Google has announced plans to move users from its Backup and Sync file-syncing services to a new unified desktop app for Drive.

Onboarding for the Drive for Desktop app will start on 19 July, with Google recommending users make the switch by the end of September before they're locked out on 1 October.

The transition is just for Backup and Sync users, however, as business clients who are already using Drive File Stream - the enterprise name for Drive for Desktops - should already be set up.

The aim of moving to a unified desktop app is to create "a powerful and unified sync client", according to Google, with the best features from both consumer and enterprise services that should be more straightforward to use and easier for IT teams to manage.

In a blog post, Google suggests the new app will be pretty familiar to anyone who used its previous file-syncing services. Drive for Desktop will offer easy access to files and photos stored in the cloud, and will sync files in the background to keep them up to date.

Google also suggests the app can sync external storage devices like flash drives to Drive, mirror files between Drive and local files on a desktop computer, and let users choose whether they store individual photos and videos in Drive or Google Photos.

The launch of Drive for Desktop coincided with a few announcements from the tech giant, which included changes to services that helped many through the pandemic. In April 2020, for example, Google Meet was made available to all users with day-long group calls, but that has been switched to an hour as of 1 July. As such, free Gmail users will now have to make do with calls with three or more participants at a limit of 60 minutes.

Managed File Transfer is a big investment. Whether you’re buying for the first time or replacing an outdated solution, you don’t want to make an expensive mistake.

But with over forty vendors pushing their product, it can be difficult to identify what your business really needs. Research takes up time and resource and even then, are you confident you’ve covered everything?

The Managed File Transfer Buyer’s Guide will set you on the right track.

Download it now to access expertise and advice, including:

• An explanation of MFT and whether you have a current or future business need.
• A series of common business problems MFT solves, including automation, security and visibility.
• Which MFT features or modules address which requirement.
• Use cases explaining how different industries use MFT.
• Advice for the different stages of an MFT project.
• Access to more downloadable resources to help you through each stage.

Most IT professionals know that in business, file transfer protocols get things done. They are the processes that move information from one location to another, both internally sharing data within an organisation and passing information from business to business.

For growing enterprises, the daily transfer of files and documents between internal systems and external partners has become so prominent that it's now classified as a core business process. One that can be notoriously time-consuming and unreliable.

With different file transfer protocols available that yield benefits from operational efficiency to added security, the time has come to identify what process your business is utilising and consider whether a change would be beneficial. Managed File Transfer (MFT) is the most advanced of the currently available protocols, with high growth in the MFT industry predicted in the near future.

What is MFT?

MFT is a platform that helps organisations accomplish multiple data-related objectives through managing various file transfer workflows. High volumes of data are moved across time and space, a common need indeed in the data-driven business landscape present today.

Putting the 'manage' in MFT are the internalised add-ons to the file transfer toolkit, setting the protocol apart from competitors. When businesses select MFT software and a vendor that matches their requirements, data and data processes can be managed effectively, with authentication and integration with existing software.

Administration capabilities coupled with automation and security protocols are also typically offered as part of MFT, allowing transfers between systems and users to take place in a secure and controlled fashion. This breeds confidence in end-users that sensitive data is processed according to the rules.

Traditionally, MFT solutions are on-premise installations that focus on integrating with existing internal systems. However, cloud solutions are growing in popularity, providing control over data and workflows without the infrastructure management.

The competition

MFT is just one of three commonly used file transfer protocols, the other two being standard File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Secure File Transfer (SFT). Each protocol dictates how files are processed and sent, but unsurprisingly each has its own quirks. These nuances can be technical and difficult to interpret without specialist knowledge.

Created in the 1970s, FTP was and still is a fast and efficient method of moving data across a server channel, essential for the booming industries of web development and software. Yet for data-driven enterprises, especially with big data initiatives circling, FTP doesn't provide the volume-scalability, nor the security necessary to transfer sensitive data and ensure compliance with regulations.

SFT can be said to have emerged from FTP as a response to data-security concerns arising from stricter data-protection regulation and, of course, cyber attacks themselves. Such matters weren't overarching at the date of FTP's inception, resulting in generally unsecure and therefore vulnerable communication through its channels. SFT, on the other hand, encrypts the data it transfers over a Secure Shell data stream, essentially making it a more secure and advanced version of FTP, but without the centralised functionality unique to MFT.

Why choose MFT

MFT can also be said to have evolved from FTP, and represents the premium and arguably the most advanced software for transferring files, both in terms of its usability and security.

It's best to think of MFT as a one-pane, centralised transfer system with limbs attending to visibility, security, integrations, and more. Previously, to acquire such benefits when implementing an FTP protocol, clunky add-ons would have to be deployed, making for siloed applications that struggle to communicate.

Ingeniously, this added functionality doesn't correlate with negative user experience. Often, MFT interfaces are designed for transparency and visibility, actually making it an easier tool to navigate than its competitors.

A higher level of security is granted compared to FTP, with additional encryption measures protecting data in transit, helping to prevent data snooping, tampering and leakage. It also has a focus on compliance, meaning businesses don't have to live in fear of GDPR fines.

The major drawback however, and something that typically accompanies greater functionality, is that it's by far the most complex protocol to initially deploy although cloud solutions are gradually making this easier.

At ground-level, MFT provides tangible business benefits, such as faster file transfers and cost and risk reduction, and in turn is opening the door to new mobile, cloud and big data initiatives.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, nothing is certain except death, taxes and lost data. There's only so much that technology can do about death and taxes, but a solid RAID configuration can definitely help with the latter. RAID technology helps protect hard drives - whether they're in a server, desktop NAS drive or data centre storage array - from data loss through mechanical failure or corruption.

RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks" or "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks". It was principally designed with fault tolerance or failover protection in mind, and involves mirroring the data in a storage array across multiple disks, ensuring that if one drive fails, the contents of the array are not lost. Redundancy is important as hard drive failure can and does happen, so RAID acts as a failsafe against hardware breakdown.

In addition, multiple drives can also be combined into a single pool to create a cheap, high-capacity storage resource. This also allows the system to write to multiple disks at once, thereby improving performance.

There are many different levels of RAID, the most common being RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5. Other more niche levels include RAID 6, 10 and 5+1. In addition to this, there is JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), virtual disk RAID, and other vendor-specific RAID implementations.

Benefits of using RAID

There are a number of advantages to using RAID over conventional hard drive configurations.

Large storage: RAID volumes can support much larger capacities than a single drive. If you need more storage, you can simply add more drives.

Fault tolerance: For most RAID levels, some degree of redundancy and fault tolerance is built into the array, helping to prevent data loss.

Continuous running: When hard drives fail on a computer, the operating system stops. In a RAID array, when hard drives fail, the systems continues to operate normally while the failed disk is replaced - assuming the system supports hot-swapping drives.

Parity: Many RAID levels will include 'parity' protections which, in the event of a drive failure, use data from the other drives in an array to rebuild the replacement drive.

Speed: RAID can run much faster than a single drive, as the array can write to and read from multiple disks at the same time, increasing transmission rates.

RAID levels explained

RAID 0 (Disk striping)

This type of RAID divides data across any number of disks enabling higher data throughput. Files are read from multiple disks, increasing speed and capacity. This is known as striping and has the benefit of increased performance.

However, it doesn't have redundancy and fault tolerance as data is not duplicated. Disks appear as a single partition. If one of them fails, the array is broken, and data is lost. RAID 0 is used where speed is more important than data loss (such as live streaming, video on demand and IPTV).

RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring)

This RAID level reads and writes the same data to two drives. This is known as data mirroring and provides redundancy. If a disk fails, the system can still access data from the other disk or disks. Once a faulty disk is replaced, data is copied from one of the remaining disks to the new disk, rebuilding the array. This is an easy way to create failover storage.

The downside is that it lowers the usable capacity by half, increasing the cost per GB. It is used where data redundancy and availability are critical.

RAID 5 (Striping with parity)

This type of RAID stripes data blocks across multiple disks as RAID 0 does, but it also stores parity information (this is a checksum to determine if the data on the disk has any errors and can help in recovering data in the event of disk failure). RAID 5 has both speed (as data is accessible from multiple disks) and redundancy as parity information is stored across disks. If a disk fails, data can be recreated from data on other disk and the parity blocks. Around a third of the disk capacity is used in storing parity data.

The drawback of this is it has lower performance, as servers need to carry out many more write operations for parity. It is ideal for file storage and application servers.

RAID 6 (Striping with double parity)

This is not unlike RAID 5, however, it stores two parity blocks instead of one. That means that two drives can fail without destroying the array. This enables it to have higher redundancy and better read performance.

However, if a server is carrying out lots of write operations, performance decreases because of the extra parity overhead. This too is ideal for large file and application servers.

RAID 10 (Striping + Mirroring)

This is a combination of RAID 0's striping and RAID 1's mirroring. This means you have redundancy (RAID 1) and better performance (RAID 0).

The drawbacks of this is that usable capacity is lower and cost is higher. There is also limited scalability compared to other RAID levels. This arrangement is heavily used in database servers carrying out a lot of write operations.

Implementing RAID

There are two ways of implementing RAID; Software RAID and hardware RAID.

Hardware RAID uses a dedicated hardware controller to which the disks are linked. An on-board processor manages RAID that offloads the work from the host processor, making it faster to read and write data. Hardware controllers offer an extra element of failsafe as its BBU (Battery Backup Unit) protects your data in case of an unanticipated loss of power in the server. Replacing failed disk is easy; you just pull it out and insert a new one.

The disadvantage of hardware RAID is the need to buy hardware, which makes it more expensive than software RAID. If the controller fails, you need a compatible one to replace it to get the system back up and working.

Software RAID is done within an operating system and is fairly easy to implement. There is no need for extra hardware and firmware; this makes it more cost effective. Arrays can also be reconfigured as they are not restricted by the hardware RAID controller.

The disadvantage of software RAID is that it is slower than hardware RAID. It uses processing power, and in turn, impacts read and write speeds of a RAID configuration, along with other operations on the server. Replacing disks is a more complicated task too, as the system has to stop using the disk before it is replaced.

If your computer is ​feeling slow, the cause might not be your CPU or memory – it could just as easily be your storage.

A slow hard disk can have a huge impact on the responsiveness of your PC, particularly when it comes to starting up Windows, opening apps and working with large datasets. Upgrading to a high-speed SSD can make a sluggish desktop fly.

When choosing your drive, however, raw speed isn't the only factor you should take into account. Reliability is a hugely important issue, especially for business use. SSDs have a finite lifespan, and they’re only guaranteed to sustain a certain number of write and erase cycles. Enterprise drives are typically designed to withstand much more intensive use than consumer models, and it’s crucial to make sure the drives in your machines are up to your workloads.

Remember, though: even if your chosen SSD is designed for heavy usage, unexpected hardware failures do happen, and your warranty won’t bring back any data that gets lost. It remains absolutely essential to keep regular backups.

Another factor to consider when picking an SSD is security. Some drives feature built-in encryption, which provides a welcome layer of protection for those working on sensitive or confidential information.

Finally, there’s the question of price. Larger capacities naturally cost more, but you don’t necessarily need to buy a huge drive: it may make sense to choose a modestly-sized SSD for your operating system and applications, and partner it with a much cheaper mechanical disk for data that doesn’t need high-speed access.

Whether you're building a custom system from scratch or upgrading an existing machine, there are plenty of SSD options to choose from: here’s a selection of our favourites.

WD Black SN850

Upgrading or building a PC? Then the WD Black SN850 makes a superb system drive. It takes full advantage of the huge bandwidth provided by the PCI Express Gen4 bus to offer performance most rival SSDs can’t match. It also boasts multi-thread performance and, despite all its positive aspects, is fairly affordable too. It’ll set you back around £140 but be aware its phenomenal performance is enabled by the PCI Express Gen4 interface. If you install it in an older PC, it will work but won’t be as fast.

Price when reviewed: £140 exc VAT

Read our full WD Black SN850 review here

Samsung 870 QVO

The Samsung 870 QVO is almost a carbon copy of the 870 Evo, as it’s effectively the same drive but with four-bit QLC chips in place of the more mainstream TLC tech. It has the additional memory without sacrificing speed and is one of the speediest SATA drives we’ve seen. It’s also cheaper than its TLC counterpart, at £129 for 2TB.

Unfortunately, due to the limited write endurance of the 870 QVO means it won’t be the best for intensive, mission-critical roles. However, if you want to give a new lease of life to a laptop or lightweight PC, it can provide the space you need at an unbeatable price.

Price when reviewed: £129 exc VAT

Read our full Samsung 870 QVO review here

Samsung 980 Pro

The Samsung 980 Pro delivers super-fast file transfers once plugged into a PC or laptop with a PCI Express Gen3 motherboard. On systems with the Gen4 bus, the drive can go even faster, reaching an incredible 5,468MB/sec. With speeds like this, the high-end drive doesn’t come cheap. The entry-level 250GB model costs around £59 exc VAT, with 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB variants progressively increasing in price to a steep £288 exc VAT. If you need top performance and hardware encryption, then this component delivers fully on both.

Price when reviewed: £154 exc VAT

Read our full Samsung 980 Pro review here

Samsung 870 EVO

The Samsung 870 Evo doesn’t really have anything distinctive about it but equally it doesn’t get anything wrong either. With sequential read and write rates of 528MB/sec and 499MB/sec respectively, it’s as fast as any other SATA drive you can buy. Additionally, in the PCMark 10 storage benchmarks it achieved fairly good scores, racking up 1,178 in the System Disk test and 1,473 in the Data Disk stakes. By offering a five-year warranty and a promised write endurance of 600TBW for the 1TB model, it ticks all the right boxes. If you need to upgrade an old PC or laptop then this drive will get the job done.

Price when reviewed: £56 exc VAT

Read our full Samsung 870 EVO review here

Crucial P5 Plus 1TB

If you’re looking for a fast device for writing that outperforms the PC Mark 10 storage benchmarks, then look no further. The Crucial P5 Plus is a solid PCIe NVMe drive and a great value option that will supercharge your storage performance. It is a notable speed upgrade over PCI Express 3.0 P5 with great value relative to its competition, priced at £131 excluding VAT.

Price when reviewed: £131 exc VAT

Read our full Crucial Plus 1TB review here

WD Blue SN550

If you're building a relatively simple PC or wanting to upgrade from your SATA storage on the cheap, this might be the drive for you. This is a budget SSD that is probably going to mainly face relatively simple tasks. It has fast maximum speeds, only cost £83 when we reviewed it and is one of our recommended drives. It has a few advantages over the SN500 too like faster overall.

Price when reviewed: £83 exc VAT

Read our full WD Blue SN550 review here

Seagate IronWolf 510

If you regularly access large amounts of data, the Seagate Ironwolf 510 will have the performance and life expectancy you'll need, whether your handling video, images or big data. It is a high capacity device with extended durability and with is commensurate £360 price, it may be overkill for file server caching in your average office environment.

Price when reviewed: £360 exc VAT

Read our full Seagate IronWolf 510 review here

The move from 40GbE to 100GbE in the data centre is gathering momentum and going mainstream, with port shipments expected to triple over the next year. Dell EMC is a main player in this market and in this exclusive review, we look at its new Z9264F-ON core switch which aims to offer enterprises, data centres and Tier1/2 cloud service providers a high-density 100GbE solution with a low cost per port.

Powered by Broadcom's StrataXGS Tomahawk II ASIC, the Z9264F-ON squeezes an impressive 64 100GbE QSFP28 ports into its low-profile 2U chassis. With a backplane capacity of 12.8Tb/sec, it delivers a doubling in performance and port density over Dell EMC's Z9100-ON, which was launched in 2016.

As the Z9264F-ON is a multi-rate switch, the ports can be used at their maximum speed and Dell EMC also offers a big choice of break-out cables. These allow the switch to support up to 128 10/25/50GbE links and there's also a range of QSFP+ transceivers available for converting selected ports to 40GbE speeds.

Dell EMC Networking Z9264F-ON review: Open networking

The 'ON' in its model name means this switch is a fully paid-up member of Dell EMC's open networking club. Along with Dell EMC's OS10 software, the switch can run a range of other OSes including Cumulus Linux and Big Switch Networks with support for Pluribus Networks coming soon.

Cumulus Linux is built from the ground up as a data centre-grade networking OS and can run virtually any Linux application you want. For zero-touch provisioning, Cumulus can work with the Ansible automation tool and its scripts and templates, or many other tools including Puppet and Chef.

Alternatively, you can specify the switch with the Big Switch Networks Big Cloud Fabric. This turns the Z9264F-ON into a true software-defined network (SDN) physical layer switch managed by a separate SDN controller.

Dell EMC Networking Z9264F-ON review: OS10 Enterprise Edition

Dell EMC's own OS10 Enterprise Edition (OS10 EE) software provides all the traditional switching and routing capabilities and there are no hidden costs. It includes advanced L3 features such as BGP routing and OSPF as standard and not as expensive optional extras.

OS 10 uses traditional CLI access and so far Dell EMC has resisted the temptation to implement a web GUI. As OS10 is a standard, unmodified Linux kernel, it also allows you to run certified automation tools such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible and SaltStack.

The switch supports up to 128 link aggregation groups (LAGs) each comprising up to 16 ports for high-performance switch-to-switch links. Dell EMC's VLTs (virtual link trunks) go further as they allow two switches to be placed in a high availability domain.

In a VLT domain, both switches are active, they share the same virtual MAC address and if one goes down, the other assumes all primary functions and carries on regardless with no loss of service. The mVLT (multi-VLT) feature also allows LAGs to be used to create multiple redundant connections between logical VLT domains.

Dell EMC Networking Z9264F-ON review: Optic pricing

The Z9264F-ON undoubtedly delivers a big reduction in the cost per 100GbE port but it's a shame Dell EMC can't do the same with its 100GbE optics. The SR4 850nm optic and its 100-metre reach has a list price of 3,313, while the full LR4 optic increases the reach to 10kms but costs 15,490.

Looking back at our Z9100-ON review, we can see that the same SR4 and LR4 optics three years ago had list prices of just over 2,000 and 14,609 so they've actually increased in cost. True, you don't have to use Dell EMC's own optics - but it would seem sensible if the company had made them more competitively priced.

For direct 100GbE server-to-switch connections over short distances, it's more cost-effective to use QSFP28 DAC (direct attach copper) cables. A 5-metre DAC cable costs about 572, won't require expensive optics at each end and uses a lot less power as well.

Dell EMC Networking Z9264F-ON review: 100GbE speed

For performance testing, we used two Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 1U rack servers equipped with dual Xeon Scalable Gold 6150 CPUs, plus 256GB of DDR4. Both systems were running Windows Server 2016 and equipped with QLogic FastLinQ QL45611H 100GbE HBAs cabled directly to the Z9264F-ON test switch over 100GbE links.

To generate the high throughput required to stress the 100GbE ports, we used the jPerf Windows app on both servers with one side configured as a server and the other as a client. We configured jPerf to test network throughput from the client to the server using 800 parallel streams back to the jPerf server.

After letting it settle for 15 minutes, we could see it recording a very impressive network throughput of up to 89Gbits/sec. From the switch's OS10 CLI console, we pulled up interface statistics for both ports the servers were attached to. Whilst running jPerf, we could see the CLI registering a link utilization of around 89% for each 100GbE interface thus confirming our jPerf results.

Dell EMC Networking Z9264F-ON review: Verdict

With exponential growth forecast in the data centre switching and routing market, the Z9264F-ON puts Dell EMC in a prime position. It delivers a wealth of 100GbE ports in a compact 2U form-factor allowing businesses to break away from expensive and often underutilized chassis-based solutions.

As one of the first blue-chip vendors to introduce open networking switches, it's also uniquely positioned to offer more software choices than the competition and release businesses from vendor lock-in. Dell EMC also delivers on its promise to reduce per 100GbE port costs. When the 32-port Z9100-ON was released, its list price was a shade under 31,000, whereas the starting price for the 64-port Z9264F-ON is only around four grand more.

Verdict

The Z9264F-ON is perfect for fast-growing data centres as it offers a high 100GbE port density and low per-port costs while support for open networking delivers more software choices than the competition

Chassis: 2U rack

Ports: 64 x 100GbE QSFP28, 2 x 10GbE SFP+

Backplane: 12.8Tbps full duplex

Forwarding capacity: 2,900 Mpps

Packet buffer: 42MB

CPU memory: 16GB

Power: 2 x 1600W hot-plug PSUs

Cooling: 4 x fan standard or reverse flow modules

Software: OS10.4.2 preinstalled

With the ability to provide data access, support media processing workloads and more, cloud-based file services offer flexibility and scalability for organisations. But when it comes to picking which service to use, there are many factors to contemplate and questions to answer.

This whitepaper provides an overview of major cloud file sharing services, including benefits, considerations, challenges and recommendations.

Traditionally, organisations seeking to centralise their data storage were forced to plough money into running and maintaining an on-site file server. However, times have changed: today, it is possible to simplify your data management by investing in a cloud storage solution, which not only ends up being much more cost-effective, but also makes day-to-day operations easier.

For instance, if you ever tried sending your customer or team member an email filled with several clunky attachments, you know that it can be a real headache. Especially from the client’s perspective, it can create the impression that your business is technologically dated. This is because, these days, it’s much easier – and safer – to use download links which, with the help of the internet, bring in the data from the cloud straight to the addressee’s device, making data transfers fast and simple.

However, this is just one example of what the cloud has to offer. In actuality, cloud storage offers way more than what the term suggests – nowadays, cloud providers tend to go the extra mile and are no longer just a handy data depot. From cyber security services to hardware offerings, cloud providers are capable of supplying a range of useful features which will transform the way you do business, allowing you to fully focus on your customers’ needs.

The only potential downside is the variety of available options, which can be quite overwhelming, especially if you’re on the search for specific sharing and collaboration features. This is why, in order to make sense of it all, we've put together a quick guide on what to look out for in order to make the right buying decision.

Choosing a cloud supplier: What storage plan do I need?

You will be pleased to know that the vast majority of cloud providers offer customers a wide variety of different storage plans, making it easier to select a plan that best meets your needs and budget demands. Cloud providers tend to offer a fairly basic free tier, which are usually constrained by limitations when it comes to capacity or restrictions on how big the files you upload can be. Choosing one of these options will help save you money, but you could find yourself regretting it once you discover that essential files aren’t able to be synced right when you’re working on a key piece of work.

1&1 HiDrive provides a public cloud folder for team members to share

Selecting an option you have to pay for will give your data more flexibility, and give you more oversight through an administration console. It's through these consoles that you can choose how to implement file-level access controls and decide which users are able to access your cloud storage. Additionally, keep an eye out for tiered administration features that let you give employees some administrative powers. This means they’ll be able to manage features like adding new users, making password changes, or carrying out access requests.

As you can probably guess by now, the paid service tends to offer a great number of features, so we strongly recommend you to choose this option, with prices beginning at a few pounds per month. However, you might think about choosing an advanced plan that comes with unlimited cloud storage for all your users, especially if your organisation requires working with huge amounts of data. These services tend to be fairly affordable, which may sound surprising.

Choosing a cloud supplier: How do I control the costs?

Although we’ve underlined how important it is to look for low cost cloud storage, it’s still a good idea to take into consideration your needs and make sure you don’t spend money on unnecessary gigabytes.

It’s also worth considering which users will have access to the service too. The cost of cloud storage is calculated on how many people need to access it, and not all members of your business need to be able to do this. The good news is that through a dynamic upgrade, many plans can be altered in the future if you need to add more users. However, downgrading isn’t necessarily as simple, so it’s always worth reading over the terms for the service intricately prior to committing fully to it.

Some good advice is if you opt to go with a plan that restricts how many users can access your cloud storage, it’s probably wise to create a policy that informs workers what they are allowed to save there so your cloud storage doesn’t become cluttered with unnecessary information. However, if this is deemed to be tricky to accomplish, then maybe select a cloud storage provider who can implement account usage controls, including storage quotas.

It’s worth being aware of, however, that we’ve witnessed starter business plans use slightly misleading advertising. They’ve suggested that they offer a specific amount of storage for each user when the figure they are quoting is actually the full amount of storage you can expect to get for the whole organisation. Be aware, then, that if the plan doesn’t mention there’s a storage allowance per user, it probably means there's a specific amount of storage for the whole company.

You may also be able to save money by making a longer commitment. All providers will accept payment on a monthly basis, but there are substantial discounts on offer if you sign up for a yearly contract.

Choosing a cloud supplier: File syncing

Sync agents keep your files up to date, and some can apply bandwidth limits

Real-time file syncing makes cloud storage fantastically convenient and getting set up is easy. In most cases, the administration console can be used to send an email invitation to users, containing a link they can click to download a synchronisation agent and join the collaboration party.

The Box Drive agent provides easy access to all your files in the cloud

Note, though, that the sign-up process requires the user to provide a password for their cloud account. All the usual caveats apply here: the password should be secure and not easily guessed. Good providers offer admin controls that allow you to set policies that ensure passwords adhere to a specific format and strength.

Once the agent is installed, and the user is logged in, the latest files will start automatically downloading to each user's computer. If you're working with lots of large documents, look for an agent that lets users decide what should sync automatically and what should live in the cloud. Be warned, though, this can leave staff stymied if they lose internet access for any reason. In the past, we were one of many UK businesses that were hit by a Virgin Media service outage and were unable to access our cloud files for over four hours.

The Box admin portal gives an overview of all file-sharing activities

Assuming all is working well, cloud services also provide personal web portals, so each user can view their data, upload or download files, and share folders with team members. File versioning is a very worthwhile feature, allowing deleted files to be recovered or reverted to an earlier version.

Tresorit provides a rich desktop app with easy access to documents

One last valuable feature is the ability to send large files to other users or external clients simply by creating a web link in the portal and emailing it to them. For increased security, look for a service that allows you to password protect links, and apply download limits and expiry dates.

Some providers also enable external clients to send files to your cloud repository by invitation, without needing their own credentials.

Choosing a cloud supplier: What are the benefits?

Business cloud storage services bring a wealth of benefits. They can save you money and increase productivity, and many offer integration with other apps and cloud services such as Office 365.

It's worth noting that mobile support, although generally good with apps for Android and iOS, can vary considerably in terms of capabilities, so it's worth checking each provider to see which have the features you need.

This article was first published on 18/06/21, and has since been updated a number of times

More than 1.5 billion sensitive corporate and consumer files, including payroll details and intellectual property data, are publicly exposed, according to cybersecurity company Digital Shadows.

Researchers at the firm detected files amounting to 12,000 terabytes of data hosted across Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 buckets, rsync sites, server message block (SMB) and file transfer protocol (FTP) servers, Misconfigured Websites (WebIndex), and web-connected NAS drives as publicly accessible over the first three months of 2018, detailing their findings in a report titled Too Much Information.

For scale, the volume of data is roughly 4,000 times the size of 2016's Panama Papers leak.

The files are mostly stored in storage drives or buckets that are unencrypted and open to the public, meaning anyone with the correct URL address could access these documents, despite many containing people's personal information, something the EU's GDPR data protection legislation will be able to punish with huge potential fines when the rules come into force next month.

Digital Shadows CISO Rick Holland said: "The volume of this sensitive data exposure should be a major cause for concern for any security and privacy conscious organisation. In addition, with GDPR fast-approaching, there are clear regulatory implications for any organisation with EU citizen data."

Following numerous high profile breaches from companies mistakenly storing private information in public S3 buckets, AWS introduced the option to enable default encryption for its cloud storage last November. But as recently as February, FedEx locked down an unsecure S3 server following the exposure of data belonging to more than 119,000 citizens from around the world. And Digital Shadows found S3 buckets still accounted for 6.5% of the exposed data it discovered this year.

But at 33%, most of the exposed files were found on unencrypted SMB servers; followed by those stored on file-sync rsync sites (28%) and transferred using FTP servers (26%). Payroll (707,960) and tax return (64,048) files were the most commonly exposed employee data.

Moreover, Digital Shadows found a significant portion of intellectual property data at risk, with the cybersecurity company discovering, for example, a patent summary for renewable energy in a document marked "strictly confidential".

On another instance a document containing proprietary source code submitted as part of a copyright application was found; including code outlining the design and workflow of a site providing software Electronic Medical Records (EMR), as well as details of the application.

Confidential information on members of the public also appeared, with 14,687 files listing people's contact information and 4,548 documents identifying healthcare patients, as well as files including transactional information, and some credit card data exposed.

"While we often hyper-focus on responding to adversaries conducting intrusions into our environments and silently exfiltrating our data, we aren't focusing on our external digital footprints and the data that is already publicly available via misconfigured servers," Holland said.

US firms had the highest number of leaked files, accounting for more than 239 million (16.3%), while the European Union as a whole made up more than 537 million files (36.5%). More than 64 million files were found to be exposed in the UK, while Germany and France together amassed more than 238 million exposed files.

Digital Shadows urged organisations to increase user training and awareness to combat the issue in the long term, but the report also mentioned tips to ensure organisations mitigate their risk to inadvertent exposure.

For users of FTP and SMB servers and rsync sites, Digital Shadows recommended the use of a password, and disabling guest or anonymous access, while firewalling the port off from the internet, and whitelisting the IPs permitted to access the resource.

Although S3 buckets can be encrypted by default, Digital Shadows recommends AWS users understand how to do so, while Misconfigured Websites (WebIndex) users are advised to disable directory listings unless required, and NAS drive users can add a password and disable guest or anonymous access, as well as opt for NAS devices that are secured by default.

Picture credit: Bigstock

Western Digital has urged customers to update the firmware on their NAS appliances, after a security researcher discovered a number of security issues including a hard-coded backdoor that allows anyone to gain access to the devices.

GulfTech researcher James Bercegay discovered the vulnerability, which allows attackers to log into an affected NAS device using a pre-set username and password that cannot be changed or modified.

The affected models are: MyCloud, MyCloudMirror, My Cloud Gen 2, My Cloud PR2100, My Cloud PR4100, My Cloud EX2 Ultra, My Cloud EX2, My Cloud EX4, My Cloud EX2100, My Cloud EX4100, My Cloud DL2100 and My Cloud DL4100.

Bercegay also discovered several other vulnerabilities, including command injection, cross-site request forgery and unrestricted file upload flaws. Interestingly, he noted that the backdoor and file upload issued perfectly matched flaws found in the D-Link DNS-320L ShareCenter, a rival NAS device, making it possible that Western Digital licensed the (flawed) code from D-Link in order to build its NAS appliance.

Western Digital told IT Pro that Bercegay had already notified it of the flaws, and that the issue was addressed in the v2.30.172 firmware update. A spokesperson urged customers to update to the latest version of the firmware in order to avoid being affected.

"As a reminder, we urge customers to ensure the firmware on their products is always up to date; enabling automatic updates is recommended. We also urge you to implement sound data protection practices such as regular data backups and password protection, including to secure your router when you use a personal cloud or network-attached storage device," they said.

"Western Digital works continuously to improve the capability and security of our products, including with the security research community to address issues they may uncover. We encourage responsible disclosure by customers and researchers to ensure our customers are protected while we address valid vulnerabilities."

Flash storage vendor Fusion-io has acquired UK-based open source software vendor ID7.

ID7 specialises in the creation of software-defined storage systems and has previously worked with Fusion-io to develop the ION Data Accelerator software that allows servers to be transformed into shared storage appliances.

The company was founded in 2006 and is reportedly the primary developer of the SCST storage subsystem that is used to carry out deduplication and automatic backups, for example, on Linux-based servers and appliances.

David Flynn, CEO and chairman of Fusion-io, said software-defined storage platforms are an essential part of modern datacentre infrastructures.

"ID7 has provided valuable contributions to the industry, making us excited to welcome them to our ION Data Accelerator team as we continue to grow our business with the expertise of many of the world's most innovative engineers," said Flynn.

Mark Klarzynski, founder and chief technology offers of ID7, added: "We're excited to join the Fusion-io team of world class engineers and developers to work together on open, software defined solutions to today's most challenging data demands."

The worldwide storage software market grew by less than one per cent, according to a new IDC report.

The analyst company said that worldwide revenues increased by only 0.9 per cent over the past year. The storage software market closed the second quarter 2012 higher than compared to the same quarter last year, but only just.

EMC, IBM, and Symantec remained the top ranking storage software suppliers with 26.4 per cent, 14.7 per cent, and 14.6 per cent market shares, respectively. CommVault and EMC showed the largest organic growth during the quarter with 21.5 per cent and 7.4 per cent year over year increases.

The report found that data protection and recovery and archiving software markets were once again the two fastest growing segments with 2.4 per cent and 2.2 per cent year over year growth rates, respectively, or $1.16 billion and $404 million in total revenues.

Large enterprises contributed to the arrest in the market. Companies with more than 1,000 employees made up the biggest component of the market with $1.5 billion (926 million) in storage software investments during the quarter, but this represented a fall of one per cent compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Storage software investments made by small and medium companies countered this fall, managing to grow 5.2 per cent year over year to $574 million (354 million). Spending on storage software by governments and education also fell 1.5 per cent to $472 million (291 million).

Eric Sheppard, research director, Storage Software at IDC said the results of the second quarter were "mixed when viewed by supplier or functional market."

"Indeed, five of the top eight suppliers experienced revenue growth, but this was offset by declines within a few of the market's larger suppliers," he said.

"Most functional markets showed increased investments, but the increases were far smaller than the market had been experiencing over the past two years."

Sheppard added that these generally lower results could be partially attributed to suppressed economic growth in Europe, reduced government and education investments as well as "transitions specific to a few large suppliers."

When a PC gets too old to keep up the demands of modern application, many see very little use in keeping the computer. But what it is still good for is for use as a server a place to store data in files and databases.

Rather than taking it to a recycling site where more energy will be used to extract components and metals from the device, it can be re-purposed as a store for your other PCs backups or as a file server that you or your could access on the move.

By turning your old, perfectly serviceable PC into a NAS device you can easily save hundreds of pounds on installing software such as FreeNAS instead of buy a new box.

Intel has released a number of unremarkable chassis and motherboards to support its server processors, but the launch of the Xeon E5 CPUs sees a radical shift in direction.

The chip-maker is now going head-to-head with manufacturers such as Supermicro by announcing a huge range of server platforms to house the latest Xeon processors.

We take a look at the Broadberry Data Systems CyberServe XE5-R2216, which showcases Intel's Server System R2000GZ. Codenamed Bighorn Peak', this 2U rack server chassis is one of Intel's premium platforms and comes equipped with its Grizzly Pass' S2600GZ motherboard.

The 8-bay model comes with an optical drive and control panel on the front.

Xeon power under the hood

Broadberry has kitted the system out with a tasty pair of 2.6GHz Xeon E5-2670 processors. These use the new 32nm Sandy Bridge-EP' (efficient performance) architecture which sees the number of inter-socket QPI links doubled and speeds pushed up to 8.0GT/sec.

These 8-core models have a generous 20MB of L3 cache and support the new Turbo Boost 2.0 feature which allows cores to be sped up briefly beyond their TDP rating. During idle periods, the system accumulates a thermal budget and in times of increased activity, uses it to boost core performance for up to 25 seconds.

The E5-2600 Xeons have four memory channels per socket and the XE5-R2216 has the full 24 DIMM slots onboard. In dual CPU systems you can boost memory up to 768GB using RDIMMs or the new LR-DIMM (load reduced) modules. The latter use a buffer chip instead of the register so more memory can be put on each channel and it can run faster.

This particular system shows Intel is taking server storage very seriously as it has an impressive range of expansion options that rival Dell's slinky new PowerEdge R720. The system on review was supplied with 16 hot-swap SFF drive bays but you can opt for 8-bay or 24-bay versions.

The 24-bay model has a slightly different chassis design as you lose the optical drive and control panel at the front. The power and ID buttons have also been moved over to the right-hand edge. Two other models are available that support 8 or 12 hot-swap LFF drives.

The 24-bay version has a redesigned front panel to handle the extra drives.

The motherboard has pair of 4-port mini-SAS connectors, which can handle the latest 6Gbps hard disks. To accommodate the extra drives in the high capacity chassis there's a small SAS expander board mounted behind the drive bays.

Design and expansion

There are some design limitations though, as drives connected to the expander board cannot currently function as boot devices. Consequently, you'll need to link one of the motherboard's mini-SAS ports directly to the hard disk backplane.

Alternatively, you can mount a couple of SATA SSDs on the special cut-outs in the air shroud over the processors. Separate power connectors are provided and SSDs can be linked to the two on-board SATA ports.

The motherboard employs a C600-A Patsburg chipset and in its default configuration supports SATA drives plus stripes and mirrors and only enables the first mini-SAS connector. To enable the second connector along with SAS 2 and RAID-5 support, you'll need Intel's RAID C600 Upgrade Key which effectively turns the chipset into a Patsburg C600-T version.

The internal layout is tidy and provides plenty of room for expansion.

More RAID options are available as a dedicated socket supports Intel's optional mezzanine cards. Five modules also offer a range of hardware managed array types plus SATA III or SAS 2 support.

There's plenty of room to expand as you have two riser cards at the back and a choice of up to three PCI-e Gen3 slots per riser. Bear in mind that the new Sandy Bridge-EP design has the IOH (I/O Hub) moved on-chip so you can only use both riser cards if two CPUs are installed.

Network connections are abound as the motherboard has four embedded Gigabit ports and a separate I/O connector at the back can be used to add even more. Options include quad-port Gigabit, dual 10GbE SFP or 10GBaseT, dual-port QDR Infiniband and the Cave Creek' module which adds Intel's Quick Assist hardware acceleration and data encryption technologies.

Comprehensive remote management

Remote server management via a web browser comes as standard with Intel's RMM4 module. This snaps into a small socket next to the I/O module slot and provides a dedicated network port at the rear.

It uses the same KVM chip as Supermicro's servers and provides a tidy web interface displaying sensor readouts for fan speeds, temperatures and voltages. Each value has low and high thresholds which can be tied in with email and SNMP alerts.

You can keep a close eye on critical components and link detected problems to emails and SNMP alerts.

The server came with a single 750W hot-plug power supply. For an extra 234, you can add a second for redundancy. Intel also steps into line with Dell and HP as it now offers a choice of supplies with 460W, 750W AC and 750W DC models on the menu.

The E5-2670 CPUs have a TDP of 115W and we found the server to be easy on the juice in our power tests. With Windows Server 2008 R2 in idle, we measured a draw of 104W which peaked at only 250W with all 32 logical cores under heavy pressure from the SiSoft Sandra benchmarking app.

The CyberServe XE5-R1304 isn't as well built or feature rich as Dell's PowerEdge R720 but it is a lot cheaper. Businesses looking for a low-cost 2U storage server with the latest Xeon E5 processors and a high memory capacity will find this fits the bill nicely.

Verdict

The CyberServe XE5-R2216 delivers supports Intel’s latest Xeon E5 processors and impresses when it comes to storage, memory and expansion. It won’t be beating Dell’s new PowerEdge R720 for quality, features and design but this is reflected in its much lower price tag.

Chassis: Intel R2000GZ 2U rack

Motherboard: Intel S2600GZ

CPU: 2 x 2.6GHz Xeon E5-2670

Memory: 48GB DDR3 expandable to 768GB (using RDIMM or LR-DIMM)

Storage: 1 x 900GB Seagate SAS 2 SFF 10K hot-swap hard disk

RAID: Intel C600-A (upgradeable to C600-T)

Array support: RAID0, 1

Expansion: 6 x PCI-e Gen3 slots (with dual CPUs)

Network: 4 x Gigabit

Power: 750W hot-plug supply (max 2)

Management: Intel RMM4 with 10/100 port

Warranty: 3yrs on site NBD

Options: Redundant 750W PSU, £234

Egnyte has announced a new service, Egnyte HybridCloud for Enterprise, allowing larger organisations to run consumer-like cloud storage on hybrid cloud environments.

The service is focused on giving firms a level of scalabities Egnyte claims is not found in consumer-focused products. It has created its Egnyte Object Store, an enterprise-class architecture allowing organisations to scale up to 10 million files and upwards of 10,000 concurrent users to meet this need.

It said that users can file uploads up to 1TB using Egnyte's Unified FTP environment, giving both IT and business users a way to collaborate with others.

It said it had an ecosystem of business partners, such as NetApp, Netgear and VMware, to provide IT with the tools to take advantage of the Egnyte HybridCloud File Server solution.

It is also is partnering with IT security company Sophos and will integrate its service with Sophos's SafeGuard to provide an end-to-end security solution, including mobile device encryptions and complete control over data encryption keys. IT managers also have more choices with new single sign-on solutions, including VMware Horizon, OneLogin and Symplified. Further, integrations with SAML and Active Directory provide IT managers with robust security policies.

Egnyte pointed to recent customer wins as proof that a hybrid cloud service was needed in the market.

Piotr Malinski, Head of IT for financial services company Semperian, said that a pure public cloud offering "just didn't fulfil our needs, and that's why we turned to Egnyte and their hybrid cloud offering."

He said that the company now has "fast, secure behind the firewall access with the flexibility of the cloud, all at one third the cost of a file server."

Analysts said that with employees bringing their own devices and using unauthorised cloud storage services, IT was no longer able to secure corporate information.

"This creates a nasty situation where IT can't do their job of securing corporate information because users are bypassing them", said Rob Enderle Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group.

He said that the product "provides a bridge offering covering the ease of use that users are seeking while addressing the security and management requirements a well-run company requires".

In addition to desktop access, the service will also be available for remote workers via updated iPad, iPhone, Android applications, and the addition of a newly released Windows Mobile application. End users also have access to a host of workflow integrations with Salesforce, Google Docs and Microsoft Outlook. Mobile productivity app integrations include Avatron, QuickOffice, and GoodReader.

Nexenta Systems has launched a storage product targeting simplified storage management across all layers of a VMware-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) stack.

The storage software firm demonstrated its NexentaVDI' provisioning and rapid deployment solution for VMware View 5 at VMworld Europe 2011 in Copenhagen this week.

The plug-in for VMware's VDI management system, version 5 of which was launched at the Danish show, enables users to deploy and provision virtual desktop resources built on the virtualisation vendor's vSphere cloud computing operating system (OS).

VDI creates a huge number of random rights issues that traditional proprietary storage finds hard to handle.

Based on the open source Zettabyte File System (ZFS) originally developed by Sun, NexentaVDI automates the deployment and management of the tiered storage features of VMware View 5, and works in tandem with NexentaStor 3.1 OpenStorage virtual storage appliance (VSA) configuration and tuning.

NexentaVDI offers rapid deployment of the VSA across the VMware vSphere cluster based on user inputs such as desktop pool type, number of users and target performance levels.

Jon Ash, Nexenta vice president of sales, told IT Pro the plug-in would change the economics of VDI deployments by simplifying their management and eliminating costly proprietary storage overheads.

"VDI creates a huge number of random rights issues that traditional proprietary storage finds hard to handle," he said. "Customers tell me that they are paying $120 per desktop for SSDs [solid state drives] that they were supposed to save $100 on by virtualising the desktops in the first place. Our solution's modern file system enables the use of commodity storage hardware, while the plug-in automates its provisioning to the virtual desktops."

He said managers simply name a desktop pool, indicating how many desktops to provision. NexentaVDI automatically sets up the underlying storage and VMware View desktop pool, optimising the deployment to provide the best performance for the environment, while also handling the disparate storage requirements of both persistent and non-persistent virtual desktops.

Parag Patel, VMware global strategic alliances vice president, welcomed the Nexenta integration development.

"NexentaVDI takes advantage of the inherent flexibility of VSA storage, offering a purpose-built storage layer for the type of VDI pool being deployed. The NexentaVDI plug-in offers an improved level of simplicity, validated performance, and auto-optimisation," he said.

The storage firm is currently recruiting participants for its VDI beta programme, while NexentaVDI will be generally available in the first quarter of 2012.

Ash claimed the company already has around 7,000 customers worldwide, including a number of cloud service providers and large enterprises, particularly in banking and telecommunications, who were typically saving 70 per cent on storage costs.

F-Secure believes it has discovered the file and the email which helped crack EMC's security arm RSA, in what became one of the most famous hacks in history earlier this year.

Timo Hirvonen, an F-Secure analyst, doggedly pursued the XLS file used to hack RSA even after others had given up the chase. Hirvonen created a tool to analyse samples for a Flash object, which was used to exploit the target's system.

"The new tool located several relevant samples. However, one of them was not an Excel file. It was an Outlook message file (MSG)," an F-Secure blog read.

"When Timo opened it up, he knew he was onto something. The message file turned out to be the original email that was sent to RSA on 3 March, complete with the attachment 2011 Recruitment plan.xls. After five months, we finally had the file. And not only that, we had the original email."

The email which was sent to a single EMC employee, with two others CC'd in, was made to look like it came from Beyond.com, a career network.

The subject line read "2011 Recruitment plan" and the body copy contained just one line: "I forward this file to you for review. Please open and view it."

Once the file was opened the Flash object was executed by Excel, using a vulnerability to write code on the victim's machine and then drop a Poison Ivy backdoor to the system. Excel is then closed automatically and the infection is done.

What we think...

It's clear the email which duped EMC was pretty simple. Certainly it would be unadvisable to trust an email which contains just a single line.

This only emphasises the need for further education amongst workforces about spear phishing. It seems even workers at security firms aren't getting the message, which would be laughable if the connotations of the RSA hack weren't so serious.

Tom Brewster, Senior Staff Writer

"After this, Poison Ivy connects back to it's server at good.mincesur.com. The domain mincesur.com has been used in similar espionage attacks over an extended period of time," F-Secure said.

"Once the connection is made, the attacker has full remote access to the infected workstation. Even worse, it has full access to network drives that the user can access. Apparently the attackers were able to leverage this vector further until they gained access to the critical SecurID data they were looking for."

As F-Secure noted, the attack itself did not appear to be hugely sophisticated, although as the vulnerability was a zero-day there was no way RSA could have protected itself by patching.

"Was this an advanced attack? The email wasn't advanced. The backdoor they dropped wasn't advanced. But the exploit was advanced," F-Secure added.

"And the ultimate target of the attacker was advanced. If somebody hacks a security vendor just to gain access to their customers systems, we'd say the attack is advanced, even if some of the interim steps weren't very complicated."

The hackers who went after RSA wanted the company's SecureID information so they could hit US Government contractors, including Lockheed Martin.

Following the Lockheed attacks, RSA offered token replacement for customers "with concentrated user bases typically focused on protecting intellectual property and corporate networks."

RSA - the security arm of EMC - has admitted to having a number of its servers hacked, as data on its two-factor authentication product SecurID was compromised.

The firm warned the data could be used to "reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack," and RSA urged customers to take immediate remedial action.

RSA executive chairman Art Coviello said the firm's security systems had been targeted by an "extremely sophisticated cyber attack."

It is believed the attack was in the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) category, which may indicate a well-funded group of individuals were responsible.

APTs involve significant intelligence research and the use of numerous techniques to hack targets. They need serious investment to be carried out.

RSA is now in the process of informing customers about the dangers and how to strengthen SecurID implementations.

"We have no evidence that customer security related to other RSA products has been similarly impacted," Coviello said in an open letter to customers.

"We are also confident that no other EMC products were impacted by this attack. It is important to note that we do not believe that either customer or employee personally identifiable information was compromised as a result of this incident."

In an advice note to customers, RSA listed a number of recommendations for customers to follow, with the first point being to increase focus on security for social media applications and the use of them by anyone with access to critical networks.

RSA has a wide range of customers, ranging from high profile private companies to government bodies.

A sad day'

The breach will be damaging for RSA and it could take some time for the EMC division to recover, said SecurEnvoy co-founder Steve Watts.

Watts said it was a "sad day" to see a company with the reputation of RSA being hit by such a significant attack.

"Anyone with an RSA token doesn't know if they're going to be compromised. The industry is a bit concerned," Watts told IT PRO.

"This isn't just a bit of a marketing booboo, this is a major strategic issue. The problem is that it will take quite a long time to get over it."

If RSA has to initiate a recall of a large chunk of its tokens, then this would lump the firm with a costly logistical nightmare, Watts added.

"Is it going to be as extreme as changing every token that is sent out into the marketplace? Is it as far as to send out replacement tokens for every user? That's just beyond measure," Watts added.

Earlier this week, Jim Fulton, vice president at DigitalPersona, told IT PRO many companies were struggling with token deployments as it was.

"I've heard people say that if they could, they'd throw them underneath a lorry and crush them because they hate them so much," Fulton said.

The latest microservers are aimed squarely at small business that have traditionally relied on a PC for providing simple file and print services. HP was first out of the blocks with its compact MicroServer N36L and now Fujitsu has introduced its Primergy MX130 S1.

The MX130 targets small businesses of up to 15 users that want a central location for basic file sharing and print services. Along with Windows Server 2008 R2, the server is also validated for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We can't see many small businesses wanting to tussle with the latter though as it's far too complicated.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation can be preinstalled for 145 which is good value. Fujitsu advised us it also plans to offer SBS Essentials 2011 on this server when Microsoft launches it later this year.

The system on review looks pricey when compared to the HP MicroServer. However, the Primergy's 3.1GHz AMD Athlon II X2 255 is a lot faster than the little 1.3GHz Athlon II Neo in the MicroServer, although you can save cash by opting for an Athlon 220 or a single-core Sempron processor.

The price for the review system also includes two 1TB SATA hard disks. We shopped around and found an Athlon 220 model with 2GB of RAM and a pair of 250GB drives on EBuyer for around 250 ex VAT which puts it closer in price to the MicroServer.

Rather than design a completely new chassis for the MX130 S1, Fujitsu has simply used its standard Esprimo desktop casing. Physically, it's little different from the Esprimo E5645 that failed to impress us when we recently reviewed it.

However, a big bonus of this chassis is it's designed to be very quiet and we can say it's almost silent. The cooling arrangement is a little strange, though, as the chassis has a fan mounted at the front, but the processor heatsink is barely an inch behind it and is also fitted with its own fan.

The cover is removed by pressing buttons on each side and pulling the complete shell forwards and it can be padlocked shut. The four memory slots are easily accessible and the server can be upgraded to 16GB, but if you opt for Server 2008 Foundation remember this OS only supports up to 8GB.

For storage the motherboard has six embedded SATA ports, but the integral AMD RAID controller only supports mirrors and stripes. Up to two 3.5in hard disks can be fitted with one mounted under the power supply and the other beneath the 5.25in bay.

HP's MicroServer provides far easier access to its four drive bays as they are located right behind its front door with the hard disks fitted in flimsy but easily removable carriers. To get at the drives in the MX130 you need to remove the shell and unclip the front bay or the power supply unit and swing them up.

You can increase the drive count as optional 2.5in hard disk mounting kits are also available. Two drives can be placed under the power supply, two more in the front bay and, if you dispense with the optical drive, another pair can be squeezed in here as well.

There's room to expand as the motherboard has two PCI Express slots as well as another pair of 32-bit PCI slots. They are easily accessible and all support half-height expansion cards.

Some businesses are putting microservers into small remote offices to provide basic file sharing functions with AD access controls. In these scenarios it would be very useful to be able to remotely monitor and manage the server from the head office, but the MX130 is devoid of these features.

The MX130 was supplied to us with Fujitsu's ServerView software installed, but as the server doesn't have an embedded iRMC2 controller there's little you can do with it. We were advised that this will be rectified later this year with the release of a ServerView agent for local management only, along with the ServerView Installation Manager software.

HP's MicroServer is currently your best bet if you want full remote management. For only 55 extra you can have the Remote Access Control PCI Express card. It's surprisingly sophisticated as it has web browser access, hardware monitoring, power controls, virtual media services and KVM-over-IP remote control.

Fujitsu's MX130 S1 has a reasonable hardware specification, is remarkably quiet and has good expansion potential. However, its desktop PC chassis is not designed to provide easy access to the hard disks and if you want full remote management capabilities then HP's little MicroServer is a much better choice.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The Primergy MX130 S1 is compact and quiet with good expansion potential but, apart from support for ECC memory, doesn’t offer much more than a standard desktop PC. HP’s MicroServer may have a slower processor but it costs less, its hard disks are far more accessible and it beats Fujitsu easily for remote management with its optional RAC card.

Chassis: Desktop CPU: 3.1GHz AMD Athlon II X2 255 Memory: 4GB 1,333MHz DDR3 expandable to 16GB Storage: 2 x 1TB WD SATA cold-swap hard disks (max 2 x 3.5in or 6 x 2.5in with optional 2.5in disk mounting kits) RAID: integrated six-port AMD SATA controller Array support: RAID 0, 1 Expansion slots: 2 x PCI Express, 2 x 32-bit PCI Ports: 12 x USB2 (2 front, 6 rear, 4 internal) Network: Gigabit Ethernet Power: 250W internal supply

It makes sense for small businesses to use a server for even simple tasks, such as file sharing, but many still see them as expensive and overly complex. HP wants to change their minds as its latest MicroServer N36L is aimed at businesses of up to ten users that want something highly affordable and easy to use.

HP gets the ball rolling by selling the MicroServer at a low price. Only one model is available and its starting price of 235 will have a more than a few small businesses taking notice. Even better is the fact that HP is currently running a 100 cashback offer until the end of February.

The MicroServer is a chunky little desktop cube equipped with a dual-core 1.3GHz AMD Athlon II Neo N36L processor and 1GB of 800MHz ECC DDR3 memory. The price includes a single 250GB SATA hard disk with room for three more inside, but the removable drive carriers are cheap plastic and not very sturdy.

No OS is included in the price but HP offers a choice of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Windows Server R2 Standard and Foundation. We can't see small businesses with limited IT skills wanting to mess with Linux, so Server 2008 R2 Foundation would be the best bet which, HP tells us, can be preinstalled for 169.

There are a number of restrictions with Foundation. It only supports a maximum of fifteen Windows user accounts. It's 64-bit only, supports only a single processor with multiple cores and won't let you upgrade beyond 8GB of memory, but these are unlikely to be too restrictive for the smaller business, budget-conscious users the MicroServer is aimed at.

The MicroServer itself is well built with a lockable metal door protecting the hard disk carriers. Up above is a single 5.25in bay which is empty on base systems. We had the optional DVD writer supplied in the review system which costs an extra 35.

The small power button on the top edge is a little too exposed, but fortunately won't shut the OS down if pressed accidentally. Below this are four USB ports plus two more round the back along with an eSATA port. There's even an internal USB port which can be used for connecting a boot disk for use with a virtualisation hypervisor.

There may be four drive bays but hardware RAID options are very limited. The motherboard uses an AMD RAID controller which only supports JBODs, stripes and mirrors so you can't create RAID 5 or 6 arrays.The controller doesn't support hot-swap either, so if a drive fails the server must be powered down to replace it. However, it can handle 2TB SATA drives so there should be sufficient future storage expansion for most uses.

As you'd expect, it's very cramped inside. The only way to access the pair of PCI Express slots and memory sockets is to release the motherboard in the base of the server and slowly slide it forward unplugging the various interface and power cables as they become exposed. It takes time, but your patience will be rewarded.

The embedded AMD processor may not be overly powerful, but its TDP of 12W keeps consumption right down. We measured the review system drawing a mere 22W with Foundation in idle which rose to only 31W with SiSoft Sandra pushing the processor to the max.

Another feature that sets the MicroServer apart from your average desktop is HP's optional Remote Access Card (RAC). Costing 55, it slots into the PCI-E x1 slot and provides a dedicated network port for remotely managing and monitoring the server.

Once it's installed, a new IPMI option appears in the BIOS menu where you can assign a fixed IP address to the card or leave DHCP to hand one out to it. In terms of features we put the RAC in between HP's entry-level Lights Out 100i and its top end iLO3.

The web interface provides details on fan speeds and temperatures, plus the ability to remotely power the server on and off or reset it. PEFs (platform event filters) can be used to assign actions to specific events, so if the fans fail or temperatures rise then the server can be automatically powered down, reset or rebooted.

Two features that make the RAC excellent value are KVM-over-IP remote control and virtual media services. The former provides full remote access to the BIOS menu and OS whilst the latter allows you to present devices such as optical drives over the network for the server to use.

The MicroServer is worth considering as a first server as it's good value, small, quiet and has four disk bays. RAID support is very limited and upgrades will be time consuming, but the optional RAC card makes it a good choice for remote office deployments as no other server at this price offers this as an option.

The MicroServer may be low on processing power and tricky to upgrade, but it is a good value choice for small businesses that want their first server. It’s disappointing that despite having four drive bays it doesn’t support RAID 5, but HP’s optional management card does mean it’s well suited to deployment in small remote offices.

Gawker Media has admitted passwords were stolen in a hack on its user databases.

Whilst the stored passwords were encrypted, Gawker said, simple ones may still be vulnerable to a brute force attack, where constant attempts to crack the key are made until the hackers are successful.

Users have been advised to change their passwords for Gawker websites and for any other site on which they use that same password.

"We're deeply embarrassed by this breach," a note on the Gawker website read.

"We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems. And, yes, the irony is not lost on us."

Other Gawker sites include Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot.

"We understand how important trust is on the internet, and we're deeply sorry for and embarrassed about this breach of security - and of trust," a separate note on Lifehacker read.

"We're working around the clock to ensure our security (and our commenters' account security) moving forward."

A group going by the name of Gnosis has claimed credit for hacking Gawker's servers, reportedly posting a file on the Pirate Bay.

The file contained numerous passwords, including those of Gawker founder Nick Denton.

As yet, there has been no definite link between Gnosis and the Anonymous hacker group who have been going after anti-WikiLeaks services.

A related Twitter hack?

Following the Gawker compromise, hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts were hacked as well.

Del Harvey, Twitter's director of trust and safety, said she suspected these new hacks used the same passwords as those taken from Gawker.

The hacked Twitter accounts have been used by spammers to send messages attempting to direct users to a supposed acai berry diet website.

"Got a Gawker acct that shares a PW w/your Twitter acct? Change your Twitter PW. A current attack appears to be due to the Gawker compromise," Harvey wrote on her own Twitter page.

"In other words: the acai berry attack looks to be connected w/the Gawker hack rather than a worm."

Ethical hacker Jason Hart, senior vice president at CRYPTOcard, told IT PRO hacks like the one against Gawker are becoming easier to carry out.

"With the ease of hacking and cracking passwords, there need to be additional layers of security," Hart said.

"Encrypting passwords does not prevent brute force attacks."

Sophos has told web users to mix up their passwords for added security.

According to a Sophos poll carried out last year, a third of respondents said they used the same passwords for all of their online accounts.

Just a fifth used different passwords for all their various accounts.

Fujitsu has traditionally sold a wide range of network storage products for SMBs and mid-sized businesses, but the new Eternus CS800 is the first for this market to have deduplication features. The CS800 aims to be easy to install and deploy as well as having high storage capacity and impressive expansion potential.

On review is the CS800 Basic model which uses a well specified Primergy RX300 S5 rack server as a head unit. It has a total of eight Gigabit Ethernet ports for connecting storage to the network, whilst the more expensive Performance model has four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a pair of 10-Gigabit Ethernet connectors.

The eleven hot-swap drives in the RX300 are arranged in mirrored arrays and used for the operating system and the deduplication indexing database. It's paired with a single Eternus DX80 disk array which provides general data storage.

The DX80 arrays provide masses of redundancy as their dual RAID controllers function in active/active mode so access to the RAID arrays won't cease if one of the controllers fails the other will take over. Each of the controllers has two 4Gbps FC ports and these are cross-linked to a pair of QLogic dual-port FC adapters in the RX300 to create multiple, redundant pathways.

The DX80 comes as standard with a dozen 1TB SAS drives preconfigured as an 8TB RAID-6 array. Using the dedicated SAS expansion ports in each controller, you can daisy-chain nine more DX80 arrays from it allowing raw capacity to be boosted in stages up to 80TB.

There's more as the DX80 controllers have Fujitsu's unique Cache Protector. This replaces traditional batteries with a combination of capacitors and Flash memory so that in the event of a power failure the cache contents are written to memory. The benefit here is that when power is restored, the capacitor takes a lot less time to recharge than a battery pack and can therefore provide full protection again much more quickly.

Installation starts by pointing a web browser at the head unit's default IP address where you'll be greeted by a well designed, intuitive interface. It was very familiar to us as it's identical to that presented by Quantum's DXi4520. This isn't a bad thing as we found Quantum's software very easy to use when we tested its SMB appliance.

Your first job is to decide how you want your network ports to be used as they can be kept separate or bonded together in load balanced, redundant teams. Note that one port on the Gigabit cards is retained for service and maintenance functions so you actually have seven ports to play with.

The CS800 supports both CIFS and NFS shares and for user access control you can enable workgroup or AD modes. Deduplication can be enabled on a per share basis, but once set it can't be removed. However, you can specify backup windows for a share during which time deduplication is disabled.

A big advantage of appliance-side deduplication is that host systems are totally unaware of the processes involved. Consequently, it supports any backup software you care to mention and even drag and drop copies to a share on the appliance will be deduplicated.

Along with all data deduplication and compression features, the price for the review system includes replication to a remote appliance. You also get Symantec's OpenStorage (OST) plug-in which allows the appliance to present itself as storage servers to systems running NetBackup. You don't get the esXpress software which Quantum bundles with its DXi4500 appliances. This is designed to automate backing up VMs running on ESX Server systems, but we found it extremely difficult to deploy and manage so it's no great loss.

For testing we used our own set of tests specifically designed to look at deduplication performance for file server operations. We use a 4GB data set consisting of 1,000 files and introduce controlled changes within a percentage of the files during a simulated backup strategy consisting of daily incrementals and weekly full backups.

To manage the backups we installed CA's ARCserve r12.5 on a Dell PowerEdge R310 Windows Server 2008 R2 system. To use the CS800, all we needed to do was create a share and declare it to ARCserve as a disk based backup device.

After the first full backup was run, we modified 2 per cent of the data in 40 per cent of the files prior to each subsequent backup. At the end of a one month backup simulation we saw a good deduplication ratio of 7.2:1 which, unsurprisingly, is virtually identical to that achieved with Quantum's DXi4520 for the same test.

To test general throughput performance we ran a full backup of a 40GB data sample comprising 16,000 files. Run over Gigabit Ethernet, the job returned an average speed of 45MB/s or 160GB/hour.

The deduplication technology used by the CS800 came under fire earlier this year with claims that restoration speeds were being hit hard when data was retrieved from the block store. We restored the entire 40GB data sample to a new location on the test server and saw an average speed of 37.4MB/sec showing these claims to be largely groundless.

Pairing an RX300 S5 server with DX80 disk arrays is a smart move by Fujitsu as this hardware combination has superb levels of redundancy. Our tests show the CS800 is capable of making some big savings on storage requirements for backup operations and we also found it particularly easy to deploy and manage.

Verdict

Our real world tests show that the CS800 is capable of delivering big reductions on storage usage along with good backup and restore performance. In terms of price, it compares well with other mid-sized deduplication products but scores better for its high expansion potential and superb levels of redundancy.

RX300 S5 Chassis: 2U rack CPU: 2 x 2.53GHz E5540 Xeon Memory: 48GB 1067MHz DDR3 Storage: 11 x 300GB 10k SAS SFF hot-swap disks in RAID-1 RAID: Fujitsu SAS 5/6 with 512MB cache and BBU Network: 7 x Gigabit Ethernet FC Ports: 4 x 4Gbps Power: 2 x 800W hot-plug supplies Management: Web browser Software: Symantec OST plugin DX80 Disk Array Chassis: 2U rack Storage: 12 x 1TB 7.2k SAS hot-swap disks RAID: Dual controllers with RAID6 CPU: 1.2GHz processor Memory: 2GB DDR2 and capacitor FC Ports: 2 x 4Gbps per controller Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet management ports Other: 2 x SAS expansion ports Power: 2 x 350W hot-plug supplies

Apple may be promoting the iPad as an alternative to netbooks, but one advantage that netbooks have over Apple's tablet is the ability to run Microsoft Office. Although Apple has released a version of its iWork suite for the iPad, its file format compatibility is incomplete and moving files to and from the iPad is cumbersome. DataViz has released a version of its venerable Documents To Go suite for the iPad. While it's an improvement over iWork in many respects, it's a disappointment in others.

Files have to be copied onto the iPad before you can work with them. The standard method of using iTunes and a USB cable to shuttle files back and forth is cumbersome and inconvenient, especially since it makes no effort to synchronise any changes you make to documents. Like iWork, Documents To Go Premium (DTGP) can open office documents sent as email attachments. This works well and the Premium version, unlike the cheaper standard version of Documents To Go, can also access attachments in Exchange inboxes.

One distinct advantage DTGP has over iWork is that it can access files stashed away in online storage services, such as Dropbox, SugarSync and MobileMe iDisk. Files are automatically cached as you open them so they can be accessed offline. DTGP also works with Google Docs, but it must first download files before you can work on them. Although you can then upload the changed document, it could overwrite any changes made by other people which is obviously far from ideal when collaborating on a shared document.

Disappointingly, DTGP can't access files stored on standard file servers but it can synchronise its files with those stored on your Mac or PC over WiFi using a free companion application. Recently accessed files, whether stored online or locally, can be accessed from the app's main menu.

Although DataViz claims that external Bluetooth keyboard support is forthcoming in a future update, we didn't have any trouble using one with the current version at the time of writing. Even if you're quick and proficient at using the iPad's onscreen keyboard, using an external keyboard may still be preferable. When active, the onscreen keyboard leaves considerably less room for viewing your documents, especially when the iPad is oriented horizontally. The toolbar can be minimised to give a little more screen space.

The interface takes getting used to, especially if you're an experienced Microsoft Office user. Simple tasks such as selecting a range of cells in a spreadsheet are baffling until you've figured out the right gestures. This isn't helped by the incomplete documentation and the toolbar full of small, unlabelled, cryptic looking icons. Tool tips are available, but only if you press and hold each icon which grows tedious very quickly.

We weren't expecting DTGP to have 100% feature parity and file format compatibility with Microsoft Office and it doesn't. A more critical flaw is that DTGP can strip out content or formatting in a file if it depends on a feature the app doesn't support. For example, in a moderately complicated spreadsheet with several embedded macros and a graph dependent on external graphics assets, DTGP was able to open the file but stripped out the macros and the entire graph. This makes DTGP unsuitable for working on even moderately complex documents.

Although our complex PowerPoint presentations were opened correctly, the ability to create new presentations is rather limited and inferior to iWork's Keynote. There's no way to add images to new slides, while text editing options are basic and animation capabilities are non-existent. Creating new slides and editing existing ones is done using a separate editing mode which isn't WYSIWYG, so you have to constantly flip between editing and viewing modes which is awkward. It is possible to display slides and presenter notes on an external monitor or projector using Apple's VGA adapter, but we wish it was possible to show just the notes on the iPad and not on the external display.

DTGP does have some useful editing features though, most of which aren't present in iWork. Word processing documents have word count and support for Microsoft Word's Track Changes feature, both of which are gaping omissions in iWork's Pages. PDFs can be viewed, but unsurprisingly can't be edited. DTGP is also a Universal app, so it will also run on an iPhone or iPod Touch. The smaller screens on those devices makes editing and creating new documents even more cumbersome, but the app still has most of the same features as on the iPad. Your iPhone or iPod Touch will need to be running iOS 4 if you want the ability to open files sent as email attachments though.

Verdict

Documents To Go Premium has lots of convenient ways of accessing your files, but file format compatibility is incomplete and potentially destructive while the interface can be cumbersome. For all but straightforward, simple documents, the app is better suited for viewing files rather than serious editing and document creation. DTGP on an iPad is not a complete substitute for a laptop with Office installed, but it could be a workable alternative in certain circumstances.

System requirements Apple iPad running iOS 3.2 or later; or Apple iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 3 or later

Small businesses face many of the same internet threats that large enterprises have to contend with. One big difference is the available budget and manpower, with small companies struggling to afford even one member of staff with the sole responsibility of keeping computer systems safe.

One solution is to use systems management software, but this isn't cheaper either, and requires costly hardware. One of the many alternative solutions available is Trend Micro's new hosted security service that aims to provide small businesses with a low-cost and easy-to-use alternative. It does not even require a server.

We have looked at the ways you can use Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Services to lock down and manage the security of the computers in your office or even your home.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) revenue will grow at five times the speed of traditional packaged software through to 2014, according to an analyst firm.

The SaaS market will be worth $40.5 billion by 2014, up from $13.1 billion in 2009, IDC predicted.

By 2012, less than 15 per cent of new software firms entering the market will ship a product on CD, IDC said, and around a third of all new business software purchases will be delivered through SaaS by 2014.

"The SaaS model has become mainstream, and is quickly coming to dominate the planning - from R&D, to sales quotas, to partnering, channels and distribution - of all software and services vendors," said Robert Mahowald, vice president of SaaS and cloud services research at IDC.

"Enterprise IT plans are rapidly shifting to accommodate the growing choices for sourcing most or all IT software functions, from business applications to software development and testing, to service and desktop management, as SaaS services become available from established vendors and new models for accessing functionality in the cloud creates lower-cost options and more tailored models for consuming IT services," Mahowald added.

The packaged software market's revenue is in decline and a shift towards subscription models will lead to an almost $7 billion drop in worldwide license revenue in 2010, IDC predicted.

The SaaS market is one of the quickest growing segments in the whole IT industry and McAfee recently jumped on board by launching its SaaS Web Protection product.

Data deduplication may be all the rage this year but it has traditionally been priced way beyond the means of most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Quantum aims to remedy this as its latest DXi4500 family delivers a low cost appliance based solution with ease of use high on its agenda.

Quantum has two products in its new lineup with the DXi4510 offering 2TB of usable storage and the DXi4520 on review here providing 4TB. Prices start at 8,334 for the DXi4510 going up to 15,000 for the DXi4520. The price includes a one year on-site warranty which can be extended to three years for 1,134 and 2,040 respectively.

Data reduction is carried out at the appliance and has a big advantage over source based deduplication as it will work with any backup software you choose to name. The main drawback is that all data selected on the source must be sent to be processed by the appliance so network overheads will be higher.

Whereas a number of solutions offer up VTLs (virtual tape libraries) over IP SANs for storage, the DXi4520 is a pure NAS appliance and supports the CIFS and NFS protocols. To use it you simply create network shares with are used as backup destinations.

Quantum gets our thumbs up for its choice of hardware as hiding behind the bezel is a top quality PowerEdge R510 2U rack server. Dell designed this box specifically for storage server duties and for more information you can check out the exclusive review of it in our sister title PC Pro.

Storage is handled by eight 1TB Seagate Constellation SATA drives mounted in sturdy hot-swap bays. All are managed by a Dell PERC H700 controller as a single RAID-6 array. This does cost in terms of available storage but the array can survive simultaneous failures of two drives so redundancy is good.

There are no hidden costs as the price includes all data deduplication and compression features plus remote replication to another appliance. Along with NAS shares, the appliance supports Symantec's OpenStorage (OST) API allowing it to work with NetBackup's data mover function.

Quantum has also targeted virtualised environments as you get its esXpress Backup for VMware ESX software with support for four virtual backup appliances included. This allows you to schedule automated, daily backups of virtual machines or run them on demand.

Creating NAS shares is a cinch as you choose a name, go for CIFS or NFS protocols and define access permissions where workgroup and AD modes are supported. At this stage you also decide whether deduplication should be enabled on the share but this is a one way trip and can't be reversed later on.

The console provides plenty of status information so you can keep track of network, RAID, deduplication and ingest activity on the appliance. You can view the deduplication ratio being achieved, check on storage usage and set up alerts that can be emailed to multiple recipients.

To test deduplication ratios we ran our own set of lab tests designed specifically to look at performance for file server operations. We used a 4GB data set consisting of 1,000 files and introduced controlled changes within a percentage of the files during a simulated standard backup strategy consisting of daily incrementals and weekly full backups.

To carry out the test backups we used CA's ARCserve r12.5 running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 system. To get it to work with the appliance all we needed to do was create an ARCserve disk backup location that pointed at the appliance's share.

After the first full backup was completed, we modified two per cent of the data in 40 per cent of the files prior to each subsequent backup. Quantum's reporting facilities were used to determine the amount of data sent to the appliance and how much was actually being stored on it.

We then continued the test for a further two weeks and at the end of a simulated one month backup period the appliance reported a data deduplication ratio of 7.22:1. Naturally, the ratios that can be achieved will depend on the type of data being secured, its compressibility, the rate of change and the retention period.

To test general throughput performance we created a new share on the appliance and asked ARCserve to run a full backup of a folder on our test server containing 13,000 files totalling 28GB. With the backup running over Gigabit, the job was completed at a rate of 43MB/sec which equates to a very tidy 152GB/hour.

Before using the esXpress software we recommend sitting down and reading all seven manuals as configuration is a very lengthy and unintuitive process. The product consists of an OVF file which is used to create a VM running the optional Quorum web GUI. If you don't use this you must manually install the supplied RPM files on each host to be backed up.

We opted to use the GUI and created a VM for it on our ESX Server 4.0 system. The browser console provides a wizard where you declare your VMware host, create backup targets that point to the appliance and decide on the backup frequency and window and whether they should be full, delta or file level.

You can opt for scheduled daily and monthly backups and use filters to determine which VMs are to be secured. The VMware service console can also be used to load the esXpress main menu from where you can run on-demand backups of all or selected VMs and check the esXpress logs.

We found esXpress offers plenty of backup and restore features for large and small virtualised environments alike but felt that it really needs to be much more user friendly. However, for general network backup operations, Quantum's DXi4520 is very easy to configure and use and an affordable option for SMBs looking to make some big storage savings.

Verdict

Using NAS shares as deduplication targets makes the DXi4500 appliances extremely easy to deploy and manage for network backup operations.

They’re priced right for SMBs and our tests show they are capable of delivering good storage savings.

Chassis: 2U rack

CPU: 2 x 2.53GHz E5540 Xeon

Memory: 24GB 1067MHz DDR3

Storage: 8 x 1TB Seagate Constellation SATA hard disks in hot-swap carriers

RAID: Dell PERC H700 with 512MB cache and BBU

Array support: RAID 6

Network: 4 x Gigabit

Power: 2 x 750W Energy Smart hot-plug supplies

Management: Web browser

Software: Quantum esXpress with support for 4 VMs, Symantec OST plugin

Apple has released the latest update to its desktop operating system, Mac OS X 10.6.4.

After last week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was entirely dominated by the new iPhone 4 and [a href="https://www.itpro.com/622291/apple-ipad-review]iPad, Apple finally gave its desktop products some much-needed attention, with the Mac OS X update accompanying an overhaul to the Mac Mini all-in-one computer.

Top of the list of fixes in the 315MB software update available in both desktop and server editions is an issue that caused the trackpad to become unresponsive. Apple also addresses problems when running Adobe's Creative Suite 3, while extended support for HTML5 is added to the Safari 5 web browser, together with Reader functionality.

Other issues addressed include problems related to copying, renaming or deleting files stored on SMB file servers, along with playback issues with the Mac's DVD player and problems when editing photos in full-screen mode on iPhoto or Aperture 3. VPN connection reliablity has also been addressed.

Also part of the update are a pair of minor fixes for the early 2010 MacBook Pro, addressing a reported issue where the right speaker sometimes runs louder than the left by default, and display sleep problems.

Apple is advising all Snow Leopard users to install the update for the sake of security, stability and compatibility of their systems, but recommends you should back up first.

There's fashionably late and there's just plain late and Symantec is definitely the latter as it's only now that the new Backup Exec 2010 (BE2010) finally brings data deduplication to the masses. Computer Associates (CA) delivered deduplication in its ARCserve r12.5, which was released nearly a year ago so Symantec has certainly taken its time to implement this red-hot technology.

Another big difference is CA was the first and only backup software vendor to include deduplication as a core component at no extra cost. Symantec offers this as a separately chargeable module but does provide quite a few extra features.

CA opted to deduplicate only at the backup server primarily as it's faster than doing it client-side and doesn't introduce any performance overheads at the client. BE2010 offers client-side and server-side deduplication so you can decide which is better for your network.

There is a third option as BE2010 supports Symantec's OpenStorage technology and can integrate with intelligent disk services such as its PureDisk and other third party products. A single deduplication licence allows you to use two out of the three options available.

To implement deduplication in BE2010, Symantec ported over its NetBackup PureDisk solution which essentially uses the same hash-based chunking technology as everyone else. It breaks down the data into segments and computes a hash value, or fingerprint, for each block of data which it stores in a separate index file. If the fingerprint for an incoming block matches one in the index then instead of storing it, BE2010 updates its reference file with the address of that block already in the data file.

Most of the other new features lay in the shadow of deduplication but BE2010 also offers an archiving option, which is based on a light version of its Enterprise Vault. This can be applied to both file and Exchange servers where BE2010 uses rules to determine what should be archived.

Other new features are support for Server 2008 R2 as a media server and the Core version as a client, a remote agent for Windows 7 and a greater focus on virtualisation with support for vSphere 4.0 and VMware incremental backups.

For testing, we loaded Backup Exec 2010 on a Broadberry CyberServe rack server equipped with dual 2.8GHz X5560 Xeons and 6GB of DDR3 memory. General installation is a swift process and an optional environment check scans the server to ensure that it meets the minimum hardware and software requirements.

The base product and multiple components can be selected at the same time and you can also remotely deploy extra media servers and remote agents during this phase as well. However, bear in mind that the deduplication option is 64-bit only.

We didn't spot the brief comment in the manual and the installation routine allowed us to select this option and install in on a 32-bit version of Server 2008. It was only when we tried to create a deduplication folder that Backup Exec popped up a message advising us that it wasn't supported requiring us to trash the OS and reinstall the 64-bit version.

To create a deduplication folder you select the drive to receive it and set up thresholds for low capacity levels and the number of streams it will support. BE2010 only supports a single deduplication folder per media server but this can be shared amongst multiple media servers providing you have the Central Admin Server or the SAN Shared Storage option installed.

To activate client-side deduplication each system must have the remote agent configured for direct access to the PureDisk device on the media server. This allows it to bypass the media server, perform deduplication locally and only send unique segments over the network. There is a caveat, though, as a direct access backup job can only have a single remote host declared to it.

After the first full backup was completed, two per cent of the data was modified in 40 per cent of the files prior to each subsequent backup. Using BE2010's reporting facilities we saw that after a two-week simulation it achieved a deduplication ratio of 3.6:1 showing reasonable storage savings. ARCserve proved to more efficient as in exactly the same test it returned a ratio of 5.3:1.

We also tested deduplication by backing up the system drives on four Windows client systems. The total amount of data backed up was 35.5GB but the datastore only contained 23GB of data resulting in an initial deduplication ratio of 1.6:1 and a storage saving of 35 per cent.

We weren't overly impressed with the reporting facilities for deduplication as all BE2010 offers are summaries of these jobs showing storage statistics, performance plus achieved ratios and another for the deduplication device.

ARCserve's reporting is more sophisticated as it provides graphs and pie charts showing nodes involved in deduplication, storage savings over time and historical data. In fact, ARCserve's reporting tools generally provide a lot more information about all things backup related.

This latest version of Backup Exec delivers an impressive range of new features and adding deduplication services finally brings it in line with much of the competition. Unlike ARCserve, this is optional feature but still good value if you want the extra support for client-side and third party deduplication storage devices.

Verdict

Along with the deduplication option, this latest version of Backup Exec delivers plenty of other new features with the focus also on protecting virtualised environments. Deduplication does cost extra and the reporting facilities aren’t up to much but our tests show that good storage savings can be made. However, if you want free server-side deduplication and better reporting facilities then check out CA’s ARCserve r12.5.

Media server: Windows 2003, 2008, XP. Options: Deduplication Option for one media server, £1,232; File Server Archiving Option. £491; Exchange Archiving Option for 100 mailboxes, £1,204 (all ex VAT)

IBM has launched it first ever foray into the network attached storage market with the Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) product.

Designed as an appliance for the company's Scale Out NAS global virtual file server, it has up to 30 interface nodes and 60 storage nodes, in a cluster based on IBM's General Parallel File System [GPFS].

It offers 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 20Gbps InfiniBand connections and can handle up to 14.4 petabytes of data across 240 spaces for either 1TB or 2TB drives.

The device comes with RAID controllers as well as snapshot ability and tiered storage through the company's Tivoli Storage Manager software.

"Today's modern analytics-based applications demand multiple processes and servers (sometimes numbering in the 100s) simultaneously running against hundreds of terabytes of data of live production data, streaming in from expanding number of smarter sensors, input devices [and] users," said John Sing, an executive IT consultant on the SONAS team, in a blog post.

"[This produces] digital image-intensive results that must be programmatically sent to an ever increasing number of mobile devices in geographically dispersed storage [and requires] parallel performance levels that used to be the domain only of High Performance Computing."

"This is a major paradigm shift in storage and that is the solution and storage capabilities that IBM SONAS is designed to address."

Pricing will be between $250,000 and $500,000 when the device goes to market in April.

This week marks Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. IT PRO was part of a select crowd invited to a Q&A session with the company's chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff. Here's what he had to say.

Can we get a serious answer about the concerns for cloud such as security, how is holding cloud computing companies back and what you are doing to persuade people it is the right model to go with?

We are on a technology adoption curve. You have to follow that curve. You have early adopters and laggers and the ones in the middle [but] we are moving up. The cloud computing metaphor is the future. If it isn't then I guess Google, Amazon and eBay are in a lot of trouble.

In regards to security, key to that is transparency. We have a trust site that you can see every issue. We let them [customers] look at our code [and] we get them into the most intimate aspects of the company. In almost all our cases our customer security is far below where we are. It is really important to us and we are doing a lot of the right things.

There is no finish line when we talk about security but if you chose to plug yourself into the internet... [people] are going to be looking in your file servers or trying to and if you don't have vast security teams working on this then you need to work with vendors. The largest companies have those teams but small ones don't. That's where we become their surrogate CIO.

No-one is exempt from security.

Why has renewal stabilised and shipments improved in your recent results?

There are eight key areas that we track and most of them were up and that resulted with bookings being above where they were a year ago. It was extremely exciting for us as we thought they would be flat or slightly down.

New licence sales are down for most software companies this year. We did not suffer that carnage. We did see that in the first two quarters but for this quarter we saw flat or slightly up and we think this will continue through to the end of this year.

the company's latest launch

Today we already have terabytes of information from our customers... around that entire system is built a sharing model and each user has the ability, right down to the field level, to say this user can only see this bit of data. That is the key. We didn't build that after Chatter, we built that first. Because of that sharing model as a place the filter comes from this...

How will you manage regulatory compliance across countries?

In terms of specific regulatory requirements on a country by country basis that is very much in the hands of each customer [to work out] the requirements of their country.

What is the deal you have with Facebook and Twitter?

We don't have any revenue deals with Facebook and Twitter, just a marketing partnership.

What is the size of the enterprise collaboration market?

We look at it as a market that is equivalent to the sales and services market [$2-4 billion], we think it could be larger but we will wait for the analysts to confirm that.

How much thought have you given to business processes having to change to take advantage of Chatter?

It has changed... its just that we don't know it. All the transactions were already happening and we are just illuminating them... that is the power of the model. I think a lot of what will [happen] is people will be smarter by using the app.

When using Facebook I get smarter. I know that someone likes this movie, went to the football... what if I knew as much about my own customers? I want that same level of detail and intimacy about my business and my products.

We have seen the revelation of how to collaborate. It is called Facebook. It is called Twitter. We are just collaborating around a lot of stuff that so far hasn't made us smarter in our business lives.

You talk a lot about the history in terms of David and Goliath. Are you the Goliath now?

We are 1/60 the size of the largest software company today so we still very much feel like the David. These companies, however, continue to launch their... status quo technologies. What we are trying to do is to show customers a new way.

Cloud computing is really about economies of scale. When you run a massive data centre, not only do you get a better deal buying hardware than smaller businesses buying a handful or servers, you can also invest in automated management, videographers and failover services.

That means cloud isn't just about offering new services like Salesforce.com's online CRM system; a cloud service can offer the same services a business could run in house, like Exchange or SharePoint, but more cost effectively.

The administrators running a cloud service have the expertise to look after the systems they're running for you; they're the ones patching the servers and running the updates and keeping the lights on. That means you can get on with the IT innovation that adds value to your business.

The other advantage is that you can get a cloud service up and running much faster than you could order, set up and deploy your own hardware and software. As long as the service and SLA do what your business needs, you can get a faster return on investment from picking the cloud option. You can scale up', getting more capacity when you need it; and (again, assuming the pricing is set up to allow this) you can scale back down after your busy period when you stop using it, you stop paying for it.

Cloud services have been successful for storage, for hosted services, for applications, but cloud can also work for desktop management. As workers become more mobile, VDI makes more sense; not only does it simplify deploying a desktop system to end users, it also makes it easier to secure both the systems and the data that users are working with. If a desktop PC fails, the user can get access to their virtual system on another PC faster than you can deploy with anything but the most automated systems.

Virtual desktops aren't a new idea. We've been able to offer managed and remote desktop access with Terminal Server for years, but that still means provisioning and managing the servers and packaging and streaming the applications. While there are VDI solutions from all the major players, they're still complex to set up in the first place.

With a cloud service like ThinkGrid you get the advantages of VDI and the convenience of a cloud service. You're paying a monthly fee (49 per user or 490 for a year) that includes Windows XP desktops and Microsoft Office 2007. ThinkGrid also offers hosted Exchange 2007 and SharePoint, or you can integrate the hosted desktops with your existing Active Directory infrastructure. Users can access files on the local machine, your own file servers, file servers hosted by ThinkGrid or shared on ThinkGrid's cloud storage service.

It's a flexible mix; here's how it works in action.

If you used to transferring large files quickly and easily in an office environment, it's only natural that you're going to want the same flexibility on those occasions when you're working from home.

The DGN2000 is part of Netgear's RangeMax series of ADSL routers and with Draft-N wireless transfer speeds and a wide range of security features it's an appealing choice.

Without the luxury of an IT department to assist you at home or in a smaller business it's good news that the interface includes a setup wizard to automatically detect your ADSL settings before prompting you for your ADSL account name and password.

The DGN2000 has a wider range of security options than many similarly priced routers. You can blacklist sites either by exact domain or by keywords, which is handy if you want to prevent users, from browsing Facebook during business hours. The blacklist can be linked to a schedule, so banned sites can be made available during lunch breaks or after office hours. Also useful is the ability to add a single trusted IP address that is allowed to access blocked sites.

Further control over incoming and outgoing traffic is available through Firewall Rules, which allow you to restrict access to specific IP address ranges and a selection of ports used by common services. You can add port ranges of your own, making it easy to block those commonly used for things such as peer-to-peer clients, and rules can be applied to all local machines or only those in a designated address range.

You can configure the router to email hourly, daily or weekly logs to a designated address. If you enable reports, the router can immediately send an alert if it detects a DoS attack, port scan or an attempt to access a blocked site. If you plan on administrating the server remotely, the Advanced settings let you limit remote access to a specific range of IP addresses for added security.

Unlike enterprise class routers that use an isolated Ethernet segment for their DMZ, which prevents machines inside it from accessing anything behind the firewall, the DGN2000's DMZ is not restricted from connecting to the rest of the local network. This means that, although you can enable the DMZ and put a machine in it to handle incoming service requests that don't match any of your existing firewall rules, it really isn't a very good idea to do so except for rare troubleshooting purposes.

The router has a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) ALG (Application Gateway Layer) that enables it to handle voice or video calls from hardware or software VoIP phones and correctly initiate an internet telephony session that directs packets to the correct ports of both client and server. This can avoid VoIP routing problems associated with NAT firewalls but some SIP applications use their own workarounds for NAT problems. In case of such incompatibilities, Netgear has helpfully provided an option to disable SIP ALG in the Advanced WAN Setup options.

Most basic ADSL connections provide a dynamic IP address, which changes, if not every time you reconnect to your ISP, but on a regular basis. This means that, if you host a website locally, the DNS record linking your domain name to your IP address will have to be changed every time your IP address changes. To do this, many routers have built-in support for Dynamic DNS services that can notify the DNS servers that handle the routing of your domain name whenever your IP address changes. Unfortunately, the DGN2000 only supports a single DDNS provider: DynDNS, so if you use a different service you'll have to instead install a software notification client on a computer inside your network.

You'll probably want to use the router as a DHCP server to automatically assign local IP addresses to every device that connects to the network. However, if your office uses a network printer, NAS device or file server, you'll want their addresses to remain static, rather than changing every time they're connected. You can assign fixed IP addresses in the router's Advanced LAN Setup, where you can simply select any device currently connected to the network or manually enter the MAC address and desired IP of any device you wish to assign a static address to.

The DGN2000 enables you to implement MAC filtering through its Wireless Station Access List. When Access Control is enabled, only wireless devices on your trusted list will be able to connect to the router. This is by no means foolproof security but it's an additional line of defence. Of course, you'll need more than this to secure your wireless network against intruders. The router supports 64-bit and 128-bit WEP, WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK encryption, as well as WPA-802.1x, which authenticates connection attempts against a RADIUS server located elsewhere on the LAN.

Its wireless transfer speeds were good. Tests using ours Centrino 2 notebook produced particularly strong results when compared to other wireless routers, like Belkin's similarly priced N+ Wireless ADSL Router. We were particularly impressed by a 22.3Mbit/s transfer speed at a distance of 25m, which means that this router should be powerful enough to provide fast and stable wireless access to users across even large offices.

Like all Certified 802.11 Draft N routers, the DGN2000's wireless radio is set to use only a single channel by default, which limits its speed to 130Mbit/s. We enabled channel bonding by switching to 270Mbit/s mode in the router's Wireless Settings. This produced speeds of 58.6Mbit/s at a distance of 15m when we used a Netgear RangeMax Wireless-N USB adaptor, compared to 51.4Mbit/s with channel-bonding disabled. However, channel-bonding can result in a less stable wireless signal that is more prone to interference. We were unable to get a consistent signal in channel-bonding mode at 25m. Fortunately, the practical speed difference between the two modes is negligible.

The DGN2000 provides enough security for business use and we were pleased by its range of security alert, logging and diagnostic options. However, it lacks a number of features that some businesses will class as essentials, like built-in VPN tunnelling capabilities, IPsec and support for multiple SSIDs and guest logins.

What's more, the absence of Gigabit Ethernet could be a serious problem for businesses that shunt large amounts of data across their local network. This is disappointing given that almost all small enterprise NAS equipment supports 10/100/1000 Ethernet but is sadly typical of an ADSL router. Although almost every cable router on the market has Gigabit, only a handful of more expensive ADSL devices do, like Belkin's N1 Vision, Netgear's DG834N and Billion's more business-oriented BiPAC 7402NX, which also has support for VPN tunnelling and a 3G failover. However, these are more than twice the price of the DGN2000 and neither performed as well in our wireless speed tests over distances of 25m.

Verdict

If affordability, a well designed interface and good wireless performance are your main priorities, then the DGN2000 is a good choice, but if you require more advanced features and Gigabit networking, you should look elsewhere.

Router, ADSL2+ Modem Router, Switch Wireless access point Wired networking: 4x 10/100 Ethernet ports Wireless networking: 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/Draft-n Security: WEP (64-bit, 128-bit), WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK, RADIUS Antennas: 2 external, non-upgradeable Features: Firewall, MAC address filtering, DMZ, UPnP, DHCP server, MAC spoofing, DDNS, port forwarding, WDS support, Wi-Fi Protected Setup Power consumption on: 5W

A survey released today claims IT decision makers are fooling themselves that their organisation's sensitive data is secure.

Nearly 84 per cent of 179 IT decision makers in large (1,000 employees or more), global enterprises believe that all or most of their confidential data is protected.

But the database security controls research report produced by database security vendor Application Security, in conjunction with analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group, said this perception around data security was disconnected from reality.

This is because the same respondents noted they failed major enterprise-wide and industry specific security audits more than 33 per cent of the time, including those to become compliant with the likes of Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), Basel II and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

When questioned about where most of their organisational data resided, just over 55 per cent stated that customer and employee information was housed on databases as opposed to file servers, desktops or email systems.

But 63 per cent of respondents claimed that their organisation's database security depended upon manual processes alone, meaning they're always one step behind attackers, according to Tom Bain, Application Security's director of communications.

"Businesses are being reactionary in their attitudes to data security and not mapping security and compliance requirements closely enough onto their business goals," he said.

"Those automating key process around database access and privileged activity monitoring are already ahead of the game, especially when criminals will target confidential data more in this global economic downturn."

A reliance on manual controls belied the fact that nearly 75 per cent of those surveyed also believed the number of database-focused attacks would increase in 2009, with the majority of respondents stating that insider threats are the most likely.

"These are global enterprises with massive IT organisations and thousands of database applications. All it takes is one insecure application or one unpatched server for a breach," added Bain, in response to the research finding that over 60 per cent of those surveyed admitted they had suffered at least one data breach in the past 12 months already.

Bain concluded: "The survey proves that it's not just about technology, but about taking pre-emptive action and making sure companies have the right people, policies and processes in place too."

Introduced in 2007, AVG's Internet Security SBS Edition aims to deliver a complete network protection solution to small to medium businesses relying on a single server to provide all key services such as file sharing and email. It's based on AVG's Internet Security Network Edition and delivers a wide range of features including anti-virus, anti-spyware and client anti-spam services for local email clients.

The pricing structure is geared up to single server environments as you purchase licenses for the number of clients you want to protect and the price includes protection for one Windows server as well. Along with the standard set of features the latter also includes anti-virus for Exchange and for file servers. The whole shebang can be looked after by the AVG Admin component, which provides centralised management plus deployment tools for the client software, signature updates and configuration settings.

For testing we used a Dell PowerEdge 2900 rack server equipped with 1.86GHz quad-core Xeons and running Windows SBS 2003 along with Exchange Server 2003. Essentially, installation is a three phase process and you start by loading the AVG Admin 8.0 remote administration console which is used to deploy the software to your server and all your workstations. AVG Admin comprises a number of components with the DataCenter providing data storage for workstation configurations, scan settings and so on.

A FireBird database is included as standard but the DataCenter can use existing installations of SQL Server or Oracle. A wizard helps streamline the AVG software deployment and you can use it to scan a network subnet or specify individual IP addresses. However, we did find the scan process an unacceptably lengthy affair with it taking over an hour just to check a single IP subnet. AVG also provides a plethora of manuals and we found the Network Edition the best one to use as the SBS quick start guide lacks cohesion and doesn't explain the various dependencies clearly.

The AVG Exchange component also needed to be installed on our SBS server but this can't be deployed from the console and is a separate manual process. It runs as an Exchange plug-in it which can only be accessed from the Exchange System Manager where you can view message scanning information. There's nothing to do for configuration as it scans all messages in the private and public folders, automatically removes infections and posts notifications in the Windows event log.

Existing users with paid up licenses can upgrade free to this latest version but note that it is not backward compatible. Consequently, workstations running v7.5 must be migrated across from the older console where you create an export file for all selected systems and then import it into the new console. AVG 8.0 is then deployed to them and they then need to be removed from the old database.

The tidy Admin console makes light work of ongoing monitoring and management. Each workstation can be placed in various groups with each one having its own set of scan configurations, which are deployed to all group members. Usefully, any workstations that are not compliant, such as those with out-of-date signature files, will be added to a default group where you can see easily what the problem is as each is shown with the versions installed and older ones will be highlighted.

Group shared settings determine the security stance of each member workstation. Every AVG component is accessible from here so you can switch them on and off or modify them. For example, the anti-spam component can have its spam scoring level modified, the subject tag for spam customised and its engine performance tweaked. For the price, the anti-spam measures look good value and include the option to have spam checked against external MailShell servers as well. In practise it worked well enough although our live tests showed that Outlook's own spam protection was almost as efficient.

AVG has gained a certain notoriety with its LinkScanner component, which checks search engine results for potentially dodgy sites and content by emulating a user clicking on the result. IT PRO reported recently that AVG had made an update available , which stops LinkScanner producing fake traffic, which was causing havoc with web site traffic.

You can switch it off on all clients from the console but we found all the local AVG interfaces on our test clients were flagging this with an error status and a warning that they may not be protected. There is an option in the group shared settings to ignore selected faulty conditions so we ticked LinkScanner from the list and sent out the change. Annoyingly, instead of getting rid of the warning in the client's interface it simply made it more alarmist by adding extra comments advising that the error still existed but that they had chosen to ignore it.

During testing we found the anti-virus scan process quite hungry for resources. A full scan on the system and data volumes on the main SBS server took nearly an hour and during this time it utilised anything from 5 to 35 per cent of CPU resources. One of three scan priorities can be selected using a slider bar but we left it on the default automatic setting for this test. A full scan of on one of our Vista workstations also took ten minutes to complete and its dual 3GHz 5160 Xeons were getting hit for a similar CPU usage during this period.

During testing we found AVG's Internet Security SBS Edition simple enough to use on a day to day basis enabling us to easily manage all our workstation configurations and client updates. The plethora of manuals and the lack of cohesion between them does make for a tedious installation process and the Exchange component is totally separate but there's no denying this package is brimming with features and looks good value as well.

Verdict

The sheer number of features on offer makes this security package look very good value. Once up and running it’s easy enough to monitor and manage but the fragmented documentation doesn’t aid initial installation, we would have preferred better integration with the Exchange anti-virus component and switching client components off leaves them with annoying and unnecessary warning messages.

Processor: 1.2GHz or faster

OS: Client: Windows 2000 and above, Server: Windows Server 2000 and above

Memory: 256MB of RAM

Hard disk: 70MB free hard-disk space

Apple's iPhone is taking more steps toward full business use, as a security firm announced a new system to allow secure remote access to corporate network systems on the popular handset.

Check Point's VPN-1 will enable an encrypted connected that will protect the iPhone's in-transit data. It will also support the L2TP client embedded in all current and future iPhone versions. This will give customers immediate IPsec virtual private network access to corporate servers.

iPhone users will be able to send and receive email and use company resources, including internal web portals, file servers and IP-based corporate applications, without the need for additional software on the device.

With VPN-1 administrators will also be able to take advantage of a shared secret password and certificates for all iPhones on the network with specific login credentials for each end user.

This feature eliminates the need for IT to create separate gateway authentication keys for each device, easing the deployment of iPhones on the network.

Vice president of product management at Check Point Bob Egner said that as more devices are linked up to the corporate network there is an increased need for security.

"With the success of the iPhone, IT departments received multiple requests to connect the new devices to the corporate network," he said.

"The diversity of personal equipment in the work place makes the enforcement of security policies difficult. For the iPhone, Check Point created a simple configuration that provides instant, secure connectivity through VPN-1 gateways."

However, principal analyst at Quocirca Fran Howarth has her doubts about the roles of administrators with VPN-1.

"The use of shared secrets by administrators should absolutely never be allowed. It is something that can be configured using the L2TP/IPsec protocol, but is very dangerous," she explained.

"Essentially, if all administrators use a shared secret, you cannot know who has configured what. If one performs an action that causes a misconfiguration that leads to a security breach, you cannot prove where the leak originated and therefore you are out of compliance with regulations. That is the first security issue. However, IPSec provides good strong encryption," said Howarth.

Yet, despite such concerns, Egner is adamant that security for iPhones is paramount.

"As more iPhones make their way into the network, Check Point VPN-1 ensures the communication between the devices and servers remain secure."

More than half of UK businesses have suffered at least one data breach during the last year, according to a survey released at Infosec 2008 in London.

According to an annual study by The Ponemon Institute and commissioned by PGP Corporation, 60 per cent of businesses suffered at least one data breach over the last 12 months. The results also showed 28 per cent of organisations had suffered two to five breaches.

Businesses were making more efforts to solve the problem with an increased uptake of data encryption. It showed that 15 per cent now had an encryption strategy applied consistently across the workplace, up from nine per cent in 2007.

This was partly due to the fact that there was a shift in the reasons businesses were using encryption. The use of encryption to comply with privacy and data security regulations had increased from 17 per cent in 2007 to 58 per cent in 2008.

"There was a real shift away from reputational damage being the driver for encryption to compliance and regulation," said Jamie Cowper, director of European marketing at PGP Corporation. "Perhaps that's showing that the market is getting more mature."

The trend showed that regulation was now more than ever driving business behaviour. Aspects like the computer misuse act, the data protection act and financial regulations.

"PCI compliance is a good example," said Alan Bentley, regional vice president in EMEA for Lumension Security, who recently partnered with PGP.

"It is centered around the fact that if you are processing credit card data, you have to conform around regulations that are outlined by credit card companies to cover themselves around insurance."

Bentley said that compliance was evolving. There was always law around the way businesses were operating and regulations governing it, but over the last ten years they started to realise that they couldn't function without IT.

"All records are stored electronically," said Bentley. "All of those laws and regulations are now encompassing electronic data transfer."

The report also showed that encryption across multiple applications was growing, with the consistent encryption of laptops, emails, file servers and backup tapes.

Tape backup encryption was the most common, with 13 per cent reporting use most of the time. Laptop encryption was used most of the time in 12 per cent of organisations, up from 10 per cent in 2007.

"The study reaffirms what we've been telling our customers for a long time - a strategic encryption strategy defends an organisation's data more effectively than assembling point encryption products," said Philip Dunkelberger, president and cheif executive of PGP.

"The results show that the most effective enterprises are seeking a platform approach to encryption," he added.

For more Infosec 2008 coverage, see IT PRO's roundup page here.

Enterprise defence is evolving - from perimeter defence to the security of business critical information, according to Oracle in a keynote speech at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

It said organisations were concentrating more on securing business critical information and applications, whereas previously it was more about perimeter defence and defending from the outside - threats like denial of service attacks, spam, spyware and viruses.

"There are three primary security challenges that organisations have today," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of Oracle Server Technologies Development.

"Number one is that businesses are not secure, two is that the cost of protecting information is growing, and three is that the way that you have to secure this information is complex and challenging for many organisations."

He said that business critical information was not currently secure because there were lots of places where it was being stored.

"You have sales contracts that are in your CRM system. You've got financial contracts in your ERP system. You've got hundreds of business critical documents that are scattered on different file servers and document depositories," said Kurian.

"Email retention is now a business critical issue because legally it is seen as a system where email needs to be stored and managed. Many users have access to these depositories, and so by this very nature, it is not secure."

He also said that even if businesses attempted to secure the information, costs were escalating increasing because of new technology and applications coming out as well as the move to self service applications.

Kurian ended the keynote by saying: "We at Oracle have watched the whole enterprise security initiative evolve over the last three, four, five years."

"Fundamentally the nature of what needs to be secured, what security vulnerabilities occur and what causes them has changed," he continued.

Over the next few months, Microsoft will be finalising the code in Windows Server 2008, previously known as Longhorn Server. Getting it right it is critical for Microsoft as this much heralded, much delayed upgrade to Windows Server 2003 is going to be its enterprise computing platform for at least the next four years.

Windows Server 2008 contains many features that were previously shipped as add-ons in the previous server release or which were cut due to problems with time or the underlying code. Features such as virtualisation and Network Access Protection (NAP) are examples of these.

Microsoft has also broken with its GUI love affair and chosen to ship a command line only version of the operating system known as Server Core. There is a whole new scripting engine (Powershell) and the ability to support a much wider range of Unix like commands. Both of these will appeal to the enterprise customer and the security conscious as it reduces the size and attack surface of the operating system.All of the changes and updates to Windows Server 2008 are grouped under three broad headings or pillars by Microsoft - more control, greater flexibility and increased protection. Every version of Windows Server 2008 from the Data Centre Edition to Server Core has specific technology related to these pillars.

Under each of these pillars are key scenarios that Microsoft is targeting. These are:

More ControlServer Management

Web & Applications Platform

Greater FlexibilityServer Virtualisation

Centralised Applications Access

Increased ProtectionSecurity & Policy Enforcement

High Availability

An additional scenario - Branch Office - sits underneath all three pillars.

The full list of new and improved features is extensive and many are likely to be irrelevant to most organisations. The key is trying to identify those features that are likely to have an immediate impact on your data centre. Among the big issues in the datacentre are management, resource utilisation and automation.

New install, new look

From the moment you begin to install Windows Server 2008 you will notice changes. While Windows Server 2003 introduced better wizards for configuring server roles it still left a lot of things hostage to the knowledge of the installer. While not necessarily a bad thing, it does mean that in a world where the installation, creation and deployment of servers are increasingly time critical, that knowledge is not always available.

With Windows Server 2008, a lot more attention has been paid to what is required to install and configure a server for a specific role. The emphasis here is on best practice or at least what Microsoft has determined is best practice.

Consistency and arguably minimalism has been a major push inside the tools. Rather than have a lot of Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-ins that used their own layout, Microsoft has sought to standardise the components. It has also looked to reduce the number of plug-ins in order to make it easier to find the tools you need.

Long overdue is work on explaining dependencies between components. One of the big issues with any operating system is how to reduce what is installed to what is actually needed. By default, a lot of stuff is installed with any operating system that is not required. Removing bits, especially those that increase the security risk, is not simple.

Features dependency is very hard to track. With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft gives you more information on what installing or uninstalling a service or component means. It also makes it easy to add just those things that you need in order to use a particular role.

Overhauling management

Server Manager has been heavily beefed up and as well as the GUI tool, there is now a Server Manager command line tool. Server 2008 contains a lot of best practice guides to not only do initial installation and configuration but ongoing management. The latter is important. At the moment, when you add a role in Windows Server 2003 it gives you a limited set of tasks to complete the installation. With Windows Server 2008 that has been extended to provide more information on the status of the server, what has been installed, what has gone wrong and how to solve it.

This is done through a series of additional health and status views. Anyone who has been supporting Windows Vista will have come across the Windows Problem Reports and Solutions tool. Longhorn has its own version of this which should speed up reporting of problems and locating solutions.

Roles are a critical part of how Microsoft sees the configuration of server instances. File server, print server, Domain Name Server (DNS), Active Directory Domain Control (AD DC) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server are all example of roles. Many of the roles for which server instances are configured, are deployed on multiple servers across the organisation.

In order to ensure consistency, especially in terms of security and for simplified management, Microsoft has added XML based models for each role. These XML models can be exported, shipped to other parts of the organisation and then used to create a new server. Management tools that want to manage the various server roles will also be able to import these XML models.

This is all part of Microsoft's DSI management strategy but there is a catch. Windows Server 2008 XML models were built using the Microsoft System Definition Model (SDM) language which has been around for four years. That product has recently been going through standards accreditation where a number of other big IT companies have joined with Microsoft to promote what is now known as System Modelling Language (SML).

While SDM was backwardly compatible with earlier versions Microsoft will not commit to Windows Server 20080 SDM models being SML complaint. This is a common problem when something moves from a single vendor product to an industry standard. As these models are now locked down, administrators may have to wait for a service pack in order to migrate to SML and take full advantage of these XML models.

Another improvement in the Roles Wizard is that Microsoft has now built in more intelligence to the wizard to ensure that when you add components to a server, they are added in the right order. This might sound obvious but adding IIS and ASP to an existing Windows Server 2003 installation, a common enough task, can cause problems. Do it in the wrong order or have some components installed in the wrong sequence and you need to run command line tools to fix the installation.

With Windows Server 2008 that problem has been dealt with by making components more aware of the correct installation sequence. What Microsoft now needs to do is extend that intelligence into its deployment tools so that anyone building deployable applications can take advantage of it. So far, Microsoft is not prepared to commit to when this will happen.

Event viewer is a very underused tool in most environments. This is mainly due to the limited scope of event viewer, what it captures and what information it provides. Starting with Windows Vista and included in Windows Server 2008 is a much more powerful Event Viewer. It allows you to see events that previously would have not been captured and to drill down into much more detail.

Fortunately it also comes with extensive filtering and reporting options to ensure that you can reduce the events to a manageable subset otherwise you can quickly become overwhelmed by too much information.

Performance management

Alongside Event Viewer are a lot of improvements to Performance Monitor although it can be argued that it still does not go far enough. The interface has been overhauled, it is easier to create valid performance sets but what is still missing is adequate guidance about how to choose the right metrics. In addition, Microsoft is still not getting enough buy-in from corporate developers about building their own metrics that can be plugged into Performance Monitor to give operations a better view on resource usage.

No datacentre can function without automation. This is done through the use of scripting languages. While significant effort has been made by Microsoft in language development for software developers, administrators and operators have been poorly served. The command line is a very fast, very easy way to automate a series of operations. Today administrators rely on CMD.EXE, third party scripting libraries as well as languages such as Visual Basic and Perl. The problem is a lack of consistency between the solutions which creates silos of knowledge.

Windows PowerShell which first shipped at the end of 2006 for Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003 has now been added to Windows Server 2008. It supports existing scripting tools which reduces the need to force administrators to learn a new language. Unlike VB, PowerShell is targeted at those with little or no programming skills. What it does bring from the developer market is its own utilities, a consistent syntax and support for a lot of other, commonly used, languages.

PowerShell is not just being targeted at operating system management. Other Microsoft server teams such as Exchange Server 2007, the new System Centre products and SQL Server 2008 will all be manageable from PowerShell.

These are just a few of the management improvements inside Windows Server 2008. In the next article we will look at what Microsoft means when it talks about virtualisation inside the operating system.

Too many users save their documents in binary formats that are both proprietary and transitory.

The justification for this practice is that the proprietary formats are 'de facto' standards. "De facto they may be," according to Jeremy Allison, a lead developer on the Samba team, "but standards they are not." The Samba server allows Linux and Unix to serve and share files on Windows networks, using Microsoft's SMB/CIFS (Server Message Block/Common Internet File System) protocol. SMB/CIFS is Microsoft's standard implementation that allows communication on PC networks running Microsoft systems. Linux and Samba drive most of the dedicated print and file servers on the market.

SMB/CIFS is described by Allison as "a bizarre hybrid between an open and a proprietary standard." The implementation on Windows deviates widely from the published standard. "Microsoft engineers tend to see the protocol as unique to their own systems", says Allison. "They view the implementation on Windows as correct even where it deviates from the X/Open standard." The Samba team interprets these deviations as bugs, and Allison describes Samba as "bug for bug compatible" with Microsoft. "The spec was a fiction, and made no sense. The complexity of SMB is one of the main reasons that NT was so unstable."

Although SMB/CIFS is a set of networking protocols for exchanging data between computers, the Samba team had the choice of signing an NDA, or reverse engineering the Windows implementation. An NDA was out of the question because Samba is free software and the code is visible. "Samba can exist because Microsoft has to provide backwards compatibility with all their older systems," Allison notes. "We live in their backwards compatibility shadow, which is very long indeed. We can emulate those file-sharing protocols because they can't change the clients that much and break the backend servers," but this solution is far from satisfactory. In laboratory tests, conducted by IT Week labs in October 2003, Samba on Red Hat Linux outperformed Windows Server 2003 as a Windows domain controller by a factor of 2.5, but the success of Samba does not disguise the fact that the absence of an open standard impedes interoperability.

"The SMB protocol is disgusting", says Allison. "It grew like a wart. You can tell. It has a 39-byte header, which might have been important when bytes were important on the wire, but now it's crazy. Eventually, I'd like Samba to go away."

I can't talk your language

Proprietary data formats, published or not, offer little long term data security, and are an unreliable choice for transferring data to prospective clients. A few years from now, the contents of the current word processor document, for instance, may well be hidden from view, and will be messy and expensive to retrieve. Reliance is too often placed on backups and short term solutions, and inevitably the data will be lost and forgotten - and the search will be frustrated by the inability to read the binary format that was the "de facto standard" a few short years before.

Microsoft Office, for instance, currently dominates large sectors of the market for productivity suites, possessing the lion's share of the customer base, but this has only been true for the last ten years or so. Back in the '80s, Lotus 1-2-3 had over 90 per cent of the spreadsheet market and Excel was a clunky no-hoper. WordPerfect was a billion dollar giant, and Word had less than 10 per cent of the market. The subsequent success of Word and Excel probably owes more to the success of DOS and Windows than it does to the inherent virtues of the products themselves.

The purpose of open standards is to promote interoperability between different applications on different operating systems. The effect of proprietary data formats is to encourage reliance on single vendor applications and to discourage the implementation of competitive products. Proprietary data formats give us no assurance of permanence or diversity, force dependence on the continuing popularity of a particular product, and are liable to alteration between different versions of the software. The user is locked into an involuntary upgrade cycle with an individual vendor, with few guarantees of consistency, and has little long term control over the viability of the data. This is the significance of the troubles that Microsoft is facing from the European Commission for uncompetitive practices, the current fuss over Microsoft's attempt to force its Office Open XML (OOXML) office document "standard" on the standards bodies, and the coincidental patent action Microsoft is facing from Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 compression technologies.

Patents, "de facto standards" and trade secrets embedded in file formats are anti-competitive and impede innovation and interoperability. They also go against the spirit of cooperation that has been responsible for the vast advances in information technology during the last half-century.

Knitting the web

Interoperability, or the simple notion that computer systems should produce outputs in common formats which allow one computer to talk to another, has been a goal of computing since the beginning of the electronic era. The prime example of network computing built on open standards is the web. Tim Berners-Lee's concept, first proposed in 1989, was that "a global hypertext space be created in which any network-accessible information could be referred to by a single 'Universal Document Identifier'."

On the server side, there were web pages written in a hypertext markup language (HTML)that followed simple conventions and rules. On the client side, there was a browser that was able to translate HTML code into a readable format. The web of browsable HTML pages was knitted together by hypertext links, which became known as URLs, and everything was connected by TCP/IP and IPV4. As Berners-Lee put it: "The dream behind the web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything."

The web has worked well because the protocols and standards have remained open, universal, consistent and simple, and the players, for the most part, have had to play ball and follow the rules. Every computer can talk to every other computer and share information at a fairly basic level, and we are able to share Berners-Lee's "common information space" as a universal resource. These principles have been applied to the current trend for web Services and Service Oriented Architectures, both of which concepts are entirely dependent on open protocols such as SOAP, XML and WDSL to bridge the divide between pieces of software, to feed data between departments, services and consumers, and find new uses for that data.

In an ideal world, this model should apply to all aspects of the network. But the reality is sometimes different, as illustrated by the $1.52 billion judgement against Microsoft for infringing a patent taken out by Bell Laboratories and held by Alcatel-Lucent on MP3 audio compression technologies. MP3 was acknowledged as a standard by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in 1993, but contains a number of patented technologies owned by a variety of corporate entities, several of which are staking claims on the relative success of the format. If Alcatel-Lucent succeed in their claims against Microsoft we are all the losers, because the "de facto standard" format for compressed music is owned.

1900 was a leap year?

Interoperability is not just about how computers talk to each other over the network, but also their ability to access and share documents, irrespective of the origin of those documents. It has long been recognised that an open standard was desirable for the storage and sharing of office documents to provide continuity, interoperability, choice, access and control for end users. In December 2002, an industry-wide Technical Committee of the OASIS industry consortium was convened to "create an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications." The resulting specification, the OpenDocument format, is cross-platform, 600 pages long, clear and comprehensive, and was submitted to the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) in November 2005. The specification was approved for "release as an ISO and IEC International Standard" in May 2006, and published as an ISO standard in November 2006.

Already, the OpenDocument format has been widely implemented and accepted as the standard format for storing and sharing documents by more than a dozen governments, and has been recommended for adoption by a number of American states. The problem for Microsoft is that the adoption of an open format as a standard threatens Microsoft's grip on the office market. Hence Microsoft has pushed for the adoption of a counter standard, confusingly called Office Open XML (OOXML).

Earlier this year, Microsoft asked for fast track adoption by ISO of the 6000 page OOXML specification. The objections to this procedure can be summarised in a statement from FFII, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure: "OpenXML relies on undisclosed patents, and undisclosed or incomplete licensing terms that make any independent reimplementation impossible or heavily risky. It obliges implementers to reverse-engineer the behaviour of old closed Microsoft applications and formats. It uses non-standard formats for languages and dates, and specifies known bugs, such as treating 1900 as a leap year." So far, fourteen national standards bodies have voiced direct objections to the fast track adoption of what has been described as a "single vendor standard", and others have voiced concerns.

Most office suites will implement OpenDocument as their default format, enabling free and easy exchange of documents. Microsoft Office, which currently dominates the market, can be made compliant via an OpenDocument plugin which may be downloaded from Microsoft's website, but this only partially satisfies the demands of governments and industry for the OpenDocument format to be adopted as an open and ubiquitous format for the storage, retrieval and sharing of documents.

An open standard that enables users to share documents on any operating system on any device, unencumbered by patents and trade secrets, is a necessity for the office of the future. OOXML requires "bug for bug compatibility" with all the past implementations of Microsoft Office and does not fulfil the primary objectives of transparency and portability.

In a polyglot world, where people exchange information in many different languages and dialects, it is important that there are common reference points that make interaction possible. Standards give us the means to talk to one another in a heterogeneous environment, whatever applications, operating systems or computer language we use. "If I can't talk the language of your proprietary format, I can't hear what you say", and conversation becomes impossible.