Fraudulent Email Alert

Security researchers from Symantec are warning about a recently intercepted flood of Xmas themed malicious and fraudulent campaigns. Isn’t it too early for such type of campaigns to be launched, or are the spammers behind these campaigns relying on a different set of marketing tactics? The campaign is a great example of a flawed event-based social engineering attempt. Not only are the senders completely unknown by the recipients, but also, users are exposed to fraudulent E-shops for counterfeit shops, something that weren’t looking for to begin with.

The mentality behind these types of campaigns is fairly simple – starting from the basic fact that a user will not be interested in requesting bulk orders of viagra by default, the cybercriminals are relying on incidental discovery of their fraudulent proposition in an attempt to convert these users into potential customers.

Over the past year, we’ve seen numerous attempts to entice users into clicking on these links, by impersonating a legitimate message or notification from a respected, trusted and well known brands. These are prone to intensify over the next two months.

Users are advised to avoid clicking on links found in such messages, and to report them as spam immediately.

Course of Action

If your organization is being infiltrated by spam emails such as the those described above, then we encourage you to contact us at Expetec for on-demand computer network repair.

Source credit:  Zdnet.com

One of the challenges of building and maintaining a high speed network, is knowing when to take it off line and when not to interrupting the least amount of people as possible without pulling all-nighters or paying an IT company approximately $190 to do it for you.

1: Perform a Comprehensive System Back and Then Do a Complete Restore From That Back Up

During your holiday break look into doing a comprehensive back up for the year, but then recover from that back up. Many organizations invest thousands in back up services but have never done a run through of recovering from their back up ensuring that it really works. Your back up, unlike an insurance policy, can be tested before you have to file a claim.  The last thing you would ever want to find out is that you are not fully covered.

2: Schedule Server Consolidation, Server Replacement, or Any Major Network Maintenance

Now can be a time of year to look into consolidating any servers that you may be ready to take out of service or for installing a new server. Other things to review are hard drive space being used and if they need to be upgraded to take on expected growth for the upcoming year. If you have been getting complaints the server is running slow, this would be a good time to upgrade the RAM. Remove any past users who may no longer be with the company and whose managers may still be accessing their files and emails.

3: Evaluate New Technology Products and Services

As a busy business owner this can be the best time of year to test new products and services that you have wanted to explore.  Setting up a test environment would be the best way to test a new software or hardware product.  The team at Expetec of Rochester recommends having the people who are impacted most test a product and then provide some feedback. In addition, you and your Network Administrator can verify if your current business computer network has enough horsepower to handle whatever the product is you chose to test.

4: Review Your Security and Usage Policies

In today’s world of “Bring Your Own Device”, it is important to ensure that when your employees are using these devices your corporate security policies are protecting that data and protecting your proprietary information.  Equally important, they should be protecting your customer’s information. The rules governing PCI Compliance and HIPAA are forever changing, so this is a good time to update these policies.

5: Plan and Budget Your Life Cycle for The Year

Take a look at your inventory of switches, firewalls, servers, computers, software and devices that run on your business computer network. This is a good time to budget for the replacement of any of these devices or software so that there are no surprises throughout the year. In addition, take a look at what devices and software have had reoccurring issues that are costing your organization more in repairs than it would to replace that product.

One of the challenges of building and maintaining a high speed network, is knowing when to take it off line and when not to interrupting the least amount of people as possible without pulling all-nighters or paying an IT company approximately $190 to do it for you.

1: Perform a Comprehensive Back and then do a complete restore from that Back up
During your holiday break look into doing a comprehensive back up for the year, but then recover from that back up. Many organizations invest thousands in back up services but have never done a run through of recovering from their back up ensuring it works. Your back up unlike your insurance policy can be tested before you have to file a claim then find out you aren’t covered.

2: Schedule Server Consolidation, Server Replacement or any major maintenance
This can be a time of year to look into consolidating any servers that you may be ready to take out of service or installing a new server. Other things to review are hard drive space being used and if they need to be upgraded to take on expected growth for the upcoming year. If you have been getting complaints the server is running slow, this would be a good time to upgrade the RAM. Remove any past users who may no longer be with the company whose managers may still be accessing their files and emails.

3: Evaluate new products
As a busy business owner this can be a time of year to test new products that you have wanted to explore. Setting up a test environment would be the best way to achieve this. I would suggest having the people who are impacted most test it then give some feedback. In addition, you and your Network Administrator can verify your current set up has enough horsepower to handle whatever the product is you chose to test.

4: Review your security and usage policies
In today’s world of “Bring Your Own Device”, it is important to ensure that when your employees are using these devices your security policies are protecting that data and protecting your proprietary information. Equally important, they should be protecting your customer’s information. The rules governing PCI Compliance and HIPAA are forever changing, so this is a good time to update these policies.

5: Plan and Budget your Life Cycle for the year.
Take a look at your inventory of switches, firewalls, servers, computers, software and devices that run on your network. This is a good time to budget for the replacement of any of these devices or software so that there are no surprises throughout the year. In addition, take a look at what devices and software have had reoccurring issues that are costing you more in repairs than it would to replace that product.

When choosing what you want to do when you go to the cloud there are many options but you must be careful how you arrange your support before you make the transition. In our experience while interviewing Data Centers and Cloud providers we have discovered that many providers stop at a certain point leaving the customer on their own to find someone to help them when things go wrong but that’s where someone like Expetec can fill in the gap. For example, not all software is Cloud ready, not being able to connect to your Cloud, they only support the infrastructure, and so on. So before you depart with your IT vendor, or parts of your staff get a clear understanding from your potential Cloud provider what is covered under their scope of work.
Things you will want to ask:
Who do I contact when a user can’t connect to my Cloud Platform?
That problem alone can have you calling multiple people. You may be experiencing an internet outage, something as simple as your wireless adapter is not turned on or you are not plugged in to the local network could be the problem, or malware could be causing the problem just to name a few.
Who will verify my software is Cloud ready and it is compatible with the operating system provided by the Cloud provider?
Some industry Specific Software takes a little longer to build a platform that will work with Microsoft Server 2012, Windows 8, and other types of software you may be using.
What is my commitment?
If you decide that it is just not working for you or certain software doesn’t work in the cloud what will you be committed to if you want to make changes.
Another important question maybe the most important is how will this help me serve my customers better or how will it improve the way I am doing business?
Jumping on the cloud bandwagon without a reason can cause many headaches you just don’t need as a business so have a predetermined objective in mind and measure it.

These are just a few things you need to consider for a move to the cloud some that we feel are very important it does not cover everything like backups, redundancy, security but a few things that can cause some headaches.
Author,

Michael St. John
VP of Sales and Marketing
Expetec Technology Servcies

If you own an Android phone, you can use it as a substitute for an external drive or a USB key. You can load files into your phone simply by plugging it in to a PC with a USB cable, then tapping on “Mount” when you are prompted by the system.

This mounts the internal storage of the device as an external drive relative to the PC, and you can easily drag and drop files or create folders on the device as you see fit. Of course, it is recommended you do this on the SDCard that likely came with the device, or one that you buy for your phone.

If you are using Windows Gadgets (or those small mini-applications that are embedded on your desktop that show interesting things like the latest news, weather updates, or sports scores), you may sometimes wish you can just quickly hide them to declutter your workspace.

In Windows 7, you can do just that. Simply right-click on the desktop, go to View, and then clear the check mark on Show desktop gadgets. This will hide the gadgets. If you want to bring them back, just restore the check mark again.

Have you ever sent an email and then immediately regretted sending it? If you are using Gmail as your mail client, you can do just that with an interesting but buried option in Gmail settings.

To enable this feature, go to Mail Settings in Gmail (upper right corner, under the gear icon). Navigate to the "Labs" tab. In the labs search box, look for "Undo Send" and choose Enable, then save. Now in Mail Settings you will see an option to "Undo Send: Send cancellation period: __ seconds." Enter the number of seconds that Gmail will allow you to change your mind in the future (try 10 seconds).

With this enabled, the next time you send an email, you’ll be able to “Cancel” it from being sent out, as long as it is within the time frame you specified.

Do you prefer Bing over Google but like Google's sparse but fast loading page better? With this tip you can get the best of both worlds.

As users of Bing know, when you visit the home page of Bing, a page with a featured photo as the background is displayed by default, which increases the load time of the page. This can be distracting or annoying—especially if you have a slow connection. Disable this photo from loading by simply bookmarking this URL (http://www.bing.com/?rb=0). The next time you visit Bing, the photo will not appear.

Did you know that on iOS5 on the iPad, you can actually split the keyboard into two? This can be useful for typing with your thumbs if you are holding the iPad with both hands.

To do so, press and hold the keyboard icon on the on-screen keyboard. An option will appear, allowing you to split the keyboard into two. Alternatively you can drag the keyboard icon up across the screen until the keyboard splits up. Still another way is to simply put two fingers around the center of the keyboard and simultaneously drag them apart in a splitting motion.

Want to do a quick currency conversion? You can use Google for that. Simply type in the amount in the original currency, then the currency you want to convert it to.

For example, type in: "100 dollars in yen" or "100 dollars in Mexican Pesos" and check out the results. If you have a mobile data plan on your mobile phone with a browser, you can use this tip for quick currency conversions on the go.