Cyber Monday and Online Shopping Security Tips

With the online holiday shopping season upon us, please keep these tips in mind to help protect yourself from identity theft and other malicious activity on Cyber Monday, and throughout the year:

-Look for “https” before you click “Purchase.” Before you submit your online transaction, make sure that the webpage address begins with “https.” The “s” stands for secure, and indicates that communication with the webpage is encrypted.  A padlock or key icon in the browser’s status bar is another indicator.  Also, make sure your browser is current and up-to-date. 
-Do not respond to pop-ups.  When a window pops up promising you cash, bargains, or gift cards in exchange for your response to a survey or other questions, close it by pressing Control + F4 on Windows devices, or Command + W for Macs.
-Be alert for potential charity donation scams. Cyber criminals try to take advantage of people’s generosity during the holiday season and can use fake charity requests as a means to gain access to your information or computer/device. Think before clicking on emails requesting donations. Don’t give your financial or personal information over email or text.   Contribute by navigating to the trusted address of the charity, never through a link in an email.  To check if an organization is eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions, visit the IRS website.

For more information check http://msisac.cisecurity.org/newsletters/2013-11.cfm

Your Technology Advisor,
Virtual October Helpdesk Team

:Managed Services

Mention "outsourcing" and you get a very negative feeling. Mention "proactive" and get an entirely different feeling. The concept of Managed Services is something that Virtual October has been offering since 2005. See our latest offering at http://www.virtualoctober.com

:Patch Management

Patches and updates to Microsoft Windows PC's in a network environment used to be laxed and "as needed". I remember the philosophy only 10 years ago with NT machines that you stayed exactly 1 Service Pack behind Microsoft.
Today patches are still coming out as fast as they ever did. But installing them to a network of computers is difficult, even for networks with as few as 5 PC's. "If you leave the updates up to the end users," Says Alan Feldman, President of Virtual October, Inc. ,"you're asking for more headaches."
With new software tools running on your network, now there is a way to only approve those patches and updates that you are sure work. Now keeping your server and network computers up to date has never been easier. Ask us today how our Preventative Maintenance Packages will work for you.

:Become a Fan

Become a Fan on Facebook and you can download a custom Virtual October desktop background image for your computer for FREE. Just search for Virtual October.

:Free PDF Writer for Office 2007

Office 2007 has so many advantages
over older versions. One of the really nice features I like is the
ability to write a PDF directly from Word. Download the update directly
from Microsoft
http://ping.fm/Z07SU
F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en.

More information on PDF and XPS files in Office
http://ping.fm/Kal4J

:Here's to a Prosperous 2009

I just read Matt Best's latest
newsletter, Passport for Success. The 10 Steps to a Prosperous 2009 is
awesome. Sign up for free on his website www.somedayisland.com. Be sure
you mention who sent you.

:Plugging Power Leaks

Want to know how much power is being sucked from your appliance? I found this really cool wattage meter in a magazine the other day. It's called Kill A Watt EZ and runs about $60.

:Xerox Phaser 8560 Prints Slow

Just installed a new Xerox Phaser 8560 on a small network with 6 computers and a Small Busines Server 2003. I installed the printer on the server and shared it out for the desktops, but everytime they print it takes 2 minutes to start printing, even after the printer is warmed up. After trying many things, the printer drivers were installed to each desktop directly from the CD and now everyone prints much much faster.

:Adobe Flash Download Installer

Adobe doesn't make it easy to download their popluar free flash player and install it on another computer. For example, I have a computer that isn't connected to the Internet that needs the flash player to install the network drivers. Talk about a catch-22. But the public side of Adobe has to flash player offline installers that you can download. All the links take you to distributing documents about bundling the flash installer. All I want to do is install the darn thing. Finally found the link at a Yahoo Answers forum to download the Adobe Flash Player Installer from Adobe's ftp site. Ahh, finally.

:XPS Opens Office Documents

Microsoft's new standard for office documents has just opened up a whole new way to share documents from any application. This format will allow you to open and view documents regardless of the application used to create them. For example, I'm running Excel 2007 and I print a spreadsheet to the XPS printer and email the file to a business contact. They don't need Excel 2007 to view the document exactly as I wanted them to see it, they only need the XPS viewer.

XPS is built into the new Vista operating system, but downloadable for free.

Features include:

• easier printing
• easier sharing
• easier archival
• easier retrieval
• more secure

All hope is not lost though for users that want to share Office documents between Office 2007 and Office 2003. A free file converter is available for download.

:Vista Tour

Need to get aquianted with all the new terms and nuances of Microsoft Vista? Here is a nice overview of whats included to make our lives easier.

:Vista On The Downlow

Many new computers are coming with the latest and greatest from Microsoft, Windows Vista. Users (and their technical staff) are finding out the hard way that some things just don't work, or won't work. For example, I ran into a firm that got 2 new PC's with Vista, but none will run their mission critical app, so both are being reformateed with Windows XP.

However, there is no migration path from Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium to Windows XP. You have to have licences for XP. You are basically stuck if you want to downgrade.

But if you are really a business user, you should be purchasing Vista Business anyway. That included the rights to downgrade to Windows XP Professional for nominal costs (costs of CD). According to this document on Microsoft's website, this is what they say about downgrade rights...

Can I downgrade my OEM version of Windows Vista Business to Windows XP Professional?
Yes. OEM downgrade rights for desktop PC operating systems apply to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate as stated in the License Terms. Please note, OEM downgrade versions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate are limited to Windows XP Professional (including Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and Windows XP x64 Edition). End users can use the following media for their downgrade: Volume Licensing media (provided the end user has a Volume Licensing agreement), retail (FPP), or system builder hologram CD (provided the software is acquired in accordance with the Microsoft OEM System Builder License). Use of the downgraded operating system is governed by the Windows Vista Business License Terms, and the end user cannot use both the downgrade operating system and Windows Vista Business. There are no downgrade rights granted for Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium.

In the same breath, if you still need access to Microsoft's older products like Windows 98 or, God forbid, Windows 95, you can still purchase licences for them. What you do is purchase licenses for Vista Enterprise, then you have rights to Windows Vista Business, and it can be downgraded to the Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT® 4.0, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 98, or Windows 95 operating system.

According to the same document at Microsoft...

If I have Windows Vista Enterprise, what can I downgrade to?
Downgrade rights in the Volume Licensing programs provide customers with the right to downgrade to any prior version of the same product. Windows Vista Enterprise is a new type of product and does not have a prior version. However, customers licensed for use of Windows Vista Enterprise are licensed for Windows Vista Business, and it can be downgraded to the Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT® 4.0, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 98, or Windows 95 operating system. You would not, however, be able to downgrade to Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, or Microsoft Windows Millennium as those are different products and not considered previous versions of Windows Vista Business.

So if you are even sceptical about buying a new computer, that you just might throw in the towel with Windows Vista, do yourself and your IT staff a favor and get Vista Business for the free downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional.

:Snow Day Doesn't Mean Day Off Anymore

I just watched the weather report from Weather Plus and according to them we are having some weather today. What I would like to point out here is that I don't even have to go to work today. I mean I don't have to go to the office. I can work from home and have access to everything that I would normally have. Everything is secure, everything is fast. No one knows this is what I do on a regular basis. Not just when we have weather. You see, I don't have to be in my office (or at work) to be working and productive.

I can remote into my desktop in the office to run any application just like I was sitting there.
I can remote into my Outlook email, to see my calendar and tasks.
I can remote into a web version of Outlook and get to it another way.
I can use my Intranet from anywhere and collaborate with my co workers.
I can login with my laptop and see all of the files on my company network....LIVE.
I set my phone extension to forward to my home office and cell phone.

And all of this is encrypted and secure.
And (best part) it is all included with any new Small Business Server from Virtual October, Inc.

And everything that I'm doing, I can do for you. If you would like to find out more about how this all works, download my free guide The 12 Surefire Signs Your Business Is Ready For A Server. In it I'll explain how I can help you make your life (and your business) a little easier...And show you how a snow day can still be a work day!

:What Cell Phone Are You Using?

I recently upgraded my cell phone to the Cingular 8125. This is a Mobile Windows Pocket PC enabled phone. It has a small slide out keyboard and a touch screen.
It took me a little while to get it sync'd with Outlook 2003, but eventually (after turning on USB support on the phone) I know have all of my contacts, calendar and tasks sync'd up.
I'm using the XpressMail service from Cingular right now to send me mail. I have the XpressMail client running on my desktop in the office. It will sync my email and calendar live.
I just ordered a dashboard mount kit for my car and a GPS add on. I'll let you know more later.

:BlackBerry Sync

BlackBerry calendar and contact sync used to only be for the big guys. Now There is a FREE single user edition of BlackBerry Enterprise Server! Additional users can be added for $99 each up to 15 users. It will run on Small Business Server 2003. I just completed my first implementation and am ready to deploy on a regular basis. If you are interested in learning more, please feel free to contact me.

:SBS 2003 Client Application Deployment

I was searching high and low to figure out if Small Business Server 2003 could deploy client applicatoins to Windows 2000 Professional. I know it works for XP Professional. I think I finally figured out that it does. It does not deploy for Windows 98 or Windows ME.

The Set Up Client Applications Wizard only works with client computers running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Windows XP Professional. If you have a client computer running a different operating system, you must connect to the share manually from the client computer.

:Service Pack 2006

Numerous vendors have now posted service packs, including Trend Micro and Microsoft. Trend Micro has SP1 available for it's Client Server Messaging Security Suite for SMB. Microsoft has SP2 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and SP2 for Windows Sharepoint Services. Contact Virtual October to have your updates completed.

:Microsoft's Focus

Despite being evacuated from the facility for a fire in an electrical room, the recent TS2 event sponsored by Microsoft was a great learning experience. Highlights of the event included the entire presentation runninng on Windows Vista Beta, Microsoft's new Windows platform launching in early 2007. Despite earlier claims that everyone would have to upgrade all of thier hardware to partake, Vista will ship in 32bit versions taking advantage of todays most recent PC and laptop purchases.
The 2007 Office (not Office 2007 - huh?) has drastic menu changes, but very intuitive, better use of screen space, faster formatting, and a new document standard based on xml that allows anyone to view a document without having to have that version of Office. In fact you don't even need Office at all since it is an Internet enabled format. Despite the late relase date, you can still make Office 2003 pay for itself in less than 8 hours of your time (that's how much simpler it is to use) and I can even show you a way to get a FREE UPGRADE to 2007 Office when it comes out.
R2 version of Small Business Server 2003 is mostly full of the latest Service Packs for the first version. However the Premium version does include SQL 2005. The new branch office support allows the setup of a "Virtual Server" that synchronized shared data, so no matter what office you are in, you see the exact same things. Seamless failover is included so users stay connected even when the local server or Internet connection drops.
Many more topics and demo's where discussed. I didn't win any books or CD's, but all in all it was a great event.

:Good Bye Windows 98, ME

In what is bound to go down with some screaming and yellling, Microsoft has announced that it will stop support of Windows 98 and Windows ME in July of this year. Support documents will still be available online though. Microsoft is planning a 2007 release of their latest Windows desktop software called Microsoft Vista.

:Windows XP Paging file missing

Virtual October is on the case of the "Missing Windows XP Paging File". The paging file is a swap file, or virtual memory file that Windows uses in addition to your RAM installed in your computer. Without a page file, Windows is sluggish and slow.

Even after I reset the Virtual Memory in Control Panel, System, Advanced Tab, Performance, Settings and rebooted there is still no pagefile.sys. I did this multiple times so I was sure I wasn't losing my touch.

Norton Antivirus was installed, that could be it. I was upgrading to Trend Micro Client Security anyway. So I removed Symantec Norton AV, installed the Trend Micro CS client and rebooted. No change.

Then I found a Microsoft article about the issue. Which directed me to a site about Intel's Application Accelorator. I downloaded and prepared myself to be let down again, but after the reboot, it worked. Pagefile.sys intact and working. Performance is much better now.