Let a Managed IT Services Company Help You to Decide which Anti-Virus Software Is the Best for You

August 7, 2013 by ·

When it comes to anti-virus software, there is no one better to help you to identify the best software than a managed IT services company. There are plenty of anti-virus programs out there, all claiming to be infallible, but making it really hard for ordinary people to verify that and make the right choice.

However, if you consult a managed IT services company, such as Dolomite Technology, their employees will explain to you what benefits anti-virus software brings and what your priorities should be, helping you to asses which your best option is.

An anti-virus is not a luxury, but a must, as it will prevent, detect and quarantine, delete or block viruses, as well as other computer malware, such as adware, Trojans, worms, spyware, etc.

Although installing and using an anti-virus program is not so difficult, the reasons why you need to contract a managed IT services company go from learning how to pick the right program, to making the right settings depending on the purpose with which the computer is used, what you need from it and what you want to protect, among others.

Furthermore, a specialist can always employ a better and more complex anti-virus system in order to detect the malware on your computer, as many of these infestations are slicker and escape a non-expert.

Another problem about running anti-virus software, especially if you are an inexperienced user, is that you will most likely not understand the language employed, so will not know what decisions to make when the program asks for your confirmation or action. This could lead to deleting important files, which, although infested, are still very much required by your computer in order to run normally.

You therefore need to rely on experts with a vast experience in using anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware solutions. At Dolomite, our professionals have a wide experience in dealing with issues like installing anti-virus software, running a scan and deciding how to get rid of a virus without losing precious information from your computer.

At Dolomite, we listen to your questions and requests, we evaluate all the information you give us and we offer professional solutions, so that you never again have to worry about the safety and integrity of your system. With our managed IT services, you can forget all about viruses and their harmful actions!

Filed Under: Anti-Virus, Security · Tagged: , , ,

Fortinet – BYOD – Bring Your Own Device and You Will Not Regret It!

February 21, 2013 by ·

As everybody knows, the business environment is changing every day, bringing personal devices into the business process and slowly erasing the thin line between the personal Smartphone or tablet and the PC at work. Given the circumstances, the BYOD, standing for Bring Your Own Devices, is an abbreviation that we find discussed more and more, both online and offline.

What Is BYOD and What Is Its Purpose?

In order to answer this question, we first have to review the large variety of relations encountered within a company and between two or more companies:

  • Between managers and employees
  • Between employees and partners
  • Between  all of the above and customers
  • Between customers

Often without anyone realizing it, many of these relations happen at the core of the company, using the most popular of the company’s communication environments: the network.

Using the network to connect so many people, all bringing their own devices in the process, the company always exposes itself to inherent threats, many of them making their entrance in the system without being spotted by the people who interact using their devices.

Fortinet BYOD security is a high level, state of the art system developed by Fortinet in order to allow employees, contractors and workers to use their own devices safely in order to communicate on your network and ensure your company’s progress.

What until recently was a constant fight with spam, a continuous investment in firewalls, hardened Wi-Fi technologies, network segmentation and a lot more, is now just a detail in the process meant to turn your business safe and profitable.

With high flexibility and low costs, this Fortinet service encourages you to secure your business network without interfering with any of the Mobile Device Management and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure systems.

Fortinet’s BYOD solution is so flexible that it allows you to deploy the exact amount of protection you need, by combining different levels of familiar concepts, such as the well known and completely configurable firewall.

The intrusion prevention system can also be configured to meet your company’s security and flexibility needs. The already known antimalware/antivirus is now included in the package and no extra fee is required.

Some features developed over the past few years, such as application control and data loss prevention, are also fully integrated in the system, allowing you to decide who has access to what.

To ensure that attacks are not being initiated online, the software is not being seeded and that browsers are not being exploited, Fortinet BYOD solution came up with another great feature – web content filtering.

For the vast majority of companies for which tunneling is one of the great challenges, a VPN solution was added. As if it were not enough, protection was highly increased with the two-factor authentication, which requires more than one attribute in order for one to be able to authenticate on the network. The level at which this feature is integrated is fully customizable and can differ from company to company.

All in one, Fortinet BYOD solution is a leading technology that we can expect to see surviving for the following years and turning into the end user experience on any company network.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, PCI Compliance, Security, Tablets · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Cloud Computing Services – Choosing the Most Adequate Provider

February 20, 2013 by ·

When used in a corporate environment, cloud computing services can significantly reduce operational expenses, while also contributing to a more streamlined workflow, allowing large, medium-sized and small enterprises to benefit from outsourcing their needs for hardware, software, applications and storage capacity. However, the service provider chosen must meet a number of requirements, so, in what follows we will present a few aspects to consider when selecting your supplier.

Competence and Reliability

When looking for the right cloud computing service provider, you must make sure the supplier will be able to deliver on all the promises made. You need a provider which is in possession of the right technology and is able to provide the best performance, continuous availability and 24/7 technical support. The supplier must be able to demonstrate all these features before you sign up to any service.

Security

Another feature that makes cloud services attractive is the enhanced security of your contents. Your supplier must provide several different levels of security such as identity management, access control and authorization.

Cost Tracking

One of the major benefits of cloud services is that the consumers can use exactly the amount of resources they need, and they will be billed only for the resources consumed. You must choose service providers that offer a monitoring system of your consumption so that you can have accurate information of the related costs at all times.

Customization

The cloud computing solution you choose must cater to your exact needs. In other words, you must avoid providers that offer one-size-fits-all type of services and, most importantly, you need the terms you negotiate with the supplier to be included into the Service Level Agreement. The agreement must contain the detailed list of the services you sign up to, the metrics used to evaluate the performance of the service provider, the obligations of both the customer and the service supplier, as well as the measures to be taken in case any of the parties fails to fulfill these obligations, and reference to future changes in the contents of the Service Level Agreement.

Choosing the right cloud service provider must be a complex decision making process that involves not only the management, but also the experts working in the IT department. If you are able to define your exact needs and you negotiate your terms with a reputable cloud computing service provider, the results will surely be beneficial for both parties of the agreement, making your operation much smoother and more cost-efficient.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, General News · Tagged: , , , ,

Cloud Computing – The Types of Cloud Services and Their Field of Usage

February 13, 2013 by ·

The number of the companies understanding the advantages of cloud computing is in permanent growth, and the cloud services available are also in constant evolution. However varied and versatile these services are, they can still be categorized into three major groups. In what follows, you can find a short description of these three categories of service.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

This type of cloud service provides access to software and applications without making the customer pay for expensive licensing and without the necessity to store large program files on local computers. The user is given access to the software applications run by the service provider either free of charge or in return for a fee, and the network used for accessing is usually the internet. The most common examples of SaaS is online banking and e-mail services – the user of these applications is no longer dependent on hardware, the service can be accessed from any place with a connection to the internet.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is primarily used for development environments and platforms. With this type of cloud computing service, the provider undertakes to manage the customer’s data base and operating system so the customer no longer has to manage its own platforms. The service is mainly used in development projects with extended computing needs that would require a very long time to complete if done on individual, local computers; it also shortens time-to-market considerably, while making the complete control of costs possible.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

With this type of service, customers can significantly and consistently reduce capital expenses by outsourcing infrastructure like hardware and storage, eliminating the need to purchase large capacity servers. What the customer gets with this type of cloud computing service is access to storage space and processor usage without using any dedicated software to create such space. The system is very flexible, as it allows the user to increase and decrease the size of the space any time and the provider invoices the client only on the size of storage space and of the resources used for delivering the service.

The growing need for outsourced solutions is setting the quick pace of development for these cloud services and accounts for their popularity among corporate and individual customers alike. The storage space, the networking tools, the applications provided in the form of cloud computing services all serve purposes of cost reduction and enhanced efficiency, enabling competitive functioning in a demanding economic environment.

About Dolomite

Dolomite Technology is a Managed Service Provider that provides services and consulting on technology services to customers across the nation. A core concept of of Dolomite’s service portfolio is cloud computing services. To learn more about Dolomite services please contact us. You can also learn more about cloud computing on our website.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, General News · Tagged: , , , ,

The Fortinet Antivirus – Safe Navigation at All Levels

February 7, 2013 by ·

The Worst Enemies of Nowadays Businesses – Malware Infections

Servers, networks and endpoints are constantly threatened by malware infections and their protection or cleaning costs more and more companies, from government agencies to manufacturers and service providers huge amounts of money. Leaving the financial implications aside, when problems occur, solving them takes valuable time, that could be used for more productive purposes, not to mention that, on most occasions, the process leads to the loss of important data.

The information that is not lost could always leak and be used by your competitors or third parties, and that can be very serious, especially if we are talking about bank accounts or new products designs. To top all these, there are some powerful viruses out there, capable of taking down entire networks and of deleting valuable information from databases and servers.

Excellent Performance

The Antivirus technology developed by Fortinet uses the latest viruses signatures and the highest performing detection engines in order to ensure real time protection on several layers, against old, common, new and rare malware, from viruses to spyware, worms and not only, no matter if they threaten the safety of websites, email systems or file transfer means.

The performance of the Fortinet Antivirus is ensured by the FortiASIC™ Content Processors, a significant part of the FortiWiFI and FortiGate, two important Fortinet products, responsible for accelerating the process of scanning signatures and that of detecting heuristics or anomalies of any kind. The performances delivered make this antivirus perfect for protecting any assets, from entry-level appliances to data center platforms and several gigabits core networks.

Flow-Based Inspection

The security platforms of Fortigate include three antivirus databases that are proxy-based and a flow-based antivirus option. The latter allows the scanning of files of any format or size, without compromising on performance. The inspection option, flow-based, makes possible the scanning of compressed files, all with the purpose of detecting hidden threats. You have the freedom to choose any antivirus engine, but your choice influences the balance between performance and security, so it has to be made responsibly.

Complete Protection against Malware

The common protocols in the tunneling field can benefit from the encryption/decryption performances like L2TP, PPTP, SSL, IPSec and host integrity on-demand verification, allowing the inspection of the encrypted content, like the traffic sent through VPN connections.

Fortinet, through its antivirus, supports SMTP, IMAP, POP3, HTTP, P2P, IM and FTP content inspection, even in compressed files.  In order to provide protection to endpoint devices as well, the FortiClient™ security agents extend their action over remote desktop computers, smartphones and laptops, even if they operate outside the network perimeter.

Fortinet FortiGuard Services

The Fortinet antivirus is regularly activated through the FortiGuard Services. The FortiGuard team in charge of threat research came up with competitive, last hour updates for the antivirus signatures and with easy to implement protection measures against any threats identified at the content level.

To conclude, Fortinet Antivirus is the service that can make the difference between highly performing websites and servers and activity blockages or unnecessary investments.

About Dolomite

Dolomite Technology is a Managed Service Provider that provides services and consulting on technology services to customers across the nation. A core concept of of Dolomite’s service portfolio is security services. To learn more about Dolomite services please contact us. We are more than happy to discuss Fortinet or other security services.

Filed Under: Anti-Virus, Security, Spyware · Tagged: , , , ,