Posted by Adam T. Sutton in Website Design Tips	September 27, 2007

There are simple ways to solve huge computer security problems

By Adam T. Sutton, Managing Editor, Mequoda Group, LLC

It's a crazy week at work. You're the last one out of the office, cranking out work until 11 p.m. The last thing you do before leaving is lock the door. Without locking the door, your entire business would be vulnerable.

Luckily, there are only a few sets of keys to your office, so it's well protected. But what if everyone in the neighborhood had a key? Or what if everyone knew that jiggling the handle would pop the door open? How safe would your business be then?

Now think about the other entrance to your office: the computer network. Is it locked? Are you sure? Because if it's not, your business is just as vulnerable as if you left the front door wide open every night.

This story from InformationWeek should scare every business with an unlocked computer network. Convicted hacker Robert Moore is beginning a two-year federal prison sentence today for his part in a sophisticated telecommunications scam, according to the story.

Moore broke into the networks of 15 telecommunications companies and hundreds of businesses worldwide. "One small telecom went out of business because of the expenses the company incurred during the break in," according to InformationWeek.

Moore said his job was "so easy a caveman could do it." He targeted default passwords, scanned over 6 million computers in five months, and found that 70 percent of all the companies were insecure, according to InformationWeek.

Default passwords are a hacker's dream. They are passwords that come standard with a piece of software and are the same for every computer the software is installed on. This makes passwords like "admin" a hacker's first guess when trying to break into a system, because many companies never change the defaults.

If your network is using default passwords, it's time to change them. Ignoring them is exposing your computers to hackers who can use them to disguise their hunt for bigger fish, or who want to steal credit card numbers and personal information.

No system is totally-hacker proof, but problems like default passwords and outdated security patches are foolish. They make it unnecessarily easy for hackers to exploit your business. Perhaps it's time for a network security audit? Talk to the professionals and see how you can keep your customers and your business safer.

2007 Mequoda Publisher of the Year Announced

Today we are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2007 Mequoda Publisher of the Year award goes to Ceramic Arts Daily. Mequoda Daily's readers voted that this creative Mequoda Hub best served its audience while running a newly launched Mequoda system. A big thank you goes out to all the readers who voted, and most of all, to all of this year's nominees.

Below we are running an encore presentation of Ceramic Arts Daily's profile from the Mequoda Daily. You can also visit the Ceramic Arts Daily website for a first hand view.

Ceramic Arts Daily

If you enjoy creating or collecting elegant vases, hearty pots or any ceramics, then Ceramic Arts Daily is for you.

Since the Ceramic Publications Company launched the site in July, the hub has been serving daily tips about ceramic artists, their work, techniques and artistic prospective.

"[Ceramic Arts Daily] provides a lot more timely information to the people we had previously served with magazines and more traditional websites," says President of the Ceramic Publications Company Charlie Spahr.

"Those websites that we had before did not get updated nearly as often as this one does. This one gets updated everyday...before it was much more typical of a magazine cycle."

That update cycle mostly paralleled Ceramic Publications Company's two print magazines, Ceramics Monthly and Pottery Making Illustrated—which is usually too infrequent to be successful online.

Now the website's update cycle is daily, which is a good strategy for attracting repeat website traffic and building an email newsletter database.

Website's Offerings

One of the major benefits of Ceramic Arts Daily is that it allows its audience to "do a lot of things from one place," Spahr said.

Anyone wishing to learn more about creating or collecting ceramic art does not have to look far. The site serves as a center for products, making them more accessible to customers, Spahr said. The site brings together books, magazine subscriptions, Potter's Council memberships and workshops—all designed to teach people about ceramics.

Other educational tools include three free downloadable books on the site, which come with a free subscription to the daily email newsletter. The daily email newsletter drives the website's update schedule.

"The free products are actually pretty robust," Spahr said. "They have a wide appeal to attract as many people as possible."

Rather than just a place to post tips, the Ceramic Arts Daily's website is also becoming a forum for artists and collectors to meet and interact. People started commenting on posts and answering each other's questions less than six weeks after the site's launch.

"I think [the commenting] is going to catch on very much, and it has already started to do that," Spahr said.

The site also serves as a reference, with third-party listings for workshops, classes, artist guilds, residencies and colleges. Anyone can view the listings, free of charge.

There's a gallery section of the website where artists can post their contact information and provide an image of their work. That part of the site will hopefully see major changes in the future, Spahr said, with the addition of features that will allow artists to post an array of their work and link to their websites.

One thing Ceramic Arts Daily does not offer is third-party advertising—at least not yet.

"We certainly will be offering advertising to third parties in 2008, maybe sooner...I've already received unsolicited requests for advertising on the website," Spahr said.

Unsolicited advertisers? It seems like this Mequoda Hub is off to a great start and can only go up from here.