by Darragh | Aug 3, 2014 | At home, Business, Disaster recovery |
If you don’t, now is the time to start getting organized. A local company in Drogheda called me in a panic a few months ago. They had a type of virus called a crypto locker. This infection sits silently on your computer, encrypting all the files you save and open. Quietly preparing to block access to every file you are likely to open. If you get this virus, or as they are more commonly known as scamware, you have two choices. Either pay using a potentially dodgy pay method to have the decryption key sent to you to allow you to unlock the files or restore your files using a previous backup. The real problem comes when you don’t have a backup and you’ve paid to have the decryption key but it either doesn’t work, or worse, you pay over the money and no key is sent. You absolutely must have a backup. It isn’t just best practise, it’s vital. Please don’t think that this infection is only caught by a minority of Internet users. It is far too prevalent to be taken lightly. To make matters worse, this company had a central file share so when one person infected with the virus accessed a file on the shared directory, that file became encrypted so even if another computer on the network didn’t have the virus, on the day that the virus cut off access to the files it had encrypted, no user could access the file from any computer. This was having a major impact on the business and for five days they were unable to find someone...
by Darragh | May 5, 2014 | At home |
Windows XP is no longer Supported by Microsoft. Contents: Introduction Securing Windows XP Antivirus Apply all updates Your Browser Java Create a standard user account More help Introduction and background Windows XP was originally released for testing on 31st October 2000 with the full release on 24th August 2001. This was the result of an extensive research and development process that began in the late 90’s where Microsoft aimed to drastically change the Windows user interface to include a full start screen, activity centres known as hubs and a more solid foundation taken from their server software. Interestingly, Hubs are very popular in Windows phone and the start screen is a similar concept used today in Windows 8. The important point to note here is that Windows XP was originally based on concepts and ideas that stem back from the mid to late 90’s and when it was released in 2001, it was an innovation that consumers and businesses quickly adopted. For that reason, thirteen years after Windows XP was originally released for testing consumers and businesses are still actively using it. However, Windows XP has been through a lot of changes over the years. Service pack 1 released on 9th September 2002 let users change the programs that were used by default to open music, pictures, websites and other files and media, it also incorporated support for USB2, a standard still used today for printers, digital cameras, scanners, MP3 players and other peripherals. Service pack 2 released on 25th August 2004 is acknowledged by some as being such a huge upgrade to Windows XP that it could have...
by Darragh | May 5, 2014 | Disaster recovery, System administration |
When your systems are down and you have 6, 60 or 6000 clients unable to access your network, there’s only one thing you want to hear. “Leave it with me and I’ll get it fixed”. With the best system in the world, you must prepare for disasters. Have a plan in place so that when everything goes wrong, you know how you are going to handle it. Here are a few things that we advise: Define terms and language that you are going to use to describe this temporary setback. Explain that the problem is a temporary glitch. You will most likely be unable to provide a clear expectation as to how long it will take to resolve the problem but what you can assure customers is that you will call them back every hour to provide them with an update. When your customers need your systems to work, a call to say that no progress has been made is better than no call at all. Ensure that you don’t use words with bad connotations such as “crash, Corrupt or deleted” to describe the problem. Customers need to feel assured that you have things under control. Be assertive in your language. If you know that this will take four hours, don’t tell the customer that you think it will take four hours. This potentially shows that you don’t have enough exposure to the solution of the problem. Confidently communicate your message. Stay away from terms such as “I think, I’m not sure and I don’t know”. Don’t be afraid to use partial templates for calls and Emails to customers....
by Darragh | May 4, 2014 | Business |
On the morning of Thursday the 29th of March, I was listening to the Michael Reed show on the local radio station for Louth and Meath LMFM. Michael was speaking to Mark Fielding, the chief executive officer of business lobby group the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME). One of the points Mr Fielding made was regarding the businesses in Ireland that have yet to establish a presence online. The justification he gave for this was a lack of availability and reliability of Broadband across all parts of the country. I understand Mr Fielding’s perspective on this however I would have a different opinion. In my experience, I find that the majority of companies have access to broadband in some shape or form however they have either no idea where to start to get a website created or they have had a bad experience in the past. I think if more focus was directed at education and raising awareness of the mechanisms available in Ireland that can help businesses reach the online market the uptake would increase exponentially. For a .IE website name, you will pay €45.90 For a .BIZ website name you will pay €13.50 For a .COM website name you will pay €17.90 For a .NET website name you will pay €9.98 For a .CO.UK website name you will pay €9.98 For hosting the site, you ordinarily pay annually. The cost ranges anywhere from €40 per month up as high as you want depending on the services you require. For example, if you are expecting a huge amount of traffic, you may pay more for bandwidth....
by Darragh | May 4, 2014 | Firewalls, Linux, Mail, Monitoring, Regular checks, Security, System administration, Web, Windows |
While administering any computer system there are a number of checks that are needed to ensure all systems are functioning correctly. Depending on the size of the system, you may be required to perform these checks a number of times or just once a week. It’s usually a good idea to have some kind of checklist that you can tick off to show that you’ve completed these tests so that if a problem emerges, you can show with your logging that problems started after a specific date or time. Here are a number of the checks I run on systems. I have broken them into monthly, weekly and daily. Monthly checks Clean server room and coms room. Remove dust build up from server casing. Check air conditioning fans and vents. Check room security. Check Active Directory for old or unused computer or user accounts. Ensure all updates are downloading to Windows Server Update Services. Clean up Windows Server Update Services. Apply Updates from the previous month to Servers. Note, if there are hundreds of servers this would be a weekly task. Run a test restore from a random backup job. If there are clustered systems for redundancy, check a random service to ensure it fails over correctly. Weekly checks Check temperature of server rooms. Do a visual inspection of all servers. Distribute updates to workstations. Check server logs for errors. Check priority workstations for errors. Check that all anti-virus and other software is up to date. Check Anti-Virus logs for outbreaks or irremovable infections. Check logs from CCTV and door access systems to ensure there are no issues. On...
