Fast becoming a symbiotic relationship, the Entrepreneur and the Virtual Assistant is an awesome combination. At Equilibrium, we are acutely aware of this and demand the highest quality and diligence from ourselves when assisting our customers.

Many Entrepreneurs have effectively used the administrative services at that Virtual Assistants provide at Equilibrium to enhance the progress of their venture. As both groups are prone to working outside of office hours, their understanding of meeting deadlines are razor sharp.

A successful Entrepreneur will use all the skills available to them to propagate their venture. They understand the specific skills base requirement and are often good delegates.

A high risk category, the Entrepreneur is an extremely driven individual. He or she is often innovative, seeing things that even the most venerated executives fail to notice. And as the stakes get higher, they find even more novel ways to capitalise on opportunities thus benefiting from the outcome.

The need for speed and accuracy in the Entrepreneur’s world is crucial and mistakes are tantamount to failure. As entrepreneurship is essentially a risk business, but a highly successful one, Entrepreneurs understand the need for stability and roots. A good working system with excellent administrative back-up is a bonus for what they want to attain.

Entrepreneurs are vast and varied from running a family business to larger business. Working long hours, they instil the help of all those around them to ‘make the business work’. Entrepreneurs working with a strong presence on the internet are dealing with additional as well as different challenges. As the Entrepreneur works all hours, the Virtual Assistant becomes their ideal partner.

Despite the image of the Entrepreneur capitalising on his or her family to generate assistance, many are cultivating a far more sophisticated approach. Multiple approaches, new technologies, virtual communication, global sales and links require top grade systems and maintenance. Sourcing and retaining an effective Virtual Assistant is now a main stay in independent and corporate business.

Entrepreneurs are far ahead of the game, realising the need for multiple approaches, they has come to rely on support systems. Responding to business opportunities and having the necessary administrative back-up from Virtual Assistants, Equilibrium ensures that they can rely on the expected rapid growth of his or her business.

© 2008 Kate Oakley

Georgina Prodhan and John Bowker writing for Reuters state that “British chip designer ARM will demonstrate a prototype of Google Inc’s Android mobile phone platform in action next week at the world’s biggest wireless fair, a source close to the company said.

It was not immediately clear on Thursday what the working model that ARM plans to show at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona would look like or who would supply the parts.

Google plans to deploy phones and services using the Android platform commercially in the second half of this year.

Google and ARM declined to comment on the report.

Google established an alliance of more than 30 carriers, handset makers, software firms and chipmakers in November to develop Android, which is based on open-source software and designed to make the Internet work better on mobile phones.

Deutsche Telekom’s  T-Mobile and Taiwan’s High Tech Computer Corp (HTC) have said that they plan to offer phones based on the Android platform this year.

Click here to read the article in full.

Companies can’t depend wholly on policy to maintain the level of security they need as reported by Computerworld; their comprehensive look at eight areas of possible problems is commandable and a warning to any working within these programmes. Areas covered are: Instant messaging; Web mail; Portable storage devices; PDAs and smart phones; Camera phones; Skype and other consumer VoIP services; Downloadable widgets and Virtual worlds. In this lengthy and comprehensive article on security and risk in all eight areas is fully explored. Computerworld furthre elaborates and states that:

“High-tech consumer products and services of all kinds are making their way into the workplace. They include everything from smart phones, voice-over-IP systems and flash memory sticks to virtual online worlds. And as people grow more accustomed to having their own personal technology at their beck and call — and in fact can’t imagine functioning without it — the line between what they use for work and what they use for recreation is blurring.

In a recent survey of corporate users by Yankee Group Research Inc., 86% of the 500 respondents said they had used at least one consumer technology in the workplace, for purposes related to both innovation and productivity.

Unfortunately, this trend poses problems for IT organizations. For one thing, the use of these technologies increases the risk of security breaches. Moreover, users expect IT to support these devices and services, especially once they interact with applications in the corporate environment.

But in many companies, it would be against corporate culture to simply ban the devices or to block employees from accessing consumer services. At the same time, companies can’t depend wholly on policy to maintain the level of security they need.

“I don’t know of any business where employees have the time to read and comprehend every single policy related to a computer in their environment — they’re busy doing their jobs,” says Sharon Finney, information security administrator at DeKalb Medical Centre in DeKalb County, Ga. “I consider it my responsibility to implement things that make security seamless, easy and completely in the background.”

Others, like Michael Miller, vice president of security at telecommunications services provider Global Crossing Ltd., wait until the devices or services affect productivity or otherwise cause a business problem, such as the security department battling worms or dealing with bandwidth issues. But no matter what companies decide to do, the response always involves a balance of enabling employee productivity, abiding by the corporate culture, not eating up too much of IT’s own resources and ensuring a level of security that’s right for the company.

“Consumerization will be a nightmare for IT departments, creating maintenance and support problems that will swiftly overwhelm IT resources, unless they embrace new approaches to managing the rogue employees,” says Josh Holbrook, an analyst at Yankee Group. Holbrook equates banning the use of consumer technologies in the workplace with “an endless game of whack-a-mole.” At the same time, ignoring the adoption of such technologies would lead to a potentially hazardous mix of secured and unsecured applications within a corporate enterprise, he says. He proposes ceding control to end users via an internal customer care cooperative model.
 
To help you decide how to respond, below we look at eight popular consumer technologies and services that have crept into the workplace and provide some insight into how companies are achieving the balance of security, productivity and sanity.

1. Instant messaging
People use instant messaging for everything from making sure their kids have a ride home from practice to communicating with co-workers and business partners. In the Yankee study, 40% of respondents said they use consumer IM technology at work. Instant messaging present numerous security challenges. Among other things, malware can enter a corporate network through external IM clients and IM users can send sensitive company data across insecure networks.

One way to combat threats is to phase out consumer IM services and use an internal IM server. In late 2005, Global Crossing did just that when it deployed Microsoft Corp.’s Live Communications Server (LCS). Then in August 2006 it blocked employees from directly using external IM services from providers such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Now, all internal IM exchanges are encrypted, and external IM exchanges are protected, as they’re funnelled through the LCS server and Microsoft’s public IM cloud.

Adopting an internal IM server also gave Global Crossing’s security team more control. “Through the public IM cloud, we’re able to make certain choices as to how restrictive or open we are. We can block file transfers, limit the information leaving our network or restrict URLs coming in,” which was a common method for propagating worms, Miller says. “That takes away a huge component of malicious activity.”

You can also take a harder line. DeKalb’s security policy, for instance, bans IM use altogether. “It’s mainly chat-type traffic, not personal health information, but it’s still a concern,” Finney says. As backup to the restrictive policy, she blocks most sites where IM clients can be downloaded, although she can’t block MSN, AOL or Yahoo because many physicians use those sites for e-mail accounts. Her team also uses a network inventory tool that can detect IM clients on employee PCs. If one is found, the employee is reminded of DeKalb’s no-IM policy and notified that the IM client will be removed. Finney is also considering various methods of blocking outbound IM traffic, but for now, she also uses a data loss prevention tool from Vericept Corp. to monitor IM traffic and alert the security team about any serious breaches. To do that, Finney’s team needs to shut down most of its Internet ports, which forces IM traffic to scroll to Port 80 for monitoring.

DeKalb is looking into the idea of implementing the IM add-on of IBM’s Lotus Notes or even an internal freeware IM service like Jabber for business users who want to communicate across campus. “Nothing is 100%,” Finney says. “IM is always a huge concern from a security as well as a productivity perspective.”

2. Web mail
Of the respondents to the Yankee Group survey, 50% said they use consumer e-mail applications for business purposes. The problem with consumer e-mail services such as those from Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo is that the users themselves don’t realize how insecure their e-mail exchanges are because messages are transported over the Web and stored on the ISP’s server as well as the e-mail provider’s server. Without that awareness, many use no discretion about sending sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, passwords, confidential business data or trade secrets.

One approach to tightening security around Web mail is to use a tool that monitors e-mail content using keyword filters and other detection techniques and the either generates alerts regarding potential breaches or simply blocks the e-mail from being sent. For instance, WebEx Communications is considering expanding its use of a data loss prevention tool from Reconnex Inc. to include e-mail monitoring, according to Michael Machado, director of IT infrastructure.

For its part, DeKalb addresses this problem with Vericept’s tool, which captures a screenshot of every Web-based e-mail that employees send, including file attachments, and scans these for company-defined sensitive data, such as Social Security numbers. Alerts are sent to Finney’s team so that they can follow up with users to educate them on the dangers of sending sensitive data over the Web.

3. Portable storage devices
One of an IT manager’s biggest fears, according to Holbrook, is the steady proliferation in types of portable storage, ranging from Apple iPhones and iPods to flash memory devices. “People can use these to download any number of corporate secrets or sensitive information and move it off-site, which is not where IT wants that information to be,” he says.

“In the past three weeks alone, I’ve heard six different conversations about the risks of flash drives and portable storage devices,” says Mark Rhodes-Ousley, an information security architect and author of Network Security: The Complete Reference (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003).

While it would be easy enough to lock down the USB ports on employee PCs, many security managers say this is not a recommended approach. “If people want to subvert the process, they’re going to find a way to get around any barriers you put in place,” Miller says. “And where do you draw the line? If you restrict USB ports and [cell] phones coming into the office that may have data storage ports, then you have to look at restricting infrared ports on devices and CD burners, and the list goes on and on.”

It’s better, he says, to handle the matter by educating people on how to treat the storage of sensitive information. “Most of the incidents that occur are unintentional [rather than] malicious, so that’s where education comes in, as to proper handling and why it’s important,” Miller says.

Machado says he isn’t a fan of blocking USB ports at WebEx, mainly because such a strategy would quickly devolve into users asking IT for exceptions to the rule and IT having to manage those exceptions. “Everyone has an exception that they think is important, which takes up more of IT’s time than is necessary,” he says.

What would be optimal, he adds, is to have a tool that sends an message to people who are trying to copy files to USB drives or other unencrypted storage media, advising them that they’re going against corporate policy. “Then they know they’re empowered to make the decision but that it’s going to be tracked and monitored,” he says.

On the other hand, DeKalb’s Finney says she is interested in blocking technologies and is looking into the Vericept tool’s ability to either block certain types of data from being transferred to an external storage device or alert her when someone tries to plug anything into a PC that’s not native to that computer. Ideally, she’d like a tool that would also remind employees that corporate policy forbids sensitive data to be stored on external devices.

Meanwhile, Michigan’s Grand Valley State University and other colleges and universities where professors and students have lost flash drives with sensitive data are looking into standardizing on password- and encryption-protected USB drives to protect them in the future.

4. PDAs and smart phones
More and more employees are showing up at work with some form of smart phone or personal digital assistant, be it a BlackBerry, a Treo or an iPhone. But when they try to synch up their device’s calendar or e-mail application with their own PC, it can cause problems ranging from application glitches to the blue screen of death. “Those types of problems are not uncommon — it’s the mundane things like that that can drive IT nuts,” Holbrook says. “It’s not how they want to be spending their time.”

Moreover, should the employee quit or be fired, he can walk out the door with any information he wants, as long as the PDA or smart phone belongs to him. Like some other companies, WebEx minimizes those possibilities by standardizing on a single brand and model of PDA and letting employees know the IT organization will only support that one device. WebEx does the same thing with laptops, which Machado notes, represent an even greater threat than PDAs because they can hold even more data. Any unapproved devices are not allowed on the WebEx network.”

Click here to read about all the eight dangerous technologies

The power of the interactive facilities was evident at Tommy Hilfiger’s London store when overnight the company collected 1500 plus subscribers to its e-newsletter. Obviously a large budget helps, but even on a small scale for up-coming and small business it may just be the ticket. Digital Signage Today reports that customers at selected Tommy Hilfiger Denim stores can now join the Hilfiger Hall of Fame by adding their pictures to an interactive storefront campaign that launched on 3rd January 2008.
 
“Hilfiger stores in London, Amsterdam, Cologne, Antwerp and Dublin now feature through-window touch screens, providing an interface for passing shoppers to capture, stylize and submit their image as part of collage of images being shown on digital screens in the shop windows.
 
The digital storefronts enable customers to interact with the Hilfiger brand even outside of business hours. At the end of the campaign, customers will be able to return to the store and have their own T-shirt specially printed using the image they created as the design. The campaign also serves as mechanic for driving subscriptions to Hilfiger’s email newsletter, with users being asked to opt-in when uploading their images.”

Click here to read in full.

At Equilibrium we are as excited as the next person on the planet about the new project by the founder of Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales is a maverick and a humanitarian. Since its inception, his wonderful creation of Wikipedia has become a universe in itself, with intelligent and insightful write-ups on practically everything. But now, Mr. Wales has decided to take on Google, Yahoo and the like as setting up an alternative with visible working structures by stating he his aim is to “to build a completely freely licensed, open- source search engine”.

Richard Waters at the Financial Times explores further into the Jimmy Wale’s latest project.

“An internet search engine that draws on human recommendations is due to make its first public appearance today, although even its founder warns that it will take some time to tell if the experiment can yield useful results.

Created by Jimmy Wales, the man behind online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, the search service will let users rate the relevance of results on a five-star system, then apply that information to shape future search results shown to others.

It will also draw on ideas from online social networking to try to establish reputations for its users and decide whose ratings should carry the most weight.

The success of Wikipedia, now one of the 10 most visited sites on the internet, has guaranteed huge interest in Mr Wales’s latest experiment, known as Wikia. In an interview, he said that his aim was “to build a completely freely licensed, open- source search engine” that would be far more transparent than Google and other existing services, which keep their algorithms for ranking search results a secret.

Sceptics have argued that Mr Wales’s approach risks exposing his service to “spammers” who try to trick search engines into promoting their sites. Mr Wales himself predicted that it would take “a minimum of two years” for his service to yield results that competed with existing engines”.

Click here to read the full article.

New or established businesses are always on the lookout for ways to increase traffic to their site. In our view Google Webmaster delivers on every score.

The aim of Google Webmaster Central is to increase traffic to your site. With the Webmaster, you can improve traffic and easily determine your statistics, diagnostics and management of Google’s indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.

Google Webmaster Central provides a “one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.”

To take advantage of this package, click here to learn more.

Do you want to increase the potential of your business online? At Equilibirium Solutions, we are forever on the search to find ways that would increase the potential of your businesses. With Google Base you will see that its an ideal tool where you can to expand your business online, generate interest and income.

Google Base’s applications can be applied to all kinds of businesses and offers a facility for promoting your business, events promotions, advertising, profiles, products and so on.

This you can achieve even if you don’t have a website. By simply posting your business, event or product on Base, your entry will appear in Google.

Google states that all you need to do is “simply describe your items on Base to make them as easy as possible for people to find when they search. You don’t even need a website to put your stuff online.” 

Click here to learn more and access Google Base.

Google Maps is an effective and highly efficient way for you to find customers for your business. A free listing’s facility, Google Maps could help your business to target and hone into your market potential. 

They state that “Millions of people search Google Maps every day. A free listing on Google Maps makes it easy for them to find you. Use the Local Business Centre to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.”

Click here to read further on this free facility

Analysing your marketing efforts and knowing what works – is one of the most effective ways of increasing your earning potential and yet as with new and on-going business, it is this aspect of the business that always suffers. Google Analytics lets you see exacrtly how your customers interact with your website. At Equilibrium, we highly recommend Google Analytics to our clients. This is an important tool that will assist you to optimize the potential of your business.

With Google Analytics, you can now have the ability to know what is happening with your online business through the statistics that the package provides. Although a free facility, this newly re-designed package has even more capacity to help learn about visitors to your website, with a greater intelligence on how they interact when there. The package also allows tailoring your requirements and selecting partners (from a list provided by Google) according to your needs.

Google Analytics asserts that “the new Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners.

Click here, to read more on Google Analytics

Is it time to update your office software, not sure what software is right for your needs. Then a Secure Virtual Office may be the answer for you.

With Secure Virtual Office you can use applications like MS Office over the internet. You don’t need to have the application installed on your computer. Some people call this Software on Demand, Software as a Service or Hosted Applications .

In addition Secure Virtual Office allows access to your data and your applications wherever you are in the world!

There are many other benefits to this service including:

• Remote Access from anywhere – use your work applications from home or on holiday
• Full offsite backups with our continuous backup service
• 24 x 7 technical support to ensure that your applications are always available for you
• Monthly subscription provides flexibility as you grow or shrink
• A rich choice of the latest applications – if we don’t host one you need tell us
• Reduced IT administrative and support costs
• Reduce costly hardware upgrades and software rollouts

Make Secure Virtual Office your office today. Sign up for a FREE TRIAL!