Last week was great for food. I was in Cleveland to train our new channel managers when I found I had an evening to myself. I went to Lola, owned by Michael Symon, an Iron Chef on the food network. I chose the restaurant because he is into offal and there will be sweetbreads on the menu. I liked going alone as I would not have to see the looks of disgust as I enjoyed crispy pancreas or thymus meats. This time in addition to sweetbreads, Michael added crispy bone marrow accompanied with toast, pickled shallots, chopped parsley and vinegar, fleur de sel, and three other acidic items. I could not resist. The bone marrow was deep-fried and spread deliciously onto toast, which I topped with one or more of the accompaniments to cut the fat. The next ordered dish was grilled calf's heart with cream corn, morels and chimichurri. It came medium rare and sliced over the corn and morels. It was a fantastic dish. Always try internal organs from a chef whose favorite t-shirt reads "offal".

This weekend I made honey BBQ chicken, panko crusted shrimp, deep fried gou (fish), Chinese dumplings and pesto crusted t-bone steak. While everything was good, the Fettuccini with Pesto and grilled Pesto Crusted T-bone Steak was fantastic. Instead of the usual peas mixed with the fettuccini, I prepared lima beans cooked with apple-smoked bacon (done by yours truly). The dish was marvelous. My preferred choice of pesto is made by Christopher Ranch of Gilroy, California, the garlic capital of the world. It is also simple to make your own pesto as well. Enjoy!

The Seven Deadliest Attacks

As companies transition from TDM to IP communications, they are exposing more of their infrastructure to hackers and outright criminals. In an attempt to address this, Broadvox, recently instituted a program to have our engineers assist customers in reviewing their security settings and environment. While we expect either our VAR partner members or the customer's IT department to be responsible for the security of their networks, we can give good advice to protect them from fraudulent usage or damaging attacks. Often a customer discovers they have a security issue over a SIP Trunk after someone has gained access and made hundreds of calls to international destinations. In addition to advice, we will also turn off international dialing for customers who have no requirement for the service.

It is important for companies to recognize that the transition from TDM to IP communications exposes so much more of their information infrastructure to benign and sometimes malicious attacks. Dan York, a security expert, has written "Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks". I know that most of you will not go out and read the book; therefore, I will list the seven attack methodologies on Wednesday.

None of the attacks is new to most IT managers, but the threat has increased and has expanded beyond the IP or data world into voice communications. Unified communications by its very nature attracts these new hackers by giving them a broader range of areas to attack. An attack can still be focused on data, but the same techniques can be applied to disrupt/alter conversations, rich media, telepresence or other collaborative applications.  

More on Wednesday...