#firewall and security

[uplevelsystemsblogs]

OpEx vs CapEx: What should SMBs choose?

There’s a lot of talk in the IT world today about OpEx vs CapEx.

Now more than ever, SMBs have options for treating IT hardware and software as either an operating expense or a capital expenditure.

They wonder which one is better: OpEx or CapEx? And what drives this decision for a small business owner?

Let’s find out.

Understanding CapEx and OpEx

Historically, CapEx has meant “expenditures” rather than “expenses.” Think major purchases like property, plant, and equipment that are used over the long term. That’s because CapEx is not expensed; rather it is depreciated over its useful life. Often Capital Expenditures are financed externally through borrowing.

Operating Expenses, on the other hand, are day-to-day, ordinary, and customary expenses that keep the business operational, such as for utilities, rent, lease payments, and consumable items.

Also, OpEx is deductible for tax purposes.

So, where does IT spending fall?

IT is not always easy to classify, having elements of both OpEx and CapEx.

Certainly, hardware and software are expected to last more than one year which would typically mean they are CapEx.

However, most IT purchases also include maintenance, support, and licensing costs that are ongoing and therefore, OpEx. Moreover, many IT purchases are inexpensive enough to be considered consumable for today’s businesses.

What has muddied the waters even more is the wide availability of “as a service” IT offerings for small businesses:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Desktop (or Device) as a Service (DaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS).

On-demand, cloud-based services like these offered on a monthly subscription basis are similar to a lease and qualify as OpEx.

Why do SMBs prefer “As a service” offerings?

“As a service” offerings, and the ability to treat IT expenses as OpEx are popular with SMBs and perceived favorably for several reasons:

The “pay for what you use” model with “bite sized” increments provides flexibility.

IT capabilities like storage and bandwidth can be added or removed as needed, which is advantageous for businesses, especially in unpredictable or high growth environments.

Maintenance and support costs are rolled into the monthly subscription payment which simplifies expense tracking

Hardware is usually refreshed periodically without additional cost to the subscriber.

More scalable (even though large increases can result in painful monthly bills, they can be implemented quickly without outside financing.)

Requires less in-house IT staff and expertise.

However, the “as a service” model also means that you don’t own your IT hardware or software and therefore have less control over important elements of your business.

Also, the total cost of ownership can sometimes be higher with a subscription versus a purchase in cases where the same technology is used for several years without replacement.  

Read more about blog here: https://www.uplevelsystems.com/blog/opex-vs-capex

[uplevelsystemsblogs]

DDoS Attacks Explained

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been much in the news lately, partly due to cyber liability insurers noticing their potential impact on small businesses. A DDoS attack is different from the typical malware or ransomware attack in that it does not seek to directly infiltrate a business. Instead, it attempts to disrupt or shut down a business by preventing legitimate users from accessing publicly available resources required for business operations.

For example, most businesses have websites on which they may conduct e-commerce; a DDoS attack would deluge these websites with a tsunami of fake transactions, overloading the website and stopping real transactions from happening. The purpose may be to extort money from the business, or simply to force it offline (and even, in some cases, just to prove a point!).

As a reference, here is a readable document describing how DDoS impacts small biz:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1X_AlQ6wAG3g446aeiMxCPXjkdlBD3M-o7K8GBWVDsQM/edit?usp=sharing

A useful excerpt from this document:‍

Any public service can fall victim to a DDoS attack, such as mobile application APIs, web pages, e-mail services, or DNS services. The affected service becomes completely unavailable during the attack, which means that any mobile applications, web pages, or email services will be inaccessible.‍

The key here is "public service such as mobile APIs, web pages ". Unless the business is hosting some kind of public service, and punching holes in its firewall to allow worldwide access to that service, there isn't any way an effective DDoS attack can be directly mounted against it. Against the cloud service providers it relies on - that's another story. However, the security of those cloud services is the responsibility of the service provider(s).

Since DDoS attacks are aimed at public resources, there is little point in directing the attack at the office of a small business, unless that office is hosting some kind of public server such as a web server.

For example, a "SYN flood" is a common DDoS attack that seeks to overrun a public server by filling up its connection tracking tables with garbage entries. However, the Uplevel gateway summarily drops all inbound unsolicited SYNs without even bothering to make a connection tracking table entry; thus such an attack is useless against an Uplevel gateway.

Read More about the blog here: https://www.uplevelsystems.com/blog/ddos-attacks-explained

[uplevelsystemsblogs]

Why separate SSIDs for 2.4 and 5 GHz is a bad idea

The question of why the Uplevel System does not support assigning separate Wi-Fi SSIDs to the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz bands has come up several times.

Assigning different SSIDs to the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band is a common practice in home Wi-Fi. It is not unusual to find SSIDs like 'Xfinity-2.4' and 'Xfinity-5' when doing a scan. Since each SSID is associated with a different profile in the client device, the user must select the band to use for each client device. The user could optionally enter both profiles into the client, but this is unlikely to do much good, as clients rarely move away from their currently configured Wi-Fi profile unless it is completely disconnected and seeking a new network.

The ostensible reason for doing something like this is to provide more 'control' over the behavior of the Wi-Fi system. The user can manually 'steer' a client device to a specific band by entering only the profile for that band into the device. More control is good, right?

Wrong.

With two separate Wi-Fi profiles, the clients are unable to switch quickly - or in some cases even at all - from using 5 GHz for capacity, to 2.4 GHz for range. Switching between bands occurs far more often than one would expect, even for stationary devices such as printers.

The Wi-Fi environment is highly dynamic; signal strength and RF propagation are greatly affected by people and things moving about, surrounding devices, interferers, etc. (At one Intel Corp open air test lab I visited several times, people were even prohibited from parking in the lot out front, because a car pulling up would cause dramatic changes in signal strength and throw off their measurements).

A client that initially connects to 5 GHz with a clear channel may find that maintaining good throughput requires moving to 2.4 GHz. However, if it does not have the Wi-Fi profile for 2.4 GHz, it is denied that chance. Even if the profile should be configured, since each profile represents a different virtual interface, switching profiles causes a disconnect and reconnect. Keeping the same profile for both 2.4 and 5 ghz lets the client roam from band to band without the disconnect.

Read More....https://www.uplevelsystems.com/blog/why-separate-ssids-for-2-4-and-5-ghz-is-a-bad-idea