Wednesday 1 February 2017

4 Reasons to Install Windows 10 Right Now


Let's not even talk about Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. They are best forgotten, just like Windows ME or Windows Vista. After Windows 7, the proper operating system to hit the market is Windows 10. And with Windows 7 is almost at the end of its lifetime, it is high time to migrate to Windows 10.  Windows 7 to 10 migration has multiple benefits which we will discuss briefly.

1.    Receive regular updates: Windows 7 will retire later this year which means you will not receive any update. This will make the computer vulnerable to hacking threats. With Windows 10, you will receive not only the latest security features but also get periodic updates which will keep you safe from modern hacking tools and attempts.

2.    Increased employee productivity: Survey has proved that Windows 10 increases employee productivity in an organisation. If that is to be believed, then your organisation stands to gain a lot from this migration.

3.    Better built-in software: Windows 10 comes with many modern software and applications. For example, the latest browser from Microsoft, Edge, is the best browser from the company and that is installed in Windows 10 by default. These modern applications are better suited to handle the modern computing needs. 

4.    Improved speed: Windows 10 is faster than Windows 7. In fact, this is the fastest yet operating system from Windows. The increased speed will surely increase the way things move in the organisation.

Modernise Your Legacy Applications To Save Effort and Money

One of the most common problems faced by almost every old organisation is how to migrate the so called legacy applications. These applications, which have aged since their inception, are actually still capable of delivering what they were created to deliver but they are unable to cope up with the changing business environments or the expansion of the business or even are incompatible with the newer computing environment.

Additional issues which might pop up, complicating the case further, is the paucity of staffs who know how to handle and maintain these applications. There would be hardly any updated documentation and adding new functionalities which might become necessary during the course of time will be difficult while keeping the original architect intact.
 

Building a new application is always a solution but that might not take advantage of the investment made in the research and development of the original software. It might also fail to utilise the collection of enterprise data which has been captured by the existing organisational architecture. Finding a third-party solution is another way of handling the crisis but there is hardly ready-to-use application which has every feature which the organisation needed.

Rather than waiting for a long time to build a perfect replacement which might never take form and which might also become outdated even before it is implemented, migrating the legacy application to a modern system might be an excellent idea. You can retain the original architecture yet install all the modern and needed features into the system.

Are The Boards Prepared for Cyber Attacks?


The possible negative effect of cyber attack on a business is so grave that it is time for the cybersecurity and information risk management is to be elevated and have its own category of INFOSEC (information security) and should be reported to the CXO level.  

Board of director, chief information security officer, general counsels and chief risk officers need to comprehend and monitor the planning and readiness to address the threats of cyberattack. 
 

A recent study by a prominent body in cyber security found out that one third of all the general counsels surveyed believe that their board is not ready to handle cyber attack real time. Less than half of the CEOs said that their companies have a formulated and approved method for handling cyber attack. However, on a positive note, almost four fifth of all the general counsel and CEOs said that they are ready to detect a cyber security breach. This also indicates that there is a stark difference between being mentally ready or aware and to have a written strategy to combat the threat. In an older survey of 2012 by Carnegie Mellon decided that boards are not actively preparing for the threats for cyber attack. 


Only one fourth of the respondents, all of whom are from Forbes Global 2000 companies, review the top-level privacy and information technology policies on a regular basis and approve them. However, a dismal 40% respondents said that they hardly ever do it, if ever. These figures are worrying and a call for the board members to pay more attention to cyber attack threats.

What Is The Difference Between MSI And EXE Installations?


MSI packaging is considered to be the future of application packaging and Microsoft encourages software developers and administrators to reformat the EXE packages to MSI packages. MSI packages are created according to the standard definition created by the Windows Installer Technology from Microsoft. This means that all the MSI packages which are created using different packaging tools have similar deployment and management system. EXE files, on the other hand, are just executable files which don't adhere to any defined standard. Depending on the creation tool used, an EXE installation might have different customised options for installation and uninstallation, error handling process and deployment method.

As there are no single standard for EXE installation, different vendors use different set of standards to create their own executables. Thus, two installers, created by two different creation tools, namely Wise Studio and InstallSheild will have everything different. This is a major headache for every network administrators who are often required to push unattended remote software installation and uninstallation and are responsible for software infrastructure of an organisation. Moreover, most of the EXE installers don't support silent mode of installation.

A typical EXE set up has different interactive options during the installation and the user needs to click on different options during different steps of the installation. Thus, the IT guy needs to click on those options on every computer they want to install the software on, one by one. This can be very time-consuming and almost impossible if the plan is to install it remotely.