The 10 Best Windows Tablets of the Year

Windows-based tablets have become increasingly ubiquitous, with multiple models released by major PC manufacturers all the time. Spurred on by the touch capability of Windows 8 and Windows 10 operating systems, as well as hardware that fits true PC power into slimmer and lighter devices, these versatile systems won't be disappearing anytime soon.

We've seen standalone tablets, dock-friendly slates, and a collection of accessories that range from keyboards to gamepads to variations on the simple stylus. The unifying thread that runs through all of these isn't hardware, or even accessories, but software. Setting these tablets apart from all of the iDevices and Android tablets is full-blown Windows with x86 support for all of your software.

Size Matters
Just as laptops come in different sizes and are built for different users, tablets fall into several categories. There are inexpensive 8-inch models, designed to let you browse the Web and enjoy streaming a movie from Netflix or Amazon Prime, but these small, budget-friendly devices usually rely on low-power processors and minimal storage, making them ideal as a second or third device alongside your laptop or smartphone. Then there are larger 10- to 12-inch models that come with a stylus or a docking keyboard, giving you a better way to take notes in class, type up an email or a term paper, and generally provide a well-rounded (if somewhat basic) Windows experience. Finally, there are premium and business systems, designed as productivity tools rather than media consumption devices.

Processor
Tablets run the gamut from low-power entertainment devices to potent tools for productivity. A lot of this comes down to the processor. At one end of the spectrum are Intel's Atom processors, which are built for low-power usage and passive cooling. 

At the other end of the spectrum are the Core i3, i5, and i7 processors that you might expect to find in a full-fledged laptop. While these CPUs draw more power and require more cooling hardware, they offer a much higher level of capability, letting you get real work done. Tablets equipped with these processors are priced more like laptops, but they also offer similar levels of productivity. 

Features and Connectivity
The switch from laptop to tablet also brings some new features to these handheld PCs. Sensors previously seen in smartphones bring new ways to interact with your PC, with accelerometers, gyroscopes, and e-compasses providing positional awareness for both automatic screen rotation and new immersive applications. And let's not forget touch. 

Finally, there's the question of connectivity. With such mobile designs, it's only natural that some shoppers will want tablets that feature the same sort of mobile data that they enjoy on their smartphones. While there are plenty of Windows tablets on the market with 4G and LTE connectivity, this capability isn't the norm. Most Windows tablets stick exclusively to Wi-Fi, but if you're willing to take on the added expense of a data plan, there are several mobile-friendly tablets on the market.

Article was taken on part from PC Magazine. 

Things to know before you buy a smartphone or tablet

Mobile devices including smartphone and tablet market are increasingly becoming popular all around the globe. Advances in technology such as processing power, aesthetic form factor, smart applications, net connectivity, more memory space and increased batter power is propelling smartphone and tablet market to new heights than ever. With so many options available, it is becoming more of a challenging job to buy the right mobile device that suits you. This article highlights 8 important features that you need to consider when buying a smartphone or tablet.

Size of the Screen

Visual experience play a very important role in determining the quality of a product. This makes screen size a major feature to look for when buying either smartphone or a tablet. A perfect screen to some extend can overshadow the defects in a model. Screen is also the single most expensive and important hardware component in a smartphone and tablets.

Thickness and Weight

 Thickness and weight is another important factor to be considered when buying a smartphone or tablet. Thickness is more of an aesthetic concern than anything else. Thinner devices don’t always lead to a quality product. So it’s up to you to decide if you want to sacrifice quality over aesthetic value.

Operating System used by Smartphone or Tablet

 OS that is used on a Smartphone or tablet is yet another major feature to be considered before you make a purchase. When it comes to OS that we use in our PC, we have the popular options to either go for Apple’s Macintosh, Microsoft Windows OS or the open source Linux. Windows OS is the winner here since it is very user friendly and got a huge choice of supporting applications and softwares to go with the OS. iOS is used only in Apple phones and tablets. Android OS is very popular and used in a wide range of models. Even though Windows phone is not as popular as Android, it is user friendliness and popularity is slowly capturing the smartphone and tablet os market.

Storage space available in a Smartphone or Tablet

Most smartphone and tablet manufacturers these days are offering 16 GB storage capacity which is enough space for storing pics, songs and videos. However some users like to add additional memory to increase the storage capacity.

Connection Specifications

 All tablets and smartphones are portable devices which need wireless for communication. Wireless devices and they offer Wi-Fi connectivity to let you wirelessly connect to home and public networks. However some models offer 3G, 4G connectivity which helps in having an internet connection enabled SIM.

Apps Compatibility

One of the important feature of a smartphone or tablet is the presence of Apps. It is similar to using application software in your PC. Compatibility of apps is very important to be considered when you buy a smartphone or table.

Camera Options

 Almost all smartphones and all tablets come with an in built camera. Camera by default is a major feature that most customers check by default when buying mobile devices. It is a very useful feature especially when you are looking forward for recording memories and spur of the moment events.

TV and Video options

It is an increasing trend now a day to record high quality videos using smartphones or tablets and share it across different platforms. To see the real quality of the recorded video, one will definitely want to try it on a bigger screen connecting to display monitors or television. So the next time, you decide to buy a smartphone or tablets, you may want to see if it carries options for connecting to these devices.

Next time you buy a smartphone or tablet, remember these tips and act accordingly.

How Differentiate Disaster Recovery from Storage and Backup Solutions

We tend to see a lot of questions on this so let’s take a moment to see how see how they differ—and how they can work together to benefit a customer’s business.

Cloud storage refers simply to the ability to store data and files in the cloud. One of the greatest benefits of cloud storage is scalability: it provides bottomless storage and complete elasticity—meaning that it can scale up or down as needed to meet changing customer requirements. Data stored in the cloud also offers the advantage of access from anywhere, so customers can get to their files wherever they are, or from whatever application they use. With Microsoft Azure, customers also have the benefit of compatibility with a range of operating systems, so they know it will work regardless of the OS. Finally, on Azure, stored data gets enterprise-grade protection, including redundant storage with multiple copies kept automatically to prevent data loss due to unexpected systems failure.

Backup and disaster recovery also involve storing data, but they are primarily focused on doing so for the purposes of data protection and business continuity. One easy way to think about the difference between backup and disaster recovery is that backup is about making sure customers’ employees don’t lose files that may be accidentally deleted or lost due corruption, while disaster recovery is about making sure the customers doesn’t lose files AND that that they can continue to operate their business seamlessly after an unexpected event impacting their primary site, while they work to restore their systems .

Backups are the best tool for making sure you can restore recent copies of files that are accidentally deleted or lost due to hard drive failure . It is also an important tool for legal discovery—with long-term data retention, you can ensure that customers have access to historical data and files when needed for legal reasons.

Disaster recovery is generally more focused on getting services back up and running fast. For example, a customers might have taken an off-site backup of their files an hour before a fire takes out their company’s application servers. So their files are safe (with the exception of any changes made during the hour since the last backup). But how are they going to get your applications and services back up and running? That is where disaster recovery comes in, by enabling them to restore their files AND their services quickly so they can be back up and running in minutes, instead of hours, days or weeks.

All of these are great tools for that leverage the benefits of the cloud to support productivity and business continuity and a lower cost. When combined, they complement each other, working together as a great way to provide multiple layers of convenience and protection. 

Want to learn more? Get in touch with us today at info@liteglobal.com

LITE Global: The Cable TV Industry Is Dying. What Comes Next?

LITE Global: The Cable TV Industry Is Dying. What Comes Next?: Beginning in 2013, cable TV started experiencing a loss of subscribers, and that loss grew wider in 2014. A combination of lower TV view...

The Cable TV Industry Is Dying. What Comes Next?

Beginning in 2013, cable TV started experiencing a loss of subscribers, and that loss grew wider in 2014. A combination of lower TV viewership because of fewer cable subscribers and other media supplanting cable has the industry at a crossroads. In fact, according to Nielsen ratings, TV viewing has been dropping about 10% per quarter. 

And now, for the first time ever, you can watch real-time, live TV over any Internet connection… on any connected TV, phone, tablet, or another device.

You’ll see it exactly as it plays on cable, live and on schedule… except you’ll be paying a fraction of the cost and you won’t have a contract.

If you hate dealing with your cable company as much as I do, this is big news, right?

But the bigger news for you and me is the opportunity this gives us to snap up three stocks that are poised to explode now that cable TV has finally been put on life support.

Just like when newspaper publishers, telephone utilities, stockbrokers, record companies, bookstores, travel agencies, and big box retailers watched helplessly as the Internet swept away their business models.

Here some reason why cable is dying

New competitors have emerged, challenging the legacy systems. Netflix, Inc. (NFLX), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), Sling TV, Crackle, and Sony Corporation (SNE) provide streaming content, replacing the set-top box/TV combination as the only way to view entertainment. 

Consumers are no longer willing to pay for a plethora of channels that they don’t watch. This antiquated cable model has become usurped by streaming options of getting only what you want to watch, and even those consumers that are still with cable are requesting more targeted, smaller bundles.

Media companies that own the most sought after content, like ESPN or HBO, have recognized the change in consumer behavior and begun experimenting with offering their own streaming content. 

The costs of the legacy bundled cable subscriptions had grown so high that consumers are no longer willing to pay and are forgoing cable services all together. Between 1995 and 2005 cable bills increased three times faster than inflation, a highly unsustainable trend.

People are more wired today and prefer the ease and convenience of transitioning between devices like laptops, mobile phones, and wearable (watches) that broadband and wireless connections afford. 

Minutes spent per month on Internet videos on computers and time-shifted TV increased between 2013 and 2014 while traditional TV was the only medium that lost minutes. Whether it’s the convenience, the lower cost or the more desirable content, a shift in our viewing habits has been changing the way the industry operates. Now the question is will the legacy players be able to adapt before they are pushed out?

Next generation hotspots: The future of Wi-Fi?

In the home, in the enterprise, in public spaces and increasingly, in “Internet of Things” applications, WiFi has come to dominate how end users connect to the broader network as they seek good speed, throughput and low cost for their connections. For the first time in 2015, Wi-Fi carried more mobile network traffic than cellular networks. Cisco’s Visual Networking Index for mobile pegged the percentage as 51% of overall network traffic being offloaded from cellular to the wired network via Wi-Fi and femtocells. 

That trend is only expected to continue, as by 2020, Cisco predicts mobile offload will increase to 55% of overall mobile data traffic, which at that point will mean about 38.1 exabytes per month, up from 3.9 exabytes per month in 2015. Wi-Fi is also stepping up its game through expanded features and capabilities. It’s expected that 802.11ac’s second wave of features will see Wi-Fi Alliance certification this year, with the first certified devices designed to support gigabit WiFi speeds – also known as WiGig or 802.11ad – set to appear this year as well. Wi-Fi also has a new standard specifically for IoT applications known as W-Fi HaLow. Meanwhile, vendors continue to push for expanded adoption of Wi-Fi Alliance’s Hotspot 2.0, commercially known as Passpoint, which enables seamless authentication to make Wi-Fi act more like cellular.

As Wi-Fi expands its features and reach though, the technology is also encountering new challenges. Its very popularity has resulted in major congestion in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band, and the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s 2015 annual report said some operators fear the unlicensed 5 GHz band could become intolerably congested in as little as two to three years. One of the biggest question marks is co-existence and how well Wi-Fi will fare on a continued convergence toward cellular, with the advent of LTE in unlicensed bands using License Assisted Access and LTE over Unlicensed – a question which industry players are trying hard to answer. 


Future trends in Wi-Fi, including standards work; the controversy around LTE-U and potential impacts to Wi-Fi; spectrum issues; and the role the technology is likely to play for service providers in the home and other offload points, including monetization tactics based on analytics, services and IoT.

Extracted from: The future of the Wi-Fi by  Kelly Hill

Contact us: info@liteglobal.com

Why Do I Need Managed Services?

This is an important question to ask when you have a business full of computers, servers and employees. “What will I get with managed services that I couldn’t get with a break-fix solution?” Information technology (IT) systems are expected to meet high standards of operation, while offering 24/7 availability, security, and performance. 

In today’s environment, you have to keep pace with the constant changes in IT, performance demands, and pressure to deliver competitive IT functionality. To meet these challenges, many organizations consider outsourcing their IT activities to be an attractive option.

We find managed services everywhere. Most technology companies use the term “Managed Services” as a service. If you are like most non-techies, managed services may cause you to draw a blank. But, if you are a small business owner, it is definitely something you need.

Organizations are increasingly turning to managed service providers (MSPs) to handle elements of their IT needs as part of a collaborative arrangement with the internal IT department, according to new research from IT industry trade association CompTIA.

Companies have become more familiar with managed services and are turning to them for management of certain IT functions, particularly email hosting, customer relationship management (CRM) applications, storage, backup and recovery and network monitoring.

"While one-time projects account for some of these engagements, a significant portion is ongoing management of one or more IT functions by a managed services provider. "There is a much higher degree of familiarity with the term 'managed services' and greater adoption."

Security and Virtualization in the Data Center

Threats facing today IT security administrators have grown from the relatively trivial attempts to wreak havoc on networks into sophisticated attacks aimed at profit and the theft of sensitive corporate data. Implementation of robust data center security capabilities to safeguard sensitive mission-critical applications and data is a cornerstone in the effort to secure enterprise networks.

The data center security challenges does not stop there. New application rollouts, virtualization, and an increasingly transparent perimeter are converging to drive an evolution in the requirements for data center security architectures.

Application rollouts bring there own set of challenges for securing communications and applying security policy—couple this with a virtualized environment and the challenge of policy enforcement and visibility increases many times over.

Traditionally, the perimeter has been the proverbial shield to stop malicious and unwanted outside traffic from leaking into the Enteprise network. Creating a secure perimeter is still valid and essential in defending against attacks and providing traffic filtering. But the amount and type of traffic entering the enterprise network has increased and continues to do so. Extranet connections for business partners, vendor connections, supply chain transactions, and digital communications all required more openings to be created at the perimeter to allow communication. Permitting these business-driven openings creates greater opportunities for attack and elevates the risk to a network.

In addition, attack vectors have moved higher in the stack to subvert network protection and aim directly at applications. HTTP-, XML-, and SQL-based attacks are useful efforts for most attackers because these protocols are usually allowed to flow through the enterprise network and enter the intranet data center.

Virtualization is driving change in the way data centers are being architected. Server virtualization is becoming a prevalent tool for consolidation, power savings, and cost reduction. It is also creating new challenges for infrastructure and security teams to be able to provide consistent levels of isolation, monitoring, and policy enforcement-similar to what is available for physical servers and systems today.

Device virtualization is providing new design opportunities and options for creating flexible data center architectures. Features that provide control plane and data plane isolation are offering a multitude of design options for device placement, Layer-2 and Layer-3 designs, and service integration.

The data center provides the critical application services for business operations. New architectures that leverage device and server virtualization are enhancing the data center capabilities while increasing the availability of these services. Using careful planning and best practice techniques, integrating security with these next-generation architectures can support this effort—without creating a hindrance. By properly planning and leveraging these new capabilities, scalable security solutions can be leveraged to increase service availability and create a more secure environment for the critical information residing in the data center.

Contact us at: info@liteglobal.com

Best Security Practices to Protect Data for Businesses

Securing stored data involves preventing unauthorized people from accessing it as well as preventing accidental or intentional destruction, infection or corruption of information. While data encryption is a popular topic, it is just one of many techniques and technologies that can be used to implement a tiered data-security strategy. Steps to secure data involve understanding applicable threats, aligning appropriate layers of defense and continual monitoring of activity logs taking action as needed.

Here's my list of 10 security best practice guidelines for businesses (in no particular order).

1. Encrypt your data: Stored data, file systems, and across-the-wire transfers all need to be encrypted. Encryption is essential to protecting sensitive data and to help prevent data loss due to theft or equipment loss.
2. Use digital certificates to sign all of your sites: Save your certificates to hardware devices such as routers or load balancers and not on the web server as is traditionally done. Obtain your certificates from one of the trusted authorities.
3. Implement DLP and auditing: Use data loss prevention and file auditing to monitor, alert, identify, and block the flow of data into and out of your network.
4. Implement a removable media policy: Restrict the use of USB drives, external hard disks, thumb drives, external DVD writers, and any writeable media. These devices facilitate security breaches coming into or leaving your network.
5. Secure websites against MITM and malware infections: Use SSL, scan your website daily for malware, set the Secure flag for all session cookies, use SSL certificates with Extended Validation.
6. Use a spam filter on email servers: Use a time-tested spam filter such as SpamAssassin to remove unwanted email from entering your users' inboxes and junk folders. Teach your users how to identify junk mail even if it's from a trusted source.
7. Use a comprehensive endpoint security solution: Symantec suggests using a multi-layered product (theirs, of course) to prevent malware infections on user devices. Antivirus software alone is not enough. Antivirus, personal firewall, and intrusion detection are all part of the total approach to endpoint protection.
8. Maintain security patches: Some antivirus programs update on what seems like a daily basis. Be sure that your software and hardware defenses stay up to date with new antimalware signatures and the latest patches. If you turn off automatic updating, set up a regular scan and remediate plan for your systems.
9. Educate your users: The second most important BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) security defense: user awareness , "it might be the most important non-hardware, non-software solution available. An informed user is a user who behaves more responsibly and takes fewer risks with valuable company data, including email".
10. Network-based security hardware and software: Use firewalls, gateway          antivirus, intrusion detection devices, honey pots, and monitoring to screen for DoS attacks, virus signatures, unauthorized intrusion, port scans, and other "over the network" attacks and attempts at security breaches.

Advanced defenses for advanced attacks 

Block more threats and quickly mitigate those that do breach your defenses with the industry’s first threat-focused NGFW. Cisco Firepower NGFW appliances combine proven network firewall with the industry’s most effective next-gen IPS and advanced malware protection. All so you can get more visibility, be more flexible, save more, and protect better.

Find the best next-generation firewall for you

ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services

Small business, branch office, enterprise
Firewall throughput from 256 Mbps to 15 Gbps
Threat inspection from 125 Mbps to 30 Gbps
Stateful firewall, AVC, NGIPS, AMP, URL

Firepower 4100 Series

Internet edge, high-performance environments
Firewall throughput from 20 Gbps to 60 Gbps
Threat inspection from 10 Gbps to 20 Gbps
Stateful firewall, AVC, NGIPS, AMP, URL

Firepower 9000 Series

Service provider, data center
Firewall throughput up to 225 Gbps
Threat inspection up to 90 Gbps
Firewall, AVC, NGIPS, AMP, URL, DDoS

Consult us any security concern that you may have in your business at info@liteglobal.com

How to Turn Your House into a Smart Home

It's summer, 85 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and you're about to leave home. As you leave your bedroom, the lights dim slowly and eventually turn off. You walk down the hall, step out the door, and lock it. Inside, you can hear the air condition sputter to a stop. As you saunter down the street, you wonder if you left the coffee pot on, but don't think twice about it, as the appliance is running an automated check right now to ensure it's off. Later that night, around 11:15, your mattress cover will cool down your side of the bed so it's just the way you like it by 11:30, when you hit the hay.

This kind of smart home system is already possible. All kinds of small appliances, light bulbs, door sensors, and other home products can automatically turn on and off when triggered by certain actions. Smart homes make life more comfortable, and they're typically designed to be power-efficient, which could save you money.

If you're interested in taking your home from dumb to smart, how do you start? And how can you build on it to make it incrementally more intelligent all the time? One very important note about smart home components is that you must change the default user name and password when you set them up. If you don't, you're leaving your home exposed to hackers and other threats. 

Below some products in the market that will help you to turn your house into a Smart Home.

Home Automation Systems

Insteon, a best-seller in wireless home-control networking technology, offers hardware and software for every residential need, from irrigation control and occupancy sensing to remote-control HVAC. If this all sounds a little daunting, consider easing into automation with the company's starter kit for lighting and appliance control. Available on Amazon; $126.

August Smart Lock

The August Smart Lock uses its keyless technology to keep your home safe, even when you're not around. From your smartphone, you can let guests in, check to make sure that you locked up before you left the house, keep a record of who's entered and exited, and unlock your door as you trudge up to your home after a long day's work. Convenient? Yes. Smart? You bet. Available on Amazon; $218. 

Video Doorbell

It's like caller ID for your front porch! The VTech video doorbell allows you to screen—and even video chat with—visitors before you answer the door. Not home? No worries. The system takes a snapshot each time the doorbell is pressed, so you'll always know who came knocking while you were away. Available on Amazon; $115.

Philips Hue Smart Lighting

What can Philips Hue do for you? For starters, the system can set your lights to brighten gradually in the morning to wake you up naturally. You can also re-create the quality of light from any photo on your smartphone by using a dropper tool to choose the palette. Or you can simply configure your lighting to turn on and off at set times. Starter Pack Available on Amazon; $199.

Smart TVs

Navigate through movies, music, social media, apps, the Internet, and—last but not least—television channels, from the comfort of your living room couch. And, with Samsung Smart TV's voice-interaction capabilities, you don't even have to worry when the remote goes missing. Available on Amazon; $900.

Bosch Dishwasher

Everything about the new Bosch 800 Plus Series Dishwasher is smart. Behind the door of this quiet genius is a flexible third rack for awkward items, a touch-screen control panel, and built-in water softener. A full-color text display screen gives cycle status and maintenance updates. Simply brilliant! Available on Amazon; $915. 

The Nest Learning Thermostat

The Nest is the first of its kind, a design-savvy programmable thermostat that learns your schedule and programs itself. It can even be controlled from your phone. Teach it well and it could save you up to 20 percent on heating and cooling costs. Available on Amazon; $247.

Network Security is important

$10 router blamed in Bangladesh bank hack

Hackers managed to steal $80m (£56m) from Bangladesh's central bank because it skimped on network hardware and security software, reports Reuters.

The bank had no firewall and used second-hand routers that cost $10 to connect to global financial networks.

Better security and hardware would have hampered the attackers, Reuters said, quoting an official investigator.

The hackers aimed to steal $1bn but made mistakes that led to the theft being spotted and stopped.

Better defense

A firewall would have made attempts to hack the bank more "difficult". The second-hand hardware also meant that basic security steps to segregate network traffic were not taken, he said.

The cheap routers have hindered the investigation, because they collected very little network data that could be used to pinpoint the hackers and shed light on their tactics.

The hack took place in early February and involved hackers getting access to the core network of Bangladesh's central bank. They used this privileged access to transfer cash from Bangladesh's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to other banks.

A spelling mistake in one of the transfer orders alerted bank staff and meant the hackers only managed to steal $ 81m. This has been traced to accounts in the Philippines and to casinos in the same country. Most of the cash has yet to be recovered.

Bank security experts said the bank should have spent more time and money protecting the network for its central bank.

"You are talking about an organisation that has access to billions of dollars and they are not taking even the most basic security precautions,"

Hackers are knocking at the door. Detect and stop threats to your customers’ networks before they become a problem with next-generation firewall solutions. With Cisco security systems you can block more threats and quickly mitigate those that do breach your defenses with the industry’s first threat-focused NGFW. Cisco Firepower NGFW appliances combine their proven network firewall with the industry’s most effective next-gen IPS and advanced malware protection.
All so you can get more visibility, be more flexible, save more, and protect better. You must take the right security decisions to protect your network from hackers attacks.

The smart home of the future is on our doorstep

The smart home has arrived — the internet is gradually making its way into everything from appliances to thermostats, and you’ll soon be able to control most things in your house from your phone.

But letting WiFi connected things into your house is a big step — they can watch you at all times and know a great deal about your most intimate life. So it’s worth getting one you trust and believe in.

Tons of products and whole ecosystems want to help you control your home via a single iOS or Android app. You can pick and choose your favorite gadgets to assemble an affordable intelligent abode on your own terms, or opt for an entire smart home system that does all the work for you. Here are some of our favorite smart home systems and individual gadgets.

If you have a wide variety of smart home gadgets, you'll need a central system to integrate and control them all.

With advancement in technology, scores of cool gadgets are adorning every home that has changed people’s lifestyle. The gadgets are not just fancy; they provide quick solutions to everyday problems. The simple design and improved functions reduce human effort and conserve space.

We lived with the most promising gadgets and allowed them to automate our house to see which can be most useful, and make you feel the most secure.

Products as smoke detectors can talk to you and let you know when there’s a problem and alerts can be viewed or silenced from your phone. Smart lights can be turned on using an app. You can change the colours and brightness, and sync them up with other apps so that they’ll flash when your phone gets a notification, for example. It lets you control up to 50 lights at a time. 

Security systems, Smart electricity switches, Smart Locks and a lot of more smart products are a reality now and can be shopped on your favorite store and everything at your doorstep.