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In this issue:
• From the President's Desk
•
Application Delivery
• A Look at
Visualization
• Content
Assurance to the Next Level
• Inside
the Secret World of SCIFs
•
Staffing Solutions
www.edgeti.com
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From the President's Desk
 It’s
all about information ... gathering, sharing, protecting and deploying it
to achieve goals and accomplish missions. Period. Here at Edge
Technologies, we specialize in managing the way people view, share and
engage information. Whether through our off-the-shelf software, custom
solutions, or staffing engagements, every member of the Edge team is
focused on aligning our clients’ information assets with their mission and
program goals. Through our core practices in Data Visualization, Content
Assurance, and Staff Augmentation, we literally change the way people view,
share and engage information.
As the world and technology become
more complex, it is our vision to find new ways to make information
clearer, collaboration easier and keep this valuable asset safer. For more
than 15 years, we’ve worked within the world’s most secure network
infrastructures for some of the most demanding government, telco and
enterprise organizations. The experience we’ve gained lays the groundwork
for the innovations to come. We welcome the opportunity to share our
perspectives with you, and invite you to explore our website and contact us with any
questions, comments, suggestions or observations.
Laurence
Chang
President and CEO
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Application
Delivery Delivers
Maximizing IT ROI
Skyrocketing energy costs and an economic downturn have amplified the need
to maximize the efficiencies offered by Web-based Application Delivery.
From ERP systems to web apps, increasing productivity while reducing costs
requires seamless, constant, secure interaction between your applications
and your partners, employees, vendors and distributors. However, with
greater integration, mobility and distribution come the dual challenges of
increasing application access and availability while maintaining
information integrity and security.
 The right approach to
application delivery is critical to delivering optimal application
performance and information security to your business. Perhaps the most
powerful-yet-flexible approach offering the greatest potential ROI are the
NetScaler® solutions from Citrix®. These powerful web application delivery
solutions are purpose-built appliances that provide:
- Application
performance acceleration up to five times
- Comprehensive
web application security
- Visibility
into end-user application experience
- Advanced
traffic management and load-balancing
Compatible with portal systems
provided by Edge, Citrix NetScaler offers the industry’s leading
load-balancing and disaster recovery capability. Now as a certified Citrix
partner, Edge provides our clients the unique real-world expertise to
custom-fit every Citrix implementation to their specific environment and
unique mission - whether or not Edge has provided the associated portal
infrastructure. As well as supplying the NetScaler solution, Edge can
provide the training and ongoing support that help our clients get maximum
ROI from their Citrix-based solution. For more information,
click here.
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A Look at Visualization
Tools
Deploy Them, You'll See.
 Proper
visualization of the critical components of IT infrastructure that deliver
a business service or an operational mission is essential to managing that
service or mission’s status and performance. Without the proper visibility,
faults cannot be rectified and performance cannot be tracked or improved.
Edge Technologies provides a range of advanced visualization tools to bring
all the critical pieces of information together into a single screen, and
present them in a highly customizable, at-a-glance format that makes sense
to the user. The challenge, of course, is in the integration of diverse
information from a variety of apps and vendors into a range of cohesive
dashboard views that provide appropriate information to the specific users
of that information – whether they be operators, managers or executives.
In many cases the information
being analyzed is relatively static, but the more demanding business
services and operational missions require real-time visibility. It takes
specialized, platform-agnostic expertise to integrate real-time
applications and content into almost any type of presentation
infrastructure. Fortunately, advanced visualization tools, such as Edge
Technologies' AppBoard and Visualization Widgets toolkit can turn major
integration projects into fast-track integration solutions. These tools are
the culmination years of experience in information integration,
cognitive reasoning and visualization, combined with leading-edge
implementation of the latest tools and technologies.
In evaluating a Visualization
solution, look for an approach that reduces schedule risk and enables
secure content sharing, and that has been proven across large portal
implementations. A top-tier solution will:
- Accelerate
roll-out and minimize custom development
- Offer
highly adaptable and scalable portal architectures
- Integrate
static and dynamic content quickly and cost-effectively
- Tailor
access methods to security policies, as well as user preferences
- Include
mplementation, testing, and management of intranet and extranet
portals
Solutions like Edge’s AppBoard and
Visualization Widgets toolkit help IT professionals quickly create live,
interactive and meaningful dashboard visualizations. Through the use of Web
2.0 technologies and standards-based techniques such as Web services,
Edge’s AppBoard and Visualization Widgets toolkit helps create dynamic,
top-level dashboards based on live data, without the need for heavy
programming effort to create a custom GUI. Real-time visualizations can be
put together quickly and easily to provide simple dashboard summaries of
key business parameters and critical information for customers, partners,
employees or executive management.
For more on
Advanced Visualization tools, click here.
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Taking Content
Assurance & Information Protection to the Next Level
 Large
and small enterprises must be vigilant about potential threats that
compromise the integrity and security of corporate information or
intellectual property. They must also ensure compliance with various
standards of corporate governance. These new threats, and new
requirements, demand new strategies. For example, Edge Technologies’ Data
Alchemist enables companies to guard against potential intrusions by
monitoring and tracking attempted access to corporate network or security
components. Data Alchemist can work in multiple ways – to filter, track
and/or block incoming attempts to access internal information, or to filter
or block outgoing access to undesirable external sites.
Security operations teams deploy
information assurance tools like Data Alchemist to quickly create and set
multiple threat scenarios. When an indicated threat meets certain threat
criteria, Data Alchemist can dispatch events and alarms to central security
information management consoles and/or generate detailed reports. This allows
the team to rapidly isolate potential problems. In addition, advanced tools
such as Data Alchemist can block unauthorized access attempts and ensure
the security of valuable corporate information assets.
Data Alchemist can perform
intelligent Traffic Interrogation and Control, including the monitoring and
logging of suspicious network traffic and activity, to combat the “Insider
Threat.” It functions silently, with no perceptible lag for the user,
transparently residing in the data communications network between the user
and source systems.
Information networks are now among
the most valuable, and vulnerable organizational assets. And the bad guys,
both outside and within are increasingly sophisticated. For organizations
that consider information a most valued asset (and whose competitors and
adversaries consider a high value target), Content Assurance tools like
Edge’s Data Alchemist, in conjunction with anti-spyware, anti-adware, or
antivirus programs, raise protection and intelligence to the next level. To find out
how Data Alchemist can help make your network, and your information, safer,
click here.
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Inside the Secret World of
SCIFs
 Our
government clients are quite familiar with the SCIF, but our commercial
clients are often curious about what goes on inside the secret world of the
Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. SCIF is a standard for
facilities that handle sensitive government data or intelligence. A key
emphasis of the guidelines is the ability to impose extraordinary controls
on building access. A SCIF is required for areas in which classified
information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods or
analytical processes is being processed. A SCIF is also required when and
where this information is stored, used or discussed.
What happens in the SCIF,
stays in the SCIF.
Beyond the stringent access control, physical security and intrusion
detection systems one would expect in a Top Secret facility, SCIF
construction considers the most extreme methods an adversary might use to
compromise the facility’s security. While SCIFs are typically custom-built
to meet the specific needs of the user, program, and certification agencies
involved, there are many characteristics any SCIF must possess to provide
physical, audio, visual and electronic security.
For example, there is typically
only one access point. And no windows. (From great distances, laser
microphones can “eavesdrop” on conversations by reading tiny vibrations on
window panes.) All interior surfaces such as walls, ceilings and floors
must be built in a manner that reveals any form of tampering or breach. To
prevent audio or electronic eavesdropping, walls and duct work must possess
sound masking materials and screening technologies. In addition, a white
noise generator broadcasts continuous low-level, multi-frequency sounds to
obscure internal conversations. No personal radio, iPods or any personal
electronic devices of any kind are allowed inside a SCIF and all
communications, electrical and security systems must be contained within
the SCIF.
If your company is interested in
winning some of the government’s most important, most secure business, SCIF
space is likely to be a requirement. Edge Technologies has premium SCIF
space available for lease. Click
here for details.
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Staffing Solutions:
Expertise without the Hiring Hassles
 Despite
the economic downturn, agencies and business throughout the
Washington/Baltimore corridor continue the struggle to find highly
qualified, often highly-cleared, IT professionals. And once recruited, trained
and deployed, keeping them is often harder.
To satisfy the need for these
highly sought-after individuals, more organizations are turning to outside
staffing solutions to fulfill their IT staffing needs. Staffing and Staff
Augmentation solutions eliminate the headaches involved in recruiting,
hiring, training and reviewing employees. Further, while traditional HR
departments are, out of necessity, generalists, staffing solutions
providers like Edge Technologies are proficient in recruiting technology
professionals. They speak the same language and understand the needs,
concerns, strengths and weaknesses of individuals working in this
challenging profession.
Edge’s IT staffing specialists
have developed proven methodologies that help them target, recognize and
retain top performers. They also recognize the qualities that long-term
players possess, and offer the variety and high-end engagements in which
these A-list professionals thrive.
Our clients often realize
significant productivity gains, and benefit from the knowledge gained from
experience across a broad spectrum of highly sophisticated government and
private sector engagements. What’s more, our clients also greatly
reduce the time and costs associated with personnel activities such as:
- Advertising
- Benefits
Expenses
- Interviewing
- Legal
Compliance
- Record
Keeping
- Recruiting
- Reviews
- Reference
Checking
- Training
- Screening
Edge Technologies is known for
innovation and performance, reward and opportunity, which helps attract the
very best and brightest IT professionals. The result is a win-win-win
situation for clients, the staffing provider and the employee. Candidates
and clients are drawn to firms like Edge Technologies where co-workers are
colleagues, and benefit from working side-by-side with the leading
innovators in their field.
Most importantly,
clients receive the benefit of highly-motivated, highly-cleared process and
technology experts who focus on developing innovative, often
ground-breaking solutions. To find out if a staffing or staff augmentation
is the right fit for your organization, click here
or email us, or give us a
call at 1-888-771-EDGE.
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