Small-medium business IT questions

[archer07]

So here's basically what I'm facing. So far I've talked to some people and done some googling and come up with TrueCrypt and Alfresco as potential solutions for security and DM/KM. Backup is still iffy. Budget is flexible but preferably under $1k (we already have a ThinkServer with Ubuntu server on it).

OUR TEAM AND EQUIPMENT
We currently have 7 people. Each person has their own Lenovo laptop.

I have no problems managing these technologies. For the rest of the team, the technology should be as transparent as possible.

DOCUMENT/KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
We have 5 years of institutional knowledge and documents. We need a way to keep track of and access documents such as past reports, past year data, templates for documents, contracts, current reports that are being collaborated on and so on over the internet. We also need to have some way of managing information such as process and implementation information, internal info regarding network and building access, client billing histories, etc. Is a wiki the best solution to knowledge management? Are there any that integrate with a document management system?

BACKUP
Currently, we are backing up our computers by dragging the 'My Documents' folder to separate directories on a 1TB external hard-drive. This is obviously problematic because the drive is not secured, physical access is required, there is little versioning with backups, and there is no redundancy should the drive crash/get lost/etc.

We'd like to have some sort of version-controlled network available backup. Something kind of like Dropbox, or a periodic svn commit (not ideal since there should be GUI-based file retrieval and it should be able to be paused easily in case bandwidth is needed elsewhere). rdiff-backup would work but it's probably too difficult for analysts to get their files back once they've been backed up.

SECURITY
Most of our documents do not need to be particularly secure. We do, however, store demographic and contact information for thousands of our clients' customers in some of our files. It is, predictably, of utmost importance that we start storing these files in a secure manner.

These files are in a few different formats, from raw data dumps from our surveying tool, CSVs, XLS, etc. Sometimes we need to share these files with clients. They can be too large for email ? sometimes in the 100s of MB.

What is a good method for securely storing these files locally?
How should we send these files to clients?
What's a good password policy ? one internal + one for clients; one for each member + one for clients, etc.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: archer07
SECURITY
Most of our documents do not need to be particularly secure. We do, however, store demographic and contact information for thousands of our clients' customers in some of our files. It is, predictably, of utmost importance that we start storing these files in a secure manner.

These files are in a few different formats, from raw data dumps from our surveying tool, CSVs, XLS, etc. Sometimes we need to share these files with clients. They can be too large for email ? sometimes in the 100s of MB.

What is a good method for securely storing these files locally?
How should we send these files to clients?
What's a good password policy ? one internal + one for clients; one for each member + one for clients, etc.

Assuming your workstations run Windows:
To make it easy, use TrueCrypt to encrypt your system drive (full disk encryption). The user types in their password after the POST screen, and then windows boots normally. All files are protected all the time. As a bonus, before Truecrypt will let you do this, it will create a backup CD image and force you to burn a copy and stick it in your CD drive to verify.

Alternatively you could use Windows EFS or Bitlocker, but I think it would be harder to manage in your situation.

For sending securely through email, you could use WinZip to encrypt the files. You could also use PGP for a more robust solution if the body of your message also needs to be protected instead of just the attachments.

If you use full disk encryption, everyone will have their own password to unlock their own workstation and you as the admin will store a backup copy of the actual encryption key if they forget. If you use it to encrypt an external hard drive, you'll all have to share a password.

 

[Goosemaster]

MANAGE

I recommend moving to a directory structure for security so you centrally manage rights.
Any basic flavor of windows server will give you AD Directory Services and Rights Management. At the very least you will have the ability to manage permissions across the network, and if you go all out you can protect MS Office documents and email with it.

As for backups, I would first look at centralizing data so that it is easier to manage. Backing up data on a single server that is always on will be more reliable and less painful than tracking down data off of people's lappies. This can be accomplished via offline files in windows or rsync on linux.

DOCUMENT/KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

There is a lot of stuff out there for this and the best option is usually to try them out extensicely. Off the top of my head there are, Alfresco, O3space, Knowledgtree, and WSS (sharepoint), and I recommend that you try them all. All offer versioning, wiki's, blogs, document sharing and more with a few quirks here in there. What's nice is that you can manage access via LDAP.

BACKUP

For Backup the options are endless. I would look into a few options, such as basic backups on the windows/linux server using windows backup or rsync.

IF you want more but still want it to be free, look at amanda - http://amanda.zmanda.com/

IF you feel that you want more, then you need to start budgeting.


SECURE

Using the aforementioned AD base will go far in this respect, and you can integrate things such as bitlocker. I do agree that truecrypt is great, but make sure you have contingencies in place when a drive fails or a user changes/forgets a password. it's not rocket science but can be a really big headache if you don't deploy it appropriately.

for large file transfers you can go with something like an office yousendit account. accelllion makes a sweet product but that is out of your price range.


good luck