INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Six important factors in the selection of your e-mail account

2009-04-04T06:40:00.002-07:00

At the present time, email address is becoming one of the crucial parts of our lives due to its convenience credentials. There are so many email providers, it can be difficult to figure out which one is the best for you. Following are six major factors to consider.

Commercial or Non-commercial:

Commercial email accounts are usually more secure and feature – driven than personal email accounts. However, the choice is ultimately yours.

Name Availability:

Regarding the name, a combination of letters and numbers is recommended by the larger email accounts providers.

Anti Virus:

Best email accounts provider always offers scans using some of the more reliable programs such as Kaspersky, Norton or Nod 32. It not a substitute for having your own antivirus installed.

Anti-spam:

Some protection is better than none Anti-spam software always seems to be 100% effective.

Space:

Inbox between 100 mb and 250 mb is probably be fine for a user, in the land of email accounts, size does not necessarily matter, unless you plan on using the same email address for the rest of your life while never deleting a message.

Security Tools:

A good email accounts provider also provides the security tools against the junk mail.

Filters:

Filters provide the ability to create folders and send relevant new emails there automatically. This saves time, especially if you receive a lot of emails.

Attachments:

There are two things to take into consideration: both the total size and the number of files you can send through your email. It is important factor that not all personal email accounts allow attachments.

All email providers have their advantages and disadvantages so it will up to you to choose the one that’s perfect for you. I hope that the above mentioned factors have been useful to you.

Free Anti Virus Software for Home Users

2009-04-04T06:40:00.001-07:00

Without antivirus and antispyware protection, your computer and data are at extreme risk.There are many free anti virus software are available on internet for home users and for commercial use. I have five years experience in the management of computer lab in a educational institution I have found that most them do not work effectively there are many inconvenience in support, updates and version Upgradation or they demand the cost of Upgradation and support. I will share with you my experience that there are the following anti virus are totally free for home users and work properly without any cost.
(a). AVAST Anti Virus Home Edition (Link for downloading http://www.avast.com)
AVAST anti virus home edition for Windows with anti-spyware protection is totally free for home users but the Institutions and Organizations (Non-commercial including) are not allowed to use AVAST home edition. The latest version of this program is 4.8
The appearance of the Simple User Interface is very flexible. It supports so-called skins, allowing users to change the appearance of the application interface. It has full anti-spyware capabilities built-in. Avast Anti virus kernel has a feature of outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. Web Shield is a unique feature of avast, that enables it to monitor and filter all HTTP traffic coming from the Web sites on the Internet. Automatic updates are another need in virus protection. Both the virus database and the program itself can be updated automatically.

(b). AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Link for downloading (http://www.avg.com)
AVG Free contains basic anti virus and anti spyware protection for windows. It provides limited features. It is for a single computer and non-commercial use only. It has also compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP and provides the protection against viruses and spyware at free of cost

The above both software are the best free anti viruses and work effectively.

Introduction of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) Technology

2009-04-04T06:39:00.002-07:00

ATM is a very high speed communications protocol designed for data and voice that combines the best of circuit switching and packet switching. ATM creates a fixed channel between two points before data transfer begins, which makes it like circuit switching, but packets are still sent, instead of an entire message, which makes it like packet switching.

ATM works with very short, fixed length cells at speeds between 44.7 Mbps to 2.4 GBPS and higher. ATM can support such high speeds because it is designed to be implemented by hardware instead of software.

Cells differ from a packet or frame in that an ATM cell does not always include source or destination addressing information. The ATM cell also doesn’t include higher level addressing and packet control information.

ATM is connection oriented, but the cells are not used to establish and maintain a circuit. Once a circuit is set up the bandwidth will be used entirely for data transport. After the circuit is set up, ATM associates each cell with a virtual connection either a channel or a path between origin and destination. Having both virtual paths and channels makes it easy for a switch to handle multiple connections with the same origin and destination.

The data in these cells comes from native mode protocols, such as TCP/IP. ATM’s adaptation Layer deals with differences between the various. The adaptation Layer uses the classes to adapt protocols into an ATM intermediate format.

Important Qualities of a Good Web Hosting Providers

2009-04-04T06:39:00.001-07:00

There are many web hosting service providers that claims to deliver quality services and only few of them can really deliver it. The following qualities aim to help you in searching for the best web hosting services provider.

Database System:

Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle are the most reliable database systems. It is an important feature to handle a huge volume of data.

Disk Space:

You should know that how much storage volume are offering by the web hosting services provider to store your emails and website data, data transfer limit and bandwidth limit. You should have a fair amount of storage.

Control Panel:

Control Panel should be user friendly for data management, configuring for emails and in adjusting the bandwidth.

IP: (Internet Protocol Address)

Your machine communicates to other machines through an IP address. It should be unique.

Support:

Support is an important feature for a good web hosting service providers. The support team should be expert and responsible for inquiries and technical support on issues regarding web hosting service.

Common Features Offered by the Anti Virus Softwares That Should be Learnt by Each Individual

2009-04-04T06:38:00.001-07:00

Following are the mandatory common elements that should be learnt by each individual.

• Real Time Virus Protection

The real-time or on-access virus scanning feature means that all files are automatically checked for infection at the point of user interaction. If we open, move, copy or update any file, the On-Access monitor will instantly analyze the file before it is opened. This process also continually scans memory resident processes for viruses. If you launch a program or file which creates destructive anomalies then the scanner will detect it. Such instant detection of viruses assures us that our system is perpetually monitored for threats.

• On Demand Virus Scanning

If we suspect a file, disk or folder may be infected we can use the on – demand virus scanning feature to perform an instant check on the selected object. On demand virus scanning is seamlessly integrated into the Windows operating system. Users can scan specific objects “on the fly” by simply right clicking on a file, folder or drive and selecting Scan for viruses from the context sensitive menu.

• Quarantine Suspicious Files

The quarantine facility removes and isolates suspicious files into a safe location before analyzing them for possible infection. Any files transferred in this fashion are encrypted- meaning they cannot be run or executed. This isolation prevents infected files from affecting the rest of your PC.

Following are two of the basic elements that should be implemented at each workstation:

• Auto Update upon system startup. This feature provides us solutions to the latest virus outbreaks.

Frequency: Daily – First thing in the morning
Time Taken: Less than 5-7 minutes

• Auto scanning according to the time table provided and set preferences.

Frequency: Once a week
Time taken: Depending upon your physical volumes (Size of Hard Disk(s).

An Update of Information Security for IT Professionals

2009-04-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

Many organizations are working separately or together to enhance the knowledge, skills and networking opportunities for information security professionals as all work to create improved security for the computing ecosystem.
Microsoft and Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) are key stakeholders in securing infrastructure.
“Microsoft is continuously looking for new ways to gain feedback from IT professionals around the world. The Information System Security Association in 24 countries and over 13,000 members is the largest international, not for profit association specifically for information security professionals and practitioners. ISSA members represent all levels of the security field in a broad range of industries, including communications, education, healthcare, financial and government.
Microsoft and ISSA provides education, publications, information sharing and peer forums to foster the knowledge, skill and professional growth of its members, and serves as The Global Voice of information Security.
The information Systems Security Association (ISSA) and Microsoft Corp have announced a alliance to provide security training, networking and education opportunities to information security professionals around the world.

Hosting a Exchange Server for Small Business

2009-04-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

If you are planning to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server for your company, you should know the following best options for your company.

Self hosted Exchange

Self hosted exchange is expensive, therefore an efficient Microsoft Exchange environment needs dedicated Active Directory domain Controllers and dedicated Exchange server environment. All servers must be licensed. Just hardware and support can cost you approximate $ 5000 in licensing alone.

The equipments mentioned here are just the building blocks of your e-mail system. There are further other components missing from the configuration, which may include necessary for Anti-Virus, internet connectivity, data backup and support and maintenance.

Shared Hosted Exchange

There are several companies those have their own Microsoft Exchange Server infrastructures, capable of supporting thousand of users. Web hosting companies offer a simple solution for single users as well as small businesses to host Exchange email. You can easily avail their services for a flat fee without undergoing the hassles of setting up or maintaining every things on your own.

A single user or a small organization immediately takes advantages. Most hosting companies offer access to services like Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Shared Hosted Exchange has few drawbacks

There are hundreds of specialized management utilities available for Exchange and Active Directory, all of which are off limits to shared hosted customers. Single Sign-on is another feature for Exchange Server that is unavailable to shared hosted customers and an integration login feature for the users of Exchange server is also unavailable, user’s login using their Active Directory user account and this account is also used to access their email system. That means that a single login, a single password, gives them access to all of their applications. This integration is not possible with shared hosted exchange.

The best web hosting companies also provide simplifies management of your Exchange environment so that you get all the functionality and flexibility from your email and collaboration tools without spending too much time, effort, and cost. These hosting companies also provide Anti-Virus, backups and mobile email at the most cost effective rates.