Notes on Productivity Home Page

John Rolling has written an excellent overview of some of the new features of Notes and Domino 8.51. If you are looking for a quick way to find out what's new, be sure to check this out.

This concern applies to any hosted server, but specifically to Domino because we are used to the inherent security features in Domino and as a result it is easy to not stress about security.

For years, my customer has taken comfort in the inherent security of Notes/Domino with its encrypted databases and encrypted data transfer. So far, so good. Local database encryption means that Lotus can deliver a truly end-to-end secure solution. Great. This means my customer can securely store confidential information, including passwords, etc. in an encrypted database. Yes, peace of mind.

Here comes cloud computing

Customer decides to move one of his Domino servers into the cloud. Fine. No problem. Many people do that every day with companies like Prominic, PSC, Connectria, and now IBM,  to name just a few.

Databases on a Domino server are typically unencrypted. This was OK when the Domino sever was at the customer premises - his Domino servers were in a locked data center with access to physical computers restricted to trusted employees. Now that his Domino server is in the cloud he cannot control who has access to his machine. Now, unencrypted databases on the server (and their resulting backups) could become a real liability. Someone with access to a copy of, say, the company president's mail file from the server would have unencrypted access to all of his messages and their content.

Customer asks:

Is this this a valid argument against hosting a Domino server
in the cloud, or is there a better practice for encrypted
databases on a hosted Domino server?

 

It's been over a month since I last did a full weekly review. I took a 6 weeks off of work to complete my Master's degree in Information and Knowledge Management and then two additional weeks to spend some time with my family.

During this time, I blogged only occaisionally and I intentionally ignored most emails, doing only an occasional emergency scan of my inbox in order to delegate time-critical items to my team.

Yesterday,  I spent the day with David Allen and his team to discuss exciting developments around eProductivity, mobility, and Notes 8.51.

Today, I returned to the office to an overflowing inbox - over 4,000 emails and a small stack of paper to process.

Ouch!

At least it's all in one place, ready for me to process.


I guess it's time for me to start eating my own dog food, again.

I wonder if I should nominate myself as the new poster-child for eProductivity?