CompTIA Hardware Support Multimedia Certification Courses - The Inside Track

CompTIA A+ computer training covers four specialised areas - you'll have to qualify in two of these areas to reach the level of competent in A+. This is why, many training establishments limit their course to 2 of the 4 sectors. We think this is selling you short - yes you'll have qualified, but knowledge of every section will prepare you more fully for when you're in industry, where you'll need a more comprehensive understanding. So that's why you should train in everything.

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A+ computer training courses cover diagnostics and fault finding - via hands on and remote access, as well as building computers and repairing them and working in antistatic conditions. If you're considering being the kind of individual who is a member of a large organisation - in network support, add Network+ to your CompTIA A+, or consider the Microsoft networking route (MCSA - MCSE) to give you a better comprehension of how networks work.

The perhaps intimidating chore of finding your first job can be eased by some companies, via a Job Placement Assistance programme. But don't place too much emphasis on it - it's quite easy for their marketing department to overstate it's need. Ultimately, the still growing need for IT personnel in the United Kingdom is what will make you attractive to employers.

You would ideally have help and assistance with preparing a CV and getting interviews though; also we would encourage all students to get their CV updated right at the beginning of their training - don't procrastinate and leave it for when you're ready to start work. A good number of junior support roles are offered to people who are in the process of training and haven't even passed a single exam yet. This will at the very least get you on your way. If it's important to you to find work near your home, then you'll probably find that a local IT focused recruitment consultancy might work much better for you than a national service, for they are much more inclined to have insider knowledge of what's available near you.

A slight frustration for a number of course providers is how hard men and women are focused on studying to pass exams, but how little effort that student will then put into getting the role they've studied for. Get out there and hustle - you might find it's fun.

A knowledgeable and specialised advisor (as opposed to a salesman) will talk through your current situation. There is no other way of working out your starting level of study. With some real-world experience or qualifications, you may find that your starting point is very different to someone completely new. If this is going to be your first effort at an IT exam then you should consider whether to start out with some basic Microsoft package and Windows skills first.

Quite often, students have issues with a single training area which is often not even considered: The way the training is divided into chunks and physically delivered to you. Drop-shipping your training elements one stage at a time, as you pass each exam is the usual method of releasing your program. Of course, this sounds sensible, but you must understand the following: How would they react if you didn't complete each and every module at the proposed pace? Often the staged order won't fit you as well as another different route may.

To avoid any potential future issues, many trainees now want to make sure that every element of their training is sent immediately, and not in a piecemeal fashion. That means it's down to you how fast or slow and in what order you'd like to work.

How LAN problems can impact on your firewalls

Last week seems to have been a firewall issue week for me. I worked on incidents in two large networks where problems on the LAN managed to bring down firewalls at the edge of the network. Firewalls have come a long way since the original stateless varieties, which were little more than a collection of access control lists. These were superseded by stateful firewalls which kept track of the state of network connections. Modern firewalls are now application aware, you can do things like block access to certain applications or prevent users from using applications like Bittorrent.

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However, these firewalls don't come without their problems. They require lots of computing power to analyze and filter applications as they pass through. On some networks it can be a challenge getting the right balance of application awareness and traffic throughput. The more features you enable, the more stressed your firewall becomes. A lot of firewalls are priced on throughput: the greater the throughput, the greater the price. As a result of this, I see some networks with firewalls that are just about coping due to the costs involved of upgrading to the next model.

One incident I worked on last week was with an Internet service provider (ISP). A couple of their corporate firewalls, which linked their staff networks to the Internet, were resetting themselves. They suspected a resource issue on the firewalls and installed extra memory, but this seemed to make the problem worse. We discovered the source of the problem by looking at the network traffic going from the network core to the firewalls.

We found that large volumes of syslog traffic was being routed to an external IP address. This was unusual as syslog is normally used for managing local networks. We looked at the external IP addresses and saw that they were from an IP range that was once owned by the ISP. They sold it off and updated routing tables. However, nobody checked if any remaining systems were exporting data to this old subnet. Once routing tables were updated the syslog traffic was now sent out via their firewall. This caused an overload and the firewalls reset themselves.

It's an interesting problem caused by the lack of IPV4 address space. A block of addresses is very valuable. For example, earlier this year Microsoft paid $7.5 million to purchase a block of 666,624 IPv4 addresses. If you are looking to change IP addressing on your network, make sure you have monitoring in place so that you can identify what is using the IP addresses and for what reason.

The second incident I looked at involved a large university in Scotland. The connection rate limit on their main firewalls was peaking. This resulted in complaints from network users that connections were dropping or that downloading and uploading was slow.

Networks within educational campuses are typically more open than they would be in a corporate environment. This means that even things like what's on the TV schedules can affect network performance. Applications like Bittorrent can generate large numbers of connections as it downloads small pieces of data from lots of other clients on the Bittorrent network. In the case of this university network, users on their WiFi networks were tunnelling Bittorrent over TCP port 80. This resulted in large amounts of traffic and connections. The firewall rules were updated to only allow 80 parallel connections per IP address and the firewalls stabilized.

I do like the way application aware firewalls are evolving, more awareness of traffic coupled with clever management interfaces. However, no matter what firewall you choose you should be able to see what is going in and out of your network perimeter. Try and do this independently of the firewall, no point in trying to switch on logging or extra diagnostics if it's already stressed out. Knowing what is going in and out of your network can also help prevent network breaches.

Physicians using tablets to treat patients

Within the next year, almost half of all doctors will be using tablets and other mobile devices to perform everyday tasks, such as accessing patient information in electronic medical records (EMRs), according to the survey by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a nonprofit group.

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Today, a quarter of healthcare providers surveyed say they're using tablets in their practice. Another 21% indicated they expect to do so within a year.

CompTIA's Third Annual Healthcare IT Insights and Opportunities study was based on two seperate online surveys: One focused on 350 doctors, dentists and other healthcare providers or administrators; the other polled 400 IT firms with healthcare IT practices. Both were conducted in late July and early August.

The study shows that more than half of healthcare professionals currently use a smartphone for work, and about a third use their smartphones or tablets to access EMR systems. Another 20% expect to start mobile usage with EMRs within the next year.

The U.S. government is pressing all medical facilities to roll out EHRs by 2016, but the going has been slow so far. By the end of next year, 58% of small physician practices are expected to have EHR systems in place.

By 2014, the federal government wants more than half of all healthcare facilities to use EHRs.

Facilities that roll out the systems -- and prove their meaningful use, according to federal standards -- can receive tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursement money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Some facilities, depending on their size, could get millions.

EHRs are also expected to promote the use of standardized medical practices.

CompTIA's survey also showed EMR system adoption is on the rise, with 38% of healthcare providers indicating they have a comprehensive system in place and 17% saying they have a partial system or module. Sixty-one percent of the EMR said they're generally satisfied with their comprehensive systems.

"That's a respectable figure, but one that also indicates there's room for improvement in areas such as greater ease of use; better interoperability with other systems; faster speeds; improved remote access and mobility features; and more training," CompTIA said.

Doctors have reported feeling like data-entry clerks when typing their own notes into EMR systems. Others are unfamiliar with the technology and see it as yet one more learning curve to conquer in their jobs.

"We're a teaching hospital, so on one end of the spectrum we have residents born with a computer in their hand and so they look at this as an opportunity to move forward; on the other side of the spectrum are the physicians [who] are in their 60s and the very idea of signing onto a computer is a big question mark to them," said Bill Fawns, director of IT services at Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, Calif.

Late last year, Kern Medical Center, a 222-bed acute-care teaching hospital, deployed an OpenVista EMR system from Medsphere Systems Corp.

"As mobile devices and applications have become more user-friendly, affordable and powerful, the appeal to businesses of all types, including healthcare providers, has grown exponentially," Tim Herbert, vice president of research at CompTIA, said in a statement.

The survey also touched on the adoption of cloud computing in the healthcare industry. The results showed cloud computing is clearly in its early stages, with 57% indicating they were not very familiar with the technology and just 5% stating they were using cloud services.

"It's worth noting, though, that some healthcare providers are likely using cloud-based applications, like software-as-a-service, and not thinking of it as cloud computing," the report stated.

The potential for its growth is strong. A key component of EMR meaningful use standards is the ability to share information, either through proprietary networks or through regional Health Information Exchanges, which will include many of the elements of cloud computing.

Adoption of telemedicine, where physicians consult with patients with teleconferencing, is still a ways off, the report said. Recent studies have shown that patients can be just as effectively treated through telemedicine as through traditional in-person visits. In fact, studies have shown telemedicine actually improves patient-physician communication.

Hoewever, just 14% of healthcare professionals reported actively following news and trends in telemedicine, according to CompTIA's survey.

Those surveyed indicated they saw the greatest benefits of telemedicine in the areas of continuing medical education (61%), specialist referral services (44%) and patient consultations (37%). Only one in 10 healthcare providers surveyed say they intend to use video conferencing for patient interaction within the next 12 months.