Editor's note

Protect your assets, brand, reputation

More than 50 percent of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) either have one IT staff or none at all, according to a recent survey conducted by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCCI) on SMB technology trends and usage. And out of the 279 respondents, 80 percent indicated that the majority of IT decisions are made by the business owner or CEO. Considering the business owner is as heavily involved in other aspects of his business and spends a lot of his time "fire-fighting", the last thing he wants is to spend time and resources recovering lost data and troubleshooting the network.

This month's special report throws the spotlight on enterprise security, which is more than simply installing a firewall or configuring antispam filters. The theme "Securing the Business" reminds us that SMBs don't buy and install antivirus, content filtering and intrusion detection systems for technology's sake but to protect their information assets, brand and reputation.

Enterprise security is also about risk management. Since there is no such thing as being 100 percent secure, and it would be impractical--and expensive--to try to plug every single security gap, the best approach is to first identify what risks you can and cannot live with, and then find ways to minimize those risks. By ensuring computer networks and information are safe and secure from internal and external threats, SMB heads can have more peace of mind and devote more time to areas that require their attention.

More and more vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems, are realizing that SMBs don't only need more affordable secure technologies, they need the systems to be simpler to install and use too. This is good news, because SMBs, as mentioned before, lack the technical expertise to troubleshoot security issues.

Last week, HP announced an expanded porfolio, including security offerings to help SMBs in Asia-Pacific combat security breaches. They include HP Scanjet scanners, which sport new digital watermarking technology that help prevent forgery and unauthorized copying of documents, and an integrated firewall and VPN offering. Sun Microsystems and Trend Micro have also teamed up to offer pre-installed anitvirus and spam protection on Sun workstations and servers, while Big Blue has announced a tailored suite of disaster recovery and managed security services, put together by IBM's Global Services team.

CNETAsia SMB IT Essentials is a good starting point for SMB owners, whom many are taking the onus to personally drive the planning of their firms' IT and security programs. We hope you find our executive interview and security features useful, and welcome you to write to us.