Lauren Simonds

Technology is so entwined with our lives that today it’s hard to imagine running a successful business without it. In fact, it’s nearly as immutable as death and taxes. While small companies understand that fact, many don’t want to deal with complex and confusing technologies, so they outsource the responsibility to a value-added reseller, or […]

Protecting your business network against hackers and crackers interested in stealing critical data, remains at the top of the to-do list of many small businesses. Experts agree that a multi-layered approach is the best defense, i.e., using more than one solution to plug a variety of security holes. For example, adding a hardware firewall on […]

Small retailers across the country know the pain that is inputting point-of-sale data into an accounting program. Entering sales, inventory and customer information — by hand — from one application to another is a black hole into which valuable time disappears at an alarming rate. What’s more, it often results in duplicated effort and an […]

Why does it have to be so hard — and expensive — to get secure e-mail for your company? A system that keeps out viruses and other e-mail-borne threats and lets you and your employees collaborate using shared calendars and access e-mail over the Internet. Is that asking too much? Not according to Mirapoint, a […]

Software-as-service — one of the hottest tech trends aimed at small business — shows no sign of cooling down as major players such as Microsoft and Cisco begin offering hosted services. Big as they are, though, they’re still relatively new to the game, whereas smaller companies, like Smart Online, have been providing small businesses with […]

Working outside the confines of a standard business office adds a certain element of risk when it comes to your computer. In the face of bumps, falls, the weather and other environmental hazards, a notebook PC’s life expectancy seems precarious at best, which is why Panasonic offers a line of rugged and semi-rugged notebooks. “Ruggedized” […]

Unified Threat Management, or UTM, sounds more like a function of Homeland Security than anything a small business might need, but that term represents the best way to keep your networks and e-mail safe from the wide and ever-growing barrage of electronic threats like viruses, spam, malware, spyware, adware and phishing. ServGate, a Milpitas, Calif.-based […]

Anyone who’s ever had to manage a project that involves diverse tasks, different phases and multiple people (not to mention multiple personalities) and bring it in on time and on budget knows it’s a major challenge. Some might say it feels a lot like herding cats. Many small businesses manage a variety of projects that […]

As e-mail and Internet threats evolve, it only makes sense that the companies dedicated to fighting them change and grow, too. MX Logicis a Denver, Colorado-based company that traditionally focuses on e-mail defense, which primarily consists of spam, viruses and malicious content. However, as more forms of communications move over the Internet, and as Internet […]

Microsoft has released a bulletin for a Windows patch labeled critical. The security bulletin addresses three vulnerabilities, each affecting the graphics-rendering engine in Windows 2000, Windows XP SP1/SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 SP1. The bulletin’s number is MS05-053. The main culprit behind this security bulletin is a critical vulnerability in the Windows […]

As a small business owner, one of the most sensible choices you can make to safeguard your company’s critical data is to keep an exact copy at a remote location. That way, should the unthinkable happen and your building burns or floods or your server simply crashes (like that’s ever simple, right?), you can restore […]

The good news, when it comes to printers, is that you’ve never had more choices. The bad news, however, is that you’ve never had more choices. Today’s small businesses have a huge variety of printers from which to choose, including inkjets, lasers and multifunction machines — and that just covers the major categories. Dig deeper […]