Well back in those days when my job was as a system administrator, DHCP was like a boon. For people who do not know what a DHCP serve is – It is simply an application running on a server which provides IP addresses to machines requesting for it. This way the machines in your network need not be configured with an IP address before hand. Each time the machine boots it gets an IP from the DHCP server. In two of my ex companies I had shifted their network to be run on a DHCP server. We never had IP conflict problems after that.

But now with every network having a Wi Fi connection other than the normal wired LAN I think DHCP is more evil than a boon. Lets say an employees friend walks into your office with a laptop. Wile they have chit chat about the golden times they had last vacation he switches on his laptop to show his new girl friends photos. The friend asks if he can get an internet connection. The employee not knowing of the dangers passes the Wi Fi password to his friend. Voilà in seconds(because he authenticates the Wi Fi protocol and our DHCP gives him an IP) he is connected to you company LAN and he becomes your worst night mare ever. If you do not properly secure every aspects of your network(Which almost 95% of companies in the SME sector do not) this person can take out what ever he can find from your network. A simple excel sheet taken out of your network can cause damages beyond imagination to your business.

So when you think about the hidden answer to our problem described above, it looks very simple. Secure everything Wi Fi network, LAN, Data everything. Now think further does every IT Manager in the SME sector have this kind of Budget. Not to think of the System Administrative overhead to implement and manage this. We at Netzary InfoDynamics think that a simple gateway application which double backs as a gateway and a UTM(Unified Threat Management) is the way to go. Some cost effective solution where they can invest one time and forget about all the worries. Not some over bloated application which was meant to do everything from A-Z and the people use only A B and Z functionality. Some simple yet effective application which takes care of the SME's problem. I do not blame the over bloated application providers, since they made it for Networks who have full time System Administrators, Network Engineers and all that highly paid staff. The current SME sector works with one guy managing the entire IT operations and his few trusted System Administrators.