Monthly Archives: February 2010
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Syndication
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February 26, 2010
New Signature Wins Top Honors at 2009 Interactive Media Awards
The New Signature creative division earned an IMA Outstanding Achievement Award under the category “Nonprofit” for the website we designed and produced for the Foreign Policy Initiative. This award demonstrates that the Foreign Policy Initiative website excelled in all areas of IMA’s judging criteria and represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.The Interactive Media Awards recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honor individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement. This award is further validation that New Signature is a leader in the industry, able to effectively and efficiently develop powerful and appealing websites for our valuable clients.
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February 24, 2010
Network Security: The Case Against Administrative Privileges
At New Signature we work with our clients to ensure that their staff are not logging into computers with accounts that have administrative privileges. Allowing everyone to login to a Windows computer as a member of the Administrators group makes the system vulnerable to Trojan horses and other security risks. The simple act of visiting an Internet site or opening an e-mail attachment can be damaging to the system and cost a business in staff downtime and costly computer repairs. In addition, with administrative privileges the average user will also be able to install any program they desire, including peer-to-peer file-sharing programs. While these programs may seem innocuous, they in fact may create substantial security and data privacy issues.
An example of these risks is illustrated by the The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recent warning to nearly 100 organizations that personal information, including sensitive data about customers or employees, was being leaked on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that had been installed on their networks. The FTC is urged recipients to take steps to control the use of P2P software on their networks. The agency pointed out that the data could potentially be used to commit identity fraud, corporate espionage or other crimes.
At New Signature we work with our clients to reduce network security issues through the careful management of administrative privileges and education. Our goal is to balance security with usability and ensure that these restrictions don’t restrict the ability to perform their work. There are many approaches to provide end users, even “power users” who need access to more computing functions than the average information worker, with the ability to fully utilize their Windows computers without their default user account having administrative privileges.
Contact New Signature today to learn more about how these approaches can increase your security and decrease the risk of data leakage.
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February 23, 2010
New and Improved Public Charter Schools Dashboard
NAPCS Dashboard
With help from New Signature, the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools launched a new and improved version of their Public Charter School Dasbboard. The most comprehensive set of charter school data ever made publicly available now includes performance data on over 5,000 individual schools.
The new features build on previous capabilities that allowed visitors to browse and extract data covering 10 years of charter school growth and performance at national and state levels. The new enhancements allow Visitors to search for individual charter schools by location, name, management organization, and various accolades including performance data benchmarks and recognition under the U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Schools Program. (more…)
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February 19, 2010
The Importance of Maintaining a Computer Network
No kid likes to keep their room clean. Without supervision, soda and food will begin to pile up and before you know it you’re on the phone with the exterminator lying through your teeth as you say, “I don’t know how these bugs got in here!”
The same applies to the most mundane of security tasks: keeping systems fully patched on a regular basis. And just as bugs can do real damage to a house if not prevented, keeping unpatched systems in your network can expose your entire organization to real risk.
Beyond the hyped headlines of “data theft” and “state-sponsored cyber-crime” though, the most likely risk is ordinary data loss, corruption or systems not performing as they should. If a computer isn’t allowing a user to check their email because a patch wasn’t applied, it is cold comfort to a user that they “haven’t been compromised by a criminal”. They merely want their email to work. (more…)
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February 10, 2010
New Signature Core Values: Sustainability (a.k.a., Being Green)
New Signature’s core values shape the way we do business. One of these core values is to, “Help create a better community through our actions.” One way that we help create a better community is through our efforts to ensure that we limit our (and our clients’) impact on the environment. New Signature’s goal is to be green like Kermit the Frog. As such, New Signature places a strong emphasis on reducing our impact on the environment. We have take a number of steps to do this, including the following:Transportation. New Signature participates in WMATA’s SmartBenefits program and provides each employee with a corporate ZipCar membership. Participation in WMATA’s SmartBenefits program encourages New Signature employees to use public transportation for commuting as it reduces the cost by making it pre-tax. While New Signature encourages employees to use public transportation, especially the Metro, to visit clients there are some instances that require they drive. In these instances, the ZipCar membership enables our staff not to have to bring cars to work–instead they can simply use a ZipCar on an hourly basis. (more…)
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February 5, 2010
Modular IT Solutions and How Your Business Can Benefit From Them
One of the key revolutions over the past 30 years has been the slow death of proprietary, closed systems. Building on an earlier theme I’d like to explore just exactly how far we’ve come in the technology world.
30 years ago most people worked with computers strictly on mainframes. The personal computer explosion hadn’t begun yet, save for a few hobbyists. If a company purchased “A” computer, it was an extraordinary capital investment. Furthermore, choosing one vendor over another meant locking in to not only the hardware, but the software and all the programs moving into the future. On the telephony side, systems were similar: you’d choose a vendor first, and then take what the vendor offered you. From financial systems to HR to filing, proprietary solutions dominated the field, and single-purpose equipment (e.g., a fax machine that just faxes, a calculator that merely does simple calculations on paper, no overlap between a “copier” and a “printer”, etc) was omnipresent. (more…)
