June 30, 2010

Personal Note for June 2010

I usually have so much on my mind I just don’t know where to start. I know business has been very busy and balance between work and family has had its challenges. The nice thing about it is that AMRCON has been growing at a steady pace that allows for additional qualified employees to make AMRCON even better. So I’m going to try and leave the business end of the blog at that. We’re very blessed and doing very well. A Thanks to all of our loyal clients.

After all of the excitement of the past few months the family had the chance to get away for a spell to the family house upstate. Funny, while we were there we found some familiar characters in the photo to the right. Does anyone recognize these notorious gangsters? OK, so maybe not all of us are notorious gangsters but the 2 little ones are for sure! We try and do it all up there, and it was funny that the last time we had done one of these pictures we only had Santino, so we had to get an updated photo. The extended weekend was mostly spent in the Lake George area, Water Slide World, the family house on the Hudson River and some stops here and in-between. I can honestly say I only opened up my laptop twice, and I think once was just to look something up locally. Can someone tell me if learning how to relax just comes with age? I’ll tell ya it’s been getting easier, but it’s so stressful for the years you try and figure out how to unstress! Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Regardless, I’d like to hear from anyone that can tell me if and when they noticed things just got less stressful: was it at a certain age, monetary goal success, moving, children, marriage, promotion? What was it, or maybe it hasn’t happened?

More trips to come. If any of you want to share your thoughts in the blog, please feel free. I’ve also started a mission on Twitter “DeeRudko” and you probably all know how to find me on Facebook “Dee Rudko”. A new fun little application is Foursquare. It’s an application that allows you to check into locations as you move through your day, it also links back to Twitter and Facebook. Check it out. I’ve been playing a bit of a game with a few of my friends to see who can score the most check in points. So far Cliff has us all beat, but I’m trying to catch up. Check it out and search for me. If you haven’t started in social media, you should. The business opportunities are endless. The personal aspects are fun. I found people I haven’t talk to since grade school. Funny thing is I started networking with them in business as well. Funny, some of us were fighting on the playground, now we’re passing business referrals. Who would have thought?

June 24, 2010

Small Business Security

In today’s world of heightened security with both foreign and domestic threats on the rise, eternal vigilance now more than ever should be the mantra of all Americans including Small Business owners.

What?  What does National Security have to do with me?  Well the short and simple answer is that “Security, being a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”.  Small Business owners are responsible for not only economic growth, but also contribute to the growth of online computing resources on the Internet.

Small Business owners have been feeling the pinch in the economy and as a result may have not spent the funds necessary to ensure that their networking environments have been secured.  We all have heard it before, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.

Communications is a key component in subversive activities both in the United States and abroad.  Small businesses and individual citizens have unknowingly assisted in the facilitation of these communications, through poorly secured communications systems including VoIP, Network and Email systems.

A poorly secured communications system deployed on the Internet, not only gives the ability to bounce or even originate communications to anywhere in the world, but it may in fact have legal consequences as well.  Minimally Small Businesses or individuals that have been breached may be impacted as a result of governmental computer systems flagging them as a person or an entity of interest for monitoring. 

For those of you reading this that have already made capital investments in communications systems, take the time verify that they are secure.  Some industry best practices include:

1.       The implementation of a hardware firewall that has been well configured
           (remember the minimalists approach in access is always the best).

2.       Disable unused services on both workstations and servers.

3.       Leverage anti-virus and anti-malware whenever possible.

4.       As a part of your audit policy, enable logging of all access, and authentication to secured resources.

5.       Implement a ridged password policy across all systems.

6.       Educate your users, (business related browsing only, deleting unwanted emails
          and never opening un-trusted downloads from the Internet).

No one can ever guarantee that a system is 100% secured as long as it has a network cable attached to the world, but taking some simple precautions can go a real long way.

For those of you that are currently ODS Managed Services customers rest assured that ongoing maintenance and monitoring of network resources is an integral part of our service.   For those of you who are not an ODS Managed Services clients we are able to provide an audit service to test and report how secure your network is.  Any remediation actions may then be performed under a professional service engagement.

By Taras Rudko CIO

June 5, 2010

AMRCON is in our new location!

After months of hard work and logistics for our new site, we’re done and all moved in as of May 1st. I’m proud to say that our expertise in project management brought our build-out to a record 6 weeks to complete. We’ve made a big move and it’s thanks to our valued clients. Come and have a look June 10th at 6PM – 8PM during our Grand Opening event. 

Here is an idea of what our project consisted of. A formal case study to follow.

• Demolition – Carpet, walls, old cooling unit, flooring
• Carpentry – Drywall, doors, frame work
• HVAC – Reconfigured ceiling returns and ducts, replaced Data Center cooling with 2 Ton wall mount unit
• Electrical – Corrective work, re-cabled tele/data, cleaned up old wiring, installed TV’s, Smart-board
• Metal/Glass – New conference room glass door
• Fire/Security – Fire suppression, IP accessible alarm/alerting for Blackberry, Video Surveillance DVR
• Appliances – Refrigerator, microwave
• Paint – Drywall resurfaced, corrected, painted entire office, painted door frames
• Carpet – New carpet in entire office, Vinyl base
• Window Treatments – All installed privacy shades
• Branding – AMRCON logos, neon, door signs, banners, outdoor signs, lobby signs
• Furniture – Refitted furniture to reuse, purchased new office furniture, conference area furnishings
• Technology – New workstations, data center equipment refitted, over head cable racks, UPS power, Generator, cooling

These were some of the high level aspects of the build. As you can imagine you have permits, insurance and other logistic aspects that also need to be carefully managed in a move to ensure compliance and coverage during the process. We proudly have our vendors/partners displayed throughout the office to introduce you to.

We invite everyone to come and see us. We would like the opportunity to introduce AMRCON to a business looking to move, expand or build-out from start. We would be honored to provide a tour and explain how AMRCON can take many of the headaches out of such a project. Our experience allows us to replicate our process and avoid many of the technological pitfalls that might await you. We will have an official build-out case study coming shortly. However some might only be interested in learning more about AMRCON and ODS Managed Services, we would love to have you check us out as well.

Please be sure to visit us June 10th at 6PM – 8PM for our Grand Opening Event. Call for further details 732-705-5057  ext. 2302 to speak with Brenda.