In previous blogs we talked about needing to educate the end users and knowing the details of what activity is occurring on your enterprise’s systems. In part 3, we’re going to talk about managing the threats that occur with a layered approach. Good security doesn’t stop at the endpoint with just an antivirus client (link to symc sep), it doesn’t stop with just a perimeter firewall. It starts with good knowledge of your environment, and grows out to each layer (Network, Endpoints, Client Hardware, Storage, etc) we’ll talk about each one in the next paragraphs.

I'm often asked about specific workflows within Red Hat's Satellite management tool. We'll take a look at a few common admin scenarios. One of the most common uses of Satellite is for centralized kickstart and provisioning. Here we'll walk through creating a new kickstart profile and some common options.

After attending the well put together DLT, NetApp, and Quest Software sponsored IT Consolidation Executive Forum I realized how important of a topic this is to our public sector agencies including the State and local sector. At many of these types’ forums and shows, sometimes, IT Consolidation doesn’t seem too relevant. But given the state of data growth, many who attended are planning on implementing data centers which use the technologies included with virtualization and IT consolidation. Cindy Cassil exemplified this in her presentation by giving specific examples of the implementation at Department of State and showing how it was accepted by her boss immediately because it showed how they could standardize and save money. She also pointed out the need for putting together the right team, she mentioned the NetApp engineers, with the right skills to make sure that everything was put into place correctly.

The blog entry below contains excerpts from ‘Putting Virtual “Boots on the Ground” – Law Enforcement Gets Intelligence on Demand,’ originally written by Caron Beesley and published on

The below blog was written by and published with permission by Steve O’Keeffe. Steve O'Keeffe is the founder of MeriTalk – www.meritalk.com – the government IT network. MeriTalk is an online community that hosts professional networking, thought leadership, and focused events to drive the government IT dialogue. A 20-year veteran of the government IT community, O'Keeffe has worked in government and industry. In addition to MeriTalk, he founded Telework Exchange, GovMark Council, and O’Keeffe & Company It seems amnesia is in fashion in D.C. OMB's data center consolidation admission that it stumbled across an additional 1,000 data centers was greeted by more smirks than surprise. Now that gives a whole new meaning to "government oversight." But, it seems that server farms aren't the only thing the Federal government's mislaying. According to a new MeriTalk study, "Uncle Sam's Lost & Found - $15.4B," Federal agencies are challenged to lay hand on information in their own databases and servers.

Can the government really save $15B by improving the way they search for documents? A recent survey of 300 federal employees, Uncle Sam's Lost and Found: $15.4 Billion, indicates that improvements can be made in several areas. The best place to start is with training, standards and the enforcement of standards. Sure, most agencies have established naming conventions, file storage procedures and a host of other ‘best practices’, but how often are these standards reviewed to ensure compliance? Focusing on some of these fundamentals will certainly improve the efficiency of file search. Unfortunately, training and standards will not fully resolve the challenge. One survey participant expressed the desire to have the ability to search for documents at work the same way they search for data at home – via search tools like Google. The benefits of a search appliance deployed within an agency are many. The search appliances are able to be customized to fit the agency needs, the interface is familiar, and the technology is scalable. The amount of data stored by organizations grows exponentially year after year, so the problem is only going to increase. Is $15B in savings a realistic number? The data suggests that the savings is just the tip of iceberg.

In Part 1 we investigated effective end-user education by making them take part in exercises to ensure that they are aware of risks out in the wild that exploit the well meaning insider. In Part 2, we’ll educate the IT department by learning what’s happening on their network. The best way to do this is with an appliance like the Symantec Security Information Manager (SSIM). The way that SSIM works is by collecting logs from a multitude of devices, whether they be network devices like firewalls and routers, or application log files like IIS or Symantec Endpoint Protection to correlate events to determine if any malicious activities are occurring across multiple layers. This level of visibility into the enterprise is critical to maintain your level of situational awareness.

For Public Sector (“PS”) customers, the networking continued on Monday night at the only purely PS focused event at Open World, the annual Oracle Public Sector Reception at Jillian’s. This Industry event is where PS customers could meet with Oracle PS experts for a night of food, drink, and sports, in a casual environment while watching Monday Night Football on several big screen TV’s in a fun sports atmosphere. This year’s event was heavily attended relative to past years; I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout.. The pool tables were packed with lines 2-3 people deep at each table so some additional games would have helped alleviate the overflow on the pool tables. This was a good problem to have considering that the majority of attendees were customers and not Oracle employees. I would suggest to Jillian’s that they add foosball and air hockey to their inventory of games next year to help alleviate the wait for a pool table. I would specifically suggest these two games based on their popularity at the “Game Zone” lounge in the Exhibit Hall. Both of these games were extremely popular and were only preceded in popularity by “Dance Dance Revolution” and the ever popular “Pop a Shot!” The only thing not included in the carnival atmosphere of the Exhibit halls and game lounge was a carnival barker, a palm reader, candied applies, and stuffed animals. I left having won 3 out of 5 air hockey games but without any prizes or cotton candy for my efforts. I did, however, have a wonderful time and I encourage Oracle to keep up that tradition at future Open Worlds especially for those attendees that bring children.

In the first blog entry of this series, I used this AdultSwim video on YouTube to outline the five stages of grief and then related them to the five steps to a successful technology implementation. The subsequent entries included have gone into more detail for each stage and step – Needs/Denial, Process/Anger, and Training/Bargaining. That brings us to this final entry in this series, which will cover: Step 4: Technology Rollout; or, Stage 4: Depression Stage 5: Rallying the Users; or Stage 5: Acceptance Along the way I’ve drawn a comparison between Technology Implementation, Therapy and the Kübler-Ross Model for Grief. Implementing new technology in your agency, or any organization, can be hard and if not done right can have catastrophic consequences. Don’t believe me? Just ask Hershey; yes, the chocolate company. Hershey Food Corp spent $112 million and 30 months of implementation effort, however, when they attempted to go live in July 1999, the company experienced catastrophic failures with sales order processing, which had a crippling effect in shipping delays and deliveries of incomplete orders. That’s a lot of melting chocolate.

Every year around the holiday season, we all get in the giving spirit. You put your spare change in a bucket, get an extra gift for a loved one, maybe even bake some cookies for someone. Well, at DLT Solutions, the holiday spirit gets kicked up a few notches in the form of our annual Toys for Tots Competitive Toy Drive. If you aren’t familiar with the Toys for Tots program, it is a great foundation run by the Marines to benefit underprivileged children. The goal is simple: bring in as many toys a possible. At DLT, we of course take it to another level.