The Attorney's Office Tools
DSL connection, but a practice with several attorneys and a number of other employees may need something like a 3.0 megabits per second (mbps) bound T1 line. If you are hosting your own website or email, you may
even consider using two different Internet connections at the same time for the sake of uptime or the need for increased speed. Getting back to the main theme of this article, this is why I always say that identifying the needs of a practice is the most important step in deploying technology successfully.
Security Identity and data theft as well as hacking are becoming
increasingly common. Furthermore, spam emails, viruses, spyware, and malware infest the public Internet. Te government mandates in many industries that certain precautions are taken to ensure that data is protected for good reason.
But the people on the Internet that want to cause harm However, I still tend to recommend most people use
wired connections due to signal interference and the overall lower reliability of wireless. Wireless can, and should be, used in tandem with the Ethernet cables already in place. Wireless access can also be secured, so access to the network can be limited to only authorized users. As you are probably well aware, Internet access is
constantly evolving. Not too long ago, dial up was often the only practical Internet connection for most home and business users. Now, you can purchase unlimited Internet access with a number of high speed technologies that are several times faster than the fastest dial up connection. What technology your business decides to use (DSL,
Cable, FIOS, T1, cellular, satellite) is based on a number of factors. Te biggest one is geography. Unfortunately, two different offices in two different parts of the same city will likely have different types of Internet access available to them at different prices. Furthermore, 6 months from now there could very well be more connections available at different prices and speeds if a company like Verizon decides to branch out to a certain location. Another much more important factor is need. Depending
on how much communication you are doing with the outside world, your IT professional will probably recommend a different kind of connection. A solo attorney with an assistant can probably get by with a 768 kilobits per second (kbps)
30 Trial Reporter / Spring 2010
to others are not doing so indiscriminately. Tey look for loopholes and shortcuts in order to get what they want in the easiest possible way. Tink of a bank robber like a computer hacker. Imagine if that bank robber had his choice of which bank to stick up based on knowing which one lacks the necessary security to stop him. Tat is how most hackers operate. Why make the job more difficult than it needs to be? Fortunately, when a network is adequately secured, the odds of serious damage are almost completely eliminated. At my company, we have a data center that has several very fast Internet connections, terabytes of data, and a number of types of communication with the outside world. Yet we have never faced a serious security issue that we could not address promptly and effectively because we have put the right technology in place to protect our business. While the scale may be different, your firm can also have the same comfort level regarding your network security with a reasonable investment. Network security needs to be approached from two
directions. Te first is from intrusion from the outside, such as someone trying to break into your server to steal data or cause harm. In order to protect against this, a firewall is needed. Essentially, a firewall sits between your office and the rest of the public Internet and allows good traffic to come in and blocks bad traffic (like an intruder). Firewalls also help manage remote connections, whether it is another office, your home, or anywhere else you might connect to your main location remotely from like an airport, coffee shop, etc. Firewalls typically have other security features built into them as well. However, I often tell my customers not to rely completely on these other features from your primary firewall,because they often lack robustness.
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