Monthly Archives: April 2011
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Syndication
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April 22, 2011
Social Microfunding — New Signature Helps ioby Bring Environmental Projects to Life, Block by Block
By New Signature
**Update: Check out our new post: Drupal 7 Commerce in action for ioby.org**New Signature worked with ioby to design and build a new social microfunding web service that connects people and money to site-based environmental projects. All of the projects funded through ioby are conceived, designed, and run by neighbors—which ensures community buy-in, long-term caretakers and daily reminders of what’s been achieved. The website provides a five step process to empower visitors to help make a difference: (1) pick a project, (2) nurture it through funding, (3) follow the results, (4) get your hands dirty and inspire others, and (5) prepare for great things. The optional sixth step is “rinse and repeat”.
New Signature used Drupal 7 as the platform for the ioby website. Drupal 7 provided a powerful and flexible platform that answered ioby’s need for a robust e-commerce and collaborative social community solution. New Signature developed the ioby Drupal 7 website to be fast, responsive and handle huge amounts of traffic. The website uses Drupal’s rich social networking integration to make it easy for visitors to share what they have learned on ioby and build their own network of ioby donors and volunteers through their profile page. The ioby website leverages Drupal Commerce–a professional e-commerce solution for Drupal 7. New Signature utilized Drupal Commerce to present a simplified and streamlined process to the visitor, empowering them to easily move from project selection through checkout and payment. New Signature further extended the Drupal platform through the use of contributed and custom modules.
New Signature also employed other web technologies and services in building the ioby website. For example, jQuery–a fast and concise JavaScript Library–was employed by New Signature because of its lightweight footprint, CSS3 compliance and cross-browser compatibility. New Signature also utilized the Google Maps API to provide visualization of the large number of projects interactively.
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April 19, 2011
New Signature Enterprise Patch Management Solution
By New Signature
New Signature’s Enterprise Patch Management Solution (EPMS) reduces the risk, cost and hassle associated with patch management by automatically identifying missing patches, and delivering critical fixes for these and many other software applications.EPMS is a simple and affordable service that saves you money, while improving the security, performance and stability of your desktops, laptops and servers. Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Mozilla and other software manufacturers release updates almost every month, and many of these patches are in response to security vulnerabilities, program instability or performance problems.
Comprehensive Patch Database
New Signature leverages the efforts of hundreds of patch researchers, analysts and data aggregation specialists to supply EPMS with patch data for Microsoft and third-party software applications from vendors such as Adobe, Apple, Mozilla, and Sun JAVA.Approval and Deployment
Patches are transmitted securely to your servers where New Signature engineers routinely evaluate and then publish these patches for deployment.Patch Health Reports
You receive weekly reports that include details about your network health level, missing patches and applicable patches that have not yet been published. -
April 15, 2011
Dive into Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (Part 1)
By New SignatureIn the past, the rule was simple: leaving a physical device in someone else’s possession meant data was insecure. Anything carried out of the corporate network–phones, USB drives, laptops or iPads–were therefore security risks, especially if they contained sensitive data.
Recent advances have finally brought the vision of secure mobile devices into the realm of reality. With this post we begin to explore Microsoft’s newest answer to securing laptop drives to prevent data from being compromised: Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM).
Before we dive into how MBAM enables enterprises to secure their mobile data, it’s useful to explore what the common risks are when corporate devices leave the enterprise network. Data in the field typically is at risk during two time periods: while communications channels are open back to the home office and when a laptop or disk is left unattended.
Securing the communications channel is the foundation of any security system, and most enterprises are already utilizing secure channels for this. Thus, the real risk occurs when individuals leave laptops unattended in hotel rooms, or in non-public places. Armed with the proper tools, a malicious individual could gain entry, copy a drive, and return the disk (seemingly without detection) to the original state. Armed with a copy of the data, an intruder could attack the security with impunity, all while the victim was unaware.
Using a hardware component called a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), plus Microsoft’s BitLocker Drive Encryption software package, newer laptops can utilize hardware-based disk encryption to prevent evil maids from altering how disks are accessed. The latest TPM chipsets can be used to require a passphrase each time the machine is powered on. Without the proper passphrase and TPM chipset, the disk is secure. Recent attacks scenarios have focused on grabbing the disk encryption keys from memory, which work as long as the laptop is powered on. The solution? Power your laptop off while not in use.
Armed with these three simple rules, your laptop can be secure:
- TPM (Trusted Platform Module) + Passphrase
- Bitlocker
- Powering off the laptop if it is not in use
If the laptop is powered off, actors couldn’t simply remove the drive without the TPM detecting a change. They’d also be unable to read the keys from memory because powering on the laptop would require the passphrase before the drive was mounted.
Now that we have a secure computing scenario, the next logical question was: how easy is it to implement? Unfortunately, over the past few years Bitlocker has acquired a reputation for being difficult to manage, and like many well-designed but complex security system, this has reduced adoption. Now with the release of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2011, Microsoft has armed security minded system administrators with the tools to centrally manage bitlocker-enabled laptops from a single console, reducing deployment time and support, which speeds adoption.
In the next installment, we’ll cover how to use MBAM (a.k.a., Malta).
Malta -
April 14, 2011
Microsoft Server Application Virtualization – Deploy On-premises Applications to Windows Azure
By New SignatureAvailable to customers in the second half of 2011, Microsoft Server Application Virtualization (Server App-V) and the Server Application Virtualization Packaging Tool will allow firms to deploy existing, on-premises applications directly onto Windows Azure. This is a big win for those that want to take advantage of Microsoft’s cloud capabilities. Server Application Virtualization delivers three primary benefits: application mobility, simplified deployment and lower operational costs.
Microsoft Server Application Virtualization allows for the separation of application configuration and state from the underlying operating system. This separation and packaging enables existing Windows applications, not specifically designed for Windows Azure, to be deployed Windows Azure.
In addition, with Windows Azure Connect you can can create that linkage from within Windows Azure back into your network. Windows Azure Connect creates IPsec protected connections between physical or virtual computers in your network and roles running in Windows Azure. This allows on-premises server applications that you want to virtualize to access local resources within your domain or in your datacenter. If you need to leverage this technology, plan for the latency that will occur when running part of your service on-premises and part in the cloud.
Contact New Signature today if you are interested in learning more about how virtualization, or cloud computing, can provide value to your organization. New Signature is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has 14 competency designations from Microsoft including Gold Virtualization, Gold Server Platform and Gold Hosting. New Signature is also a member of the Cloud Essentials and Cloud Accelerate partner program.
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April 12, 2011
Protocol Staffing Services Website Launches
By New Signature
New Signature designed and built the new website for Protocol Staffing Services–a division of Occasions Caterers, one of Washington’s premier catering companies. The creative and unique website matches this unique company that is recognized for creativity and flawless execution. For over twenty years, Protocol Staffing Services has been behind the scenes of Washington DC’s most memorable and historic social events. From the annual Corcoran Ball to Inaugural events and fundraisers, their staff has been an intricate part of each event’s success.New Signature designed the website to extend this established and powerful brand online and ensure that the design of the website is as memorable as the events the firm staffs. New Signature’s graphic designers created a visually compelling homepage design that exemplifies the top-quality services Protocol Staffing Services provides to their clients. We also provided guidance and expertise to ensure that the website is user-friendly, easy to navigate, provides effective and easy-to-read information, and makes it easy for existing or prospective clients to contact the Protocol team.
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April 7, 2011
High Availability With Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 — An Economical Solution for SMB Organizations
By New SignatureMicrosoft has made a big new change that immediately lowers the entry cost to deploy a highly available network. With April 4th, 2011 release of Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3, Microsoft enables storage consolidation and sharing on a Windows Server by implementing the iSCSI protocol, which supports SCSI-block access to a storage device over a TCP/IP network.
For example, you can use three physical servers, two running Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and the third with Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard to enable live-migration. This means you can use an existing server instead of purchasing an expensive Storage Area Network (SAN) solution to create a storage array. Then you can connect two Hyper-V servers and enable high availability at a far lower price point. This is an economical solution suited for a small, medium, or branch office production environment (or a development or test environment).
The solution isn’t a simple one–setting up this solution is complex enough to require a team with deep levels of expertise in clustering and virtualization Microsoft technologies. But for organizations that are looking to re-purpose existing hardware, develop a proof of concept for reduced maintenance cost, or just to provide a higher level of availability that they have in the past, the new iSCSI target software is a perfect match. Give New Signature a call today if you are interested in seeing if this technology may work for you. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner with fourteen competencies, including Gold Virtualization, Gold Server Platform, Gold Desktop and Gold Hosting.