The Fire Phone, scheduled to be available the end of July from AT&T, tracks your face for “sort of 3D,” sports an amazing camera, can recognize almost everything it sees or hears, but what about features for your company?

You will have the ability to view MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. The phone provides Outlook and uses your Exchange server for messages, contacts, calendar, tasks, etc. The device supports encryption and is supposed to support VPN connectivity soon. Then, of course, there are so many apps available in Amazon’s own Fire Phone Apps in Amazon’s store. See details by googling: “Fire Phone for Work site:amazon.com” or click here: Fire Phone for Work

For IT Pros, they will be happy that the phone supports their ability to remote-wipe a lost or stolen phone and control the installation of applications. A notable tool is Amazon’s Whispercast.

Whispercast is a stable platform that schools and businesses use already. It provides an easy interface for your IT professionals to manage these devices including limiting Wi-Fi connectivity and provide content restriction (such as blocking access to social media sites). IT Pros can configure users into “groups,” with each group receiving different content and restrictions.

Soon other MDM (Mobile Device Management) tools will add robust features that your IT Pros need in order to enhance security and productivity for devices using your network.

Is there a Fire Phone in your future? Can your IT manage the BYOD features? At least you know it can “do business.”

Please post your comments below…

The post Fire Phone at Work appeared first on Foster Institute.

When an executive asks their own IT professionals or service providers for advice, the executive wonders if the IT professional has some kind of “agenda.”

When executives talk to their peers and get advice on technology, keep in mind that they may not fully understand how the same technology they tried can help or hurt your organization’s situation.

A qualified independent third party has no “agenda” other than to help you. Most IT professionals, and even IT vendors, appreciate your choosing to seek advice from the qualified third party since then the IT professional doesn’t feel they have to “convince” you of necessary changes.

Most of the time top-level executives have 20/20 hindsight after security event or IT failure affects an organization. I hear questions like, “Why weren’t the IT professionals prepared—why didn’t they do something to protect us from something like this from happening?” Often the executives are very angry at their IT professionals. Wise ones know to go look in the mirror to see who to blame.

The post Executives, Be in the Know! appeared first on Foster Institute.

You already know that the return address is useless. The sender information on email messages can be spoofed—meaning you don’t know the real sender. Have you ever received an email message from yourself?

The prank e-mail message was sent as a carbon copy to exactly 590 email addresses. 57 of those addresses were duplicates. 31 of them use AOL—the same source of the prank email—but that really doesn’t mean much.

Using blind carbon copy (BCC) instead of carbon copy (CC) makes it more difficult for the prankster to learn the 590 email addresses.

So, none of this is useful? How do you track down the results? The answer is headers and log files. Every email message contains headers which usually contain useful information that can sometimes pinpoint the sender and the email program they were using to send the email. Your IT professional can show you how to view the headers.

This blog is dedicated to executives and owners, so it is okay if you skip the following technical information:

To find headers in Outlook 2010, open the email message. Now, click on the File tab, make sure Info is selected in the left-hand column. Then, in the right-hand column of the menu, at the very bottom, is the Properties choice.

Click on Properties and notice the box at the bottom called Internet Headers. You can read the info right there if you want to. I find the small box constraining and elect to click in the box, choose CTRL-A, CTRL-C, then open notepad, and use CTRL-V in Notepad. Now you can expand Notepad to have a better look.

The received: from lines need to be examined and placed in order. Use the time stamps and/or from and by text to get the right order. Now, you are able to see the source unless someone has changed the headers. If you want to learn even more about this process, there is a good write-up at
www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/29/31457/0519.

In case the headers only lead you part of the way, perhaps to the perimeter of an organization, then often the log files (if they are being recorded) inside of an organization will allow identification of the culprit. Log files can be configured to store a great deal of information such as what data goes where in a network, what users are doing, and connections to the Internet.

Contact the last person on the list entity you found in the header and see if they can provide you with more information. Some entities have a privacy policy that won’t allow them to help you from there, while some organizations are more than happy to help you track down the culprit. The other organization will track the date/time and the chronologically first source information you provide them to hopefully find the actual source.

In the case of the organization in this article, the source was tracked down to a specific computer that is owned by the organization.

And just suppose you do catch the prankster. Have you thought of what you’ll do then?

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Trace a prank email to the source appeared first on Foster Institute.

Another use for an additional portable monitor is during visits and meetings outside of the office. You can have one screen for you to look at and another that you show to your customers and prospects.

The monitors connect to a USB port on your laptop. I have two of the Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421 14″ LCD monitors. Alternative monitors on the market that I’ve not tried include the AOC E1649FWU 16″ USB-Powered Portable LED Monitor and also the Toshiba 14-inch USB Ultra-portable Mobile LCD Monitor (No, I do not receive any kind of compensation for recommending products. Options are provided to you in order to save you time searching so that you can have choices when you determine what works best for you).

Best wishes as you and your team members become even more productive!

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Increase productivity while traveling appeared first on Foster Institute.

When you subscribe to your payroll system, where does the perimeter of “inside vs. outside” go? What if your entire ERP is hosted in the cloud?

As more and more companies move into the cloud, defining what is inside and outside your organization becomes very difficult to describe.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Interesting cloud computing side effect appeared first on Foster Institute.

Would you exchange your executive desk for a podium to work? I doubt it, so why do you accept a single screen to use on your computer?

Ask someone you know with multiple monitors, “If someone offered you $1,000 to go back to one monitor for one year, would you do it?” Chances are very good they will answer, “No way!”

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post How to connect multiple monitors to your computer appeared first on Foster Institute.

• Computer and information systems managers
  • 2009 salary: $113,720—44% gain
• Computer software engineers, systems software
  • 2009 salary: $93,470—34% gain
• Network and computer systems administrators
  • 2009 salary: $67,710—32% gain
• Computer systems analysts
  • 2009 salary: $77,080—30% gain
• Computer software engineers, applications
  • 2009 salary: $87,480—29% gain

I appreciate Alan Hague for sending the link to the slide show of the top 50 rising salaries.
Click here to watch the slide show.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Some salaries for IT professionals appeared first on Foster Institute.

When asked, it turns out that IT professionals have the attitude, “Well, they asked me to do it, so I did it. Why should I have to tell them it is done? Why can’t they just trust me?”

This is indeed a trust issue. IT expects the user or executive to trust that it is done, and the executive or user trusts IT to tell them when it is done. For an IT professional not to report back reduces or even destroys the trust the executives have in them.

When the user or executive has to ask if the task was complete, the IT professional feels untrusted.

I hope you have the IT professionals who always report back that a task is complete. If so, then they clearly understand trust is something you earn. If they have a habit of not getting back to people to tell them a task is completed, instruct them to do everyone a favor and start saying when they finish! You will break the cycle and start increasing trust right away. This will help you and your organization as much as it helps them!

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post IT professionals–tell us when you finish appeared first on Foster Institute.

This company, like many, had separate networks for e-commerce and for administration. The IT professional had been telling his CEO that the organization was “compliant” based on the security of the office administration network—not the IT systems that actually process, store, and transmit credit card information.  He pretended to be shocked that he needed to secure the computers and network that actually handle the credit card data.

As IT professionals, it is important to know what we are talking about when we answer a CEO’s question. Especially if a wrong answer could lead to the CEO facing fines, lawsuits, and even the failure of a business. If we don’t know, the proper response is, “I do not know but I will find out.”

As a C-level executive, business owner, and as a manager, it is important to understand that, unfortunately, some IT professionals will tell you that you are compliant with specific regulations when they really don’t know.

I want to extend my gratitude to the IT professionals who do act responsibly!

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Can you trust your IT professional’s answer? appeared first on Foster Institute.

Fortunately for the CEO, after our conversation, he decided not to terminate the IT professional and keep him on board. The CEO will arrange management training for the IT professional.

In my experience, not all of the very best IT professionals are also excellent leaders and managers. Expecting all IT professionals to also be good at management reminds me a little bit of the flying cars, or amphibious vehicles. Those vehicles are pretty good at both, but not excellent at either.

Although I have met a few, should we expect IT professionals to be good managers? Many of the C-level executives I speak to feel this is a reasonable expectation. Please post your comments on this blog.

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