Have you heard of the damage the Stuxnet worm has been causing businesses and their computer systems around the world? Have you heard of the huge impact it has had on cyber warfare? Did you know it is a USB transmitted malware that’s not that hard to stop? Have you heard of cases where entire customer lists are copied and stolen by former employees, upset that they were fired or just because they wanted more money from a competitor? Have you heard of people just walking into a company and copying all the private data stored there on a simple USB stick or on a smart phone and just walking out with it?

While we love our mobility and portability – who doesn’t love to run their business from a mobile phone when stranded in an airport for hours, waiting for their next flight? – there are serious security threats that come with the use of portable devices, especially if we don’t know what we’re doing. Enter data loss prevention, device control and endpoint security solutions, some of the best being brilliantly developed by Mirror Communications client CoSoSys. What you also might not know is that there are virtually none such solutions to protect Mac computers! Not only does CoSoSys provide such a business application, they also have just released a new verison of their Endpoint Protector 2009 for Mac device control and endpoint security solution!

What the new product does is make sure that while you’re traveling, you can still stay productive and complete tasks which require the use of portable devices, while staying safe from the threats I’ve mentioned earlier. The new release also offers companies a closer watch on what their employees are doing with files and data accessed on or copied to portable devices.

“The new Mac version of Endpoint Protector focuses on two important aspects of device control and data loss prevention – keeping a close eye on data activity within the company to prevent possible leaks or theft (and File Tracing enables the needed close watch and audit) and making sure productivity and mobility are not impaired by security policies, while at the same time providing a safe way to work with portable devices,”  said Roman Foeckl, CoSoSys CEO.

The two main features of the new data loss prevention and endpoint security solution for Mac / Apple are File Tracing and offline temporary passwords. When enabled, the File Tracing feature logs all data and file related activity and stores it for later auditing. Each time an employee edits, deletes or renames a certain file originating from or subsequently copied to a portable device, his actions are recorded, along with his user credentials and the device specifications.

Offline temporary passwords address the needs of road warriors, or simply put, those business men that need to travel a lot and still need to use their comuter, copy files to and from it, to do their job. When on a business trip, employees might be unable to connect to the Internet and need to authorize a new portable device, a memory stick to save a presentation for an event etc. To help them save time and complete their tasks, a temporary offline password can be provided to them by phone by authorized company representatives and subsequently they can authorize devices for a period ranging from 30 minutes to one week.

Of course these are only the most important new features that the new Endpoint Protector release for Mac device control features, there are a lot more functionalities keeping your data safe and business advantages that come from working safely with portable devices to consider and you can review them all here.

2009 has been a year of many changes. It’s been a year of accomplishments and joy, as well as the year when a lot didn’t go according to plan, in both personal and business life. I would have wanted to skip the 2009 review and go straight to my 2010 plans. But that would have meant skipping some important steps of the process and make it less effective. So what happened in 2009?

On Words of a Broken Mirror, it’s been a year full of significant posts and essential lessons. I didn’t exactly meet my own plans of posting frequency, but I am extremely pleased with the quality of everything published here, as well as that of the guest posts I have written for other blogs.

2009 was also the year when I went from part time to full time business owner. Mirror Communications kept growing, I continued to work with IT companies and tackled other fields as well. I switched from spending part of my day in a client’s office to working fully on my own. This of course came with some organization and time management issues. It’s still fairly new but I’m getting better at it every day.

In what my PR and Marketing agency is concerned, there’s much work ahead. But I have had the opportunity to try a lot of things together with my clients and the results made us all very happy. We are currently plotting and planning what to do in 2009 It hasn’t been an easy ride, but it’s been challenging and inspiring and I am sure it’s been a very good decision, career wise, to start my own business.

In late August, together with two friends of mine, I have launched an online magazine for women, Cenusa de trandafir. It will turn 4 months on Christmas and it already has quite some traffic, good ranks and my personal reasons for happiness and excitement – over 1000 comments already, daily conversations with our readers on Twitter, many guest authors of which some became permanent authors! Compared to our competitors, we’re doing great at building a community around the magazine. The future holds a complete redesign and a lot more work from the entire team

I kept planning all year to revive my travel blog. It took me a while, but in November I again started posting frequently on Travel Spells! Better later than never, as the saying goes

I also started writing a book in 2009. As I have mentioned before it’s a vampire story. A few close friends (including Joanna Young whom I haven’t thanked enough for all her help and support) have read what I have written and their positive feedback fueled my desire to keep going. I was planning to release the book in December, but things got a bit delayed.

The personal part of 2009 has definitely been a wild ride. Yet I am happy and thankful for everything that has happened! Life sometimes makes us the most wonderful surprises ever!  And based on how I feel in the month of December, I can honestly say 2010 will be an amazing year on all levels

Now that you know that the Mirror Communications PR and Marketing Agency is up and running, I’d like to share another piece of news today. I’ve also launched the Articles and eBooks section with a first piece on events and the myth of the almighty booth.

This section will cover PR and Marketing topics, but not in the usual format of this blog. There will be longer articles and ebooks that will each debate a topic and present it more thoroughly. This first article is intended to show how getting a booth at a trade show is not always the best alternative, especially for the business to business segment and for products with a medium to long purchase cycle.

Hope you like this new section and that you find it usefull in planning yoru PR strategy and in getting more business.

Today is that very special day when Mirror Communications, PR and Marketing Agency, officially opens doors online. I’ve shared my plans earlier this year and it finally happened! There’s still plenty of work o be done, but we’re finally out of the construction site

But now that there’s a new PR and Marketing agency on the market, some people my stop to wonder: is there room for another one on the market?

Well, for a good one, there always is. And when it comes to PR strategies and effective marketing, these troubled economic plans do not require them, they strongly demand such services. For a million reasons: starting with the possibility of gaining quite some market share rather easy and finishing with the fact that employees, clients and partners need to know your company is doing OK, you’re there for them and you will provide the same excellent products and services, regardless of where the economy is headed.

But if these reasons are not enough, consider the following:

• Companies still don’t know how to focus on benefits, not features;
• Some people still believe scaring customers into buying what they sell is a good strategy;
• Having no PR at all is as bad as having some really bad PR;
• When you’re building your company’s image, taking breaks is out of the questions;
• Individuals, companies and entire countries still have big marketing and PR problems;
• Customers are lost every day due to poor post sales services;
• And there are still plenty of so-called marketers or PR experts that give the whole industry a bad name.

If you want your true identity to be reflected, your unique voice heard and to engage in wonderful and profitable conversations, take a look at the Mirror Communications website, read some PR and marketing post on your blog and then contact me. Let’s talk about how we can work together to make your company shine!

There are two periods every year when I stop to analyze what has happened and figure out what I want to do next: the end of a year and beginning of a new one and my birthday. My birthday plays a more important role when it comes to personal resolutions, the new year comes with other tipes of goal settings and plans.

This year I want to state what I want to achieve in 2009, so that this post can act as a reminder, a resource to analyze 2009 when 2010 is close and as a way for me to have a clearer view of what I actually plan to do with my personal and professional life.

Blogging

Words of a Broken Mirror

• publish at least 5 posts per week
• guest post at least once a month
• have some more guest posts on WoBM
• comment more and have more comments on my posts
• get business from the blog
• increase number of RSS subscribers, be it via email or readers
• increase blog traffic, Google PR (currently at 5), Alexa, Technorati and whatever other metric makes me happy

Travel Spells

• revive the blog and post at least 3 times per week
• get constant comments and far more readers
• change the blog theme and upload the cool logo that’s waiting in your email inbox
• and of course, traffic, pr, metrics and such

PRwave Blog (for those of you who don’t know it, this is a PR and communication blog in Romania, hosted by PRwave, the first PR community in Romania. This is where I write about similar topics as on WoBM, but in my mother tongue)

• 2-3 posts per month
• have readers identify me with the blog (as I’ve recently taken over the blog, it is still identified with its former author)
• get the conversation started with old and new readers

New Cool Online Magazine for Women (this is a project I’m working on with a couple of friends, an online magazine built on our idea of what a woman should find in a magazine dedicated to her: more articles that are really based on real life)

• build a launch plan
• find a name and purchase a domain
• launch and work on promoting the magazine

Mirror Communications

In case you’ve missed it, I run my own company now and am extremly proud of it. While the company was founded in mid-2008, it’s been on stealth mode for most of 2008 and I’ve turned it from dream to reality in the last quarter of the year. Now’s the time to really get it up and running!

• Launch bilingual website (English and Romanian)
• Gain customers
• Gain more customers
• Hire people

I know this does not sound as much of a plan, but there’s a limit to what I can actually disclose at the moment. I’ll have to update this section later in 2009.

Blogosphere, Social Media & Networking

• be thankful everyday for the wonderful people I’ve met online these past few years
• Meet new people and build relationships with them
• Stay active on the news, bookmarking and networking communities I am a part of
• Read more blogs, more tweets and more of everything worthwhile on the Internet (and stay clear of the junk)

Personal Plans

• Invest more time, effort and resources in my education
• Travel a little this year
• Finalize list for wedding guest and book a restaurant for the party
• Get Kayla, my lab, the treatment she needs. Unfortunately, she has dysplasia and she will need surgery. She’s too young right now, but we hope everything will be just fine and she’ll be able to go out and play with other dogs soon.
• Keep reading a book a week
• Get back in shape
• Cook more (with the help of Dani, my wonderful fiance) as it’s a lot healthier than the massive amount of junk we both eat.

I hope to be able to reach all my goals. But one important thing I learned in 2008 was that whenever you are unable to keep up with the schedule you’ve made for yourself (due to several issues), you should stop blaming yourself and try again! I’m going to remember myself, as I am extremely hard on myself

2008 has been an interesting, challenging and far from boring year for me and those close to me. And not that 2009 is right around the corner, I’d like to share some of the amazing things that have happened and what’s to come in the next year.

I’ve been dropping hints here and there about a big something I was planning to tell you about and it’s finally time to tell you what I am really talking about. Some of you already know it, some of you have picked up the track on LinkedIn, but I’m making it official now. Drums please!

I started my own company!!! It’s called Mirror Communications and it does what I do best: marketing and PR consulting.

It all started in April, when I decided to make myself the best birthday gift I could ever think of: my own company, with everything it entails: independence, huge responsibility, different lifestyle and all that. It wasn’t much at the time, just a name and lots of paperwork. That is why it’s been on stealth mode ever since.

Well, after an exhausting year, lots of stress and my need to run my own life, careerwise and a three week vacation to think of what I really want, what I need and how I want the rest of my life to look like, I decided I didn’t want a side gig, I wanted the whole deal and in November I handed in my resignation to Axigen.

It was harder than I thought it would be. I was a bit scared. OK, a lot. I had spent over 2 years as part of the Axigen team and I’ve come to care a lot about the people I work with. Then something really awesome happened: after a long talk with the Axigen CEO, they became my client! I can’t begin to explain how great it felt to see they appreciated and needed me enough to adapt to what I wanted and find a way not to end our collaboration. So I’m there 4 hours a day, I still manage their PR department and I have loads of time left for other projects.

This is what’s happened in 2008. What does 2009 hold? Well January will most surely be the month I officially launch the Mirror Communications website. And of course Alex Cristache is guilty for the design It’s almost ready, it looks amazing and I’m working hard on writing the texts. And yes, it’s harder when it’s your site, especially if you’re a perfectionists like I tend to be.

I know we’re all in a downturn, I know some think marketing and PR services will be in lower demand. I beg to differ. The smart companies will use marketing and PR extensively. They might invest in different projects, but marketing and PR are here to stay.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this piece of news which is the biggest in the world for me right now! But above all, keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck!