by Tolga Sakman, Senior VP, Corporate Development and Strategy at Glowpoint

These past few weeks we saw a flurry of publicity around an Internet security consulting firm’s findings on video conferencing and telepresence endpoints’ vulnerability to hackers, as covered by articles in The New York Times and Network World. The sensational aspect was that someone – anyone – could potentially dial into your endpoint, and unbeknownst to you, could be watching you and listening to your conversations, zooming in and reading confidential papers left in a conference room.

Needless to say, the telepresence end user community took notice, and the video-centric blogosphere lit up with viewpoints that put varying degrees of the blame on the equipment vendors (they shipped the systems with the auto-answer feature on), the A/V integrators (they didn’t setup a gatekeeper), the equipment installers (they simply don’t understand security), or even the end users (just because they’re always easy to blame).

I have been in the video industry for some time now, and the question of security comes up time and again. Let’s clarify one thing: the industry has developed and implemented high levels of encryption that satisfy the most security-conscious users, including the US Department of Defense. So once a video call is on, it cannot be “phished” / listened in / watched, whether it’s a point to point or multipoint call. Read more...

The 2011 global network managed services market is worth $12 billion according to ABI Research-- and is set to reach $14bn in 2012, before growing to $25bn in 2017. 

“Outsourcing is a win-win situation,” the analyst says. “Network operators reduce OPEX, improve service quality, and increase revenues.  And network equipment vendors earn higher margins on services than on hardware and software...”

ABI mentions the "new paradigm," Managed Services 2.0 (MS 2.0), where operators team up with managed services providers to transform their business and increase Read more...

RealVNC announces the latest versions of its VNC Enterprise Edition (an enterprise-class, cross-platform VNC solution)and VNC Viewer Plus. 

VNC Enterprise edition supports the widest OS range yet-- with version 4.6 adding support for Windows 7 SP1, SUSE Linux 10-11, Fedora 11-13, Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10. It also offers increased end-to-end connection security (via 256-bit AES encryption), an improved UI and multiple file/folder transfer abilities. 

Meanwhile VNC Viewer Plus 1.2 connects to a VNC Server embedded directly to supported computers carying Read more...

UK-based managed service provider SysFix Group offers customers a free small business server-- if they have 3 computers under a SysFix support contract. 

Similar to a HaaS service, the offer provides businesses with a free server for internal file sharing complete with IDS, HTTP proxy, traffic priority and an online backup option. 

The server will be available for clients for the duration of their IT contracts-- and could also be put under long-term support contracts, akin to HaaS deals. 

Go UK IT Support Company Offers Free Server