GCC Church IT Roundtable session 4

VOIP

• What are you buying when you buy a SIP Trunk
  • Voice dial tone over the data connection rather than a PRI

• Bandwidth.com
• Many are seeing cost savings in the $1k’s
• Make sure your PS/ALI (911) is compatible
• Do you need to keep copper for Fire, Elevator, etc…
  • In some areas this can be done wireless

• What about Hosted PBX
  • Bandwith.com can be trusted for this.
  • Response point is second possible solution

Gapps or Exchange or hosted exchange

• Hosted exchange -
  • http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange

Approachability - Friendly IT

• Users have to be able to approach IT
• How do you help your users ask questions when they should be asking question?
  • Use a Ticketing System they can ask for things they might not think to ask when chatting in conversation.
    • Zen Desk

• Ask for meeting times be proactive don’t wait
• Set appropriate expectations for the users when you will be able to respond.

Metrics

• Tracking ticketing time
• How much does a new staff member cost?
• Do leadership make Technology a priority?

GCC Church IT RoundTable Session 3

Admin or Not to Admin cont.

What happens when they have admin rights and things go bad

• SysInternals Process Explorer
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

• If you allow Admin access you "Must" have standardization and images of each "flavor" of workstation.
• What do users "need"?
• Does Software and Hardware get purchased Centrally?
• Some applications get un happy when they don’t have local permissions
  • SteelSonic.com
  • Encryped Run As ($6.00 per license) http://www.wingnutsoftware.com/

Spyware Removal

• Malwarebites.org

Application Deployment/Virtualization

• CloneZilla
• Ghost
• Fodproject.com
• Casper Suite - jamfsoftware.com
• Mac OSX Imaging
• PrinterShare.com
• Vmware VDI
• Ardence by Dell
  • http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/solutions/en/thinpc?c=us&l=en&cs=555

Passwords

• Ewallet
• SecretServer - Multi User
• How Frequently do the passwords change

What is the burden on IT of the "pitfalls" of Social Media

• Leadership has to decided assisted with by the direction of IT what the orgization’s going to "Use" social media for… then IT has to come along side with the vision/mission
• We have to digest social media for our leadership so they "get it"
• Find an advocate for IT on staff… find someone who can digest Technology on your behalf.

GCC Church IT RoundTable Session 2

Revisit SLA of DR with Executive Team

Computer Emergency Response Team Cert - http://www.cert.org/

StorageCraft - http://www.storagecraft.com/

IM

• Allow/Block?
• Content Filtering -
• Open DNS
• Dan’s Guardian
• Sonicwall Content Filtering
• Untangle
• IPCop
• Estro

PC and Mac Solutions for Mac remote clients

• Not Blocking IM - But Archiving it?

Why do IM?

• Step between email and a phone call
• Reduce Email Ping Pong

Why Not do IM

• File Transfer conduit

Colaboration Tools

• Live Mesh
• Groove
• Adobe Connect
• Skype
• FreeConfrencecall.com
• Callaflower.com
• Mobile Content Filtering
• Convenient Eyes - Accountability Software

Spam

• Postini - $1500 min
• Resellers are a little more $$ but they provide support direct from Google doesn’t
• Barracuda
• Sonicwall
• ExchangeDefender

Inbound and Outbound filtering

• Catching outbound emails containing credit card information

Data (PCI) Compliance - how are you managing data on laptops etc.

• Policy /Guidelines
• Enabling TPM
• Cornel Spider - Searches computer for security numbers http://www2.cit.cornell.edu/security/tools/
• If its important enough to keep from people seeing it… its important enough to have backed up centrally
• Make the Network Work and make the network Secure… those two are mutually Exclusive… there has to be balance.

Admin or not to Admin (locally)

• Why Local Admin - Super rapid growth couldn’t support locked down machines

Primo Customer Service

In the past I have been known to write about customer service that was lacking… But this time I have to share some customer service that just left me speechless….

Natalie and I decided to do our own lawn fertilizer and weed control this year…. and yes by “we” I really mean me.  I just couldn’t pony up the $200 for someone to walk my lawn… I already owned the sprayer and spreader so we made the decision to go back to our own lawn care.

I purchased Scotts Weed-Be-Gone and Scotts Turf Builder Plus Weed Control and applied them as directly six weeks apart but still had some weeds growing… annoying.

So I called the customer service number and got a delightful representative who was very willing to listen to my concerns…

I know some of you might find it hard to believe, but I hadn’t called with the intention to get anything free or replaced… I just wanted to make sure that I was applying the products correctly and to see how soon I could re-apply the products.

So while we chatted the customer service representative assured me that I had read the instructions and followed them correctly and then says, “I am processing your refund check for both products, where should I send the refund”… I was speechless…. I had no anticipation of a refund, but Scotts was willing to stand behind the product they would send me a check even without sending a proof of purchase, just because I had to call and the product hadn’t performed as expected!

WOW an A+ to Scotts for Customer Service!  There is no wondering if I’ll switch brands next time I shop for Lawn Care products!  Kudos for good Customer Service… the Art of Caring about customers isn’t dead!

Why didn’t i think of this

So this weekend I was watching some tastily programming on the food network and I saw a little dive in Minneapolis making burgers with Cheddar-Jack cheese… which is fine except they put the cheese inside the burger then cook it… The result a gooey cheesy burger… I had to try.

My first attempt turned out much better than I anticipated. So with this Idea being so simple but good I had to try it and take photos.

Prepping the Burgers stuffing the cheese

The Cheesy Burger on The Grill

The Cheese Oozing out of the Burger

Tastes Better than I expected!

ACS Pre-Convention Day (Roundtable & Checkpoint 201)

Today we had a great crowd at the ACS Church IT Roundtable.  As always I got really jazzed and fired up from the peer learning and community that are parts of all CITRT events.  There were a lot of new people to meet, and I also enjoyed getting to know some CITRTers I had talked with but never met…. Like Jeff Suever Great to meet you!

The conversation was great and I even got to shamelessly plug CITRT.org for those who haven’t’ heard of it… thanks Dean.

The afternoon consisted of the Checkpoint 201-Launching Checkpoint Successfully in your Church pre-convention workshop… This was a great group and we had a lot of fun sharing our experience and hearing how others are planning to launch Checkpoint for their ministries. 

As I noted in the workshop we are more than happy to share anything we have learned or produced during our Checkpoint launch that you might be able to use for your ministry.  Most of today’s content is now listed below but we’ll continue to add and update items as time goes on (Download Content Updated June 9th to include additional content).

If you have questions about launching Checkpoint or would like to share your story with us we would love to hear from you.

• Workshop Power Point (PDF)
• Registration form (PDF)
• Program Insert (PDF)
• Website FAQs (Web)
• Training Documents (PDF) (DOCX)
• Self Service Kiosk Instruction Pannel (PDF) (JPG)
• Self Service Kiosk Instruction Pannel - Draft 1 (PDF)
• Self Service Kiosk Signage (PDF)

Indy Motor Speedway

After a great morning session (see Session 1 and Session 2 for Notes for the details of the info presented in the Road Show Presentation) at the the Sonicwall Road show presentations we headed over to the Indy Motor Speedway for the lunch and afternoon festivities.

Sonicwall provided lunch in one of suites above the track near the start/finish line.  There was an awesome spread of food and great conversation.

After lunch we headed to the Garages and Pit Road during the Firestone Indy Lights Qualifying.  We had a great time checking out the cars of the Indy Cup drivers as well as the Indy Lights.

Here are some photos from the afternoon… go here for all the photos.

Sonicwall Roadshow Part 2

Dee Bhatia – CDP Regional Sales Manager

Slides of CDP “Suite
Local Backup
CDP to CDP
CDP to Local Archive
Bare Metal – Acronis Backup w/ Sonicwall Logo

Neil Jones
Email Security Specialist
njones@sonicwall.com
602-458-0728

Spam Math: 2005 30 billion per day 2009 140 billion messages per day
Does Spam Pay: Howard Carmack sends 10m emails per day earns $200k per year

Product Updates:
Backspatter Attacks were added Last fall
Apply Real-Time reputation to an email’s text, picture, URL, etc

“5 Minute updates is key, Updates once per hour is not sufficient [for spam filtering]”.

Leverage the 1million plus firewalls and offer customers basic Spam services as a add-on to the existing products.

Sonicwall Demo Site: LiveDemo.Sonicwall.com

Available Promotions
”Three and Free” buy three years of UTM and get the appliance free

Sonicwall Roadshow Part 1

Dolph Smith– Sonicwall SE

One of the largest threats we face is the content “we” create: Wikipedia, Facebook, etc.

Not every threat is web based.

Dave Perry – Director of Software Engineering

Ten Things your Firewall Should Do
What are your employees doing? Web Surfing, Twitter, Facebook, Downloading files, IM, Video, Games, Email

Facts at work:
25% of employees do peer to peer sharing
16% of men 8% of women admit viewing pornography at work
25% of the office internet traffic is non-business related

Non-Traditional Malware
Prediction – Malware disguised as “Benign social networking links” will be the top threat to data security in 2009 “HiJacks your need to be liked”

1. Manage Streaming video
2. Bandwidth management

3. Webmail Data Loss
4. Application use enforcement
5. Deny FTP upload
6. Keep P2p2 apps under control
7. Manage streaming music
8. Prioritize Application bandwidth
9. Block Confidential Docs
10. Block/log forbidden files

Product Updates
UTM Products

SonicOS 5.5 Update (Due out in Fall)

- SSO Improvements
- 4WAN links
- Active/Active UTM (UTM processing on HA host spare)

Content Filter “We know we have dropped the ball” we have 4 people working on that project and expect a more enterprise robust feature set by fall.

Late Night Tour

While in Indy Jeremie and I wanted to meet up with other Church IT RoundTable people and we were able to connect with David Szpunar.

We Had Dinner with David, Tom Templin, and Mark Moreno

After Dinner we had a VERY LATE night tour of Lakeview Christian Center with David. We started the tour at around 11:30 PM, but David gave an awesome tour, and we didn’t even stand in once place for more than 5 minutes!

Here are a few Shots from our Tour.
 
 
 
 

For more photos of our Tour of Lakeview Check out the Sonicwall Road Show Set here.