can lead to “cross-channel” pro-
some companies and can put your sites that are tracking your informa- file tracking where it follows you
personal information at risk if you tion, and you can choose whether from your smartphone to your
aren’t careful. or not to allow those websites to laptop and even to your televi-
track you.” sion. “If you’re running a Windows
FRIEND OR FOE? laptop [and] an Xbox, and using
Although cookies can be helpful MORE WEB TRACKING Internet Explorer and Bing Search,
and allow a website to provide a With the increased use of mobile Microsoft can immediately consoli-
custom experience for an individual devices (which don’t use cookies), date those platforms together and
visitor, “they can also be leveraged advertisers sought new forms of gather more accurate information
against you by malware to steal in- tracking technology. So-called dig- about your behavior,” he says.
formation,” Tang says. He explains ital fingerprinting, for example, Perhaps the most interesting
that there are thousands of groups involves collecting all of the hard- thing about the profile-tracking ap-
dedicated to using a person’s infor- ware and software information proach, according to Tang, is that it
mation against him. Cookies and available about a user’s device as will have a “huge impact on online
other Internet tracking technolo- the user browses the Internet. In advertising.” In the past, Tang ex-
gies gather information about your this way a “fingerprint” is formed plains, companies like Google and
browsing history and general be- that is associated with a particular Microsoft only “controlled one item
havior, and hackers can use those user, allows for tracking of that in the supply chain,” but now with
cookies to spot and exploit certain user, and remains unaffected when tracking technology that can span
vulnerabilities in the future. the user deletes stored Internet across multiple platforms, “they can
For that reason, it’s important that tracking data. take control of the whole industry.”
your employees, especially those Technologies such as digital Both companies are already using
with access to sensitive informa- fingerprinting are often used for profile tracking to some degree, but
tion, be aware of such threats. “You targeted advertising. For instance, it will be interesting to see where
have to teach your end user how after visiting a company’s website the technology goes from here and
to protect [his] information when or searching for a specific product how the technology will impact the
searching online,” says Tang. “The available from an online retailer, way consumers and businesses in-
first step is to promote awareness. you may notice that advertisements teract with the Web in the future. ●

PC Today / February 2014 53


Smartphone Tips
SPECIAL CHARACTERS
WITHOUT SWITCHING
KEYBOARDS
➤ If you’re typing and need
to insert just the occasional
special character, you can
do so without switching to
a different keyboard. Press
and hold the Numbers And
Symbols (&123) key and,
without removing your finger
from the screen, move your
fingertip until it lands on the
character you wish to type.
The Numbers And Symbols
key is also helpful when you
need to enter an email ad-
dress or website URL and
the .com and @ keys are not
present on the keyboard.
54 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
A Roundup Of Helpful Advice
WINDOWS PHONE
PRESERVE YOUR CHARGE, SHUT DOWN OPEN WEB PAGES
➤ You might be among the many Windows Phone users who don’t know that
opening Web pages and not closing them means those pages are maintaining an
Internet connection (and sapping your device’s battery charge) in the background.
In Internet Explorer, tap More (three dots), tap Tabs, and then tap X however many
times is necessary to close every open tab. If you wish to clear all open Internet con-
nections in one fell swoop (that is, connections that exist in the background for various
mobile apps), you can do that by accessing the Start screen, swiping left, tapping
Settings (gear icon), tapping Wi-Fi, and sliding the Wi-Fi Networking switch to the
Off position.
ADD SOCIAL NETWORKING ACCOUNTS TO YOUR WINDOWS PHONE
➤ Windows Phone integrates social media functionality into multiple areas of the
operating system, primarily in the People hub but also (depending on the social net-
work) in the Photos hub, the Me card, and elsewhere. To add a Facebook account
to your phone, tap Settings, Email + Accounts, Add An Account, and Facebook;
enter the required login information; tap Sign In; and, if you would like to link your
Facebook and Microsoft accounts, tap Connect. There are similar steps for adding a
LinkedIn or Twitter account: tap Settings, Email + Accounts, LinkedIn or Twitter, and
Connect; you will then be redirected to a mobile Web page to log in.

Swype, don’t tap,
to type in Android
RESET THE
SWYPE DICTIONARY
➤ Newer Android devices in-
clude the Swype on-screen key-
board, which lets you glide your
finger from one letter to the next
to spell a word without having
to press each letter separately. As
with any small-screen keyboard,
the results can sometimes differ
from what you intended to type,
either because you touched a few
wrong keys or because the key-
board’s auto-correct feature incor-
rectly assumed you were trying
to type a different word. After
you enter a word that Swype
doesn’t recognize, it is added to
the Swype dictionary. If at some
point you would like to clear your
added words from the Swype
dictionary, access Settings; tap
My Device, Language & Input,
Preferences, and Reset Swype’s
Dictionary; tap the pop-up box
option to confirm that you want
to take this action.
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
ANDROID
DELETE BROWSER HISTORY
➤ If you’re using the Chrome browser with Android 4 or later, you may
be wondering how to remove your browser history. This isn’t just a
good security practice; it also keeps Chrome running lean and mean.
To access Chrome’s history, launch Chrome and type chrome:history
in the address bar. The browsing history will display. You can tap any
item in the history list to quickly go to that URL.
You can delete individual history items by tapping the drop-down
icon to the right of the item and selecting the Remove option. To remove
multiple items, tap to the left of an item; a
check mark will appear. Tap to the left of ad-
ditional items to select them, and then tap the
Remove Selected Items button.
If you want to remove all of your browsing
history in one fell swoop, go to Menu,
Settings, Advanced, and Privacy. Tap Clear
Browsing Data. A list of browsing data types
will display. Place a check mark next to
Browsing History, as well as any other data
types you wish to remove, and tap the Clear
button.
SET UP ENCRYPTION
➤ For added security, you can encrypt all of
the settings, account information, apps, and
other data on your Android device or on a SD Clear out old, unnecessary
card installed in your device. With encryp- browser data by deleting
tion established, you will be required to enter Chrome browser history.
a PIN or password every time you wish to ac-
cess anything on the device or SD card.
Before setting up encryption, make sure
your Android device is fully charged and is attached to a charger, as the
entire process can take an hour or more and must not be interrupted to
complete successfully. To apply encryption, access the Settings screen,
tap More, and then tap the appropriate option: Encrypt Device or
Encrypt External SD Card. Tap Set Screen Lock Type and then follow
the on-screen prompts to complete the process.
You can also use encryption for email communications on your
Android device. System administrators have the option to activate
the encryption option when setting up your device with a Microsoft
Exchange or ActiveSync account, but if you’re setting up such an ac-
count on your own, look for the Manual Setup option and select the Use
Secure Connection (SSL) option (which means you’ll be using the Secure
Sockets Layer encryption protocol) during setup.
PC Today / February 2014 55

SIM PIN LOCK
➤ If you’re not locking your
phone, you’re setting yourself up
for a world of trouble. Without a
SIM lock, your BlackBerry phone
can be accessed pretty easily by
anyone who manages to get their
hands on it.
When you enable the SIM PIN
lock, your phone will require a
PIN for access. If you’ve never
used the SIM PIN lock feature
before, you’ll need your default
SIM PIN code, which was pro-
vided in the documentation that
was supplied with the phone. If
you don’t know your default PIN
code, do not follow these instruc-
tions. Failure to enter the correct
code within three attempts will
lock the SIM card and prevent
you from using the phone. If this
happens, you’ll need to take the
phone to the service provider to
unlock the SIM card.
From the Home screen, select
Options, Advanced Options, and
Enable Security. If this is the first
time you’ve used the SIM lock
feature, you’ll be asked to provide
your default PIN code. Once you
enter this code, you will always
be required to enter a PIN to turn
on and use your phone.
Get a new BlackBerry,
keep your data
56 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
BLACKBERRY
TRANSFER DATA FROM A NON-BLACKBERRY DEVICE
➤ You can use BlackBerry Link software (available for Windows or Mac from
www.blackberry.com/blackberrylink) to transfer data from a non-BlackBerry de-
vice to a device running BlackBerry OS 10. If the other device is an iPhone,
sync it with iTunes, disconnect it from your computer, download and install
BlackBerry Link, connect the BlackBerry using a USB cable, select iTunes as the
music source, and access the desired views (Pictures and Video, Music) in order
to select and drag files from your computer to the BlackBerry. If you have an
Android device or a feature phone and a Windows PC, you can simply connect
both the non-Black-
Berry device and the
BlackBerry to the
PC using the corre-
sponding sync ca-
bles, open Windows
Explorer (click
Start, Accessories,
Windows Explorer),
and then drag files
directly from the
Android device or BlackBerry Link software simplifies the process of transferring
feature phone to the data from a non-BlackBerry device.
BlackBerry.
TRANSFER DATA FROM AN OLD BLACKBERRY TO A NEW ONE
➤ If you have a BlackBerry smartphone running BlackBerry 7 OS or later
and wish to transfer data from that phone to a newer model running
BlackBerry OS 10, you can use BlackBerry Link to do so. BlackBerry Link
software lets you transfer contacts (including BlackBerry Messenger con-
tacts), calendar entries, tasks, memos, messages (as in text and multimedia
messages, but not email messages), Password Keeper entries, and various
settings from one device to another. To do this, you will need to have a
media card installed in the old device as well as the password you use when
backing up your BlackBerry.
To begin, tap the Search icon on the older device, type device switch in
the search field, and tap Search. This should display a setup screen. Select
Setup, Device Switch, Using A Media Card, and Save Data. Uncheck the
Save Emails checkbox. Select Continue, and the Device Switch program
will transfer all of your information to the device’s media card. Remove the
media card and insert it in the new device. When the Device Switch interface
appears on-screen, enter the password and tap Transfer to complete the pro-
cess. To obtain email messages on the new device, select Settings, Accounts,
and Add Account, and then enter your email address and password; this
links the account to the device.

QUICKLY ENTER .COM
& OTHER DOMAINS
➤ Beginning with iOS 7, the Safari
browser no longer has a .com key
for quickly entering a domain.
With iOS 7, when you type a Web
address directly into the address
bar, as soon as you reach the point
at which you need to enter a do-
main simply tap and hold the pe-
riod key. This brings up a small
menu that lets you choose from
a short list of common domains:
.com, .us, .org, .edu, and .net. If
the website you want to visit uses
a different domain, you’ll have to
type it manually.
QUICK KEYBOARDING TIPS
➤ Having to enter a submenu
just to access the apostrophe re-
ally muddles typing words with
apostrophes, such as the con-
junctions it’s, we’ll, we’re, and
they’re. Often times, your iPhone
automatically suggests the ap-
propriate word, which lets you
press the Space key to input it.
When auto suggest utterly fails
to read your mind, however, you
can type certain words a certain
way to get auto suggest to display
the word you want. To type it’s,
we’ll, we’re, or they’re, just type
itss, welll, weree, and theyrr, re-
spectively, followed by a Space.
Stop apps from running
in the background
MOBILE OFFICE
BUSINESS ON THE ROAD
iOS
Tap and hold the period key
for a selection of domains.
SAVE & SYNC YOUR SENSITIVE DATA
➤ Apple’s iCloud Keychain, a feature new to iOS 7, stores your usernames,
passwords, credit card information, and Wi-Fi network data for all of your
iOS devices. This data is kept secure through 256-bit AES encryption. To
set it up, tap Settings, iCloud, and Keychain; set it to On; and follow the on-
screen prompts. When you first use iCloud Keychain, you can use it immedi-
ately on whatever iOS device you’re currently using; when you subsequently
enable the feature on additional iOS devices, iCloud will send an approval
request notification to the device on which you first used iCloud Keychain.
KNOW YOUR LOCATION ICONS
➤ When your iPhone’s Location Services are enabled, apps that have per-
mission to use location-based services will display a small chevron-shaped
icon when in use. In iOS 7, a solid purple icon will appear when your loca-
tion is currently being tracked or has very recently been tracked. A solid
gray icon will appear when your location has been tracked within the pre-
vious 24 hours. And an outlined purple location icon will appear when one
of your apps (such as Reminders or a social networking app) discovers that
you have entered an area that uses a geofence, which is capable of tracking
when you have entered or exited a specific perimeter. In social networking,
for example this is the technology behind “checking in” to a certain busi-
ness or other location.
DISMISS CURRENTLY RUNNING APPS
➤ The iPhone’s multitasking feature is great for quickly switching back to a
recently used app, but it also opens the door for multiple apps to run in the
background. Apps running in the background doesn’t usually hamper per-
formance, but it can, and restarting the iPhone doesn’t shut down the apps.
To view all currently running apps, press the Home button twice quickly.
Swipe left or right to locate each app you would like to shut down, and
simply swipe the app’s thumbnail screen upward to dismiss it from the list
and stop it from running. Doing this does not cause any data loss. Press the
Home screen again to return to the normal view.
PC Today / February 2014 57
 PERSONAL ELECTRONICS
TECH FOR HOME & LEISURE

D I G I TA L

The Latest Premium Electronics

CREATIVE LABS SOUND BLASTERAXX AXX 200

➤ If you like your electronics smart, then turn your ears in the
direction of Creative’s Sound BlasterAxx AXX 200 ($299.99;
us.creative.com), “the future of audio.” The “Intelligent Wireless
Sound System” sports a raft of features (including the company’s
multi-core SB-Axx1 audio processor) that, according to Creative,
would collectively add up to $1,000-plus worth of audio good-
ness if sold separately. Able to function as a full-fledged external
sound card, the Sound BlasterAxx AXX 200 plays back and re-
cords audio in real time. Further, it integrates a voice recorder,
quad microphone for 360-degree pickup, and numerous audio-en-
hancing technologies (including CrystalVoice voice-enhancement
technology) that, when all combined, provide a “mobile wireless
teleconferencing system” that can record calls, interviews, presen-
tations, meetings, and more to a microSD card. Touch-sensitive
controls, NFC support, Wireless HD Audio quality, 15 hours of
battery life, and an ability to charge a smartphone battery are also
onboard, as are iOS and Android apps that offer easy configura-
tion abilities from a mobile device. Finally, for those times when
you need to get everyone’s attention, the Sound BlasterAxx AXX
200 can even function as a megaphone.

58 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com

 PERSONAL ELECTRONICS
TECH FOR HOME & LEISURE

COOLER MASTER CM STORM SF-17

➤ On first appearance, the CM Storm SF-17
($59.99), a member of the well-regarded Strike
Force Series of notebook coolers from Cooler
Master (www.coolermaster.com), looks like a beefed-
up, futuristic briefcase that belongs to a power
broker from some cinematic post-apocalyptic
world. In reality, the CM Storm SF-17 is built for
durability. Better still, it cleverly integrates a per-
forated mesh surface that dispels heats heat away
from the notebook resting on top of the cooler.
Cooler Master specifically designed the CM Storm
SF-17 with gamers in mind, but the cooler can
handle any type of notebook up to 19 inches in
size. In addition to offering four adjustable height
positions, the cooler includes four USB hubs and
a rubber carrying handle. Further, the built-in
180mm turbine fan has adjustable speed options,
red LED lightning that provides a touch of men-
acing flare, and various well-concealed grooves
that allow for cable routing.

ADATA DASHDRIVE DURABLE HD650

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE
➤ The DashDrive Durable HD650 External Hard
Drive from ADATA (www.adata-group.com) looks visu-
ally tough but in an entirely dashing manner. This
isn’t by coincidence, either. Featuring a flashy red
and silver exterior (a black color scheme is also avail-
able) that demands attention, the DashDrive Durable
HD650 is also built for rugged environments, espe-
cially those that users “with active and outdoor life-
styles” might introduce the drive to. The DashDrive
uses a triple-layer construction that features use of
a silicone material that ADATA touts as providing
“exceptional elasticity” and that provides shock-ab-
sorbing ability along all axes of the drive. Backed by a
three-year warranty, the drive also boasts a composite
plastic exterior that is resistant to scratches, nicks,
and other abrasions. Usage-wise, the drive provides
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 transfer rates, and models are
available in either 500GB ($59.99) or 1TB ($74.99) op-
tions—either amount should be enough to haul a
truckload of spreadsheets, slideshows, audio, photos,
videos, and other files wherever you go.

PC Today / February 2014 59


Protect Your
Privacy Online
Minimize The Risks Of Using Social Networking Services
If you use online services, social
networking sites, or search engines,
your privacy is at risk. The more in-
formation you make available online,
the easier it is to compromise your
privacy, your identity, or even your
computer. Today, there are very few
consumer protections for online pri-
vacy, but there are steps you can take
to help minimize the risk.
GENERAL ONLINE
PRIVACY TIPS
Many online services and social
networking sites request personal
information. Knowing how your
information is used and shared is im-
portant. However, privacy and secu-
rity settings can be difficult to find
and understand. To help protect your
60 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
PERSONAL ELECTRONICS
TECH FOR HOME & LEISURE
privacy, keep the following recom-
mendations in mind when registering
for online services:
r
Enter the minimum amount of
personal information necessary
and do not provide information
useful to identity thieves such as
your birth date or Social Security
number
r
If email account information is
required, don’t use your work
or home email account—create
a separate email account to use
solely for online activity
r
Read the site’s privacy poli-
cies—they can reveal a lot about
how your information is used
and how you can take additional
steps to protect it
r
Verify and change account and
privacy settings—many sites de-
fault to less private options
r
Use strong passwords and secu-
rity questions that are not easy
for others to guess
r
Employ antivirus and spyware
software on your computer and
keep the software updated
r
Be wary of installing software or
toolbars, downloading items, and
using add-on applications
r
Look for and opt-out of receiving
notices or special offers
r
Decline options to import your
email contacts into the service
r
If you receive a personal email
invitation to sign up for an on-
line service, contact the sender to
verify its authenticity

r
Use common sense—if the site
or service doesn’t seem like it’s
on the up and up, don’t register
to use it
FACEBOOK
To access Facebook privacy op-
tions, click the Settings (gear) icon in
the top right corner of the page and
then select Privacy Settings. Under
the top heading, Who Can See My
Stuff?, you can establish the basic
overall default privacy setting for
your future Facebook posts. Here you
can make your updates and photos
open to the public, accessible
only to friends, or completely
private by making the corre-
sponding selection from the
drop-down box under the
heading Who Can See Your
Future Posts?
The typical non-public set-
ting is Friends, meaning that
only friends will see what
you post; however, as with
email messages, those who
receive them can always
share them with others, so
any post you make avail-
able to all of your Facebook
friends can potentially be more
widely shared (or even made public)
by any of those friends. If you are ex-
tremely concerned about privacy and
sometimes wish to make posts only
for your own reference, it’s safest to
choose the Only Me setting; this may
seem extreme and perhaps the an-
tithesis of why you would want to
use Facebook to begin with, but keep
in mind that even if you choose this
setting, you can choose to make any
post public, for friends’ eyes only, or
private at the time you make the post.
For more precise customiza-
tion options, select Custom from
the drop-down box under Who Can
See Your Future Posts?, and choose
whether you would like your posts
to be viewable to friends of friends
or specific individuals, and whether
you want posts to not be shared
with other specific users. Remember,
PERSONAL ELECTRONICS
TECH FOR HOME & LEISURE
these are default actions that you can
change with each post you make be-
fore it goes live.
Under the heading Who Can
Contact Me?, click the appropriate
Edit link to define who can send
you friend requests (the choices are
Everyone and Friends Of Friends)
and what type of message filtering
you prefer (choosing Strict Filtering
instead of Basic Filtering is more
about filtering messages to certain
locations than it is about privacy).
Under the heading Who Can Look
Me Up?, you can manage the ways
in which other Facebook users and
other Internet users can find (or not
find) your Facebook profile.
Next, carefully examine the pri-
vacy preferences under the Apps
and Ad sections. These setings affect
the information that other Facebook
applications and websites can access.
and it controls the information that
your friends’ applications can access
about you. Click Edit to open the
settings for each item; you might be
surprised to learn what information
is available to others by default.
Finally, click to access the
Timeline And Tagging section to re-
view these additional settings, and
also look over the information in-
cluded in your profile. Note that you
cannot prevent Facebook from dis-
playing your profile photo, name,
gender, and networks if you provide
this information.
GOOGLE+
Google+ represents Google’s own
stab at connecting all of its users
(and potentially all Web users) under
one social umbrella. Whether or not
you use Google+, there’s a good
chance you have noticed its features.
Google has integrated Google+ into
all of its software and services, in-
cluding search. The network’s seem-
ingly ubiquitous feature is the little
+1 button that graces countless on-
line articles, websites, and search re-
sults. It’s akin to the Like and Tweet
buttons for Facebook and Twitter,
You can set Facebook to
make your posts com-
pletely private by default;
you still have the option
each time you make a post
to make it available to
everyone, friends, or a list
of specific people.
respectively, and often appears
alongside them.
Google+ operates on the
premise that in real life people
share information with indi-
viduals and groups, and that on
the Web users want more nu-
anced sharing options than the
basic three—“private,” “everyone
in my network,” and “the whole
world”—when it comes to posting
information about themselves. To
that end, Google+ lets users create
“circles” of other users to “follow.”
A circle can include an individual
or any number of users.
After you have created circles, you
can share posts, links, photos, and +1
clicks with those circles. How you
choose to share posts and similar
information amounts to one of the
fundamental privacy controls within
Google+: You can, on a post-by-post
PC Today / February 2014 61

LinkedIn provides multiple layers of privacy settings that provide you with a great deal of
control over your information. These settings are well-organized and clearly labeled, but
making use of them all requires a fair amount of time and careful consideration.
basis, share posts with any number of
circles or no one at all.
Apart from choosing how you
share information when you post
something, you will find other pri-
vacy options when you hover over
the Home button at the top left side
of your Google+ page and select
Settings. The most important set-
tings to review in terms of privacy
are those listed at the top under
Who Can Interact With You And
Your Posts?, and those accessible
by clicking the Manage Apps &
Activities button. You might also
want to customize your circles for
added control.
Unlike other social networking
sites, Google lets you download all
of your Google+ data so you can
save it as a backup or keep it in
your possession if you choose to
stop using the service. To use this
feature, click Data Liberation on
the Settings page and follow the in-
structions provided.
LINKEDIN
As Facebook and Google+ do,
LinkedIn uses your profile infor-
mation for certain advertising and
marketing opportunities. It also in-
corporates third-party applications
and research surveys.
To modify LinkedIn privacy op-
tions, hover over your image or
avatar in the top right corner and
select Privacy & Settings. To con-
trol how much of your profile is
62 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
PERSONAL ELECTRONICS
TECH FOR HOME & LEISURE
available to search engines, click the
Edit Your Public Profile link under
Settings. Here you can determine
whether to publish your profile and
what information displays if you
choose to do so. You can also pre-
view your profile as it will appear
in search engine results.
ONLINE TRACKING INFORMATION & TOOLS
Data broker companies track
Internet use through your Web
browser, search engine, and online
activity. Third-party cookies and
code hidden on Web pages track
your movements online, record the
kinds of searches you perform, and
capture personal information. Rather
than your name, a code stored on
your computer is associated with the
information. The code and related
data can be sold to companies that
want to target advertisements and
content specifically to your interests
and profile. For more information
about how you can prevent online
data collection and tracking, refer to
the following resources:
ABOUTCOOKIES.ORG
www.aboutcookies.org
Get detailed information about man-
aging and tracking cookies in all types of
Web browsers
Most of the remaining privacy
options are accessible by clicking
Profile or Account on the Settings
page and looking under the Privacy
Controls heading. In these areas
you can control who can view
your “broadcasts” (LinkedIn termi-
nology for posts) and connections,
determine whether you prefer to
use a secure connection when using
LinkedIn, manage advertising set-
tings, and more.
WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Signing up for online services and
social networks can expose your per-
sonal information to others. But there
are other online activities that third-
party data brokers track through
your Web browser and search engine
use. Refer to the “Online Tracking
Information & Tools” sidebar for in-
formation and resources. ●
KNOWPRIVACY
www.knowprivacy.org
Learn more about the current state of
Web privacy, data collection, and in-
formation sharing from this research
report by the UC Berkeley School of
Information
NETWORK ADVERTISING
INITIATIVE
www.networkadvertising.org
PRIVACYCHOICE
www.privacychoice.org
Opt out of some behavioral targeting
tracking and advertisements
PRIVACY RIGHTS
CLEARINGHOUSE
www.privacyrights.org
Get fact sheets in the Online Privacy &
Technology section for detailed informa-
tion about monitoring online activities
and keeping information private
 PC Today
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 PowerPoint Tips For
ADDING CHARTS & GRAPHS
The scenario is familiar to traveling
professionals: your PowerPoint presen-
tation is all set when new and relevant
information comes to light and must
be added. If you’re on the road or in
the sky and find yourself having to
add charts or graphs to a PowerPoint
presentation, this article will help. We
include tips designed for PowerPoint
novices and adept PowerPoint users
seeking specific chart-making advice.
➤ CREATE A BASIC
CHART OR GRAPH
To insert a colorful chart or graph il-
lustration into your PowerPoint presen-
tation, locate the Insert tab and select
Chart. Next, look through the available
chart types, select the design that best
represents the information you want
to share, and click OK. A Microsoft
Excel chart will open with placeholder
64 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
text and figures you can replace with
relevant data. When you finish entering
information, click File and Close to open
the finished chart in PowerPoint.
➤ SAVE & MANAGE
CHART TEMPLATES
If you want to adjust the look of an
existing chart, click the chart in the
PowerPoint slide and the Chart Tools
contextual tab appears. Keep in mind
Chart Tools will only appear when
you select a chart. Open the Design tab
and you can manipulate the overall
layout of a chart, adjust its style,
and save it as a template for future
presentations. To adjust the orienta-
tion, size, or spacing of a chart’s data
and graphical elements, expand the
Charts Layouts pane and choose one
of the nine layout options. You can also
change chart elements and background
colors by selecting options from the
Chart Styles section on the Design tab.
When you’ve fashioned a chart you’d
like to reuse, click the Save As Template
button on the Design tab. Name the
chart and PowerPoint saves it with
the .CRTX file extension, which indi-
cates it is a chart template.
➤ HIGHLIGHT IMPORTANT
DATA IN A POWERPOINT CHART
Whether you’re presenting numerous
charts or need to add emphasis to spe-
cific data within a chart, sometimes it’s
beneficial to call out key points. Locate
the Drawing pane in the Home tab and
expand the Shapes menu. Select one that
is appropriate for emphasizing informa-
tion in your chart, and then click any-
where in the chart to place the shape. To
customize the shape, select it and click
the Shape Fill, Shape Outline, Shape
 BUSINESS TRAVEL 911
ON-THE-GO TECH SUPPORT

Effects, and Quick Styles options in the

Drawing pane.

➤ INSERT A CHART
THAT’S LINKED TO EXCEL
If you’re used to working in Excel and
prefer to construct the skeleton of your
chart first, you can use Excel to com-
pile data and create a chart for use in
PowerPoint. Start by entering values
in an Excel workbook. Highlight all nec-
essary data cells, click Insert, and apply
a preferred chart style in the Charts
pane. Next, select the newly created
chart and click Copy in the Home tab.
Microsoft PowerPoint’s Design tab in the Chart Tools contextual tab lets you modify the
Open a current or new PowerPoint slide
layout of your chart and adjust its style. These settings help you create one-of-a-kind charts
and find the Clipboard pane. Click the
and graphs that illuminate important statistics or values.
Paste drop-down arrow and choose
Keep Source Formatting & Link Data
(to maintain the appearance of the Excel
file) or Use Destination Theme & Link
Data (to match the chart appearance
with the presentation).

➤ EDIT & ADD LABELS

A chart that includes a lot of numbers
or a detailed legend may require some
editing, especially because you want it
to look polished for presentation pur-
poses. These fine-tuning tools are lo-
cated in the Labels pane of the Layout
tab on the Chart Tools contextual tab. If
you notice that your chart is missing a
title, you can add one by clicking Chart
Title and selecting Centered Overlay
Title or Above Chart—this displays
a title at the top of the chart. You can
browse the remaining label options to
add axis titles, insert legend variations,
and manipulate data.
➤ ADJUST STYLE & TEXT
To put the finishing touches of color
and contrast on a chart, start by clicking
the Format tab in the Chart Tools con-
textual tab. You can enhance back-
grounds, category shapes, and 3D chart
elements when you use options on
the Shape Styles pane for each feature.
Options on the WordArt Styles pane
let you apply fill colors, outlines, and
effects to chart text. To view every part
of your chart (such as depth, floor, hori-
zontal axis, side wall, and so on), click
You can outline a graphical element, change its color, and add unique effects to a chart or graph
all within PowerPoint. In addition, applying WordArt Styles will change the fill color, shade, and
outline of selected text.
the drop-down arrow at the top of the
Current Selection pane.
➤ MODIFY DATA
IN AN EXISTING CHART
Regardless of whether you created
your initial chart in Excel or Power-
Point, you should be able to modify
data without much hassle. In Power-
Point, click the chart you intend to
change and select the Design tab in the
Chart Tools contextual tab. Next, click
Edit Data in the Data pane. Excel opens
the data sheet in a new window and
from here you can click and edit indi-
vidual cells. Simply closing the Excel file
will refresh and save the new content.
➤ ADD ANIMATION
If you want to emphasize a particular
data group, you can add animations to
a graph or chart. Under the Animations
tab, the Animation pane has approxi-
mately 30 default animations you can
apply to a chart. Explore extra effects
by clicking More Entrance Effects,
More Emphasis Effects, or More Exit
Effects at the bottom of the Animation
menu. To stagger the animation of
individual objects, click Effect Options
and select one of the following func-
tions: As One Object, By Series, By
Category, Be Element In Series, or By
Element In Category. ●

PC Today / February 2014 65

 Office In The Cloud
LEVERAGE THE WEB
Just as there are now virtual or version. We offer some practical tips or post to a blog. Use the Page tab
cloud-based versions of software and and how-to steps that will help you to change layouts, the Insert tab to add
storage solutions that used to be advance from novice to experienced content, or the Format Text tab to work
firmly entrenched in physical servers Office 365 user. with text. Or click the Page tab and
and desktops, there are now Web select New to create an entirely new
versions of Microsoft’s widely used ➤ CUSTOMIZE YOUR page for the Public Website.
Office products. Word, Excel, and PUBLIC WEBSITE
other Office programs are included If your company uses SharePoint ➤ CREATE PERSONAL
in a hosted service called Office 365 Online, you can update or add pages & TEAM WEBSITES
(office365.microsoft.com). But as familiar to your Public Website whether you’re When you become an Office 365 user,
as you may be with the functional- in the office or on the road. Click the you can activate a My Site website
ity of traditional Office products, Page tab and select Edit to start mak- where you can manage and share
there are plenty of new capabilities, ing changes to an existing page—say, docs hosted by SharePoint Online. A
features, and collaborative possi- to add new information and photos similar feature exists for team project
bilities to explore in the Web-based for a new product, update a schedule, management in the Team Site, where
you can create a Team Site for sync-
ing calendars, developing projects,
If your company uses SharePoint Online, you can and working offline. To start a team-
accessible home base site in Share-
update or add pages to your Public Website whether Point, go to the Site Actions menu,
you’re in the office or on the road. choose New Site, and then click the
Featured Items or Browse All tab.

66 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com


Assign your team site a URL
and title and click Create.
➤ ADD SHARED &
PRIVATE NOTES
DURING A LYNC
MEETING
Many times the records, lists,
and important items you save
in OneNote (Microsoft’s digital
note-taking software) turn into
meeting agendas and tasks for
colleagues, so it’s convenient
that Lync lets you save private
notes or share notes for collaborative
discussions. To start a note during an in-
session Lync meeting, click the OneNote
tab in the conversations window after
you pause the presentation. Then select
My Notes to start typing private notes
or click Share Notes and choose a sec-
tion for note-taking.
➤ SHARE A PRESENTATION
Lync not only lets you share your
Desktop, a program window, a white-
board, or a poll, but it also lets you
share PowerPoint presentations. When
you start an IM (instant message) con-
versation, click the Share drop-down
menu and select the PowerPoint Pre-
sentation option. After the presentation
uploads, you can enable restrictions,
such as who can enter the presentation,
who presents, and who is allowed to
annotate the presentation.
➤ SEND DOCUMENTS VIA
INSTANT MESSAGE
There are two ways to send a document
as an attachment using Lync: from the
document itself or through an open
IM window. Within the document
you intend to send, click File, click
Save & Send, and then select Send By
Instant Message. In the Address Book
window add the recipient names in the
To field, and then make sure you can
see the attachment in the IM window.
Alternatively, you can start an IM con-
versation with a recipient, click the
paper clip icon (for sending attach-
ments), choose a file, click Open, select
the item you intend to share, and send.
BUSINESS TRAVEL 911
ON-THE-GO TECH SUPPORT
➤ EDIT OR VIEW DOCS IN
REAL TIME
Another advantage of SharePoint is the
ability for multiple users to work in the
same documents simultaneously. To
access a document that’s available for
team editing, find the document link
in your SharePoint website’s document
library, hover over and click the arrow
(if you’re asked to select Read Only
or Edit), and choose View In Brows-
er or Edit In Browser. Accessing doc-
uments in this way requires that the
corresponding Microsoft Web App
(Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote)
is installed.
➤ SHARE YOUR CALENDAR
Office 365 Outlook includes calendar
sharing options that let you select a con-
tact or group of people who may access
your schedule. You can do so by enter-
ing the Calendar view, clicking Share,
and choosing Share This Calendar.
Next, insert the individual or group
who will receive the shared calendar.
➤ STAY IN TOUCH WITH
COLLEAGUES VIA MOBILE APP
If your company uses Microsoft Lync,
try the mobile app when you’re away
from the office. The Lync app is avail-
able for a variety of mobile platforms
and provides you with capabilities sim-
ilar to those of the desktop version. Log
in and start connecting with colleagues
directly via IM, or use the app to place
calls, start an email message, or partici-
pate in a videoconference. As with the
There are plenty of
helpful features built
into Office 365 to
keep you organized.
For example, you
can customize your
Outlook calendar
Web app as you plan
meetings and work
toward deadlines.
desktop Lync, you can use the app to let
others know your present availability,
as well.
➤ USE YOUR MOBILE DEVICE
TO SHARE DOCS
Microsoft recommends two sharing
methods from mobile: sharing with
recipients you invite to your site and
sharing via a guest link. Both methods
may require you to switch from mobile
to PC view through the Settings menu.
To share with site invitees, tap More in
the document library, then tap Share.
Next, type the appropriate names or
email addresses of those with whom
you’re sharing the doc. Next, select Can
Edit or Can View; check the Require
Sign-In box. If you would like to add a
message, choose Show Options and tap
Send An Email Invitation. If you opt to
send a guest link, simply uncheck the
Require Sign-In check box.
➤ RECORD COLLABORATION
SESSIONS USING LYNC
Lync helps you document current mul-
tiuser conversations, calls, and meet-
ings so you can easily reference pivotal
conversations. To do this while you’re
in Lync, direct your pointer to the con-
versation window and click the More
Options menu (two arrows on the right
side of the window). Next, click Start
Recording. You can access saved record-
ings by navigating to the Microsoft Lync
Recording Manager. Click Start, select
All Programs, and then click Microsoft
Lync. Open the Manager and choose
your preferred recording. ●
PC Today / February 2014 67
 Rootkit Attacks
WHAT TO DO TO FIGHT BACK
Even seeing the word “rootkit” can
send shivers up the spine of someone
who has suffered through the incon-
venience and damage a rootkit can
exact. Dan Olds, principal at Gabriel
Consulting Group (www.gabrielconsult
inggroup.com) says “rootkits are some
of the most insidious and dangerous
pieces of malware out there today.”
That’s due to the fact that rootkits
are both extremely difficult to detect
and get rid of completely. Therefore,
the more you know about rootkits,
the better.
➤ WHAT IS A ROOTKIT?
A rootkit is software that infects and
gains privileged access to a computer.
“This means it can perform adminis-
trator-level type tasks,” says Michela
Menting, ABI Research (www.abiresearch
.com) senior analyst. “The primary
68 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
feature is that it can hide itself in the
system and remain undetected.”
One way to think of how a rootkit
wreaks havoc, says Jim O’Gorman,
an instructor of offensive security
measures, is to envision that you
are driving a car but someone else
is intercepting all your movements
and deciding if he should pass them
on to the car or not. “In some cases,
he might decide to just insert some
of his own commands, as well,”
O’Gorman says.
Although rootkits are similar to vi-
ruses or Trojans, says Chris Hadnagy,
a security training professional, vi-
ruses and Trojans usually delete data,
stop services, or cause harm while a
rootkit provides an attacker system
access to get at data. Not all root-
kits are malicious (a company might
install one to remotely access and
control employee computers, for ex-
ample), however, Menting says they
are “extremely popular with mali-
cious hackers and cyber criminals,
which is why they have such a nega-
tive connotation.”
➤ THE DAMAGE DONE
Essentially, rootkits give an attacker
free reign to perform any task de-
sired, include installing software;
deleting files; modifying programs;
transmitting data; and using spy-
ware to steal credit card numbers,
passwords, keystrokes, etc. A root-
kit’s ability to modify existing pro-
grams and processes, says Menting,
enables it to avoid detection by se-
curity software that would normally
catch such software.
“There really aren’t any limits to
how much damage it can do to a PC,”

Olds says. “It can delete data files and
then rewrite gibberish on the hard
drive to ensure that the data can’t be
recovered, or it can quietly work in the
background and log user keystrokes,
eventually capturing workplace, ecom-
merce, or banking usernames and pass-
words.” Ultimately, a rootkit can route
that data to a hacker “to plunder ac-
counts or gain access to a corporate net-
work,” Olds says.
Beyond software-based rootkits
there are hardware-based rootkits, says
Hadnagy. “These, like software root-
kits, give the attacker full admin access
to a machine, compromising everything
on it and even at times the network
it’s connected to,” he says. For users,
O’Gorman says a rootkit “destroys
Rootkits give an attacker free reign to perform any task
desired, include installing software; deleting files; modi-
fying programs; transmitting data; and using spyware to
steal credit card numbers, passwords, keystrokes, etc.
all trust with the computer. You can’t
know what is private, what is not. All
integrity is gone.”
➤ HOW YOU’LL KNOW
There are several ways a rootkit can
find its way into a computer. A down-
loaded program file a user believes to
be legitimate, for example, may have
a rootkit embedded within it. Menting
says rootkits generally enter a system
through existing vulnerabilities and are
loaded by malware, which can infect
computers via downloads, email at-
tachments disguised as genuine com-
munication or documents, websites
with unpatched vulnerabilities, USB
thumb drives, or mobile devices.
To the average user, abnormal com-
puter behavior is the best indicator a
rootkit might be present; warning
signs include files spontaneously dis-
appearing or appearing, a sluggish
Internet connection, and slow-loading
programs. Such behavior can indicate
BUSINESS TRAVEL 911
ON-THE-GO TECH SUPPORT
other programs are running in the
background. Menting advises checking
the Task Manager to detect which ap-
plications or processes are running and
using significant memory. “For the
non-tech user, it may be difficult to un-
derstand,” she says. “But users should
familiarize themselves with how their
Task Manager looks when it’s running
on a clean system so that when it actu-
ally is infected, the user can spot some
differences when looking at the tasks.”   computer should be purged—wipe
That said, detecting a rootkit is still
generally difficult. This is due to how
adept they are at installing themselves
and hiding their presence in a way that
is “virtually undetectable by your sys-
tem software,” Olds says. “In this case,
the only way to find the rootkit is to
boot the system using a CD/DVD or
thumb drive that has special diagnostic
routines designed to find and remove
rootkits.” Hadnagy says if a system’s
OS is compromised, it can’t be “trusted
to find flaws in itself.” In this event, it
may be necessary to boot a self-con-
tained OS running from a CD/DVD
or USB drive and run malware de-
tection and removal software from a
“clean” environment.
➤ WHAT TO DO
For typical users, arguably the worst
news concerning rootkits is that getting
rid of one can be beyond their scope.
Olds says, in fact, most users should
probably seek an expert’s help if they
suspect a rootkit infection. Though
some security programs can detect and
remove specific rootkits, Menting says,
“there are so many variants that it can
be impossible to detect and remove
them all.” Often, she says, getting rid of
a rootkit “requires a radical solution.”
If a user suspects a rootkit, he
should first disconnect the system
from the Internet to cut off possible
remote access and prevent data from
leaking, Menting says. Next, remove
data from the infected computer and
scan it for malware on another de-
vice. (Menting notes that if the data
contains unknown [or zero-day] mal-
ware, this step may not guarantee the
malware is eradicated.) Finally, “the
the hard drive and reinstall every-
thing,” she says. O’Gorman, in fact,
says starting over is the only real solu-
tion, because “really, you can’t trust
cleanup methods, as you are never
really sure if they worked.” 
➤ HOW TO
PROTECT YOURSELF
The first defense against rootkits (and
malware in general) is keeping the
OS and all software—especially secu-
rity software—up-to-date and fully
patched. Completely relying on anti-
virus software is a mistake, however.
As O’Gorman says, there’s always
a lag between the time a new threat
pops up and the point at which anti-
virus software can detect it. “The best
way to avoid issues is to not engage in
risky activities,” he says. “Run trust-
worthy, current software that’s kept
patched. Don’t go to shady sites with
out-of-date browsers and plug-ins.
Don’t run software that doesn’t come
from trustworthy sources.”
Unfortunately, “the likelihood of
being hacked or unwittingly down-
loading malware on a computer is
extremely high,” Menting says. “Es-
pecially in the network-connected
environment of a company—even if
you take all precautions necessary—
someone else may not have and you
get a virus from them internally.” She
suggests using different passwords for
all logins, encrypting sensitive and con-
fidential data, constantly being on the
lookout for odd system behavior, and
securing mobile devices if connecting
them to a company network or busi-
ness computer. ●
PC Today / February 2014 69

Mobile Data Best Practices
SYNC & BACKUP OPTIONS
FOR YOUR TRAVELS
The theft or loss of a laptop, tablet,
smartphone, or other mobile device
ranks among the worst productivity ca-
tastrophes that can befall a traveling
professional. For all intents and pur-
poses, our devices are our offices when
we travel, and losing them disrupts our
ability to work and communicate. There
is an obvious financial hit associated
with the loss of hardware, but there is
a potentially greater hit that occurs in
the loss of corporate data. It’s impor-
tant, then, to know where your data
is at all times, so in the event that you
no longer have access to your devices,
you’ll know what is lost and what is ac-
cessible elsewhere. And, if you follow a
few mobile best practices, you’ll never
70 February 2014 / www.pctoday.com
BUSINESS TRAVEL 911
ON-THE-GO TECH SUPPORT
have to worry about losing much data at
all—if any.
➤ KNOW WHAT GETS BACKED
UP AUTOMATICALLY
Depending on your smartphone’s or tab-
let’s operating system, there is a certain
amount of device data that automatically
gets backed up on a regular basis. If you
use a USB cable to directly sync your
iPhone or iPad with your computer, for
example, the sync process backs up all
of the OS and app data stored on that
device; there is an option to encrypt and
password-protect the backed-up data,
too. If you use the iCloud service with
your iOS device, specific sets of data
will automatically be backed up in the
background as long as your device has
a Wi-Fi Internet connection, is plugged
in to a power source, and has a locked
screen; backed up data can include
camera roll images, documents, audio,
and settings, depending on the options
you choose.
Android users can manage incre-
mental backups for apps and device
settings by signing into the associated
Google Account from the smartphone
or tablet. The Android Auto Sync feature
routinely syncs in the background; how
and what it syncs partly depends on the
options you choose, but by default the
feature backs up OS data, contact infor-
mation, documents, and select app data
(such as Facebook and Twitter).
 BUSINESS TRAVEL 911
ON-THE-GO TECH SUPPORT

If you have a device running one of
the latest versions of Windows Phone,
you can sync documents stored on your
device with Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud
storage solution; you can also retrieve
documents from SkyDrive that were
uploaded from a different source. To
sync all of the photos, audio files, and
videos stored on your Windows Phone
device, you must install Microsoft’s
Zune software on your computer and
connect the mobile device to the com-
puter via USB.
➤ DON’T FORGET
YOUR APP DATA
“App data” encompasses a broad range
of digital information, but in our con-
text it means third-party apps and the
content you create using those apps.
Consider, for instance, note-taking ser-
vices that exist as both cloud services
(where all of the information associ-
ated with those services is stored in the
cloud) and applications (where your
app-related information is stored lo-
cally). As you take notes with the app,
it stores those notes locally and in the
cloud simultaneously and in real-time.
Such an app-service combination is dif-
ferent from a note-taking app that does
not have an associated cloud service;
with this type of app, everything you
add is stored only in the device and is
therefore vulnerable to loss. Make sure
you know how your apps work so you
don’t get caught unawares.
Also keep in mind that some apps
are more flexible than others. Apple’s
Notes app in iOS, for example, can
keep your notes on the device only or
on both the device and in the cloud,
depending on how you set it up.
➤ BE CAREFUL
WHEN TRAVELING
If you travel frequently, you probably
have quite a few travel-related routines.
When it comes to keeping all of your
data intact, though, it’s important to re-
member that travel disrupts the rou-
tines you’ve established at the office.
For example, if you regularly sync your
tablet and smartphone with your com-
puter but typically leave the computer
behind when traveling, the backup
that otherwise occurs with every phys-
ical sync won’t take place during your
travels. If you keep that sort of thing
in mind while traveling, you will re-
main aware of what data resides in
the “danger zone” (i.e., stored on your
device, but not backed up anywhere
else) in the event your device gets lost
or stolen.
➤ USE CLOUD SERVICES,
AT LEAST TEMPORARILY
If you’re reluctant to sync key data
to a cloud backup or storage service
on a regular basis, consider using an
alternative cloud solution—at least
temporarily—to meet specific require-
ments while traveling. For example,
you could set up an account with a
major online storage provider to use
with only a handful of files that are
necessary for a specific trip. Providers
offering this type of service typically
also offer a mobile app that makes the
service more useful on your mobile
device. And some major storage ser-
vices also sync with productivity apps
you might already have installed on
your devices.
Another stop-gap alternative is
to use a Web-based email service to
email documents to and from a cor-
porate account. Doing this ensures
that a copy of the document is main-
tained on the corporate network even
after you delete the associated email
from the Web email account.
➤ PHYSICAL BACKUP
Finally, you can’t sync a certain amount
of valuable device data to the cloud
(or to your main computer via the
cloud), so be sure to back up that data
as often as possible to a second device
(such as a laptop) or storage solution
(such as a microSD card or portable
hard drive). ●

➤ To locate the
Storage & Backup
menu on your iOS
device, tap Settings,
iCloud, and Storage
& Backup. From this
screen you can view
available storage
and switch iCloud
off and on.

➤ You can customize which apps are backed up in iCloud by toggling the
ON/OFF button next to each app. Be sure to activate the Find My iPad
feature in case you need to locate a lost iOS device.

PC Today / February 2014 71

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