DonorsChoose

DonorsChoose

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The DonorsChoose team vets every classroom project request submitted by teachers and processes donor transactions. When a project reaches its funding goal, the company purchases all related classroom materials, ship the items directly to the schools and notify the principal of the pending shipments. They close the loop by providing photos of each project taking place with a cost report showing how donations were spent.

For Donors: You can donate to the classroom project of your choice and then invite your social network friends, fans and followers to join your efforts. Donate over $50 to a project and you’ll receive handwritten thank yous from students.

For Non-profits: Teachers are encouraged to submit classroom projects to the site and to use social media to garner support. Projects less than $400 have the best chance of being funded.

DonateNow/Network for Good

DonateNow/Network for Good

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This site provides a secure donation system that powers the online fundraising efforts of many non-profits. It provides donation tools to individuals, non-profits, companies and even software developers.

For Donors: You may never come into contact with Network for Good until you make an online contribution to a non-profit that uses DonateNow behind the scenes. But you can go to the Network for Good site and make donations and manage your giving history directly. You can also set up automated monthly giving, buy a charity gift card, or download a badge for your favorite charity to add to your website or blog.

For Non-profits: Using the DonateNow service, select from three plans: DonateNow for $59.95 per month; DonateNow Plus for $79.95 per month or DonateNow Unlimited for $149.95 per month, with a 3% transaction fee for all accounts. All prices require an annual contract. They also offer a service called EventsNow powered by givezooks with transaction fees of 5.5% and $0.99 per ticket or donation and a fee-based e-mail service powered by Constant Contact.

Crowdrise

Crowdrise

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Crowdrise offers online tools for personal fundraising, event fundraising, special occasion fundraising, team fundraising and sponsored volunteerism. Star power from co-founder Edward Norton and social media-powered, high-profile fundraisers have helped set this crowdfunding tool apart from others.

For Donors: In addition to starting a fundraising campaign, giving to one, volunteering or interacting within Crowdrise, you can accumulate points for your activities. You'll earn 10 points for every dollar raised or donated and double points for giving to a featured charity. Top point winners get prizes such as electronics, clothing and giftcards.

For Non-profits: Non-profits can benefit from Crowdrise's turn-key solution meant to complement their existing fundraising and volunteer activities. Basic accounts are free, Featured accounts are $49 per month and Royale accounts are $199 per month. All accounts require annual commitments. Crowdrise deducts a 5% transaction fee on donations made through its site for Basic accounts, 4% on Featured accounts and 3% on Royale accounts. A standard 2.9% plus $0.30 credit card processing fee is charged for any type of account.

Causes

Causes

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Causes.com is a campaigning platform that empowers individuals and non-profit organizations to collaborate and take action together. Its Supporter Network is a social networking platform that connects likeminded, socially conscious people.

For Donors: Create a cause-related profile that identifies your
campaign for action: to donate, to pledge, to petition or even a larger campaign within the Causes.com platform.

For Non-profits: Create organization profiles (brands can do the same) as destinations, through which the professional organizer can share updates and engage supporters. Profile pages aggregate all of an organization’s campaigns in one place. Non-profits can also access free analytics. In order to accept donations through Causes.com, a non-profit must be 501(c)3 verified through GuideStar. Non-profits pay a 4.75% per transaction processing fee directly toNetwork for Good, but Causes.com does not take any percent of the donation.

CSA: IT Perception of Cloud Services Has Increased

CSA: IT Perception of Cloud Services Has Increased

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An increasing number of enterprise employees are asking their IT security organizations to make the jump to cloud services, according to a recent studyfrom Cloud Security Alliance. The increase in positive perception toward cloud adoption could be indicative of a widespread change in public opinion regarding the safety and reliability of the cloud services market as a whole.

CSA’s survey, titled “The Cloud Balancing Act for IT: Between Promise and Peril” polled more than 200 IT and security professionals in the Americas, EMEA and APAC to gage their perception of the importance of cloud services and their willingness to make the jump from legacy services to the cloud. CSA found that 64.9 percent of IT trusts the cloud as much or more than their on-premise solutions. In fact, security professionals surveyed said they received 10.6 requests, on average, per month from employees looking for additional cloud services within their business.The survey also indicated that 71 percent of companies surveyed have set up a formal process for employees to request cloud services - a sure sign of the rapid-fire requests for virtual solutions being hurled at IT pros on a weekly basis.

So how has perception about the importance of cloud services changed over the past several years? In the past, business owners accustomed to utilizing legacy storage and in-house services struggled to see the benefits of cloud computing, especially in light of recent high-profile data leaks and controversy as to the effectiveness of remote solutions. Like any new technology, cloud services were strange and different from the norm, causing those adverse to change to shy away from their use for fear of exposing sensitive information.

But in recent years, cloud has become increasingly more prevalent in both consumer and enterprise use, and in doing so has demonstrated its worth as a replacement for both physical storage and traditional data center services. While many organizations still have their reservations about the reliability of the cloud, even those reluctant to change their ways are beginning to embrace these services.

“As a growing number of companies have become more confident in cloud security measures and, with that, are moving their systems of records to the cloud, the role of IT and its relationship to the line of business is changing,” said Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA, in a statement. “This survey provides excellent insight into what security professionals are doing to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of transforming their businesses into cloud-first organizations.”

The study, which was sponsored by Skyhigh Networks, also polled respondents on adjacent topics related to cloud security. The most interesting highlights included:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) is the most widely used cloud-based system, according to respondents.
• Having a Chief Information Security Officer, or CISO, in place generally makes employees feel more prepared to take on a potential cyber attack.
• People, not programs, are the top barrier to stopping data loss in the cloud.
• Nearly a quarter of companies surveyed said they would pay a ransom to a hacker to prevent a cyber attack. Of those, 14 percent said they would be willing to pay in excess of $1 million.

Of course, a company like Skyhigh Networks has a vested interest in convincing businesses to switch from legacy to cloud security solutions, but the findings in this study are solid in that virtual security can indeed be a safe alternative to physical systems. While we are unlikely to ever see a 100 percent migration to cloud services in terms of enterprise IT, the results are heartening for those who already know the benefit of taking their business processes beyond the confines of the data center.

Cato Networks Unveils NSaaS Platform, Assigns New Americas Channel Chief

Cato Networks Unveils NSaaS Platform, Assigns New Americas Channel Chief

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Network security startupCato Networks is looking to provide channel partners with the ability to provide Network Security as a Service (NSaaS) to their customers with the launch of Cato Cloud, a managed services alternative to traditional network security solutions.

Like other “as a service” solutions of its class, Cato Cloud takes the concept of legacy network security solutions, which were traditionally expensive to utilize across businesses with distributed infrastructures, and allows IT administrators to virtualize their security for use across the entire network. The company said its approach to network security cuts down on the cost of distributing security to mobile devices and branch offices while eliminating the infrastructure strain typically associated with legacy solutions.“Network security must scale and adapt quickly to support new business requirements and the evolving threat landscape. However, the current appliance-based infrastructure can’t keep up and is too expensive and too complex to sustain, especially for mid-sized and resource-constrained companies,” said Shlomo Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Cato, in a statement. “Cato is creating the next chapter in the evolution of network security by unifying the network and security stack in the Cloud, addressing multiple enterprise challenges and use cases with one turnkey, service-based solution.”

Technically speaking, Cato Cloud consists of two layers, including the Cato Cloud Network and Cato Network Security Services, according to the announcement. Cato Cloud Network is a global network of Points of Presence, or PoPs, while Cato Network Security Services includes a suite of cloud-based network security solutions, the company explained in the official press release. The platform, which is managed by Cato’s Network and Security Operations Center, combines both WAN and Internet traffic in the cloud under a unified set of security services.

The launch of Cato Cloud comes in unison with the appointment of former Barracuda Networks (CUDA) executive Glenn Esposito as Cato’s vice president of Sales, Americas, responsible for overseeing the company’s sales and channel efforts in the Americas. Esposito joins the Israeli security company this month after spending five years in various positions at Barracuda, including his most recent stint as senior vice president of Sales for the Americas.

Cato also received $20 million in Series A funding as the company looks to build a name for itself in the IT security market.

CipherCloud Announces Cloud Security Broker

CipherCloud Announces Cloud Security Broker

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CipherCloud has launched a solution designed to deliver cross-cloud visibility and data protection. 

The San Jose, California-based cloud security provider has released Cloud Security Broker, which "extends the CipherCloud platform with frictionless application programming interface (API) integration to entire categories of clouds such as cloud storage applications, CRM systems, HR applications and more."Cloud Security Broker delivers 360-degree user behavior analytics, threat detection compliance controls and encryption, according to CipherCloud.

In addition, CipherCloud noted Cloud Security Broker works across a range of applications across Microsoft Office 365, OneDrive, Box and other cloud applications through cloud APIs.

Other Cloud Security Broker features include:

• Compliance scanning capabilities
• Granular policy controls
• Policy-based encryption
• Multi-cloud collaboration controls
• Activity monitoring and anomaly detection

"CipherCloud is the industry pioneer in enabling enterprise cloud adoption by protecting sensitive and regulated data," CipherCloud CEO Pravin Kothari said in a prepared statement. "Cloud Security Broker greatly expands the breadth of our cloud coverage."

Also, CipherCloud continues to explore ways to bolster its cloud security offerings. 

The company in June, for example, added tokenization to its cloud data protection portfolio.  

Tokenization allows businesses to retain the original data on premises while sending the tokenized forms into the cloud, CipherCloud said.

Kothari pointed out the offering was "tailor made for the EU's increasingly tougher regulatory environment for the cloud" as well. 

What are your thoughts on CipherCloud? Share your thoughts about this story in the Comments section below, via Twitter @dkobialka or email me atdan.kobialka@penton.com.​