McAfee posted on its blog recently news about e-mail purportedly coming from Facebook urging recipients to open an attachment to get their new password on the site. Unfortunately the email is a scam to get not only users’ password of the popular social networking website, but potentially any accounts they use while using their computer as well.

This is the latest in a wave of malware and phishing scams specifically targetting uses of social networking websites. As the popularity of these websites grow, so do their attractiveness to online crooks. It is estimated that Facebook alone has over 350 million users, and just recently has surpassed Google as the most popular destination on the Internet. Even if just a small percentage of users fall for the scam, this would still make a sizable number of compromised profiles and accounts.

As always, be extra careful when opening any sort of attachment in email messages. Also make sure to double check the sender of the message, the context and its content. For example, Facebook rarely asks users to update their account information via email. In addition, the message in the bogus email mentioned here is supposedly full of awkward sentences and wrong spellings, which should clue users in on its authenticity. Of course customers enrolled in our managed security services won’t have to worry, as we block these types of messages before they reach their Inbox. Worried about threats coming in through your email? Contact us and see how we can help.

Related links:

• Beware the new Facebook password reset scam (cnet.com)
• Social-networking sites short on security (securityfocus.com)
• EU may regulate social networking sites over security issues (arstechnica.com)

Users beware of ransomware: malicious software that extorts money from users in exchange for freeing the user’s computer or data. One particularly nasty version was recently discovered by researchers at CA which came bundled with a software download called uFast Download Manager. The malware blocks Internet access for users until they pay the publisher a fee via SMS. Users who download the software are immediately infected, seeing a message posted in Russian demanding a ransom under the guise of activating the uFast Download Manager application. To keep your computer environment safe, always be wary of downloading suspicious free software on the Internet. If you need help or are unsure, please contact us first so we can help!

Hold on to your mobile devices: IDC predicts 20.9% growth in smartphone sales from 2009 through 2013. Symbian and Research In Motion (RIM) remain the market leaders, but you can be sure that competition will intensify with giants Microsoft, Google and Apple in the mix.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced the release of Windows Mobile 7, officially named Windows Phone. The announcement, made at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, came soon after the debut of Apple’s iPad. Early hardware partners were announced, including Dell, Garmin-Asus, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and HP. While hesitant to give any specific dates, Microsoft says to expect Windows Phone handsets to hit the shelves “in time for the Holiday season of 2010.″

Business users will find the ”Office” particularly interesting: a center where users can access Office, Outlook, OneNote, and SharePoint Workspace on their mobile device. A feature called the “Marketplace” will also be useful, allowing you to easily find and download certified applications and games.

Meanwhile, news has been circulating recently on websites such as The Wall Street Journal, Mashable and VentureBeat about Google’s plans to sell third-party software for its Android mobile platform. While an app store for their smartphone OS has existed for some time, many have criticized it for not being business ready, with its lack of a more stringent review and vetting process for apps. However, all that’s expected to change with the launch of a new app store completely filtered for business-ready apps.

You can be sure that Symbian, through its sponsor Nokia, is not taking all of this sitting down. Soon, you’ll be able to download the popular VoIP product, Skype, for free from Nokia’s Ovi Store. The app will work over a Wi-Fi or mobile data connection – GPRS, EDGE, and 3G – and you’ll be able to call, instant message, text message, share photos and videos, receive alerts when your contacts are online, and import a phone’s address book.

Not to be left behind, RIM also made a recent announcement of its plans to develop a new browser for its Blackberry products. Many have felt that the company’s products has been outperformed by the competition in terms of its web capabilities and UI. With this announcement, it’s believed that the Blackberry will finally have support for websites with AJAX, CSS, and HTML5, although no mention of flash was made.

It’s truly exciting times for mobile device users. If you spend your day connected to customers, partners, and employees, you can see the value in these capabilities, with even more useful useful devices that really help you stay in touch and work on the go.

You can’t have a disaster recovery plan until you first have a good backup solution. Is your backup solution good—or just good enough?

The traditional backup process is done to tape – which has a number of limitations including high cost (particularly as capacity increases), difficult upgrades, degradation over time, and slow backup and restoration.
Over the past three to five years, there has been a transition to hard-disk-based backup solutions that generally offer the ability to easily increase capacity as well as backup and restore much faster.

Whichever solution you use, there are many risks to your data.

Traditional backup processes capture only one snapshot of your information per day. So if your backup is scheduled to take place at 12 a.m., you risk losing the entire following day’s work in the case of a disaster.

The backup process traditionally involves significant manual labor. Someone has to ensure that the correct media is in the drive. Someone has to look at the results of the backup to ensure that it is complete (and ideally perform periodic data restorations). Then, when the backup is complete, someone has to take it offsite for safekeeping.

While some businesses have the capabilities to perform all of these backup-related tasks, many others don’t—and therefore have no idea if their backups will be there when needed.

How can you make your backup system better?

• First, you should be absolutely sure that every bit of your data is backed up multiple times per day.

• Second, the human element should be completely eliminated from the equation.

• Third, restoration should be quick and flexible, so you can bring back any part of your data or all of it, depending on your needs.

• Finally, the impact on your business should be minimal. In fact, you should be unaware that a backup is even in progress.

We can help you set up and maintain a backup solution perfect for your needs. Contact us for more information.

Finding a way to easily access recently used files, folders, and websites was annoying to some in previous versions of Windows.  In Windows 7, the new Jump List feature allows you to those items quickly.

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It’s March again, and many hoops fans are once again in a frenzy – creating fantasy basketball drafts, watching streamed basketball games, and researching basketball trends, rumors, and other related information. That’s “March Madness” for you.

Most of the activity of March Madness is internet based, with gambling and betting at an all-time high, especially as the tournament draws to a close with the Elite Eight Teams whittling down to the Final Four. Fans spend a lot of time watching streamed videos of games and gathering information on the tournament online, distracting them from their official duties and potentially wasting company bandwidth.

How much does this impact your company? A lot, says the research. A 2008 Newsweek article reports that the March Madness phenomenon cost a total of $1.7B in lost productivity. And that’s not counting the high bandwidth consumed from all the video streams and the research activities.

In more recent research findings reported by national outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the losses due to March Madness are expected to continue.

“Those who insist there will be no impact are kidding themselves,” says John Challenger, CEO of the Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “It might be a slight drop in output, or it could be slow Internet connections as bandwidth is sapped by employees watching streaming feeds of the games,” he adds.

If you’re concerned about your company’s bandwidth during this period and want to look for ways to better manage it, we’d be happy to discuss a possible roadmap.

Sources:

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/17/2048029/college-basketball.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/124404

A cool feature in Windows 7 Media Center is the ability to listen to local FM radio. But what if you don’t have a tuner card that supports a connected radio antenna? The RadioTime plug-in solves the problem by allowing access to thousands of online radio stations.

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In today’s tough market environment, many small and medium businesses are turning to Managed Services. But is the up-front cost worth it? We say yes—and think you’ll agree when we explain why.

With Managed Services, an IT consultant constantly manages your network, typically from afar. In other words, someone will prevent many IT problems—and fix those that do occur before they disrupt your operations.

Despite this benefit, many companies still consider Managed Services an unnecessary expense because it typically involves a monthly or yearly fee. But there are many ways that such a model can actually lower your IT costs.

• Lower overhead. It can be expensive to hire and train IT staff. In fact, staffing is often the largest portion of a company’s IT budget. You can eliminate much of that expense with Managed Services, which provide you with high-quality IT staff at a fraction of the cost.

• Increased cost predictability. The cost of responding to an IT problem is usually an unplanned expense—and often a significant one. With Managed Services, you prevent problems, so you can better predict (and therefore manage) IT costs.

• A better business model. Additionally, Managed Services provide an efficient business model. There’s less IT down time, which means employees are less frustrated and customers are always served. That increases employee retention and helps you create long-term business relationships—which in turn can increase your revenue.

Contact us today for more information about our Managed Services.

Businesses are constantly changing. Is your disaster recovery plan changing, too? It should be.

Every company can experience a business-altering event at any time:  floods, explosions, accidents, computer malfunctions—the list is endless.

If you have a disaster recovery plan, you’re prepared to prevent such events from disrupting your normal operations—or at least you were at the time you created the plan. But how long ago was that?

As your business has grown, it’s likely that your products and services, or at least the way you deliver them, has changed as well. For example, the increase in technology-based processes over the past few years has likely increased your reliance on the availability of systems and information for your business to function effectively.

These changes might necessitate a change in your disaster recovery plan. As a result, we recommend a regular review of your plan. If you make changes, these change should be tested and new processes documented so all employees can be trained accordingly.

Finally, keep in mind that reviewing your disaster recovery plan isn’t a one-time event. Because changes to your products and services, or the way you deliver them, are likely to continue, reviewing your disaster recovery plan should be a regular process.

If you’d like a professional review of your disaster recovery plan (or if you don’t have one in place at all), contact us today. We can help save your systems and data from the unthinkable.

Whoda thunk it? Copiers can also be a risk for information security.

Most business copiers these days use a hard drive – when you make a copy, the image is put on the hard drive, on the copier, then printed out on the pages (copies). The idea here is that you can put in a great big bunch of pages – let’s say 50 in a document feeder – and the copier can quickly scan those pages, give you back your originals, and take its time printing out all 50 pages, or three copies of all 50 pages, etc. While the 50 pages are printing out you can put 25 more in that will wait until the first 50 pages get done – you see where I am going here.

Copiers have used a “buffer” of some kind for years, to allow for just what I am describing above. In the old days (yes, back 5 – 8 years ago, wayyy back then) copiers used RAM chips. These chips were volatile memory, meaning when the originals were printed, or the copier was turned off, the data stored in RAM went away.

To increase capacity copiers went to hard disk drives. Hard drives could store much more memory than regular RAM chips, and now the data didn’t have to be volatile – it could be saved. Better stability for the data (data in this case being the scans of the original documents).

OK, that’s the upshot. Well, it turns out that copiers will hold data on their hard drives pretty much permanently. I have to be honest I was unaware of this, and this is quite big.

Here is a link to a story in February from CBSnews.com detailing how copiers have become the new “Gold Mine” for identity theft. Example: a law office trades their copier in, and the old one still can have thousands of documents scanned onto the copier hard drive in a simple format that anyone can get to.

Imagine that: A law office, with all those documents from lawsuits, divorce and child support information, and so forth. Goodness!

The moral of the story is that the hard drive in a copier needs to be scrubbed just like the hard drive(s) in a computer you are getting rid of. I have some info on this in an older blog post here.

So this one is worth a look – and something to keep in mind when you trade that copier in.

Find the story at CBSnews.com here.