Toshiba Phone Systems and More

How much time do you spend going through Spam daily?

Today’s businesses need robust yet simple e-mail threat protection that takes minutes, not hours, per week to manage. Available as a hardened appliance or as Windows software, SonicWALL Email Security provides powerful protection in one simple solution that dramatically reduces the time and expense involved in e-mail security.

SonicWALL Email Security offers the highest possible level of network protection from all inbound and outbound e-mail threats by leveraging a global end-to-end attack monitoring network. Protections include:

· Anti-spam

· Anti-phishing

· Anti-virus & Time-Zero technology

· Policy management

· Connection management

· Zombie detection

· Compliance & content filtering – regulatory & corporate

We implemented this technology at Pilothouse because of the large amount of “spam” that was coming into everyone’s email inbox. It was taking so much time to go through it daily- once we implemented this it immediately stopped. Every day each user gets an easy to read report of all the spam mail that was captured, or you can log into a real-time log of captured spam and have the ability to view any email and “unjunk it” so you don’t miss those important emails that we are waiting for that may be perceived as spam.

Within this product there are many reports that show where this spam is coming from, who’s the top receiver and sender of spam- monitoring outbound spam is also very important, it could indicate someone has hacked into your system and is using your email server as an outbound spam server- you would never know. You will be amazed at the number of junk emails that come to your organization on an hourly basis. You also can see the ROI on a daily basis for your employees not having to deal with these emails.

Here is a staggering stat from our system of only 10 email users from last month: 3371 good emails and 27433 were Junk, (SPAM, Virus or Phishing)

If you are tired of wasting time and expense everyday going through your emails looking for “real” emails, call us for more information on the SonicWALL email security solution we sell. 866-887-5792

Are you SIP yet? My research  has shown that interest in SIP Trunking is high. According to Eric Krapf of No Jitter ” The most-attended breakout session at VoiceCon was the one on SIP Trunking, which surprised the heck out of me. SIP Trunking has become one of the most popular topics at the show, but the biggest? I wouldn’t have expected that.” But users are only just starting to solicit proposals for SIP based carrier services.

Part of the issue is a real fustration with customers about SIP Trunking. They have heard about it,they think that they can save money by going to it and yet they can’t seem to get a SIP service that works.

Another issue is trying to match a carriers services with a phone system, most carriers want to connect to PBX’s that have been certifed, and the same is true for PBX manufactures, they also want to only connect to SIP providers that have been certified. The problem is that there is no ONE standard for SIP Trunking!

So is SIP Trunking main stream technology? The answer is yes. Some carriers have already started delivering services to customers in SIP form and then converting back to traditional forms to interface with the customers equipment. SIP Trunking will become the standard as time goes on. It is more cost effective for the carriers to deliver services that way.

Customers that are looking to go to SIP should start by looking at there phone system. Old equipment will not be able to interface with SIP Trunks. As I mentioned earlier PBX manufactures will have a list of approved carriers. Need more help? We offer PBX solutions from Toshiba and carrier services from several SIP providers including Paetec. Contact Pilothouse Communications at 866-887-5792.

Do you use your cell phone for business?

Many people are using the cell phones for business, would n it be nice if you walked in to your office while talking on the cell phone and were able to transfer the call to your desk phone without skipping a beat? Or maybe the reverse, start a call at your desk and want to continue the call as you leave? Well now you can!

With a  (smartphone) you can connect through and be switched between the phone system (wired networks) and wireless (cellular) networks. This includes the ability to  provide roaming and hand-off between networks, pretty cool right?
Instead of giving out your office number and your cell phone number this feature enables callers to dial the PBX DID extension number and reach the person regardless of whether they are in or out of office, so employees only have one number to give out for
business purposes. One number access what a concept!
Missed business calls go to the phone system (PBX) voice mail to leave messages, rather than the smartphone voice mail, so employees have only one place to check for all business calls.
PBX features are extended to the smartphone including one number reach, the ability to dial ext’s from your cell, call hold, call transfer,  message waiting indication and many more.

This feature called Fixed Mobile Convergence is now being offered by Toshiba who is partnering with Varaha Systems Inc. It is available thru authorized Toshiba dealers, like Pilothouse Communications.

Want to learn more? contact Pilothouse Communications at 866-887-5792

Nearly everyone backs up their data. While a backup process can seem simple, more often than not, the recovery of data can be extremely challenging.

In an economic climate where workforce changes are inevitable, organizations need to ensure that their data can be accessed and recovered in an instant. Lost or sabotaged laptops, servers and files can result in a massive loss of productivity and as a consequence, the inability to remain competitive.

5 Everyday Things Your Data Backup System Should Do.

1. People Delete Good Files Sometimes- We’ve all done it. We delete a file, then empty the trash only to realize a minute, hour
or day later we REALLY need that file. Reluctantly, we contact the administrator to help recover the file from backup. They can do it, but it will be tomorrow, now what?

Challenge-Restore your deleted file in less than 1 day

We recently had an employee delete a file containing our marketing matrix for the past year and forward 3 months. I went to look at it and it was GONE. I called my data guy and within 2 minutes he had recovered the file and then protected it from being deleted again by that employee. Simple!

FACT: 97% of all restores are single files (Microsoft)

2. “Save” can be just like Delete-You need to prepare a sales quote for “Louis” and open the “Quote – Anderson” spreadsheet to use as a template. When you’re done you hit “Ctrl S” (save) and you have the Louis quote saved. A millisecond later you realize you’ve saved the Louis quote over the Anderson quote. You need both and it will take 30 minutes to recreate the Anderson quote.

Challenge: Restore the good “Quote – Anderson” file in less than 30 minutes

FACT : Up to 40% of all data loss is caused by Human Error (Microsoft)
3. System crash, is today lost?

Good News: Your hard drive has stopped whining
Bad News: Your hard drive has stopped turning
Really Bad News: This happened at 5:30 pm and the Board presentation you’ve been working on all day is…

Challenge: Determine which version of the “Board presentation” you can recover
A. The 8:00 am version from yesterday’s backup tape
(You did remember to do the backup?)
B. The last saved version using disk recovery utilities
(Crossing your fingers helps here!)
C. The 11:00 am version from your bosses’ e-mail
(“Boss, my computer crashed and there’s no backup, so…”)
D. The last version you saved

4. The Inbox is gone but not forgotten- Bill left the company a year ago. About 6 months ago, your predecessor deleted Bill’s e-mail inbox from the mail server to save space. Today, your company received a subpoena to produce the last 2 years of Bill’s e-mail in relation to an Intellectual Property dispute.

Challenge: Product Bill’s old email inbox- If Bill’s e-mail box was automatically backup up each day you can easily restore his inbox, because Bill’s e-mail remained on the backup system even after his e-mail box was removed from the mail server.

5. “I think everyone is backed up”- The boss asked a simple question, “Is everyone’s data backed up?”. Your answer “I think everyone is backed up” did not inspire confidence, so the next question is more precise, “Is everyone’s data backed up everyday?”. You now have a new number one project.

Challenge: Prove to the boss that “everyone’s data is backed up everyday”. With SonicWall CDP (Continuous Data Protection) we can receive an automatically genterated e-mail Activity Report showing exactly what was backed up.

If you’ve ever gotten the “blue screen of death” you know the feeling…that you’ve lost everything. I know my business would be in seriously bad sharp if I were to loss all of my companies data. We use the technology we sell, SonicWall CDP- it’s foolproof, intuitive, automatic and continuous so that we always have the latest version of any file, program or document anyone is working on. It provides flexible recovery options and more importantly…THE RESTORE WORKS!!!

As a business owner you should test not only your backup strategy but also your restore procedure to make sure it works.

To learn more…give us a call 203-649-6405 and ask to speak with a SonicWall Certified Engineer.