Internet has almost become a lifeline for the new generation. Many businesses now depend entirely on the Internet. People residing in different parts of world are able to talk to each other via the medium of Internet. Video conferencing is a live example of it. Many marriages are also made with the help of the Internet. The list of benefits that Internet provides is limitless.
But, what would you do when you have a slow speed internet connection that takes a lot of time? That internet connection would simply be useless to you.
The speed at which you are connected to the Internet plays a very important role in enjoying the advantages offered by it. For example, suppose one of your relatives who is residing overseas, has sent you a holiday clip. Now, if your Internet speed is slow then first of all it would take a long time to load the mail website. Then you would enter your user name and password. It would again take extra time to verify it. Also, downloading the clip would be very slow, even if its size is very small. Overall, you can say that having a low speed Internet connection (dial-up connection) is not a good thing.
There are many choices available for a high speed Internet connection. DSL, Cable and Satellite are some of them. You can select the best one from them. Here are some of the common benefits that all these high speed Internet connections provide.
* Viewing of streamlining clips or videos is very easy and fast in these connections. Dial-up connections may not even allow their access. * You can upload web pages and download any kind of information or software with more than twice the speed of dial-up connection. * Downloading of images and huge e-mail files can be done almost promptly. * High speed Internet connection has proven to be a boon for all businessmen. They can now access the world wide web within a few seconds. Their businesses have been highly benefited through efficient and quick video conferencing which would have been impossible in a slow dial-up connection. * For those people who work from home, a high speed Internet connection can assist them in increasing their overall work efficiency and output. * On a long term basis, the high speed Internet connection can prove to be highly economical.
DSL: The best choice for high speed internet connection Now-a-days, DSL has become the leading choice for a high speed Internet connection. DSL works on existing telephone lines. With a DSL connection you can browse the web and talk on the phone at the same time. Generally, a DSL connection requires a DSL router, a dedicated phone line and a network card or a modem for each system. The installation of DSL at your location is the responsibility of the service provider. Last but not the least, this high speed Internet connection is offered at very affordable prices.
http://www.allinternetarticles.com/article.cfm/id/205406
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Wireless LAN Tools
This article is the fourth in a series that explores the purpose and use of 802.11 Wireless LAN Analyzers. Prior installments provided a resource list of open source and commercial WLAN analyzers (Part 1), explained how to combine software with hardware to create a WLAN analysis toolkit (Part 2), and used several different tools to illustrate wireless node discovery, rogue detection, site surveys, and basic troubleshooting (Part 3).
Here in Part 4, we show how to use WLAN analyzers to support typical 802.11 network monitoring and reporting tasks. Analyzers can help WLAN administrators detect security vulnerabilities and active attacks, monitor performance and pin-point potential problems, and evaluate network and application usage to spot emerging trends.
Security audits
In last week's installment, we illustrated the use of WLAN analyzers and Intrusion Detection Systems to detect and track down nearby 802.11 APs and stations. That process, commonly referred to as rogue detection, is just one step in auditing the security of your WLAN.
Performing a security audit can help you find and fix your own WLAN's vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. Like an accounting audit, a network security audit check for the presence of known risk factors and compliance with best practices and established policies. A security audit can be conducted in-house or by a third-party, and can involve both active penetration testing and passive observation.
WLAN analyzers play an essential role during an audit by alerting you to common risk factors, like an AP broadcasting its SSID in beacon frames, or an AP using WEP keys that are known to be especially weak. Analyzers can also detect deviation from best practices commonly used to reduce risk, like an AP operating with a factory-default SSID (probably an unconfigured and therefore unsecured AP) or a station sending NetBIOS over wireless (probably leaking fileshares to others on the WLAN).
These conditions may or may not represent actual threats—for example, the AP may belong to a neighbor, or you might not intend to use WEP anyway. More often, these security alerts draw your attention to conditions that you didn't know existed or did not realize were risks. Performing a security audit gives you the opportunity to review these warnings and take corrective action where appropriate.
For example, consider this security audit template provided by WildPackets AiroPeekNX. This template loads pre-defined capture filters that are applied to wireless traffic to detect 13 common security mistakes. When an audited event occurs, it triggers a notification and/or a packet capture. Analyzing captured packets lets you investigate the event—in this example, identifying the AP using a factory-default SSID, and whether any stations are communicating with that AP. This template can obviously be extended or refined to check for additional risks or best practices.
those that do not. Audits are typically repeated until you reach the point where remaining risk is acceptable. At that time, you will probably want to disable WLAN analyzer alerts that you no longer want to hear about. For example, this Network Instruments Observer panel is used to selectively enable or disable individual alerts reported by each local or remote network probe.
Click to view entire screen shotDepending on the analyzer, alerts may be set globally or at a more granular level. For example, AirMagnet alerts can be set on a per-SSID-group basis. The Publicly Secure Packet Forwarding alert shown here applies mostly to public WLANs. But traffic between wireless stations may be appropriate in some private WLANs—for example, printing to a wireless print server. To reflect this, this example assigns public SSID(s) to a "Guest" group and private SSID(s) to another group so that we can apply different alert settings to these WLANs.
In fact, many of the alerts built into WLAN analyzers can help you enforce your company's security policy. The above example includes a long list of authentication alerts related to non-use of 802.1X and various EAP types. But these may or may not be policy violations for your WLAN. It's up to every organization to decide which security measures are required or permitted on their own WLAN.
http://www.isp-planet.com/fixed_wireless/technology/2004/wlan_analyzers_pt4.html
Here in Part 4, we show how to use WLAN analyzers to support typical 802.11 network monitoring and reporting tasks. Analyzers can help WLAN administrators detect security vulnerabilities and active attacks, monitor performance and pin-point potential problems, and evaluate network and application usage to spot emerging trends.
Security audits
In last week's installment, we illustrated the use of WLAN analyzers and Intrusion Detection Systems to detect and track down nearby 802.11 APs and stations. That process, commonly referred to as rogue detection, is just one step in auditing the security of your WLAN.
Performing a security audit can help you find and fix your own WLAN's vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. Like an accounting audit, a network security audit check for the presence of known risk factors and compliance with best practices and established policies. A security audit can be conducted in-house or by a third-party, and can involve both active penetration testing and passive observation.
WLAN analyzers play an essential role during an audit by alerting you to common risk factors, like an AP broadcasting its SSID in beacon frames, or an AP using WEP keys that are known to be especially weak. Analyzers can also detect deviation from best practices commonly used to reduce risk, like an AP operating with a factory-default SSID (probably an unconfigured and therefore unsecured AP) or a station sending NetBIOS over wireless (probably leaking fileshares to others on the WLAN).
These conditions may or may not represent actual threats—for example, the AP may belong to a neighbor, or you might not intend to use WEP anyway. More often, these security alerts draw your attention to conditions that you didn't know existed or did not realize were risks. Performing a security audit gives you the opportunity to review these warnings and take corrective action where appropriate.
For example, consider this security audit template provided by WildPackets AiroPeekNX. This template loads pre-defined capture filters that are applied to wireless traffic to detect 13 common security mistakes. When an audited event occurs, it triggers a notification and/or a packet capture. Analyzing captured packets lets you investigate the event—in this example, identifying the AP using a factory-default SSID, and whether any stations are communicating with that AP. This template can obviously be extended or refined to check for additional risks or best practices.
those that do not. Audits are typically repeated until you reach the point where remaining risk is acceptable. At that time, you will probably want to disable WLAN analyzer alerts that you no longer want to hear about. For example, this Network Instruments Observer panel is used to selectively enable or disable individual alerts reported by each local or remote network probe.
Click to view entire screen shotDepending on the analyzer, alerts may be set globally or at a more granular level. For example, AirMagnet alerts can be set on a per-SSID-group basis. The Publicly Secure Packet Forwarding alert shown here applies mostly to public WLANs. But traffic between wireless stations may be appropriate in some private WLANs—for example, printing to a wireless print server. To reflect this, this example assigns public SSID(s) to a "Guest" group and private SSID(s) to another group so that we can apply different alert settings to these WLANs.
In fact, many of the alerts built into WLAN analyzers can help you enforce your company's security policy. The above example includes a long list of authentication alerts related to non-use of 802.1X and various EAP types. But these may or may not be policy violations for your WLAN. It's up to every organization to decide which security measures are required or permitted on their own WLAN.
http://www.isp-planet.com/fixed_wireless/technology/2004/wlan_analyzers_pt4.html
Managed Security Service Provider Survey
Many companies, large and small, are now considering or have already outsourced certain network security tasks to third-party providers. Today, there are hundreds of Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), with offerings that range from managed firewall and virtual private network (VPN) services, to managed intrusion detection (IDS) and anti-spam/virus e-mail filtering. According to Gartner, the North American MSSP market continued to expand during the past year, with revenue increasing 19 percent during 2H03 alone.
Why do businesses outsource these sensitive services? To cut cost. MSSPs can offload many labor-intensive tasks associated with establishing a solid network defense, including security hardware/software installation, provisioning, maintenance, and 24x7 event monitoring. They can hire and train experts to staff a security operations center (SOC), investing in remote administration and surveillance platforms, creating a common infrastructure from which to satisfy the security needs of many customers.
In return, customers can reduce capital equipment investments, in-house security staff, and better budget and account for the cost of security by paying a fixed monthly tab.
Of course, no company should abdicate control over the security of their business network. Although your company may delegate certain security implementation and monitoring tasks to an MSSP, you will retain responsibility for determining security policies and dictating incident responses. Purchasing a managed security service means entering into a close and trusted partnership with your chosen provider. It's vital to consider not only the cost, breadth, and depth of services offered, but also each MSSP's history, reputation, business practices, service commitments, and "house style" of interacting with customers.
Before you conduct this type of qualitative assessment, you'll need to identify one or more MSSP candidates who are capable of delivering the security services that your company needs, in the countries where your business operates. To that end, ISP-Planet has been conducting semi-annual MSSP surveys since 1999. What follows here is our fourth MSSP survey, conducted in December 2004.
Participating providers
Our survey attempts to provide an apples-to-apples comparison between common security services offered by a modest but representative MSSP sample set, ranging from national to global, from network generalist to security specialist. By presenting example services in this fashion, we hope to help readers better understand the kinds of security services that are commercially available and some common attributes that should be considered when shopping for such services.
The following table identifies the MSSPs participating in this year's survey, and the surveyed services that are now offered by each provider. In addition, many participants offer managed security services beyond the scope of our survey, such as managed authentication, PKI, vulnerability scanning, and security monitoring for other networked devices. Several also offer related professional services, like security consultation, education, risk assessment, auditing, and emergency response. Consult MSSP websites for services beyond those addressed by our survey.
http://www.isp-planet.com/technology/2004/mssp1.html
Why do businesses outsource these sensitive services? To cut cost. MSSPs can offload many labor-intensive tasks associated with establishing a solid network defense, including security hardware/software installation, provisioning, maintenance, and 24x7 event monitoring. They can hire and train experts to staff a security operations center (SOC), investing in remote administration and surveillance platforms, creating a common infrastructure from which to satisfy the security needs of many customers.
In return, customers can reduce capital equipment investments, in-house security staff, and better budget and account for the cost of security by paying a fixed monthly tab.
Of course, no company should abdicate control over the security of their business network. Although your company may delegate certain security implementation and monitoring tasks to an MSSP, you will retain responsibility for determining security policies and dictating incident responses. Purchasing a managed security service means entering into a close and trusted partnership with your chosen provider. It's vital to consider not only the cost, breadth, and depth of services offered, but also each MSSP's history, reputation, business practices, service commitments, and "house style" of interacting with customers.
Before you conduct this type of qualitative assessment, you'll need to identify one or more MSSP candidates who are capable of delivering the security services that your company needs, in the countries where your business operates. To that end, ISP-Planet has been conducting semi-annual MSSP surveys since 1999. What follows here is our fourth MSSP survey, conducted in December 2004.
Participating providers
Our survey attempts to provide an apples-to-apples comparison between common security services offered by a modest but representative MSSP sample set, ranging from national to global, from network generalist to security specialist. By presenting example services in this fashion, we hope to help readers better understand the kinds of security services that are commercially available and some common attributes that should be considered when shopping for such services.
The following table identifies the MSSPs participating in this year's survey, and the surveyed services that are now offered by each provider. In addition, many participants offer managed security services beyond the scope of our survey, such as managed authentication, PKI, vulnerability scanning, and security monitoring for other networked devices. Several also offer related professional services, like security consultation, education, risk assessment, auditing, and emergency response. Consult MSSP websites for services beyond those addressed by our survey.
http://www.isp-planet.com/technology/2004/mssp1.html
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Garry Betty, 49, Chief of the Internet Provider EarthLink, Dies
Garry Betty, who built the EarthLink Corporation from a struggling start-up into a public company that took on telecommunications giants, died Tuesday in Atlanta. He was 49.
The cause was heart problems associated with adrenal cortical cancer, said Scott Hobby, a business associate and close family friend.
At his death, Mr. Betty was EarthLink’s chief executive, though he had given up his daily duties to pursue medical treatment.
Charles Garry Betty was born in Huntsville, Ala., and reared in Columbus, Ga. He worked his way through the Georgia Institute of Technology with jobs that included selling house siding over the phone. He graduated in 1979 with a degree in chemical engineering.
He worked briefly at Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., and in 1984 became vice president for sales and marketing at Hayes Microcomputer Products, which made computer modems.
In 1989, Mr. Betty was named president of Digital Communications Associates, which made technology to let personal computers talk to mainframe computers. A year later, at the age of 33, Mr. Betty became chief executive of the company.
In 1996, Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink, an Internet access company, persuaded Mr. Betty to become chief executive, working in Pasadena, Calif., and returning to his home in Atlanta on weekends.
At the time, EarthLink was adding subscribers at a furious pace, growing 10 percent to 15 percent every week, but was functionally bankrupt, Mr. Betty said last August.
The company borrowed money and, in January 1997, became one of the first Internet companies to go public, a few months before Amazon.com. It built a reputation for customer service and became known as a consumer-friendly alternative to America Online.
“I built the plane, but he was the pilot,” Mr. Dayton said of Mr. Betty yesterday. “He was at once a very strait-laced conservative Southern gentleman who also devoured fantasy books. There were a lot of dimensions to him.”
In recent years, EarthLink has faced considerable challenges as consumers abandon dial-up Internet access, the company’s bread and butter, in favor of broadband access. Mr. Betty pushed the company into new businesses, like offering citywide wireless networks and investing in Helio, a venture with SK Telecom, which provides mobile phone service aimed at young consumers.
Mr. Betty and Mr. Hobby had been working together to create a foundation in Mr. Betty’s name that would focus on using adult stem cells to search for cancer cures.
Mr. Betty is survived by his wife, Kathy Betty, and a sister, Rena Lane.
Another passion of Mr. Betty’s was books. He owned 3,500 first editions and first printings, many of them science fiction and fantasy, and about 10,000 pulp magazines.
In an interview a few months ago, he said he loved stories where “good triumphs over evil.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/technology/04betty.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The cause was heart problems associated with adrenal cortical cancer, said Scott Hobby, a business associate and close family friend.
At his death, Mr. Betty was EarthLink’s chief executive, though he had given up his daily duties to pursue medical treatment.
Charles Garry Betty was born in Huntsville, Ala., and reared in Columbus, Ga. He worked his way through the Georgia Institute of Technology with jobs that included selling house siding over the phone. He graduated in 1979 with a degree in chemical engineering.
He worked briefly at Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., and in 1984 became vice president for sales and marketing at Hayes Microcomputer Products, which made computer modems.
In 1989, Mr. Betty was named president of Digital Communications Associates, which made technology to let personal computers talk to mainframe computers. A year later, at the age of 33, Mr. Betty became chief executive of the company.
In 1996, Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink, an Internet access company, persuaded Mr. Betty to become chief executive, working in Pasadena, Calif., and returning to his home in Atlanta on weekends.
At the time, EarthLink was adding subscribers at a furious pace, growing 10 percent to 15 percent every week, but was functionally bankrupt, Mr. Betty said last August.
The company borrowed money and, in January 1997, became one of the first Internet companies to go public, a few months before Amazon.com. It built a reputation for customer service and became known as a consumer-friendly alternative to America Online.
“I built the plane, but he was the pilot,” Mr. Dayton said of Mr. Betty yesterday. “He was at once a very strait-laced conservative Southern gentleman who also devoured fantasy books. There were a lot of dimensions to him.”
In recent years, EarthLink has faced considerable challenges as consumers abandon dial-up Internet access, the company’s bread and butter, in favor of broadband access. Mr. Betty pushed the company into new businesses, like offering citywide wireless networks and investing in Helio, a venture with SK Telecom, which provides mobile phone service aimed at young consumers.
Mr. Betty and Mr. Hobby had been working together to create a foundation in Mr. Betty’s name that would focus on using adult stem cells to search for cancer cures.
Mr. Betty is survived by his wife, Kathy Betty, and a sister, Rena Lane.
Another passion of Mr. Betty’s was books. He owned 3,500 first editions and first printings, many of them science fiction and fantasy, and about 10,000 pulp magazines.
In an interview a few months ago, he said he loved stories where “good triumphs over evil.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/technology/04betty.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Monday, October 15, 2007
MSSP Survey Part 2:Managed Firewall and Intrusion Detection Services
Today, it's well understood that every Internet-connected business requires at least one perimeter firewall—perhaps several, depending upon number of locations, size of workforce, and need for high-availability. Most businesses also require some degree of Intrusion Detection (IDS) to confirm that attacks are not occurring inside their network perimeter (e.g., penetrating firewalls).
These firewall and IDS "best practices" may be very common in large enterprises, but they still aren't easy to design, deploy, administer, and monitor efficiently. Smaller businesses increasingly rely on turnkey security appliances, but lack the in-house expertise to understand whether their deployed defenses are actually effective. Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) can help customers to focus on their own core businesses by offloading these network security tasks.
Managed Firewall services are still a staple for nearly every MSSP participating in our survey, creating a foundation upon which to deliver many add-on or complementary security services. This year, Managed Intrusion Detection offerings have become nearly as prevalent.
However, the line between perimeter firewall and intrusion defenses has become increasingly thin—in some cases, entirely absent—with the advent of Intrusion Prevention (IPS). In this year's survey, we note a marked increase in IPS services, paired with or integrated into firewall/IDS offerings.
Laying The Foundation: Managed Firewalls
Click to view firewall chartNearly every MSSP participating in this year's survey offers one or more Managed Firewall services (see chart). Two participants (Aventail and Fiberlink) focus exclusively on secure remote access and thus do not appear here. AT&T does offer Managed Firewall and IDS (IP Security) services, but did not submit firewall/IDS details this year.
MSSPs deliver Managed Firewall services by taking responsibility for firewall hardware/software installation and policy configuration to reflect customer needs. Typically, MSSPs manage firewall rules and monitor firewall events remotely, 24x7x365, from a Security Operations Center (SOC).
Basic firewall service attributes are fairly consistent across the board. For example, all of the firewall services in this year's survey are CPE-based, access link-independent, and include 24/7 monitoring and automated incident response, except where otherwise noted in our chart. Most are optionally available in high-availability configurations, although architectures do vary (e.g., active-passive, active-active, stateful failover).
Several MSSPs now offer more than one firewall service. For example, ClearPath offers the only network-based firewall service in this year's survey, but also sells a CPE service, based on its own security appliance. ISS offers separate "managed" and "monitored" firewall services, the distinction being whether firewall events receive expert human scrutiny at the SOC. Unisys offers both a standard TCP/IP firewall service and a web application firewall service. Finally, most providers now employ more than one firewall platform, sold under a single service, but selected and deployed as needed to meet each customer's requirements.
In fact, although CheckPoint is still very popular, we're now seeing Cisco PIX and Netscreen (aka Juniper) nearly as often. Fortinet, SonicWALL, Symantec, and WatchGuard appliances made appearances this year, along with proprietary appliances from ClearPath, ISS, PresiNET, SecurePipe, and SecureWorks. The number of providers that now employ more than one platform appears to indicate a move away from one-size-fits-all solutions. After all, you don't need to buy a turnkey box from an MSSP—you can buy those on-line. Expect your MSSP to select the right firewall(s) to meet your company's needs, configure them properly, and keep a full-time watchful eye over them.
As we do each year, we asked providers to describe their procedures for handing firewall policy updates, log and report delivery, and incident response. For many providers, this is where the rubber meets the road—these are time-consuming tasks that require careful scrutiny and security expertise. They are also sensitive tasks that require delegation of selected responsibilities to the provider, while leaving the customer in the driver's seat. It is difficult for a survey to directly compare such processes, but responses to these questions can give you a feel for each provider's overall approach, level of customer interaction, and attention to security. For example:
* Most providers now offer secure, web-based "customer portal" access to logs and reports. When choosing a provider, look carefully at supplied information to ensure you receive sufficient visibility without overwhelming detail. See IDS/IPS for incident response handling.
* Most providers now support on-line change requests, submitted through a customer portal, with status tracking and completion notification. Look for differentiating features like strong authentication of the requester, pre-implementation review/impact assessment, and post-implementation verification.
Most (but not all) firewall services are accompanied by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify certain procedural or health and performance metrics. SLAs still vary quite a bit, and may be customized when negotiating service contracts. Still, we recommend asking your MSSP to quantify its commitments and to stand behind them with future-credit or money-back guarantees. If you require such commitments from your in-house security staff, you should expect no less from your MSSP.
Finally, we asked providers to identify managed firewall service add-ons, since many higher-layer services are sold only in conjunction with underlying network or firewall services. VPN, IDS, and (to a lesser extent) Content Filtering were very common in this year's survey. Many providers also offer complementary services like network scanning—remotely-initiated scans are helpful to demonstrate that your firewall is doing its job
http://www.isp-planet.com/technology/2004/mssp2.html
These firewall and IDS "best practices" may be very common in large enterprises, but they still aren't easy to design, deploy, administer, and monitor efficiently. Smaller businesses increasingly rely on turnkey security appliances, but lack the in-house expertise to understand whether their deployed defenses are actually effective. Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) can help customers to focus on their own core businesses by offloading these network security tasks.
Managed Firewall services are still a staple for nearly every MSSP participating in our survey, creating a foundation upon which to deliver many add-on or complementary security services. This year, Managed Intrusion Detection offerings have become nearly as prevalent.
However, the line between perimeter firewall and intrusion defenses has become increasingly thin—in some cases, entirely absent—with the advent of Intrusion Prevention (IPS). In this year's survey, we note a marked increase in IPS services, paired with or integrated into firewall/IDS offerings.
Laying The Foundation: Managed Firewalls
Click to view firewall chartNearly every MSSP participating in this year's survey offers one or more Managed Firewall services (see chart). Two participants (Aventail and Fiberlink) focus exclusively on secure remote access and thus do not appear here. AT&T does offer Managed Firewall and IDS (IP Security) services, but did not submit firewall/IDS details this year.
MSSPs deliver Managed Firewall services by taking responsibility for firewall hardware/software installation and policy configuration to reflect customer needs. Typically, MSSPs manage firewall rules and monitor firewall events remotely, 24x7x365, from a Security Operations Center (SOC).
Basic firewall service attributes are fairly consistent across the board. For example, all of the firewall services in this year's survey are CPE-based, access link-independent, and include 24/7 monitoring and automated incident response, except where otherwise noted in our chart. Most are optionally available in high-availability configurations, although architectures do vary (e.g., active-passive, active-active, stateful failover).
Several MSSPs now offer more than one firewall service. For example, ClearPath offers the only network-based firewall service in this year's survey, but also sells a CPE service, based on its own security appliance. ISS offers separate "managed" and "monitored" firewall services, the distinction being whether firewall events receive expert human scrutiny at the SOC. Unisys offers both a standard TCP/IP firewall service and a web application firewall service. Finally, most providers now employ more than one firewall platform, sold under a single service, but selected and deployed as needed to meet each customer's requirements.
In fact, although CheckPoint is still very popular, we're now seeing Cisco PIX and Netscreen (aka Juniper) nearly as often. Fortinet, SonicWALL, Symantec, and WatchGuard appliances made appearances this year, along with proprietary appliances from ClearPath, ISS, PresiNET, SecurePipe, and SecureWorks. The number of providers that now employ more than one platform appears to indicate a move away from one-size-fits-all solutions. After all, you don't need to buy a turnkey box from an MSSP—you can buy those on-line. Expect your MSSP to select the right firewall(s) to meet your company's needs, configure them properly, and keep a full-time watchful eye over them.
As we do each year, we asked providers to describe their procedures for handing firewall policy updates, log and report delivery, and incident response. For many providers, this is where the rubber meets the road—these are time-consuming tasks that require careful scrutiny and security expertise. They are also sensitive tasks that require delegation of selected responsibilities to the provider, while leaving the customer in the driver's seat. It is difficult for a survey to directly compare such processes, but responses to these questions can give you a feel for each provider's overall approach, level of customer interaction, and attention to security. For example:
* Most providers now offer secure, web-based "customer portal" access to logs and reports. When choosing a provider, look carefully at supplied information to ensure you receive sufficient visibility without overwhelming detail. See IDS/IPS for incident response handling.
* Most providers now support on-line change requests, submitted through a customer portal, with status tracking and completion notification. Look for differentiating features like strong authentication of the requester, pre-implementation review/impact assessment, and post-implementation verification.
Most (but not all) firewall services are accompanied by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify certain procedural or health and performance metrics. SLAs still vary quite a bit, and may be customized when negotiating service contracts. Still, we recommend asking your MSSP to quantify its commitments and to stand behind them with future-credit or money-back guarantees. If you require such commitments from your in-house security staff, you should expect no less from your MSSP.
Finally, we asked providers to identify managed firewall service add-ons, since many higher-layer services are sold only in conjunction with underlying network or firewall services. VPN, IDS, and (to a lesser extent) Content Filtering were very common in this year's survey. Many providers also offer complementary services like network scanning—remotely-initiated scans are helpful to demonstrate that your firewall is doing its job
http://www.isp-planet.com/technology/2004/mssp2.html
Friday, October 12, 2007
Proven Income - New Home Internet Marketing Strategies
Humans have been writing articles for millenia. The internet has become popular for only about fiften years. Find out how this author uses articles to generate proven income with new home internet marketing strategies.
The title probably got your attention, but maybe this is not so new. And then again, maybe it is new as the internet is not that old. Human beings have been writing for millenia, Writing on the internet with this much ease has only been done for a very short time. I have written a number of articles on the subject of internet marketing, mostly because I am investigating the same, and the best way to clarify your thinking is to put it on paper. Articles will do this for you. Emphasis is on the basics, the kinds of things that anyone new to internet marketing can and should do, not the fancy stuff. These are the not so new home internet marketing strategies that more experienced internet marketers continue to do themselves on a regular basis. They provide the internet marketer with a dependable, recurring, high, and consistent proven income. Focus will be on article marketing because I have become aware of how important this has become to the search engines.
My honest wish is that I had started my online business about 15 years ago when the internet was just getting popular. Like most I didn't. When I did make the decision to start an online business, and I was really new to home internet marketing strategies, I looked at a number of websites for the keywords I had chosen. I remember the first time I spied on my competition. The site had over a thousand links. I had about 10. I thought to myself, how am I ever going to get this many? The competition is tough! Sites with pr four and pr five on page one of Google are so far ahead of me, I will never be able to make up this lost time.
I was so pre-occupied with Google Adwords, list building, and making fast money that I put the idea of getting a lot of links to my website aside. After about ten dollars, it was a lot more than that, and about a month of wasted time, I bought LinkMachine and started linking. I also started submitting my sight to the internet directories. I started getting some traffic from this, but I knew it was not nearly enough. I realized that most of the people looking at my link pages were not the customers I was seeking, but other internet marketing strategists looking for link partners. My site had gotten a pr three, so there were quite a few. I was getting lots of visits to my web pages, however no sales.
I spent the next few months focusing on my linking strategies along with directory submissions. Traffic continued to increase until all of a sudden, I could not seem to find any more high pr sites to link to. I had pretty much run into most of the relative web sites. Many of them required a pr four or higher. Most ignored my requests to be a link partner. This was probably because of the number of requests they receive. I did not want to link to the pr zero sites any more because I realized that this was not going to help my site when I reciprocate. I had to do something different.
I already had about five articles that had been submitted to a number of article directories. A few of them were sitting on page one for the keywords I had written about. After going through all of this, I decided to go on an article campaign. I wrote five articles in one week. I sat down and registered with about two hundred high pr article directories using Article Submitter Pro. I made sure that all of my old articles were showing up in all of the article directories and added them when I found them missing. I picked up a thousand back links just by fixing the old ones.
Then I submitted the five new ones in one week. Within a week my web page went from about page five and six to page one and two in MSN. It also climbed dramatically in Google for one relatively low traffic keyword phrase. Web page visits increased immediately by one hundred or so. The really cool thing about the search engine pages that my web site was showing up for on page one and two, is that the articles are also showing up on page one and two. So, surfers are clicking on my main web page by clicking on my web page link, and if they don't do that, they would also see and click on the article links showing up on the same page.
Fresh articles are important in the article directories as well. If the article directory has a recently added section, your article title will show up on that page as well. This not only exposes the article to surfers who frequent that article directory, it provides you web page with another back link in addition to the article back link itself, even though it may only be for a short while. Article directories like Idea Marketers will display this link not only on their main page, but on the pages of articles that are relative to your topic. They have made a science out of creating internal links for their own web site because these pages also contain links back to their own web pages. I had one article in this article directory that generated dozens of back links because the anchor text link showed up on a number of sub-pages.
Here is something about writing articles that I have found a personal observation on. The longer you are pursuing a business, and searching for that one thing that will give you the proven income that every marketer on the internet seems to promise with little or no effort on your part, the more focused your articles become on the keywords you want your web site to show up on page one in the search engines for. When I realized that this was incredibly important, as well as the anchor text in the author box, the higher my web page started to climb in the search engines. My web pages now show up on page one and two in MSN and Google for about a dozen key word phrases. I am adding about one hundred visits per day on average every month.
These new home internet marketing strategies in the form of your own fresh article content contributions, though not so new in conceptArticle Search, will move your web pages up in the search engine rankings fast! My hope is that your web pages climb the misty mountains of Google and MSN and provide you with the proven income you always deserved.
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/online-promotion/proven-income-new-home-internet-marketing-strategies.html
The title probably got your attention, but maybe this is not so new. And then again, maybe it is new as the internet is not that old. Human beings have been writing for millenia, Writing on the internet with this much ease has only been done for a very short time. I have written a number of articles on the subject of internet marketing, mostly because I am investigating the same, and the best way to clarify your thinking is to put it on paper. Articles will do this for you. Emphasis is on the basics, the kinds of things that anyone new to internet marketing can and should do, not the fancy stuff. These are the not so new home internet marketing strategies that more experienced internet marketers continue to do themselves on a regular basis. They provide the internet marketer with a dependable, recurring, high, and consistent proven income. Focus will be on article marketing because I have become aware of how important this has become to the search engines.
My honest wish is that I had started my online business about 15 years ago when the internet was just getting popular. Like most I didn't. When I did make the decision to start an online business, and I was really new to home internet marketing strategies, I looked at a number of websites for the keywords I had chosen. I remember the first time I spied on my competition. The site had over a thousand links. I had about 10. I thought to myself, how am I ever going to get this many? The competition is tough! Sites with pr four and pr five on page one of Google are so far ahead of me, I will never be able to make up this lost time.
I was so pre-occupied with Google Adwords, list building, and making fast money that I put the idea of getting a lot of links to my website aside. After about ten dollars, it was a lot more than that, and about a month of wasted time, I bought LinkMachine and started linking. I also started submitting my sight to the internet directories. I started getting some traffic from this, but I knew it was not nearly enough. I realized that most of the people looking at my link pages were not the customers I was seeking, but other internet marketing strategists looking for link partners. My site had gotten a pr three, so there were quite a few. I was getting lots of visits to my web pages, however no sales.
I spent the next few months focusing on my linking strategies along with directory submissions. Traffic continued to increase until all of a sudden, I could not seem to find any more high pr sites to link to. I had pretty much run into most of the relative web sites. Many of them required a pr four or higher. Most ignored my requests to be a link partner. This was probably because of the number of requests they receive. I did not want to link to the pr zero sites any more because I realized that this was not going to help my site when I reciprocate. I had to do something different.
I already had about five articles that had been submitted to a number of article directories. A few of them were sitting on page one for the keywords I had written about. After going through all of this, I decided to go on an article campaign. I wrote five articles in one week. I sat down and registered with about two hundred high pr article directories using Article Submitter Pro. I made sure that all of my old articles were showing up in all of the article directories and added them when I found them missing. I picked up a thousand back links just by fixing the old ones.
Then I submitted the five new ones in one week. Within a week my web page went from about page five and six to page one and two in MSN. It also climbed dramatically in Google for one relatively low traffic keyword phrase. Web page visits increased immediately by one hundred or so. The really cool thing about the search engine pages that my web site was showing up for on page one and two, is that the articles are also showing up on page one and two. So, surfers are clicking on my main web page by clicking on my web page link, and if they don't do that, they would also see and click on the article links showing up on the same page.
Fresh articles are important in the article directories as well. If the article directory has a recently added section, your article title will show up on that page as well. This not only exposes the article to surfers who frequent that article directory, it provides you web page with another back link in addition to the article back link itself, even though it may only be for a short while. Article directories like Idea Marketers will display this link not only on their main page, but on the pages of articles that are relative to your topic. They have made a science out of creating internal links for their own web site because these pages also contain links back to their own web pages. I had one article in this article directory that generated dozens of back links because the anchor text link showed up on a number of sub-pages.
Here is something about writing articles that I have found a personal observation on. The longer you are pursuing a business, and searching for that one thing that will give you the proven income that every marketer on the internet seems to promise with little or no effort on your part, the more focused your articles become on the keywords you want your web site to show up on page one in the search engines for. When I realized that this was incredibly important, as well as the anchor text in the author box, the higher my web page started to climb in the search engines. My web pages now show up on page one and two in MSN and Google for about a dozen key word phrases. I am adding about one hundred visits per day on average every month.
These new home internet marketing strategies in the form of your own fresh article content contributions, though not so new in conceptArticle Search, will move your web pages up in the search engine rankings fast! My hope is that your web pages climb the misty mountains of Google and MSN and provide you with the proven income you always deserved.
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/online-promotion/proven-income-new-home-internet-marketing-strategies.html
Make Money By Writing And Publishing Small Articles On The Internet
A writer can find a great market for his or her work on the Internet. Heck! A Writer can CREATE a business by writing small articles.
Right now, thousands of people from around the world, from professional authors to my sister-in-law, are using small, simple articles to make money on the Internet.
How much money can you make writing articles?Well, that is going to vary from person to person, and a lot of other factors are involved as well. It's not simply how good a writer you are, but the subjects you choose to write about, how you address the subject, where you place your articles, how many sites you get your articles on, how valuable the information is, and the site(s) you link to with your articles. A few small, 600 to 1000 words, articles properly placed can create regular customers and sales while enhancing an internet business website ranking within the search engines...which also increases traffic to the website. Increased traffic can translate to increased customers, therefore more sales, and, in some cases, repeat sales, which translates to residual (passive)Some people make thousands of dollars while others just make a few bucks. However, the technique is simple and it's a game that almost anyone can play. Even my sister-in-law figured out that if she simply wrote about some of the problems she encountered growing up, there would be places where her articles could be published, people who would read those articles, and a means of linking from those articles to a site she and her husband have on the internet.
So, what IS the technique for making money with small articles?In most cases, the first step is to decide on what the general subject is you wish to write about. In this case, I have chosen to write about writing. The general subject is then narrowed down to a niche. Again, in this case, I have chosen to write about how to write small articles for profit. Someone interested in bicycling may write about racing, or even narrow the niche to a specific sort of bike racing or type of racing bike.
The niche should be related to the product. The product may be a physical product, a service, or information. Some people will have a product already. Our bicycle enthusiast above may own a bicycle store or sell bicycle parts and accessories over the internet. I offer various services and information related to writing and publishing articles, so I have chosen to write an article on writing articles...for profit!!It is important in most cases that you choose a product or service that you enjoy talking or writing about. If you pick a product JUST to make money, but don't really care about the area of interest, you will lose your motivation during periods when income is small or slow. It is a reality, by the way, that the first few days, weeks, or even months may be periods where you will make little or no money. An interest in your topic will help keep you coming back to "open your store".
What if you don't already have a product?There are many sites on the internet where you can find people or companies which will be happy to pay you a commission for bringing them buying customers. Most of these "affiliate programs" will only pay if the customer you send to them actually buys something. Years ago, you could find programs which would pay an affiliate for a click-thru, but, of course, many people would just sit and click on the link or have friends click on the link in order to generate income, so that went away.
Some places where you can find products with affiliate programs are ClickBank.com, commission Junction (cj.com), and Link Share (linkshare.com). If you cannot find a product or company that meets your interests, just do a search on related topics and request "affiliate program" with the search. You may have to kiss a few frogs, but there are good affiliate programs in just about every field.
What do you do with your articles?Make your own website:
Obviously, if you have several articles on a subject, you can always create your own website. A benefit of having your own website is that you control the set-up of your articles and you have complete editorial control of both the articles themselves and the website. You can add, subtract, and edit as you wish, and you can create any potentially profitable links as you desire.
The drawbacks are that your website, and article, exposure will be only as good as your search engine optimization efforts will make it and that your articles will be confined to one spot on the web. You will also have to learn something about website design, buy hosting, register domain names, and provide periodic maintenance, just to name a few responsibilities. If you want to try this route, you might want to cut your teeth with free hosting and, once you have gained competence and confidence, register a domain and host your own site yourself.
Create a blog:
There are a myriad of places to create blogs on the internet, and most of them are free. If you are a prolific writer, a blog may be perfect as you can regularly update your blog with new material. Even if you don't turn out articles regularly, you can fill in with material from the article directories, which we will talk about in a moment. Again, you will have control over most of the linking, but free services are sometimes limited in what they will allow you to do. For one example, I once tried to place a banner for an affiliate program on one of my blogs and it threw the positioning of everything out of whack. However, if you can offer interesting and relevant information on your topic and update it regularly, you can create a good amount of traffic to your business or affiliate program.
Post your articles on forums:
There are a kazillion (my spell checker hates that non-word) forums on the Internet, and you can find at least one for almost any topic or subject area. Many will allow you to create a signature which can include a link to your internet business website. Regularly posting relevant and interesting articles on these sites can create a lot of traffic, and sometimes contribute to enhancing your ranking and placement on various search engines.
Post your articles on article directories:
This is my absolute most favorite type, kind, and sort of method. Once you have written an article, you can go to any one of several good article directories and post your article. Article sites will allow you to include a link to your site. Be aware, however, that many sites will not allow linking directly to an affiliate link provided by the company you are affiliated with, so you may wind up having to create an intermediate information site or portal anyway.
Since this article may appear on several different article directories, I won't mention any specific article directories here, but, if you are seeing this article on an article directory, I possibly posted it there...which brings me to a benefit of posting your article on article directories.
Obviously, the more exposure you get for your article the better...in most cases at least. However, it can be a real pain to go from one article directory to another, cutting and pasting and dealing with the rules or restrictions particular to each site. Since many sites allow for your article, with your byline or links attached, to be copied by others, your article may be copied and placed on other sites or used in ezines. Those placed on other websites create new links back to your site, enhancing the value of your site in the eyes of the search engine spiders, and possibly bringing in new customers.
Still, you are faced with the bother of manually placing each new article on several different sites with different requirements. One way around this is to purchase the services of an article submission service. For a fee, these companies will, once you have posted an article on their site, submit it to several different article directories and forums. This can increase your exposure exponentially.
As with many things, there are few overnight successes. If you are able and willing to write at least a few articles and find places to post, them, however, you will be able to create the start of an Internet success story. The key is not to give up just because nothing happens right away. This is why you choose an area which pleases and interests you. If you are working in such an areaFeature Articles, you will find it much easier to continue creating articles even if you are not immediately experiencing fantastic results.
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/business/make-money-by-writing-and-publishing-small-articles-on-the-internet.html
Right now, thousands of people from around the world, from professional authors to my sister-in-law, are using small, simple articles to make money on the Internet.
How much money can you make writing articles?Well, that is going to vary from person to person, and a lot of other factors are involved as well. It's not simply how good a writer you are, but the subjects you choose to write about, how you address the subject, where you place your articles, how many sites you get your articles on, how valuable the information is, and the site(s) you link to with your articles. A few small, 600 to 1000 words, articles properly placed can create regular customers and sales while enhancing an internet business website ranking within the search engines...which also increases traffic to the website. Increased traffic can translate to increased customers, therefore more sales, and, in some cases, repeat sales, which translates to residual (passive)Some people make thousands of dollars while others just make a few bucks. However, the technique is simple and it's a game that almost anyone can play. Even my sister-in-law figured out that if she simply wrote about some of the problems she encountered growing up, there would be places where her articles could be published, people who would read those articles, and a means of linking from those articles to a site she and her husband have on the internet.
So, what IS the technique for making money with small articles?In most cases, the first step is to decide on what the general subject is you wish to write about. In this case, I have chosen to write about writing. The general subject is then narrowed down to a niche. Again, in this case, I have chosen to write about how to write small articles for profit. Someone interested in bicycling may write about racing, or even narrow the niche to a specific sort of bike racing or type of racing bike.
The niche should be related to the product. The product may be a physical product, a service, or information. Some people will have a product already. Our bicycle enthusiast above may own a bicycle store or sell bicycle parts and accessories over the internet. I offer various services and information related to writing and publishing articles, so I have chosen to write an article on writing articles...for profit!!It is important in most cases that you choose a product or service that you enjoy talking or writing about. If you pick a product JUST to make money, but don't really care about the area of interest, you will lose your motivation during periods when income is small or slow. It is a reality, by the way, that the first few days, weeks, or even months may be periods where you will make little or no money. An interest in your topic will help keep you coming back to "open your store".
What if you don't already have a product?There are many sites on the internet where you can find people or companies which will be happy to pay you a commission for bringing them buying customers. Most of these "affiliate programs" will only pay if the customer you send to them actually buys something. Years ago, you could find programs which would pay an affiliate for a click-thru, but, of course, many people would just sit and click on the link or have friends click on the link in order to generate income, so that went away.
Some places where you can find products with affiliate programs are ClickBank.com, commission Junction (cj.com), and Link Share (linkshare.com). If you cannot find a product or company that meets your interests, just do a search on related topics and request "affiliate program" with the search. You may have to kiss a few frogs, but there are good affiliate programs in just about every field.
What do you do with your articles?Make your own website:
Obviously, if you have several articles on a subject, you can always create your own website. A benefit of having your own website is that you control the set-up of your articles and you have complete editorial control of both the articles themselves and the website. You can add, subtract, and edit as you wish, and you can create any potentially profitable links as you desire.
The drawbacks are that your website, and article, exposure will be only as good as your search engine optimization efforts will make it and that your articles will be confined to one spot on the web. You will also have to learn something about website design, buy hosting, register domain names, and provide periodic maintenance, just to name a few responsibilities. If you want to try this route, you might want to cut your teeth with free hosting and, once you have gained competence and confidence, register a domain and host your own site yourself.
Create a blog:
There are a myriad of places to create blogs on the internet, and most of them are free. If you are a prolific writer, a blog may be perfect as you can regularly update your blog with new material. Even if you don't turn out articles regularly, you can fill in with material from the article directories, which we will talk about in a moment. Again, you will have control over most of the linking, but free services are sometimes limited in what they will allow you to do. For one example, I once tried to place a banner for an affiliate program on one of my blogs and it threw the positioning of everything out of whack. However, if you can offer interesting and relevant information on your topic and update it regularly, you can create a good amount of traffic to your business or affiliate program.
Post your articles on forums:
There are a kazillion (my spell checker hates that non-word) forums on the Internet, and you can find at least one for almost any topic or subject area. Many will allow you to create a signature which can include a link to your internet business website. Regularly posting relevant and interesting articles on these sites can create a lot of traffic, and sometimes contribute to enhancing your ranking and placement on various search engines.
Post your articles on article directories:
This is my absolute most favorite type, kind, and sort of method. Once you have written an article, you can go to any one of several good article directories and post your article. Article sites will allow you to include a link to your site. Be aware, however, that many sites will not allow linking directly to an affiliate link provided by the company you are affiliated with, so you may wind up having to create an intermediate information site or portal anyway.
Since this article may appear on several different article directories, I won't mention any specific article directories here, but, if you are seeing this article on an article directory, I possibly posted it there...which brings me to a benefit of posting your article on article directories.
Obviously, the more exposure you get for your article the better...in most cases at least. However, it can be a real pain to go from one article directory to another, cutting and pasting and dealing with the rules or restrictions particular to each site. Since many sites allow for your article, with your byline or links attached, to be copied by others, your article may be copied and placed on other sites or used in ezines. Those placed on other websites create new links back to your site, enhancing the value of your site in the eyes of the search engine spiders, and possibly bringing in new customers.
Still, you are faced with the bother of manually placing each new article on several different sites with different requirements. One way around this is to purchase the services of an article submission service. For a fee, these companies will, once you have posted an article on their site, submit it to several different article directories and forums. This can increase your exposure exponentially.
As with many things, there are few overnight successes. If you are able and willing to write at least a few articles and find places to post, them, however, you will be able to create the start of an Internet success story. The key is not to give up just because nothing happens right away. This is why you choose an area which pleases and interests you. If you are working in such an areaFeature Articles, you will find it much easier to continue creating articles even if you are not immediately experiencing fantastic results.
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/business/make-money-by-writing-and-publishing-small-articles-on-the-internet.html
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