Purchase Reliable Servers
MPC Computers' NetFRAME
William Brandle of Mariposa, California, can't say enough positive things about MPC Computers' (formerly MicronPC) NetFRAME server line. He says, "MPC has stood out above the rest. I have MPC departmental servers that have been running 24 × 7 × 365 without a problem for 9 years. All others have been replaced for various reasons including support frustrations. With MPC, support is super quick, and the support team is very knowledgeable and easy to understand. MPC's support isn't outsourced to another country; all support is in the United States. Just recently, I made it our policy that we purchase only MPC servers. With the trimming down of our IT department to a skeleton crew, MPC's quality computers have paid off big for my company. I have been so impressed with MPC systems' quality and support that I just had to share it with others."
Reader William Brandle
Mariposa, California
Product NetFRAME
Company MPC Computers
Contact 888-208-8014,
www.mpccorp.com
Implement Web Filtering
ContentWatch ContentProtect Professional
Zed Al-Safar of Bloomington, Illinois, provides high praise for ContentWatch's ContentProtect Professional. He says, "We're a restaurant chain, and unlike a typical corporate network, we have standalone computers that communicate to us through the Internet rather than a LAN. We have six users that work on the same machine, so profiles aren't implemented. We needed a good solution to implement Web filtering and have found ContentProtect very simple to use and install. The product has a Web interface, sends email alerts, and the price is right. The product provides excellent reports that you can access from any browser connected to the Internet. We love ContentProtect and have had no more Web-abuse-related firings."
ContentProtect blocks sites that don't meet your organization's standards and instantly sends you email notifications when employees inappropriately use the Internet. Pricing is $29.99.
Reader Zed Al-Safar
Bloomington, Illinois
Product ContentProtect Professional
Company ContentWatch
Contact 866-765-7233, www.contentwatch.com
Control Your Network's Message Content
Nemx Software SecurExchange
Eric Mockler of Akron, Ohio, just started using Nemx Software's SecurExchange. He has found the software has made a difference in helping him do his job. He says, "I'm getting 95 percent basic spam-filtering capability out of the box. The features that make this software stand out are Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Exchange 2000 Server, and Exchange Server 5.5 support; the capability to install it directly on the Exchange server as a connector; the ability to use Realtime Blackhole List databases; header, subject, and content filters; and antivirus capability."
SecurExchange features real-time content message scanning to detect and prevent content violations before they occur; concept-based scanning to improve the solution's effectiveness and to help you define and enforce your acceptable content policies; an automatic message archive by user, by user group, or based on message content; detailed statistical reporting including the number of incoming and outgoing messages, the number of messages that triggered an event or action, which rules are being triggered and how many times; and "Zero-hour" antivirus defense to stop viruses before a signature file is created.
Reader Eric Mockler
Akron, Ohio
Product SecurExchange
Company Nemx Software
Contact 613-831-2010, www.nemx.com
Diagnose and Solve Performance Problems
Quest Software's Quest Spotlight on Windows
Quest Software's Quest Spotlight on Windows provides an interface into your Windows architecture so that you can see and respond to problems before they become a major concern. From the Spotlight home page, you can view the front-end directors, cache, disk I/O, and transaction statistics to pinpoint and alleviate problem areas as they occur. You can drill down from any of these views to receive in-depth charts of underlying statistics.
Charlie Airey of Dublin, Ireland, recommends Spotlight on Windows because he has found it to be an excellent solution. He says, "We originally started looking at Spotlight on Windows to troubleshoot an application performance issue on a Citrix server, but we were so impressed with it that we purchased all of the extra Spotlight components (i.e., Active Directory, SQL Server, Exchange). The product looks a bit 'Star Trek' but is very easy to use, and more importantly, has highlighted potential issues and bottlenecks as well as helped us to solve our performance problems."
Reader Charlie Airey
Dublin, Ireland
Product Quest Spotlight on Windows
Company Quest Software
Contact 949-754-8000, www.quest.com
Report Inherited ACLs
SomarSoft's DumpSec
Heather Oakes of Kansas City, Missouri, uses SomarSoft's DumpSec, a security-auditing program. She provides high praise for the product. She says, "We provide IT support for small businesses. Often, access control lists get out of control and I'm asked to perform an audit of who has access to what. DumpSec does a nice job of consolidating that information and outputting it in a way I can easily share with the customer. In my opinion, this free product does a better job than similar products you have to pay for."
DumpSec runs on Windows 2000 and Windows NT systems and dumps the permissions and audit settings for the file system, registry, printers, and shares in a readable format. You'll become aware of the holes in system security. DumpSec also dumps user, group, and replication information.
Reader Heather Oakes
Kansas City, Missouri
Product DumpSec
Company SomarSoft
Contact www.somarsoft.com
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