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[S254]Security Vs Distribution Group

by Roosevelt Cooper, Roo

As you begin to embark on your journey to financial freedom, one thing that you will discover, if you have not already is that there aren't a lot of people who are going to support your efforts. You may have shared your desires with others and receive responses that may surprise you. For example, here are some of the responses that I have received...

"That is a pipe dream"

"You can't do that"

"You are money hungry and greedy"

Why is it that many people seem to be against your desire to obtain financial independence? The reason why is because the steps required to reach financial freedom is too uncomfortable for most people. Most people would like financial freedom. However, they value security much more than freedom. As a result, they give up on their dreams of financial freedom for the security of a safe, secure job with benefits.

Security and freedom are not the same. They are actually very different value systems. For example, if you want to make money, you can make money the secure way, by getting a job, or you can make money the freedom way, by starting your own business. Let's contrast the two methods.

Getting a good job is a very secure way of making money. When you have a job, you know that after a given time period you are going to get a certain amount of money. Every year or so, your money is increased a certain percentage if you do a satisfactory job and if you can learn additional skills you can get a promotion, which can increase the amount of money you take home.

However, this security comes at a cost of freedom. Your employer tells you what you have to do, when you have to do it and how you must do it. Your employer tells you what hours you must work, when you can take a break, when you can eat lunch, when you can take a vacation, how long that vacation can be, etc. If you choose not to do things the way you employer desires for them to be done, you will lose your employment and as such you will lose your financial security.

Also, even if you do everything to the desire of your employer, there are outside forces beyond your control that can take your job away from you. Generally, there is a certain pay range that you qualify for based upon your job and you cannot exceed that pay range, unless you develop skills for a different job. A good job provides you with security, but it costs you freedom.

Starting your own business is a very freedom way of getting rich. However, you give up security. As a business owner you are free to decide what you want to do, when you want to do it and how you want to do it. If you want to take a two hour lunch instead of a one hour lunch, you can do so and there's nothing anybody can do about it. If you prefer to work 12 hours 3 days a week and take the other 4 days off, as oppose to working 7 hours 5 days a week, you can do so.

In fact, once your business reaches a certain level, you will be able to receive money, regardless of whether you show up to work or not. However, this freedom comes at a cost of security. As a business owner especially at the beginning, you are not guaranteed any amount of money. One month your business can bring in a large amount of money and then the very next month, your business brings in a 3rd of what you brought in last month even though you did the exact same thing in both months. Also, if you make mistakes, the money your business did make can be easily taken away from you through lawsuits, fines and mismanagement.

The large majority of people that you encounter have a secure mindset. That is why it is very important for you to seek out people with a freedom mindset to encourage you on your financial journey. One of the most difficult things I have had to discover on my journey is the difference between a world of security and a world of freedom. On my job, I know when I'm getting paid, on the 15th and the 30th of each month. I also know how much I'm getting paid.

With my business though, I don't have a clue when I'm getting paid and how much. I can put an auction on Ebay for three straight weeks and get no bids and then put up the same auction the fourth week and make the sale, without making any changes to my auction listing whatsoever. I can buy stock and lose money on 5 straight trades and then on my 6th trade I make all the money I lost back and make even more money on top of that. It takes time to adjust to a world of freedom when you have been conditioned to live in a world of security. As a result, you need people of the same mindset to encourage you on the way.

The overwhelming increase in the mobility of the corporate workforce and the availability of wireless internet connections in airports, hotels, and coffee houses, creates an unbearable challenge to IT managers. Whenever employees, travelling with their laptops, connect to a hotel hotspot, they are in fact connecting their corporate computers to an unsecured network, shared by hundreds of guests. This innocent connection jeopardizes sensitive data and can bring back security threats into the corporate network when returned to the office. For this reason, IT managers have adopted rigid security policies, creating a conflict between the need for security and the productivity of the mobile workforce. For example, some organizations consider the returning laptops as ?infected?. The infected laptops are completely formatted and cleaned. Some allow dial-up connections-only (no Wi-Fi), while others go further to completely prohibit the connection of laptops to the Internet outside the corporate network.
This unbearable conflict between security and mobility can only be solved if the mobile force is equipped with the same level of security as they have inside the corporate network. To understand what this means, we should examine the level of security that is maintained inside the corporate networks.

Corporate Network - Two Lines of Defense

Corporate users enjoy higher security levels inside the corporate network because they operate behind two lines of defense. The first line of defense, is a set of robust security appliances, installed at the IT center and exclusively controlled by the IT department. It is largely based on a comprehensive set of IT security appliances running secured and hardened OS, with Firewall, IDS, IPS, Anti Virus, Anti Spyware,
Anti Spam and Content filtering. The second line is based on the Personal FW and Anti Virus software installed on end-user's computers.
The first line of defense completely isolates the user at the physical and logical layers.
Unlike PCs, these appliances are equipped with a Hardened operating systems that do not have security holes, ?back-doors?, or unsecured layers. They are designed for a single purpose, to provide security.
The first line of defense provides the following advantages:
- Mobile code is not run - content arriving from the internet is not executed on these appliances it just goes or does not go through into the network. It makes it more difficult to attack as the mobile code delivered by the hackers does not run on the appliances.
Cannot be uninstalled ? Security attacks often start by targeting the security software, while trying to uninstall it or stop its activity.
Software-based security solutions, as any software program includes an uninstall option that can be targeted. In contrast, the hardware-based security appliances cannot be uninstalled as they are hard coded into the hardware.
- Non-writable Memory - Hardware-based solutions manage the memory in a restricted and controlled manner. The security appliances can prohibit access to its memory, providing greater protection against attacks on the security mechanism.
-Controlled by IT personnel ? The security appliances are controlled by IT, who constantly maintains the highest security policies and updates.
- Performance - The security appliances are optimized for maximum security and operate independently from computers in the network, not degrading the performance of the desktops or consuming their resources.
Consequently, the corporate PCs reside in a secured environment. If the security is breached, at least the damage stops at the gateway. The first line of defense prevents threats from entering the corporate network. While the second line serves as a precaution and help defend against threats that may have already entered the network (e.g. emails). But the real problem starts when the corporate PCs go in and out of this secured environment. Outside the corporate network they are at the frontline with no first line of defense. The problem intensifies as they return, bypassing the first line of defense as they enter the network. These laptops can be considered as the greatest threat because they unknowingly infiltrate security threats
into the supposedly safe network.

Article Source : Pg. 325

About Author

Both Roosevelt Cooper & Robert Thomson are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Roosevelt Cooper has sinced written about articles on various topics from Network Marketing, Finances. . Roosevelt Cooper's top article generates over 2400 views. to your Favourites.

Robert Thomson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Personal Desktop, Finances and Pets. , established in 2005 by Shlomo Touboul, former founder and CEO of Finjan Software, and the inventor of Behavior Based Blocking Technology, is t. Robert Thomson's top article generates over 450000 views. to your Favourites.