Archive for the ‘Guest Contributors’ Category

The Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Workplace, Part 2

March 27th, 2013
Posted by: admin

 

GUEST BLOG

By Daniel Dimov
InfoSec Institute

In Part I of this two-part blog, I explored the advantages of restricting social media access for employees.  In this second part, we explore the disadvantages.

Disadvantages of restricting social media access for employees

There are seven main disadvantages of restricting social media access for employees; namely, the (1) decrease in morale of the employees, (2) missed opportunities for free advertising, (3) missed opportunities for team building, (4) missed opportunities for skill building, (5) missed opportunities for internal and external communication, (6) missed opportunities for networking, and (7) the attraction of new employees becomes more difficult.

Decreasing the morale of the employees

The main disadvantage of restricting social media access for employees is that the employees may feel oppressed by the employer. This may affect employee morale and satisfaction from their work. In this regard, Ann Cavoukian, a privacy commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario, noted that blocking of social networks in the workplace is a mistake. She also said that “It’s like waving the proverbial red flag in front of your staff – it’s almost a challenge to them to find a way around it.”

Missed opportunities for free advertising

In most cases, employees add to their social network profile the name of the companies for which they work for. Thus, each of their friends can see the name of the company. Taking into account that, in 2012, the average number of Facebook friends of U.S users at 18-24 years of age was 429, an employer with 10 workers who restricts social network access will lose thousands of views of his/her company name and logo.

Missed opportunities for team building

Social networks allow employees to know more about each other. It may lead to a better cooperation between team members which, in turn, will improve the team’s performance. Social media also gives team members the opportunity to communicate on a personal level. This may bring them closer together. Moreover, social networks may be used for organizing team building events. For example, Facebook has a comprehensive system for event scheduling. The organizers of events in Facebook may not only post information, including audio and video content, about the event, but may also see the users who are going to attend the meeting or not.

Missed opportunities for skill building

In the past five years, there has been a steady increase in the users of social networks. As a result, effective skills in using social networks are a must for anyone willing to practice certain professions, such as PR and Marketing. Allowing the employees to use social networks may serve as a valuable training for them.

Missed opportunities for internal and external communication

Communication between employees, and between the company and its potential customers, is very important to the success of any business. Social networks provide excellent opportunities for internal and external communication because it is more interactive than traditional means of communication, such as email and phone.

Missed opportunities for networking

Business networking allows the employees of a company to know what other companies are doing and obtain information about recent developments in the company’s field of activity. A business network can be very well supplemented by an online social network. Through an online social network, the people who have met in person will be able to receive more information about each other. The most prominent business social network is LinkedIn.

Making the attraction of new employees more difficult

Many potential new employees may get to know that the company restricts social media access for employees. Some of them may not apply for a position at the company because they may consider the restriction of the access to social networks as a form of oppression.

Conclusion

The restriction of social networks at the workplace has both advantages and disadvantages. The decrease in the productivity of employees seems to be an often cited disadvantage. However, a recent study has indicated that employees who have access to social networks may be more productive than employees in companies that block access. While it is debatable whether or not the restriction of social networks increases the productivity of a company, it is certain that the use of social networks may be a source of malicious code. Consequently, the restriction of the use of social networks at the workplace may be considered as a preventive information security measure. It should be added that doing so may not only limit the risk of getting viruses, but also protect the employees from identity theft. As many know, the results of an identity theft can be catastrophic for both individuals and companies.

The restriction of social networks has several disadvantages as well. One of the most important disadvantages is that some employees may feel oppressed as a result of the restriction of social networks. The decreased morale of the employees may then negatively affect their productivity. Besides, by not allowing employees to use social networks, the employer may deprive himself of free advertising that employees would otherwise make using social networks. Moreover, the employer will also miss opportunities for team building, training the staff in skills related to social networks, developing internal and external communication, and networking. Last but not the least, the restriction of social networks may have a negative impact on attracting new employees.

Daniel Dimov is a security researcher for InfoSec Institute.  The InfoSec Institute is a provider of information security training specializing in PMP certification classes.

 

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

1 Comment »

The Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Workplace, Part 1

March 25th, 2013
Posted by: admin

 

GUEST BLOG

By Daniel Dimov
InfoSec Institute

Employees using social networks such as Facebook and Google+ may not only waste a lot of their working time, but also spread viruses on their work computers. Due to this, some employers have implemented security systems designed to closely monitor or restrict, as needed, an employee’s access and use of social networks. The purpose of this blog is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of restricting social media access for employees.

social media in workplace

Restricting social media access in the workplace has four main advantages but it also carries some disadvantages.

Advantages of restricting social media access for employees

The restriction of social media access for employees has four advantages; namely, it (1) increases employee productivity of, (2) decreases the risk of getting malicious software, (3) increases the availability of bandwidth, and (4) prevents identity theft. These four advantages are discussed below.

Increasing the productivity of employees

Surfing in social networks may waste a lot of an employee’s time. A Proskauer International Labor & Employment Group survey conducted in 2011 indicated that 43 percent of businesses using social media have dealt with employees’ misuse of social networks, and approximately a third of all businesses have taken disciplinary action against employees concerning this. It is also worth mentioning that, on the basis of an analysis of the web traffic of 1,636 companies, the firewall supplier Palo Alto found out that there was an increase in employees’ use of Facebook to run web apps and games. The wasted time spent there can be otherwise used for completing tasks assigned by the employer or for educational purposes. This is why implementing security systems that restrict access to social media may improve the productivity of the employees.

It should be noted, however, that a study conducted at the University of Melbourne found out that employees with access to social networks were actually more productive than employees in companies that block access. Dr. Brent Coker, a researcher involved in the study, noted that employees who can reward themselves between the completion of one task and the start of another with a visit to their Facebook or MySpace page are more motivated than the workers who do not use social networks. The study found out that workers using social networks get 9 percent more accomplished than their blocked counterparts. Consequently, it is doubtful whether the restriction of social networks should be considered as an advantage.

It is important to note that the study of Dr. Coker should not be interpreted as stating that the use of social networks cannot decrease the productivity of the employees. Social networks may increase productivity only if they are used moderately. As Dr. Coker said, “Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days’ work, and as a result, increased productivity.”

Decreasing the risk of malicious software

Often, social networks are a place where users can easily exchange files, some of which may contain viruses. In this regard, it should be noted that, after analyzing the web traffic of 5,500 PC users in 20 nations, firewall maker Barracuda Networks discovered that one of every 60 Facebook posts and one of every 100 Twitter tweets contained malicious code. The press regularly publishes reports noting the appearance of new types of Facebook viruses.

For example, a new computer virus labeled Steckt.Evl has been recently discovered by Trend Micro. This virus spreads via the chat window on Facebook. In particular, a message from a friend appears in the pop-up window that is used for person-to-person chat. The message contains a link to an innocent-looking website. If the victim installs the virus on his computer, it instantly disables and removes the existing anti-virus software. Then, it spreads itself by opening chat windows on the Facebook friends of the infected user. (For additional information on malware, check out the ceh training course offered by InfoSec institute, an IT security training company.)

Increasing the availability of bandwidth

Social media may generate a lot of internal traffic. This is because the use of social media websites is often accompanied by the use of video sharing websites, such as YouTube. In this connection, Patrick Wood, senior director of product management for Exinda, a provider of WAN optimization and application acceleration products based in the US, stated that, “While it varies from organization to organization, we have seen instances where as much as 60 percent or more of network resources are being consumed with things like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.”

Preventing identity theft

Social networks can be used by criminals to steal identities. For instance, photo- and video-sharing websites like Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube may provide a lot of information about their users. Moreover, such social networks may contain information about the family and the friends of the users.

The next section of this article will discuss the disadvantages of social media in the workplace and draw a conclusion on the subject.

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

1 Comment »

10 Dangerous Risks to Your Server Security

February 27th, 2013
Posted by: admin

GUEST BLOG

By Sarah Morris
KirkpatrickPrice

Security.  That’s usually the first thing on the minds of those in the IT world.  To keep up with changing technologies, we are constantly changing and improving our security standards, so that we can remain one step ahead of malicious attackers in defending our confidential information.

Royce Howard, of Global Knowledge, offers some tips about the 10 most dangerous risks to your server.  These tips are important to remember when developing and securing your IT infrastructure.

Physical Attacks. Make sure no one has physical access to your server.  Server rooms should be kept secure, and sensitive data should be encrypted.

Password Policies. Create complex passwords and change passwords every 90 days.

Privileged Accounts and Social Engineering. Vulnerabilities can be mitigated by removing administrator rights.

Email Attacks. Beware of phishing emails.  Never open an email from an untrusted source and avoid clicking on links in emails.

Worms. Worms are self-replicating programs that copy themselves from machine to machine, using up computer processing time and bandwidth.

Increasingly Malicious Malware. Scheduling regular scans can help detect and prevent against malicious malware and spyware.

Unauthorized Network Access. Network Access Control and Network Access Protection can help control network access of a computer host while using a set of protocols to define and implement a security policy.

Not Updating Patches. Automatic updating of patches can help avoid threats.

3rd-Party Applications. Check security platforms of 3rd-party vendors and applications from independent developers and manage exploits.

The Human Factor. People are the weakest link in security initiatives.  Develop strong policies and procedures so that people are prepared.

At KirkpatrickPrice, we have years of experience in information assurance by performing assessments, audits, and tests that strengthen information security controls.  Contact us at info@kirkpatrickprice.com for more information on how we can help you in your compliance efforts.

Sarah Morris is a technical writer for KirkpatrickPrice, a provider of world-class audit services. Visit www.kirkpatrickprice.com.

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

No Comments »

Top 10 Security Risks Found by Your Auditor

February 21st, 2013
Posted by: admin

GUEST BLOG

By Sarah Morris
KirkpatrickPrice

At KirkpatrickPrice, we strive to provide the proper assurance and resources to help our clients maintain security within their organization.  Recently, we held a client webinar focused on the “Top Ten Security Risks” that your auditor finds during your auditing process.  Below is a summary of the most common risks that we find.

1.      No Formal Policies and Procedures

Formal guidelines of policies and procedures help provide your employees with clarity of what’s expected of them.  They define the accountability for each employee and also establish necessary training. Information security policies are mandated by the FTC Safeguards Rule, PCI Data Security Standards, and the HIPAA Security Rule. This means they are mandatory.

2.      Misconfigurations

Standards need to be applied consistently. Organizations should utilize benchmark configuration standards from a recognized entity such as: Center for Internet Security (CIS), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), SysAdmin Audit Network Security (SANS) Institute, and the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST).

3.      No Formal Risk Assessment

Assessment should cover assets that are critical to your enterprise to continue business operations for the following: hardware, software, human resources, and processes (automated or manual). Some important things to consider when thinking about risk assessment are the threats to your assets as well as the likelihood of vulnerability being compromised. Threats can be both internal (employees or third party contractors or partners) as well as external (natural events or social engineering). Developing a proper risk assessment can help to mitigate potential risks that you face.

4.      Undefined Incident Response

It is always important to have clear instructions on reporting procedures when determining incident response. It is suggested to build a culture within your work environment that encourages reporting of all incidents the moment they present themselves.

5.      Lack of Disaster Planning

Disaster planning is important in a situation where written plans were available for others to follow in the event that key personnel are not available. A business impact analysis can help quantify what level of redundancy is required for disaster planning. Proactive arrangements should be made to care for the staff and to communicate with third parties. Walkthroughs and training scenarios can benefit organizations so employees are properly prepared in the event of a disaster.

6.      Lack of Testing

The concept of testing applies to all areas of your security. If your security is not tested, there is no way to determine whether or not vulnerabilities are present.

7.      Insecure Code

Developing secure coding is something we find lots of companies struggling with. To develop secure coding, training must be implemented as well as specific development standards and quality assurance.

8.      Lack of Monitoring/Audit Trails

Log Harvesting, parsing, and alerting methods must be determined to efficiently deal with massive event logs. The responsibility for review must be formally assigned as part of daily operations.  Audit trails should be stored in such a way that system administrators cannot modify without alerting someone with and oversight role.

9.      Data Leakage

Some things we often forget are where the data is located and how long should it be retained? How is encryption implemented and verified? How is access to data granted and audited?  These things are all very important, and if not corrected, can keep you from complying with federal and industry standards and regulations.

10.  Lack of Training

A lack of training can prove to be a striking blow to the security of your organization. Employers should recognize the importance of properly training all employees on safety and security best practices. Standards and guidelines should be clearly set and determined in each organization. Several training opportunities are offered through KirkpatrickPrice to properly train you and your company on the basics of security awareness, awareness for managers, awareness for IT professionals, and awareness for credit card handling.

Determining your individual risks is the first step toward the mitigation process.  Maximum security of your sensitive information is KirkpatrickPrice’s number one priority.

If you’re ready to get started with your assurance process, you’ve come to the right place. We’re ready to help. Let’s work together.

Sarah Morris is a technical writer for KirkpatrickPrice, a provider of world-class audit services. Visit www.kirkpatrickprice.com.

 

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

No Comments »

Why Is Compliance in the Cloud Important?

May 7th, 2012
Posted by: Donna Hemmert

GUEST BLOG

By Joseph Kirkpatrick
Managing Partner, KirkpatrickPrice

The world’s digital infrastructure is a constantly growing industry.  This is why the use of data centers has become exceedingly popular.  What is the scary thing about collecting and storing highly sensitive information?  The risk of a security breach.

When a company utilizes a data center, such as for cloud computing and hosting, it’s important that they are aware of the security of their organization’s data, especially because data centers often times outsource to other vendors.  What does this mean to you?  This means they may also have access to your data.  This is why cloud hosting providers must be in compliance with all applicable privacy laws when it comes to keeping data secure during the collection, storage and use of your sensitive information.

How is compliance measured?  Compliance is measured by how well organizations meet the data security standards and regulations that are meant to help you keep your information confidential and secure.  The use of data centers is very resourceful as long as you’re sure your service provider is complying with these industry accepted security standards and regulations.  Some of the companies that comply with SSAE 16, PCI Data Security Standards, and Trust Services Principles and Criteria have already taken these steps and have been audited by third parties, such as Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) and Quality Security Assessors (QSAs).

So, what steps should you be taking?  Start taking your organization’s security into consideration and ensure compliance in the cloud.

(more…)

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

1 Comment »

Setting Performance and Latency Expectations for International Hosted SharePoint Deployments

January 5th, 2012
Posted by: admin

SharePoint Latency

GUEST BLOG

By Michael V. Velotta
Founder, Intelishift Technologies

Last month, a prospective client asked a very good question related to the performance of his hosted SharePoint deployment.

The hosted SharePoint environment that he currently has deployed across North America, Western Europe and India is very slow.  Latency is an issue – 20 seconds to upload a file.  He wanted to know how he can minimize latency with a hosted SharePoint solution.  In short, he was concerned about performance.

Latency between Washington and Western Europe ranges between 80 milliseconds (ms) and 140 ms, depending on the country and the carriers within the country.  From Western Europe to Chicago, I’ll add 25 ms to that number.

Latency between Washington and India is 250 ms to 280 ms.  The wildcard here, however, is inside India.  India is heavily oversubscribed and a bad carrier could skyrocket the latency to north of 500 ms.  We’ve had a little more success from Fremont (CA) to India and can get the latency down to 200 ms; then we have the in-country latency issue again.

The holy grail (this is what large SharePoint shops do) is to have SharePoint servers at a datacenter “near” their offices: one in Washington, one in India and maybe one in Greece.  Then the SharePoint servers can sync up behind the scenes (or nightly).  The user’s latency problem goes away and the SharePoint servers are left to keep in sync without impacting the user’s experience.

What is your experience with this?  I’d be interested in your comments.

Michael V. Velotta is a technologist and entrepreneur.  He is the founder of Intelishift Technologies, a strategic data center solutions consultant for a diverse set of clients, including high-end technology firms, Fortune 500 companies, non-profits and government agencies.

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

7 Comments »

Web Design and Development: Best Practices in Production, Staging and Development for Web-Based Companies

December 12th, 2011
Posted by: admin

GUEST BLOG

By Gaige B. Paulsen
Board of Advisors, AIS Network

For companies that primarily do business through their public-facing Internet site, best practices for production, staging and development are imperative.  For any Web-based business, whether e-commerce or presence-based, it is essential that content and systems be updated to remain competitive, which means change and that means risk.

Web-based businesses wrestle with complexity on a daily basis.  Typically, there are multiple developers involved, different development timelines, and numerous components being built simultaneously, tiered systems to synchronize for updates, etc.  One misstep in the development and deployment cycle has the potential to cost the business millions of dollars.

In my various capacities, I have spent years refining best practices for production, staging and development environments.  Normal best practices these days are for the following:

  • A serious version control system (VCS) or distributed version control system (DVCS).  Depending on the architecture, I’m still using   Perforce, which is expensive, but über-reliable.  Many folks like GIT, Subversion, and Mercurial.
  • Serious issue management to track platform development and bug fixes/handle actionable team communication, etc. I recommend   JIRA.
  • Development environments that run on developers’ personal machines in a sandbox or VM, or if substantially small in terms of the number of processes, just in the OS (if they’re running desktop/laptop Linux).   Development environments should be a little version of production.
  • New development that is branched in the VCS and not let into the mainline branch until complete.   Branches can be team-centered or developer-centered depending on how many developers are working on the particular piece of code.   But a modern VCS makes it easy to branch early and merge back in only when development is complete.
  • Staging is essential and should be gate-kept.  Development should be promoted to staging through the VCS.   This way, the act of promotion provides a dry-run for the move from stage to production.
  • Scripted tests for Web-based platforms.   I suggest looking at   Sauce Labs for this, or roll-your-own using   Selenium.
  1. Staging is generally used as a dry run for a move to production and final testing.   Nothing should go to production that doesn’t succeed in stage.
  2. Stage should have a lazy copy of the entire environment if possible (full user base, etc.), but shouldn’t directly touch anything that could cause user confusion (sending email to users, etc.).   It can be quite difficult to get a reliable stage environment set up, especially if you need multiple servers to do it (DB, File, GUI, etc.).   But, the more complex the real environment, the more complex the stage environment and the more important it is to get staging working correctly.
  3. Stage is also where you perform human testing on things that can’t be scripted.   There shouldn’t be need for a lot of this on a Web app, but there are some things that are hard to do in an automated fashion (i.e., does the site look “bad”?).
  • Unit tests for internal functionality need to be baked into the development process.   High-volume organizations tend to make automated running of the 3 major test types (integration, unit, and scripted GUI). As a safeguard, a trigger in the check-in process is important so that code that violates testing cannot be checked into the code base at all and instead remains on the developer’s machine.
  • If you can do it, Continuous Integration is a boon to keep things from getting too far afield.  Code compilations, environment synchronization, and spawning automated testing when checks occur are all great tools and can be done very inexpensively with   Jenkins.
  • Work on production is considered to be a complete fail.   The only reason to do it is catastrophic failure of something that does not happen in the stage and development environments and is a sign that the stage is an inadequate representation of production.   Usually, this would only be to change configuration parameters.
  1. If production breaks roll back to the previous version of the site.   If that fails, then you have no choice but to work on production.
  2. Note that even for catastrophic situations, changing code directly on the production servers is just as likely to make things worse if they haven’t passed the rest of the testing in stage.
  • You can do a lot of debugging on the production site, where debugging is gathering information about something that isn’t working correctly.   You shouldn’t, however, use the production site as a test bed or development environment.
  • If your tests don’t do things that you wouldn’t want done in the production environment (adding and removing users and files, changing parameters, simulating failures, etc.), then you don’t have sufficiently detailed tests.

This is the tip of the iceberg, but before anybody tells you that these methods are too overbearing for a small team, I would suggest that’s a short-sighted view.

At my company, we practice this in a team of small developers for mobile, desktop, and Web apps.   The result is that, in over two years, we have not suffered data loss or corruption in the Web site, which handles our registration, e-commerce, etc. Additionally, we have caught many things that would have been problematic for users if they’d been released.  Similarly, regression testing in mobile and desktop apps had kept us from releasing versions of the software that don’t work on all of the supported platforms and has saved us a lot of customer difficulties.

I hope this is helpful, and I invite you to comment.  Good luck.

Gaige B. Paulsen is a technologist and entrepreneur.  He is currently founder and president of ClueTrust, makers of Cartographica and CartoMobile, Geospatial products for MacOS X and iOS.

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

2 Comments »

Microsoft SharePoint For Small Businesses

May 3rd, 2011
Posted by: admin

Guest Blog

By Steven Nichols, Mission Critical Systems

Many small businesses have found huge gains in using SharePoint to address specific business problems with measurable results. In many cases, the free version of the software (WSS) is sufficient to deliver huge value, and the cost is consequently very reasonable for the tightest of budgets.

The key, of course, is to take an iterative approach and ensure that each version addresses a specific and pressing business problem. Here are 5 typical small business SharePoint solutions.

Information Distribution
Many small businesses have documents and information that is common to all employees or to groups of employees. Make this content “Self-service” by posting it to the intranet site.

  • Human Resources documents – employee manuals, vacation request forms, employee contact lists, emergency contact lists etc.
  • Client files – current contracts, contact information, meeting notes, expense forms etc.
  • Operations files – reports, accounting files, procedures, vendor contact lists etc.

Document Management
Some document management systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require hours of training to understand. SharePoint is a great solution for small businesses that need document management, but don’t care to spend and arm and a leg.

  • Versioning controls – Keep straight who made what changes and when. Roll back to previous versions and undo changes.
  • Document Security – Limit access to certain documents (for instance HR Documents) and monitor who has opened or changed a document.
  • Document Collaboration – Organize the process of multiple people contributing to the same document.
  • Document approval – Send documents for review or approval from other users.

Project Management
Most project management programs are designed for large projects with lots of interworking parts. Small businesses usually have the opposite, many small projects and no way to organize diverse work. If 10 people are working on 20 projects, then who is doing what and when are they doing it?

Though Microsoft SharePoint isn’t a good fit to manage a large project for a large business, it does very well with small projects. The program can generate simple Gant charts, create collaborative virtual workspaces, organize calendars (which integrate with Microsoft Outlook), and in general, keep track of all of the balls in the air.

Collaboration
Microsoft SharePoint is probably best known as collaboration software. Users can share ideas on meetings, documents, events, contacts, and really any content that fits in the site.

In a small business, each individual employee is proportionally much more important to the company, and typically fills multiple rolls. If that employee leaves for any reason, the loss of their knowledge can be devastating. Microsoft SharePoint is a way for those individuals to share their experience with the rest of the company.

Wikis, bulletined boards, and discussion pages keep employees sharing ideas, collaborating, and working together.

Client Portals
The value of a SharePoint site can easily be extended to a key vendor, supplier, or client. Collaborate, manage projects, manage documents, and distribute reports and other information through a Microsoft SharePoint site.

If the site allows access to users outside of your network, certain compliancy, security, and policy considerations have to be made, but in limited application, this can be a very effective way to work with the other companies and individuals that are most important to the business finding success.

Small Businesses can be more efficient and effective with SharePoint
SharePoint allows a small business to quickly and inexpensively develop a fully functioning intranet site with great functionality, design, and structure. Microsoft SharePoint can be a very valuable application for small businesses.

Mission Critical Systems is an experienced Microsoft SharePoint development and training company that helps small businesses get the most out of the software. We believe SharePoint should be used to solve business problems and make companies more effective and profitable. Please contact us for more information.

http://www.mcstech.net/sharepoint-training-customization.cfm

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

3 Comments »

Why You Should Care About SharePoint 2010 Administration

April 28th, 2011
Posted by: admin

Guest Blog

SharePoint 2010 is a very complex system… not only for a developer or consultant. It is also very complex for an administrator and regardless of your role as a developer or consultant in your company you need to understand the aspects of SharePoint administration.

And here is why:

As a developer your implementation is required to work not only in your environment but also in your customers environment. Since every customers infrastructure is different in the way it is organized your code might not work. Because of that a replication of your customers environment can save you lots of time and money because you will find errors during the implementation phase of your project instead of the going live phase. Of course it will keep you stress free and doesn’t impact the image of you and your employer.

As a consultant you need to understand the impacts of a SharePoint deployment. SharePoint is always deployed within an existing infrastructure. There aren’t only interfaces between existing servers and system… additionally you need to think about the administrator himself. He is the person who will be responsible for planning, deployment and maintenance. Bringing people with the right knowledge at the right time together is most important.

In order to get such an understanding an experienced SharePoint developer or consultant can be helpful. Otherwise a book about SharePoint 2010 administration is a good start and there are quite some books out there by Wrox, Microsoft Press, McGraw-Hill Osborne Media or Sybex. Usually a book for beginners is accurate since it doesn’t only tell you about administration it also tells you about the things behind features and functionality. Understanding the use case is a central part of the beginners book. If you are already familiar with the background of SharePoint 2010 you can switch to a professional book with a lot more detailed scenarios.

For a successful deployment and implementation of SharePoint 2010 it is the most important thing to get an understanding of basic administration. How do you deploy SharePoint? Which person does it affect? At which time do you need someone? Without thinking about that problems will occur and usually it’s too late or it requires more strength to revise it.

Choosing the right SharePoint book is essential since they cover content in a different way and in different depth.

Markus Ramirez is an independent SharePoint developer mainly in Switzerland but also in Germany and Austria. As a trainer he tries to sensitize people to take a look behind things in order to understand them.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

TAGS:

CATEGORIES:

1 Comment »