Tutorial on Using Windows 8

Finding things and doing things from the new Windows 8 interface.

The first time I sat in front of the Windows 8 interface, I have to admit I was not thrilled; no Start button, I couldn’t find the control panel, things just weren’t what I was used to. That was over two years ago in the early adopter program for Windows 8, and now when I use Windows XP or Windows 7, I find it very inefficient to "have to click through so many menus" to find and do basic stuff.

The focus of this article is to share with you not simply how to make Windows 8 work like Windows XP/Windows 7 "the old way" (which I will go through and give you tips on how to find stuff and configure stuff to work the old way), but instead to really focus on how to do things better and more easily, effectively helping you shortcut the learning process that makes Windows 8 actually extremely easy and efficient to use.

Note: I've made a copy of this Tutorial available in PDF format so you can easily download and print/keep a copy, the PDF is up in my SkyDrive at https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=C99D5C694EA9E532!109&authkey=!ACC7qwl6DQle-SM

First of all, some basic terminology and "old way" of finding things so that I can take you through Windows 8 in a way you have learned how to use Windows. As I’m sure you are aware, Windows 8 no longer has the "Start Button" at the bottom left of the screen. Instead, Microsoft has the "Windows 8 Style Menu" (that they formally called the Metro style menu, until Microsoft was informed Metro Style was copyrighted, so they’re just calling it the Windows 8 Style menu). This is the menu that Windows comes up with.

If you are in the middle of an application (browser, Word, or any other app) and you want to get back to the menu, on a tablet, you press the "Home" button (usually a physical button on the bottom middle of the tablet device) or from a keyboard system, you press the "Windows-key."

The "start button" for the most part (the thing that gives you access to the Control Panel, shutdown/restart, etc) is called the "Charm" and it pops up on a touchscreen tablet when you swipe your thumb from right to left on the right side of the screen (basically swiping the charm menu out from the right edge and into your screen of view). On a keyboard system, the charm menu pops up when you move the move cursor all the way to the right bottom of the screen.

From the charm menu, you can click on the top most icon ("search") and it shows you all of your applications installed (this would be similar to doing a Start/All Programs in Windows 7). You’ll see the search bar (circled in red) and on the left you can scroll through all of your apps.

When you search/find the app you want or simply just scroll through the apps off this Charm/Search view, you can right-click the application, and at the bottom of the screen you are given options to Pin to Start, which adds the app to your Windows 8 Style Menu (THIS is a good idea as it puts a shortcut on your main menu screen so that every time you press the Home button or press the Windows-key, your apps show up on the main menu). You can also Pin to Start things like Control Panel, Command Prompt, Run, etc. I usually Pin everything I usually use/access to the Start which makes it easy for me to just go back to the main Windows 8 style menu to launch my apps!

Note: You’ll also see when you right click an app, you can also Pin to Taskbar (this pins to the old Windows 7 style taskbar at the bottom of the "Desktop" screen). I used to Pin stuff to the Taskbar, but now that more and more apps are coming out with Windows 8 menu icons (like Office 2013, SkyDrive, Box.net, Real Player, etc), I no longer find myself working from the older Win7 "taskbar." This is one of those crutches you can continue to use, or just move into the 21st Century and start using the native Windows 8 menu.

Note: You’ll also see when you right click an app, at the bottom of the screen you can choose to run the app as an Administrator, uninstall the app, find the file/application location. These are helpful "things" we used occasionally in Win7 in the past that you now have shortcuts to run.

Another option off the Charm Menu (when you move your mouse cursor to the bottom right, or swipe your thumb right to left off the right edge of a tablet) is the Settings options (the bottom-most option on the charm) when you click on Settings…

…this is where a LOT of common things are found, such as Control Panel…

…Power (where you choose to shutdown/restart the computer/device), Network (where you select the WiFi connection you want to connect to), Change PC Settings (where you can change other things that are not in the Control Panel like desktop background, the photo you associate to your logon…

…add printers, etc).

Basically click on this Settings place and you’ll get to a lot of things you may normally access for configuration.

Okay, so with the basics under your belt, here’s where you learn to be a Windows 8 person and not a WinXP/Win7 person trying to run Windows 8. Instead of moving your cursor to pop up the charm to then click on Search to then find your application, or instead of moving your cursor to pop up the charm to then click Settings to then go to the Control Panel…you would do one of two things. If you are on a Tablet (or a keyboard-based Win8 device), ADD all of your apps, control panel, etc. to your Windows 8 style menu. It’ll take you a couple minutes to right click and "Pin to Start" all of your apps and utilities, but once they are pinned, you will almost never have to go fiddle with the charm thing. You’ll just press the Home button (on a tablet) or press the Windows key (on a keyboard-based system) and from the menu, click/tap the app and you run the app. To "switch" to another app, press the Home button or press the Windows key and click/tap the other app you want to run. All apps stay in memory; you just "toggle" between apps by simply pressing the Home button or pressing the Windows key to get to your apps.

Note: On a keyboard system, you can still Alt-Tab between apps, so toggling between apps is really easy. No more Start/Programs to get to applications. No need to Charm/Settings/Control Panel to get to the Control Panel if you simply pinned the Control Panel onto your Windows 8 style main menu!

So what happens if you want to access an app that you did not pin to your menu? On a keyboard-based system, at the Windows 8 Menu, just start typing a few letters of the app or function you want to do, and the "search" starts working immediately. For example, at the Windows 8 menu, if I start typing the letters n-o-t-e-p, the search bar will appear in the upper right and it’ll zero in on the Notepad application on the left.

Assuming the app is highlighted on the left, just press the Enter key any time and it'll launch that app, no key clicking, nothing extra. If it pops up several apps with n-o-t-e-p, then either keep typing to zero in on "the app" you want and press Enter to launch, or you can arrow around/tap-touch/click on the app name on the left side to select "the app" you want. Fiddle with this, but effectively this is a very quick way to launch apps that may not be on your Windows 8 menu (yet).

If I start typing w-o-r-d, if I have Microsoft Word on the system, it’ll show me Word, or e-x-c-e-l will give me the option of launching Excel. Or even things like p-r-i-n-t-e-r will pop up under Settings the option for me to "Add a Printer," or n-e-t under search settings will show me options like "Connect to a Network."

Between Pinning things to Start and simply typing a few letters of something, I can launch apps, run utils, add printers, and do things on a Win8 system FASTER than what I thought was super efficient in WinXP or Win7. This was the trick to making Windows 8 easy to use.

Now that you have the navigation thing figured out, go to the Windows Store and download "apps" for your most common things you do, so things like there are Box.com apps, Acrobat reader apps, Picture viewers, Real Media Player app, etc.

Note: When you are in the store looking for apps, as much as you can scroll through the "Popular" apps or "Top free" apps it shows you on screen, if you wanted to "search" for an app to download, it's not intuitive how to search for an app. The way to search for an app is when you are in the Store, pull up the "charm" thing (move mouse to the bottom right, or on a tablet, swipe your right thumb right to left to have the "charm" menu on the right side pop out and then use the "search" function in the charm). So just as you "searched" your apps earlier in this blog to find stuff on your local computer, when you are in the Store app and do a search, it'll now search for apps in the Store (ie: searching for Acrobat, or Box, or Alarm Clock, or USA Today or the like).

When you install the app, it shows up on your Windows 8 Style menu. Simply clicking the app launches the application. However, from your Windows 8 Style menu, you might want to move your most commonly used apps to the left side of your menu so they are visible to you more frequently when you pop up the Windows 8 menu. To move the app with a mouse/keyboard, just click and hold down the mouse button down and “drag" the app to the left. On a touch tablet, you touch the app with your finger and then slide the app "down" and then to the left. This took me a while to figure out as I logically tried to push the app with my finger and immediately drag to the left which would tend to just launch the app. The trick is to touch the app with your finger, drag down a bit, then to the left to move it around! Move any non-commonly used apps from the left side over to the right side so they are out of your way.

Many times apps take up two spaces on the menu. I hate that. I’d rather have all of my apps as the small 1-square wide icon. All you do is right-click the app icon and at the bottom it’ll show you “larger" or "smaller" to make the icon a different size. Some have this option to make small icons larger. Oddly, you cannot tag multiple icons and make them all "Smaller" at the same time, you have to right click and "make smaller" one by one. It takes a few seconds to do, but buys you back more real estate on your Windows 8 menu to get more apps 1 click away to run. (Note: if you have a touch tablet, some of these first time configurations are BEST off doing with a mouse. I would usually plug a USB mouse into my tablet and run through some of these basic right-click configuration things, or drag/drop icon things as it is a LOT faster with a mouse. Everything "can" be done with your finger on a touch screen; it's just not as efficient if you have a lot to configure/setup).

When you are in a Windows 8 app, you likely find there are no application configuration options, settings, things you can do with the app that you have in Windows XP or Windows 7 apps might have found as Tools/Options, or Options/Settings. With Windows 8, apps typically DO have configuration settings, you just have to know how to find them. Here's the trick, app settings are in the Charm/Settings on Windows 8. Launch and sit in the Windows 8 application, and then with a touch tablet, swipe your right thumb from right to left off the left edge of the tablet screen, and press Settings; with a keyboard system, move your mouse cursor to the bottom right to pull up the Charm menu, then click Settings. With the Charm/Settings exposed, you'll see configuration settings for that app!

Also, when you are in a Windows 8 application, there are frequently more options when you "swipe down" from the top of the tablet, or "swipe up" from the bottom of the tablet screen (or on a keyboard-based system, you position your mouse cursor at the top of the screen where a bar appears, or you move the mouse cursor at the top of the screen and right-click). As an example, when I'm in the Internet Explorer in Windows 8 and want to have the Address Bar appear, or I want to switch between IE "tabs", things like the below pop up and give you additional application options...

For applications on your Windows 8 menu, there’s also this thing called "Live Tile," in which the icon changes screens, like the way the CNN news live tile shows you the latest news and flips through things, or the Photos "Live Tile" flips through your pictures. You can turn Live Tile off (again, right click the icon, choose to turn Live Tile on/off). I find it annoying to have the thing flip through stuff when I don’t remember what icon is what, but it's really your call.

To flip through running apps, you can Alt-Tab from a keyboard-based system, or from either a mouse or touch tablet, move the cursor to the upper left hand corner and little tiles of the running apps show in the left margin of the screen. You can right-click and "close" any of those running apps. I used to close apps all the time as I’m old school and after running an app and don’t need it anymore, I close it. But after a while, I just leave the apps running. They don’t take up processing power and with 4-8GB of RAM in my systems these days I have plenty of memory. Every now and then I reboot my device/tablet/system but on occasion, and I will run my finger to the upper left and choose apps to close.

And a hidden thing in the bottom left corner of the screen is a "start"-type button thing that when right clicked will show you a list of common tasks like Event Viewer, Disk Management, Command Prompt, Task Manager, Control Panel, Windows Explorer, Run, etc. It's sometimes helpful to use that, although these days with most stuff on my Windows 8 Menu or I just type a few letters, I don’t bother with these various other menu things, but just FYI…

Logging Out of a system is done by click on your name from the Windows 8 Style menu as shown in the Figure here:

To shutdown or restart the computer, you can navigate the menus (like Charm, Settings, Shutdown), or what I did was create a Windows 8 style menu "app" that I simply click that’ll shut down my computer. You effectively create a "shortcut" on the "desktop" and then you "Pin to Start." That’ll add the shortcut to your Windows 8 menu. Here’s what it looks like:

1) From the Windows 8 menu, click Desktop to switch to the old Windows 7 style desktop
2) Right click on the desktop and choose New | Shortcut
3) When prompted for the Location of the item, enter in c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe /p as shown below, then click Next
4) For the name of the Shortcut, type in something like Shutdown, then click Finish
5) Right click on the shortcut that is on your desktop and choose Pin to Start

You now have an icon on your Windows 8 menu that allows you to shutdown your system with a single click.

You can change the command syntax in #3 above to restart the computer by making that c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe /r or /h at the end (instead of /r) will hibernate a system.

Oh, and one more thing - so once I tricked out my Windows 8 menu with all of the icons I wanted, how do I transfer my icons, menu items, etc. to other systems? Microsoft came out with this thing called the User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) that is the new generation of "roaming profiles." However, unlike roaming profiles of the past where EVERYTHING was moved from system to system whether you wanted it or not (ie: registry settings, apps, icons, junk on your desktop, etc), with UE-V profiles, you can specifically just note to "roam" your Windows 8 menu. Microsoft did a case study on my organization’s experience with UE-V [link download].

More information on UE-V is available on the Microsoft site. UE-V isn’t free; it’s part of what Microsoft calls its Desktop Optmization Pack (MDOP) that includes a bunch of other tools like RemoteApp, App-V (application virtualization), VDI, etc. Any case, you might find your organization owns MDOP as part of the Software Assurance for Windows client licensing, and if so, explore UE-V where you can roam your Win8 menu from your desktop, to your laptop, to your tablet, to your VDI guest session, to your Remote Desktop (terminal server) guest session, etc.

Hopefully, this is a place to start. I REALLY fought the whole Windows 8 menu thing for a long time, even filed several "bug reports" during the early adopter program noting that the whole Windows 8 menu was a major "bug," although with a bunch of these tips and tricks I’ve noted in this article, I think you’ll find this whole Windows 8 menu thing to actually be a LOT easier to use and definitely faster than having to fiddle through a bunch of menus.

Questions and Answers
As the "comments" section below has gotten pretty massive, I wanted to create a little index of some of the more helpful questions/answers that people have asked about (and I have answered). Scroll down to the appropriate Comment/Reply below for more info:

Having Windows 8 "forget" the WiFi passcode and WiFi default connection so you can re-enter in a new key or choose a different WiFi default connection (see response to posting from "Sara" from January 5, 2013)
Accessing POP3 email from Windows 8 (see response to post from reedfunchap from January 4, 2013)
Re-associating Windows 8 with a new email / logon / local account without having to restore the whole new system (see response to post from catey44 from January 1, 2013)
Difference between a Windows 8 Store "App" and downloading an app from a vendor's site (see response to post from Scott Schulte from January 1, 2013)
Disabling the "Charm" from popping out all the time see response to post from Jesse A Vasquez from December 23, 2012)
Adjusting the timezone in Windows 8 (see response to post from Sabir Ali from December 17th-ish, 2012)
Choosing a different "response" when a device is plugged into a system, ie: setting a new default action for a device (see response to post from Ken Reynolds from early December 2012)
As I respond to "comments" with information of value, I'll continue to add the info in here for a quick summary...



Several other postings I’ve done on Windows Server 2012, Exchange 2013, Intune, System Center, etc. Just click the Next Article or Previous Article buttons on this blog post to get to other articles I’ve covered, or click here to see a listing of all of the various blog posts I’ve done over the years. Hopefully this information is helpful!

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Nearly a week in, Yahoo still fixing email woes

Yahoo says its engineers are 'making steady progress,' but the system still isn't fully restored

Nearly a week after Yahoo's email service crashed, the company is still working to bring it all back.

At 10:45 p.m. ET on Sunday, a report posted on Yahoo's Mail Status page reported that company engineers had been working on the email problems over the weekend and were "making steady progress" on restoring lost messages. The Yahoo team is restoring folders and the tools that can tell users whether a message has been read.

"As part of the restoration process, some timestamps may not appear correctly on some of your messages," the company said in the post. "Thank you again for your continued patience through this process and we will share an update again tomorrow."

The Mail Status page has not yet been updated.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, described the email system crash and continued problems a huge blow to Yahoo, which has been trying to overhaul its image as an Internet has-been.

"I don't recall any other service like this being down this long over the past 15 years," he added. "It makes Yahoo look like a real Web rookie. If Yahoo doesn't fix [it soon], day-by-day they will continue to lose more credibility as a Web services company."

The gains made by CEO Marissa Mayer over the past year are now in jeopardy, Moorhead noted.

"Mayer has built some goodwill for Yahoo since her tenure, slowly shifting the perception from a has-been to a company that has a chance," said Moorhead. "This incident will surely hurt any perception of improvement. People must be thinking, 'Email is so '90s. How can they do mobile or search well?' "

Mayer on Friday said said she is "very sorry" for the week-long outage.

"For many of us, Yahoo Mail is a lifeline to our friends, family members and customers," Mayer wrote in a Tumblr post. "This week, we experienced a major outage that not only interrupted that connection, but caused many of you a massive inconvenience. That's unacceptable and it's something we're taking very seriously. Unfortunately, the outage was much more complex than it seemed at first."

She added that users are affected differently, making the restoration process all the more complex.

"Above all else, we're going to be working hard on improvements to prevent issues like this in the future," Mayer wrote. "While our overall uptime is well above 99.9%, even accounting for this incident, we really let you down this week. We can, and we will, do better in the future."

Yahoo's mail service began floundering around 1:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Dec. 10, when users began reporting that they couldn't access email in their inboxes, and that emails they had sent weren't being delivered.

Yahoo had told users a few times last week that the service would be back up and running correctly within a few hours.

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The worst IT project disasters of 2013

The Healthcare.gov rollout leads a pack of painful projects

Trends come and go in the technology industry but some things, such as IT system failures, bloom eternal.

"Nothing has changed," said analyst Michael Krigsman of consulting firm Asuret, an expert on why IT projects go off the rails. "Not a damn thing."

"These are hard problems," he added. "People mistakenly believe that IT failures are due to a technical problem or a software problem, and in fact it has its roots into the culture, how people work together, how they share knowledge, the politics of an organization. The worse the politics, the more likely the failure."

Here's a look at some of this year's highest-profile IT disasters.

Healthcare.gov: By now everyone knows about the health insurance shopping website's problems upon the Oct. 1 go-live, when many users couldn't access the system and only about 30 percent were actually able to sign up for health care.

Following a frenzied effort to fix bugs in the system, U.S. officials said Healthcare.gov had been stabilized as of Dec. 1. But the work is not yet complete. Last week, officials said 25 percent of applications sent from Healthcare.gov to private insurers contain errors that were caused by the website.

Yet to come is a final fix, as well as a full accounting of why the Healthcare.gov launch stumbled.

Krigsman is skeptical that fallout from Healthcare.gov will lead to any major reforms. But the controversy has had one effect, he added. "IT failures have really hit the mainstream media in a way they never did before."

Queensland Health payroll system: The government of Queensland, Australia, announced in August that IBM would no longer be allowed to sign new consulting contracts with the state after its "bungle" of a payroll system project that reportedly could cost taxpayers up to AUS$1.2 billion (US$1.1 billion).

"It appears that IBM took the state of Queensland for a ride," Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said at the time.

Last week, Newman's administration began pursuing a lawsuit against IBM, according to published reports.

It's not clear how that effort will play out, given that a 264-page analysis of the project commissioned by the government concluded earlier this year that due to past agreements, "there was no means by which the State may seek damages from IBM for breach of contract."

For its part, IBM has maintained that the project's issues were out of its hands, and that the state failed to properly scope the project and define its requirements.

MyCalPAYS: In February, the state of California terminated its contract with SAP in connection with a massive payroll project called MyCalPAYS. More than US$250 million has been spent on the project, which dates to 2005. SAP, which says it isn't to blame for the problems, came aboard after the state fired original contractor BearingPoint.

Last month, California Comptroller John Chiang filed suit against SAP, seeking compensation. California has paid SAP $50 million for its work on the project, but it's not clear how much money the state will get back even if its lawsuit is successful.

Marin County, California, sued SAP and Deloitte over a different ERP project. The case was settled but reportedly netted the county only $3.9 million, after it spent $5 million on legal fees and more than $30 million on the system, which will be replaced with a different product.

Royal Bank of Scotland: Computer system woes continued this year for RBS, including an outage on Cyber Monday that left account holders unable to make payments or get cash.

The Cyber Monday failure was "unacceptable," RBS CEO Ross McEwan said in a statement. RBS has failed to properly invest in its IT systems for decades, but a plan is under way now to change that with details coming next year, he added.

Last year, RBS suffered an IT failure that led to delays in wage and tax credits being paid into customer accounts.

Deloitte's unemployment system woes: Deloitte found itself under fire in California, Florida and Massachusetts this year over problems with unemployment compensation systems built by the consulting firm.

The problems resulted in delayed payments to thousands of job seekers. Deloitte principal Mark Price told Massachusetts lawmakers during a public hearing in October that the state had "a successful, working system today," and only a "relatively small percentage" of jobless people had been affected. The problems stemmed from "very specific data issues" in the state's legacy system, he said. Price also said the reports of problems with Deloitte's projects in Florida and California were overblown.

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Social Engineering: The Basics 2014

What is social engineering? What are the most common and current tactics? A guide on how to stop social engineering.

You've got all the bells and whistles when it comes to network firewalls and your building's security has a state-of-the-art access system. You've invested in the technology. But a social engineering attack could bypass all those defenses.

CSO's ultimate guide to social engineering

Say two fire inspectors show up at your office, show their badges and ask for a walkthrough—you're legally required to give them access to do their job. They ask a lot of questions, they take electrical readings at various wall outlets, they examine wiring under desks. Thorough, aren't they? Problem is, in this case they're really security consultants doing a social engineering 'penetration test' and grabbing access cards, installing keystroke loggers, and generally getting away with as much of your business's private information as they can get their hands on. (See How to rob a bank for details from this real-world example.)

Social engineers, or criminals who take advantage of human behavior to pull of a scam, aren't worried about a badge system. They will just walk right in and confidently ask someone to help them get inside. And that firewall? It won't mean much if your users are tricked into clicking on a malicious link they think came from a Facebook friend.

In this article, we outline the common tactics social engineers often use, and give you tips on how to ensure your staff is on guard.

Social engineering is essentially the art of gaining access to buildings, systems or data by exploiting human psychology, rather than by breaking in or using technical hacking techniques. For example, instead of trying to find a software vulnerability, a social engineer might call an employee and pose as an IT support person, trying to trick the employee into divulging his password.

Famous hacker Kevin Mitnick helped popularize the term 'social engineering' in the '90s, although the idea and many of the techniques have been around as long as there have been scam artists of any sort. (Watch the video to see social-engineering expert Chris Nickerson size up one building's perimeter security)
Through a Social Engineer's Eyes
Social Engineering expert Chris Nickerson reveals what criminals are looking for when it comes vulnerabilities in building security.

How is my company at risk?

Social engineering has proven to be a very successful way for a criminal to "get inside" your organization. In the example given above, once a social engineer has a trusted employee's password, he can simply log in and snoop around for sensitive data. Another try might be to scam someone out of an access card or code in order to physically get inside a facility, whether to access data, steal assets, or even to harm people.

Chris Nickerson, founder of Lares, a Colorado-based security consultancy, conducts 'red team testing' for clients using social engineering techniques to see where a company is vulnerable. Nickerson detailed for CSO how easy it is to get inside a building without question.

In one penetration test, Nickerson used current events, public information available on social network sites, and a $4 Cisco shirt he purchased at a thrift store to prepare for his illegal entry. The shirt helped him convince building reception and other employees that he was a Cisco employee on a technical support visit. Once inside, he was able to give his other team members illegal entry as well. He also managed to drop several malware-laden USBs and hack into the company's network, all within sight of other employees. Read Anatomy of a Hack to follow Nickerson through this exercise.

In What it's like to steal someone's identity professional pen tester Chris Roberts, founder of One World Labs, says he too often meets people who assume they have nothing worth stealing.

"So many people look at themselves or the companies they work for and think, 'Why would somebody want something from me? I don't have any money or anything anyone would want,'?" he said. "While you may not, if I can assume your identity, you can pay my bills. Or I can commit crimes in your name. I always try to get people to understand that no matter who the heck you are, or who you represent, you have a value to a criminal."

Sneaky stuff. Give me some specific examples of what social engineers say or do.

Criminals will often take weeks and months getting to know a place before even coming in the door or making a phone call. Their preparation might include finding a company phone list or org chart and researching employees on social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook.

In the case of Roberts, he was asked to conduct a pen test for a client who was a high-net-worth individual to see how easy it would be to steal from him. He used a basic internet search to find an email address for the individual. From there, it snowballed.
Useful Books on Social Engineering!

No Tech Hacking: A Guide to Social Engineering, Dumpster Diving, and Shoulder Surfing
By Johnny Long et al (Syngress 2008)
"Whether breaking into buildings or slipping past industrial-grade firewalls, my goal has always been the same: extract the informational secrets using any means necessary."

"We searched for the e-mail address online were able to find a telephone number because he had posted in a public forum using both," said Roberts. "On this forum, he was looking for concert tickets and had posted his telephone number on there to be contacted about buying tickets from a potential seller."

The phone number turned out to be an office number and Roberts called pretending to be a publicist. From there he was able to obtain a personal cell phone number, a home address, and, eventually, mortage information. The point being from one small bit of information, a social engineering can compile an enitre profile on a target and seem convincing. By the time Roberts was done with his pen test, he knew where the person's kids went to school and even was able to pull a Bluetooth signal from his residence.

Once a social engineer is ready to strike, knowing the right thing to say, knowing whom to ask for, and having confidence are often all it takes for an unauthorized person to gain access to a facility or sensitive data, according to Nickerson.

The goal is always to gain the trust of one or more of your employees. In Mind Games: How Social Engineers Win Your Confidence Brian Bushwood, host of the Internet video series Scam School, describes some of the tricks scam artists use to gain that trust, which can vary depending on the communication medium:

-- On the phone:
A social engineer might call and pretend to be a fellow employee or a trusted outside authority (such as law enforcement or an auditor).

According to Sal Lifrieri, a 20-year veteran of the New York City Police Department who now educates companies on social engineering tactics through an organization called Protective Operations, the criminal tries to make the person feel comfortable with familiarity. They might learn the corporate lingo so the person on the other end thinks they are an insider. Another successful technique involves recording the "hold" music a company uses when callers are left waiting on the phone. See more such tricks in Social Engineering: Eight Common Tactics.

-- In the office:
"Can you hold the door for me? I don't have my key/access card on me." How often have you heard that in your building? While the person asking may not seem suspicious, this is a very common tactic used by social engineers.

In the same exercise where Nickerson used his thrift-shop shirt to get into a building, he had a team member wait outside near the smoking area where employees often went for breaks. Assuming this person was simply a fellow-office-smoking mate, real employees let him in the back door with out question. "A cigarette is a social engineer's best friend," said Nickerson. He also points out other places where social engineers can get in easily in 5 Security Holes at the Office.

This kind of thing goes on all the time, according to Nickerson. The tactic is als o known as tailgating. Many people just don't ask others to prove they have permission to be there. But even in places where badges or other proof is required to roam the halls, fakery is easy, he said.

"I usually use some high-end photography to print up badges to really look like I am supposed to be in that environment. But they often don't even get checked. I've even worn a badge that said right on it 'Kick me out' and I still was not questioned."

-- Online:
Social networking sites have opened a whole new door for social engineering scams, according to Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with U.K.-based security firm Sophos. One of the latest involves the criminal posing as a Facebook "friend." But one can never be certain the person they are talking to on Facebook is actually the real person, he noted. Criminals are stealing passwords, hacking accounts and posing as friends for financial gain.

One popular tactic used recently involved scammers hacking into Facebook accounts and sending a message on Facebook claiming to be stuck in a foreign city and they say they need money.

"The claim is often that they were robbed while traveling and the person asks the Facebook friend to wire money so everything can be fixed," said Cluley.

"If a person has chosen a bad password, or had it stolen through malware, it is easy for a con to wear that cloak of trustability," he said. "Once you have access to a person's account, you can see who their spouse is, where they went on holiday the last time. It is easy to pretend to be someone you are not."

See 9 Dirty Tricks: Social Engineers Favorite Pick-up Lines for more examples.

Social engineers also take advantage of current events and holidays to lure victims. In Cyber Monday: 3 online shopping scams and 7 Scroogeworthy scams for the holidays security experts warn that social engineers often take advantage of holiday shopping trends by posioning search results and planting bad links in sites. They might also go as far as to set up a fake charity in the hope of gaining some cash from a Christmas donation.

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12 jobs getting the biggest raises in 2014

The average salary for newly hired IT pros is expected to increase 5.6% in the coming year

Looking to make your next career move? Staffing firm Robert Half analyzed 70 tech positions and found certain titles will be getting particularly big salary hikes in 2014. Read on to learn more about the 12 positions with the biggest raise potential. (Only base salaries are calculated; totals don’t include bonuses, perks or other compensation elements.)

U.S. starting salaries for professional occupations are projected to increase an average of 3.7% next year, according to data from Robert Half. That number jumps to 5.6% in the tech industry, which is expected to see the largest gains among all the fields researched.

Pre-sales/technical engineer
At the top of the heap, based on percentage gains, are pre-sales/technical engineers, who can expect an 8.4% increase in starting salaries, Robert Half reports. Typical duties for this position include: participating in customer presentations as the technical expert; determining technical requirements to meet client goals and acting as the liaison between the firm’s sales/business development and engineering groups; responding to RFIs or RFPs from current or potential customers with technical details of proposed solutions; coordinating the transition between pre-sales specifications and implementation engineering upon the awarding of contracts.

Mobile applications developer
Demand for people who can develop mobile apps remains strong, and companies are willing to pay a premium. Typical duties, as defined by Robert Half, include: coding, testing, debugging, documenting and monitoring mobile applications; interacting with different departments within the organization regarding new deployments; contributing to the development of project schedules and workflow; and recommending changes and enhancements to applications.

Software developer
Wanted: detail-oriented professionals with strong problem-solving capabilities, analytical expertise and communication skills. Software developers typically perform these duties: coding, testing and debugging programs according to computer engineering specifications; modifying, expanding and updating applications; communicating with a team that includes analysts, engineers and quality assurance testers in order to coordinate and document application development and testing; and developing software prototypes.

Software engineer
Candidates for a software engineer position should have broad information systems experience, says Robert Half. The firm describes these typical duties: designing and creating engineering specifications for software programs and applications; working with quality assurance to develop software test plans; collaborating with hardware engineers to assess and test hardware and software interaction; implementing a specific development methodology; and documenting software specifications.

Business intelligence analyst
In the era of big data, analytic talent is coveted. A business intelligence analyst is expected to perform these typical duties: designing and developing enterprise-wide data analysis and reporting solutions; reviewing and analyzing data from multiple internal and external sources; communicating analysis results and making recommendations to senior management; and developing data cleansing rules.

Data architect
A data architect brings analytical and creative skills to the table, along with in-depth knowledge of data systems and database methodology, design and modeling, says Robert Half. Typical duties include: understanding and evaluating business requirements and translating them into specific database solutions; creating data design models, database architecture and data repository design; working with the systems and database administration staff to implement, coordinate and maintain enterprise-wide data architecture; providing leadership in establishing and documenting data standards; and creating and testing database prototypes.

Developer/programmer analyst
According to Robert Half, the ability to understand applications from both a technical perspective and a business point of view is essential for a developer/programmer analyst. Typical duties include: analyzing business application requirements for functional areas such as finance, manufacturing, marketing or human resources; writing code, testing and debugging software applications; recommending system changes and enhancements; and documenting software specifications and training users.

Wireless network engineer
Among the network specialties, the position expected to get the largest percentage raise (7%) is wireless network engineer. Typical duties include: researching, designing and implementing wireless networks, including all engineering specifications and resource requirements for network hardware and software; making recommendations for wireless network optimization, additions and upgrades to meet business requirements; conducting and documenting RF coverage and site surveys; and documenting network infrastructure and design.

Network engineer
Robert Half also expects network engineers to receive sizable raises in the 6.9% range. Typical duties include: engineering enterprise data, voice and video networks; establishing and operating network test facilities; maintaining a secure transfer of data to multiple locations via internal and external networks; working with vendors, clients, carriers and technical staff on network implementation, optimization and ongoing management; providing high-level support and technical expertise in networking technology, including LAN/WAN hardware, hubs, bridges and routers.

ERP technical developer
ERP technical developers need to quickly identify technical problems in ERP applications, assess their potential impacts, and help design solutions, says Robert Half. Typical duties include: performing analysis, design, coding, data migration and testing for ERP production and development environments; implementing ERP enhancements to support changes in business processes; providing ERP application support; and working with various business teams to gather requirements and support business processes.

Network architect
Another network-related position in line for a sizable raise is network architect. As defined by Robert Half, the role is responsible for: assessing business and applications requirements for corporate data and voice networks; planning, designing and upgrading network installation projects; establishing and maintaining backup, version-control and viral defense systems; troubleshooting network architecture and making recommendations for system fixes and enhancements; and making recommendations for leveraging network installations and reducing operational costs.

Information systems security manager
One security-focused title showed up among the 12 IT jobs getting the biggest raises: information systems security manager. Expected to command a 6.8% raise in 2014, the position call for: providing leadership, guidance and training to information systems security personnel; reviewing, implementing, updating and documenting companywide information security policies and procedures; managing security audits, vulnerability and threat assessments and directing responses to network or system intrusions; ensuring fulfillment of legal and contractual information security and privacy mandates, including providing executive management with compliance reports and audit findings; and preventing and detecting intrusion.

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Products of the week

Our roundup of intriguing new products from companies such as Radware and NetMotion

Our roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.

Product name: RAM 6021 industrial router
Key features: Facilitates seamless communication between local and wide area networks, but rugged enough for extreme environmental conditions. RAM 6021 prevents unwanted network intrusions in the connected factory and remote locations. More info.

Product name: Locality Cloud
Key features: Hosted version of application that lets IT groups monitor what’s happening with mobile workers on cellular networks: collecting and analyzing data on connectivity issues, identifying and solving mobile problems. More info.

Product name – Anonymous Incident Portal
Key features - a web service that lets users securely and anonymously report incidents, complaints and violations while allowing organizations to manage issues internally. More info.

Product name: Baidu Antivirus
Key features: a permanently free antivirus and cloud security application. New feature: complete built-in protection from Virut botnet. More info.

Product Name: Alteon LBaaS
Product Description: application delivery controller (ADC) solution that offers Load Balancing as a Service natively built into the Havana version of OpenStack’s Neutron LBaaS driver. Alteon LBaaS solution integrates advanced ADC functionality in the OpenStack infrastructure for enterprise organizations considering to deploy OpenStack. The new solution ensures consistent QoE, provides performance consistency of network services across multiple tenants, and allows quick roll-out of new application delivery services. More info.

Product Name: AFORE Amazon Web Services (AWS) Data Encryption Suite
Key features: AFORE secures sensitive data for VDI, application servers and storage with enterprise-controlled key management and a single security management plane across private, hybrid and public clouds including AWS VPC and EC2. More info.

Product name: Vaultive Platform 3.4
Key features: extends support to Box, Yammer, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP SuccessFactors and other leading cloud applications. Integrations with DLP and eDiscovery in Office 365 also powers sensitive content detection. More info.

Product name: Aerospike 3 NoSQL database on Internap’s AgileSERVER bare-metal cloud
Key features: Combines Aerospike’s leading NoSQL database with the Internap’s AgileSERVER bare-metal cloud, resulting in a global “fast big data” platform that processes massive amounts of data in milliseconds. More info.

Product name: Commons Cloud
Key features: is the only collaboration solution that maintains a complete, permanent and easily accessible record of every edit, version, and comment about every file. More info.

Product name: AdRem NetCrunch 7.3
Key features: has rule-based monitoring and smart network rediscovery to maintain long-term control of ever changing network, systems and applications. More info.

Product name -- Virtual Office Mobile 4.0
Key features -- Turns iPhone, iPad and Android into a desk-phone over 3G, 4G and WiFi. Make/take calls, extension dial with video, transfer, conference, chat, visual voicemail, manage faxes for BYOD. More info.

Product name: OpenSpan Activity Intelligence
Key features: is a new, SaaS-based solution designed to provide actionable insight into interaction business intelligence, worker activity, process flows, and technology diagnostics. More info.

Product name: Unisys Mobile Environment Management 2.0
Key features: is a set of cloud-based or on-premise managed mobility services for supporting mobile users and managing and securing mobile resources–from devices to expenses. More info.

Product name: Velocity Zoom
Key features: IT leadership can examine transaction performance from the enterprise level down to a specific user’s experience, monitor application performance trends, and compare their statistics to the aggregate of Velocity’s customer community. More info.

Product name: Alpine 3.0
Key features: the first visual, script-less and web-based advanced analytics solution for Hadoop and Big Data. The new software release enables business analysts to create and deploy predictive models on the web using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Product name: Workshare Protect Server
Key features: extends corporate data security policies to safeguard high-value content shared via email and webmail on mobile devices, eliminating employee risk of leaking sensitive data. More info.

Product name: OpenAM 11.0
Key features: OpenAM is the first access management solution that goes beyond the classic “castle defense” of legacy IAM, leveraging identity to extend business reach, drive new business models and grow revenue. More info.

Product name – EventTracker 7.5
Key features - brings new features and licensing models for MSP/MSSPs, integration with Threat Intelligence feeds and options for embedded vulnerability scans and intrusion detection. More info.

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Microsoft offers quick fix for Zero-Day vulnerability

Company issues stop-gap patch for vulnerability targeting TIFF image format

Confirming reports of limited attacks in South Asia and the Middle East, Microsoft released a security advisory on Tuesday warning of a new vulnerability targeting the TIFF image format.

Microsoft issued an advisory and a stop-gap fix on Tuesday, for a new vulnerability that's targeting users in the Middle East and South Asia. Experts are urging IT administrators to deploy the Fix-It or EMET solutions, as it is unlikely that Microsoft will have a proper patch available for this month's round of updates.

The Zero-Day flaw resides in the TIFF image format, and has been used in what the software giant is calling limited attacks. According to their advisory, the vulnerability can be exploited to enable remote access to the victim's system, including code execution.

Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 are affected, as well as 2010 on Windows XP and Server 2003. Moreover, Vista SP 2, Server 2008, and Microsoft Lync are vulnerable as well.

"Microsoft has provided a Fix-It that turns off TIFF rendering in the affected graphics library, which should have no impact if you are not working with TIFF format files on a regular basis. The listed software packages are not vulnerable under all conditions, so it is important that you take a look at your installed base and your possible exposure for the next couple of weeks into December," Qualys CTO, Wolfgang Kandek explained in an email to CSO.

According to Microsoft, the attacks against the flaw are being carried out against selectively, and requires user interaction. Thus, Phishing or other socually engineered attacks are likely to be the main phase of a given campaign. However, it is possible to exploit the flaw online, so malcious websites are a potential risk too.

If the Fix-It solution isn't an option, Microsoft reccomends that administrators install EMET and enable ROP mitigations, or others such as mandatory ASLR, EAF, or HeapSpray.

"Given the close date of the next Patch Tuesday for November, we don't believe that we can count on a patch arriving in time, but will probably have to wait until December, which makes your planning for a work-around even more important," Kandek added.

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Google Glass dominates wearable tech session at DEMO Fall 2013

Three of the four demonstrators in the wearable technology session employed Google Glass, even though none of them know when it will be commercially available.

Despite the uncertainty regarding when Google Glass will be made available to the public, entrepreneurs are betting their livelihood on the head-worn device.

Three of the four demonstrators that composed the wearable technology session at the DEMO Fall 2013 conference displayed technology based on Glass.

Pristine joined the growing market for Glass in the healthcare field, introducing a streaming video solution that allowed remote users to watch and interact via audio during healthcare procedures. Surgery was the example given on-stage, and the technology allowed for a remote user to call in, watch the surgery in real time, and consult the surgeon as he conducted it.

The company claimed the technology is HIPAA-compliant, and aims to replace expensive, unwieldy solutions that enable streaming video for medical procedures. The cost for current technology can run into the tens of thousands, whereas Google has suggested a $300 to $500 price range for Glass when it becomes available to consumers.

Aside from the uncertainty around Glass’ release date, Pristine CEO Kyle Samani told panelists that the company has had trouble finding real-life settings in which it can test the technology. Testing in a hospital setting would require collaboration from across the facility – from physicians to patients to IT.

Fortunately, Pristine may have plenty of opportunities to find testing environments as Google bides its time developing the technology.

Another demonstrator, GlassPay, may also benefit from some extra time to develop its technology – a Glass-based technology that allows shoppers to make purchases by scanning barcodes on products.

The only catch, so far, is that GlassPay only allows purchases to be made with the digital currency Bitcoin. Although the demonstration functioned as intended, one noticeable flaw was that the display only showed the price for retail items in Bitcoin value. So a set of towels were shown to retail for 0.1 BTC, leaving the user to calculate the equivalent in USD. Not only will users need to have a Bitcoin Wallet in order to use GlassPay, they’ll need to keep up with the exchange rate on their own if they want to know the dollar-value of their expenses.

Later on in the Glass Pay demonstration, though, GlassPay CEO Guy Paddock explained that GlassPay is currently limited to Bitcoin only because it’s much easier to make quick online payments with Bitcoin than with cash. He expressed interest in integrated Google Wallet later on, which would open up a larger market.

In retrospect, the Bitcoin integration worked to Glass Pay’s advantage, for the purposes of DEMO at least. The company was only given a four-minute window in which to demonstrate its product, and Bitcoin involved much less risk of a verification issue on-stage. Similarly, Paddock also explained that a GlassPay app is already available for Android devices. Google Glass, however, attracts much more publicity than smartphone payment apps, landing GlassPay in the highly publicized wearable technology category.

Another Glass-based app, People+, relies more on the Glass technology. Calling the product a combination of LinkedIn and Wikipedia, the demonstrators showed how People+ could browse through information on a given person, drawing from multiple online source, while focusing the Glass camera on him.

It’s an early iteration of an app that seems perfect for facial recognition technology, depending on how well that might work on Glass in the future. When that might happen, and how such technology will be received by the general public, still remains to be seen.

Only one demonstrator in the wearable technology session didn’t employ Google Glass, but may have had the most impressive demonstration. Skully showed off its high-tech motorcycle helmet, which is equipped with a heads-up display that projects GPS navigation and playback from the rear-view camera and voice commands for phone calls or controlling music.

The rear-view camera may have been the most impressive, giving a panoramic view of everything located behind a motorcyclist and eliminating the need to check blind spots. The rear-view camera’s technology recognizes the horizon behind the driver, meaning that the road will always be in view, and flattens the video playback to provide depth in the video playback.

Unlike Google Glass, the Skully Helmet has a spring 2014 estimated release date, and the company is preparing an SDK on which developers could build their own apps for the device.

The only potential competition it may face could be when Glass becomes available and users could simply wear it underneath traditional motorcycle helmets. Fortunately for Skully, that likely won’t be an issue for a few years.

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12 best places to land a tech job

Tech skills are increasingly in demand across the U.S., and you may not need to uproot to find a new opportunity, as growth is not limited to the usual job markets. Here’s a look at where tech job growth is highest, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as interviews with Shravan Goli, President of Dice Holdings, Tim Johnson, vice president of sales at Mondo; and Matthew Ripaldi, senior vice president at Modis.

New Jersey
New Jersey tops the BLS list for job growth in computer systems design and related services, at 5.2%. That brings the Garden State into the top five in terms of tech workforce size, along with California, Texas, Virginia and New York, according to BLS data. The state is actively working to add tech jobs, Goli says, by offering tax breaks and grants to small and midsize tech businesses that create new positions. Also fueling growth is the ability of New Jersey tech companies to feed off neighbor New York’s talent base, Goli says.


Massachusetts
Massachusetts is second to New Jersey in tech job growth, at 4%, according to the BLS, and has created more jobs so far in 2013 than last year at this time. Like New Jersey, the state is actively working to attract tech business, Goli says. In addition to its many healthcare, financial services and education giants requiring tech talent, Massachusetts also competes with New York for the title of “Silicon Valley of the East,” Goli says. Along with startups, traditional tech firms maintain a Boston presence for proximity to the region’s universities, Mondo’s Johnson adds.

Missouri
BLS data shows 3.8% tech job growth in Missouri, which concurs with Dice’s observation earlier this year that St. Louis was top among U.S. cities in tech employment growth. This is due in part to an increased awareness of technology’s role in business and on employment, Goli says. “Incubation of tech companies through government support is happening more in some areas, whereas it’s done predominantly through venture funding in traditional states,” he says. For instance, the St. Louis IT Entrepreneur Network works to coach tech startups. Another driver is the number of large tech consultancies in St. Louis, Goli says.

Texas
Texas hosts a large tech workforce, and it’s about to get bigger, with 3.3% growth, according to the BLS. Dice attributes the growth to a diverse business landscape that includes cloud software companies in Austin; healthcare, financial and insurance powerhouses in Houston; the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas; and defense contractors in San Antonio. Additionally, Ripaldi says, the energy sector continues to spur growth in Houston, and businesses are attracted to the state’s comparatively low cost of living. Texas also offers a very business-friendly environment, adds Johnson, whose firm plans to open an office in Dallas early next year.

New York
At 2.6% job growth, New York is fifth on the BLS list. Part of this growth is its succesful work to establish itself as the go-to tech startup community over its rival, Boston. “Boston was the Silicon Valley of the East Coast for a long period of time, but it’s faded as New York became a hotbed for startups on the East Coast these days,” Goli says. Even beyond the startup world, the tech workforce in New York is “large and growing at astronomical rates,” Johnson says.

Washington State
Washington has become a technology innovation center and is seeing 2.5% growth in tech jobs, according to the BLS. Spurred by ongoing tech developments from Amazon and Microsoft, the state is best known for focusing on the cloud and Web services. “Because of the big cloud push, an ecosystem has developed around these companies that feeds off one another,” Goli says. “We’re seeing a lot of growth that will keep a company like ours busy.”

Illinois
While Chicago is not renowned for its technology innovation, it hosts one of the larger tech workforces and is seeing 1.8% tech job growth, according to the BLS. A big factor in this growth is the number of large, mature companies in several industries that call it home. “You never hear it mentioned in regards to cutting-edge technology, as with New York or Silicon Valley,” Johnson says. “But there’s no doubt that technology is growing significantly in Chicago.” On Dice’s jobs site, Illinois tends to have roughly 4,000 open positions posted on any given day, Goli says.

Pennsylvania
According to Johnson, Mondo’s third fastest-growing office is in Philadelphia, after New York and California. “You would never assume that, but that’s the reality,” he says. Pennsylvania also made it to the last slot on the BLS list top 10 list, with 1.7% growth. In-demand skills, Johnson says, are more traditional in the region -- possibly due to the manufacturing and industrial businesses concentrated in both Philly and Pittsburgh -- including programmers, developers, project managers and help desk workers.

Florida
Florida does not make the BLS list for fast growth, but recruiters are seeing a surge in job opportunities. According to Ripaldi, the trend is attributable, in part, to large organizations elsewhere in the U.S. looking to affordable and desirable cities like Jacksonville when planning an expansion of their data centers or extension of their application development function. “We’ve had clients with large data centers in the Northeast realize that from a cost standpoint, they could get more in this market,” he says. “Then they discover some of the talent that’s already here or that they can attract to the area.”

Georgia
Atlanta, known as the business capital of the South, is “extremely hot” right now, according to Johnson, based on the combination of a healthy business environment, a low cost of living and a growing community of tech startups. “Technology is so engrained in business that if you’re in a market that’s good-sized and growing, technology jobs will be a big piece of that,” he says. Further, “forward-thinking technology entreprenuers are choosing Atlanta to set up shop,” Johnson says. “The cost of living is significantly lower, yet it offers everything you want in a big city, so it can attract talent.”

North and South Carolina
From Research Triangle Park and spreading out to Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro and Winston-Salem, companies in a range of industries (financial services, healthcare, technology, manufacturing and insurance) make up a strong market in which tech skills are in high demand, Ripaldi says. Like Atlanta and Florida, the cost of living in the Carolinas is attractive to both businesses and employees, and “talented resources are moving there and calling it home because there’s so much innovation happening in the area,” Johnson says.

California
With Silicon Valley, California is the renowned startup and technology capital of the U.S. The size of its tech workforce is hard to beat in terms of raw volume, but because it’s starting from such a large base, its tech job growth rate is slower than other states; in fact, it didn’t make it to the BLS’s Top 10 list. However, observers are seeing a quickening in the job creation pace. “The pace of tech hiring in California is something to note,” Ripaldi says. “Even though the technology companies there have been hiring for some time, it continues to spread.”

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IT Hiring Manager Seeks a Perfect Fit

Cynthia Nustad has served since February 2011 as SVP and CIO at HMS Holdings, which offers cost-containment services to commercial and government health-insurance payers. HMS specializes in coordinating benefits (verifying the right payers pay claims) and program integrity (making sure claims are paid appropriately).

Last year, HMS recovered $3.2 billion for clients and saved them billions more by preventing erroneous payments. As a company with significant investments in data, HMS relies on an IT team that is growing by double digits. Nustad describes how she hires IT staff members who fit the company's culture.

What's the culture at HMS like?

We bring solutions to the healthcare marketplace that reduce waste and inefficiency. It's an important mission; a nonpartisan group estimates that the U.S. healthcare system wastes about $750 billion a year. Through constant improvement and ongoing technological investments, we're addressing that significant problem and helping to improve the system for everyone.

What's the best way to ensure that new recruits will fit in?

We highly value our current employees and their personal and professional networks. We offer reward incentives for referrals from employees as a way to drive a shared culture. We also find that new hires are more successful when they were referred by another employee because there is an added level of accountability to the employee that made the referral.

How do you tell whether someone will rally around the company cause?

We share our company story and what drives our business and then see what the candidate offers in conversation about their experiences with the healthcare system. We might ask, "Was there a time when you were able to help drive technological development for the betterment of others?" We also ask whether they've applied cost-effective technology to solve business problems rather than installing technology for technological advancement. As a fast and dynamic company, we also ask about their ability to take action rather than wait for approval.

Do you hire from certain industries?

For the IT department, we hire from all industries, but because of our great need for deep data and analytics skills, we're especially interested in experienced hires from consumer companies. That industry has been investing in big data and listening to their customers for years. HMS can offer this highly sought-after talent a mission that focuses on making a difference in people's lives by creating value in the healthcare system.

Do you put each hire through an online assessment for interpersonal and cultural fit?

We use these tools more at the senior leadership level than middle management or college hiring. They offer some value, but I find the input of my peers and my team to be of greatest value. They know the culture and the team dynamics best and can provide me with the feedback I need to make a hiring decision. I'm not necessarily looking for unanimity, but the feedback also helps reinforce our culture. An online assessment tool can't do this. Generally, we like our talent-acquisition process to include panel interviews and peer feedback so that we listen to all inputs to find the best employee fit for our team.

Phil Schneidermeyer is a partner with Heidrick & Struggles, where he specializes in recruiting CIOs and CTOs for all industries.

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Demand for Cloud Skills Still Outpaces Supply of Workers

Cloud technology is a 'must-have' for organizations building out or replacing their data center architecture, but there's still a major cloud skills gap that's impeding faster adoption and growth

If you're an IT pro looking to either polish your existing cloud skills or add new expertise to your resume, the time is now as demand for cloud skills continues to outpace the supply of available workers.
Cloud Careers

A joint study released last November from Microsoft and IDC revealed that there were 1.7 million cloud-related jobs that went unfilled in 2012, and that over the next few years, millions more will remain open.

The study, Climate Change: Cloud's Impact on IT Organizations and Staffing, echoes findings from CompTIA's 4th Annual Cloud Computing Trends Report, which found that hiring managers experience the most difficulty in finding employees with higher-level cloud skills such as building migration plans or assessing the risk of a cloud transition.
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These findings are indicative of cloud computing's maturation as a technology, says CompTIA's Director of Industry Analysis Carolyn April. "We're seeing cloud technology move beyond the realm of curiosity, beyond early experimentation, and into a second- or third-stage technology evolution," she says.

"Up until this year, we'd seen a gradual increase in adoption and acceptance, but this year we saw a huge spike in adoption, and that's a game-changer for business," April says. As cloud computing becomes even more mainstream, the demand for the proper skills will continue to rise with it as companies seek to gain the benefits of this business model, she says.

What Cloud Skills Businesses Need

"At this point in the cloud technology evolution, firms have a diverse set of options to build out their architecture that includes both cloud tech and on-site solutions," says Seth Robinson, CompTIA's Director of Technology Analysis.

"The move to the cloud has gone well, and it is becoming a common part of building out or revamping architecture. We're seeing not just companies move to the cloud for the first time, but more and more secondary moves -- migrating more applications, moving from one public cloud provider to another, from a public cloud to a private and vice versa," Robinson says.

Businesses, therefore, are focusing less on how to use cloud technology than on migration and deeper integration with existing enterprise systems, Robinson says, and are looking for talent with the skills to do so.

"Companies are looking for folks with the knowledge of how to integrate cloud solutions with existing, on-site systems," Robinson says. "Migration, integration, developer knowledge of different cloud providers' application programming interfaces (APIs), are all skills that are in high demand."

Howard Lee, architect of the talent sourcing solution Open Web, says that analyzing recruiter searches shows some clear trends, among them a demand for Amazon Web Services skills, open source, and DevOps engineers.

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Apple iOS 7 surprises as first with new multipath TCP connections

iOS 7 first large-scale, commercial use of resilient TCP extension

Apple's iOS 7 is the first large-scale use of a newly-minted Internet protocol, called multipath TCP. It lets computers send and receive data across different network paths and interfaces at the same time, such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi and 3G.

There is evidence [see screen shot below that Apple is using the new protocol for iOS 7 device links to Siri, Apple’s cloud-based, natural language voice command and navigation service. MPTCP is intended to create more robust connections, resistant to path failures, and to improve performance, especially for delay-sensitive applications such as voice. It’s part of an ambitious, global effort to transform the Internet from a mainly data network today to one that supports far more demanding applications such as telephony and IP TV.
apple ios7

The new protocol has been in the works for several years, and became an “experimental standard” of the IETF in January, as RFC 6824. Six months later, three implementations had been developed, including one for the Linux kernel. The Linux implementation is a project of the IP Networking Lab, part of the department of computing science and engineering at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

This week, completely unheralded, Apple’s iOS 7 became the first big commercial release of MPTCP.

Researchers have been working for years on creating “disruption tolerant” networks, which can automatically work around failures, sometimes multiple failures, and adapt to changing network conditions. [See from 2008 “Disruption-tolerant nets set for large-scale test”]

Today TCP is a single path protocol: if that path should fail for any reason, the session ends, and the connection has to be re-established.

By contrast, MCTCP is a TCP extension that enables the simultaneous use of several IP addresses or interfaces. Existing applications – completely unmodified -- see what appears to be a standard TCP interface. But under the covers, MPTCP is spreading the connection’s data across several subflows, sending it over the least congested paths.

The benefits of this include improved network utilization, higher throughput, and greater resiliency by letting the network automatically and smoothly react to path failures. For more details in MPTCP design see "How hard can it be? Designing and implementing a deployable multipath TCP"

The Linux MCTCP implementers posted a video of the protocol in action, running over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and 3G. The demo starts with the launch of an SSH session. The traffic monitor at right in the video shows the session active over, from top to bottom, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and 3G. The researchers turn off Ethernet, then Wi-Fi, and the active session – visible at the left – continues running without interruption or problems over the 3G connection.

“Without our MPTCP Linux Kernel, the session would simply stop working and the user would need to restart the ssh-session,” according to the post.

Apple’s use of MPTCP was discovered by one of the researchers active in the protocol development process, Professor Olivier Bonaventure, with the IP Networking Lab, in Belgium.

“Packet traces collected on an iPad running iOS7 reveal that it uses Multipath TCP to reach some destinations that seem to be directly controlled by Apple,” he wrote in a blog post. “You won’t see Multipath TCP for regular TCP connections from applications like Safari, but if you use SIRI, you might see that the connection with one of the apple servers runs uses Multipath TCP.”

We don’t yet know how Apple is using MPTCP. “At this stage, the actual usage of Multipath TCP by iOS 7 is unclear….” says Bonaventure. “The next step will, of course, be the utilization of Multipath TCP by default for all applications running over iOS7.”

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SharePoint 2010 cheat sheet

How to find your way around SharePoint 2010 and make the most of its features.

SharePoint has taken the world by storm. As of last year, if Microsoft broke SharePoint's revenue out as a single entity, it would have created the fifth largest software company in existence, according to Jared Spataro, senior director of SharePoint product management at Microsoft.
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IT folks: We hope you'll pass this guide on to your users to help them learn the SharePoint 2010 ropes.

All told, hundreds of thousands of SharePoint licenses and millions of installations of both the free and the paid enterprise edition exist in the world.

All of which means there's a good chance you use SharePoint -- even just a little bit -- if you have any sort of corporate job. But most users barely scratch the surface of what is possible in Microsoft's premier collaboration platform. Or perhaps your company has been using SharePoint 2007 and now you've got 2010 rolled out, and you're feeling lost.

There's nothing to worry about. With this cheat sheet, you'll learn all of the basics of navigating and using a SharePoint site, and where to go to find some of the most popular customization options as well.
Get to know SharePoint 2010

If you're just starting with SharePoint
What's new in SharePoint 2010
Creating a document library
Uploading and interacting with documents
Customizing the document library
Creating and customizing calendars
Integrating SharePoint content with Outlook 2010
5 tips for working with SharePoint 2010

And don't forget to take a look at our Microsoft Office 2010 cheat sheets too:

Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010 and PowerPoint 2010.

Note: There are a couple of versions of SharePoint 2010. One is free of charge and is called SharePoint Foundation 2010; the other is a licensed, enterprise-ready product called Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. While they both look the same and have the same feel for users, SharePoint Server offers a few additional features, such as those for really advanced workflows, "my" sites where you can post status updates and blog entries, and a lot of administrative functions. In this piece, we'll focus on the very commonly used SharePoint Foundation 2010 version, which has 100% of what users need.
If you're just starting with SharePoint

(If you're a veteran SharePoint user and want to start with what's new in the 2010 version, you might want to go directly to the next section. Also check out our "5 tips for using SharePoint 2010" related story, with advice that's a bit more advanced than most of what you'll find here.)
Microsoft SharePoint wiki page
What a page looks like inside SharePoint.
Click to view larger image.

SharePoint's primary reason for being is to serve as a place where things can be shared. This can include everything from documents to calendars to lists to pictures to discussion boards and more. All of it can be a part of a SharePoint site, and any user you designate within your organization's network -- and in some cases, even users outside of your network such as partners or vendors -- can then access those pieces and collaborate with you.

SharePoint 2010 has a defined list of content types that you can create on a given site. They include:
Microsoft SharePoint document library
What a document library looks like inside SharePoint.
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A page. This is exactly what it sounds like -- a page that is edited within the browser using the editor functionality in SharePoint. These pages primarily contain text, but you can embed images, links, lists and Web parts within them. (Web parts, or little bits of code, are sometimes installed on SharePoint pages to perform specific functions.)

A document library. You can create a document library that lets you upload Word files and other files to share. These document libraries allow you to check files out to make sure that only one person edits them at any given time, to keep versions on file so that you can see the revision history and activity of a given document and to create folders to structure documents logically within the library.
Microsoft SharePoint image repository
SharePoint can handle other, non-textual kinds of content, including photos.
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Other kinds of libraries. These include picture libraries that store only image files and XML forms that your business can use to route information through Microsoft InfoPath, an application some companies use to process forms and route them for approval and filing. Another supported content type is a wiki; these allow for a quick way to edit text and have it remain on the Web. You can link that text to other Web pages as well -- a poor man's shareable text editor, you might say.

A site itself. Sites are basically collections of content, so you can create sites underneath your main SharePoint site (kind of like large folders on your file system) to collect related materials that deserve their own focus. Meetings, blogs, documents and teams might have their own sites. If the hierarchy is confusing, think of it like this: A site is a file drawer in a file cabinet, and the libraries, lists and other types of content are the individual folders within that file drawer. (See example.)
Microsoft SharePoint templates
Microsoft includes templates that can be used to create a featured content type, including meeting workspaces and issue-tracking lists.
Click to view larger image.

A list. Lists are collections of like items. You can choose from announcements, a calendar, a list of contacts, a custom list in both list form and an editable datasheet form, a discussion board, an issue tracking list, a list of links, a list of project tasks (with a Gantt-like chart), a survey, a task list or an imported Excel spreadsheet. (See example.)

Content based on a template. There are many default templates in SharePoint that you can use to quickly create a featured content type, including meeting workspaces, issue tracking lists and more.

What's new in SharePoint 2010

Like much of the Microsoft Office family, SharePoint 2010 is based around the concept of the Ribbon, Microsoft's interface that displays all of the options, choices and operations you can perform on any given page. It differs a lot from SharePoint 2007, which didn't have the Ribbon, but many of the same options are there -- just in a different place.
SharePoint 2010 interface
Key portions of the SharePoint 2010 interface.
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The Site Actions menu. This is where all of the action happens, literally. From here you can create new pages, document libraries and SharePoint-based sites; edit the pages you see; synchronize an offline copy of the site to the SharePoint Workspace application (assuming you have that feature as part of Office 2010); and access settings to customize the sites' accessibility and permissions. To change major aspects of sites within SharePoint or to create new items, you'll probably want to go to the Site Actions menu first.

The Credentials area. This menu, accessed when you click on your display name in the top right corner of the Web page, is where you sign into or out of a site, and where you change any user-modifiable sections of the Web page.

The Ribbon. Borrowing liberally from Office 2007 and Office 2010, SharePoint includes the Ribbon, a panel at the top of the window where almost all of the functions possible on a given page are grouped and displayed. Most SharePoint pages have the Browse tab turned on by default, which gives you a breadcrumb-style hierarchy. In other words, it helps you to navigate among pages on the site and see how you arrived at the current page. The Ribbon is also context-sensitive; it shows you different options depending on where you are within SharePoint. So if you're in a document library, the Library Tools Ribbon panel will appear; if you're in different types of lists, other tools will show up in the Ribbon.

The Quick Launch bar. Running along the left side of your SharePoint Web page, this bar helps you jump among the various parts of your site, including to different lists, libraries, discussion areas, picture collections and the site Recycle Bin. (This works exactly like the Windows recycle bin except it holds items from the SharePoint site only.) Another option is to see a full tree-like view of all the places on your site.

The Search box, where you can type in any sort of search query, click the magnifying glass icon to the right and then take advantage of the indexing engine on the site to get comprehensive results from any file that includes your search term.
Creating a document library
SharePoint - creating your own library
From the Site Actions Menu, click "New Document Library."

The most common use for SharePoint is as a document repository. You and other team members and colleagues can put documents and files all in one specific place, accessible to everyone, and then avoid the all-too-familiar email blasts with Word documents attached.

(I would wager that if you never saw another "please disregard the previous message, I've attached the correct newest version of the file here" message pass through your inbox, it would probably not be too soon.)

You can then simply email hyperlinks to documents on the SharePoint site when collaboration needs to happen. As users modify and update files, the latest version -- as well as previous versions, if you wish -- along with all of the history of who revised what, and when, is stored in a single place.

To get started serving up and sharing documents and files in SharePoint 2010, you will probably need to create your own document library. This is fairly straightforward.

Open SharePoint in your Web browser.
From the Site Actions menu (remember, this is at the top left of your window), click New Document Library.
The Create window appears. Enter a friendly name and a useful description of your new library. (See example.)
Decide whether this library should appear in the Quick Launch bar -- the navigation aid that appears to the left in most SharePoint Web windows.
Choose whether or not a new version of the file is created each time someone edits a file in this library. When in doubt, choose yes; you would be amazed how often this versioning history comes in handy.
Finally, select the type of template that will become the default if someone chooses the New File option on the ribbon within your library. This is not an important choice, as a document library can hold just about any type of file.
Click Create to close out and be taken directly to your new library.

Uploading and interacting with documents

Once you're in the document library, you can very easily upload new content to the library by clicking the Add Document link at the bottom of the middle pane.
SharePoint - uploading new content
Uploading new content into your document library.

When you do, the Upload Document window appears.

Here, you can select the single document you would like to upload, or you can click the Upload Multiple Files link; this will open a new dialog box with a hotspot where you can drag and drop multiple files from a regular Windows Explorer window to upload. You can also just browse normally for files one at a time and add them to this group. You can click OK and then the group of files will upload directly to the library.
SharePoint document import
Importing one or more documents to your library.
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If you have enabled versioning, you can add version comments here as well, for a reader-friendly description of what has changed in this new version of the file you are uploading. Click OK to finish out, and you'll see the newly uploaded file in the list with the green "new" symbol just beside it.

If you click the drop down arrow beside the file, you get a context-sensitive menu full of commonly used options. These include:

View Properties. Selecting this option opens the document properties page, where you can adjust the name and title of the document. You can also get a smaller ribbon of options on this page, allowing you to view the version history of the document, delete it or check the document out of the library (to prevent other people from editing it at the same time). You can also set an alert to notify you when actions are performed on the item, and manage alternate copies of this document. In case other copies are located in other places on the SharePoint site, you can be notified when updates are made on every copy. Here, you can also see who created the document and when, who the last editor of the document was and when that last edit occurred.
SharePoint document properties
Viewing document properties.
Click to view larger image.

Edit Properties. This option brings up the same page as View Properties, but actions are enabled on this page by default so you can actually edit all of the settings instead of just seeing what they are.

Edit in Microsoft Word/Excel. This opens the document in either application, depending on what type of file you are acting upon. It's handy to open the files directly from SharePoint instead of trying to navigate to the SharePoint site from within the File/Open dialog boxes in the individual Office applications.

Check Out. The Check Out option locks a file for editing by a single user. If other users attempt to save back to the file, they'll be notified that they can't make changes until the user who has the file checked out currently checks it back in and makes it available for editing.
SharePoint - checkout
Checking out a file locks it for editing by a single person.

Version History. This option opens the Version History window and shows you all the versions of the document that SharePoint knows about, including the number, the date and time of the version, who uploaded a particular version, how big the file is and any free-form comments that were included by the user at the time of the upload. (You can't edit previous comments; you can only add new comments to new document versions.) This creates a user-friendly audit trail that can help you track down inadvertent or incorrect modifications and back up to a good version if someone makes a catastrophic mistake.

Alert Me. This helps you set up alerts for this particular item. We'll talk more about Alerts in the "5 tips" piece of this cheat sheet.
SharePoint - version history
You can see the version history of any file.

Send To. On this menu, you can move a document to another library on the SharePoint site, or you can email a link to this document library to someone else. You can also download an independent copy of this document to use locally on your own PC, although choosing this option doesn't keep the copy of the document on the SharePoint site updated. You can also create a new document workspace -- a SharePoint subsite -- with this document preloaded in case more focused collaboration is necessary, for a subcommittee, for instance.
SharePoint - deleting a file
Deleting a file from the library.

Delete. This simply deletes the file, after a confirmation prompt, from the document library. A copy is stored in the site's Recycle Bin (accessible by default, unless the administrator has turned this feature off, in the left Quick Launch bar at the very bottom of the menu) in case you delete something by mistake. (If the Recycle Bin appears, it's enabled; if you don't see it, it's not enabled; you can't use it if you can't see it.)
Customizing the document library

SharePoint 2010 lets you use the Library Tools Ribbon to manage and further interact with documents in your libraries. In some cases these are actions you can perform in other ways (as described above); this just gives you a different way in. For instance, on the Document tab, you can perform operations grouped as follows:
SharePoint - customizing the library
Using the Library Tools Ribbon group to manage the documents in your libraries.
Click to view larger image.

The New group: Here, you can create a new document, upload a single document or multiple files at the same time, or create a new folder within the library.

The Open & Check Out group: In this group, you can begin editing a document in its native application such as Word, check out a document to lock it for further editing, check it back in or discard a check-out if you made no changes and have no revisions to check back in.

The Manage group: Here, you can view and edit the properties of a document, view its version history and the permissions on the document (if your administrator has enabled such a feature), and delete a document from the library.

The Share & Track group: You can have SharePoint open a new message in your email client with a hyperlink to a selected document embedded within by clicking the Email and Link button, or you can set up an alert on a document or manage all alerts on a SharePoint site through the Alert Me button.

The Copies group: You can download a copy of a document, send a copy to either another location or to a new document workspace, manage copies in other SharePoint locations or go to the source of a copied document in this group.

The Workflows tab: Here you can manage workflows, publishing and approvals. More on this in the next major section.

Creating and customizing calendars

Arguably the second most common activity users head to SharePoint for is to create, view and edit team calendars. SharePoint is a reasonably flexible solution for sharing calendars that multiple people need to see and that pertain to a specific project. They're better suited to that than just sharing peoples' individual Exchange calendars, for instance, since the latter are mostly locked down and contain a lot of extraneous information that other team members don't need to see.
SharePoint - creating a new calendar
Creating a new calendar via the Site Actions menu.
Click to view larger image.

For tracking due dates, events and project meetings, SharePoint calendars are great.

To create a new calendar on a SharePoint site, head to the Site Actions menu and then click More Options. From the List section, click Calendar, and then type in a plain-English name for the new calendar and click the Create button.
SharePoint - creating a calendar event
Creating an event in your new calendar.

Once your calendar is created, you can add events by clicking the Events tab in the Calendar Tools group on the ribbon, and then clicking the New Event button.

From there, you can enter the name of the event, the location, the duration and times, a description, a category (if you are using them), whether or not this event is a recurring or an all-day event and whether to create a meeting workspace for this event. (A "meeting workspace" is a mini-site within SharePoint.) Hit Save when you have completed the form.
SharePoint - adding more info about events
Adding more information about events to your calendar.
Click to view larger image.

After your calendar has been populated, you can experiment with the various views that are available specifically for calendars in SharePoint. On the calendar's SharePoint page, click the Calendar tab in the Calendar Tools ribbon group, and then in the Manage Views group, click the drop down list under Current View.

You will see a few options from which you can choose:

Calendar: This is the default and popular grid we are all accustomed to.

All Events: This is a tabular listing of all events listed on the calendar -- past, present and future.
SharePoint - calendar views
After your calendar has been populated, you can experiment with the various views.

Upcoming Events: This is also a tabular list, but only of forthcoming events.

These different views are helpful if you need to edit a batch of events in bulk and don't want to click through the monthly views of the calendar to get to each event.
Integrating SharePoint content with Outlook 2010

If you're like many SharePoint-using organizations, your IT department has also deployed Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, so you are using a mail client that integrates very well with SharePoint. In particular, Outlook 2010 has a variety of features that help you combine information you already store in Outlook with information within SharePoint. Here are some examples.
SharePoint - putting calendars into Outlook
Integrating SharePoint calendars into Outlook.
Click to view larger image.
Putting SharePoint calendars into Outlook

If you have a team with deadlines, deliverable due dates and events you need to keep track of separately, a SharePoint calendar is a convenient way for all members to add, update and maintain a single record of dates. But sometimes it can be inconvenient to have to track multiple calendars, especially when your personal calendar lives within the Outlook client and the team calendars live on the SharePoint site.

You can bring down SharePoint 2010 calendar information into Outlook and either look at the contents of that calendar beside your own, or use Outlook's very nice overlay feature to see a single calendar at once with all of your pertinent information. Here is how:

Open the SharePoint calendar in your Web browser. (Frankly, despite Microsoft saying SharePoint 2010 works well in other browsers, this feature works best in Internet Explorer and poorly in other software.)
In the Calendar Tools Ribbon, click the Calendar tab and then click Connect to Outlook from within the Actions subgroup.
You'll get an Internet Explorer security warning. Click Allow here to let the process work.
Outlook will then open, if it's not already, and present a dialog box asking you if you are sure that you want to open that SharePoint calendar within Outlook. You can either click Yes here to accept the default configuration, or click the Advanced button to customize the name the calendar will take in Outlook as well as its description.
Outlook will display the SharePoint calendar in the left pane under the Other Calendars heading. Click the check box to make sure it is displayed.

Of particular interest here is the fact that these calendars are now linked between Outlook and SharePoint. If another member of your team updates the Web version of the SharePoint calendar, those changes will migrate directly down to the Outlook display of that calendar.

If you adjust a date or otherwise make a change to the linked SharePoint calendar from within Outlook, that change will migrate back up to SharePoint automatically and likewise go back down into any other users' individual Outlook clients if they have chosen to link the calendar as well. It is all seamlessly synchronized.
Synchronizing task lists from SharePoint into Outlook

Your project team might also store lists of tasks within a SharePoint site. This is particularly interesting in a scenario where other users of SharePoint directly assign tasks to you within the user interface. If you do not have SharePoint alerts set up to notify you of new activities on your site, and you fail to check the website often enough to keep updated and fresh on new developments, then you might miss a deadline or not complete a task the right way.
Syncing task lists from SharePoint into Outlook
You can use Outlook as a single place to collect information about all your SharePoint tasks.
Click to view larger image.

By synchronizing tasks between SharePoint and Outlook, you can use Outlook as a single place to collect all of the information on whatever tasks you have on your plate.

Open the SharePoint task list in your Web browser. Again, Internet Explorer works best in these scenarios.
In the List Tools Ribbon group, click the List tab, and then click Connect to Outlook from within the Connect & Export subgroup.
You'll get an Internet Explorer security warning. Click Allow here to let the process work.
Outlook will then open, if it's not already, and present a dialog box asking you if you are sure that you want to open that SharePoint task list within Outlook. Click Yes.
Outlook will display the SharePoint task list in the left pane under the Other Tasks heading if you have selected the Tasks view. Click the check box beside the listing to make sure it is displayed in the right pane.

The two-way synchronization for tasks works exactly the same way as it does for calendars -- changes in one place automatically make their way to other linked places with no muss and no fuss.
Sharing Outlook contact details with SharePoint

Your team might also store important contact details and information in a SharePoint site. You can synchronize this to Outlook in the same way as you can with calendars and task lists.

Open the SharePoint contact list in your Web browser. You probably know by now that Internet Explorer works best for these synchronization activities.
In the List Tools Ribbon group, click the List tab, and then click Connect to Outlook from within the Connect & Export subgroup.
You'll get an Internet Explorer security warning. Click Allow here to continue.
Outlook will then open, if it's not already, and present a dialog box asking you if you are sure that you want to open that SharePoint contact list within Outlook. Click Yes.
Outlook will display the SharePoint contact list in the left pane under the Other Contacts heading if you have selected the Contacts view. Click the check box beside the listing to make sure it is displayed in the right pane.

In this series

Word 2010 cheat sheet
Excel 2010 cheat sheet
Outlook 2010 cheat sheet
PowerPoint 2010 cheat sheet

Now for a bit of a technicality: SharePoint stores contacts in its database a little bit differently than does Outlook. Some of the fields are named differently. This could affect how your mail merges perform, for example, if you're trying to blast out a piece of email or snail mail to a group of contacts that is represented within Outlook but linked from SharePoint. Luckily, the differences are minor, but they still exist nonetheless. (See chart, below.)
Outlook vs. SharePoint field names

Outlook field name SharePoint field name
Last Name Last Name
First Name First Name
Full Name Full Name
E-mail E-mail Address
Company Company
Job Title Job Title
Business Business Phone
Home Home Phone
Mobile Mobile Phone
Business Fax Fax Number
Business Address Address
Business City City
Business State/Province State/Province
Business Zip/Postal Zip/Postal code
Business Country Country/Region
Web Page Web Page
Notes Notes
Source: Microsoft

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