How Small Business Can Fight Internet Hackers

-Business Week Magazine

interview of CEO Jose Cruz

Article in Business Week written by Jeremy Quittner.

First, company e-mails started to take forever to arrive. Then Jose Cruz, network specialist for apparel maker Nanette Lepore, kept getting kicked off the company's central server. A few hours later sales machines at the company's nine boutiques were routinely getting bumped off-line when they tried to connect to the central server. Cruz became increasingly alarmed. Hackers were attacking the business with a so-called denial of service attack, using an army of computers to bombard a server with bogus requests for information, and making it impossible for legitimate ones to get through. "This was a malicious attack to shut down the company," Cruz says. Engineers from his Internet service provider eventually traced the raid to hackers in Asia.

But when the onslaught occurred, in November 2008, at least the 100-person, $150 million business was prepared. It had a battle plan. It had redundant servers, with multiple links between stores, the company's central database, and the Internet. Its Web hosting was offsite, its security software up to date. Cruz's first call was to the Internet service provider that handles Nanette Lepore's boutiques' Web access, which switched off the link that was being bombarded and established a secondary link for the stores to use. Things did not return to normal until three days later, when the ISP was able to effectively block the rogue signals.

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Small Firms More SUSCEPTIBLE to Cyber Crimes

-Reuters News

interview of CEO Jose Cruz

Reuters Article Written by — Deborah L. Cohen

“If they can gain access to your network routers, you’re pretty much an open book,” said Jose Cruz, Nanette Lepore’s director of information technology, who has since developed a Fort Knox-like security protocol for the confidential information flowing through the company’s 10 boutiques and its New York headquarters. “The first thing I did was lock it all down.” 

Unfortunately Nanette Lepore is not alone among small and medium-sized businesses for its lack of planning for a cyber attack. A new study issued by the National Cyber Security Alliance and software company Symantec confirmed that small businesses are among the most vulnerable to Internet crime due to their unstructured approach to online security. 

Read the Full Article Here

Putting a solid data backup and recovery plan behind mobile devices

-TechData Magazine

Interview of CEO Jose Cruz

Tech Target Article Written by Alan R. Earls

“Although the core IT operations are run out of offices in New York City, many aspects of business operations are widely distributed and mobile. In fact, according to IT director, Jose Cruz, Lepore more or less runs the company from her iPhone.

So when that piece of hardware went missing a couple of years ago, panic set in … and for good reason, it turns out. Some of the data on the device ended up doing the rounds with scam sites based in Nigeria. "That was when we decided we had to do something," said Cruz.”

You can read the full article HERE

Seven Lessons That SMBs Can Learn from Big IT

-PC WORLD Magazine

Interview of CEO Jose Cruz

Article Written by David Strom

3. Use Hardware to Secure Your Internet Connection 

SMBs often are not as attentive to the security of their Internet connection as they should be, and the results of such neglect could be disastrous. Last year, hackers compromised the point of sale system (POS) of clothing designer firm Nanette Lepore. The hackers managed to reconfigure the outdated firewalls and sold some stolen credit card numbers from the company's high-end clientele. 

This happened because the company's chain of retail stores had little or no security measures or proper procedures. "All of our store clerks were using the same password to access the POS," says Jose Cruz, Nanette Lepore's network manager. "It was wide open. No one had ever thought to change passwords periodically, or even use different ones for each user. Prior to my arrival here, the emphasis on POS security wasn't urgent. Needless to say, this all changed."

Read the Full Article HERE

Two Entities, Two Patient Portals

Article Featuring Consultant Debra Sargeant

-Wayne Indépendant News

“We’ve found some patients were confused between Wayne Memorial Hospital’s portal, myWMH and CHC’s portal,” stated Debra Sargeant, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) coordinator, WMCHC. “A unique name and logo will create a separate identity for WMCHC’s portal and make it easier for patients to obtain the information they need

from the correct source.”
WMCHC’s patient portal, a secure messaging system which allows patients to communicate with their physician’s office online via a home computer or Smartphone, went live at the end of 2014--about eight months after Wayne Memorial Hospital launched its portal, myWMH.

Sargeant explained that although WMCHC is a clinical affiliate of Wayne Memorial Hospital--it’s independent. WMCHC physician offices and the hospital maintain different data sets and use different software.

For the full Article Click HERE

To read the full article click HERE

Fahrenheit 212 Catalyzes Client Growth with HD Visual Communications from Panasonic.

-Case Study of Video Conferencing solution implemented by Jose Cruz

review the Case Study HERE

WiMax rides wave of surfing technology

USA Today Article

Featuring Project by CEO Jose Cruz

Read the full story HERE

No small concern

SCMagazine - written by Jim Carr

Featuring Project by CEO Jose Cruz

Read the full Article HERE

Consider the case of Jose Cruz, the network administrator at Nanette Lepore, a New York City-based women’s fashion designer/manufacturer. Among his other network tasks, Cruz was challenged with placating potential investors who were worried about protecting the intellectual property at his couture chain. His response was to embed security into the mindset of the company’s workers while restructuring the network they use.

When Cruz joined Nanette Lepore in February 2007, the company’s networking infrastructure was a real mess, he says. 

“The firewalls were consumer-grade at best, and some databases with product designs had public IP addresses and were wide open to the world,” he says.

Moreover, the company’s employees could log onto virtually any resource they wanted without authorization. That level of employee access worked when the company was under the radar and relatively unknown, Cruz says. But after a group of investors showed interest in helping the company expand outside of its New York City headquarters, the investors wanted to see stronger security in place, he explains.

For Cruz, that meant rebuilding the network at every level on an OSI (open systems interconnection) model. This included installing switches and routers and a variety of security products from SonicWALL, as well as deploying Active Directory for authenticating both Macintosh and PC users, he says. It also meant convincing the company’s employees that securing data on file servers and authenticating themselves was critical to succeeding in the competitive fashion industry. 

Cruz eased the company’s 100 employees into a security mindset by first migrating the network from a POP3-based email system to an Exchange Server that required users to login. 

“They got used to it, and having collaboration and the ability to setup appointments was a plus for them,” he says. 

Still, Cruz’s main security challenge was putting policies in place, he confides. 

“Some would say that is simple, but it’s not when you had nothing to begin with and you’re working with people who’ve never done it before,” he says.

POS System Pay Off

-Baseline Magazine

Written by David Strom

Featuring Project by CEO Jose Cruz

Point of sale (POS) systems are what we used to call electronic cash registers, which really weren’t much more than a cash drawer bolted onto the bottom of a PC. But as these systems have gotten more sophisticated, they’ve played an ever-increasing and important role in how a business can integrate its accounting systems, cut operating costs, track inventory and improve its supply chain partners’ efficiency.

The wrong systems can literally send customers out of the store in frustration, while the right ones can deliver higher levels of service and increased customer satisfaction. Here are some examples of how retailers have evolved their POS systems and have integrated them into their overall IT operations.

Last year, hackers compromised POS systems of clothing designer Nanette Lepore by reconfiguring the company’s outdated firewalls and selling stolen credit card numbers from the retailer’s high-end clientele. This happened because the chain had few security measures or proper procedures in place.

“All our store clerks were using the same password to access the POS,” says Jose Cruz, the network manager for the New York City-based retailer. “It was wide open. No one had ever thought to change passwords periodically, or even to use different ones for each employee. Prior to my arrival here, the emphasis on POS security wasn’t urgent. Needless to say, that’s all changed.”