Taking a software solution to market

The challenges of successfully taking a software solution to market An interview with Jerry Hutter,CEO of CFO Strategies, Inc.

Audits to Protect the Food Supply Chain Only Sensible Solution According to TraceGains

TraceGains asserts that today the annual financial audit is taken for granted by any company that is trying to establish credibility, whether publicly-traded or not. The financial audit is very much a fixture in today’s corporate world; less than four short generations ago, it was viewed as a revolutionary innovation.

 

The mission at TraceGains (www.TraceGains.com) is to protect the brand of food and beverage clients by eliminating problems before product is shipped to the customer.   If a problem does occur this unique solution can minimize the brand damage by using patented recall trace-back and track-forward technologies. A recall alert can be initiated within minutes, reducing potentially bad news to one news cycle, and saving customers millions of dollars in long-term brand rehabilitation costs. The Recall Detective analyzes critical risk factors, going beyond material movement tracking; the Recall Minimizer provides instant multiple scenarios for reduced brand damage. 

 

Corporate disasters have expanded the audit role beyond basic financial reports to include compliance updates on several corporate operational areas. Without third-party audits, stakeholders rely solely upon status updates from management to understand the state of a company. A traceability review offers similar reassurances. Expansions to previous audit protocols, such as the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are usually a reaction to newly enacted government regulations or the most recent corporate misstep.

 

Recent events strongly suggest that it is now time to expand the external audit function to include an external review of a company’s traceability system.  This does not require over-reaching governmental regulation.  A decade of installing traceability systems for customers has shown us that only when a real-time process monitoring system is installed, and operational dashboards are provided to senior and mid-managers showing deviation from key operational business rules, will management perceptions synchronize more closely with reality.

 

Even after process-monitoring traceability systems have been installed, an external review is needed to make sure that any gaps are plugged. A traceability review is a stand-alone audit (following a formally prescribed set of procedures conducted by auditors or third-party companies that are traceability specialists.)  This is the only way that company directors, as well as existing and prospective shareholders, have the information they need to fully evaluate the company’s traceability risk.

 

During the traceability review, specialists need to analyze factors such as: (1) product movement across the company’s different legal entities, (2) identity preservation across various internal process transformations, (3) methods of collecting traceability information, (4) the type of information being collected with respect to the required reporting regulations, (5) the methods the company uses to retrieve regulatory information in the event of a tainted goods episode, (6) company process and business rule compliance monitoring systems, and (7) the company’s recall history.

 

 

TraceGains Inc.

www.tracegains.com

Marc Simony, Director of Marketing

traceability@tracegains.com

(303)682-9898

 

Hardware Firewall Routers: The Small Business Solution

For small to medium sized businesses, a hardware firewall router is an excellent solution for keeping your computer network safe and secure. Business owners and network IT administrators agree that the implementation of a hardware firewall router in their networks will save time, money, and (most importantly) it will save you from the hassle of dealing with the fallout from a hacker’s intrusion or a virus’ damage.

Operating on multiple levels simultaneously, hardware firewall routers utilize firewall, UTM, wireless and VPN technologies integrated to provide you with the ultimate in security. A hardware firewall is a physical component, just like your computer towers, monitors and keyboards. Its primary function is to act as a filter between the outside internet and your business network, but it does so much more.

The ultimate threat management component comprises of anti-virus, anti-spyware, content filtering and intrusion prevention, all controlled from one point. Readily protecting thousands of computers, as opposed to a software program which can only protect the computer it is installed upon, is one of the reasons why hardware firewall routers are so cost effective.

The savings in time and labor costs are another; small business owners especially can appreciate the fact that there are not enough hours in the day. The convenience of updating and controlling firewall settings for every computer on your network simultaneously from one place makes a hardware firewall the most appealing choice when it comes to security. Your network IT administrator will also appreciate having a few less things on his or her to do list.

Wireless and Virtual Private Networking capabilities allow enterprise businesses more freedom in setting up and expanding their networks, while keeping sensitive information secure. The advanced, comprehensive reporting system translates data on network utilization and user activity into easy to read reports, simplifying the task of monitoring network activity, while maintaining compliance with regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.

With these features, and more, the all inclusiveness of the capabilities of hardware network routers make them the obvious choice of enterprise businesses and network IT administrators for keeping their network secure and threat free.

Why Businesses need a Solution for Outlook Email Archiving

Ranging from business compliance to the performance of Outlook itself there are many reasons why in today’s world a company needs to look for a successful Outlook email archiving solution. There are a number of issues that businesses face with regards to email archiving and compliance below this article focuses on the more critical issues and some of the solutions to these problems. Whilst this article is focusing predominantly on businesses that use the Outlook and Microsoft Exchange systems much of what is discussed will be relevant to all businesses, particularly in the US and the UK.

Research has shown that the average worker can spend up to 90 minutes of every workday managing their mailboxes and performing archiving and data management tasks. This leads to loss of productivity to the entire business. Aside from the productivity issues most Exchange servers are only set to backup information once per day, meaning that any emails that have been deleted through the course of a day are not archived this can also be said to the auto archiving feature that Outlook has.  Also due to the way that the auto-archive feature works, finding a specific email that has been archived is incredibly laborious and time consuming.

There are several issues that need to be looked at with regard to the need for a good email archiving solution, these issues are outlined below.

Data flow over time

Before looking at any of the legal ramifications or performance problems of not having a good email archiving solutions it is important to first look at the points which create these issues.

Even smaller companies will generate massive amounts of emails over a long period of time.  This is caused by storage of emails and attachments, however part of the problem stems from having all versions of these emails stored for example: an email is sent out with a 1 MB attachment to every employee (30 people). Every reply to that email is also now being stored along with the original email text. Whilst the email sizes are not of any real significance at this point, over a period of a year with multiple instances of this example the storage required will add up, especially with taking into account the attachment being saved also.

Auto Archiving

Many businesses feel that they have no problems with archiving as they have the Outlook auto archiving in place for their company emails. This unfortunately is not as helpful as it may at first seem to be.  As mentioned earlier, any emails deleted prior to the auto-archive taking place are not archived.  This in itself provides massive issues with compliance which will be covered later. 

A common problem shared by all companies that rely on the Outlook auto archive tool is initially the build up of emails and more specifically the overall deterioration of performance from the Microsoft Exchange servers as a consequence of a large email volume.  As the Exchange servers fill with archived emails the system begins to slow and takes longer to perform each backup. The servers filling also increase the chance of a critical systems failure.

Outlook saves all email data as .pst files when it archives the old emails. Many .pst files will be created over time as bulk archives are created over a period of time. How often this happens depends on the specific settings a company has organised themselves and how many emails the company has sent and received within specifically set parameters. These parameters would be determined by the company’s individual settings.  The more data stored on a .pst file the slower the servers and Outlook will function for their various daily tasks such as a backup.

A more pressing concern with the way that Outlook auto archive functions however is that bulk email packages are saved as .pst files, specifically a maximum storage per file of 20 GB. 20 GB of space can store thousands of emails; if a .pst file is corrupted the information on every one of those emails can potentially be lost forever.  Aside from the difficulty for an individual to navigate these files to locate specific emails when called upon to do so, if the files are lost this can provide very costly issues with regard to compliance.

Compliance

The issues of compliance covers multiple different points that will affect companies to different degrees depending on what countries they are in or do business with. That said all of these points are worth understanding as the laws are quickly changing world wide to cover the issues raised by emails being regarded as legal documents. Whilst the specifics below are predominantly for the UK, other countries will have similar laws with different specifics laid out.

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (UK)

The public have the right to ask for copies of emails from public authorities. The authorities then have 20 days in which to provide the copies.

Data Protection Act

Individuals have the right to request for copies of personal data held about them by an authority or company. The authority or company then has a 40 day time frame for compliance; failure to comply can lead to heavy fines.

Employment Tribunals

The highest possible award at a tribunal for unfair dismissal in the UK is £66,200. With more communication in the places of work happening via email, companies need to ensure that they have easy access to all possible evidence available to protect themselves

Court Actions

A wronged party has 6 years from the date that a contract has been breached or a civil wrong committed to bring a court action. With emails potentially being used by either party it is necessary for a company or organisation to be able to access any information required that was stored within those previous 6 years. This means it is paramount that an organisation has the best possible email archiving system available to them.  The system the organisation uses can make the difference between winning and losing a court action.  Furthermore inability to provide requested evidence can result in heavy fines depending on the nature of the court action, thus having the ability to store and easily find the information could avoid these fines before a court action ever reaches a court.

 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

This is a piece of US legislation also affects any company outside of the US which is listed on NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, including subsidiaries of US companies that are themselves based outside of the US. The Act states that any transactional data meet the requirement of the Act.  Furthermore the Act sates over several sections that an organisation’s IT department is obligated to be able to provide any and all electronic data pertinent to a potential case during the discovery period in the event of a lawsuit or investigation.  Simply put an organisation must be able to provide copies of any electronic data as requested during the discovery period, the period prior to a case where evidence is collected to prepare for the legal proceeding, to a legal action.  Failure to provide the evidence in the discovery period results in heavy fines which are weighted against the nature of the legal proceeding.

The Solution

Most of the problems outlined above are not new and have been occurring for years, however with the exponential increase in the use of computers and by extension email these problems have begun to be far more severe and obvious.  The only possible solution is for a company to utilise an email archiving solution. The qualities one should look for in an email archiving solution, as outlined by the problems listed above, are as follows:

Can function independently from the Outlook’s auto archive facility Allows for settings to be standardised with capacity for users to create and archive new email folders with ease A program that does not rely on storing emails in bulk but instead saves each email individually so as to avoid the issues of file corruption. However still provides the functionality to archive files at the same time A solution that allows for customised archiving structures allowing companies to tailor how and where the files are saved. A solution which allows for deletion upon archiving of the emails from Outlook to again avoid high email volume effecting Microsoft Exchange servers Intuitive design to negate the need for training or complications prior to use of the solution. A solution that saves emails in a format that is readable independently of Outlook

It is important that all these criteria be met at the very least when looking for a solution to email archiving with Outlook to avoid all of the problems listed above. In the end avoiding these problems could save your business time and money and avoid the issue of decreased productivity from staff spending too much time organising mailboxes.

MsgSave is an Outlook add-in designed to tackle all of the afore mentioned issues and many more. MsgSave is offered in 3 different versions to meet your specific needs. MsgSave is a product of Sarcophagus a leader in IT business solutions.

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