We talked about the huge volumes of eWaste out there and the things you can do to help reduce it in an earlier post.   But the reality is that eWaste will still exist as we need to upgrade our computers, cell phones and copiers.  So what else do you need to think about when getting rid of this equipment.  How about the fact that your confidential company data may be on it for the taking?!?!

Most people consider deleting their files from the hard drive of a computer they replace, but did you know you how easily that information can be retrieved unless it is deleted with a special program that restricts recovery?  How about the emails that are on your cell phone when you turn it in that may include your customer’s credit card information on it from the last big sale you made?  And your fax/copier/network printer?!  This unit probably contains more confidential information than your kitchen sponge has bacteria after being used for several years.  Scared?  Good.

Several studies have been done recently that determined that confidential information is being recklessly discarded to the great peril of the companies that discarded it.  CBS news did a piece on copiers that revealed medical records, criminal records, and bank statements.  Kessler International did a study of hard drives purchased on eBay and found that over 40% of them had confidential data such as corporate financial data.  For some organizations, this is a breach of corporate conduct,  Sarbanes-Oxley regulations and other  state and federal privacy laws.

Don’t worry though, you don’t need to rent a storage shed for all of your old equipment or have a huge backyard bonfire.  There are ways to ensure that your data is safe and that you are protected.  To help, we have compiled this list of 5 things you should consider when disposing of old equipment.  While following these will not guarantee that your data will never fall into the wrong hands, you can at least be assured that you have made a good effort to protect it.

You probably have a handle on how much you rely on your email, internet connection, certainly the data about your clients and financials.  Maybe you even recognize how powerful a tool your website can be.  What else should you be thinking about?  Here are 5 key questions for reflection:

1. Do you rely on an individual person to support your technologies? Whether this is an internal staff member or outside consultant, this is a single point of failure that can hurt you if they become unavailable without warning, or simply don’t have the experience or expertise needed to solve a problem in your environment.
2. Does your idea of support mean calling someone AFTER something breaks? While not every issue can be prevented, many can.  Some basic preventative maintenance of your network and even your website is a best practices that can prevent embarrassing and costly downtime.
3. Are any upcoming projects or changes in the works? Are you planning to move, expand or downsize, replace a server, target a new market, put on a major fundraiser?  While some of these things may not be directly related to technology, change is a perfect time to review what’s in place and make sure it is effectively achieving your goals.
4. Are you leveraging social media marketing to increase traffic to your website and convert the traffic into leads?  Are your competitors? We recently posted a series of articles by guest blogger Thomas Clifford “Social Media Isn’t for Business.  Yeah, Right“.  If you think it can’t help your business, school or nonprofit, this is highly recommended reading.
5. Is there anything you wish you could change about your technology, be it your network, website support (or lack thereof)? Think of this as the old “magic wand” question.  If you could wave it over your technology, what would that look like?  What would the benefits be from these changes?  What is the status quo costing you?

It’s not unusual to realize that you aren’t thrilled with what you have in place, but you’re also not sure what to do about it.  Reputable technology firms offer basic reviews with recommendations that can make a big difference for little or no cost to you as an introduction to their expertise.  Take advantage of them, and this reflection will have been time well spent to help you achieve your goals.

It is so un-”PC” to be wasteful in any way these days.  We bring our own bags to the grocery store and turn down a bag if we have just a handful of items.  We wash and separate our trash and even take the bus if we can to save harmful emissions into the air.  So would it surprise you to know that despite all of your efforts, you are probably still being wasteful in ways that are putting lead and mercury into our landfills growing at a rate of 2-3 times that of other types of waste?

eWaste is being generated by all of us as we replace our cell phones, upgrade our computers and install 50″ flat screens in place of our old 19″ CRT televisions. With the rapid changes in technology, this is happening at a faster rate than ever before as we just have to have the latest gadgets (think - iPhone 4). According to sources on the Internet, an estimated 50 million tons of eWaste is produced each year. To make matters worse, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that only 15-20% of eWaste is recycled and the rest goes directly into landfills and incinerators.

While the problem sounds overwhelming, there are things you can do to help control the effects.   Here are a few:

• Refurbish and Reuse - The old saying that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure certainly holds true here.  Schools, non-profits, and organizations that ship refurbished goods to less privileged areas can take your “worthless” technology and help someone who is not able to have the latest and greatest.  One partner we have worked with is mysbk.org.
• Recycle - Sometimes pieces of the equipment can be salvaged for the precious metals that it is composed of and the usable parts removed so the net eWaste effect is lessened.
• Dispose Properly - If a device can’t be reused or recycled, there are proper ways to dispose of them.  Depending upon the device, some towns have special drop off days and others will take them at a dump or transfer station.  There are even companies designed specifically to take this type of waste for a small fee.  If you are going to use one of these be sure that they are a reputable operation who is not simply going to take the fee and then dispose of them improperly after you leave.

eWaste is a large and growing problem, but every little bit of controlling the issue can help.  Think about that when you open up the box to your shiny new iPhone and are about toss your Motorola StarTAC into the kitchen trashcan.

If you work with  businesses in Massachusetts, there is another aspect of the new identity theft regulations that you need to be aware of.  As part of the regulations, Massachusetts organizations must also confirm that their service providers are taking appropriate security measures when handling personal information by requiring them to complete a “201 CMR 17 Third Party Compliance Contract”.

Personal information includes social security numbers, credit card or bank account numbers, PIN numbers and/or passwords to access financial accounts.  Law firms, insurance agencies, realtors, financial services brokers and IT firms are just a few of the many businesses  who will be receiving the contracts as their Massachusetts clients complete the checklist for 201 CMR 17.

In order to be compliant themselves, companies must select and oversee third-party service providers that are capable of maintaining safeguards for personal information and contractually require that they adhere to them.  Compliance is a process that takes time to implement.  Don’t jeopardize lucrative client relationships - use the 201 CMR checklist to create a Written Information Security Program (WISP) for your company BEFORE you are asked to sign off on a Third Party Compliance Contract.

I polled IT professionals from the ForeSite team and beyond to determine what key things every business owner, director of a school or nonprofit should know about their network.  My goal was to create a checklist that will help “nontechnical” people who have the ultimate responsibility of making technology related business decisions and protecting sensitive data to better understand what questions to ask of their IT professionals - whether you rely on an internal IT staff or a technology firm.

Some of the questions are obvious, such as making sure that your critical data is being backed up and that you know important passwords.  But there were also questions that could be eye-opening, such as “what remote access is being allowed?”.  I think back to a meeting with a Head of School when this question was asked, and it was determined that a former vendor and two former employees still had remote access to their server (and the data residing on the server)  simply because no one had thought to regularly audit the remote access and disable accounts that were no longer valid.

We hope this checklist will help you to get the information you need to make informed decisions about your network.  Your comments and questions are welcome!

Without a doubt, the answer to the above question is THE BUSINESS!  But it’s amazing how often we forget this when looking at new technology to implement in a business.  Far too often, a cool new technology noticed by a business owner or the desire of their IT company to play with a new technology drives the decision for an implementation.  While there may be merits of the technology, the decision to affect a business’s production environment should be driven by a business need.  For example, we have clients come to us all the time saying something like, “Shouldn’t we be upgrading to Windows 7?”.  Our reply is usually, “Why?  Do you feel that one of the new features can help with a business problem you are having?”  While the answer is sometimes yes, most often it is because they have a friend who got it or saw a good ad on TV.

As a technology partner for our clients, we use the mantra that business needs should always drive technology implementations, not vice versa.  To help our clients make the best use of their technology investments we will work to understand their business so we can help them make informed decisions.  Some of the things we want to determine are:

• Is there a business problem you are having that is driving this?
• Have you considered all of the costs of this implementation?
• How will this affect your interactions with your clients?

By working in this fashion, we believe it build good long term relationships as we are not simply looking to book every billable project we can get our hands on.  In the long run it is a win/win.

We have compiled a more thorough list of the things we evaluate when helping a client determine if a new technology is right for them.  Download our “10 Reality Check Items to Consider in any Technology Implementation“.

5 signs that it’s time for a web site redesign:

1.  Your site isn’t effective in helping you achieve your goals (more sales, brand recognition, community awareness, etc)

2.  Your site is no longer an accurate representative of who you are and what you offer.

3.  The site looks very dated.  Not sure about this?  Check out your competitor’s sites to see what you are up against.

4.  You don’t have a scalable web site that you can update with new content, add a blog or integrate easily with social media.

5.  Users have asked for features or made other suggestions for changes that cannot be accomplished with your current site.

Looking for specific recommendations for your web site?  Let our team of experts evaluate it!

A quick reminder for business owners that we’re nearing the deadline to purchase and install new hardware and software and qualify for the Section 179 deduction.

Please contact us ASAP at 1-866-GO-SITE if you need assistance with a quote for replacement equipment or assistance with installation.

When I was working from home the other day, I started to feel a sharp pain in my side.  At first, it was just annoying but it really started slowing me down.  I was working on filing the forms for my defense in the murder charges that had recently been brought against me which really isn’t that fun so I decided that instead of continuing, I would give myself surgery to see if I could find the cause of my pain and resolve it.  I figured hey, I’ve been living with this body for 38 years, who knows it better than me?

So I got out my trusty pocket knife and jammed it into my side just above the area where the pain was so I could look around.  I took out a few organs and made quite a mess before I realized that I was probably in over my head, so I jammed everything back in and used my trusty Swingline stapler to close my side up.  Then I went back to the murder defense because I was there, who could defend me better than me?

Sound ridiculous?  Of course!!  But for some reason, we step into situations every day where non-technology folks decide that they can setup a new server or firewall themselves because they figure “how hard could it be?” only to find out that their “work” has not not only delayed the project, but for us to undo what they did will take twice as long as if they had simply let us take care of it.

We have created a checklist of questions to ask yourself before embarking on an IT project on your own.  By answering these questions honestly, it will help you decide if you should call a professional.  You can probably come up with a similar checklist for when to call a doctor or lawyer as well.

Download 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting an IT Project on Your Own

Great question.  Maybe you shouldn’t?  We talk to clients about this all of the time and have counseled many businesses into and out of replacing network equipment currently in place.  Often the issue if forced when there is an outage of an aging server but in our network support model we try to be more proactive about the process and help a business owner understand the potential business benefits to replacing a server, leaving it as is, or even extending the warranty for another year.

The first thing you should do in considering a server replacement is calculate the ROI for the project.  Unfortunately, there is no magic number for the payback of a new server as all businesses are different but we have compiled 10  Things to Consider when making this ROI calculation.   The list includes hard calculations like the average hourly wage of your employees and the amount of time spent on repetitive processes but it also considers less concrete items like peace of mind of the business owner as that is also definitely worth something in today’s stressful business world.

Some quick guidelines as to whether or not to replace would be:

Replace if:

• There a positive ROI (as discussed above) for the project
• The server is out of warranty (if it is, it will more likely have a hardware failure) and it can not be extended
• The server does not meet your basic business functions and is holding you back

Extend the Warranty if:

• The warranty can be extended and the server is meeting your basic business needs
• You do not expect your business needs for the server to expand greatly in the next 12 months
• You would like to replace the server and it is borderline, but you need to plan for the expenditure in the next budget cycle

Generally, a server will be an effective business resource for 3-5 years depending upon business growth.  After 5 years, server hardware can become unreliable, sluggish and apt to fail.  If you are in the gray area somewhere, you may want to consider calculating the ROI of replacement to see if there is a real payback for your business.

Download 10 Things to Consider when Calculating the ROI of a Network Server Replacement