Sify Enterprise Solutions :: Extensity Newsletter

How does an organization's leadership assess if business is ready for a Knowledge Management (KM) initiative? Several factors ranging from cultural, organizational processes, technology as well as leadership buy-in can influence a decision on KM.

Here are eight questions that can help you assess if your business is 'KM-Ready':

Are you competing for business against global companies?
Do you depend on the effective application of science and technology for competitive advantage?
Do your employees possess knowledge that they would take away with them if they left the company?
Do your employees willingly share what they know with colleagues?
Do your employees know which of the colleagues they can turn to for help when faced with a particular challenge or problem?
Does your company possess intellectual capital that could be repackaged into a product or service with resale value?
Are you able to make informed decisions faster than your competitors?
Does it take you longer than your competitors to get a new employee up to speed?

If you answered Yes to all except question 7, your organization is ripe for a KM initiative.

How do you choose a firewall?
The level of network security required and not just commercial considerations must dictate choice.

What are the types of firewalls?
Firewalls are broadly of two types, those that operate at the network layer and ones that work at the application layer.

What is Network layer firewall?
Network layer firewalls such as Packet Filters and Circuit Layer Gateways run at layer 3 (Network) and sometimes layer 4 (Transport) of the OSI Model and are only able to make "decisions" that fall under these two layers.

They scan for source and destination information and allow or disallow packets based on this information. Network firewalls are typically used when speed is essential.

This can be advantageous for firewalls that scan for connections to web and e-mail servers, especially ones that have high amounts of traffic. While they are inexpensive, offer a layer of protection and do not impede connectivity, they are susceptible to any attacks or vulnerabilities that operating systems possess. Network level firewalls run on an access control list and cannot monitor the contents of packets.

What is Application level firewall?
Application level firewalls operate in the Application Layer of the OSI model. They view information as a data stream and not as a series of packets and because they are equipped with a certain level of logic, they are able to scan information being passed over them and validate the information based on their own set of rules. They generally are hosts running proxy servers, which permit no traffic directly between networks, and which perform elaborate logging and auditing of traffic passing through them.

This makes it easier to track when a potential vulnerability happens. Another major benefit of application firewalls is that they typically support the ability to report to intrusion detection software.

This allows third party software to take control of an intrusive situation and perform tasks above the capabilities of the firewall itself. This is useful if you want to monitor a hacker once they get inside instead of just blocking them or have the system send a page when an intrusion is detected.