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New Year’s Resolutions For Problem Free Computing

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Even though we’re a few weeks into the new year, it’s not too late to take a look at your company’s network and make a few resolutions for better computing in 2012. Here are a few suggestions.

Better backups – now!
Implement a better, more reliable backup system to ensure your critical business data is properly protected. If you’re still using tape drives or not employing the latest professional-grade backup software, there’s no bigger New Year’s resolution that you should have.

You should have both an onsite and offsite backup of your data that allows you to restore files fast. Your backup should also be image-based, not just file-based.

Data loss can happen from human error, hardware/software failure, fire, flood, theft or other disaster. Every hour that you’re without your critical business information could cost you thousands of dollars.

Check out the cloud
Is cloud computing is right for you? In many cases, parts of your IT infrastructure can easily be put in the cloud to save you money and give you better service. It is important to talk to someone who can honestly assess your situation and tell you the pros and cons of making the switch to the Cloud. It’s not for every business but it’s worth exploring closely.

Dump the old PCs
I know that no one really likes spending money on new computers but think about how much unproductive time your staff spends waiting for their slow machines.

You can get an entry-level business desktop now for as little as $600, and speed upgrades to newer machines are very reasonably priced. What’s the cost of staff sitting around waiting for their computer or dealing with computer problems?

Upgrade your server
New servers are light years ahead of the ones made three, four and five years ago. Your company is less productive and less profitable with a server that slows everyone down.

Change your passwords
Most businesses regularly have employees leave, including those who were involved with supporting the computer network. Changing passwords regularly will improve security and protect your valuable customer and business data.

Perform a security review
We’re seeing all sorts of increased threats from hackers these days and you need to make sure your security approach is up to date. There are many parts to your security that you should examine including password strength; anti-virus software; and getting a strong firewall that will prevent intrusions, attacks and other malicious activity.

Keep up with your preventive maintenance
Downtime and annoying IT problems can be prevented with regular maintenance on your computers and network. If you’re not doing this now, it’s time to start!

Start the year right with a full audit of your network to develop your IT plan for the year.

Our top of the line network audit is a 27-point review of the security, performance and reliability of your network, and includes a full hardware and software inventory, plus checks on the health of your server, firewall, and network backup.

Industry Standard Security Best Practices

Network security is a must in any network, but when it comes to a business network, there are a number of security standards and best practices that ensure you have control over your network.

Businesses in certain industries secure. Many different companies require different security standards; one organization for instance is the PCI (Payment Card Industry). The payment card industry has very a strict network security standard.

The below practices are fairly strict and will offer you a great deal of control and protection against data theft and network intrusion.

Modem
We will start from the outside edge of your connection of your network and work our way in from your modem on into client workstations.

The modem is probably the simplest device on the network – you can’t really secure it (beyond performing regular updates), but some ISP’s feature a built in firewall in the modem. This can be turned on or off to work in conjunction with your company’s firewall.

Firewall
The next item to take a look at is your router/firewall. Generally you would have a router that offers several ports you can connect to via a direct Ethernet connection as well as WiFi access.

This firewall will add another layer of protection for when your network connects to the Internet. When configured properly, you would block all unauthorized network connections. As far as protecting the WiFi goes you are best to enable MAC filtering.

Each piece of network hardware has a unique identifying numerical code, called a MAC address. Filtering by MAC lets you set up WiFi so that only devices you explicitly define are allowed to connect to your network.

Once you have MAC filtering in place, you can also encrypt network traffic and use a long secure password. Since the clients on the network will not need to type this password in all the time, it is best to make a complex password containing both capital and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.

Another option to further increase security when it comes to WiFi connections is to set the access point to not broadcast it’s SSID. This will make it look to the normal person as if there is no wireless connection available.

Server
There are a lot of features that can be enabled at the server to further improve network security. The first item to review is the group policy. Group policy is part of the server operating systems that allows you to centrally manage what your client workstations have access to and how.

Group policies can be created to allow or deny access to various locations on your users’ desktops. You can get as granular as defining a group policy that sets standards on user passwords.

By default, Windows Server 2008’s password policy requires users to have passwords with a minimum of 6 characters and meet certain complexity requirements.

While these settings are the defaults, generally 8-10 characters is recommended as well as mixing upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special symbols. An example of a complex password might be @fF1n!ty (Affinity). This password would meet all complexity requirements and is fairly easy to remember. Passwords should also be forced to reset every so many days. A good time period is roughly 30 days.

One other possible option is to have firewall software installed on the server itself to regulate traffic in and out of the server.

The nice thing about having a firewall on the server itself is that you have the ability to log failed connections to the server itself as well as what that connections is and where it was coming from.

This feature alone gives you a lot more control over the network. For example if you noticed in the firewall logs on the server that a connection you didn’t want getting through was making it to the server you can go back and edit policies on the router/firewall to attempt to further lock down your network from that point as well as blocking it at the server.

One final quick thought on server security is physical security.

Generally it is a good practice to have the server physically locked in a room that only specific people have access to. If you really wanted more control as well you can have the server locked using a system that logs who comes in and out of a room via a digital keypad and their own passwords.

When it comes to your workstations, employees should only be logging into the workstation via their domain login and not using the local admin login.

This will allow you to centrally control via group policy what they can access like stated above. You can also configure roaming profiles so that if someone was to steal a physical workstation they would not have access to any company information as it would all be stored on the server and not that workstation – which is another great reason to have your server locked up.

Employee logins to workstations should also have account lockout policies in place so that if a user attempts to login too many times with an incorrect password, the server would lock them out on that workstation for a time period set by the administrator. One other item you could have in place for various employees is specific time periods their credentials will allow them to log into the systems.

One final step in network security is having good antivirus software installed on your workstations and your server. A compromised machine can be giving your passwords and information away to hackers making it possible for them to waltz right into your network undetected.

You are best protected by having as many of the above security steps configured and working properly on your network.

Determine what your network needs, evaluate the practice after it has been in place for a month and make the proper adjustments to ensure your network is safe. You should also preform regular security audits.

If you would like to see how secure or unsecure your network is give us a call and we can perform a network security audit for you and let you know where you stand!

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Tech Experts

How To Shop Online More Safely And Securely

These tips can help you determine that you’re shopping at a secure and trustworthy website.

Look for signs that the business is legitimate. Buy only from reputable stores and sellers. Here are some ways to check.

Find out what other shoppers say. Sites like Epinions.com or BizRate have customer evaluations which can help you determine a company’s legitimacy.

Look for third-party seals of approval. Companies can put these seals on their sites if they abide by a set of rigorous standards such as how personal information can be used. Two seals to look for are the Better Business Bureau seal, and the TrustE certified privacy seal.  If you see the seals, click them to make sure they link to the organization that created them. Some unscrupulous merchants will put these logos on their websites without permission.

Look for signs that the website protects your data. On the web page where you enter your credit card or other personal information, look for an “s” after http in the web address of that page. This shows that the web page is encrypted. Encryption is a security measure that scrambles data as it traverses the Internet.

Also make sure there is a tiny closed padlock in the address bar, or on the lower right corner of the window.

Use a filter that warns you of suspicious websites. Find a filter that warns you of suspicious websites and blocks visits to reported phishing sites. For example, try the SmartScreen Filter included in Internet Explorer.

Keep your web browser updated.

It helps protect you when you shop online.

Internet Security: What Are They Surfing At Work?

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

A recent survey of business owners and IT managers found that employees are using company computers, Internet access, e-mail, and other resources to conduct hours of non-work related activities.  And the problem is on the rise.

Some of these activities simply waste time, like day trading and monitoring eBay bids. However, some of the activities are malicious and can cause serious issues with a company’s server and network.

Here are a few incidents that were reported by the IT managers that were surveyed:

• One employee was caught running a gambling website and acting as a bookie for his co-workers.

• To bypass the company’s web filter, one employee was caught using his desktop computer as an FTP server for the other employees. He had downloaded and saved over 300GB of material, all on his work computer, using his company’s Internet connection and undoubtedly slowing down their systems.

• One employee was caught giving away confidential information such as price lists, contracts, and software code for application development.

• Another employee had a pretty lucrative side business stealing and selling company inventory on eBay.

• One woman was caught running an online “outcall” service from her desk.

• One employee was caught renting the corporate IP address to hacker friends to attack other company’s computers and networks.

While these scenarios seem outrageous, they are not uncommon. Of the 300 companies surveyed, almost one-third have fired an employee in the last 12 months for violating e-mail policies, and 52 percent of companies said they have disciplined an employee for violating e-mail rules in the past year.

Educating your employees through an acceptable use policy is simply not enough. If the requirements are not enforced, employees will accidentally or intentionally violate your rules.

That’s why every company needs to invest in good e-mail and web filtering software. Just having it in place will act as a deterrent for such activities. If something really is going on – like an employee leaking confidential information to a competitor or sending racial or sexist jokes through your company’s e-mail – you’ll be able to catch it and resolve the issue proactively, instead of reacting to it after the fact.

Additionally, a good web filter will prevent employees from accessing inappropriate material online, wasting time on non-work activities, downloading viruses and spyware, and using up company bandwidth to download photos and music.

Strong Passwords Keep Your Personal Information Secure

A recent ZoneAlarm survey revealed that 79 percent of consumers use risky password construction practices, such as including personal information and words.

The survey also revealed that 26 percent of respondents reuse the same password for important accounts such as e-mail, banking or shopping and social networking sites.

In addition, nearly 8 percent admit to copying an entire password found online in a listing of “good” passwords.

Given these numbers, it’s no wonder that 29 percent of respondents had their own e-mail or social network account hacked, and that over half (52 percent) know someone who has had a similar problem.

The first step a hacker will take when attempting to break into a computer or secure account is try to guess the victim’s password.

Automated programs are available to repeatedly guess passwords from a database of common words and other information.

Once a hacker gains access to one account, almost 30 percent of the time that information can be used to access other sites that contain financial data such as bank account numbers and credit card information. To ensure you stay safe online, here are a few tips for creating a strong password.

Use Unique Passwords For Each Account
Choose different and unique passwords for each account.

Passwords Should Be Eight To Ten Characters Long
Choose a password that is at least eight to 10 characters long. This should be long enough to prevent brute force attacks, which consist of trying every possible combination of a password until the right one is found.

Avoid Using Personal Information
Make sure your password is difficult for someone to guess. Do not use names of any kind, including your login name, family member’s name or a pet’s name. Also avoid using personal information such as a phone number, birthday or place of birth.

Avoid Words In The Dictionary
Avoid words that can be found in the dictionary. With the availability of online dictionaries, it is easy for someone to write a program to test all of the words until they find the right one.

Avoid Repeating Characters Or Sequences
Stay away from repeated characters or easy to guess sequences. For example: 77777, 12345, or abcde.

Use Numbers, Letters And Special Characters
Choose a password that is a mixture of numbers, letters and special characters. The more complex and random it is, the harder it will be to crack.

Use Word Fragments
Use fragments of words that will not be found in a dictionary. Break the word in half and put a special character in the middle.

Frequently Change Your Passwords
Change your passwords often. Even if someone cracks the system password file, the password they obtain is not likely to last long.

Cyber crime is on the rise. Taking the time to actively choose secure passwords will protect your identity, banking information and personal information. And remember, writing your password on a sticky note on your monitor isn’t secure!

Online Banking: Five Steps To Protect Yourself

I was reading the Wall Street Journal website recently, and came across an interesting article about online bank fraud. The article was about a small business owner in California had over $100,000 stolen from his bank account.

He only recovered about $50,000 of it back. The other $50,000 went to a bank in Europe, where mules (someone who receives the stolen money) started to withdraw the money from the bank account.

How did this happen? The business owner had spyware on his computer that transferred his banking username and password to the hackers. I always shake my head when I read an article like this, because I know it could have been easily avoided.

Anti-virus and anti-spyware
The first step in protecting yourself is to make sure your computer has anti-virus and anti-spyware installed.

If you’re doing online banking, make sure that you’re using commercial quality protection – not something you download from the Internet for free.

The stronger your first layer of protection, the safer you are online.

We see computers every day that don’t have this simplest of protection installed; or, worse, the business owner has installed protection software, but then fails to keep it updated or renewed.

Unified threat management
The next step is to invest in a unified threat management (UTM) firewall. A UTM firewall is miles ahead of the simple DSL or cable routers you’d pick up at the office supply store.

They offer solid protection against viruses, hackers, spyware, and the host of other Internet dangers.

The device scans all Internet traffic in real time, and can protect you even before the anti-virus and antispyware vendors have updated their software for new attacks.

UTM firewalls can also implement web filtering and prevent the computer from reaching the intended attacker.

Web filtering can block access to websites that contain malware and spyware; it can also protect employees from going places they shouldn’t be.

Fortinet is our preferred vendor that makes firewall appliances that do what I describe above. A dedicated firewall and UTM appliance is very effective in helping prevent an attack such as this.

Block SPAM at the source
One of the sneakiest ways hackers can compromise your computer is through email, so you’ll want to look for a rock-solid spam filtering solution. Numerous cloud based (hosted) solutions exist that are very inexpensive. A good spam filter will keep viruses, phishing and other attacks from hitting your email. Reflexion is our favorite cloud based email filtering solution. The product is easy to use, well supported and extremely effective.

With online banking, phishing attacks are very common. Someone creates an email that looks like your bank in an attempt to collect information, you click on the link, and next thing you know, the hackers have your login and password.

Personally, I never open emails from my bank. Most banks will not contact you for important account information with email.

Perform regular maintenance
The fourth step to keeping your computers safe is patch management. Microsoft releases security updates for Windows nearly very week. Having a trained IT professional ensure patches are applied correctly – and quickly – will protect you from any security holes in the software that you’re running.

Most small businesses should look at one of our managed service plans, which provides you with “whatever it takes” service at a low fixed monthly cost.

Pay attention
The final step is a matter of common sense. Most people will go to potentially hazardous websites or click on something they shouldn’t have. My suggestion is if you are doing Internet banking, it should be on a computer that is used the least.

If you are going to go to questionable websites, don’t do it on the computer where you do your banking.

FBI: Rogue Antivirus Scammers Have Made $150M

They’re the scourge of the Internet right now and the U.S. Federal Bureau of investigation says they’ve also raked in more than $150 million for scammers. Security experts call them rogue antivirus programs.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (ICC) issued a warning over fake antivirus software, saying that Web surfers should be wary of sudden pop-up windows that report security problems on their computers.

This software can appear almost anywhere on the Web. Typically, the scam starts with an aggressive pop-up ad that looks like some sort of virus scan. Of course, the scan turns up problems, and the pop-up says the only way to get rid of them is to pay with a credit card.

This is always a bad idea. At best, the software is subpar. At worst, it could result in viruses, Trojans and/or keyloggers being installed on the computer. Identity thieves often use keyloggers to gain access to credit
card numbers, bank account information, and computer users’ social security numbers.

The tactics of the scareware have caused significant losses to users. The FBI is aware of an estimated loss to victims in excess of $150 million.

The IC3 says that users who see these unexpected antivirus pop-up warnings should shut down their browsers or their computers immediately and then run an antivirus scan to see what’s going on.

New Phishing Schemes You Should Know About

I know growing up as a child, I loved to go fishing. I never caught very many fish, but just being out on the water “drowning worms” was good enough for me. As the years have passed, though, a new kind of “phishing” has emerged.

The term phishing refers to luring techniques used by identity thieves to fish for personal information in a lake of unsuspecting Internet users.

Their purpose is to take this information and use it for criminal objectives such as identity theft and fraud.

Phishing is a general term for the creation and use by criminals of emails and websites – designed to look like they come from well-known, legitimate and trusted businesses, financial institutions and government agencies – in an attempt to gather personal, financial and sensitive information.

These criminals deceive Internet users into disclosing their bank and financial account information or other personal data such as usernames and passwords.

Today a new form of phishing appears to be spreading through social websites such as Facebook. This new scam works like this.

As soon as you login to the site, it will steal your email and password and then log you into Facebook. Within a short period of time the system will automatically switch your password and block you from the site. It then begins to send the same URL to all of your Facebook friend’s inboxes.

As this spreads, the criminals gather thousands of email addresses and passwords before Facebook can stop all references to the website.

The scammers have developed a method to duplicate the scam immediately and the next thing you know they have four or five phishing scams going on at the same time all over Facebook. This allows them to gather hundreds of thousands of victims very quickly.

It is not known yet what these people intend to do with all these addresses, but you can almost guarantee that they will result in a malicious worm at some point. The potential to access a user’s financial information and accounts could result in the loss of millions of dollars.

Another form of phishing is called “in session” phishing. This form does not use email nor does it rely on the user having to be tricked into clicking on a link.

It works like this. Let’s say you go to your banking website that is secure. You login and take care of your business, then leaving that browser window open you innocently go to another website that has been compromised. All of a sudden a pop-up asks you to validate your login to continue your banking session.

Remember two things must happen in order for this scam to work. First, a website must be compromised and infected—the higher traffic the better, obviously.

Second, the downloaded malware must be able to identify whether or not the unknowing user is logged into a relevant website.

Most banking institutions have taken steps to prevent this. One step is having a rapid disconnect of an idle session.

But in order to be safe we would recommend closing all browser windows after you have visited a secure banking website.

In addition it is very important to keep your system free of all spyware, malware and viruses.

Tech Experts has certified technicians that clean these types of infections and malware from computers every day. We urge you to take advantage of our system checkup and cleaning service to keep your identity to yourself.

QuickTime Video Software Target Of Hacker Attack

We all remember that it was not too long ago when Microsoft had left a huge hole for attackers to exploit in Windows XP.  Microsoft corrected the error by releasing a new security update and including it as an important update in the Windows Update service.

Now for the third time, attackers have found a new vulnerability in Windows. This attack only affects Windows XP, Windows 2003 server and Windows 2000. Windows Vista, Server 2008 and surprisingly Windows 7 aren’t affected.

Microsoft has already discovered that the attackers are using the code on many different video websites. The attack starts with a QuickTime video and exploits a problem in the Direct X software that Windows uses in almost everything you do, from watching videos to playing video games.

The hackers are using the code in QuickTime files which is the default video for Apple, but not in Windows. You most likely have QuickTime installed on your PC if you have an iPhone or iPod.

The malicious code is hidden inside video files, and allows the attacker to execute any kind of program he would like on the victim’s personal computer. Then, depending on what the attacker planned to do, they could take over your computer or make all your data disappear.

In order to get infected, you’d have to open an infected QuickTime file. Opening the file allows the hacker to have control of your computer. This virus code could be sent by an attachment in email or posted on any website. You’d just have to click and download the file in order to infect your computer.

According to the developers of QuickTime, QuickTime is not the flawed code, but rather, the code inside Windows that displays the QuickTime movie using Direct X is to blame.

The reason the newer operating systems are not vulnerable to these attacks is that the code was removed when Microsoft began development of Windows Vista.

Microsoft has already released two fixes for this security vulnerability. One is pretty technical and requires the user to edit the system registry. The second is a tool that Microsoft has built to automatically disable this feature.

Microsoft hasn’t released a patch, but said that once they do, users that used the automated tool will automatically have the parser turned back on.

Top Four Threats Attacking Your Network And What You Can Do About Them

Do you ever feel like your computer network could be more secure? Chances are, keeping a few simple things in mind will improve security and reduce downtime. Here are some things to look out for.

Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites like Facebook are exploding in popularity. Threats range from malware (e.g. viruses, worms,spyware) to scammers trying to steal your identity, information and money. Many businesses and government agencies are
using these sites to communicate with clients and constituents, so simply blocking access is no longer reasonable. Defending your company while allowing employee access requires social network education for your employees and the enforcement of strong acceptable use policies. We can help you develop a policy, then monitor compliance using a Unified Threat Management device that controls and reports on network
access.

Attacks On Mobile Devices
Everyone is going mobile these days not just the “road warriors.” Once limited to laptop computers, mobile network devices now include PDAs, handheld computers and smart phones, with new appliances appearing in the stores every month. Mobile devices often contain sensitive data yet they are easily lost or stolen. Be sure to password protect and encrypt data on all mobile devices whenever possible. Include mobile devices in your acceptable use policy.

Cloud Computing
“The Cloud,” in its most simple form, involves using the Internet to access and store your data. When you access email using a web browser, you are working in “the cloud.” Using the cloud for automated off site backup is rapidly gaining popularity and is just the beginning. Companies like Microsoft, IBM and Google envision the day when we will use inexpensive terminals instead of computers to run programs and access data located somewhere on the Internet. You need to be sure that any data you store and access across the Internet is secure not just where it is stored, but during the trip to and from the Internet.

Overconfidence
User overconfidence in security products is the top threat to your network. Failure to “practice safe software” results in nuisance attacks like porn storms (unstoppable rapid fire pornographic pop-ups) and more subtle key loggers that steal passwords. Surveys promising free stuff, result in theft of information like your mother’s maiden name, high school, etc. used to answer common security questions leading to theft of otherwise secure data. Think before you click!