And, if you’re not completely sure then you have a security problem as we just learned today that the FTC has notified over 100 companies of serious data breaches. “But wait!” you say, “We’re just a small (200? 100? 50? 5? – what really is small?) company. This is only a concern for the big guys.” Well, if you’ll notice, while there were very large companies and government agencies on the list,  the smallest company that was notified had 8 employees. The blackhats of the world have realized because of technology that small no longer means unimportant. In fact, today it’s the small companies that are the dynamic game changers and these companies now create and manage just as important and confidential data as their multi-thousand employee brethren.

Ok, so now you’re concerned you have a problem but what do you do about it. You already have anti-virus  installed on your systems and you thought you had a good firewall but you’re in the <machining, art supply, hotel, training, motion picture, medical, education, trucking> business. If you spend all your time monitoring, managing, maintaining and babysitting these users you’ll never get anything done.

You know the drumbeat by now, so I’m just going to go ahead and say it: Multi-Layered, Multi-Layered, Multi-Layered! First, you need to shut down your network to only allow the protocols your users need. Generally, this is only HTTP:80 and HTTPS:443 and possibly Secure POP:995 or Secure IMAPS:993. Other than that, all outbound data to and from users should be stopped. The only other data holes you should have are for very specific applications that should be mapped to specific systems. For example, if you have your mail server in house, you should ONLY be relaying from your mail server. Do not leave your network open to inbound or outbound SMTP.

Next, you need cloud based protection on your two primary streams of data: Email (SMTP) and Web (HTTP, HTTPS).  Email security and filtering protects that most vulnerable data stream your users interact with every minute of the day. And don’t forget, you need inbound email protection AND outbound email protection. The ‘mean and nasties’ come through the inbound and all your precious data leaks out the outbound. You need to protect both.

Now, with your network looking pretty good you still have the P2P problem. When many P2P apps can’t find another way out, they are going to drop back to those standard ports you must have open for your users; 80 and 443. This means, just like email, you NEED cloud based web security and filtering on your inbound and outbound web traffic which assures you those critical ports you can’t close are monitored and scanned.

The beauty of cloud-based security solutions for these applications is that they’re just about as close to “set-it and forget-it” as you get in the security world. Because they’re cloud based you have a security wall that is monitored, managed, updated, maintained and enhanced in real-time by a team of security professionals. Which leads me to the obvious conclusion (ok, can you hear me warming up for the pitch here?) that if you manage a network of users no matter how big or how small, you need Mailprotector’s Emal Security and Compliance solution as well as our Web Security and Filtering.

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Lets hope the performance of the Security Essentials Pack is better than OneCare. While OneCare might have been protecting your computer, it also performed so poorly that you could definitely tell that it was there. Security software like this should be lightweight enough that you can set it up and forget that it is even there and it just does its job.

Microsoft is also doing the right thing with the Security Essentials Pack by allowing it to tap into the potential of cloud-base services. Most security software applications are stuck in the days of periodically downloading updated virus definitions. Microsoft Security Essentials will share information with the cloud-based Microsoft Dynamic Signature Service which should allow the software to always be aware of the latest threats as well as whitelist information in order to prevent false positives. They are not the first antivirus software to utilize the cloud but it is certainly a welcomed addition to any security software that relies on being up-to-date in order to be fully effective.

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3. Faster Startup
Every morning I walk into work, push the power button on my PC, wait 20 seconds or so, enter my username and password, and proceed to hit the office dining area to snag a cup of coffee (that’s not as good as what I just drank at home). I don’t perform this daily ritual because I just can’t get enough of the Folgers, but simply because Vista routinely takes anywhere between 3-5 minutes to connect to the network, load my essential programs, and get itself awake and firing on all cylinders. Windows 7 is a good bit faster. The preview release boots about 20% faster, and some expect the boot up time to be even more efficient when Windows 7 hits the shelves this fall. This may seem like a marginal improvement, but I’m used to Vista’s turtle-like pace so I’ll take any speed improvements I can get.

2. Snappy Dual Window Comparison
I work on the web development team for the email security company, Mailprotector. Frequently I find myself optimizing websites for cross-browser compatibility, and in the past it’s always been a pain to drag window handles to the right size in order to show two windows on one screen with each taking up 50% width and 100% height. It seems like an awful lot of work for something that should be simple, and thankfully Microsoft agrees.

With Windows 7 arranging two windows in this type of configuration is a snap… quite literally. All you have to do is drag one window until it hits the right side, drag the other window to the left side, and watch in awe as they snap beautifully into place with 100% height and 50% width exactly how they should. No more messing around with cumbersome drag handles.

1. The Jumplist
Vista’s taskbar is little more than XP’s taskbar with a minor facelift. Sure the thumbnail that appears on mouseover when Aero is enabled is neat (albeit uselessly small and really it’s nothing more than eyecandy), but the actions you can take on tabs for running programs themselves are pretty much exactly like they were in XP. Such is not the case with Windows 7. Enter the “Jumplist”.

With the Jumplist you can right-click a program in the taskbar and instantly see a list recently taken actions and recently viewed files associated with that program.

The Jumplist lets you quickly view recently (or frequently) taken actions or recently opened files for each program that’s pinned to the taskbar. Now THIS is handy.

In most programs I use on a daily basis, this will eliminate some hassle for me. For instance, when using Photoshop, I generally have to open the program and go to File\Open Recent>recentfile.psd to open something that I’ve been recently working on. With the Jumplist all you need to do is right-click a program in the taskbar (running or not) and a list of files you’ve been working on will show above the icon. From there just click the file or action you want to use and you’re good to go. It’s not going to save you hours of time, but it’s a solid and sensible feature that will allow you to jump around between files more quickly.

Overall I’m really stoked about the new features that Windows 7 is bringing to PC users. I think it’s clear to see that Microsoft seems to be getting it right this time out as Windows 7 is proving to be sleek, fast, and powerful. I eagerly anticipate the day when I can take Vista off life-support and reformat my system with an OS that was thoughtfully designed around the concept of improving user experience and task efficiency. October can’t come soon enough.

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Bing’s interface and search results looks promising as well. I’ve been trying to use it for all of my searching today and the results have been good for a wide variety of searches. And while this is probably not a Google killer, it definitely has more potential than any of Google’s other competitors.

One of the unique features of Bing that I like is the ability to hover over a line with an orange dot that appears to the right side of the listing your mouse is over and get more text for the description of the listing. Sometimes it seems that the couple lines of text you typically get in the description just isn’t enough and this addresses that.

If you want to try it out and see what a Bing search results page look like, give this search a try.

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