Data Science Journal

Getting The Best From Carbonite

Dec 10th 2015

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Oddly, this happened to me yesterday. I thoughtfully wrote an article about the police in my city, when bang the power went out and my computer shut down. I sent a flurry of curse words into the air. Then I remembered, I had invested in Carbonite. I sighed with relief, knowing that my lost file was available to me. I simply had to re-download it to my computer. Phew, what a relief.

I know you can related to this, additionally, there are worse issues that can happen to your computer rendering it useless. It is a fantastic statistic that millions of hard drives crash every year. And oddly, we carry auto insurance, life insurance and all kinds of methods to evade tragedy in our lives, yet the one thing that we use on a consistent basis we don’t provide any type of coverage for. Imagine for a moment, that your hard drive crashes; it cannot be recovered and everything you have on it in is gone. Forever. I don’t know about you, but as a freelance writer, I spend my entire day sitting in front of my laptop. If it …

Data Security
A Sharp Corporate Information Strategy Makes For Pure Success

Oct 21st 2014

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A successful corporate information strategy requires sufficient vision to identify the opportunities that can be achieved through more effective use of information. Management requires a clear vision of where the company is going and how it’s going to get there.

For example, how can information be used to gain a competitive advantage, support key decision makers, integrate all functions of the organization, and link the organization with external customers and suppliers?

The primary initiator of strategic systems is the chief information officer, or CIO.

The CIO should combine an excellent understanding of business and competition with a gut feeling for technology and what can be made to work.

The CIO should initiate the analysis of strategic systems opportunities and, in general, develop the strategic systems vision. He should help other planners and executives to think in strategic systems terms.

Model of the Future

A model of future technology and strategic opportunities should be maintained by the staff of the CIO and should be added to when new ideas arise.

The model will grow more comprehensive as it is successively updated, and periodic planning sessions should use it to examine the …

Data Security

cio tips, measuring success, strategy
Do Not Jump Into Hard Drive Recovery Mode

Oct 16th 2014

By: admin

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Hard drives like this fail all of the time.

Many concerns fall on just how you can tell if your hard drive is failing, or not. The fear of having to consider hard drive recovery does not always have to be in the back of your mind. Often times that is not even the issue, it is actually user error.

One of the most common is when a computer is no longer seeing the hard drive. Even if there is another physical drive on the computer, it may not show up. That does not mean that your hard drive is failing (unless this is a RAID stack, and if it is, please find an expert on RAID recovery right away!). My first instructions are to go to the disk management area on their system through the path of computer management. By doing this it will show all of the storage devices on the system.

If you see the drive then all you need to do is uninstall and reinstall it. Now, if you do not see the drive, then there are a few more techniques to check before consulting a HDD recovery expert. And mind you that when I say expert, I mean a certified and reputable individual …

Data Security

failing drives, protecting and recovering data, symptoms
When PostScript Was A Baby

Oct 3rd 2014

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What do you do if you are a small company launching a technically obscure product against formidable competition?

You take a page out of the Microsoft Corp. playbook and declare your product a standard the day you announce it.

Which is exactly what Adobe Systems Inc. has done in announcing Display PostScript (DPS), an extension to its page-description language for writing graphics to a screen instead of to a printer.

DPS was first announced in September 1987 by Adobe and NeXT Inc., who jointly developed the graphics-imaging software. Digital Equipment Corp. signed on to incorporate DPS in its DEC Windows product in January of this year. But things didn’t really start heating up until the NeXT computer was announced in October.

DPS, as demonstrated in the NextStep interface, coupled with the announcement of IBM’s licensing of DPS for its AIX Unix operating system, suddenly made DPS a hot technology and Adobe a company to watch.

DPS is an implementation of the PostScript language for interactive graphics displays. NextStep will not be shipped until sometime next year, and it is unclear how IBM and Digital will implement DPS on their Unix …

Data Security

DPS, postscript, taking on microsoft
Novell: Not An Olympic Champion

Sep 28th 2014

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NBC’s installation of Novell products as the mainline of its network for the coverage of the Summer Olympic Games was fraught with lackluster communications products, poor technical support and snags in multivendor communications, according to the systems integrator responsible for setting up the network.

As a result, the systems integrator, Nesbit Systems Inc., had to scramble to come up with alternative connections — in some cases replacing Novell Inc. products with 3Com Corp. hardware — to ensure the network delivered what it was designed to do: provide NBC’s on-site staff in Seoul, South Korea, with access to a research database on a local minicomputer and remote ties to systems in New York and Minneapolis.

The snafus caused Nesbit Systems to spend 50 percent more time on the project than planned. And, because a fixed price had been charged for the entire project, the company swallowed an estimated loss of $50,000 to $75,000, said Ken Michielsen, vice president of the Princeton, N.J., integration company.

While the System Fault Tolerant (SFT) NetWare operating system performed without a hitch, Novell’s communications products performed poorly and were bug-ridden to boot, said Irene Nesbit, president …

Data Security

novell is not the best, snafus
Different Operating Systems Posed Challenges For Pre-Windows Users

Sep 20th 2014

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Users who have outgrown DOS but are not yet ready to plunge into the OS/2 arena are starting to eye alternative operating systems as immediate solutions to their needs.

The introduction of OS/2 has spawned a breed of users more aware of alternatives to DOS, analysts said. While these users are frustrated by the limitations DOS imposes, they aren’t yet prepared to move to OS/2 and endure the dearth of real business applications.

One such user is Bill Santiago, a corporate director of information systems at a large Midwestern company. The introduction of OS/2, Santiago said, was primarily responsible for his decision to examine the Advanced Pick 386 operating system once it is available from Pick Systems next year.

”I guess I decided I was tired of waiting [for OS/2],” he said. ”Advanced Pick is a lot less expensive than going to OS/2, and I was really attracted to its relational database and multiuser capabilities.”

John Marvin, a corporate information-systems director at another Midwestern company, agreed. ”It would have taken forever for OS/2 applications to arrive, and I was looking for a system to start using now.” Marvin said …

Data Security

os flavors, os/2, techie codes
ARCnet… How Did We Ever Live Without You?

Aug 24th 2014

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The drive to revamp the ARCnet local area network topology by early next year is running into resistance from loyal users, whose battle cry could be, ”If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The ARCnet Trade Association (ATA), sponsor of the revamping effort, is seeking to boost the speed of ARCnet from 2.5M bits per second to 20M bps, increase the efficiency of network transmissions and expand the maximum size of ARCnet networks.

The improvements are aimed at strengthening ARCnet’s image as a viable alternative to Token-Ring and Ethernet local area network topologies.

However, some industry observers have said that by redrawing the ARCnet formula, developers may be throwing away the features that attracted users to ARCnet in the first place. The network’s ease of installation, reliability and lower cost are its primary strengths against competing technologies, they said.

”[ARCnet] is like a [Volkswagen] Beetle,” said Paul Nelson, a networking consultant for Venture Development Corp., an industry-analysis firm in Natick, Mass. ”To change would be a mistake,” he said.

The process of making ARCnet faster and more efficient will probably make it 50 percent more expensive as well, ATA President …

Data Security

arcnet, networking time, standards
Sabotage: Not Going Away

Jun 26th 2014

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With companies cutting jobs as the economic downturn deepens, the incidence of corporate and organizational sabotage is spiraling. “There is a renewed threat from disgruntled employees in times of economic downturn because more people are angered at losing their jobs,” says Richard Power, editorial director at the CSI. Experts and law enforcers advise users to increase their vigilance in line with the potential threat from disgruntled ex-employees.

In San Francisco and Silicon Valley, mass lay-offs are creating extra casework for the local branch of the Computer Intrusion Squad. Supervisory special agent Peter Trahon says his team of nine agents, the largest of 16 teams located across the US, is fielding up to six cases a day arising from malicious attacks on firms by former employees nursing grievances — only a fraction of which it has the resources to pursue. The team is investigating between eight and 12 cases out of the 60 it has on its books.

Trahon’s squad is called on to probe a wide variety of cases. “Recently, a disgruntled former employee intruded into the network and sent disparaging e-mails about one individual to 50,000 employees across the …

Data Security

corporate safety, sabotage instances growing
Backup Solutions: A Great Call

May 29th 2014

By: admin

6 comments

If you want a seamless backup system that requires little effort, check out online backup solutions such as Replica Network Data Manager from Stac Software (www.stac.com) or Connected Network Backup. Connected Network Backup, for example, provides online backup and storage for as little as $20 per month. The beauty of an online solution is, there are no disks to deal with and no programs to initiate, and the backups don’t require your participation. Once subscribed, you have access to unlimited disk space and your data recovery can be done from anywhere, at any time.

DO IT YOURSELF

But no matter how well prepared you are, sticky situations can still arise: a virus could eat your hard drive or a disgruntled employee could delete financial files. In these types of cases, you’ll need a data-recovery software program, such as PowerQuest’s Lost & Found or Ontrack’s EasyRecovery (www. ontrack.com). At less than $100 each, both do-it-yourself data-recovery programs are affordable options (compared to the thousands of dollars you might pay an expert for data recovery).

Lost & Found is an off-the-shelf software utility that PowerQuest claims can recover almost any lost or …

Data Security

backup software, backups, data safety
Stay Vigilant With Viruses

May 11th 2014

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Fifty-one per cent of companies surveyed had at least one virus outbreak in 2000. Seventy per cent using firewalls are still vulnerable to the threats they were designed to address.

Have you experienced any of these symptoms lately? Display of an unusual message, missing files, a file whose size has increased significantly, a slower computer, a sudden lack of disk space, an inability to access your hard disk? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these, chances are you’ve been infected with a computer virus. And you’ve got plenty of company.

According to a recent study Ipsos-Reid study, The Canadian [email protected] Reid Report, 46 per cent of the country’s Internet users reported they have experienced a computer virus. Of those who have been infected, 39 per cent said they were forced to get their computer repaired as a result of damage.

Another study, Is IT Safe? Network Security In Canada, by IDC Canada noted that most respondents identified computer viruses as the greatest security threat.

Finally, according ICSA Labs of TruSecure Corp. in Reston, Va., 51 per cent of companies surveyed had at least one outbreak in 2000. It …

Dangers

enterprise IT, interesting surveys, viruses
The Issues With PKI

Apr 13th 2014

By: admin

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Speaking at a conference recently, Henk Tobias, Eema’s chairman and technology manager of the global infrastructure organisation at Unilever, said it was impossible to have full and successful global e-business without addressing the unresolved problems with PKI.

Unilever began to experiment with PKI technology a few years ago when the company put in the infrastructure to allow a number of people in its human resources department to send encrypted attachments. The project was expanded to include financial services, and later moved on to secure messaging, allowing senior managers to encrypt confidential information and send it securely across the public Internet to Unilever’s offices in different countries in Europe.

Based on the success of the in-house project, the company is keen to expand its use of PKI technology to communicate with its huge network of business partners. “We’ve been looking into communicating with some of our main raw materials suppliers and a number of the supermarket chains through PKI. But all your partners must have PKI in place and the different technologies must be able to talk to each other,” Tobias said.

Perhaps one of the most significant stumbling-blocks in the …

Data Security

compatibility and PKI, pki problems
A Blast From The Past: Public Utilities

Mar 28th 2014

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If Fifth Generation’s new disk-utilities package had a motto, it would surely be, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This strategy pays off big in the area of disk maintenance, as anyone who has lost data to a hard-disk crash will attest. By performing automatic preventive disk scans, Public Utilities is the first disk-protection program to flag problems before they take a toll in lost data. In addition, the program provides capable disk-repair facilities that fix most data-structure-related problems.

Going Public

Geared to novice users, Public Utilities is simpler in scope and operation than heavyweight disk-maintenance packages such as Norton Utilities and MacTools. The Public Utilities application comes with a standard complement of disk-utility functions — it scans and, if necessary, repairs disks with directory or other non-hardware-related problems; it provides facilities for extracting text from corrupted files and for undeleting inadvertently erased files; and it includes a disk optimizer.

The real beauty of Public Utilities, however, is the software’s innovative Prevention control panel. Once installed, the control panel performs several important disk-maintenance functions automatically and unobtrusively. As well as storing the disk and file …

Data Security

classic software, old data recovery utilities