Re: Small company question was Re: Firewall administration.

[Mark Teicher <mht () clark net>]

Todd,

Getting back to Adam S. original question:

What should a small company do?

There are many approaches in trying to answer the question.

Usually I start off with is what would the company like do as in :
        Ask some of the basic questions:

                Why does company want to be on the internet?
                What is the potential issues related to being on the internet?
                How does this affect our business model?
                How does it change the business model with the Internet?
                What do we do with the Internet connection (web, ftp, etc)?
                What are the inhouse people going to do with it?

        Next set of questions or statements:

                What kind of packages or solutions are currently available
                that are easy on our pockets?

                What kind of solutions or packages are manageable with very little 
                expertise?

                How much will it cost to feed and care for over x number of months?

                How much will it cost to educate or train someone inhouse versus
                a training seminar for x number of days with a couple of local
                or distant consultants?

                What do we have to change in our environment for the internet?

Basically an evaluation stage of the statement of questions.

Then a small company can assess the essentials of their potential solution,
map out all the possibilities (pay as you go equipment, managed solutions,
purchase to own (i.e. Raptor new offering).)

Then hopefully pick out the solution that can also grow with the small
company as it gets bigger and its needs increases etc. Then manage the
potential solution over x number of months then x number of years.

But these are just some of the would be possible questions you can ask and
somewhat map out on paper.

/mht

At 05:08 AM 10/7/97 -0700, Bennett Todd wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 07, 1997 at 07:09:58AM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
> > So what should a small company do?
>
> It's an interesting question. I've been talking with a couple of small
> companies lately, about this exact topic.
>
> > They don't have the skill in house; probably can't find someone good to
> > bring in as a consultant or staff member, since the big players pay more.
>
> I don't agree with either half of that estimate.
>
> If they don't have anyone who can read Cheswick and Bellovin then they also
> don't have the expertise required to hook up to the internet, and so the
> problem gets removed, or at least moved. If they're hooking themselves up,
> they can do a little reading and do the security part as well as the data
> comms and the routing. If they're paying someone else to do the hookup, that
> someone else should be handling the security setup right along with the telco
> setup and the IP routing setup and so on. It's part of the job.
>
> If they don't have the skill in-house and can't cultivate it, _and_ they
can't
> find a half-way competant connectivity provider who'll handle the security as
> part of the package, then, they're gonna need to go outside. I know quite a
> few people who will happily do such setup for real cheap; it's not like it's
> hard or takes a long time or anything.
>
> -Bennett
--------------------------------
Mark Teicher
CASSIE Enterprises & Trust
email:mht () clark net
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