Knowledge Base
Data security wanted
Usually it is only one line, only a small slot, in which one types one or several terms of definitions, using your keyboard and within a split second you have a hit list. It started on 9.7.1998 in a garage and was called Google, and has by now found the way through the Internet onto plenty of personal computers. But what is the price? The big search engines like Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft charge us with our personal data dearly for their services.
The current, very heated, debate to enforce a better protection for personal data, reaches a new dimension in view of the desktop search. Because it is the desktop search that is actually saving personal data and knowledge of business companies on their own servers right from the start. For example, Google desktop search even speaks explicit in the GTA about saving data on external servers. The index is first generated on the personal computer and then will be send to Google. What happens there with the data, nobody knows. But it isn’t over there. Because a personalization takes place at latest, when the Google mail account and the Gmail account is involved as well. This option can be deactivated on installing, if you pay keen attention, but who does so in the modern “click next” generation?
Everyone wants our data
But it’s not just Google who wants our Data. Apples Spotlight, Microsoft and Yahoos desktop search is also rather keen on the personal bits and bytes. If you look at this data saving, over exaggerating a bit, then you will find at latest when companies are involved, that, should the data get into the wrong hands, this could be disastrous and even cause the ruin of a company. Of course, Google has no interest to hand over data to third persons, but wasn’t it the USA, that thought, currently on Wikileaks published data was save? And we all know what happened.
So one is allowed to think about the worst case scenario, considering all the affairs around data that occurred lately. Because, if you transport such an affair to the business level, then it is time and it is appropriate to be very concerned.
Companies save design studies, plans, bank data, information about employees and plans for prototypes. That is a lot of sensitive data, which needs to be protected and shouldn’t be laying on some servers somewhere in the USA. That is one of the best reasons why companies shouldn’t use this kind of search engines. But not all search engines work like that. Lookeen can help you.
Lookeen is different
And right here the line will be written, where the desktop search from Lookeen has to be mentioned. Because, aside the well known E-Mail search function in Outlook, Lookeen is able to serve as a desktop search as well. It searches and sets up an index, without a search engine cant function, but now the difference comes into effect. And you better believe it; the complete index is only saved on the local personal computer, aka your own personal computer that has started the search. In thus the data remains with the owner and won’t go wandering to far away servers of companies that aren’t transparent and that no one has control over.
Photo: Markus Henkel
Ever had canned meat in your in-box?
Canned meat, aka Spam, is in every mouth, unfortunately in every in-box too. Therewith the unrequested and unwanted Spam Emails have a lot in Common with the canned meat..
Sounds absurd?
It makes more sense if you look closer at the derivation of the word Spam. Even though the word Spam means nothing else, but litter, garbage or refuse, something the unwanted Mails indeed are, it doesn’t explain why Spam is the word everyone uses for them, while it could have been trash or waste too.
A sketch of the world famous Monty Python group is to be blamed that out of all things, the word Spam gained its questionable fame. The Comedians made fun out of the double meaning of the word Spam in said sketch. Spam is in the English language not only the word for waste and trash, but is also the unflattering synonym for an American canned meat product, called (Spiced Ham).
In the mentioned sketch the guest of a restaurant was offered meals solely containing the word Spam. To make it even more absurd, some of the dishes named contained the word Spam more than once, like “Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Bacon and Span Beans Spam”.
The strange accumulation of the word Spam during the Sketch became a basic principle. As the first trash Emails appeared, the word Spam became the general term of that, what is today in everyone’s in-box. And in everyone’s mouth.
To escape this flood of unwanted and even more so unneeded Emails, a lot of users use the help of Spam-Filters that automatically filter the Spam-Mails out of the in-box. Spam-Filter are programs which are capable of learning. They use typical search criterion’s, Email addresses and domains, to try and spot the unwanted Emails and sort them out.
But Spam-Filter do have a great deficit; they simply overlook a lot of Spam-Mails, which then still find their way into the in-box. Even worse is the opposite case. This means, the Spam-Filter recognizes a “good” mail from Friends, family, colleagues or customers as spam and sorts it out.
To avoid this, Lookeen offers a comfortable and safe solution. Luckily Spam-Mails always distinguish themselves by the same keywords.
Here the search history of Lookeen proves to be a very useful feature. Simply look for the corresponding keywords and ban the unwanted Emails via drag&drop into the recycle bin.
To keep the Emails of the future clean, simply call up the past queries from the history. Instantly you have a tidy in-box that is free of Spam.
That way you are safe from unwanted Spam – and luckily from canned meat too.
In Situations where the success of certain projects is depending on a number of participants, it is important that all information is highly available and without redundancy.
For many years companies use the so called groupware in such matters. Groupware is supposed to alleviate the working process in the teams and enable the project coordination on a timely and spacial basis. One of the most famous exponents of the groupware application is the Microsoft exchange server.
The Microsoft exchange server offers a wide spectrum of functions which allow a various number of operators to use different systems to work in cooperation together.
The most often used features of exchange servers are:
-E-Mails
-Appointments and calendars
-Tasks
-Contacts and addresses
-Notes
-Documents
All of the above mentioned elements are stored on a central server and are made available to a user-defined number of operators. Therefore the information’s are always without redundancy and up to date.
The benefit of this architecture is obvious.
Let’s assume, that you have a support section in your company and use for the contact address support@yourcompany.com an exchange inbox. Now all of your associates can see, which E-Mails have already been answered, what cases still wait for a reply and they can even see the proposal for solutions that have been made.
But the working day has changed a lot in the past years. May it be that projects are realized at the customer’s location, companies use more and more outwork or that companies have structures reaching around the entire world.
Security: Encryption with VPN
Users from outside the company network can offer their knowledge and participate through the so called VPN (Virtual Private Network). This ensures that the participants of projects always are provided with information’s up to date and without redundancy.
Using the online mode you work within the infrastructure of your company and adjust information’s in real time with your system. If the connection to the company network is disabled, you just turn your exchange server into the offline mode. This creates a copy of your inbox, which in turn allows you to still have fast access to your data.
This copy of your inbox is regularly updated by the mail server when you are online. Once the connection is enabled again, Microsoft Outlook will switch back into the online mode. Changes made by you, while there was no connection to the server, are automatically adjusted as soon as the connection is enabled again.
Of course the synchronization of the worldwide data is a challenge for the exchange server. For example, if an operator uses a cell phone and has an UMTS connection, an adjustment of large files would take way to long.
Therefore Microsoft uses the so called “cached mode” since the exchange server 2003. In the cached mode, the exchange application possesses an automatic online/offline-management, which is running in the background. This equilibrates the encumbrance of the connection to the exchange server because some of the contents aren’t aligned despite the connection to the exchange server is established.
Bulletin boards and product reviews that are dealing with search tools, often complain about the fact that most tools aren’t able to search and index all exchange inboxes in all modes.
Especially for this case of application, and for a professional environment in general, Lookeen was developed.
We at Axonic Informationsdienste GmbH are aware of the fact, that the base principle of development for Lookeen is the compatibility to exchange servers.
After the release of Lookeen the feedback is thoroughly positive and a huge amount of encouragement reached us. All involved in this dialogue profited of it.
Companies used the smooth support of exchange servers as the reason for choosing Lookeen over other search tools.
Archives or inboxes that are on the exchange servers are simply added in the Lookeen options and because of the Lookeen terms of references, we spoke about in a previous article, all particulars of the handling of the exchange servers and their clients can be individually configured.
Lookeen supports the exchange server indication in all modes, no matter if you are online or offline, if you are using the cached or the uncached mode. With Lookeen you search through all of your data in a few seconds, even on your exchange servers.
We set a high value on making the installation of Lookeen as easy and flexible as possible. This is no problem for single-user-installations: You run the setup.exe, choose a path and after that Lookeen will already be installed.
When you run Outlook after that, the Lookeen-Wizard will help you to add the desired mailboxes to the index and then you will already be able to use Lookeen on your workstation.
Above that Lookeen helps your company to fight the constantly increasing flood of emails.
For the installation within a company’s environment (regardless whether it concerns 20 or 20,000 workstations), flexibility is a decisive factor. In this case, the introduction of a fundamental tool like Lookeen naturally has to be planned well and in a structured way.
The system administrator has to find out which network resources are required for that and which settings or rather restrictions have to be made for the individual users.
The administrator regulates these settings and restrictions with the help of the so-called “Group Policies” (“GPOs” in short).
These group policies are totally indispensable for the integration in a company’s environment.
Sadly not all programmes and tools support group policies. This is why the most successful website in the field of group policies (www.gruppenrichtlinien.de) introduced the TROST-prize („Tja, Rein Optisch Schönes Tool“-prize; which means a prize for a tool which only seems to be good but it is not if you look at it more closely): A “prize” for programmes, which do not function with restricted user authorisations and do not support GPOs.
Therefore we have known from the beginning: In order to make it possible to “roll-out” Lookeen companywide, Lookeen group policies have to be developed. This amount of work should not be underestimated.
The required efforts and especially the error sources caused in a company without group policies are simply unacceptable.
The installation itself is only a part of the integration (of the roll-out) in a company. Afterwards the workstations have to be set up in a personnel-suitable way.
Assuming that you have just installed the software on 500 workstations, hopefully without any problems, the software is not just yet ready to be used only because the installation has been completed. To be honest: Do you want to make sure afterwards that the new software works properly and can be used efficiently when 500 employees with completely different backgrounds and expertise use it?
The administrator is able to control for example the following points with the help of GPOs:
- The including of shared index sources
- The periods of times during which Lookeen indexes the data stock
- The adding of outlook archives, local folders and network folders
- The handling of automatic updates
We, the Lookeen-team, have been engaged in the development of GPOs for a long time and in an extensive way. However, it was worth the time and efforts. Thus this precisely makes Lookeen today so desirable and comfortable for a lot of companies and their system administrators, regarding the central controlling.
At this point we would like to thank our customers very much! We have been actively supported by you with ideas and technical implementations since the initial stage of the GPOs.
Eventually it was one of our long-time partners, who provided us with an administrative template (ADM-File).
Down to the present day, the Lookeen GPOs have proved themselves in a multitude of companies and have been continuously enhanced.
Lookeen has been supporting the feature group policies since version 1.3 – whereas by now altogether more than 50 GPOs setting options exist, like e.g. suppression of the wizard, explicit control regarding the different exchange modes, options adjustable ON/OFF, shared index path and many more…
If you also plan to use Lookeen in your company or if you have questions regarding group policies or ADM-files, please send us an email to info@lookeen.com.
Lookout – an Obituary
Lookout for Outlook is surely still well known by a lot of people. The small tool ranked among the most important add-ons for Microsoft Outlook some time ago.
The Microsoft Outlook users have been wishing for an extended and fast search function since the first version was launched. Public folders as well as exchange mailboxes have to be browsed. It is not effective enough to only browse the current folder – instead it also has to be possible to select the simultaneous browsing of all folders. The search results have to be available immediately, also in case of a great data volume. Lookout was therefore the solution for thousands of customers who have recognized the surplus value of such an index search.
Hereby Lookout uses the well-known open source project Lucene. Lucene is considered to be one of the best and fastest search libraries in the world and is provided by the Apache Software Foundation. With the help of its existing version at that time, Lucene 1.4, Lookout was able to stabilize and optimize the compare functions.
It was a profitable and successful business for Lookout to enrich Microsoft Outlook by extended search functions. This fact makes Microsoft’s strategic decision to buy Lookout up and to integrate it into Microsoft’s own company in 2003 even more understandable. However, it seemed that this resulted in a development stop and the end of the support for Lookout. Lookout was developed for Mircosoft Outlook 2003 in .NET Framework 1.0. The consequence was that Lookout was left out for a multitude of Outlook users when they switched to Outlook 2007.
At the time Outlook 2007 was launched, the Axonic Informationssyteme GmbH was developing the social networking tool Chilibase. It was Chilibase’s aim to identify connections between contact persons, emails and email contents and to edit them in order to increase the workflow in the email environment.
Chilibase was launched on the market at the same time when Outlook 2007 was starting to push the previous version more and more away. Chilibase made it possible for the former users of Lookout to compensate the omission of Lookout. However, during conversations with customers it became more and more apparent that the users simply missed Lookout’s search function and did not found an adequate alternative. Without any doubt the end of Lookout left a gap for a lot of companies and private users.
Inspired by the customers, the Axonic GmbH started a corresponding market analyses at the end of the summer 2007. The Axonic GmbH quickly came to the doubtless conclusion that there has to be an alternative to Lookout. The advantages of a quick, smart and easy to handle index search established themselves too well to forgo it.
This was Lookeen’s hour of birth. Up to now, Lookeen has established itself as THE alternative to Lookout throughout several versions. We have tried to continuously adapt Lookeen to the wishes of the customers and to improve it. At this Lookeen is also supported by the newest versions of Lucene, which are also used by a lot of internet search engines and Wikipedia.
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