Contact centres are certainly nothing new. In fact for many companies they are tried, tested and valuable parts of their organisational infrastructure.

Having once simply been a few people in a room together answer calls, the contact centre is forever evolving. Now you’re more likely to find whole networks of people across different geographies, both national and international, working across the same systems.

The technology has grown alongside the concept, with customers now being able to communicate with staff in a contact centre by phone, by email, by instant message and in some cases even by video conference. But with so many different methods and technologies out there, how does an organisation know which contact centre solutions are right for them?

When you first plan the development of your contact centre, you need to look at the requirements with the whole organisation in mind. The best way to do this is by identifying the objectives of the organisation. If growth is one of these objectives then you’ll need to ensure that you contact centre has room to develop in order to accommodate the large volumes of calls which many come from the company’s growth. Secondly, consider the geographical needs of the organisation. Is everyone that contacts you going to be from the same country? If not, shifts may be required to cover different time zones and localities.

If you are operating outside of the standard business hours, do you have someone on hand to provide technical support should there be a problem with the hardware? Most importantly what do your competitors offer in terms of contact centre support? If they all offer 24 hour help lines, then you will need to offer the same. You should consider going a step further in order to differentiate your support system from those which your competitors offer.

Emily Collins writes on behalf of Britannic Technologies.

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Chicago, IL, USA, May 15, 2012 - Global Capacity, the world’s leading telecommunications information and logistics company announces the addition of Ethernet Access services to the One Marketplace Access Exchange with physical interconnection points in Chicago, IL and Dallas, TX. Customers will now be able to request automated rates, place orders, provision and manage off-net Ethernet access solutions through the One Marketplace platform. Strategic network interconnections will facilitate revenue growth by exposing on-net Ethernet services to automated market demand, while improving EBITDA performance through lower operating expenses.

Over the past year, Global Capacity clients have continued to grow their businesses leveraging Ethernet as a viable alternative for replacements of traditional Frame Relay, ATM and private line access. Today, Global Capacity automates point to point Ethernet rates for more than 40 suppliers and has seen Ethernet based access requests increase from 1% to 20% of overall quotes volume. While Ethernet demand is still dominated by large fiber based Ethernet service requests, Global Capacity is seeing a growing demand and supply for low bandwidth Ethernet access services including Ethernet over Copper (EoC).

“With the increased demand for Ethernet Services across the industry, Global Capacity has a unique advantage by providing customers a streamlined and more efficient process to manage their off-net quoting and delivery solutions,” comments adds

Patrick Shutt, CEO of Global Capacity.  “By strategically interconnecting with partners, Global Capacity can deliver increased market transparency and leverage carrier’s excess capacity to provide a more comprehensive solution to its customers which will add value to the entire marketplace.”

Global Capacity’s initial interconnection points are strategically located to meet demand in Chicago and Dallas. Clients can connect directly from their POP with 1 GbE port interconnections to Global Capacity’s carrier-grade Ethernet switching platform.  Once interconnected, clients have a cost-effective and efficient method to expand their reach leveraging the available capacity of other participating Carriers, Service Providers or Enterprise Customers.

One Marketplace Access Exchange provides clients with fast, accurate, real time pricing for Ethernet access circuits, vastly improving a company’s response time to customer requests.  At the same time it provides market intelligence enabling carriers to offer competitive pricing– all while meeting the demand of the market.

For more information about Global Capacity’s One Marketplace Access Exchange and Ethernet Access solutions, visitwww.globalcapacity.com or email solutions@globalcapacity.com.

Scanning, quarantine, and the detection engines are the modules that received most of the developer’s attention this time.

The fixes and improvements range from eliminating crash bugs (service application and quarantine) to bettering 64-bit PE-file and Bifrost Trojan detection.

Although the build version increment is pretty shy, Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0.0.46 shows important stability improvements.

There is no new feature added to the suite, but modifications take care of some serious bugs.

With all the repairs, though, the developer took time to initiate preparations for email scanning, a feature we may see in the next major release of Emsisoft Anti-Malware.

Users can take advantage of the latest fixes by running an online update from within the program or by installing a fresh copy of the product.

Fixes also attended to less important bugs in the two scanning engines (Emsisoft and Ikarus) that achieve one of the best detection rates on the market.

Business partners Jonathan Stuart and Ezequiel Francisco survived the yearlong rigorous screening that Wireless Zone requires of its franchise owners, not to mention Verizon Wireless.

Two entrepreneurs opened Wireless Zone in Dover Mall in early October, providing local residents with another option for Verizon cell phones and other wireless devices.

New England-based Wireless Zone is the nation’s largest wireless retail franchisor, exclusively offering Verizon Wireless products and services.

Wireless Zone is a separate company from Verizon; they have a symbiotic relationship.

Stuart and Francisco sought approval from the from Wireless Zone and Verizon Wireless executives, and after a year, they were granted a franchise, Stuart said.

It helped tremendously that Stuart and Francisco brought extensive experience in the cell phone and wireless field to the table.

Stuart has been in the wireless field since he was 18 a total of nine years with just about every carrier including the former Cellular One, Sprint, Nextel and Verizon. Francisco, also in his 20s, also has about seven years experience with Verizon.

Before they opened their Wireless Zone store in the Dover Mall, they worked at a Verizon retailer in New York and became friends.

“We brainstormed about what we wanted to do with our lives and where we wanted to go,” Stuart said. “Instead of working for somebody else, we wanted to own our own store.

And here we are a year later.

“It’s what I love to do,” Stuart said. “You get to keep up with the new technology.

Phones have become a commodity like electricity and gas for your car.

People can’t live without them. It’s a great business to be in.”

Wireless Zone has opened 200 locations over the past two years and are quickly expanding in the state, said Wireless Zone spokeswoman Emily Driscoll, of No Limit Media Consulting.

For anyone looking to open a business in this economy, Stuart urged people to make sure they getting into the right business at the right time.

“As you’ve seen electronics stores closing, supermarkets closing, car dealerships
closing, you’ve got to get into an industry that’s on the way up, not on the way down,” he said. “We’re lucky that the wireless industry is always on the cutting edge and always evolving.

It’s not just cell phones anymore; it’s tablets such as iPads, Internet, video calling.”

It’s a roll of the dice to be sure, Stuart said. But, the competition creates better deals for the customer, he said.

“We don’t worry so much about AT&T and T-Mobile.

We worry about our other Verizon competition and Best Buy and Radio Shack, which both offer Verizon.

You’ve got to know what you’re doing.”

Wireless Zone faces stiff competition with another Verizon Wireless shop already in the Dover Mall.

As well as AT&T, T-Mobile, HyTek Wireless, We R Wireless and Radio Shack, not to mention a Verizon corporate store adjacent to the mall.

without knowing your Windows password, intruders can easily gain access to files and passwords stored by Windows and other programs on your computer.

They can do this by booting into their own operating system (Windows or Linux) from a special disc or USB flash drive.

After doing so, they can access your hard drives just as you can when you’re logged into Windows.

The only way to protect your data completely is by using encryption.

You can encrypt select files, but to protect your system files and saved passwords, you must encrypt your entire hard drive.

This operation takes more time and effort than encrypting select files does, but it offers more security and it’s great for laptops and netbooks that can easily go missing.

If your computer is running the Ultimate or Enterprise edition of Windows 7 or Vista, you can use Microsoft’s included BitLocker feature to encrypt your entire drive.

BitLocker offers protection for all of your personal files and documents, as well as for all of the system files and cached or saved passwords on your drive.

Though Microsoft includes BitLocker with these two editions of Windows, the feature isn’t enabled by default.

To activate it, you must manually enable it in the ‘System and Security’ Control Panel.

After encrypting your drive with BitLocker, you won’t notice any difference in using your computer.

Unlike with most other third-party encryption programs, you don’t have to type in an encryption password when booting up your system, aside from entering the usual Windows password to log on to your user account.

The drive is automatically decrypted with a method that protects it from snoopers outside of your Windows.

If the system partition is not already available, BitLocker may try to create it for you automatically, but sometimes it may not have enough available drive space to do so.

In addition, your computer must have a motherboard with a compatible Trusted Platform Module(TPM) microchip, and the BIOS should be TCG (for Trusted Computing Group) compliant.

Having a TPM microchip isn’t madatory, but without it the configuration and usability are more complicated.

To support so simple an encryption process, however, your computer must meet a few stringent software and hardware requirements.

To start with, your drive must have two NTFS drive partitions: a system partition (which contains the files needed to start your computer), and an operating system partition (which you should have already, and which contains Windows and your personal files).

If you don’t understand the requirements, don’t sweat it. To see whether your system meets them, simply open BitLocker,Click Start, Control Panel, System and Security, BitLocker Drive Encryption, Turn On BitLocker.

If your computer doesn’t meet the requirements, it will let you know. If you get an error message about not having a TPM device, it’s possible that your PC does have one that isn’t enabled in the BIOS.

Try checking your PC’s BIOS setup menu at boot for any mention of TPM support. Otherwise, consider using a third-party encryption program, such as DiskCryptor, instead of using BitLocker.

The Operator has started a three month trail allowing unlimited data usage to its customers in order to promote the use of data services.

UK telecom operator, Vodafone is giving a rare chance to its customers to download as much data as they can during the next three months for no extra charges.

The operator is aiming to encourage downloading of apps and use of other internet-connected features of a smartphone by allowing users to download as much data as possible in the three months trial period.

The Data Test Drive of the operator, which was launched this on Saturday, is available to new or upgrading smartphone customers.

The users who are in the middle of a contract can only access the unlimited scheme after the completion of their contracts.

“The latest smartphones allow people to do more with their mobile phone than ever before.

We want customers to really play with their new handset and Data Test Drive will give them the confidence to find the apps they love and features they will use regularly.”

Srini Gopalan, consumer director for Vodafone UK, said in a statement.

After the trail period, the operator will tell customers how much data they have used and advice them on the best suited plans.

The government also aims to ratify an international treaty on online crimes, the Nikkei said without citing a source.

Japan plans to work more closely with private companies by sharing information on cyber attacks after defence contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was hacked, Nikkei business daily has reported.

The United States has recently pressured Japan to take more action against cyber attacks after Mitsubishi Heavy, which works closely with Boeing , said in September network information such as IP addresses may have been leaked.

Once the agreement is in place, the government and the public bodies would then widely share information on such attacks without identifying which firms were targeted, the Nikkei said.

Tokyo is considering asking private companies including utilities, railway operators, defence contractors, automakers and electronics to sign an agreement with public bodies to share information on cyber attacks, the Nikkei said.

But Tokyo will not establish a new law requiring firms to report online breaches to the government as this would be too difficult, the Nikkei reported.

The government also plans to ratify the Convention on Cybercrime, a treaty dealing with network security breaches and other online crimes by establishing an international network to provide help to investigators globally, the Nikkei said.

Japan, which in 2001 signed the treaty initiated by the Council of Europe, is among the nearly 50 countries that have signed or ratified the treaty, but it has yet to bring this into force.

The government will hold a meeting on Friday (Japanese time) to boost information security, the Nikkei reported.

Mitsubishi Heavy has said it so far had not confirmed any leaks on its products or technologies. An outside contractor is now checking whether any sensitive data had been breached.

According to Nielsen in the US, online gaming accounts for 10.2% of time spent on the Web,  says Sergey Golovanov, Malware Expert at Kaspersky Lab.

“Such a statistic certainly provides proof to the fact the online gaming is a growing industry that, in our experience, turns over impressive revenues each year.

The world of online gaming moves very quickly across countries each year new and exciting games are released and the army of players continues to develop.

And as with any online action that shows high activity and growth, the online gaming world has become an attractive one to cybercriminals evident by the recent hack of a popular gaming console which proved detrimental.”

In its May 2011 spam report, Kaspersky reported that 4.67% of all phishing emails that occurred were intended to steal passwords for the popular free online game RuneScape.

As a result, this platform made its debut in the top 10, straight in at number 3 way ahead of Warcraft which is the most popular online game in the world.

And this is just one example.

Kaspersky Lab has noticed that online games nowadays are of more interest to cybercriminals than social networking sites such as Facebook which is certainly a startling realisation that the company emphasises requires action.

“Despite this, often consumed by the excitement of the game itself, many online gamers do not realise the crucial importance of effective security around gaming.

And it is with this exact premise in mind that Kaspersky Lab continues to support the rAge expo as it is a well respected technology event that provides the perfect platform to engage.

With gamers to educate and offer the insight needed to ensure a safe and uninterrupted gaming experience,” says Golovanov.

“Security education across industries remains a key focus for Kaspersky Lab. We have identified the gaming industry as a sector that remains fruitful among cybercriminals and are proud to be a part of this event.

As it allows us the opportunity to educate and make an important and beneficial difference to the world of online gaming,” concludes Golovanov.