Podcasting for Business

Podcasting for Business Web 2.0 and social media is fast becoming a cornerstone in every businesses marketing arsenal. Podcasting allows a business to impart valuable information in a format (audio or video) that makes a connection with potential customers. Podcasts have the unique power to evoke the personality of the podcaster. Throughout history sales has relied on the ability to develop a relationship with a prospect. In the digital age we have very few options to connect or personality with our customers’ needs. Podcasting provides such an opportunity. Read more.

Digital Video Law Enforcement

This paper explores the application and value of digital video solutions in the law enforcement environment. It will focus on incident documentation and evidence management as well as the business case for using video to eliminate frivolous and costly law suits. Read more.

Business Case for Rugged PC's

This paper outlines the key demand drivers for reliable computing while describing the elements for different levels of “ruggedness.” It reports on the spectrum of mission-critical mobile users who have different levels of needs for rugged computing. It provides guidelines for “certification” and testing to accurately assess vendor claims and appropriately map the correct rugged form factor to the required functionality. Read more.

Podcasting for Business

Marketing whitepaper outlining the importance of Podcasting as a marketing and connective tool for business marketing.

Podcast marketing is on the rise and continues to develop and evolve as a powerhouse marketing medium. As corporations shift marketing budget from traditional media top online vehicles podcasting increases in popularity.

Podcasting allows a persona to be established as well as a position of expertise. Rich media such as podcasting increases online visibility and website conversion.

Single Throw a leader in the Internet Marketing space has developed a complete Podcast marketing solution designed to help a business connect with the connected.

Smart Metering – Enabling Greater Energy Efficiency

The electricity industry is one of the few industries where unconstrained demand is starting to be actively discouraged. The combination of rapidly increasing, more intense seasonal demand peaks with increasing pressure on infrastructure investment are causing the industry to look for ways of more intelligently managing demand. Smart metering is increasingly being seen as a tool through which regulators and network operators will be able to shape electricity demand patterns in the future. Smart metering will allow operators to educate and financially incentconsumers to be more aware of their energy usage. Ultimately it could allow a limited level of control over non-critical load, thereby increasing the reliability of supply and asset utilization efficiency. Read more.

Top Threats to Mobile Networks – And What To Do About Them

Mobile network operators are experiencing increased traffic as laptops become more portable and cell phones and other wireless devices add power, features and functions. The downside is that the growing population of mobile users taking advantage of voice, video and data services are drawing the attention of hackers, eavesdroppers, and other malefactors. By understanding the growing number of threats to their networks and what countermeasures to take to minimize security risks, mobile operators can protect their customers and their networks against many of the attacks that inevitably will take place. This white paper describes the most common attacks on mobile networks and what to do about them. Read more.

Concept to Manufacture, Collaborative Product Development way

This write-up briefly captures the Concept-to-Manufacturing (C2M) methodology that is a proven model for product OEMs to collaborate with an end-to-end solution provider for developing products and the advantages of this approach. Global demands and limited R&D budgets are pushing the companies to transfer the manufacturing as well as design and development to contract manufacturers and specialized design houses to reduce cost pressures and achieve global reach. The work gets distributed between entities, and the detached activities bring unforeseen challenges causing product delays. Unless companies and their outsourcing partners have the maturity and experience to handle complex development cycles, most of the outsourced product engineering projects fail. Read more.

Notetech Offshore Whitepaper

This whitepaper addresses common pain points in existing Offshore Outsourcing Processes and elaborates how Notetech Software India could implement a customizable but productive methodology to provide its clients a hassle-free outsource experience. Most the ODCs claim 100% project success and such vendors are executing an offshore project through a tested methodology implemented years before, without any circumstantial changes. Hence, majority of ODCs may not be working through the right method of implementation. Gartner, outsource research experts, recently stated that , ‘a typical offshore project can be execute with three years work of 80 consultants and also with one year work of 30 consultants. Determinant is the project plan and blue print’. Finding offshore vendors, contracting, enhancement and optimization of project cycle is an amalgamation or known and unknown problems. The following section of the white paper, tries to disclose the major pain points that most of the companies face while deal with outsourcing their project to an offshore vendor. It addresses common Technical and Business problems related to Finding offshore vendors, contracting, enhancement and optimization of project cycle. Read more.

Continuity of Operations Strategies in the Federal Government Part 3

Paradoxically, continuity of operations (COOP) becomes most
challenging when it’s most urgent: on the battlefield, in
emergencies, and during disasters. In these situations, federal IT
groups must augment day-to-day COOP requirements —
resilience, security, and privacy-with additional attributes. These
include the ruggedness to continue operating despite adverse
environmental conditions or network events; the portability to send
actionable information to first responders or military personnel on
the move; and rapid deployment in temporary or mobile command
centers. Ensuring COOP in these conditions is required for
Department of Defense (DoD) network-centric operations (NCO)
and network-centric warfare (NCW) strategies as well as for
response to non-combatant emergencies and disasters.

A Larstan Business Reports survey of 533 government IT
professionals revealed federal government agencies’ attitudes and
progress in integrating COOP into challenging military
combatant, military non-combatant, and civilian environments.
Most survey respondents acknowledged that ruggedness,
portability, and rapid deployment are crucial qualities for their
organizations to operate effectively, with 87% of intelligence or
military combatant, 75% of military non-combatant, and 78%
of civilian agencies agreeing or strongly agreeing. It’s unsettling
that 25% of civilian and 23% of military/non-combatant
agencies do not recognize the importance of rapid deployment as
crucial for effective operations. Events such as the explosion of
the Columbia space shuttle, natural disasters, hazardous materials
spills, building contamination, and disease outbreaks demand
rapid establishment of command centers and effective voice,
video, and data communication with mobile personnel called to
respond to the disruption.

Learn more about how Cisco's Solutions help the Fedaral Government sustain inter-agenency cooperation by reading this whitepaper.

Continuity of Operations Strategies in the Federal Government

Inter-agency collaboration has an Achilles’ heel. The vulnerability is revealed when an employee is depending on another agency’s application and it suddenly disappears, or when a response team scrambles to establish an emergency voice and video conference with leaders, managers, and decision-makers in far-flung national global offices, all using different communications systems.

To realize the promise of collaboration, federal agencies need to approach it in a way that achieves continuity of operations (COOP) programs while avoiding the perils of more potential points of failure.

While collaboration unquestionably supports government transformation by helping agencies deliver services more effectively and efficiently, it simultaneously introduces new technology concerns related to resilience. That is, a disruption to one agency’s network, applications, communications, or workforce must not disrupt the operations of that agency or its partners.

Learn more about how Cisco's Solutions help the Fedaral Government sustain inter-agenency cooperation by reading this whitepaper. Read more.

IP Transformation and Stakeholder Engagement – Managing Stakeholders During Complex Change Programs

IP Transformation programs introduce significant change into the business, technical, and service delivery environment. While most companies are struggling to address the challenge of complex change within the company, the impact of complicated change programs on their associated external stakeholders cannot be underestimated. This white paper examines the impact large change programs have on working relations with external parties, and discusses what strategies telecom companies can employ to avoid the pitfalls associated with transformation and migration. Read more.

Embedded Broadband Wireless Value

This paper delves into the new developments in wireless laptop technology and the advances in embedded wireless wide-area networking (WWAN) along with how these solutions can assist the mobile workforce in optimizing their access to critical information resources remotely. It also makes the financial justification for choosing integrated, or embedded wireless solutions over card - or USB-based options. Read more.

Choosing a Network Access Control Solution that is Right for your Network

Are you confused about Network Access Control? You are not alone. Today's enterprises are facing a growing challenge in securing access to their networks as the number of corporate mobile users and contractors is increasing exponentially. Adding to this challenge is the difficulty of integrating network security solutions into existing complex and diverse enterprise network infrastructures. Download this infomative whitepaper and learn how you can best prepare for choosing and implementing the network access control (NAC) solution that is right for your network. In addition, you'll learn: 1. How to determine your organization's priorities and objectives for a NAC solution. 2. The major differences between NAC solutions on the market today, including inline vs. out of band, client vs. clientless, etc., and the pros and cons of such approaches. 3. How to conduct an onsite evaluation to determine the best solution for your enterprise. 4. The implementation challenges faced by top enterprises. Read more.

Achieving PCI Compliance with Network Access Control (NAC)

Google Search Parameters 3

Google Search Parameters 3 Read more.

Security Risk Management Case Study: AT&T

Security Risk Management Case: AT&T Deploys Vulnerability Management Solution

Serving 40 million residential customers and another 4 million businesses, AT&T operates the largest

telecommunications network in the world. For many consumers and businesses, AT&T is a comprehensive provider of

network services that underpin the quality of their life and ensure the effective connectivity of their businesses. People

and organizations around the world have come to count on the reliability, high-availability and security of the AT&T

network for their voice and data communications.

Download this White Paper now to learn more.

The American Dream Goes Online

It’s clear that the stakes are high in the mortgage lending business. The sales process in this vital niche must be efficient and highly collaborative, with little room for error. That’s where the Internet comes in. The Internet has revolutionized all businesses and economic functions, and the mortgage industry is no exception. Mortgage lenders are increasingly relying on Web-based communications to make the sales process faster, cheaper and more persuasive. Read more.

Financial Advisor Scorecard

We believe there are eight critical areas to every business, including fiscal management, strategic planning, technology, operations, human resources, strategic marketing, client experience, and legal/compliance. These are each interdependent, so when one falls short it has a chain effect on the entire business. This “scorecard” analyzes these vital areas of 104 financial advisory practices to see how advisors stack-up compared to others. These practices cover the spectrum of the planning industry. Read more.

Security Threat Management

This White Paper explores trends that are creating requirements for a proactive and automated approach to managing threats to critical information assets. It introduces the concept of Security Threat Management (STM) as a critical component of an integrated lifecycle management framework for effective security management. It demonstrates how a more strategic approach to managing information about security events can elevate the security posture of organizations while reducing the operational costs associated with security management. Finally, it describes the technological requirements for
implementing STM to achieve organizational security objectives in a rational manner. Read more.

Delivering Anytime, Anywhere, Actionable Communications…

Public safety and emergency response organizations increasingly rely on wireless technology to provide effective command, control, and communication during emergencies and disaster response operations. However, in the event the public mobile network infrastructure is damaged, distressed or destroyed, as occurred during the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, first responders need a reliable, backup solution that allows them to continue to use full cell phone capabilities. This paper describes a novel portable Advanced Mobile Communications System (AMCS), the heart of which is a Tactical Base Station Router (TacBSR) that encapsulates all cellular network functions in a single box. It represents the smallest form factor in the industry (i.e., smaller than a laptop). The result of 6 years of development in Bell Labs, the TacBSR does not require any pre-existing wireless infrastructure, providing capacity and coverage on demand. Read more.

Testing for Cross-Frame Scripting

For financial institutions, the risk of doing business on the Internet has recently changed somewhat dramatically as attackers increasingly target the users of such institutions directly, thus bypassing the hardened security infrastructures of these institutions. Electronic attackers and cyber criminals have strategically shifted the security playing field to one clearly in their favor - exploiting the lack of security knowledge on the part of the vast majority of users and a large footprint of potential vulnerabilities, tools, and code to leverage and exploit. As customers, investors, and governments hold insecure companies accountable, these companies are being held liable for client side and user social engineering vulnerabilities. Being able to find and counter these threats must become a business imperative. This is especially true of financial institutions; people will not keep their money where they think it’s unsafe regardless of the technical specifics. The mere appearance of lax security could easily encourage otherwise satisfied customers to switch to a competitor that appears more secure. As if the choice of playing field hadn’t already stacked the deck against the network’s defenders, the lack of tools, time and expertise make it a truly daunting situation indeed. None of this information is new, nor is the security cliché that there is no absolute security, but novelty doesn’t imply or confer truth or effectiveness – the only absolute in security is the need for diligence. Along these lines, Cenzic believes it can assist large institutions in their efforts increase security diligence in the area of Web application security, generally, as well as, specifically, in regards to the Cross-frame Scripting Vulnerability in Internet Explorer discovered by iDefensei. Read more.

IPTV Business Strategies — A Perspective

Pressures to drive revenue growth, emerging content delivery technologies and promising subscriber uptake in various markets has generated interest in IPTV. Service providers with extensive broadband access networks have an opportunity to increase value from these investments and derive competitive strength. This paper provides a perspective on positioning IPTV within an overall market strategy and business model to increase the likelihood of commercial success. Read more.

The Enterprise Network Partner – Management & Transformation

Enterprises are increasingly outsourcing voice and data network management and transformation to equipment vendors, systems integrators, and managed service providers. A knowledgeable global communications solution provider can offer the managed services needed to efficiently and cost effectively administer the enterprise network from end to end. This same managed services team, given its alignment with the company’s CIO, and its familiarity with the design and everyday operation of the network, can also lead the enterprise into the next generation of data and communications networks. Transforming a data network to accelerate traffic to centralized data centers, or a legacy voice network into a converged and unified communications network, involves new technologies, tight integration, solid security, and far more efficient. This paper addresses the benefits of working with a managed service provider with the right experience to handle the management and transformation of enterprise voice and data networks and bring powerful strategic advantages to today’s businesses. Read more.

qLabs Test Case Prioritization

In software product development, it is impossible to test an entire product. To do so would increase the cost of quality and the time of the product release cycle, without providing adequate return on investment. Therefore, it is important to identify the critical areas of the software and test those more rigorously than other areas. Identifying critical areas is also important because the testing phase is often at the far end of the product release cycle and is often shortened by missed deadlines in other areas of the product release cycle. This results in many sleepless nights for test engineers who work hard to meet delivery deadlines. Therefore, testing needs to be prioritized based on a well-defined strategy and approach to enable the best possible use of time and resources. This paper describes a methodology for identifying significant test cases for a given release. Read more.

Guidelines for Selecting the Right Services Partner to Bridge Business & Technology Innovation

Competitive differentiation is critical in the current business climate, and transformation is essential in achieving it. This paper is meant to help executive decision-makers a carrier and enterprise organizations understand the importance of business-, service- and network-level transformation in achieving differentiation, and to help them address the complexities of implementing a transformation strategy. It also explains why only a Network Integrator—with the ability to tap extensive experience in both IT systems in network services—can assist by providing the unique capabilities needed to implement a transformation strategy successfully. It then examines how the right partner can also function as a trusted advisor and/or consultant throughout the entire transformation process—especially when that partner boasts a proven and comprehensive services methodology, along with a transformation framework, that allow it to reduce complexity, manage the inter-relationships among transformation projects and mitigate risk throughout the deployment lifecycle. Read more.

Conquering the Catastrophic

A terrorist attack or natural disaster can devastate a company’s information technology system and bring all business operations to an abrupt halt. Managers are increasingly aware of the importance of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, but their thinking tends to lack a truly international perspective. Here’s how to build business continuity management within a global corporation. Read more.

A Guide to Concept to Manufacturing from HCL

In today’s competitive world, it’s imperative that an enterprise brings its offerings in time to the market and more importantly ensure it’s differentiated. What can make the difference is a reliable IT solutions provider who can deliver comprehensive, end to end solutions. A comprehensive service provider also helps the enterprise overcome cost pressures and product delays arising from uneven distribution of work. However it is equally important that the service provider has the right experience and expertise to handle complex development cycles to really deliver results. Read more.

Seven Metrics to help Assess your Enterprise SOA Strategy

From several years, organizations are facing issues in aligning business applications (in-house software applications or 3rd party software applications) together as per the organizations goals and business requirements. Organizations have some work around for this common problem such as, implementing adaptor (developing customizing API’s) for the third party applications or developing its own application from scratch instead of using third party application. However, the solutions are not permanent and provide only minor relief to the organizations. Moreover, they are time consuming, expensive and require high maintenance as well. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is most comprehensive and most recognized solution in today’s IT world. SOA is a framework that provides common and reusable business functionalities in a standardized way as a set of services. SOA provides the flexibility to the organizations to coordinate these services as per their business workflow. A service is a reusable unit, which exposes business functions in standardized way and consumed across multiple projects. Since each service is a reusable component, it reduces development cost and offers consistency across applications. “Consuming a service is always cheaper and quicker than developing it ourselves.” Read more.

A Guide to Quicker & Collaborative Way to Product Development from HCL

Agile Architecture

Traditionally, an attempt is made to make the right architectural decisions early due to the significant anticipated cost associated with making incorrect decisions. But this contradicts with Agile practices, which encourages welcoming change. Conceptually, the goal of agile architecture should be to minimize the architectural change by crafting software so that it can easily adapt to change. In practice, developing agile architecture is far more difficult. The architectural goals change dramatically during the development of a software. This depends on the change in usage by users, business conditions, and availability of new software and hardware etc. This paper discusses the challenges faced with traditional enterprise software architecture and how does Agile practices helps in creating massively scalable system architecture and the potential problems faced with Agile Enterprise Architecture. Read more.

TRUSTe-TNS Study: Consumer Attitudes about Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting has become a critical online trust issue, What do consumers think about having their browsing behaviors tracked for marketing purposes? For the second year in a row, TRUSTe and TNS surveyed consumer attitudes about behavioral targeting. Participants answered questions on their concerns and opinions about tracking issues, and the actions they take to protect their privacy. The survey results found that most consumers consider privacy important enough to take steps to protect it. Many individuals know their behavior is being targeted, and they’re uncomfortable with being tracked, even with the assurance of anonymity. Most are in favor of tools and features that control targeted advertising. Businesses have a stark choice: they can either increase transparency about their behavioral advertising practices or risk increasing consumer doubt and suspicion. Companies also need to treat personal information with respect and earn the right to deliver advertising based on behavior. Read more.

Uniform Platform for Test Automation

This paper describes several approaches used for Test Automation and their advantages and disadvantages. It also explains how the qLabs Uniform Platform has changed the entire spectrum of automation testing and has reduced the dependency on automation engineers by a significant measure. This framework supports a wide variety of popular commercial and Open Source tools to meet various technical and budgetary requirements. It encourages applying standard software development processes to test automation. Read more.

Web security is within your reach. 10 ways to keep hackers in check and ensure safe web resources

The white paper was authored by Marsel Nizam, Head of Web Security Development at Bitrix and supervisor of the development of the PRO+PRO™ security framework undergirding the company’s flagship products. The white paper is based on his 10+ years’ experience in web security and allows decision-makers to understand modern web-borne threats and ways to secure web assets by selecting proper web content management solution, as well as to get a plethora of useful security-related advice. Read more.

Solution or platform? Useful advice about choosing an intranet portal

The white paper describes different approaches for creating intranet portals, advantages and weaknesses of each and contains basic advice concerning which concept better meets specific needs.. As a result, customers get reasonable recommendations and best practices for making well-grounded decisions when selecting intranet software and avoiding strategic mistakes. Read more.

Opposites attract: how can open source and proprietary software coexist?

Bitrix Inc. (www.bitrixsoft.com) introduces its hybrid model for product licensing, a reasoned compromise between free open source (FOSS) and proprietary software (PS). Incorporating advantages and evening out the disadvantages of the generally adopted licensing models, the hybrid licensing offers a well-rounded choice for small and medium-sized businesses and an industry-leading "value for money" indicator. Read more.

Why adopt nearshore Agile development?

Alarmed with the findings of the latest CHAOS Report saying that as of 2009 only 32% of all outsourced software projects succeeded, while 24% failed and 44% were challenged by late delivery, over-budget and poor functionality, Ciklum analyzed a lot of factors and concluded that waterfall model is a key reason of most of the projects’ failure. Read more.

Of Masters and Slaves: Modularity and VBVoice

If you build IVRs for call centers, hosting multiple applications or for mission critical applications — or want to target these markets — the Pronexus’ Modularity feature set can help you succeed. The Modularity feature set enables VBVoice developers to distribute or “break apart” their application into separate yet cooperating processes under what we have termed a master / slave architecture. By distributing your applications, you benefit from the ability to: • Scale applications by building “IVR server-farms” • Deliver mission critical uptime with a redundant application architecture • Host multi-tenant applications • Simplify maintenance of larger / complex applications Read more.

Interoperability between VBVoice® and Asterisk®

VBVoice VBVoice is the first Rapid Application Development tool for telephony and speech to blend a high level Graphical User Interface (GUI) with sophisticated programming in a Visual Studio .NET environment. In addition to supporting a range of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) functionality, VBVoice enables developers to deploy using a distributed architecture, for improved application scaling, redundancy or the ability to host multiple IVR applications on a single server. Asterisk Linux-based Asterisk is a complete IP-PBX in software. It provides the common PBX features, implements Voice over IP (VoIP) and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware. With support for features such as Voicemail services with Directory, Call Conferencing, IVR, Call Queuing and more, Asterisk provides a compelling low-cost alternative to traditional telephony platforms. Interoperability Interoperability studies, performed by Pronexus, demonstrate that VBVoice works with the Asterisk PBX over SIP/RTP. VBVoice enables developers to rapidly create advanced telephony applications that seamlessly work with the Asterisk PBX. The IVR tool kit provides access to sophisticated technologies such as speech recognition and text-to-speech, enabling development of applications such as dial-byname, speech auto-attendant, speech-enabled self-service and many more, bringing additional value to Asterisk, especially in the enterprise environment. VBVoice also enables development of hardware-less VoIP applications using Dialogic's Host Media Processing (HMP). This makes it a natural fit for Asterisk, which supports various VoIP protocols such as SIP and H.323 without the need for dedicated telephony hardware. VBVoice facilitates development of telephony and speech applications for a VoIP platform with its easy-to-use visual callflow control that can be extended using Visual Basic, VB.NET or any other programming language supported in Visual Studio .NET. This provides developers with an alternative to create IVR applications avoiding the intricacies of low level scripting of the Asterisk platform. Read more.

Selecting the Right Toolkit

Even in the current economic climate, the market for Computer Telephony (CT) and speech applications is growing, as organizations are looking for ways to lower costs, improve customer service and optimize operational efficiency. Speech applications, in particular, are finding increased market acceptance. After several years of technological progress and decreasing cost, TTS (Text-to-Speech) and ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) technologies have reached a point where their widespread deployment becomes increasingly feasible. Together, they are enabling new application types and make existing telephony applications even more user friendly. And although ‘traditional’ DTMF (i.e. touchtone) applications are often overlooked, they too represent a significant and growing market, as many solutions can effectively be implemented without the expense of speech. In total, the Voice Business marketplace is forecast to grow from an estimated US $632m in 2001 to $4.3bn in 2007, representing a healthy compound annual growth rate of 38% (Source: Datamonitor). For developers, this opens a wide range of attractive, high value opportunities, such as IVRs, call center solutions, outbound dialing and survey applications, voice portals and others. Developers looking to enter the voice business market face a number of hardware and software choices. Chief among these decisions is the choice of development environment – it can determine success or failure of a development initiative and make the difference between a profitable project rollout and a costly failure. This document highlights some of the critical issues that should be considered. Read more.

VoIP Best Practices

The opportunity to migrate telephony and voice applications from TDM circuit-switched networks to IP packetswitched networks offers many advantages for enterprise network managers. The current state of Voice over IP (VoIP) technologies allows companies with dedicated WAN resources to leverage their infrastructures for voice and data applications, and realize cost savings in the process. With a single, integrated network in place of two disparate networks, enterprises can consolidate staffing and streamline operations. In addition, the integration of voice and data content onto a single technology platform creates the potential for the development of new, interactive applications that may increase productivity or streamline operations. VoIP's biggest boon is increased functionality. There are thousands of possible applications for VoIP phones, and as companies open up their code to developers, more niche applications are likely to develop. With proper implementation and training, these systems can boost productivity for a broad range of companies. Read more.

Social Media Software

Social Media involves all the internet enabled means that people may use to communicate, share and collaborate. This whitepaper features the social media phenomenon and the important social media trends that are being adopted successfully by various businesses. Through various real life examples, it shares that how social media has made a tremendous impact in the growth and development of these businesses. The whitepaper also introduces the social media software and how it can assist in leveraging effective social technologies and the available solutions . Read more.

Integrated OSS Solutions

The IT Infrastructure in an enterprise is used by multiple users from different groups and functions for a variety of services and purposes. The needs of different stakeholders often compete with each other for the limited infrastructure resources. The administrator, then, needs to prioritize and allocate resources depending on the business impact of the different needs. Depending on internal policies, the administrator may also need to bill the stakeholders as per their usage of the infrastructure. HCL Integrated OSS Solutions is a tool available to any enterprise’s of IT Infrastructure managers and administrators to obtain visibility into the performance of the Infrastructure and for a data based management of the infrastructure Read more.

Optimizing Productivity. Managing Volatility

The speed and resilience advantages of turrets? The lower cost of PBX? Find out which is the best for your business with this free white paper. • See a detailed cost/feature comparison of PBX-based phones andmore-capable turrets • Find 4 key business indicators that can help you decide whether PBXphones or turret systems are the right choice for your trading environmentts • Get insights and perspective from both traders and IT professionalson the trade-offs involved in choosing between turrets and PBX Read more.

RISING ABOVE RISK

Voice communications are arguably the most critical trading technology during an emergency. Now, see how the continued adoption of Internet telephony (VoIP) gives traders far greater resiliency – at a lower total cost of ownership. • Use the business continuity planning scorecard to assess your firm’s preparedness • Discover two success stories that illustrate how companies have significantly reduced the risk of interruption of trading environments • See how IPC has redefined the capability and cost for securing business continuity for voice trading environments Read more.

Outsourcing Network Security Protection - The Smart Option

Organizations can work with a managed security service provider to protect corporate data assets more efficiently and at lower cost. The best solutions include an outsourcing arrangement that transforms your business functions and adds value to your operations. This white paper describes the current state of security threats to organizations; presents the benefits associated with outsourcing security protection; and describes the current most efficient and effective security solutions available from a managed security service provider. Read more.

PDF Security and Encryption

Protecting your Intellectual Property with DRM

Introduction to Digital Rights Management - DRM

Introduction to Encryption

Strategies for Supporting Next-Generation Networks - Proactive, Predictive & Preventive

As service providers compete to roll out advanced end-user services over next-generation networks (NGNs), they must consistently meet accelerating customer performance and service expectations to maintain their competitive edge. A key component in balancing these efforts is the development of a new maintenance model that goes beyond conventional product-level support. This white paper dimensions the two-stage evolution from today’s prevalent productlevel support model to network-level support and ultimately to service-level support. It then details the four key ingredients of the service-level support methodology and reveals and how this methodology provides the tools for seamless end-to-end proactive monitoring and maintenance that optimize service availability, reduce operating costs and allow service providers to focus on service enhancements for revenue growth. Read more.

Solving the NGN Data Migration Challenge

The costs associated with data inaccuracy have emerged as a fundamental issue for service providers planning to migrate subscribers from the PSTN to an IP network. This white paper outlines a new approach developed by Bell Labs to help operators optimize the total costs for subscriber data validation during IP Transformation. Read more.

Is Your Network Ready? – Meeting the Challenges of Today's New Communications Environment

The end-user is shaping the future of the communications, and content industries – happily changing the business dynamics associated with everything from the most rudimentary services from incumbent service providers to an exotic mix of interactive, blended, personalized offerings from companies like Google, YouTube, eBay, and MySpace. Demand for new, blended services by consumers and enterprise customers is driving service providers to deploy next generation, IP-based networks that can handle these new applications. Conducting a successful IP transformation must be based on the firm foundation of advanced network design created with the help of sophisticated modeling and simulation techniques. Service providers can best make the complex and difficult transformation journey by enlisting the help of an experienced global communications solution provider. Read more.

The Coming Carrier Network Infrastructure – A Very Different Landscape

New Partnerships, New Business Models for Tomorrow’s Telcos Both fixed and mobile telecom operators are facing new competitive challenges as they shift their focus from the network to developing retail business and content partnerships. Among the strategies they can adopt are: invest in fiber to the home in order to offer quadruple play services; converge their current and future customer offerings; and separate their network and service operations. In addition, the fierce competitive environment will drive increased merger and acquisition activity as well as the formation of partnerships between organizations that previously viewed themselves as separate entities – for example, fixed and wireless companies. To compete in this new environment, operators are rethinking their business models and are turning to outsourcing arrangements as a way to enhance their competitive positioning. Ownership of the network infrastructure is increasingly being viewed as outside their core business. Read more.

The Need for IPTV End to End Solution Integration – Learned the Hard Way

End-to-end solution integration is not a luxury. In their eagerness to capture innovators, both the service providers that led the early IPTV service launches and the early adopters learned this the hard way. Now, more than a decade later, the same types of deployment and operational issues still exist. However, given the renewed industry focus on end user quality of experience that covers not only received video quality, but ease of use and provisioning and support, operators now realize they must build quality end-to-end integration into the deployment business case. Read more.

Service Modeling:The Foundation of Service Operations Transformation

Detailed Service Models are the blueprints required to build Service-Oriented Operations This white paper: • Describes how service modeling is a key component of evolving to service-oriented operations. • Discusses the appropriate use of service modeling at various stages of the service and network development life cycle. • Highlights the manifold benefits of the service modeling process. • Discusses a structured approach to modeling based on standards and real-world experience leading to a best practice approach for this maturing technique. • Details the Alcatel-Lucent service modeling methodology as a part of the lessons learned from experience. Read more.

Web Application Security:The Truth About White Box Testing vs. Black Box Testing

Security teams are dealing with this ominous challenge with a myriad of solutions, some highly ineffective. However, as the market matures, companies are applying somewhat effective, but not complete solutions like white box testing tools. Ultimately the challenges of architecture, API usage, and integration prevent white box testing tools from having a truly direct impact on the overall security of an application. It’s critical to understand that white box analysis tools do not directly find all the risks inherent in applications—period. This paper explores the role of white box vs. black box testing. White box testing technologies have a definite but limited use and value. From a Web application security perspective it must be understood that significant blind spots come with white box testing. Ultimately white box testing is not sufficient to secure your applications: simply put organizations that rely solely on white box technologies will be exposed to vulnerabilities in their applications, thus making it an ineffectual method of testing real-world risks. This paper will demonstrate black box or dynamic testing is ultimately the appropriate solution for “truly” securing Web applications. Read more.

Enabling Security in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

New security vulnerabilities are found almost daily. When they are, the affected software must be retrofitted with an appropriate patch while companies fend off the wrath of customers. Applications have become the most fertile ground for attackers to ply their trade -- seeking out the seemingly innocuous features and utilities in today’s complex systems that can give them unauthorized access. Each newly discovered vulnerability results in a frantic patch, halfway deployed, that potentially opens up another hole -- all taking days, weeks, or months to implement throughout an installed base. Meanwhile, new vulnerabilities continue to be found, making the game of catch-up never-ending. The critical place to address security vulnerabilities is in the software development process. This white paper discusses the challenges of enabling security in the software development process and introduces Cenzic’s solution to automate security quality assurance with its five-step methodology. Read more.

Web Application Security - Continuous Testing of Production Web Applications

Web application security is a key top-of-mind concern for general managers, CISO’s, CIO’s and security staff for businesses ranging from Fortune 100 multinationals to educational institutions. Widespread data breaches and intellectual property thefts have left few organizations untouched or unaware. Almost 70% of the vulnerabilities disclosed each month shows information security teams the importance of focusing on Web application security. Read more.

Mobile Tech Service Bay

This paper explores the strategic, operational, and technological issues that are addressed by rugged mobile solutions for maintenance and service managers. The role of rugged mobility in overhaul, service and maintenance operations has become a major competitive factor as fleet operators -- along with automotive, aerospace and other large equipment manufacturers -- seek to: • Improve relationships with customers by accelerating repair operations in order to return products back to productive use; and • Elevate the productivity of mechanics and other technicians who are increasingly under pressure to do more work with fewer human resources in less time at lower cost. Read more.

Preparation For 9/11 Anniversary

On August 10, 2006, officials in London arrested 22 people that were alleged to be plotting to blow up 10 airplanes leaving Heathrow for destinations in the United States. On August 23, 2006, Northwest flight NO0042 from Amsterdam to Mumbai reversed course and returned to Amsterdam. 12 people on the flight were arrested due to suspicious behavior. These incidents serve as a stark reminder that extremists in terror networks are focused on attacking and debilitating the United States and other countries around the world.

Analysis
The facts will continue to emerge from these cases and in the meantime we need to assume that the plots were real and could have had a substantial impact with respect to both human loss and the global economy. Read more.

Achieving Effectiveness in Information Protection

Since the effort toward definition of information security practice began in the early 1990s, the issues and approaches have been continuously evolving. The ability to demonstrate effectiveness in information security is no longer an option, but an imperative in the interconnected ecosystem that enables business. The update to BS 7799 recently released by ISO/IEC provides an excellent foundation toward defining an Information Security Management System (ISMS). An understanding of the standard’s recommendations for demonstrating effectiveness of the ISMS is essential to realize the full potential of this definition and standardization of information security practice across businesses. The benefits of implementing measurement-based ISMS will only increase as demands for assurance of sound information management practices intensify.
Companies will be well-served to start now with an ISO/IEC 27001 based ISMS implementation. Read more.

“I Spy …”

As with any technological shift, the advent of DVS is changing organizations internally. New digital system deployments often are maintained by information technologists who treat the images as data and manage content much as they do all other corporate data. This
shift of infrastructure control from physical security departments to more centralized information technology department management is the first step to enjoying the significant advantages of DVS solutions. Read more.

Supply Chains and Disaster Preparedness: Where the Rubber Hits the Road

Learn more about the overriding message at a recent supply chain disruption simulation, conducted by the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL). Supply Chain Strategy, produced by CTL and Larstan Business Reports, was the official publication of the event.

Dubbed “At the Crossroads of Supply Chain and Strategy,” (or “Crossroads 2006” for short), the one-day symposium in Cambridge, Mass. was attended by major corporate leaders looking to learn the most effective methods for protecting their supply chains from unforeseen catastrophe.

This informative white paper will show you why your supply chain management needs an effective disaster relief strategy to ensure to ongoing operation of your business.

Continuity of Operations Strategies in the Federal Government Part 2

At the heart of a growing collection of privacy regulations for
public and private sector organizations is the issue of public trust.
Storing mountains of information electronically and transmitting
it online multiplies the risks of inadvertently disclosing that
information. The consequences of loss of privacy for federal
agencies are grave, ranging from loss of citizen trust to
compromised homeland security. In acknowledgement of the
magnitude of the problem, government has implemented a spate
of privacy regulations discussed later in this report.

It’s important to recognize that privacy does not become optional
in the event of disruption. Arguably, it becomes even more
important because decision-makers might need to collaborate
across organizational boundaries not ordinarily crossed during
normal operations. To ensure that information can flow between
organizations freely and expeditiously during emergencies or other
disruptions, federal agencies cannot afford to rely on timeconsuming
manual security processes requiring human oversight.
Rather, they need integrated security technologies that facilitate
rather than hinder inter-organizational collaboration. Therefore,
privacy and security are inextricable from federal government
continuity of operations (COOP) planning.

Learn more about how Cisco's Solutions help the Fedaral Government sustain inter-agenency cooperation by reading this whitepaper.