Joe Cipriano

The voice belongs to easily one of the most recognizable voices in America, Joe Cipriano. You may not know his name, but you hear Joe Cipriano every day on Radio, TV and in Movie Theaters. He is the signature voice of the Fox Television Network comedies, the CBS Network comedies and is the in-show announcer for Deal or No Deal.

Pretty darn cool. Joe and I have had a close association for over a decade, since my days as the Production Director of a local Norfolk Virginia radio station called the point. It is really too bad I cannot put my hands on some of the audio I produced with Joe, it was (if I say so myself) really, really good. Thanks Joe – in at least the first and last moments of the show, the Web Strategies Podcast sounds like a Million Bucks.

Our guest

for the main segment this time out is Tony Scarola, one of our Web Strategies Podcast subscribers, a friend to the program, and a person who we trust as an expert network engineer and security expert. This time we talk about the age-old confrontation between the technicians and your staff.

WSP04 Podcast Extra Technology Audits

As a business owner you have either have money to burn, or a handle on your business technology infrastructure. If it is not practical to have a full time network engineer on staff, your company really needs an annual technology audit. Find a reputable integrator and hire them to send an experienced network engineer to your office. Make sure they physically inspect the network hardware in place, and inventory all routers, hubs, firewalls, servers and workstations in your system. Ask the company to chart out every machine on your network, how they are connected, and identify what services each is offering. This document should be easy to read and easy to understand. Here is a graphic representing the sample Network Map in Microsoft Visio.

Network Chart

Most of the time shortcomings in outdated hardware or software carry hidden costs. Most business owners simply cannot guess how much lost productivity is the result of a staff asked to make do with old dull tools. What you do not know can indeed hurt you when it comes to network security. If security were not your area of expertise, you would have no way to know how serious a risk your business faces every day.

Has your company experienced data loss due to hardware malfunctions, viruses, or other unexpected circumstances? One of the most common threats to business is the unintentional access to sensitive files by well meaning employees. The other more obvious threat is the deliberate destruction of data by disenfranchised workers. Both are preventable if someone in the know warns you ahead of time. All that said, what happens to your business if before work one morning an electrical fire takes out the bookkeepers office. How long would that take to recover without a working plan based on your current real world network? Makes you want to reach for Alka-Seltzer right now doesn’t it?