HITman Services Clifton Park Computer Repair » Business

Data Loss and Your Risk

HMLaVine — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:21:58 +0000

It seems as though not a week goes by that there is not some news regarding a major system breach. The government in it’s infinite wisdom, has created new regulations which could put a small business out of business in the event they have a security problem. The interesting part about this, is many of the most severe computer break-ins happen in the government!

Smartphones are increasingly being used in business. People who would not have given a second look to these years ago, have now joined the bandwagon. And now that they have a smartphone, they naturally need to have access to their company information. They regularly send documents and spreadsheets from the office to their mobile devices. While email is far from secure, the main concern when information is received on the smartphone, is its portability is also a very weak link.

Most never realize the implications they and their company will face if their they are the cause of personally identifiable information getting out. How many people set pass codes on their devices? How many encrypt their data?

I was talking with a client a few months ago and she mentioned that she has lost her mobile device in the past. Several years ago I was in a conversation with a person who served on a board with me, and he said a person he knew lost a laptop with medical information on it. He also said there was no protection on the notebook.

If you carry a mobile device it is your obligation to make sure it is secure. If someone got their hands on it, at that point it becomes very easy for them to create a social engineering attack on you and those whose information is on your device. If the identity theft is against you, you’re the one who is going to be spending countless hours on correcting the situation. If the identity theft is against someone else and you are listed as the cause, you could be facing thousands and thousands of dollars in fines.

We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the Clifton Park, Albany and Saratoga area. If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Just How Secure Are Your Electronic Medical Records?

HMLaVine — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:01:30 +0000

More and more doctors and medical facilities are using electronic medical records. The soon (hopefully not) to be implemented health care law will require electronic medical records for everyone. But just how secure will the electronic medical records be?

If you lived in Lawrenceville Georgia, you would seriously be questioning the security of the Gwinnett Medical Center’s IT systems today. The Gwinnett Medical Center which is located near Atlanta, had to shut down the majority of their network yesterday.

The medical center’s network was infected with a virus. This could have been caused by a variety of reasons, such as system which had not been updated or a user doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. Regardless of the reason, this was a major incident, affected a lot of people and in a facility which focuses on saving lives.

One would think that the fault lies with the people running the IT department. While this is a possibility, most people outside of the medical IT field are unaware that many medical devices use standard operating systems such as Windows. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the makers of these medical devices prohibit keeping the systems updated with the latest patches; this is a horrible practice and one which temps disaster.

Why would any company, especially one which designs and builds medical equipment forbid updating their equipment? Their concern is the devices may no longer work. This is so contrary to common sense it is hard to believe.

Unfortunately caveat emptor, is meaningless here as once the government gets involved and forces organizations to use certain systems, the situation is out of our control!

We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the Clifton Park, Albany and Saratoga area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations. If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Big vs. Small Business; and How It Relates to Customer Service?

HMLaVine — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:52:04 +0000

Over the weekend I had a customer service experience which really highlighted the difference between big and small businesses.

For several weeks now I have been dealing with my Time Warner DVR not recording series such as the O’Reilly Factor, while it did successfully record shows such as Cavuto. Everything was set properly and there seemed to be no reason why certain shows were recording properly and others not.

On Saturday, I finally had a few minutes to work on it and placed a call to Time Warner. After 14 + minutes of being on hold I was connected with someone from technical support. After explaining the issue, I was informed that an update caused the issue and was given instructions on how to resolve the problem. The “solution” did not work and at the moment I still need to manually set my recordings.

At 9:48 on Saturday morning, my company received a service request from a person requiring technical support. Their computer was having an issue with the hard drive and requested computer support ASAP.

While our office hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm, and they were not a client, they received a phone call back within 10 minutes.

Big business may barrage us with messages about how they value our business, but the bottom line is more small businesses really care about providing the best service possible. It is the small business that typically jumps through hoops to help their customers.

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Cloud Document Storing and Sharing

HMLaVine — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:50:09 +0000

Millions of people rely upon cloud services as a method for storing and sharing documents. Another benefit to using the Cloud to store documents is it provides acces to work on the documents from multiple devices, such as Android based smart phones, iPhones, iPads and computers.

When looking for a good solution you need to determine who you will be sharing the documents with. Will you be storing confidential information? If another party got access to the documents, would that be an issue? These are just a few of the questions to ask before committing to a given solution.

Looking at many of the offerings you will find that most all promote the fact that they use SSL encryption for data transfer. While SSL encryption is good, it is not a total solution. What happens once the data gets to the server? Is it encrypted there? Who else can gain access to your files? And are the files truly yours? If the servers are located in a different county, data stored on them falls under the laws of that country.

The cloud can be a great asset or it could become a major liability. Like all things in life, there is good and bad and we must do our best to protect ourselves and the people we work for. Convenience is great but there may be consequences for that ease of use.

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If It Can Happen to Santa Clause It Can Happen To You

HMLaVine — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:01:46 +0000

Over the weekend while taking a break, I happened to see a segment of Fred Clause which was on TV. It was ironic as what was being shown actually happens to lots of businesses, and if it can happen to Santa Clause, it can happen to you.

An “efficiency expert” was sent in by the board of directors to take a look at how Santa runs his operations, and if Santa received 3 checkmarks, would be terminated. Like some employees and contractors, the representative from the board had nefarious intentions.

An opportune moment presented itself and the “expert” started shredding important documents. When the “expert” confronted Santa about the missing documents and asked about his backups; Santa replied nothing like this had ever happened before so they have no backups. This was Santa’s third check mark and he was set for termination.

Being a movie all ended well. But you and I don’t live in a movie set and if something can possibly go wrong it will. Don’t get caught in a trap like Santa. Not everyone has your best interest at heart and it pays to have backups to protect your data and digital assets.

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Prepare for Technology Disasters Now

HMLaVine — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:39:42 +0000

What a topic! Prepare for disaster; and now. How depressing. Or discussing technology disaster now could be for the best. For many however, they will bury their head in the sand, living in a world of ecstasy. After all, everything always happens to someone else. Unfortunately bad things happen and it is much better if we are in a position to deal with the issues when they come up, by being prepared.

Last week a colleague was relating to me an issue he was going through. It seems a data center he works with was facing very serious failures as a majority of their systems were offline. My colleague used this company for all of his data storage and email. Now with the data center not able to service him, he felt like he was working in the blind.

One could argue, how could he know the data center would go down. Most data centers these days rave about a 99.99% + up-time rate, and the data center never had any issue before. Well, in early August if you had asked anybody when was the last time they felt an earthquake in the Albany, NY area, the majority would say never. Had you asked them again at the end of August and their story and frame of reference would be completely different.

Let’s take a look at one scenario which could have helped my colleague. Being a road warrior, his laptop accompanied him everywhere. He also had his iPhone setup for email. His laptop was setup to access his email via a web client. This is typically a good option, but has its drawbacks. In this case because the data center was offline, so was his email. Where this turned into a major issue was that his calendar and contacts were now not accessible. Had he been using a program such as Microsoft Outlook running on his laptop, at least he would have had access to some of the critical data he needed.

My colleague is a very bright individual, he just never took the time to either sit and think of potential issues or talked through possible problems with someone. Regardless of the reason, because the data center was down, he was unable to function anywhere near his potential for several days. The time he lost can never be replaced.

On a positive note, he decided he should take some time and talk with me about planning for future disasters now.

Because we work with many local and regional businesses in the Albany and Saratoga Region, we have been able to put into place backup procedures to help in times like this. If you are unable to access certain portions of your business, how will you continue? Will this be a major or minor incident? We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations. If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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When Technology Fails

HMLaVine — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:14:38 +0000

Like it or not we live in a world engulfed by technology. And regardless of the technology, at times technology fails. It’s the plans, and procedures we have in place to back us up during those times which separate the companies and people who deal with technology failures in a stressed out state and those who are able to weather the storms and continue.

Earlier this week our entire area was in a so-called Internet blackout state for a period of time for businesses and individuals who use Time Warner’s Road Runner. While we have experienced many of these outages, this one seemed to be on a much larger scale and had the Road Runner crew scrambling.

Our office fielded many phone calls and it was very interesting to hear how people were reacting. We had one woman who was in denial and wanted a service call even though the issue related to the Internet. The majority of people calling in to our Clifton Park IT company were glad to know the issue was not with their systems and we were aware of the situation.

Because we work with many local and regional businesses we have been able to put into place backup procedures to help in times like this. If you are unable to access certain portions of your business, how will you continue? Will this be a major or minor incident? We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations. If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Data Disasters

HMLaVine — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:48:04 +0000

Data is a critical and key component to business and data disasters can strike without a moments notice. The statistics are very grim for business which don’t prepare for the inevitable, as many never survive.

Many people I talk with regarding business security and continuity are poorly prepared in the event they lose their data. Computers get hacked, hard drives and other components fail; folders and files get deleted; and computers get stolen.

Several months ago we received a call from a client with a critical issue. The controller was working on her financial spreadsheets. She decided to clean up the folder on the server and inadvertently deleted all of the spreadsheets.

As our client had been running our HITman Safe System, we were able to retrieve every spreadsheet very quickly. We verified the versions were correct and there was no data lost.

While the controller is very good with computers, stuff just happens and mistakes get made. As long as the proper plans and procedures are in place to mitigate damages, we can usually come through ok.

For more information on our HITman Safe System, go to www.HITmanSafe.com.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company, based in Clifton Park and serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

Do Anti-Virus Companies Make Viruses and Other Contemptible Practices

HMLaVine — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:20:53 +0000

Do anti-virus companies make viruses? As technologist, that is a question I hear a lot when visiting clients onsite and also while at the office of our computer company in Clifton Park. I don’t believe they do. There are other slimy practices though which businesses do partake in.

Yesterday while adding a new domain name to our account, I was asked by the representative on the phone if I would like to buy a .xxx extension for my website. When I replied no, the representative stated it would be beneficial as it would protect my domain names.

Let me get this straight! An organization decides to add a new domain extension which the vast majority of businesses would not want to use and they promote this as helping keep your domain names safe. This is a form of extortion. If they wanted to keep domain names safe all they had to do is not open up a .xxx!

Perhaps they decided to use a .xxx to help people filter, but we already have many good content filtering systems both hardware and software related available to us. It seems this is just an attempt to extract money with nothing in value being returned. Certainly not a good business practice by any stretch of the imagination.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company, based in Clifton Park and serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

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Your Data and The Businesses and Organizations You Entrust With It

HMLaVine — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:54:18 +0000

It always amazes me how willing people are to give out confidential information. And I’m not talking about the younger generation who have grown up with computers. Your data is yours; and the businesses and organizations you entrust with it may not really care for it as much as you do.

While some states have very strict guidelines, such as Massachusetts; imposing additional regulations only serves to increase the cost of doing business which typically gets passed on to consumers. While regulations have their place, they are not a panacea.

Case in point: yesterday I visited a business establishment which falls under several federal laws regarding data security. Their security measures consisted of one paper sign taped on a wall and a plastic sign on a door, they both read “Secure Room Authorized Personnel Only”. If this works as well as the no gun signs on bank doors and drug free zone signs, the data must be secure! The door was next to a sliding glass window and the lock on the door was cheap and had a twist button to unlock it. A person reaching an arm through the window could unlock the door, but that would be unnecessary as the door was wide open and only one person in the building.

Earlier this month one of our lead application developers and I had a meeting with a fairly large business organization. The organization kept very confidential records regarding its membership, which if it fell into the wrong hands could cost the business member thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, or perhaps even worse. We drew up a proposal for the organization based upon the criteria we received from their staff. During a phone call with the director of the organization, I was told that security really wasn’t that important to them; driving home my point.

Before giving control of your information to another person, company, or organization, you just might want to have them show you how they protect your information. As with almost everything, it is our responsibility to take the proper precautions with our information, as we will be the ones cleaning up the mess.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company, based in Clifton Park and serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.