Tag: Open Source

Small Business Idea

I have been for over 3 years) of acting on some of my small business ideas. There are a growing number of people with home offices in my neighbourhood. I do not know the exact number, but in the Montgomery, Montgomery Wood, and Montgomery Walk developments, we have close to 500 homes. Most of these homes have wireless.

Within a block of units (8 homes) there, at least half have wireless, and most likely all have a home computer with DSL or cable broadband. I based this assumption on my own block. I pick up at least 6 wireless signals from my family room. Most wireless signals have no security; almost all use the default router settings. There are many people like Mukesh and Nilima.

There is money to be made offering an in-home setup service for small offices/home offices. I can use my neighbourhood as a launching point for the business. I can place a small ad in the association newsletter or a posting on the website. Word of mouth will initially provide enough marketing to get from one gig to another. Hopefully, some home clients would refer me to small business clients. But first, baby steps.

I have thought up a short list of services I could provide.

  • Home networking
  • Wireless networking
  • Security
    • Patching
    • Anti-spyware
    • Anti-virus
    • Adware removal
  • PC tuneup (defrag, temp file removal)
  • Software installation and configuration
  • Hardware installation and configuration
  • Blogging and website hosting

I have yet to think much about how much to charge. Should it be an hourly or fixed price for a defined service (a la carte)? Should I have the clients sign off when work is complete? Should I incorporate or do a sole proprietorship until the business gets larger? Can I manage the workload? How do I limit this to weekends only at first?

Project Ideas for 2006

  • Mobile asset recovery system (need data on yearly losses)
  • Produce advisories on Red Hat Errata and Security Alerts
  • Leverage Open Source IDS (Snort) along with Open Source Vulnerability
    Assessment (Nessus) with the intention of creating an Open Source Security Event Management service
  • Open Source Log Management
  • Investigate use of OSSIM
  • Metrics on blocking (top domains, top categories, top users)
  • Discuss possible use of SE Linux for securing systems

Hamachi : Stay Connected

Hamachi was the subject of discussion on Leo Laporte's December 15th "Security Now!" podcast with Steve Gibson. Steve Gibson is the owner and maintainer of the popular "Shields up!" web site. The two have been discussing encrypted communications for in the last few podcasts and the difficulties of setting up a simple VPN for home or small business use. Steve reviewed a new, free, VPN solution called Hamachi - and he likes what he sees. I likes what I see as well. Check it out.

Hamachi : Stay Connected: "With Hamachi you can organize two or more computers with an Internet connection into their own virtual network for direct secure communication."

Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking application with an open security architecture and NAT-to-NAT traversal capabilities.

I installed Himachi on two of my machines to test. Both machines are Windows XP Pro with SP2 and all the latest Microsoft updates. The installation was a breeze. When you launch Himachi for the first time you will be presented with a walk through system that help you configure the system. This took me less than 5 minutes. Whoa! One of the machines I used for testing is a Dell Inspiron 2600 with a LinkSys WUSB12 wireless NIC. I temporarily "borrowed" a wireless connection from a neighbor and was successfully able to create a VPN connection back to my home network and access files on the second machine. I plan to create a VPN between my in-laws machines. Supporting them will be that much easier.