When I started my career in IT, it began with programming, hardware building, terminal installation and computer cabling. Because computers were new to business, especially small businesses they usually all required the need to have their buildings or dwelling cabled for terminals or PC’s. Lets not forget Printers. Printer cable had be hand made and were specific per printer, computer and or application. There were many ways to do cabling, all of them sweaty, smelly and difficult. This is not an exaggeration when it came to wiring homes that were turned into businesses. The floors were hard wood and were built before computers and PC’s were thought of. Installing cable in homes required large drills with a long bit. The bit needed to be about about a foot and a half to cover all walls and floors in a home. I found buildings with multi-floors the easiest and the messiest. You can run the cable in a drop down ceiling but this was also messy. Opening up the ceiling enabled you to enjoy eating fiberglass, dust and any rat droppings you get lucky enough to find. But throwing a cable was very easy and you could run cabling in the floors from holes or drop them down inside a wall. Dropping a cable in the wall is called fishing. Over time you become an expert fisherman at digging cables out of the wall. Now any new building of the last twenty years comes built with conduit and usually pre-cable. For very large building projects we would sub-contract with a structured cabling contractor to have more bodies running cable, especially if it was a rush job. Those were the days of great fun. Every once in a while I dabble back at a little fishing.

If you are one of the many people that have a small business you know how important it is to take care of it. You watch over your business during the day but you also need to watch over it at night. I think that a security system acts as a third eye for me when I am not there. There are so many different types of small business security systems available today that there is one for any type of business. We have a company down the road from our business that has installed a security system for the first time since he opened many years ago. He said the sign he had out in his front window was stolen so he felt that was a sign to actually install a real security system and not just buy a sign! All of this time I thought that he really had one. I feel that it is just good business to protect the business that we work so hard for from people who would take from it. I do not mind helping people out but the thought of someone stealing from me does not settle with me. Knowing that I have an alarm on my business I can feel comfortable when I lock it up and drive away.

It seems like everyday there is a new internet issue were thousands of users credit card information is lost or stolen. This is a very scary thing to think with the pre-cation that the credit card companies take that this ever happens. I have always be of the mind set to work with tested and secure technology that is not on the latest in cutting edge tech, my company has been more secure and I have had less headaches over the many years. Over time the use of passwords and hard key was used to make sure the right computer was access the correct network. This has become replaced with things like IP address, a Smart Card and a RSA SecurID token to create safety with secure logins. The latest technology, that is old school technology of the Two Factor Authentication. This tokenless technology  utilizing the use of the phone number call back to verify who you are when you are trying to login into the computer system. This is brilliant at using old school technology of using shadow engraving on money to stop forgers from using high-tech printers to print money. I know Google have used this type of account checking before. The future looks good for the two-factor authentication services that will utilized on enterprises worldwide, what was once old is new again