Our articles and descriptions of IT terms attempt to lead business people to understand the most important parts of the information technology world. Our goal is to help them make more informed decisions.

Computers and technology are often a mysterious black box to the business community and understanding simple terms, trends, possibilities and threats can make an enormous difference.

Articles

How to manage IT and computers in times of crisis
Emails that prompt you to do something “quick”
Fake domain names
How to find out if an e-mail sender is who he says he is

IT general terms

Access permissions
Firewalls
Antivirus/antispam gateways
Virtual private networks
Shared resources
Backup and Redundancy
Monitoring
Connection fault tolerance
Virtual servers
IT Outsourcing
Remote access/Mobility

 Access permissions

Access permissions are set up at different levels and on different resources on a network. Some of these resources are databases, files or printers, but there are others, including websites on the internet.

Setting up access permissions ensures the protection of company information and the availability of the resources for the people they are intended for.

User groups are usually set up for ease of administration, so a user can be added to a group and have the proper permissions immediately without the need to add the user to each resource. The level of access also depends on the operations that each user or group needs to perform. For instance, read permissions or write permissions are important when setting up a proper file structure and to avoid mistakes overwriting files and thus causing problems for other users or the need to restore a file from backup.

Firewalls

Firewalls are devices that are placed between the network you want to protect and the unprotected network. They are most frequently used as a protection between the local network (LAN) of a company and the Internet (WAN).

There are hardware firewalls and software firewalls. Hardware firewalls are devices or computers that are placed physically between the two networks. Software firewalls are installed on the computer that needs to be protected.

Choosing the proper firewall structure or software is crucial for businesses, since they are the first layer of protection for a company.

Antivirus/antispam gateways

A good antivirus program is crucial for any network in which the information is considered critical and in which losing the ability to work for one or more users is also critical.

Viruses can be separated in several different groups and classifications. Some of these are worms (viruses that spread rapidly throughout the internet or the local network), Trojans (viruses that stay latent within your computer) or backdoors (viruses that open a door for external individuals to access the computer that has been infected).

Spam is composed by emails that are not desired by the recipient. Good antispam programs can help lower the number of emails that are detected as spam and are in fact spam. False positives are usually the most problematic issue with these programs and that is the main reason why properly tuning the software and monitoring the emails detected as spam (whitelist them) is important. Another alternative for preventing spam are software programs that keep a list of allowed users and that, by default, prevent emails from everyone getting to the user they protect, unless the recipient authorizes the reception of the message. The problem with these programs is that they can be seen as overhead work for the end user and, often, can end up preventing the expected communication.

Virtual private networks

One of the main and simplest classifications of computer networks is by their being local (LAN) or wide (WAN) area networks. LANs are usually composed by resources that are within one location, while WANs are usually made up of several LANs, that are interconnected by slower links.

Historically, a WAN was created by point to point links or lines, or by frame relay lines. They are dedicated links.

The Internet is a non-dedicated link and gives access to a WAN composed by a lot of hosts and devices.

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs are WANs created by generating a virtual company WAN. That is, a virtually private logical networks within a physical public network. This is done by encrypting the traffic between devices participating within the private network. A routed VPN is one that lets two LANs connect (hosts from the two networks can connect among each other), while client VPNs let a single host computer connect with either the company LAN or a specific resource within the company.

The main advantages of VPNs are cost and availability of service, since most locations nowadays have several different methods to let an office connect to the internet and, through it, create a VPN.

Shared resources

Companies are constantly looking for methods that will make the communication and, in general, the interaction of their teams and stakeholders more dynamic. The result of such an achievement is a more efficient and more effective operation.

Sharing resources in the IT world means sharing files that are on centralized locations so they can be accessed by several parties (with read, write or other permissions), from local or remote locations. It can also mean sharing internet lines, databases, printers and several other resources.

Backup and Redundancy

While the importance of computers in the world goes up in rank, so does the information that is processed with it and the media through which this information can be viewed by people and/or machines that operate with it (HMIs). Proper backups of information and proper methods of redundancy are key to the availability of information and computers.

Disaster recovery plans, server clusters and redundant hardware parts are terms that have been in vogue for years now, as the importance of information has increased.

A proper backup and redundancy strategy will take into account all the previously mentioned factors and invest in the necessary resources to protect the company information to the confidence level that the company feels necessary. That means lowering the probability of information loss to the lowest possible level with the available funds to be invested in backup and redundancy devices, media and methods.

Frequently companies think that backing up the information of a server’s hard drive is enough. That overlooks the fact that bad information may overwrite good information and thus the good information may be lost forever. This is solved by backing up to external media and by regularly archiving media for potential future need.

Monitoring

Proper monitoring of network activity is important for security and availability of company resources. Monitoring can be applied to events taking place on a server, a workstation, a firewall, or connections, among others.

Different software programs are available for the deployment of such policies. With them, the uptime of systems can be monitored and solutions can be quickly taken depending on the severity of a triggered event.

Connection fault tolerance

A connection is fault tolerant when there is a backup connection to take over in case the primary one goes down. The higher the dependence of the company on this connection, the higher the importance of a fault-tolerant connection will be. For instance, if a company has voice over IP (VOIP) communications set up for its main communication method with the world, and voice communication is a crucial resource, having no fault-tolerance in IP network is a high risk and so fault-tolerance should be installed and/or configured.

Virtual servers

For some time now servers have been the central location for either one or several different functions in a company. There is or was the File server or servers, the Database server or servers, the email server or servers or, for small businesses, simply the server holding all these centralized functions. Each of these servers had the base operating system on top of which the application was installed.

Virtual servers are virtual machines, with their operating systems, running within a physical machine. This enables a physical machine to have several different functions and so the allocation of physical resources can be easier to deploy.

IT Outsourcing

IT outsourcing is the process by which a company delegates functions that are IT related to a third party. This is done so that the company can concentrate on its core competences and can leave the IT function in question for a team specialized in IT.

The world is rapidly getting used to outsourcing IT to companies that are specialized in that field, just like it has been doing it with accountants or attorneys. This is a very clear comparison for small businesses as it would be both inefficient and expensive to hire a full time lawyer to be part of the staff to take care of the company legal matters. Additionally, a lawyer that works within the company will probably not be exposed to the many experiences that other companies will provide with time and so the value to the company will probably be lower than that of a more experienced attorney.

The same applies to information technology.

Speed of response and quality of service are crucial factors when selecting a company to which IT is outsourced, and so are ensuring that the outsourcing company understands the importance of information and communications for the client. Other factors are professional communication skills such as the ease with which the IT language is “translated” into “plain English” to clients.

Remote access/Mobility

Remote access to company resources gets more importance for companies as the world is further intercommunicated among its different geographical regions, and the availability of information is necessary from spread out locations.

A salesperson that is on the road can show price and availability to clients and take orders immediately; access to company files is possible while at an important negotiation meeting takes place, so a decision can be made on the spot; a presentation of how a product works can be provided; a manufacturing operation can be started or stopped, slowed down or speeded up, or tuned to the proper level; a company manager gets access to a company resource 24 x 7 x365. These are all examples of efficiencies provided by the ability to work remotely. They are usually crucial competitive advantages for companies.

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