The Rockford Newswire

In January Rockford IT was assesed and certified for the ISO/IEC27001:2005 standard for Information Security Management. (formerly BS7799) The standard contains best practice recommendations on information security management for use by IT management for initiating, implementing or maintaining Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) and a growing family of related ISO/IEC ISMS standards.

Rockford has achieved "Microsoft Small Business Specialist" status to complement our Microsoft Certified Partner Status. Well done to Andrew for doing that exam.

We are delighted to welcome Gavin Morgan to our support team. Gavin is bringing with him many years experience and great knowlegde of supporting IT systems.

Rob, Tom and Andrew have recently taken and passed a selection of Microsoft exams, including: Active Directory Infrastructure, Exchange, Windows Server, Small Business Specialist

In Auguest this Year Mal decided to leave Rockford as Support Director and go traveling. We all wish Mal every sucess in the future and hope he has a fabulous time seeing the sights and visiting many different countries. We will not be replacing Mal in the immediate term but Andrew, our senior technician and Rob, our technical director will cover the role between them.

James Norton joins rockford as RSA technician (regular system administration). James will be monitoring and reporting on customers systems ensuring they are running as designed and raising tickets for the support desk as required.

We are delighted to welcome Vikki Smith to our support team as a second line support technician. Vikki brings a great deal experience in supporting users and IT systems, especially in the Legal sector.

Having just been awarded Associate Partner, Watchguard have now upgraded our status based on our knowledge and performance, to be Professional Partners!

Announcement: Tom Sykes, Managing Director

I am pleased to announce that Robert Bohee and Mladen Vujnovic have joined the board of Directors. Rob's new role is that of Technical Operations Director and Mal joins as Director of Support. This goes another step further in strengthening our structure and positions Rockford well to go forward into 2007. At the same time Tony is standing aside from the role of Managing Director which will be taken over by me along with the role of CTO. Tony will continue on as the Chairman of the board. Rockford goes into 2007 more focused and better positioned than ever before. We would like to thank our clients, who make it possible, for their continued custom and support.

Rockford is now recognised as an Associate Partner of Watchguard. Tom Sykes and Andrew Evers completed the Certified Sales Professional Exams to finally meet all the criteria to achieve this status. The Watchguard range of internet security appliances has proved to be a very strong force in the market place and has enabled Rockford to provide solid internet security solutions to its customers for over two years now. www.watchguard.com

Rockford has recently completed the necessary administration to be recognised as a Microsoft Certified Partner. The individual certifications and achievements have existed for quite some time, but we are now, after bringing it all together on the Microsoft Partner Program, finally recognised by Microsoft for this. Certified Partner status brings some significant benefits to the company and demonstrates that Microsoft have approved our technical capabilities.

A big welcome to Liz John who joins the team as IT Customer Service Coordinator. Liz will be a first point of contact for many of our clients and will provide a refreshing interface between clients and the support or projects teams. Liz arrives with a wealth of experience in dealing with people and organising support teams and so far seems to be fitting into the team perfectly!

Rockford IT Limited is 5 years old! Although we have been providing IT services for much longer, Rockford IT Limited was incorporated in August 2001. Previously, IT services were delivered through a division of Rockford Electronics Ltd. What better way to celebrate 5 sucessful year than with our own "Rockford cake" and a few bottles of “pop”!? Unfortunatly Elaine couldn’t be with us to celebrate but we hope she’ll be back very soon!

Andrew Evers has sucessfully completed Watchguard's Fireware Pro 8.2 exam adding even more strength to our security team! Well done Andrew!

We are pleased to announce that we have moved offices. We are now based in more secure, modern offices in the centre of Telford. We have a fully equipped 1st floor server hosting facility with strictly monitored door access control, CCTV and 24 hour security guards. At the same time we welcome Mladen Vujnovic “Mal” as our Help Desk Team Leader. Mal brings with him a huge amount of experience and knowledge and will be a very highly valued member of our team.

Rockford have been testing a new service for over six months now from a company called Critical Software. Some clients have already taken up this service for SPAM and Virus scanning of email. The service is run by Rockford on our hardware in our secure datacentre. The "engine" used is monitored and updated by the SPAM and Virus specialists at iCritical. We have found nothing that can come close to the performance of this product. Contact us for a free two week trial!

Tom Sykes has sucessfully completed the Watchguard Certified Systems Professional exam in Fireware Pro 8.2. Fireware Pro is Watchguard's latest platform that offers UTM, unified threat management.

As Rockford continues to go from strength to strength, we are delighted to say a big “hello to you” to welcome yet another new member to the team:

Our latest recruit is Rob Bohee (pronounced Bow-ee - like the rock singer...). Rob joins us from Syan and is in charge of our Helpdesk. In this update we also have to say a very fond farewell to Tim Hedges who left at Christmas after several years of loyal service to seek his fortune (and sanity) elsewhere. Gone, but not forgotten...

Rockford has recently been accrediated as a ZyXEL certified ZySolutions Partner. Rockford have been using ZyXEL networking and Internet Security equipment for some time now. ZyXEL have only recently started the ZyPartner scheme. Rockford welcomes the chance to work more closely with ZyXEL which will enable us to provide better services to our clients.

Rockford has recently taken on a new range of security devices to sit along side the existing offering. NetASQ offer a range of Unified Threat Management devices that not only provide firewall features but also Intrusion Detection and Prevention to prevent malicious or unwanted programs and viruses. Rockford currently has one fully qualified NetASQ certified administrator.

SPF makes it easy for a domain, whether it's an ISP, a business, a school or a vanity domain, to say, "I only send mail from these machines. If any other machine claims that I'm sending mail from there, they're lying."

For example - When an AOL user sends mail to us, an email server that belongs to AOL connects to an email server that belongs to us. AOL uses SPF to publish the addresses of its email servers. When the message comes in, our email servers can tell if the server on the other end of the connection belongs to AOL or not.

And that's it! SPF aims to prevent spammers from ruining other people's reputations. If they want to send spam, they should at least do it under their own name. For further information regarding SPF see the Sender Framework Policy website.

Rockford’s Simon Bayling and Tom Sykes have both recently become accredited Watchguard Certified System Professionals. Watchguard are manufacturers of very high quality Internet Security Appliances (firewalls). By achieving this status Simon and Tom are qualified to implement solutions based on the Watchguard products. www.watchguard.com