Role-Based Access Control in Microsoft Exchange 2010

Whether your company is a budding startup or a veteran in its industry, the term ‘lawsuit’ can be quite daunting. Those with experience will tell you that in the face of litigation, ignorance is anything but bliss, especially when digital files are nowhere to be found.

In the stages prior to a lawsuit being filed, the onus falls on you to ensure that all of your data, files, emails and records are readily available upon request. Essentially, certain business processes must be in place to find everything that’s needed so your company is prepared for court.

With privacy issues in the spotlight these days, the expressed concerns of employees at both ends of the spectrum are understandable. How secure is electronic discovery (or e-discovery)? Is it intrusive? Do multiple individuals or whole departments have access to my personal information? All are all viable concerns.

RBAC to the Rescue

Enter Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) – the new model for permissions in Microsoft Exchange 2010. RBAC allows systems administrators to assign and limit permissions for given role groups throughout an organization. The sheer functionality and feasibility of use is quite an upgrade from the earlier version (Exchange 2007), wherein only administrators could be assigned permissions.

Let’s put this in terms of e-discovery software. What if, for instance, you were involved in a suit that mandated the retrieval of a certain employee’s email records? There are few privacy issues more personal in nature, so, obviously, you want to handle the matter delicately. Essentially, you want the smallest possible subset of your organization to physically lay eyes on these records. It makes sense, right?

The problem is that the few employees who you’ve chosen to handle the documents (say, in the HR Department) aren’t accustomed to managing electronic discoveries, like, perhaps, the Tech Department (or better yet IT pros like Terminal!) might be. Furthermore, you want the techies to always handle the discovery. With those IT-related issues, the process just runs more smoothly that way.

The conundrum presents itself: one retrieval request, two departments, and separate tasks for each department. In older versions of Exchange, this would have been difficult to tackle. However, with RBAC, you’re able to assign search permissions to the IT Department, and visibility permissions to the HR Department, allowing both limited access to the records. The Tech Department executes the search, but has no visibility of the records. The HR Department receives the results, but has no access to the search function. Pretty cool, huh?

Role-based access control in Microsoft Exchange 2010 has changed the way companies manage email permissions. In the case of email discovery, its functionality has paved the way for a higher degree of control and more secure retrievals. I think it’s safe to say that we can all get behind that.

Visit the Microsoft Exchange 2010 tab on our blog for more related posts.

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DIY Data Recovery or Let the Pros Handle It

Even though your small-medium business (SMB) follows a regular schedule for data backup, the possibility of losing some (or all) of your data lurks just around the corner.

Regardless of which study you find, the results show that hardware failure and human error account for roughly two-thirds of all data loss incidents. Odds are an internal or external storage drive could fail unexpectedly. An end user or tech might cause the drive to crash – inadvertently, you hope.

When data loss occurs, can anything be done to recover the data?

The short, optimistic answer is “Yes.” However, there are a few things the SMB can try – if the SMB is bold enough – before reaching out to a data recovery vendor like Terminal, such as:

Power down the affected storage drive as quickly and safely as possible.  

Whether it’s a single drive or a Network Attached System (NAS) hard drive with a RAID volume, turn the affected drive off. Turning the storage drive off can help mitigate the data loss. That's because the last thing you want, as a small business owner, is to have a failing read/write head cause further damage to the hard disk – which will create an even greater problem from grinding and a high level of friction on the disk. Furthermore, you don't want new data to overwrite the lost data because server logs and automatic database functions have the ability to overwrite new data in the place where lost data was once recorded.

What if the amount of lost data happens to be small? What available options do you have?

If your business lost only a small amount of data, you might be able to recover the data with an IT team member experienced at recovering data using data recovery software. Software such as:

• Symantec Backup Exec 2012 by Symantec
• UndeletePlus by eSupport
• Recuva by Piriform

Otherwise, you can attempt to recover the lost data from a cloned copy of the specific storage drive – and that drive only – that lost data.

Better yet, call a data recovery expert.

If you want the best odds at making sure your data is recovered, seek out an experienced data recovery professional like Terminal. An entire portion of our staff is devoted to recovering lost data and helping your SMB take proactive steps to prevent and/or mitigate data loss.

One of the main reasons why your small business should have a data recovery expert recover lost data is because you or your IT personnel might not be thoroughly trained and/or experienced in handling complex data recovery scenarios. Find a data recovery service with a strong reputation among small and medium-size businesses. A service that has the following attributes:

• a proven high rate of success
• manufacturer approved
• secures your data while recovering lost data
• maintains HIPAA compliance
• ISO certified cleanroom
• certified in encryption recovery

Don’t let cost be the sole determining factor when choosing a data recovery expert because you get what you pay for. Spending more money in the short-term on data recovery and data protection can save your SMB for when the unexpected happens – hard drive failure, human error, natural disaster, or viruses.

Data loss can happen to any SMB at any time. Make sure your business has a data loss prevention and recovery plan in place. Performing regular backups of your network and critical data is a start, but what is your business going to do when a hard drive in your server goes down at 4:00 pm on Friday and a bid for a large project is due on Monday? Spend the time and necessary resources ensuring your data can possibly be recovered with minimal down time. Invest in data recovery software or recruit a data recovery vendor to help your SMB recover and preserve your data so that when the unthinkable happens, your SMB will be ready.

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How to Share CD/DVD Drives with Any Mac Running OSX 10.5 or Newer

With the growing popularity of the MacBook Air, optical drives seem to be slowly disappearing. 

Apple’s “Remote Disc” feature, built into OSX, will allow any Mac with an optical drive to share it over a network so a MacBook Air can access it. Now, what if you don’t have a MacBook Air? Or maybe your optical drive is broken. Here is a simple way to share a CD or DVD on any Mac:

First, on the Mac with the optical drive you want to share, go to “System Preferences” and click on the “Sharing” icon. Make sure CD/DVD Sharing is selected.

Second, on the Mac that doesn’t have an optical drive (or a broken drive), open up Terminal and write these two commands:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Then reboot the computer. This turns the shared optical drive into a shared folder on your network. To go back to default settings, open up Terminal and write the same two commands replacing the word “true” with “false”.

If that doesn't work, contact us and we'll walk you through it. 

Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!