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.
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…)
In July of 2009 New Signature published a post on network security (Network Security: Passwords vs. Passphrases) where we pushed for the use of more complex passwords and the use of passphrases to make this easier for the average person to use and remember. This morning (January 20, 2010) the New York Times published an article entitled “If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe“. The article shows that weak passwords continue to be a substantial problem.
“According to a new analysis, one out of five Web users still decides to leave the digital equivalent of a key under the doormat: they choose a simple, easily guessed password like ‘abc123,’ ‘iloveyou’ or even ‘password’ to protect their data.” (more…)
New Signature has won five Silver Awards in the 2009 Davey Awards. The winners of The 2009 Davey Awards were announced today by the International Academy of the Visual Arts today, and ForeignPolicyI.org, InsideIran.org, and InsideHigherEd.com all won Silver Awards. With over 4,000 entries from across the US and around the world, the Davey Awards honors the finest creative work from the best small firms, agencies and companies worldwide.
We are excited that these websites, which we designed and developed for our clients, have been selected to receive this prestigious honor. The Davey Awards is judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 200+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media. The Davey Awards is judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only organization consisting of top-tier media, advertising, and marketing professionals from the world’s leading organizations and firms.
Two of New Signature’s staff–David Geevaratne and Reed Wiedower–have earned the prestigious Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) credential to become part of the elite community of MCTs.
Microsoft Certified Trainers are the premier technical and instructional experts on Microsoft technologies, and are the only individuals authorized to deliver training for Microsoft Certification.
New Signature has earned both a Gold and Silver award at the 2009 W3 Awards. The Winners of The 2009 W3 Awards were announced by the International Academy of the Visual Arts today. Receiving nearly 3,000 entries, The W3 Awards honors outstanding Websites, Web Marketing, and Web Video created by some of the best interactive agencies, designers, and creators worldwide.
“We were incredibly impressed by the quality and creativity of this year’s entries. W3 winners continue to set the bar in Web development and design, push the limits of web advertising creativity and advance the use of web video. We are thrilled to have reviewed such a diverse and respected pool of work” said Linda Day, the executive director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire Academy, we congratulate this year’s W³ Award winners as they continue to advance Internet creativity and greatly contribute to the robust and ever-changing online community.” (more…)
Brian Krebs wrote a very relevant article on the Washington Post’s Security Fix column yesterday titled “Tighter Security Urged for Businesses Banking Online“. According to the article, “An industry group representing some of nation’s largest banks sent a private alert to its members last week warning about a surge in reported cybercrime targeting small to mid-sized business.”
The article goes on to say, “The alert indicates that the sophistication, stealth, and sheer volume of malicious software being distributed these days is testing the limits of traditional anti-malware protections, such as anti-virus software.” New Signature agrees with this assessment. Our experience has shown an increased number of attacks on client networks from any increasingly list of sources. The most alarming uptick we have seen are targeted attacks against specific clients, often using “spear fishing” techniques to try to gain entry into the corporate network.
The cost of not having the appropriate security policies, procedures, and technology in place can be high. For example, the article lists several groups that have lost substantial amounts of money through malware related attacks, including Bullitt County, Ky. which lost $415,000; Slack Auto Parts, which suffered about $75,000 in losses; and JM Test Systems that lost almost $100,000.
The increasing prevalence of malware attacks, including targeted attacks, and the real cost associated with these attacks is one of the reasons that New Signature’s technology management teams work closely with our clients to establish, and continually monitor, security policies, procedures and technologies. Our approach also includes staff education, which is an important element that should not be overlooked.
New Signature’s Drupal development expertise and experience was recognized today through our partnership with Acquia.
Acquia is a commercial open source software company providing products, services, and technical support for the open source Drupal social publishing system. Acquia’s partner program connects its clients with qualified partners, such as New Signature, who can provide Drupal development and deployment services.
New Signature was selected as an Acquia partner because of Acquia’s high level of confidence that New Signature consistently delivers a high quality, and reliable, websites based on the Drupal 6.x social publishing solution. By selecting New Signature, Acquia’s clients know that they are working with a team that is committed to the same high standards for ethics, quality, and innovation that they expect from Acquia. (more…)
CHH Enterprises, Inc., which does business as New Signature, earned the Better Business Bureau’s Accredited Business certification with a BBB Rating of A. The grade represents Better Business Bureau’s strong confidence that New Signature is operating in a trustworthy manner and will make a good faith effort to resolve any customer concerns. New Signature joined the Better Business Bureau to demonstrate our commitment to ethical business practices. This approach to business is driven by New Signature’s values, which shape the way we work and set us apart from the competition.
- Be a great company to do business with—for clients and suppliers.
- Provide only superior services.
- Encourage communication and provide polite customer service.
- Stay creative, forward thinking, proactive, entrepreneurial, and adaptive.
- Promote trust and credibility through ethical and legal conduct.
- Promote diversity of experience, culture, ideas, and opinions.
- Help create a better community through our actions.
Drupal 5.18, the eighteenth maintenance and security release of the Drupal 5 series was released on May 13th, 2009. This release fixes a security vulnerability and several bugs. One of the bug fixes was contributed by New Signature’s very own Jason Senich. Jason’s bug fix (#305544) resolved the inconsistency between the theme_system_admin_by_module and theme_admin_page that caused the footer text to float up into the page for some themes when viewing the admin/by-module page.
Drupal is a powerful open source content management system that New Signature frequently uses as a basis for the innovative websites that we build. New Signature supports the Drupal content management system through our membership in the Drupal Association, and through the efforts of Jason Senich, and other New Signature engineers–who contribute improvements to Drupal’s core code and contributed modules. Jason Senich is a project leader and senior engineer at New Signature. He has been the lead developer on countless New Signature Drupal projects since joining the New Signature in July 2003.
