Forensic Tools

Email forensic and recovery tools

Paraben's E-mail Examiner: Designed to process a wide variety of active and deleted e-mail archives. This includes Outlook Exchange, Outlook Express, Eudora, Pegasus Mails, EML message files, and many others.

Paraben's Network E-mail Examiner (NEMX): Can be used to process Microsoft Exchange archives as well as Lotus Notes and Group Wise files. Built into the tool is a corruption repair utility that will also save some time in processing by attempting to bypass corruption and move on to read the rest of the archive, allowing you to keep the data in its original state.

Ontrack PowerControls: A tool for copying, searching, recovering, and analyzing e-mail and other mailbox items from Microsoft Exchange server backups, Information Store files, and unmounted databases (EDB).

Google Apps Admins Jittery About Gmail, Hopeful About Future

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/149892/google_apps_admins_jittery_about_gmail_hopeful_about_future.html

Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
Friday, August 15, 2008 3:40 PM PDT

When Gmail crashed on Monday, affecting many organizations that depend on it for work e-mail via the Google Apps suite, widespread gnashing of teeth ensued.

At Alaska's APTI public TV and radio station, reporters working on deadline scrambled to gather information without e-mail as a tool.

In the middle of an important press announcement, staffers at San Francisco Internet startup Kwiry sought alternate ways to stay in touch with contacts.

At Davidoff Communications, the outage hit less than 24 hours after the Chicago company's migration of its five users to Google Apps.

"Since we're only on day four of our implementation, let's just say if Apps were on my baseball team, it would be hitting at the bottom of the lineup," said Davidoff Systems Administrator Mitch Wilkos in an e-mail interview this week.

With its Apps hosted suite of communications and collaboration applications, Google is a leading proponent of software-as-a-service (SaaS), an emerging model of software delivery that backers say represents the future.

Because vendors host applications in their own data centers, companies don't have to concern themselves with hardware provisioning and software maintenance. By living in the Internet "cloud," these hosted applications simplify sharing and collaboration among employees.

However, the experience of users living through the recent Google Apps outages could serve as a deterrent to some IT and business managers who might not be ready to ditch conventional software packages that are installed on their servers.

If a company relies on Google Apps for its e-mail, its IT and business managers have little to do when a Gmail outage hits them, and, with end-users demanding explanations, this waiting game can be a very stressful situation, as John Proffitt, IT services director at APTI, can attest.

"For me as the Google Apps administrator, the disruption was pretty damn irritating. Aside from getting kicked out of e-mail I need to do my own job, it also forced me to completely refocus on figuring out what's happening with Gmail and Google Apps," he said in an e-mail interview.

For the two hours that the outage lasted, Proffitt estimates that about 75 percent of the organization's approximately 40 employees were affected, some severely, including the journalists who make up about a quarter of the staff.

"It was constant troubleshooting, testing, research, posting to the Google Apps forums and so on. Plus there's the emotional strain of wondering whether you completely screwed up by moving everyone to Google Apps as our sole e-mail system. That's what freaked me out: Did Google just make me look like an idiot?" Proffitt added.

That's not a nice feeling to have, especially since Proffitt did his homework and took his time before deciding to move his end-users to Google Apps. He used the suite for about nine months himself "as a guinea pig" and then rolled it out to the entire organization six weeks ago.

Prior to Monday's crash, his satisfaction level with Google Apps was about 90 percent. Now he puts it at 70 percent.

"Mostly that 20 percent drop is based on fear of another, perhaps more damaging, outage. It hasn't happened, but now I know it could happen any time and without warning, and if it does I have virtually no recourse to get the service running again," he said.

Monday's outage was sandwiched between two other Gmail crashes -- one last week and another one on Thursday and Friday of this week, both of which were smaller in scale. Proffitt wasn't affected by those other outages, but he's ready to rethink his status as hosted software adopter if things don't go well in the future.

"If we began to experience a similar outage more than about two or three business hours per quarter, we'd probably make Google Apps and Gmail a backup solution to a locally hosted mail system, if we used it at all. And it would likely be years before we'd try a cloud-based collaborative system again from any vendor," Proffitt said.

Still, Proffitt and other Apps administrators interviewed are hoping that Google will quickly strengthen the reliability of Gmail and the other suite components to a point where crashes become extremely rare. The benefits Apps offers to their small and medium-size organizations are significant in terms of cost savings and the flexibility of Web-based software.

"Even though we've only had Apps for a few days, I'm already impressed with the customization options. The ability to completely ditch Outlook makes Apps a worthwhile service to our company," said Davidoff's Wilkos. "The Gmail interface feels more intuitive and is significantly quicker than Outlook. And the mobile accessibility is a huge improvement over our old e-mail service."

Although Monday's outage stung Kwiry on an important day, and the startup was hit briefly again on Thursday, CEO Ron Feldman is betting on Google Apps. "Google understands its tremendous responsibility to keep things up and running," Feldman said via e-mail.

Carlos Leyva, managing shareholder at Digital Business Law Group, is also confident in Google and is sold on the SaaS model, which he expects will allow his new law firm to grow quickly without having to spend a fortune on its computing infrastructure.

"No one's happy when there's downtime, but there's always downtime. I've seen Exchange go down often. Many times you're left to your own IT people to fix it. That can be good or bad. I'd rather it be Google's problem. They've got a world-class team. Their reputation is on the line. Over time, they're going to get better and better," he said in a phone interview.

Thomas Harbinson, president of IDA International in Derby, Connecticut, found Monday's outage a minor disruption for the engineering and construction service company's 11 users. They have been very satisfied with Apps, which the company has been using for about a year after migrating away from Exchange.

"As a small organization looking at pre-Google Apps practice, if it had been my hardware in-house that went down, I would not have had anywhere near the reaction time and response to be restored as Google did with the Apps service," Harbinson said via e-mail.

Google Voice Chatter Could Be a Legal Nightmare

http://www.data-storage-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=032003365PNK

By Frederick Lane
March 13, 2009 2:37PM

Google's new telephone service, Google Voice, is making observers nervous. Wiretapping laws could be violated, and searches through your voice mails on Google Voice could be a nightmare. Beyond concentrating data in one company, advertising may enter the Google Voice picture so Google can pay for the tempting free services.

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Google's new telephone service, Google Voice, is receiving generally positive reviews from industry analysts. Some of the features, however, are raising potentially troubling legal issues.

Nearly two years ago, Google bought Grand Central, an Internet-based phone service, and opened it up to a limited number of beta testers. Over the following months, users got increasingly impatient with the lack of new features or upgrades to the service.

It turns out, however, that Grand Central was merely on hold as Google undertook a complete revamping of the service to better integrate it into the Google universe. Current users and new subscribers will be able to read transcripts and search text of their voice mails, make low-cost overseas calls and free calls within the United States, set up free conference calls, and redirect both calls and text messages to up to six different numbers at the same time.

But not surprisingly, given Google's increasingly dominant online profile, the news that the company is doing for voice what it's done for virtually every other type of data has raised questions about both privacy and legality. Critics are worried about yet another data stream flowing through the Google server farms.

Scanning Phone Calls

In a widely reported interview, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the new service raises worrisome issues. "It raises two distinct problems," he said. "In the privacy world, it is increased profiling and tracking of users without safeguards. But the other problem is the growing consolidation of Internet-based services around one dominant company."

Since even Google hasn't figured out how to repeal the laws of economics, the obvious question is how the company will be able to support the undeniably attractive offer of free telephone calls, voice-mail transcriptions, and so on. As with other Google services, the answer is likely to be context-driven advertisements.

Given the announcement this week that the company will start plumbing Web search history in an effort to provide more targeted advertising, the likelihood that phone calls will be similarly scanned has many people nervous.

Google-Tapping

The other obvious issue is the legality of recording conversations. Google Voice plays a message before turning on the tapes (or firing up the hard drive), but it's not hard to imagine someone missing the announcement. In roughly half the states, a conversation can be taped secretly as long as one person consents (i.e., you can record any conversation to which you are a party). In the remainder of the states, the consent (implicit or explicit) of everyone in the conversation is required.

And what about the transcribed voice mails? It's inevitable that at some point, someone will try to introduce a Google voice mail into evidence in a legal proceeding. As Google makes itself the holder and preserver of more and more of the world's information, perhaps the next service to roll out will be Google Courts.

The new geek chic: Data centers

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9977049-80.html

by Dan Farber

Forget about flashy Web 2.0 applications. The real, geeky coolness of the Web is the growing acreage of data centers that deliver bits to billions of devices. At GigaOM's Structure 08 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, infrastructure--"clouds" of servers, storage and networks--was the headliner.

Jonathan Yarmis, vice president of advanced, emerging and disruptive technologies at AMR Research, said changes in the next five years will make the past Internet revolution feel like child's play. He didn't explain exactly how the next five years will be more revolutionary than evolutionary, but outlined the convergence of several technology trends.

The combination of social networking, mobility, alternative business models (advertising and different license and revenue models) and cloud and stream computing are mutually reinforcing trends that are driving innovations. The average life of a cell phone is 21 months, which allows users to take advantage of improvements in infrastructure.

"Cloud computing is not just for software as a service, but EaaS--Everything as a Service. Many things as discrete products become cloud-based offerings. It offers us an independence of device and location that is profoundly important," Yarmis said. Spoken like a true analyst--come up with another way to market a concept that is also known as on demand, cloud, SaaS, or utility computing.

One of the infrastructure challenges is not just storing and analyzing the growing body of data but reading, reacting, and responding in real time to disposable streams of data, Yarmis explained. The network and software needs to get much smarter and faster to enable real-time filtering and streaming for every user.

"We've reached a tipping point. All of the waves of disruptive tech are coming together at the same time," Yarmis said. He predicted that the economic downturn will help spur the adoption of cloud computing. Given the lower cost model and technological advances pioneered by companies like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.com in cloud computing, that's a sure bet.

Click here to see more stories from the Structure 08 conference and on cloud computing generally.

Recession Is Good For Cloud Computing – Microsoft Agrees

http://www.cloudave.com/link/recession-is-good-for-cloud-computing-microsoft-agrees

Feb 12 2009 03:00:00 AM Posted By : Krishnan Subramanian

When the whole world was gloomy with onset of current recession, we (the members of cloud computing community) are happy about it in a way. Every single cloud computing evangelist will tell you that recession is good for cloud computing. The reason is obvious

• CapEx is converted into OpEX
• Even the OpEx is drastically reduced

Add to this the other usual themes like better performance, redundancy, easy scalability, etc., we have a perfect recipe for recession.

Back in those days, when John McCain was predicting that our economy is fundamentally strong, Zoli predicted that

In fact I suspect the looming downturn will accelerate the structural changes in the software industry: SaaS players will thrive, traditional on-premise vendors will shrink, many will disappear.

He is not a prophet but he made a very solid prediction and summarized his post as follows

In summary, Software businesses that combine good old business sense: frugality, spending wisely, delivering value to businesses and getting paid for it, with a new business model, SaaS are likely winners in the downturn. The rest are playing musical chairs.

He followed it up with another post highlighting what many others in the industry told at that time. Everyone was confident that SaaS (and also the other components of Cloud Computing) will thrive in the recession. But people with high stakes in the traditional software world dismissed it as a marketing pitch by companies trying to get foothold in the market through Cloud based offerings.

Time has passed since Zoli’s post. John McCain is back at the senate and Sarah Palin is back in Alaska. Recession appears to be much deeper than what it was then. Microsoft, the monopoly like player in the desktop world and who was reluctant to embrace cloud computing till it ceded the market place to other players like Google, has finally agreed that bad economy is good for cloud computing. ENT News, a sister site of Redmond Channel Partner Online, quotes Microsoft exec Doug Hauser as saying

A weakened economy will serve as a catalyst to push enterprises from on-premise computing to accessing services over the Internet cloud

Not only that, he seems to underline what we, the cloud evangelists, are saying for a long time.

He said it was pretty much accepted that the small-to-medium business and consumer spaces are "looking at [cloud computing] adoption anyway, regardless of the economic climate."

Thank you Mr. Hauser. Thank you Microsoft. Do we really need to convince the cloud skeptics anymore?

On an unrelated note, I want to use the same article to highlight one point which is obvious by now. It is the enormous savings in SaaS compared to on premise software. In the talk, Mr. Hauser highlights how Exchange as SaaS is much cheaper than Exchange On Demand, in addition to giving more profits to Microsoft.

Hauser described an Exchange implementation where an on-premise cost is $18 a month per user for the software, of which Microsoft gets $3.

"For Exchange Online, we charge $10 a month per user per seat, so our net gain is $7," he said. "The customer actually saves $8. There's a huge benefit to the customer; there's a benefit to us. There are very similar economics to have developer services in the cloud similar to those sorts of online services.

Isn’t it time we stop highlighting the cloud economics and talk more about cloud dynamics?

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

Web-based programs like Google's Gmail will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time, according to the free software campaigner

Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 September 2008 14.11 BST

The concept of using web-based programs like Google's Gmail is "worse than stupidity", according to a leading advocate of free software.

Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years. Large internet and technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are pushing forward their plans to deliver information and software over the net.

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian.

"Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true."

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.

His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticised the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-driven" and "complete gibberish".

"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do," he said. "The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"

The growing number of people storing information on internet-accessible servers rather than on their own machines, has become a core part of the rise of Web 2.0 applications. Millions of people now upload personal data such as emails, photographs and, increasingly, their work, to sites owned by companies such as Google.

Computer manufacturer Dell recently even tried to trademark the term "cloud computing", although its application was refused.

But there has been growing concern that mainstream adoption of cloud computing could present a mixture of privacy and ownership issues, with users potentially being locked out of their own files.

Stallman, who is a staunch privacy advocate, advised users to stay local and stick with their own computers.

"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."

Keep an eye on cloud computing

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/itlead/2008/070708itlead1.html

Cloud Computing Confusion Leads to Opportunity

IT Leadership Alert By Amy Schurr , Network World , 07/08/2008

There's some confusion about what exactly constitutes cloud computing, but one thing experts tend to agree on is the evolutionary effect this will have on IT. A new report from Gartner points to the opportunity to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them.

The report, “Cloud Computing Confusion Leads to Opportunity,” defines cloud computing as a style where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided as a service to multiple external customers. You’ve probably heard it called utility computing, software-as-a-service and application service providers. The factors making such a model viable today are commoditization and standardization of technologies, virtualization and service-oriented architects, and the growth of the Internet.

“During the past 15 years, a continuing trend toward IT industrialization has grown in popularity as IT services delivered via hardware, software and people are becoming repeatable and usable by a wide range of customers and service providers,” said Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner Fellow.

What does this mean for IT leaders? Eventually users can focus on what the service delivers rather than how they are implemented or hosted. The possibilities include procuring computational facilities on demand, storage services to software to video.

Gartner says consumer-focused vendors have more mature services than enterprise-oriented vendors, though all can benefit. Branding is one opportunity for vendors – imagine Wal-Mart leasing its core

“Companies invest billions of dollars in building up their core competencies, much of which goes into IT,” says David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “If companies could lease their core competencies to other companies then they would capitalize on both brands, driving revenue both in the consumer-facing market and the business service market in the way that Amazon has done with technology.”