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10 Purchases for Small & Medium-Size Businesses

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Saving-Money

Small and Medium-Size Businesses (SMBs) will often take shortcuts to cut costs when purchasing.  To avoid disasters such as a loss of data or work, SMBs are strongly suggested to focus on the ten points below.

Hardware

Considering the rapid change of technology requirements, a pro-active approach for replacing desktops, laptops, servers, and networking hardware is to look five years into the future.

Backup Software

Although built-in backup software and Windows Server backup are adequate, purchasing a third-party backup solution will have the ability to recover from an image.

Internet Connection

Providing your SMB with a consumer-grade DSL line would not be an efficient business plan. Setting up a network that provides your business with more bandwidth than required will prevent a network bottleneck from occuring.

Firewall

Securing your business with only Windows built-in firewall is not ideal.  Configuring a Cisco, Fortinet, or Sonicwall is more secure, reliable and flexible in a SMB environment.

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage provides scalability, reliability and portability.  Cloud storage is divided into three categories:  Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).  Many companies are transferring to Cloud services for access to data outside the network.

Website

Online presence has become an important key for all businesses.  A solid solution is to have a strong website, blogging and effectively using social media.

Redundancy

Redundancy is an appropriate investment towards ensuring that your SMBs network does not go down.  Similar to backups, redundancy does not affect everyday business but should an incident arise, you’ll be glad it’s there.

Support

IT Support is a necessity, whether it’s an in-house department, third-party service provider, or support for software.

Mobile Devices

The ability to work from outside the office and accessing data from anywhere  is now an important key for businesses.  Setting up a virtual private network enables laptops, tablets and smartphones to connect and work from anywhere.

Printers

Supply your SMB with a printer that has the sustainability and features required for business use.

 

Website

BigBeagle.com Launched

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BigBeagle.com

We are excited to announce the rebranding of SJTHosting.net to BigBeagle.com. BigBeagle.com is a discount reseller of GoDaddy.com, and our new online store has all the products and services needed to be on the internet. With our technical experience and knowledge, we will be able to properly direct people and businesses to the best solutions on the Internet with a discounted price.

BigBeagle.com is our new online site that will allow all the options that you need to have your business online. BigBeagle.com is a user-friendly site that will help you navigate your way to getting completely set up to have your company up and running on the web in minutes.

Currently on www.BigBeagle.com there some great deals going on.

Domain Names

Web Hosting Plans

SSL Certificates

Hosted Email Exchange

Marketing Tools

And Yes, Even Build a Website From Scratch

BigBeagle.com has so many great services to offer at a reasonable price. Come check it out and don’t miss out on these great SAVINGS!

Free Software Software Utilities

Check Out These Tools to Help Safeguard Facebook Privacy

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Hopefully, why you should never trust Facebook is obvious by now. Perhaps you feel like you still need it, though — or stubbornly refuse to believe it is really all that bad, whether because you think it is not much of a risk or just do not believe the evidence.

You may take all reasonable precautions, including using no personally identifiable or sensitive information in your account or profile data. Maybe you use a password and email address for the account that you use for nothing else, and refuse to communicate with anyone who actually knows any personally identifiable information or secrets about you on Facebook. Even so, there are risks.

Facebook clearly is not concerned with your privacy any more than the absolute minimum required to keep itself in business. There’s no such thing as a trusted brand, but there is certainly such a thing as a brand that is thoroughly suspicious — and Facebook seems to fit the description when it comes to personal privacy. Any time Facebook appears to care about your privacy, keep in mind that it took Congressional posturing to keep the corporation in line even to that small degree.

It is clear that even when Facebook offers something that looks like some kind of privacy protection, the offer is not a promise, and relying on it is a recipe for disappointment. With that in mind, the problem of protecting even the most minimal sense of privacy while using Facebook seems insurmountable. Thanks to the efforts of a number of hackers and entrepreneurs who actually care about privacy — not only theirs, but that of others as well, even if only because it serves as a convenient business model — there are some options that can help at least a little.

In no particular order:

1. SaveFace
Untangle offers the SaveFace bookmarklet, a script that can be saved as a bookmark in your browser. When you click a bookmarklet, it does “something” — usually involving whatever page you happen to be visiting at that moment. In the case of SaveFace, you can visit your Facebook page then click on the bookmarklet to rest your privacy settings to Private. According to Untangle, it currently covers Contact Information; Search Settings; Friends, Tags, and Connections; and Personal Information and Posts.

2. ReclaimPrivacy.org
A similar bookmarklet is offered by ReclaimPrivacy.org. Unlike SaveFace, the purpose of ReclaimPrivacy.org’s tool is to scan your Facebook settings and detect certain types of privacy vulnerabilities in your account settings. In theory, at least, it should be more thorough than SaveFace — but less automated as a means of protecting yourself.

3. Connect In Private
At ConnectInPrivate there is an annoying tablike thing floating over the left-hand side of the page. Take a closer look: it reads “Secure Your Facebook Profile”. If you click on that, it takes you to a Facebook application that offers a fairly comprehensive Facebook privacy feature set. Of course, what it provides is little more than a convenience layer over manually adjusting your own Facebook privacy settings, but it can be used for free and, if you like that kind of thing, you might find it valuable.

Using Connect In Private’s Facebook privacy scanner is a remarkably tedious and uncomfortable process for something so simple. It involves reading, and thinking about, a series of questions about what kind of privacy preferences you have — in ways that are poorly defined, and requiring Facebook account access that should make the average security concerned user hesitate. Access to the source code is not exactly a matter of easy access the way it is with the JavaScript in the ReclaimPrivacy.org bookmarklet and the .js page it references, either.

A final word
Connect In Private has one definite advantage over the other tools, though: it is more actively maintained. As of this writing, ReclaimPrivacy.org’s script is not compatible with current Facebook privacy settings, and there is a note on the page to that effect. SaveFace is far from a complete solution, for that matter. None of them are perfect, and there is always a risk if you trust your private data to a site like Facebook. Each of them might help a little, though.

In the end, I for one find it difficult to trust the Facebook application offered by Connect In Private. Your mileage may vary.

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