GTEC (Government Technology Exhibition and Conference) takes place from October 27th until the 30th this coming fall at the Ottawa Convention Center.  

GTEC is the primary learning and professional development forum for business and IM/IT decision makers of all levels within the government.  This year, we will take part in GTEC by setting up a booth on their exhibition floor. The goal of GTEC is to demonstrate an integrated, comprehensive view of the technologies, which enables businesses and technological leadership to take place inter-governmentally.  DKC will have a few surprises up our sleeve this year that we will be sharing with you a little closer to the convention date – we highly encourage you to come by and visit us at the show!

Government and private sector communities gather at GTEC to exchange ideas towards advancing the business of ICT and professional development in general.  GTEC is Canada’s leading showcase event for technologies and services for the public sector area and is attended by over 6,000 participants, and we can’t be more excited to be participating this year.  

It comprises keynotes, seminars, panels, workshops and round table discussions which are all very thought provoking in regards to a large selection of ICT topics.  Distinction awards are also handed out at GTEC and they set the standard for recognizing excellence in public service information technology and information management in Canada.  Some of the main conference themes of this year include access to digital services, integrated service delivery, using information as a critical enabler and intelligent infrastructure.  This year the theme of the conference is to address public sector service delivery from the ‘Outside In,’ presented by stimulating speakers whom will interact with the attendees as personally as they can.  The leading trends in ICT will be on the exhibition floor at this world-class conference, exhibition and gala – DKC is honored to be a part of such a great convention!    

Today DKC is attending ExileIsland, a survivor based event in support of Children's Wish Foundation right here in Ottawa.  We are proud to support local charities as well as get out with our team and boost our office morale!

While performing charitable work can seem as though it is a completely selfless act, the behavior may actually be good for the health and well-being of those performing the act. Studies have repeatedly shown that doing good deeds for others is good for the soul. In fact, those feeling down and out can benefit from doing something to improve another person’s way of life.

For businesses, charitable giving has an added benefit: it provides networking and marketing opportunities while also increasing the business’s presence in the community. If a business also encourages employees to participate, workplace morale will improve as each person feels as though they are making a difference in the community. By forming a task force that helps organize and track the project, businesses can further boost worker confidence.

Choose the Right Cause

To be most effective, a business must first choose the right cause to support. A business owner may choose to go in a few different directions with this. Many organizations opt to find a charity that is relevant to their company mission statement. A business whose products or services cater primarily to women may choose to participate in the Komen Race for the Cure to support the fight against breast cancer. A business that manufactures children’s toys may opt to participate in or host a toy drive at Christmastime or hold an event to raise money to support a children’s cancer research hospital.

The cause should ideally also be relevant to the community in which the business has a presence. For businesses that have multiple regional offices, each office can host their own event that is important to their respective communities. Some organizations hold events in multiple cities, making it easier for a business owner to find an organization that is both locally relevant and important to its own customer base.

In choosing a charity, businesses can also choose to support an organization that is personally important to business owners or workers. An organization may have an employee who recently lost a relative to breast cancer or a manager may feel especially passionate about a particular cause. This personal connection will lead employees to be more dedicated to the business’s charitable activities, ensuring its success.

Sponsorships = Marketing

In the process of supporting a good cause, a business may also find that it can use charitable activities as a part of its annual marketing efforts. Sponsoring a local little league team or a 5K walk will allow a business to get the word out about its products or services while funneling marketing money into supporting a local cause. Instead of handing that money over to a media outlet or online advertising service, these businesses are able to ensure that money makes a difference in the community while still achieving its marketing goals.

In sponsoring an event, it’s important for all employees to participate in making the event a success. Consider creating T-shirts that include both the business’s name and the title of the event. The merchandise can not only be sold, with proceeds going to the cause, but the day of the event, employees can show up wearing the shirts to further promote the business’s participation.

Voluntary Participation

If your charity work requires workers to give up a Saturday or Sunday, be sure you make it voluntary. You may also consider rewarding employees who participate with a free product or an extra afternoon off to make sure you have a substantial presence at the event. Participants may also receive a free T-shirt or other merchandise publicizing the event for their efforts. This ensures long after the event, as your workers travel around town, your business is still receiving publicity.

Instead of working together as a group to support a specific organization, some businesses have begun offering workers days off that they can spend volunteering with a charity they choose. Earlier this year, The Washington Post revealed that several companies have found this type of perk helps them retain workers by letting them become involved in the community without giving up a day off. This route also spreads workers around across various charitable organizations, providing a degree of publicity a company wouldn’t have received by focusing on only one charity.

Increasing Networking

One way businesses can use charitable support to its networking advantage is by encouraging other businesses in the area to participate. By requesting donations from local businesses nearby, an SMB can work with local law firms, retailers, medical professionals, and more in a way that may lead them to work together more in the future.

Businesses should also work directly with the local chamber of commerce to promote charitable work. Often the local chamber is able to help get the word out about the event, as well as provide resources a businesses might not otherwise have had. The local tourism agency may be able to put information on its upcoming events or news page to further get the word out.

Taking Collections

Employees don’t even have to leave the office to give back to the community. Some businesses have found that taking up a collection to donate to a local cause can be as effective and morale-boosting as volunteering. Businesses may choose to sponsor a family at Christmastime or regularly give to a local women’s shelter. Some businesses hold charitable giving campaigns year-round where a specified amount is directed to be removed from each paycheck and contributed to an employee’s favorite charity.

Canned food drives are also an easy way to encourage employees to give. Workers can easily clear canned food from pantries and cabinets and dropped in a box. The box can then be taken to a local food bank, which will ensure the food is given to families who need it.

Through charitable giving, a business can increase its local visibility while also improving employee morale. By involving employees in the process, businesses can also increase worker retention, which can save thousands of dollars each year. Local charitable organizations will likely be more than happy to work with any small business interested in sponsoring an event or setting up a regular payroll deduction program for its workers.

CC www.forbes.com

HID Fargo Technical Update

DTC RIBBON CARTRIDGE BRACE REMOVAL

What change did HID Global (Fargo) make to some DTC EZ cartridge print ribbons?

HID Global (Fargo) replaced the EZ ribbon cartridge brace which was used to prevent the print ribbon from rotating within the cartridge during transportation.  The brace has been replaced with an additional piece of adhesive at the start of the print ribbon to achieve the same objective.  This new solution provides the same functionality as the brace while utilizing significantly less plastic, thereby making our print ribbons more environmentally-friendly.

What products will no longer have the EZ ribbon cartridge brace?

EZ cartridge print ribbons for the Fargo C50, Fargo DTC1000, Fargo DTC1250e, Fargo DTC4000, and Fargo DTC4250e will no longer include the brace.

What products will continue to use the ribbon cartridge brace?

Print ribbons for Fargo C30 and Fargo DTC400 printer models will continue to use the ribbon cartridge brace.

We can assist you with choosing the right security features, then the right card printer for the job. For help, please contact us at  http://idcardscanada.com/pages/contact-us.

Fraud-deflecting microchip embedded credit cards are on their way to your wallet in October 2015. But, according to Visa and MasterCard, that’s not soon enough.

With mass credit card hacking nearing epidemic levels -- as evidenced by the recent eBay, Michael’s, Target and Neiman Marcus breaches -- next year’s October deadline for all U.S. merchants to switch to “chip-and-PIN” credit card systems could be too late.

Related: Tips for Keeping Your Travels Identity Theft Free

Once D-Day arrives 17 months from now, credit cards with magnetic strips on the back will be phased out. Swiping your credit card will be a thing of the past. Instead, all credit cards will be equipped with metallic squares on the front containing EMV (short for Europay, MasterCard, Visa) microchips.

You will insert your chipped cards into the slot of a special card reading point-of-sale terminal. The device will read your card’s microchip. If you have a PIN number for your card (some card issuers will offer this smart option), you’ll need to enter it. Either way, you’ll still reportedly have to sign for your purchase before your transaction is complete.

The EMV chips are designed to protect users from fraud and counterfeiting, supposedly significantly better than magnetic strips ever could. They turn cardholder data into a one-time, one-of-a-kind encrypted digital signature that proponents of the technology claim is incredibly difficult to copy or duplicate. (That is at least until thieves figure out how to hack those, too, which is pretty much inevitable, being that nothing is hacker-proof any more.)

Related: Don't Get Hacked -- Tools to Fight Cyber Attacks

Microchipped cards also store considerably more information about cardholders than magnetic strips. Some worry this will leave them especially vulnerable to identity thieves equipped with scanners that could snoop the personal data contained within them.

The cost of new cash registers and training necessary to upgrade to EMV chip card payment acceptance systems have given most U.S. retailers cold feet thus far, along with years and years of hairy disputes over how processing the new technology will generally work.

Kim Lachance Shandrowmerchants, issuers and processors bicker here in the States, 80-plus countries around the world have already embraced chipKim Lachance Shandrow-and-PIN credit cards, including most in Western Europe, along with our neighbors in Mexico and Canada.  

Related: Target's Security Breach Stresses Need for Better Cyber Security

So far, a few American credit unions and large banks, including Bank of America, Citibank andJPMorgan Chase, have beat the looming 2015 deadline, already rolling out microchipped cards and encouraging customers to upgrade to them for free.

Target -- which, forgive the ironic pun here, was the target of a data breach last December that exposed the names, phone numbers, and mailing and email addresses of up to approximately 110 million individuals -- is poised to be the first major U.S. retailer to issue its own branded EMV-chipped cards, the Associated Press also reports.

The Minneapolis-headquartered company's $100 million initiative is scheduled to bring microchip credit card terminals to some of its 1,789 stores in the U.S. as early as this September.

For those whose personal, private and “confidential” information was compromised in the massive Target hack, myself included, chipped cards can’t reach critical mass soon enough. And, yes, please sign me up for a PIN number, too.   

 We can assist you with choosing the right security features, then the right card printer for the job. For help, please contact us at  http://idcardscanada.com/pages/contact-us.

Kim Lachance Shandrow

via www.entrepreneur.com 

The three most important security steps the small business should take

This article is sure to incite some debate as I could have easily listed ten or more steps a small business should take in terms of security. Some might disagree with the three I've selected here-and that's ok. Anyone reading this blog will hopefully get the point, which is that security can be complex, especially if you're a small business-but you have to start somewhere. Where do you begin if you're a lawyer running an office with six computers? Or a doctor who has a nurse running the "IT Stuff." You might not be able to afford everything under the sun, or that pricey consultant or that expensive managed service. But that doesn't mean you don't still have security concerns.

If you're a small business, please view these steps for exactly what they are: a starting point-simply an organized a place to begin. These are the absolute bare minimum, basic, no-brainer, and got-to-have things! If you know someone who has a small business, send him or her this blog.

The three most important security steps a small business should take are:

1. Antivirus Software
2. Firewalls
3. OS Patching

Let's dig in...

Antivirus software

Please raise their hand if a virus has infected your computer at some point. Now take that hand and go purchase some Antivirus software for all the PCs in your small business! You'd be surprised (I always am) about how many people still miss this basic fundamental step. Many times I also find that while folks have no problem buying and installing the software they can't seem to keep it up to date. Maybe their subscription ran out, or they have the software configured incorrectly, but it isn't updated with the latest virus definitions (those would be the antidotes to the virus, for the lay reader). Always ensure your small business has Antivirus software and that it is up to date.

Firewalls

The typical small business will have DSL or cable for Internet access. With almost all of these connections you will be provided with a small firewall like a D-Link or Linksys brand appliance. These firewalls are given to you for a reason. They are better than nothing, I will grant you that, but they are not the most robust firewalls in the world, and in many cases they won't provide the small business with adequate protection.

A sensible investment for a small business is a higher-grade firewall, preferably an application layer firewall (Better yet, a Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliance offers companies multiple edge-of-your-network security features like network-based Antivirus, intrusion prevention, and anti-Spam. This can be an effective means to maximize your security without completely whipping out your budget.

OS patching

There's a good chance your small business runs Microsoft products like Windows XP and Microsoft Office, and so on. If it does, you may be vulnerable. Microsoft's operating systems are a big target for hackers for several reasons, not the least of which involves their popularity. Everyone picks on the popular OS, and there's also the fact that, historically, they've had many vulnerabilities. And until that changes, Microsoft will continue to release security patches on a monthly basis that close these vulnerabilities. They key is to make sure your Microsoft products are up to date and have the latest patches. One important thing to consider is making sure those patches don't break any of your applications. You may wish to deploy the patches to one or two of your computers first to make sure they don't cause any major problems before you role them out en masse.

Final thoughts

Ok, I know. The savvy IT guy reading this article is all fired up right now. He's got thirteen other things to add to my list. I say to you, post them to the threads below. We want to hear them. For all you small businesses, read the threads below and check out the other tips from the experts in our midst. Use these suggestions as you budget for IT security and make practical decisions about how to improve your small businesses security. It's my belief that some security is better than no security, so start small, do what you can, and budget/plan for the future.

We can assist you with choosing the right security features, then the right card printer for the job. For help, please contact us at  http://idcardscanada.com/pages/contact-us.

Jeremy Smith
http://www.techrepublic.com

Smart cards can be used to keep data safe

Encryption refers to using a confidential process to secure data or information. Encryption should be used by small businesses to protect their customers’ information as well as protecting their own data.

Investment News advises business owners, at the least, to keep their anti-virus software up to date. This prevents phishing spyware, keystroke-logging software, and other viruses from manifesting themselves in an organisation’s computer network.

The most common security breaches occur when a thief breaks into a business and steals hardware, like laptops and hard disc drives.

Smart cards may further help secure a business. Many businesses have traditionally hid their data behind passwords, but criminals can obtain passwords by using computer software or through employee negligence. Smart cards, especially ones that make use of biometric technology, can prevent that. The plastic cards and card printers needed to produce these IDs are inexpensive compared to the amount of damage caused by lost or destroyed data.

 

At DKC associates, we believe that, depending on your needs, you should consider a card with at least one security feature, to protect your company and your valued customers. 
We can assist you with choosing the right security features, then the right card printer for the job. For help, please contact us at  http://idcardscanada.com/pages/contact-us.

 

Businesses devote time and resources to attracting and retaining customers, but these days all it takes is one data breach or other loss or theft of personally-identifying information about customers to lose their business for good. That's why a major concern of businesses entrusted with the custody of personal data about customers or employees or third parties has become preventing identity theft. 

Businesses have been stockpiling more and more personally identifiable information (PII) about customers since the advent of the digital age. PII -- including credit card numbers, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, etc. -- is often collected in the course of sales, applications for credit or loans, and in the course of employment. This information is often maintained by businesses in computer databases or on disks or is transmitted over networks, such as the Internet. Stealing PII often leads to identity theft -- a crime through which someone uses stolen personal information to get credit cards, take out loans, and/or perpetrate other fraud.

While large corporations may keep more PII, sometimes smaller firms are targeted by ID thieves because they don't have as rigorous data security. "In in a large business there is typically a well-defined set of people who have responsibility for security of computers and information assets. In small to medium businesses, that activity is not as clearly well defined," says Lawrence R. Rogers, a senior member of the technical staff at the CERT Program of the Software Engineering Institute, part of Carnegie Mellon University. "In Mom-and-Pop businesses that collect personal identifying information, they may have someone who installs patches and secures information. It's the same information a big business would have -- although not as much -- but perhaps it's more vulnerable because it's easier to attack."

The following sections will cover the ways thieves use businesses to perpetrate ID theft, how to use encryption to fight ID theft, and other steps businesses can take to better protect data.

Preventing Identity Theft: How Thieves Use Businesses for ID Theft

The Internet has helped fuel the spread of ID theft. Thieves for decades have sought to profit from identity scams, but it used to be that they had to pilfer paper files from record rooms or sort through your trash to find personal information. Nowadays, business information is aggregated on computers and one stolen or lost laptop computer could compromise the PII of millions of customers. In addition, the Internet can be used by thieves and organized criminal gangs to steal information from a business computer halfway around the world and trade it on an underground black market. 

Data thieves are just hackers and they are in it to sell this information to others who can use it to carry out financial fraud. "The information has a very short shelf life. Your social security and credit card only goes for about $50 on the black market because it can only use it for a short period of time before it's discovered," Bachman says. That's why thieves are targeting bigger repositories of data. It's like the old adage about asking a criminal why they would rob a bank. The answer is usually because that's where the money is. "That's why data breaches occur," Bachman says. "That's where the data is." 

A date breach can be costly for a business. In 2009, the average cost of a data breach rose to $202 from $197 per customer record in 2008, according to The Ponemon Institute, a Michigan-based research center focusing on privacy and data protection. The study found that the average cost of a data breach tallied $6.6 million, ranging from between $613,000 to nearly $32 million.

At DKC associates, we believe that, depending on your needs, you should consider a card with at least one security feature, to protect your company and your valued customers.
We can assist you with choosing the right security features, then the right card printer for the job. For help, please contact us at http://idcardscanada.com/pages/contact-us.

C/O www.Inc.com 

Forensic security features for ID cards are microscopic. They are hidden—either within the card’s layers, or by special graphic effects applied to the surface of the card. Unlike overt and covert security features, they cannot be visually verified, even with the use of specialized light sources or equipment. Their invisibility is a significant reason why forensic features are so difficult to counterfeit. They are extremely tricky to detect in the first place. They can only be validated through reading machines such as optical scanning devices. An example of a forensic security feature is nano-text, which can only be read when subjected to intense magnification such as under a microscope. At DKC associates, we believe that, depending on your needs, you should consider a card with at least one forensic feature—maybe more. We can assist you with choosing the right security features, then the right card printer for the job. For help, please contact us at http://idcardscanada.com/pages/contact-us.