Tag Archives: VPN

Computers

Microsoft releases Windows 8.1 Enterprise preview with VDI, Windows to Go support

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On Tuesday, Microsoft announced the preview version of Windows 8.1 for enterprises, bringing all of the functionality of WIndows 8.1 to big business, with specific improvements for enterprises.

Microsoft also reiterated that the corporate lifecycle of WIndows 8.1 would remain the same, and extend through January 10, 2023 for both the consumer preview as well as Windows 8.1 Enterprise. Microsoft didn’t say when it would release Windows 8.1 Enterprise for general availability, but did say that the Windows 8 customers would have two years from that future date to shift over to Windows Enterprise 8.1.
 
“We encourage customers to start testing the Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview now!” Erwin Visser, senior director for Windows Commercial, said in a blog post. 
 
Microsoft announced the consumer preview of Windows 8.1 last month, complete with useful features that include a revamped Start screen, the ability to boot directly to the Windows 8 desktop, and other useful enhancements including a reorganized apps screen. All those have been carried over to Windows 8.1 Enterprise, as well as numerous additions that Microsoft believes will benefit enterprises.
 
At the time, Microsoft also revealed several features of Windows 8.1 that it felt would be useful to businesses, including the ability to lock down a device to a single application, known as assigned access; workplace join; and the the ability for businesses to “kill” corporate data that appeared on a user’s Windows 8.1 PC.
 
On Tuesday, Microsoft revealed some additional, enterprise-specific features that will be part of the Windows 8.1 Enterprise release: 
  • A Windows to Go creator tool. Windows to Go allows admins to create fully bootable Windows drives allowing employees to port their desktops from PC to PC.
  • Start screen controls that allow admins to control the layout and make sure important corporate apps are easily seen.
  • Direct Access, which allows remote users to access corporate resources without tapping into a VPN.
  • BranchCache, which allows frequently-accessed data to be “cached” in branch offices without the need to constantly re-download it.
  • Virtual Desktop (VDI), which allows users to tap into the power of a Windows Server 2012 to remotely render graphics, use touch devices and USB peripherals without a powerful local client.
  • Apps can now be side-loaded onto PCs, and the client can be locked down to run only apps and files selected by the admin.
A list of other business-specific features is here, Microsoft said.
 
Microsft rode an early wave of corporate client adoption, reporting healthy growth in its Windows division soon after the launch of Windows 8. With the new enterprise features, Microsoft is undoubtedly hoping that hope its key corporate customers remain interested.

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Foreign VPNs offer protection against US government spying

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Foreign providers of virtual private networks trying to cash in on recently uncovered U.S. government surveillance can increase the level of secrecy of Web activity, experts say.

However, no VPN vendor, foreign or domestic, sells a bulletproof defense against government snooping, given the resources and sophistication of spy agencies. However, using a service outside the U.S. does make the task of tracking and logging someone’s Web activity more difficult.

Privacy jitters reached new heights last month following reports that the U.S. National Security Agency is collecting massive amounts of private data on citizens from telephone and Internet companies, such as Verizon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The court-approved data gathering is legal under the post-9/11 Patriot Act.

A VPN is essentially an encrypted tunnel between a computer and the service provider, which effectively hides the customer’s IP address and Web activity.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Info Security Products Guide Names Black Box EncrypTight a Silver Award Winner for its 2013 Global E

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

Filed under:


Info Security Products
 Guide Names Black Box EncrypTight a Silver Award Winner for its 2013 Global Excellence Awards

Winners were honored in San Francisco during the annual awards dinner and presentation

PITTSBURGH–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Black Box Corporation (NAS: BBOX) , a leading communications system integrator, announced today that Info Security Products Guide, the industry’s leading information security research and advisory guide, has named Black Box EncrypTight™ a silver award winner for its 2013 Global Excellence Awards in the Encryption/Smart Cards category. These prestigious global awards recognize security and IT vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products and solutions that are helping set the bar higher for others in all areas of security and technologies.

EncrypTight provides transparent, wire-speed encryption without the hassle of setting up VPN tunnels. (Photo: Business Wire)

EncrypTight is a family of encryption appliances from Black Box that provides transparent Layer 2, 3 and 4 WAN encryption with no VPN tunnels. EncrypTight eliminates the need to establish point-to-point VPN tunnels between each pair of remote sites to secure data, and creates an instant encrypted connection to every other site. EncrypTight is highly scalable to enterprises of every size and is centrally managed through a simple drag-and-drop interface. For more information, visit www.blackbox.com/go/EncrypTight.

“Having Info Security Products Guide choose EncrypTight as a silver award winner recognizes the Black Box commitment to providing IT professionals with the right solutions for their most challenging security issues. Secure data encryption is important to protect against data theft and is vital for any organization that must comply with privacy and security standards such as HIPAA/HITECH or PCI,” said Keith Ross, Black Box Networking Product Manager. “We are honored that Info Security Products Guide recognized the EncrypTight security solution and believe that this nomination underscores our commitment to our customers and their security needs.”

About Black Box

Black Box is a leading communications system integrator dedicated to designing, sourcing, implementing and maintaining today’s complex communications solutions. Black Box services more than 175,000 clients in approximately 150 countries with approximately 200 offices throughout the world. To learn more, visit the Black Box Web site at http://www.blackbox.com.

Black Box® and

From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/11/info-security-products-guide-names-black-box-encry/

Linux

Howto: Firewalld basics

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Firewalld is Fedora’s way to provide dynamic firewall properties in Linux. Thus way changes in the firewall configuration are applied immediately, without the need to restart. Additionally, firewalld supports D-BUS and zone concepts.

Firewalld replaced Fedora’s old firewall mechanism with Fedora 18. One of the main motivations for a new firewall system was that the old solution required a firewall restart and was thus breaking all statefull connections at each change. Additionally, Firewalld supports dynamic zones which comes in handy when using it with mobile devices as laptops: you can have different zones, thus different sets of rules, for your work network and for your home network.

Besides, to better integrate the system firewall with other applications D-BUS support was integrated into Firewalld, and the configuration is eased for the user via a GUI and a command line helper which is covered here.

If you want to use Firewalld, it might be a good idea to check on which zone you actually are running:

firewall-cmd --get-active-zone
home: wlan0

It shows the devices and the given zones.

You can list all available zones by:

# firewall-cmd --get-zones
drop work internal external trusted home dmz public block

So, if you want to change a zone on a network for example because you just started your VPN tunnel to your homenetwork, just do it:

# firewall-cmd --zone=external --change-interface=wlan0

There is no return code shown, unfortunately, but you can query the current zone again to see if it worked.

But since we are talking about dynamic firewall changes, the really interesting part is to open and close ports. Another way to look at it would be to allow or deny the access to services. The difference is that a service can be a list of several ports.

As a result, you can query the enabled services (no ports shown), or enabled ports (no services shown), or list all (everything shown):

# firewall-cmd --zone=home --list-services
mdns ipp-client dhcpv6-client ssh samba-client

The story looks different for a zone like external:

# firewall-cmd --zone=public --list-services
ssh

The port query looks just the same, but includes the actual port and protocol:

# firewall-cmd --zone=external --list-ports
3333/tcp

As mentioned above, the safest bet is to always query everything:

# firewall-cmd --zone=external --list-all
external
  interfaces: wlan0
  services: ssh
  ports: 3333/tcp
  forward-ports: 
  icmp-blocks:

As you probably know anyway, if you want to test that the port is actually reachable from the outside, start nc -l 3333 and try to telnet to that port.

But that’s all nothing without the ability, to open and close ports:

# firewall-cmd --zone=external --add-port=2222/tcp
# firewall-cmd --zone=external --list-ports
3333/tcp 2222/tcp

Closing the port is just as easy:

# firewall-cmd --zone=external --remove-port=2222/tcp
# firewall-cmd --zone=external --list-ports
3333/tcp

As you see the dynamic and zone features of Firewalld work pretty neatly. However, I do not see the benefit of Firewalld for server environments. There you usually have no changing connection …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Gartner Positions Sprint as a Challenger in Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Gartner Positions Sprint as a Challenger in Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Sprint (NYS: S) has advanced to a Challenger position within the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers. Since the previously published Magic Quadrant report, Sprint has grown its global MPLS, Ethernet and SIP Trunking coverage for business and wholesale customers.

“Our sharp focus and investment on domestic and global MPLS footprint expansion and growing product portfolio has delighted both business and wholesale customers, and this, we believe, led to Gartner advancing Sprint from a Niche Player in last year’s report to a Challenger position in this year’s,” said Mike Fitz, vice president – wireline and solutions engineering, Sprint. “The Challenger position aligns with our mission to combine our unique insights into customer needs with a robust portfolio of managed network solutions to help companies leverage their network as a strategic differentiator. And with the increasing adoption of cloud services, the network is the most important investment a company can make to accelerate transformation and the speed of business.”

This magic quadrant report1 assesses suppliers that can deliver fixed enterprise networking services worldwide, including:

  • WAN services, predominantly managed, including Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and IPsec VPNs, and Ethernet services
  • Voice services, including switched and dedicated voice and SIP trunks
  • Dedicated Internet services, including managed VPN offers

With its forward-thinking design approach and innovation in IP and wireless technologies, Sprint is uniquely positioned to unleash the full potential of business-critical applications and workforces through a single account team who understands converged, cloud and mobility solutions.

Also according to the report, “The number of organizations requiring global networking services continues to grow, due to globalization and cloud services, which are often hosted in different markets from the point of consumption. Organizations’ appetite for more bandwidth shows no signs of diminishing, with video and big data, coupled with IT centralization, as the primary drivers. Reliability and performance control are growing in importance as business processes become ever more IT-dependent; in addition, IT architectures (such as thin client computing) place ever greater reliance on the network.”

Click here to view the complete report.

For more information on Sprint’s comprehensive portfolio of wireline and cloud solutions, visit …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Linux

Plasma-nm preview

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editor

Hi,

I’d like to show you what we are doing for network management in KDE. With Lukáš Tinkl we started to write a new plasma applet for managing your network connections. It’s a long road to have some stable release or something for daily usage, but we have already wired and wireless connections and some basic functionality for other connection types. The entire applet is written in QML except for C++ model and some classes for working with NetworkManager. For that purpose we are using libnm-qt library which is Qt library for NetworkManager. We are also working on a new connection editor which will be as a standalone application. This editor uses some components from the old Plasma NM applet but it’s redoneto use libnm-qt library.

If you want to try it, you can get it from our git repositorygit://anongit.kde.org/plasma-nm.gitand you should disable the kded module from the old Plasma NM applet but we are not supporting secrets for VPN connections for now.

You will have to also compile libmm-qtgit://anongit.kde.org/libmm-qt.gitand libnm-qt (settings branch)git://anongit.kde.org/libnm-qt.git

And please note that this is not a stable version and a lot of functionality is missing. There is also one problem with secrets, because the old Plasma NM applet stores secrets into KWallet and there are “agent owned”. We are storing secrets into the NetworkManager and when your secrets are “agent owned”, there will be problem with getting them from NetworkManager. For that you will have to edit your connection with our new editor or create them from nm-connection-editor (from NetworkManager). But it can be used together with the old Plasma NM for now if you want to have full functionality of getting secrets.

Here is a video of the plasma-nm in action

And picture how will look the new editor

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Spacenet® Adds New Communications Products and Services to GSA Schedule

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Spacenet ® Adds New Communications Products and Services to GSA Schedule

Managed Network Services Provider’s GSA Schedule Now Includes Expanded Managed Broadband Services, Emergency Communications Services, and Additional High-performance Satellite Modems

MCLEAN, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Spacenet Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (NAS: GILT) and a leading provider of managed network services, today announced the addition of a range of new communications services, solutions and products to its U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule 70 contract (Contract No. GS-35F-172AA). The new additions include: managed broadband network solutions, Emergency Communications Services (ECS) and two new high-performance satellite modems.

“In an increasingly network-dependent world, our government agencies demand and deserve the most reliable and cost-effective communications capabilities available,” said Glenn Katz, Spacenet’s CEO. “These new offerings on our GSA schedule showcase the latest in all forms of communication technologies that Spacenet now offers. This broad spectrum of services provides even greater availability and affordability than our previous schedule. For example, our new Connect Series product line brings clarity and ease in selecting managed broadband services. Spacenet’s managed services include, among others, broadband wired and wireless communications, PCI compliance services, data security services, installation and maintenance services, and proactive network monitoring and management. Similarly, our ECS series offers public safety agencies greater flexibility in acquiring and deploying vital emergency satellite communications solutions.”

The new Spacenet solutions available under Contract GS-35F-172AA include:

  • Spacenet Connect Series of managed network services:

    Spacenet’s Connect Series is a tiered suite of managed services that helps clarify and simplify network operations outsourcing. Offering customers a range of services packaged according to each customer’s internal capabilities, reliability needs and security requirements, the Connect Series includes:

    • Spacenet ManagedConnect™: High-speed connectivity, proactive monitoring & support.
    • Spacenet AssuredConnect™: VPN connectivity, proactive network monitoring & support.
    • Spacenet CompleteConnect™: Network Design, VPN connectivity, complete management & support.
  • Spacenet Emergency Communications Services (ECS) and ECS Flex:

    Spacenet’s pay-as-you-use ECS and ECS Flex solutions provide an affordable and flexible emergency communications solution that delivers readily available communications via satellite to virtually any U.S. location.
  • …read more
    Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Computers

How (and why) to set up a VPN today

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Marissa Mayer made Yahoo’s VPN famous by using it to check on the work habits of her employees. Lost amid today’s VPN conversation, however, is the fact that virtual private networks are much more than just pipelines for connecting remote employees to central work servers.

And that’s a damn shame, because VPNs can be helpful tools for protecting online privacy, and you need not be an office drone to enjoy their benefits.

A VPN, as its name suggests, is just a virtual version of a secure, physical network—a web of computers linked together to share files and other resources. But VPNs connect to the outside world over the Internet, and they can serve to secure general Internet traffic in addition to corporate assets. In fact, the lion’s share of modern VPNs are encrypted, so computers, devices, and other networks that connect to them do so via encrypted tunnels.

Why you want a VPN

You have at least four great reasons to start using a VPN. First, you can use it to connect securely to a remote network via the Internet. Most companies maintain VPNs so that employees can access files, applications, printers, and other resources on the office network without compromising security, but you can also set up your own VPN to safely access your secure home network while you’re on the road.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Orange Business Services and Microsoft strengthen their cloud partnership through the integration of

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Orange Business Services and Microsoft strengthen their cloud partnership through the integration of Office Together Select into Business VPN Galerie

PARIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)– For the last two years, Orange Business Services, a Microsoft partner, has been selling Office Together Select, a communication and collaboration solution based on Microsoft Office 365 with its own professional services. As of June 2013, Office Together Select will be available on Business VPN Galerie.

The objective of this integration is to provide companies with the combined benefits of Office Together Select and Virtual Private Networks.

Launched in 2011, Business VPN Galerie extends enterprise VPNs to the cloud via fully-secured gateways, providing the high standards of end-to-end performance and reliability. Today, this solution interconnects more than 8,000 facilities in the world and provides access to a wide range of cloud solutions developed by Orange Business Services and its partners.

Orange Business Services and Microsoft have implemented a secured, dedicated connection to the Office 365 datacenters throughout the world for Orange Business Services customers. With this new integration, Orange Business Services customers will benefit from the level of performance and security of their VPN when accessing the Office 365 desktop and collaboration services of Office Together Select: electronic messaging with Exchange, IM and Web Conferencing with Lync, collaboration portal and access to enterprise social networks with SharePoint. Office Together Select streamlines the daily work of employees and provides permanent implementation and management support for the solution.

“With Business VPN Galerie, we were among the first in the world to launch a ‘Cloud Service Hub‘ providing secured access to enterprise private networks and end-to-end customer support,” said Nicolas Roy, head of the Network Solutions Business Unit, Orange Business Services. “We plan to stay ahead of the competition by increasing permanently our cloud application ecosystem and by partnering with innovative leaders. This new development of our cloud partnership with Microsoft maximizes the value of both Business VPN Galerie and Office Together Select for our mutual customers.”

“For Microsoft, the availability of Office Together Select on Business VPN Galerie consolidates the strategic partnership initiated with Orange Business Services with Office 365,” concluded Laurent Schlosser, Senior Director – Operator Channel, Microsoft France. “This is also the recognition of Microsoft cloud services know-how and of its capacity to support its partners on the long term providing them a flexible offer for their customers.”

About Orange Business Services

Orange Business Services, the France Telecom-Orange branch dedicated to B2B services, is a leading global integrator of communications solutions for multinational corporations. With the world’s largest, seamless network for voice and data, Orange Business Services reaches …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

Why VPN logs don't measure worker performance

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Yahoo recently made waves when CEO Marissa Mayer revoked all work-from-home arrangements and mandated that employees show up at the office. However, the real-world data Mayer reportedly based her decision upon is not a valid metric for work-from-home performance.

According to reports, Mayer reviewed VPN logs to determine how much time remote workers spend connected to Yahoo. She found that many were connecting infrequently, if at all, implying that those working from home were doing more “home” and less “work.”

Was Marissa Mayer’s decision misguided?

Hopefully Yahoo’s CEO looked beyond the virtual private network (VPN) logs before making a decision. VPN logs alone are not enough to prove that people working from home are slacking off, because connecting to the company network is not the same thing as delivering results.

What are you paying for?

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

News, Politics, Government

Samsung To Take A Bite Out Of Apple's Enterprise Business

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By Maribel Lopez, Contributor

Apple and Samsung are in a heated battle for market share in the new mobile computing landscape. While the war is largely being waged on the consumer landscape with Samsung outpacing Apple in product introductions, Samsung is  making bold moves in the enterprise space. In January, it announced Samsung For Enterprise (SAFE), which it defined as a set of enterprise solutions that will provide the necessary security and feature enhancements to make mobile solutions suitable for business.  SAFE has four components that include corporate email with enhanced Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) features, on-device encryption, VPN and mobile device management support. It’s teamed up with VPN vendors for secure tunnel support and MDM vendors to offer mobile deployment solutions that support more than 388 IT policies. Samsung went one step further at the recent Mobile World Congress trade show when it announced KNOX. Samsung KNOX is an end-to-end secure Android solution that provides security hardening from the hardware through to the application layer. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Computers

Yahoo's CEO checked VPN logs before work-from-home ban

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer came up with her controversial and hugely unfashionable policy of outlawing home working after doing something almost unheard of for a US CEO – she checked the VPN logs to see whether anyone was slacking.

According to the reporter who broke the news of the ban, Mayer told told a staff meeting last week that the logs told her that some employees weren’t using the VPN often enough.

The reasoning was simple and non-technical; if employees weren’t using the VPN they couldn’t be working or contributing to Yahoo as a company.

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,” Mayer said in her widely-leaked memo announcing the orignal ban, sent to staff on 22 February.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Linux

How The Linux Foundation and Fedora are Addressing Workstation Security

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By mricon

Why passwords are bad

Are you a systems administrator? Quick, which system in your infrastructure is most vulnerable to hacker attacks? No, it’s not the web server — though it’s a good guess. No, it’s not the firewall. The answer may surprise you — it’s your workstation.

Think about it — unless you’re working for an agency with extremely rigid security policies, you are probably able to connect to servers you administer right from your workstation. Perhaps not all the time — perhaps you have to establish a VPN connection first in order to be on the “inside.” Once that is done, however, your workstation becomes an extremely interesting target for malicious hackers, since at that time your workstation happens to be the least protected system that sits both on the outside and on the inside of your trusted network.

Did you know that your workstation is currently running software that was written for the sole purpose of letting others execute arbitrary code? You are looking at it right now. Yes, I do mean the browser. Did you ever think of browsers in such terms? That’s all they do, they download someone else’s code from the Internet and then execute it. Yes, all browsers implement a “sandbox” — a sanitized environment that is supposed to prevent downloaded code from doing any harm. The key phrase is “supposed to,” because quite often the browsers don’t get it right. Especially plugins, such as flash. Don’t get me started on flash.

And don’t get me started on humans. Did you know that we’re made out of meat? “Evil hackers” are well aware of that fact. They know that the easiest (and the stealthiest) way to hack into a system is not to relentlessly attack it looking for exploits, but to wait until the admins do something meat-headed. Like, you know that time when your mom posted that link with a funny cat, and the page tried to load a movie but ended up crashing your browser? And then you tried it again in another browser, just to make sure? See? Made out of meat.

So, let’s say the sandbox around your browser fails and attackers get a foothold on your system. What’s their next move? The malicious script will probably search your browser’s history and try to judge whether you’re an interesting target or not. Then the script will most likely install a keylogger and a backdoor:

• A keylogger is a small application that will record everything you type on your keyboard — it is particularly interested in anything that looks like a credit card number or an account password.
• A backdoor is a way for attackers to execute arbitrary commands on your workstation, and it doesn’t matter if your workstation is on a private network or not. Most backdoors just connect to some “command …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Foundation

Linux

Shell script password input

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By tomies

hy,

I wrote a simple shell script to monitor (with Nagios) a SNX VPN function. Here the Code snippet:

Code:
testing=`ssh user@IP-address 'ls /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0'`

#echo $testing

if [ $testing = "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0" > /dev/null 2>%1 ]; then
echo "VPN is working"
exit 0

else snx -s server -u user
exit 0
fi

As you could see if the VPN connection is establised I got a simple output text in Nagios. But when the VPN connection isn´t up and running I want to establise a connection with the command “snx -s server -u user”.
Than I have to put in a Password manually

Code:
Check Point's Linux SNX
build 800007075
Please enter your password:

And there I run into problems. How could I automate such a login within the script? Any Ideas?

regards
Tommy

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The UNIX and Linux Forums

Computers

QNAP TS-269 Pro review: A fast and powerful NAS box with a steep learning curve

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Few would dispute that QNAP makes very fast NAS hardware—the company’s boxes are consistently at the top of PCWorld’s performance charts. The TS-269 Pro is no exception, being the overall fastest two-bay NAS box that we’ve scrutinized on our new test platform. The margin of victory, however, wasn’t that great. What really sets this $600 (unpopulated) unit apart from the crowd is its slew of software features and its superior connectivity.

The TS-269 Pro features a 2.13GHz, dual-core Intel Atom D2700 CPU and 1GB of memory (which you can expand up to 3GB, using the single free SODIMM slot). One of my few complaints about the TS-269 Pro is that removing the case cover to access said memory slot was a bit of a chore the enclosure is baby smooth with nothing to grip. QNAP populated our test unit with two 1TB Western Digital WD10EFRX hard drives mirrored in RAID 1. The drive normally ships without drives.

My other minor gripe concerns the TS-269 Pro’s otherwise top-tier port array. The front USB port, normally used for quickly copying the contents of a USB flash drive, is only USB 2.0. I’m now using USB 3.0 thumb drives almost exclusively and reaching behind the unit to access the two significantly faster USB 3.0 ports is a bit of a pain. Otherwise it’s all good: dual gigabit Ethernet ports with failover and binding, an eSATA port, and two additional USB 2.0 ports. There’s also a Kensington lock port for securing the unit to your workbench or rack, and an HDMI port for outputting HD content and surveillance to a monitor or TV.

Don’t be fooled by the friendly graphical user interface; taking advantage of the TS-269 Pro’s advanced features requires deep knowledge on the part of the IT admin.

QNAP outshines everyone but Synology in the breadth of software features n its Linux-based operating system. These go way beyond simple file-sharing, administration, and backup to include iSCSI, iTunes and DLNA servers, direct photo/music/video viewing in your browser, and video surveillance support. You also get a VPN, FTP, and TFTP servers; full domain and LDAP support; and more. Check the company’s website for the full list, where you can also play with the operating system via an online demo. QNAP matches—and in some small ways beats—Synology in operating system features, QNAP’s OS is generally not as easy to use; it takes a fair amount of knowledge to implement many of its features.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld