Guide for Penny Pinchers

Whenever you approach a commercial lender for loan, he performs a credit check on you. The loan you have applied for can be home loan, business loan or loan for your dream vacation trip. It is your credit score that will decide whether your application will be accepted or not, if accepted what amount of interest you will be charged. Your credit score will also be checked even when you apply for an insurance cover or you want to rent a house and even when you apply for a job.

What is a credit score? A credit score is a number that signifies your credit information. This score is used by all financial institutions or individual lenders to assess the risk involved in giving you credit.

The credit score is calculated on the base of the following.

• Address.
• Salary.
• Credit Dept.
• Bankruptcies.

Using the above factors an algorithm is decided and using this algorithm a credit score is generated. People with low credit scores are referred as high risk borrowers and people with high credit scores are referred as low risk borrowers. Banks and other lender set different interest rates for high and low risk borrowers.

In general, a good credit score is somewhere in the range of 700-850, while an average score would be around 550-700 and anything below 500 is considered as a poor credit score. Remember, it becomes difficult to borrow loan if you have a low credit score and if you do manage to get loan, the interest rate charged will be quite high. So improve your credit score.

Collaboration among healthcare professionals, particularly in circumstances that require the sharing of confidential patient information, requires an intranet or extranet that offers enhanced security features.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has three major requirements:

• Protect the privacy of individual health information
• Provide the necessary security to protect the privacy of individual health information
• Provide standardization of electronic data interchange in health care transactions

Addressing this need, intranets and extranets are now available that meet these security requirements. As you consider the implementation of an intranet or extranet, look for the following security features:

• Secure web server with 128bit SSL encryption
• Server monitoring
• Secure IDs and passwords
• Defined authority levels
• Viewing permission controls
• Session time out after 30 minutes
• The ability to disable user-specific cookies,
• The ability of users to change their own password,
• The ability to create strong passwords.
• Complete, un-editable activity log for security audits

Choosing a web-based solution

To speed the implementation of an intranet or extranet with these features, an increasingly popular approach is to use an Application Service Provider (ASP).

In addition to providing an immediate solution that has the appropriate security features in-place, the advantages of a web-based ASP include a lower cost of entry, a proven track-record of performance and no need to install intranet software or extranet software.