In the real world, businesses come in every size, from self-employed entrepreneurs like me to mega malls like Wal-Mart.

On the Internet, companies come in every size, too, from a stand-alone ebook sales page with webmaster and owner all in one, to 300 pound gorilla like Amazon, with over a million pages requiring the entire population of a small country to serve as webmaster.

If your site is a single page, it is its own network. But if your site is any bigger, and you have plans to grow, it is a network or is fast becoming one. You need network monitoring.

Most ecommerce webmasters are at least somewhat familiar with website monitoring. Many use a website monitoring service or software to keep track of “uptime” and “downtime”.

At your local shopping mall, serious business requires more than just knowing when the front doors are open and when they are closed. Serious ecommerce needs to know more than just when the site is accessible. That is what network monitoring is all about.

Chances are, your e-business owns one of the following, or uses one of the following remotely:

DNS servers: These are used to translate your site name, like www.mycompany.com, to the numbers called “IP addresses” that computers understand. If DNS servers are not working properly, end-users will not be able to find your site and will get an error. Usually only an external or remote monitoring service will detect such a problem.

An FTP server: File Transfer Protocol servers are used to help you exchange files with remote users. If you use FTP, a monitoring service can make sure it is always up and running.

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So you want to work in the Information Technology field? In this article i’ll provide some advice to those seeking employment in this field. Keep in mind these are my opinions, others may agree or disagree.

Mechanic or Engineer?

The first question to answer is which direction do you want to go? Typically there are two types of IT Staff. Those who administer and and those who create. What do I mean by this? Ask yourself if you’d rather sit in a cube and write software, create and maintain databases and develop applications, or would you rather install software, manage an e-mail system or create a network or remote access solution.

The two areas are usually comprised of employees with very different mind sets.

The administrators tend to follow a career path that goes something like this. IT Intern or PC Technician performing break/fix tasks on PC’s. As they advance they may manage the larger rollout of operating systems or software applications. Keep in mind the focus is on more mechanical or problem solving tasks. Later in their career they may move on to network or server administration. The larger the impact of a mistake the further up the ladder in their career. Eventually they may manage a team of other administrators or perform some consulting services.

The engineers typically come from computer science backgrounds. They may have learned programming of various languages in college. The particular language is not important only the fact that they are creating or maintaining applications for systems and databases rather than focusing on the workings of the system its self. Many of these employees are introverts. They would prefer to work within their group and make a cube or office their home. The administrator would be perfectly happy being “visable” within the company.

Education

First let me say that a four year Bachelors degree is valuable to anyone seeking employment in the IT industry. Not sure what direction you want to go? Get a basic Business BA because it will teach you how a business operates and get you the open door to most job interviews. More accurately it will prevent you from being excluded simply because you do not have a degree. If you are the administrator type i’d also recommend a basic BA unless you find a program that has the current skills you are seeking. Mainly a variety of desktop and server operating system and networking skill path focusing on TCP/IP , DNS, WINS, DHCP and routing.

More: Career-in-Information-Technology

There is no 100 % protection for your computer. But this doesn’t mean you cannot prevent you data to be unauthorized accessed.

Once I was chatting with my colleagues about the security issues and the ways the information can be protected. Our main goal was to understand if the Dekart family products can be used for assuring data access protection. We were talking about existing software, about the devices available for buyers and about the percentage of an assurance we can get from these tools available on the modern market so far. We also touched the other side of protection: it’s vulnerability. We came to the conclusion that it is not simple to get the information protected, as there are many well-established strategies and methods developers (to say nicely), whose target is to get to know what is valuable for you.

But anyway there are the directions we can work on in order to minimize the risks for unauthorized access to our data. Here are they.

1. If you want to protect your data it is important to assure the building (office, home), security access and protection. There are many security agencies available on the market, which can be of real help. They have different protection strategies and tools. But as this is not directly related to your computer we will let the specialists in the area to let us know about it and we will move forward.

2. Hardware protection. There are many tools available for computer protection, like physical computers locks, which may be locked through a hole in the desk/object, or can be locked to a mounting bracket affixed to the vertical surface. There are different kits, mostly consisting of security cables and locks. These anti-theft devices are designed for Notebook laptops and PCs, with special requirements adjusted for different models.

More: Computer-s-Data-Security