Security Hardening & Its Importance to Protecting Your Security System - MCC Security Solutions

Not a day goes by, it seems, that we are not hearing about some sort of security breach involving a major retail operation or corporation. Hackers seem determined on getting at protected data, such as credit card information or Social Security numbers, by any means possible.

For the security industry, every such attack brings new concerns about the safety of network-based systems. The network is the back door to accessing all kinds of information, whether it is financial, personal or something specific to the security of an operation.

For instance, a cyber-criminal may be looking to interfere with a security system by interrupting the video stream, altering camera views so someone can make a physical attack on a location or hijacking the servers to perform illegal functions. Even a camera, if left vulnerable, may be used as an entry point to a larger network.

As a result, it is increasingly important to know what steps a security system provider is taking to ensure that its network-based equipment such as NVRs and video management system software are hardened against cyber-attacks.

While the U.S. Federal Information Security Act mandates a specific level of compliance, it is critical to work with a supplier that understands what is involved in the compliance process, and is invested in taking a lead on this critical issue.

Here are some questions to ask a security system supplier:

• How often are updates provided for the product and how are security vulnerabilities handled?  More frequent updates to the product means more opportunity to remove vulnerabilities. Also, by monitoring new vulnerabilities found through international databases a supplier can release a patch quickly to address a critical vulnerability.
• Is the company undergoing third-party assessments of its products? Having an independent, third-party undertake penetration testing will point out what vulnerabilities exist and allow the company to take the proper action to harden the system against cyber-attacks.
• How often does the vulnerability testing take place? Each time the software within a product or system is altered, there should be a new test so the development team can address any new software issues before the product is released.
• Has the company documented what it is doing? Knowing what the vulnerabilities are and how they have addressed them can go a long way toward ensuring your comfort level with a product. Ask if the company has prepared a white paper or some other document on its products and processes.

Cyber criminals continue to develop new methods for gaining access to information and systems. Knowing how a supplier is safeguarding its products is a good first line of defense.

- See more at: http://memphiscommunications.net/blog/?p=1778#sthash.enCG0pcm.dpuf

For more details please contact us at:

Memphis Communications Corporation

4771 Summer Ave

Memphis, TN 38122

Tel:  901.725.9271

Fax: 901.272.3577

Toll Free:  866.805.5893

Service and Supplies:  901.257.2500

Email: sales@memphiscommunications.net

Website: http://www.memphiscommunications.net

The Basics of Structured Cabling – Memphis Communications Corporation

A structured cabling system is a complete system of cabling and associated hardware, which provides a comprehensive telecommunications infrastructure. This infrastructure serves a wide range of uses, such as to provide telephone service or transmit data through a computer network. It should not be device dependent.

We further define a structured cabling system in terms of ownership. The structured cabling system begins at the point where the service provider (SP) terminates. This point is the point of demarcation (demark) or Network Interface Device (NID).

For example, in a telephone system installation, the SP furnishes one or more service lines (per customer requirements). The SP connects the service line at the point of demarcation.

Every structured cabling system is unique. This is due to variations in:

• The architectural structure of the building, which houses the cabling installation
• The cable and connections products
• The function of the cabling installation
• The types of equipment the cabling installation will support – present and future
• The configuration of an already installed system (upgrades and retrofits)
• Customer requirement
• Manufacturers warranties

The methods we use to complete and maintain cabling installations are relatively standard. The standardization of these installations is necessary because of the need to ensure acceptable system performance from increasingly complex arrangements.

The U.S. cabling industry accepts the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), in conjunction with TIA/EIA, as the responsible organization for providing and maintaining standards and practices within the profession. It has published a series of standards to design, install, and maintain cabling installations. These help to ensure proper cabling installation.

The benefit of these standards include:

• Consistency of design and installation
• Conformance to physical and transmission line requirements
• A basis for examining a proposed system expansion and other changes
• Uniform documentation

The industry standard term for a network installation that serves a relatively small area (such a structured cabling installation serving a building) is a local area network (LAN). There are also metropolitan area networks (MANs) and wide area networks (WANs).

Structured cabling installations typically include: entrance facilities; vertical and horizontal backbone pathways; vertical and horizontal backbone cables; horizontal pathways; horizontal cables; work area outlets; equipment rooms; telecommunications closets; cross-connect facilities; multi-user telecommunications outlet assemblies (MUTOA); transition points; and consolidated points.

The entrance facility includes the cablings components needed to provide a means to connect the outside service facilities to the premises cabling. This can include service entrance pathways, cables, connecting hardware, circuit protection devices, and transition hardware.

An entrance facility houses the transition outside plant cabling to cabling approved for intrabuilding construction. This usually involves transition to fire-rated cable. The entrance facility is also the network demarc between the SP and customer premises cabling (if required). National and regional electrical codes govern placement of electrical protection devices at this point.

The location of the entrance facility depends on the type of facility, route of the outside plant cabling (e.g. buried or aerial), building architecture, and aesthetic considerations. The four principle types of entrance facilities include underground, tunnel, buried, and aerial.

In an aerial entrance, the SP cables provide service to a building via an overhead route. Aerial entrances usually provide the lowest installation cost, and they’re readily accessible for maintenance. However, they’re subject to traffic and pedestrian clearances, can damage a building’s exterior, are susceptible to environmental conditions (such as wind and ice), and are usually joint-use installations with the power company, CATV company, and telephone or data service providers.

Backbone cabling. From the entrance facility, the structured cabling network branches out to the other buildings, as well as from floor to floor within a building on the backbone cabling system. We use the term backbone to describe the cables handling the major network traffic.

The ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A standard defines backbone cabling as follows: “The function of the backbone cabling is to provide interconnections between telecommunications closets, equipment rooms, and entrance facilities in the telecommunications cabling system structure. Backbone cabling consist of the backbone cables, intermediate and main cross-connects, mechanical terminations, and patch cords or jumpers used for backbone-to-backbone cross-connection. Backbone cabling also includes cabling between buildings.”   

Interbuilding and intrabuilding are two types of backbone cables. Interbuilding backbone cable handles traffic between buildings. Intrabuilding backbone cable handles traffic between closets in a single building.

This standard identifies two levels of backbone cabling. First-level backbone is a cable between a main cross-connect (MC) and intermediate cross-connect (IC) or horizontal cross-connect (HC). Second-level backbone exists between an IC and HC.

The main components of backbone cabling are:

• Cable pathways: shafts, conduits, raceways, and floor penetrations (such as sleeves or slots) that provide routing space for the cables
• The actual cables: optical fiber, twisted-pair copper, coaxial copper, or some combination of these. (Note: You should avoid areas where potential sources of EMI or electromagnetic interference may exist when planning the routing and support structure for copper cabling.)
• Connecting hardware: connecting blocks, patch panels, interconnections, cross-connections, or some combination of these components
• Miscellaneous support facilities: cable support hardware, firestopping and grounding hardware. Note: The terms horizontal and backbone (previously called riser) evolved from the orientations typical for functional cables of these types. However, the physical orientation of the cabling has no bearing on classifying the cabling as horizontal or backbone.

The useful life of a backbone cabling system consists of several planned growth periods (typically 3 to 10 years). This is shorter than the life expectancy of the premises cabling system.

Cabling connectors. A connector is a mechanical device you use to interface a cable to a piece of equipment or one cable to another. The role of the connector is to provide a coupling mechanism that keeps loss to a minimum.

In the case of fiber, it allows light impulses to transfer from one connector to another. For copper, it allows electrical signals to transfer from one connector to another.

A good connection requires aligning the connectors, preventing the connectors from unintentional separation, and efficient transferring of light or electricity from one connector to the other.

A connector demonstrates durability by withstanding hundreds of insertion and withdrawal cycles without failing. We calculate this as mean time between failures (MTBF).

Connectors are as essential to the integrity of the entire telecommunications network as is the cable itself. Connectors align, attach, and decouple the media to a transmitter, receiver, another media of same or similar type, an active telecommunications device, or a specified passive telecommunications device. 

 Contact MCC today for help with your structured cabling needs!

- See more at: http://www.memphiscommunications.net/blog/#sthash.YKkDSwJ4.dpuf

For more details please contact us at:

Memphis Communications Corporation

4771 Summer Ave

Memphis, TN 38122

Tel:  901.725.9271

Fax: 901.272.3577

Toll Free:  866.805.5893

Service and Supplies:  901.257.2500

Email: sales@memphiscommunications.net

Website: http://www.memphiscommunications.net

Propel business growth using these five proven strategies - MCC’s Security Solutions Division

Insurance processes are increasingly the work of field-office employees assisted by mobile technology and highly responsive system support. Processes “no longer start at the company’s firewall or with events received in the back office,” says a report from Forrester Consulting. Instead, the boundaries of the insurance process have been pushed out to the customers — and those serving the customers. 

Employees who engage customers in the field are critical resources for insurers striving to excel in today’s competitive marketplace. Many, if not most, enterprise IT and business decision makers view field-office workers as vital to both competitive differentiation and growing the business, according to the Forrester survey. Unfortunately, these same executives also say they believe field-office workers are underutilized, and lack needed support from advanced technology. What’s more, the same survey finds that some 65 percent of the executives say their field-office workers would be more effective if they had better information tools.

What’s needed to bring your field-office workers into the IT-powered moment? Forrester experts point to five key needs in the report: 

1. Focus more on the customer experience

When global decision makers were asked by Forrester which aspects of their operations were most likely to drive growth, their top answer was better support for customer-facing employees. The Forrester report points out that many enterprises are once again shifting their focus to the top line, which involves improving the customer experience and providing better support for field and point-of-service employees. Nowhere are these imperatives more important than in the insurance industry. That’s where high levels of customer service and fast claims processing are critical competitive differentiators. For this reason, insurers should view this research as a call to action and a guide for prioritizing their investments.

2. Increase front line support

Field-office workers can dramatically improve insurance customer satisfaction and retention, but only if they’re empowered with the necessary tools, technologies and solutions. Then they will be equipped to meet customers’ new and heightened expectations. For insurers, this means claims adjusters, customer-service reps and others on the front lines of customer engagement need increased support. To accomplish this, insurers can implement strong industry-specific solutions; these include tools for document preparation, printing and advanced process management, Forrester says.

3. Implement new, optimized processes

Technology is only part of the field-office transformation challenge; process changes are needed, too. Improved information management is at the core of the internal transformations needed to make insurers more competitive, Forrester adds. Respondents to its survey, when asked to rank the most important information-management activities for field-office workers, selected finding data quickly to answer customer queries, creating documents and processing information as their top choice. Coming in at a close second was the ability to update or tailor documents for immediate scanning or printing. That’s not to say IT is unimportant. But its role will become one of support. “Technologies that include mobile capture and print, business process management, and dynamic case management will be strong enablers,” Forrester says.

4. Install proven solutions for cost savings and field-office advantages

For many insurers, adopting managed print services (MPS) is critical. These systems can help cut costs and increase efficiencies by aligning the number and type of output devices with your business processes. They also provide real-time management of your printer fleet. And an MPS solution can track usage to discover even more opportunities for cost savings. If that weren’t enough, distributed capture capabilities can also help your field offices collaborate more efficiently — and in near-real time — with your home office. Going further, Lexmark, among other suppliers, has added a new dimension to MPS: software that optimizes several insurance processes, including claims management, to automatically capture, classify, validate and route information to your claims-management system. And it works with any input, whether hard copy or digital. Field-office workers gain immediate access to the latest information, empowering them to provide exceptional customer service. And processes that formerly took days, even weeks, can now be completed in mere minutes.

5. Improve mobile productivity

At many carriers, field-office workers now use a mix of smartphones and multifunction printers (MFPs) as their “information on-ramps” to claims processing, underwriting, policy management and other back-office processes. For example, a claims adjuster in the field can use the camera on a tablet to photograph storm damage at a customer’s house and then transmit the images directly to the carrier’s claims system. The new data will then be available to others in the field and home offices, even before the adjuster gets back to the office. These and other MPS-powered innovations can give field-office workers instant access to vital information. The result: Field workers spend less time chasing data, and more time serving your clients, helping the business grow.  

- See more at: http://memphiscommunications.net/blog/?p=1749#sthash.2t8ZQtqI.dpuf

For more details please contact us at:

Memphis Communications Corporation

4771 Summer Ave

Memphis, TN 38122

Tel:  901.725.9271

Fax: 901.272.3577

Toll Free:  866.805.5893

Service and Supplies:  901.257.2500

Email: sales@memphiscommunications.net

Website: http://www.memphiscommunications.net