MJ's Business IT Blog

The Importance of ICE and Registering Portable Electronics

I am writing this post to urge every reader of this blog to setup your ICE contact on your mobile phone and iPod as well as to register your portable electronics.  This post is influenced by a serious accident that occurred to a relative last week.  Without providing too much detail, in order to protect the privacy of the injured person, this person was stuck by a car while jogging one morning.  All that was on this person was their iPod.  The injuries were so severe that this person was unconscious and remains so nearly one week after the accident.  During the first 30+ hours following the accident, this person remained unidentified because all they had no ID, only their iPod on their person.  Through some truly smart thinking a nurse used this persons iPod serial number to track down their identity and find their family.

While we all tend to carry our drivers license or other form of identification on us most of the time, there are times when that may not be the case, like when you are out exercising.  I know that myself, I nearly always have my mobile phone or iPod with me.  So, as illustrated by the real world example above, if you have not registered your iPod, do it, right now, before you forget.  It could just save your life.  As well, you should setup your ICE contact on both your iPod and on your mobile phone.  I checked my kids and my wife's phones and iPods immediately and our oldest had it setup, but we set it up on the others.  What is ICE?  If you're not familiar with it, get familiar and teach it to anyone you know.  We even made this an agenda item for our staff meeting today.  I encourage you to do the same.

ICE stands for In Case of Emergency.  On many mobile phones, there is a built in feature called ICE.  What's unique about ICE is that it will work whether or not the phone is locked.  More and more people are enabling the lock features of their phones for security and to prevent unauthorized use.  In short, the ICE contact allows you to setup emergency contact names and numbers, as well as critical information like medicines you take, conditions you have, etc., that will be accessible to anyone who finds your device, regardless of whether you have enabled security or not.

On your iPod, you can setup an ICE note.  If you have never used the notes feature on your iPod, go to Extras and select Notes and follow the instructions to setup your ICE note.  It's very easy to do.

On smartphones, there are even more powerful ways to setup ICE.  Both the iPhone and Blackberry  have ICE applications available.  For the iPhone, just search the App Store for an ICE application.  There are a few available and all address the need.  To the right is a screenshot of an ICE application, which not only displays your ICE information, it can also be set as your iPhone wallpaper, to display whether the phone is locked or not.  It may not be the coolest wallpaper to have, but it may be the best one you could have.

On the Blackberry, you can use an application, just like on the iPhone, called ICE that is available at the Blackberry App World.  It provides the following features:

--One button calling of emergency contact
--Multiple contacts in order of priority
--Fully editable entries
--Covers medications and allergies
--Summary for quick access in one-button
--Private to your phone, no online access

Some Blackberry users also the built in Security Options for this.  Here are the simpe steps to set it up:  Under Options --> Security Options --> General Settings, you can set Allow Outgoing Calls While Locked to Yes, and include your ICE Phone Number under Options --> Owner in the Information section so that it displays on the home screen when the device is locked.

If you have a Windows Mobile phone, you can set your owner information to display on power up, even if the device is locked.  You can use the note section of the owner information to put extended instructions and create your own ICE.  An example of mine is to the right.

Lastly, no matter what device you use, I recommend creating an extensive ICE contact record in Outlook or whatever other contact application you may be using to sync your contacts with your mobile device.  You can use the built in fields to enter your work and home telephone numbers and then the notes section to enter your extended contact priorities and other important medical information.  If your device is accessible, this information will be critical to first responders.  If you lock your device and are part of a corporate network, your IT administrators will be able to access this contact record and relay this critical information in a timely manner, provide your ICE contact is setup and provides the basic contact information.  An example ICE contact record is below.

 

As I said earlier, please take the time and do this now so you don't forget.  Most importantly, I hope you never need to have this information used on your behalf.  As I like to believe, it's far better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  And as my police friends say, Stay Safe.

Here is the link to the video aired on the CBS affiliate in Atlanta:  http://www.cbsatlanta.com/video/21119080/

Work Hard, Play Hard

Everyone knows that hard work pays off. I'm in Kansas City for two days of intensive meetings with fifteen peers who also run IT services business from all parts of the country. We are here working hard on our businesses, learning about the factors that detemine whether we have healthy businesses. We are sharing metrrics and helping each other insure we have healthy companies, excellent staff and great client service

These trips can be mentally and physically exhausting. The benefits are tremendous and when possible, it's a nice benefit to take a little time to play hard too.

Tonight, all fifteen of us are at the Kansas City ballpark watching the Red Sox take on the Royals. I'm sitting right beside the Red Sox bullpen, which remains quiet as the Sox lead the Royals 4-0 going in to the 6th. Go Sox!

Latest Column: Isuring Company Web Browsing Remain Safe

Below is my latest column, published in today's Portsmouth Herald.  Hope you enjoy reading it.

I'm sure you are familiar with the problem: You or someone you know is browsing the Internet, seemingly on a safe Web site, and then the pop-ups start. Somehow, you've gotten infected with spyware or worse.

Just this week, users of theNew York Times Web site experienced problems caused by a malicious banner ad that infiltrated the site. This fake ad caused a window to pop up on users' computers, warning them they had a virus and instructing them to download software to fix the problem. Fortunately, most users know a pop-up like that is fake and likely a lure to get you to download software that will really cause problems, not the least of which may be identity theft.

If sites as reputable as the New York Times can be infected like this and cause problems for legitimate visitors, what can you do to protect your network?

The obvious perimeter security measures need to be in place. A robust hardware firewall appliance that will inspect traffic coming in and leaving your network is a must. Appliances such as these allow you to specify very specific rules as to what may come and go and therefore protects the computers behind it. A centrally managed anti-virus and anti-spyware solution is another must. Everyone is familiar with anti-virus software and should be with anti-spyware software as well. These need to be continually updated, tuned and monitored to ensure they provide the protection they are intended to. Many threats today will attempt to disable these defenses, so keeping vigilant watch on their operations status is imperative. Centrally managed software firewalls on individual computers are very helpful and should be a standard these days.

Those are some of the very obvious measures even the most basic computer network should have in place. However, there are some additional services that complement these, to help ensure a safer network.

The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the Internet service that translates the common names of Web sites, like www.nytimes.com, to the corresponding Internet address, or IP address, where the Web site actually exists. Many threats will attempt to overtake the DNS services that your network relies on to redirect you to fake or malicious Web sites that try to pass themselves off as the real thing. Using a DNS filtering service is a simple and very effective way to protect against this and ensure you are really browsing to the sites you think you are. More advanced services will also provide protection against known sites and threats, continually monitoring the Internet and updating their databases of malicious sites, with the goal of only allowing you to surf the safe places.

There are also traffic shaping devices that allow you to manage your Internet connectivity by restricting where people can go, or minimizing the amount of Internet bandwidth allowed to be used for certain types of sites. These types of devices allow you to restrict access to certain places on the Internet or prioritize sites based on the value to the business. For example, you may want to ensure your finance department can get to all the banking and financial sites they need to use, while minimizing or preventing outright the use of fantasy football sites, to ensure work takes a priority over play.

Some of this definitely skirts the edge of censorship and can be a bit reminiscent of "big brother," but properly implemented with the right intention, they can help ensure your use of the Internet remains as safe as possible.

Regardless of what defensive technology you put in place, and I have only touched on a few in this article, the final line of defense is also the person. There is no substitute for educating your computer users on proper and safe use of the Internet. This will continue to be a highly important part of managing your personnel, ensuring they are properly trained on safe computing to ensure your business remains safe in our highly connected world.

MJ Shoer is president and virtual chief technology officer of Jenaly Technology Group, Inc., a Portsmouth-based outsourced IT services provider. He may be reached at mshoer@jenaly.com.

Great Windows 7 Seminar

We held our latest educational seminar today, a Sneak Peak at Windows 7.  We had an unprecedented 94% attendance rate.  Thank you to everyone who came and thank to Robert's Maine Grill for providing a great facility and an excellent lunch.  Thanks as well to our team at Microsoft, who helped with content and funding to offset the cost of the event.

Congratulations to Kim Tyndall of Working with Words Collaborative who won the free copy of Windows 7 Professional we raffled off.  We had an informative and interactive seminar with some great questions from many of those in attendance.

Speed and stability were the primary concerns of the day, as everyone is concerned about a new operating system possibly being slow.  Windows 7 is anything but slow and I was able to demonstrate that from my own Toshiba Tablet PC which is running Windows 7 Ultimate.  We went through Microsoft's published list of 42 Windows 7 Tips & Tricks and focussed in on those areas of improvement and productivity that I felt were most relevant to those in attendance.  Jump Lists, Libraries and mobile features seemed to impress most.  Presentation mode, multiple monitor management, location aware functionality and search generated considerable interest as well.  Bitlocker encryption and compatibility mode were also of interest to the attendees.

We video taped the seminar and will post it to YouTube and update this post with the video as soon as it's available.

Cloud Concerns?

Cloud Computing, Hosted Applications, Software as a Service (SAAS).  These are the hot topics in the IT industry right now, but have recent high profile outages, like Google's GMail outage that lasted 3+ hours on Tuesday dealt a blow to the general enthusiasm around these technologies?

It will be interesting to see how the media and the market react to this.  This is not the first outage, neither for Google, nor other hosted providers, but it is one of the more widely publicized outages.  As more and more companies consider these solutions, the reliability and high availability that hosted applications must provide become all the more important.  Could your company continue to do business if your IT systems were unavailable?

This is not a new issue.  This has been a focus for businesses large and small for a very long time. Internal systems reliability has come a long way.  Most businesses enjoy very stable systems thanks to improved technologies an proactive IT management by their internal IT staffs or outsourced IT partner.  The same is required of the Cloud.

I know several businesses that are embracing various Cloud technologies and I know others that are building out their own private, internal, Cloud's, in part to protect themselves from this very issue.  As this continues to play out, it will be interesting to see just how availability and outage issues effect the broad adoption of Cloud bases solutions.

My Latest Gadget Love

My latest gadget is the Motorola EQ5 portable bluetooth speaker system.  I am in love with this thing.  I carry a ton of stuff in my bag.  It's quite literally a portable office, so I am always looking to slim down and consolidate.  I've been very successful with these pursuits and over the last month have successfully moved from a rather large backpack to a more slender Targus vertical Messenger Bag.  It's lighter, smaller and is a much better fit under airplane seats.

I have been carrying both a nice pair of iHome portable audio speakers, for listening to music, DVD's or my SlingPlayer and a Polycom USB Speaker Phone for my Whaleback Softphone.  Both are great, but together they take up space.  The MOTOROKR EQ5 is a bluetooth, wireless speakerphone and stereo speaker set.  It's really innovative.  The sound quality is excellent and if you get a call while you're listening to music, the music is paused so you can take the call.  Now that's cool.  It's about the size of an iPhone, so it's lught and small.  The only thing I don't love about it is that the battery is not replaceable, but it's rated for 500 charge cycles and I'm sure there will be a better unit available by the time this one fails.  For under $100.00, this device is a bargain and will get a lot of use by me.  If you have a need for an excellent speaker system that can provide both audio and speakerphone features, check out the EQ5.  It's great! Nice job Moto!