Going Digital & Going Green: Evaluating Energy Consumption of Laptops / Desktops and other Networking / IT Devices

Power tariffs in India are still on a higher side and do demand a certain attention from the owner's end so that their power bills do not skyrocket ! With processing power of CPUs on the rise alongside the need of more and more IT gadgets like projectors, LCDs, Wi-Fi routers, Firewalls, Network Switches etc etc , which are switched ON 24x7, it is a good idea to have a first hand idea of their power consumption as well. 

Lets quickly run through why a Small & Medium Enterprise would bother about Energy consumption and energy conservation by IT hardware / gadgets:

SME vulnerability to data leak & security breach: Why Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking is getting important even for smaller organizations

In this post we shall discuss why even smaller organizations need to be careful when it comes to data security and why someone would be interested (read ethical hacker!) doing so.

1. Easy availability of Tools for Ethical Hacking & Network Penetration

A simple google search will give tools for Wi-Fi Hacking

Itis not new - China employees thousands of personnels who are continuously spoofing and monitoring networks and corporate / government servers around the world. But who are these people and what are their qualifications. These are young talented teenagers or would be teenagers who are just playing around with tools on the internet and have an affinity to technology. No formal degree or education is needed. All you need a simple laptop/desktop with a dedicated internet connection. Thats all! There are videos on Youtube to train on Ethical Hacking. Freely available tools and websites which will scan IP addresses for open ports.

Disaster Management: Backing up critical data in multiple locations / PCs and Why cloud backup may NOT be the best solution

While protecting data has always been a key priority for bigger organizations, in today's data-centric and highly analytical world, it is imperative that even smaller companies take definitive steps to protect their data. Any theft or loss of data may result it days to weeks of double data entry work and cause loss of essential man-hours - thereby increasing the operating costs. 

Multiple options are available ranging from low cost to paid cloud / private cloud based solutions depending the size and criticality of data. Before we begin it is always important to segregate your data into different levels of criticality so it will be easier to manage the backup solutions and invest in them.

Our Clients: SMEs in Nagpur Go-Digital and Adopt Technology across Business Verticals

Over the past few years, OCTAVE Business Management Services has helped many organizations go digital and adopt technology to fulfill their critical gaps and needs. Below are some companies and organizations of repute in Central India.

Some of our esteemed Clients in Central India (Nagpur)

Cybersecurity: How to define basic firewall rules in routers to allow Email Only Access to Desktop/Laptop Clients?

Today, the market is flooded with thousands of variants of home / small office routers and wi-fi devices. These devices again come with multiple settings that need to be taken care of while setting up for the first time. Doing this can be intimidating and time consuming. However at the same time it is important to understand the security features these gateways / routers offer so we can ourselves configure them or ask our ISP / IT support person to do the same which require minimum understanding and effort. Lets take a look at two simple ways:

How to Auto-Start & Shutdown PCs / Laptops? - Part 2 (Wake on LAN using Mobiles & Gateway Routers)

As discussed in our previous post, we can also use WoL (Wake on LAN) Facility to boot the PCs remotely outside our local subnet (read internet!) and also from our mobile phones.

1) Wake On LAN - Sending Magic Packet via SmartPhone:

If your mobile phone is in the same Wi-Fi network as the PC, then its pretty much about downloading any suitable app on your Smartphone. One which I have tried and tested on Android goes by the name of Wake on LAN and its link can be found here.   It asks for the IP Address of the PC and the MAC (Physical address) of the NIC and sends the magic packet via Wifi Network.