Litigation Support

[smaf at M8lIeQ_1coEc-S...]

I searched the archives to see if there has been any discussion on this but
apparently not. I found the only reference in a post on today's DSL line
question. Perhaps it's not truly a Lit Support topic but it does impact
firms that don't have dedicated technical staff and it's always those
litigation types who want to be "dialed in" to their office.

I'm not an internet security specialist and I'm not a network specialist.

Talk to your security specialists or your networking crew . Make sure that
those who are using DSL or Cable from home to come into the firm's LAN are
running a firewall at home. Even though there's a firewall on your firm's
LAN to prevent unauthorized folk from getting into your system, it doesn't
protect the firm against a third party piggy-backing their way into the LAN
via an authorized party like you.

Once you use your cable modem or DSL line to get through the firm's
firewall and establish a VPN connection to your LAN, that's it, it's an
open highway between you and your LAN. Anyone who can get to your machine
can get to the firm's drives through your PC when that VPN is open. Dialup
users connecting through an ISP are less likely targets, however, to be
safe, it should be a requirement that home users have a firewall and use it.

There are software firewalls and applicance (hardware) firewalls that are
easy to install and as cheap as $300CDN to acquire (that would be $1US at
current exchange rates <lol>). I've been shocked out of my shoes recently
by a number of firms who have not taken steps to ensure that their home
users are adequately defended from intrusion. They never thought to
consider that they have a huge hole in their security with those home users
and their unprotected cable/DSL hookups.

Beware the wicked wicked web we've woven...all is not safe in the land of LAN.

Regards,

Susan Fernandes

[smaf at 6E3l7RKQd_toE-...]

Jacquie:

I live up in the GNW (Great White North) otherwise known as Canada and more
specifically, the Pacific North Wet (yes, that's wet, not west). We've got
some real cable horror stories about service and support in BC. The
telephone company DSL stories are just as bad.

That's good advice about reading the fine print on your contract. Users
also need to be aware of any volume restrictions or extra charges. Someone
might think that 1GB of data per month is a huge amount but it's not really
that much especially if you are doing music downloads along with your
documents and other files. One client got a bill of $6,000 for excess data
traffic in a single month. You can bet that they shut the door on the MP3
downloads that were going on.

Another thing to be aware of is that the cable connection is a shared
pipe. The more folks in your neighbourhood using the pipe, the slower she
goes.

Sometimes, my stinky little 56K modem with dialup service is more reliable
than all the other technologies put together.

Regards,

Susan Fernandes