How can IT support help boost your company’s bottom line? As advanced technology keeps on influencing businesses, increasingly more entrepreneurs, CFOs, and managers are starting to get more involved in the tech department of their companies. Generally, there’s a courteous relation between IT and finance chiefs, yet conflicting ideas may arise every now and then. IT departments are always excited to implement new technological strategies, while CFOs are more focused on the bottom line. That being said, it’s rather easy to see how these conflictual situations can create friction.

Business owners should find a way to make CFOs, CIOs and IT departments work together and thus increase productivity. Figure out how to make them work together as a team to boost output and help your company attain its goals. Investing in IT can be a smart way of taking things to a whole new level. Cloud technology for example, is an excellent way of persuading your IT department to brainstorm ideas and move your company forward.

1. Teamwork

IT departments have started to work closer with finance chiefs. According to a recent study, 44% of CFOs mentioned that their authority and influence over the IT department has increased visibly in the past 2 years. Furthermore, 39% of CFOs said IT departments are comfortable with reporting directly to them, thus permitting finance chiefs to be in control and manage the decision-making process. While working together with IT, CFOs should see the relationship as part of a long-term project, and not as a short-term collaboration.

2. IT is vital to CFO

The IT department can be of great use for finance chiefs as it can help them hammer out internal systems. Company owners may choose to postpone meeting with IT or CIO departments, so as to concentrate more on finance-specific tasks. Here’s what you must always remember: CFOs who are not interested in technological advances may adjourn your company from moving forward. As a company owner, it’s your job to convince them that working together can boost your bottom line.

3. IT support makes sure your business runs smoothly

Most businesses today depend on advanced technology. Offices are equipped with computers and laptops, and employees have access to information that is stored in the cloud. If something happens to the network, only the IT department can fix the problem and thus help companies stay on track. Running a company whose survival depends on computer performance and network quality can be extremely challenging, and although you may know some things about software and hardware, only a specialist will have the skills to deal with serious troubleshooting and prevent a virtual disaster.

4. Keep your company safe with IT support

IT support comes with lots of benefits. First of all, there will be a whole department taking care of your network.  A glitch can happen at any time, so it’s always a good idea to be safe. Even the smallest error can have devastating effects on your productivity. Slow computers, bad internet connectivity, and outdated anti-virus programs are daily issues most business owners overlook. Outsourced IT offers support 24/7. Thus, your whole company is secure, and in case technical issues emerge, your tech-savvy team will make sure to fix it immediately.

5. Outsourced IT support is cheaper than in-house IT services

In-house IT means you have a whole department dedicated to fixing tech-related problems in your company. Paying these people a monthly wage can be expensive, especially since there are days when their services are not required. Outsourcing IT support has become a more viable solution to keeping your business secure. Hiring independent contractors can be a lot more convenient as you pay only their IT services are needed.

Efficient IT support can work miracles for your company’s productivity. Since most business operate both online and offline, it’s good to have people dealing exclusively with the tech part of your business. Many people have decided to seek IT support offshore. There are many dependable websites that offer competent IT services; you just need to find someone who can cater to your needs and wants. Make a sensible investment now, purchase IT support and ensure your company’s success by boosting its bottom line.

Jason Phillips  is a tech freak guy who usually writes and blogs about technology. He also writes for Conosco which provides fixed-price IT support and IT services to London’s most demanding businesses.

The post 5 Ways Your IT Support Can Boost Your Bottom Line appeared first on Colocation America.

Servers deliver e-mails, run websites, and store crucial business data. As a result, their owners need to do the impossible to prevent major breaches. Since this task is harder than it seems, the following tips and tricks are more than welcomed.

Install Antiseptically

An unsecured server that is located on the Internet can be affected in only a couple of minutes. As a result, you are advised to configure the server in the offline mode, and use a CD to load all the initial patches. The whole idea is to secure the server as much as you can before placing it online.

Control Access

Bear in mind that the administrators of the server are provided with several privileges, including the right to access and control the system. Make sure that the individuals you hire as administrators are as trustworthy as possible, and handle the password only to the ones you trust the most.

Keep things simple

A server located on the Internet can combine several functions such as e-mail and database service function, but that’s not a very good idea. Not only that a server which runs several applications is the perfect target for hackers, but it also comes with software incompatibilities. The best option is to allot a single function per server.

If you’ve decided to use your server with one purpose, you’re advised to get rid of any services and software that don’t match your purpose. All you have to do is disable the service that you don’t use by adjusting the configuration settings. This way, you are making sure that hackers cannot use these services. Other services that you’re advised to remove include unused language compliers, system development tools, and network services.

Besides, you should make sure that your server isn’t provided with instant messaging software, since this can be exactly the gateway needed by intruders. In case your company has an internal website located on the intranet, you are advised to host it on a different server from the one that hosts your public website.

Add Security Software

Security software should definitely be installed on your server, since its goal is to identify and remove potential infections. Note that security software usually consists of anti-virus, anti-spyware scanners and filters, anti-root kit, and a firewall in charge of defeating unauthorized access.

Installing intrusion prevention and detection software may also help, as it will protect your server from different attacks and will guarantee for the integrity of the system files.

Don’t forget to clean up once the installation is finished

When you install several applications, you are advised to remove the scripts, sample files, directories, and code, since hackers have a tendency to use them for hiding malware.

Be password smart

Until now, passwords were usually required to have eight characters. However, current utilities can try not less than a million passwords per second, meaning that a password made of lowercase characters can be cracked in less than three days. If you use numbers and uppercase letters, your password will be more difficult to break, but still not impossible. That’s why you are advised to adopt the following safety measures:

– Choose a password that contains over 12 characters and try to include numbers, shift characters (@, %, o &), as well as both lowercase and uppercase letters.

– Never utilize passwords that make use of “dictionary words”, including clever or common misspellings, slang or digital slang such as ROTFL, expletives, or foreign words that are commonly used.

– Instead of adding a number at the end of your previous password, try adding it in the middle.

– Don’t let users to re-use their previous passwords

– Never use passwords that include pet names, anniversaries, children’s names, or birthdays.

– Quarantine incoming material

If you want to avoid potential attacks and intrusions, you can store your system files on different partitions or drives, but never in the location where the uploaded files are stored. Bear in mind that you can also hide the disk space availability for upload files, in order to make sure that the system is not utilized by hackers.

Consider lockouts

Most server operating systems enable users to lock their accounts in case a wrong password is introduced a couple of times, and this tactic can prevent some attacks. However, bear in mind that even legitimate users can type a wrong passwords, which means that the administrators will probably have to deal with requests to unlock accounts on a regular basis.

Author Bio: Jason Phillips is an ordinary guy as others, but with extraordinary passion for technology and gadgets. He owns a site conosco.com which delivers complete IT solutions at London.

The post How to Secure Your Server the Right Way—the First Time appeared first on Colocation America.

The advent of cloud computing and shared hosting has made it easy for entrepreneurs to start a social networking site. For web developers, cloud hosting offers many positive tools to protect users from volatile environments. What’s best for your social networking site may not suit your needs once your web site grows. Here are some things to consider:

Cloud Hosting

Customers who choose to go with a cloud hosting service provider gain incredible amounts of scalability and reliability as these large environments are built to handle very demanding web hosting requirements on an as needed basis.

Many times, it is cost prohibitive to set up your own hosting environment. Setting up a data center that includes a T1 internet connection as well as the space and power systems may not be the best option for medium to large computing applications. Unless your website is experiencing rapid growth cloud hosting will suffice.

Cloud Hosting Easy to Maintain

Cloud computing is also a great choice if you need around the clock technical support. Not only does the cloud vendor offer their own technical staff, but because they typically have a staff of more than just one or two engineers, they can provide the logistic support for high availability environments that would prove impossible for a small office.

Flexible Billing

Shared hosting on the cloud is billed based on usage, bandwidth, processing, users, and support incidents. Billing will typically scale up as the customer’s business scales up. Since it is on a month to month cycle, you are only billed for what you used that month. This is an especially good model for businesses that drive sales through web site traffic.

The post Hosting Solutions for Social Networking Sites appeared first on Colocation America.

The issues around choosing open source or vendor specific computer applications in large organizations has been around for a long time and will continue to be with us well into the future. In many ways, it was Linus Torvalds and his Linux operating system that really brought this issue to the forefront of corporate IT management because it was one of the first highly successful pieces of open source software that enabled businesses to at least consider the possibility of moving their IT businesses to open source infrastructures utilizing Linux dedicated server hosting. The open source issue has many specific ramifications in the medical industry, such as standardization, expenses, privacy and government regulations. At the heart, however, many of the issues that face hospitals and clinics are the same kind of issues that other private sector businesses are dealing with regarding open source technology.

Linux has been the poster child for open source software for many years, but with vendors creating and re-selling new proprietary flavors of Linux, Red Hat Linux as a case in point, many open source advocates have been questioning whether a move to Linux is really enough to satisfy the goals that open source advocates wish to achieve.

In the medical community, open source advocates wish to achieve a number of different goals, some philosophical and some practical. On the philosophic level medical open source advocates are particularly concerned about access to private health data. Open source technologies utilize public standards and freely available software that make accessing personal health records more realistic for individual patients. Vendor specific formats and technologies could prohibit individuals from accessing their own health information. On a practical level, open source technology implementations can potentially save millions of dollars in software licensing fees.

The Linux environment today is extremely nuanced with several versions (or distros, in Linux speak) available and optimized for very specific purposes. Mint and Ubuntu are two versions of Linux that are optimized to run as desktop machines, and basically are comparable to Apple’s OS X environment and Microsoft’s Windows 7 environment. On the server side, large enterprises can host their server platforms with Fedora Core. Fedora Core is the community free version of Red Hat’s proprietary Linux implementation.

The issue that has arisen lately around open source and Linux is that Red Hat now does custom development and licensing for the Linux environment, thus making Red Hat implementations as much vendor proprietary as they are open source. But is this enough for open source advocates? It depends on what goals you are attempting to achieve.

Many open source advocates who wish to save money through acquiring software free of licensing costs point out that Red Hat licensing does not come cheap. In order to gain the cost savings required by many financially overburdened hospitals and clinics, one must stick to free community software such as Fedora. While software licenses are certainly something to be evaluated, free software does come at a price for organizations. What organizations do not pay for in licensing fees, they must make up for in support costs and technical subject matter expertise. The licensing cost for a vendor such as Red Hat bakes these support costs into the price of their licensing. It is up to each medical care facility to then weigh their own technical expertise and need for technical support with the vendor licensing costs.

The philosophical issue of open standards for health data and processes is in many ways taken care of by the fact that the Linux technology licensed or not, is an open standard that could make health data much more accessible for public consumption. A move to Linux on the desktop is where a lot of this standardization would be ideal, and that is a difficult sell for many hospitals who are entrenched in Microsoft Windows. A move toward any flavor of Linux, licensed or not, would help move the institution closer to a full Linux based environment.

Author Bio: The article is written by Jason Phillips; he is a man who is brimmed with positivity and contentment. His passion is to write on technology, gadgets and social media. Also, he is a supplier of electronic health records software, and he is of the view point that this software is quintessential.

The post Is Linux Good for Open Source Medical Advocates appeared first on Colocation America.