Blog - Page 104 of 124

Protecting Computers and Servers from Power Surges

Backup and Recovery, hardwarepower surges, ServerOphtek, LLC

Jan 2015

Aside from backups and security, protecting your servers and workstations from power surges, thunder storms and power outages helps avoid costly downtime.

You may have wondered if a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) and Surge protectors are necessary and worth the extra cost in your office IT infrastructure. We’ll clarify that for you and explain each one in more detail.

Standalone Surge Protectors

A surge protector exists to protect working computers, computer peripherals and devices from power surges emanating from a primary power source.

How surge protectors work

The standard US voltage for homes and office premises is 120 volts. A power surge is anything the goes well over 120 volts. When this happens, it’s highly likely that your plugged in devices will receive this surge of power than can result in damage to the component power supply or other parts of the system as well.

Surge protectors work by transferring the excess voltage via the device’s grounding wire, stopping it from reaching the electronic device. This still allows it to receive the normal voltage needed to operate seamlessly. This way it helps maintain your electronic devices over a long period of time. This rings true, as unprotected devices can cease to work without warning due to burnt components or wires that may have been exposed to surges through the wire over time.

Electrical storms

No matter how good your power surge is, it cannot protect your device from a sudden increase of intense power experienced by thunder storms, which can be millions of volts! Your best bet will be to unplug all devices that you have and wait for the storm to pass.

Cost

You can acquire lower end surge protectors for as little as $20-$40. Good brands to consider are Belkin and Tripplite.

UPS – Uninterruptable Power Supplies

As the name suggests, a UPS is a device designed to keep your computer running for a given period of time when building power is suddenly disrupted or cut off.

How UPS works

The remaining power to keep your computers, servers or equipment running is stored in a battery, which kicks in when loss of main power is detected. This is useful during a power outage and will allow you a limited time to save any work on your computer, so you can have shut it down gracefully. Most UPS devices will automatically initiate a shut down on your server or workstation once a power outage is detected, so there’s no need for a manual shut down.

Most UPS on the market come with surge protection, which will take the edge off the power spike to protect your system components from being damaged. You can even get software that will auto save any documents and data when the UPS is triggered.

Power Outage

Imagine you have a small office, and without realizing it, a power surge occurs followed by a power outage during a heavy storm. If you had UPS devices paired up to your most critical computer systems you’ll be glad to know that the whole day’s work would not be lost, and your system would still be running on battery or at a worst case gracefully shutting the computers down.

The UPS protected computer had received a higher voltage spike ( 120+ Volts). That extra voltage was redirected to the UPS power surge component protecting the computer. Now you have this computer running on UPS battery. This can give you approximately around 20 minutes to half an hour to save all the day’s work before the UPS shuts down the system.

Cost

UPS devices are more costly than surge protectors. You can get a decent one around $100, such as Cyberpower or the more expensive ones, such as APC Smart starting around $320. UPS is that they also comes built with surge protectors, as well acting as a battery, which is why they are more expensive than a standalone surge protector.

Surge protector or UPS?

If you’re still deciding between purchasing a UPS or a surge protector, we suggest you first consider your personal circumstance. For instance, if you run and manage an entire office or department that deals with very important data and you wish to preserve your systems throughout all kinds of power fluctuations, the UPS would be your best option.

The same goes if you’re a person who works from home and the work you do on your computer is your livelihood, then a UPS would be the best choice for you.
In the scenario where you just use your own PC for occasional work, and web browsing, a surge protector may be a better choice.

For more ways to protect your critical business systems, servers and components, contact your local IT professionals.

Sony Under Attack: The Wiper Malware

Securitymalware, security, sony, wiperOphtek, LLC

Dec 2014

The sophisticated Wiper malware which was launched against Sony Pictures does exactly what it sounds like: wipes anything and everything from systems.

“Wiper” uses a malicious set of attacks:

Wipe out all information held on hard disks
Reboot servers
Prevent access to Exchange emails
Close down networks
Used on all versions of Windows

How Wiper malware works:

The Wiper executable file, recognized as exe, is known as a “dropper” file.
This file will install itself over supporting files and as a trusted Windows service.
It also creates a network share within the system root directory. This allows any other computer over the network to reach it.
It uses the WMI (Windows Management Interface) to communicate with other machines and run code to and from them to spread itself further across the network.
This allows wiper to gain access to any machine on the system via a computer network exploitation (CNE).
Broadcasts are sent out to remote command networks via a “beacon” message, the malware is already accessing the hard drive to delete data by each sector.
It overwrites data with ordinary user privileges by disguising itself as a USB 3.0 device driver. This is a commercially available disk driver, made by EldoS.
It then instructs the operating system to halt for a couple of hours then wake up with a reboot. By this time, all the data is wiped clean by the malware.

Wiper attack on Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures is a prime example of being on the receiving end of the “Wiper” attack. This particular attack recently gained media attention, got the FBI involved and caused a stir at Antivirus companies.

A snippet from the FBI memo about Wiper

Speculation at Sony from a Re/code analysis reports links the attack to North Korea. This is partly due to a near identical attack carried out against South Korea by their northerly neighbors. Originally it was claimed the attack was motivated by disgruntled ex-workers who were laid off due to a company restructure earlier in the year.

What can you do?

It’s likely that this kind of attack is mostly aimed at very high profile companies, like in our example above. In general it’s wise to do the following to keep on top of your business or home security:

Update Anti-virus definitions. Be sure to have the latest updates from you Antivirus provider. Updates are added regularly to detect and quarantine suspicious files from doing further damage.
Verify your backups, and opt for an offsite or Cloud solution, in the case of a catastrophic data loss.
Update your critical Windows Servers and desktops with the latest operating system security patches.
Avoid being spear fished. Do not open unknown emails which contain attachments or files. Be conscious of spoof emails that may trick you into clicking attachments.
Lock down USB usage. With the help of an endpoint management solution, you can set policies to only allow authorized USB devices, which can help prevent this type of attack.
Revise your IT policies to only give specific administrators privileges to run, execute and share resources.

For more information about the Wiper virus and how you can protect your business from malicious malware, contact your local IT professionals.

5 Ways to Spend Your IT Budget

Office ITbudget, office ITOphtek, LLC

Dec 2014

It’s that time of the year again. The fiscal year is drawing to a close and you still have money left to spend. Here are 5 ways to tie up IT loose ends.

Why spend your remaining IT budget?

In practical terms, we’re looking at productive suggestions in ways that you can spend your IT budget, without it being wasteful.
Besides, if directors look at the accounts after the year end and see that a significant amount was left unspent, it would be likely that the following year could lead to a cut-back on your IT budget.

The good news is that we have plenty of ideas to share with you on ways to spend your remaining IT budget wisely.

1. Expand your Cloud service and backups

Consider extending the storage capacity or bandwidth of your current Cloud set up, which can help with productivity and protect your business against catastrophic data loss. It’s always wise to expand your current backup solution. You may have a local solution but why not extend this to an online solution? Y

Revisiting your existing backup process and tying up loose ends is a good way to prevent catastrophic data loss in the future. It’s worth considering a local backup solution that is fire-proof, such as a firesafe. Such a solution you can easily be acquired from IOSafe.

2. Invest in your workforce

Train up your staff through a course or a consultant. This type of investment will not only benefit their skill set, but it will also motivate them to be productive and take on more challenging roles or tasks. This also acts an incentive to prevent job dissatisfaction and boredom by filling in any gaps in their technical skillsets. The result, having a satisfied and skilled workforce who are confident in carrying out new tasks or responsibilities.

3. Drive up your speed

We’re talking about hard drives here. It’s a common problem for them to fail, so why not invest in some, even if you don’t need them straight away. You can keep them on standby. We recommend investing in SSD, or solid state drives. They cost just a little more than the usual drives, however, they’ll start up really fast, making a noticeable difference on performance. It’s well worth investing on this if you have the leftover budget.

4. Organize the cabling

Do the cables on your server room resemble a bowl of spaghetti? If so, it’s time to consider spending some of that remaining IT budget on an effective tidy cable solution. Look to see if you need to replace old patch cables that are fraying. Try cable tidy tubes which can neatly clip and organize cables or simply hire a professional who can help untangles all those cables that are causing knots and confusion. This investment will be worth the while!

5. Invest in marketing

If you’re a single person business, then consider spending the remainder of your IT Budget on digital marketing. Even the tiniest of businesses have an IT budget, which is tracked when the accounts are worked out. Be sure to spend any leftover capital on advertising your business. This includes having blog articles written on your website, search engine advertising, or social media advertising.

For more ways to reinvest in your business’ technology, contact your local IT professionals.

Is Your Backup Software Prepared for Catastrophic Data Loss

Backup and Recoverybackup, data loss, RecoveryOphtek, LLC

Dec 2014

How much do you value your data? Catastrophic data loss is not just about business continuity but also about validating backup software and data recovery.

We’re going to be taking a look at how you can best prepare your backups for most scenarios which could lead to catastrophic data loss.

Everything from your financial records, employee information to departmental files, or worst still, your entire system, as all at stake!

Building up the picture

What would happen if a disaster occurs taking with it all the data that was stored?

Anything from hard drives crashing to building fires, flooding, earthquakes, theft or any event that could cause data loss, can hit your business very hard, like a ton of bricks.

Alternatively, a break-in could happen and your data ends up stolen. What if a work laptop is lost, out in the public domain and gone forever, possibly winding up on an auction on EBay?

Would you risk losing months, or even years of precious data that will cause loss of earnings, potential data leaks or embarrassment?

These are only some examples of worst case scenarios. It could happen to anyone.

Being Prepared

The good news is that you can prevent such catastrophes with 4 steps to checking the backups you have put in place long ago:

Verify Backups. Your system administrator will usually manage this. If you’re one yourself, simply check that they are verified and running as scheduled through whichever backup software solution you use.
Restore and test backups. You’ll want to be sure to restore your backups and test your data regularly, checking to see if everything would work smoothly without any backup media corruption.
Offsite / Cloud backup. Having an offsite or Cloud mirror copy of your existing system, which ideally, is backed up on a daily basis. If all data were to be inaccessible at your physical site, you’ll be able to seamlessly restore your most critical data and get the business up and running.
Recovery plan. This may be the last step, but is far from being the least important.

The recovery plan should contain emergency contact numbers of who to contact. For instance, of relevant IT admins, your offline disaster recovery center, the company director and any specific staff to keep them in the know.
Ideally a recovery plan can be presented as a hardcopy/document, as well as, a document hosted over the cloud, and distributed to all IT admin staff, plus a manager or director (to be extra cautious) is essential.
You may go as far as providing a copy to your Disaster recovery test centre or your offsite provider, as discussed in point 3.

Internal procedures will vary from business to business, so design one to meet suit your system setup.

Amidst the panic and chaos, you or your System Admin will be presented with 101 things to do. A documented Recovery plan will help you be organised and speed things up nicely. Say if your designated disaster recovery administrator happened to be away in a catastrophe, then at least a procedure is in place for another admin to follow.

Be Prepared for Anything

Like they say, prevention is better than a cure. You’ll never know when a disaster can occur, so be sure to review all the above steps and apply it to you disaster recovery plan today. If you have one in place, it’ll never go amiss to revise, improve and update it.

To put together a disaster recovery plan or backup systems to protect your business, contact your local IT professionals.

5 Most Important Considerations of a New PC

hardware, Office ITcomputer, laptop, updateOphtek, LLC

Dec 2014

Whether you’re buying a new PC for the office, your business or personal use, here are the features you should focus on to get the most bang for your buck.

We’re going to highlight the 5 most important features to look for in a new PC. But before we delve onto our list of five important features, let’s discuss a preliminary checklist:

What are you going to use your PC for? You’ll need to determine if you’re going to be using to for work, where potentially, data protection and backups will be crucial. Even if it’s for personal use, you’ll still want to consider securing your data and backing up your documents, photos, emails and so forth, periodically.

What software will you use? General word processing and other similar office applications are not so resource intensive. On the other hand, if you are planning on using a resource hungry program, such as a graphic design software, or anything that requires a PC with a fast processor and plenty of memory, you’ll need to take note of the minimum specifications. Even the minimum specifications on a PC for any given software will not guarantee the best performance.

Optical CD drive, anyone? If anyone remembers the phasing out of the floppy disk drives in the mid nineties, the same thing is happening to optical CD drives. They are fast becoming a legacy component, thanks to this age of digital downloads, portable USB storage and online video streaming sites. You’ll need to consider whether you’ll want one with an optical drive or not. Alternatively, you can purchase an external CD/ DVD drive if you really needed one for any intended purpose.

With all these preliminary requirements covered, let’s now dive into our checklist for the 5 most important features to look for when shopping for a new PC

Customer support.

When it comes purchasing something new, you’ll want peace of mind and know that you can call a phone support line and have a warranty to replace faulty parts. Also, some PCs may require registration in order to activate its warranty, so if you’ve any questions, you know where to call.

Opt for reputable brands.

Brands like Dell, HP or Lenovo, have a well-established community which also means that finding replacement parts is easy and less of a struggle.

Double-check the preloaded software.

Never feel too afraid to ask the sales rep about the software that comes pre-loaded with the PC. If you need a full version of Office software, make sure it has that and not just trial versions or 90 days’ worth of the full version. This is important if you heavily rely on using such software, as you won’t appreciate a break in your productivity whilst acquiring the full version!

Watch out for unnecessary software.

Be sure to find out if it comes loaded with junk software from the manufacturer pressuring you to sign up to their services. This is often a sales pitch, and from our experience, a complete waste of time, money and digital space! Just focus on what you really need and stick to your requirements.

Check the PC’s specifications.

You’ll want to look for a PC that has a fast processor and plenty of RAM. Many store sales brag about sub $300 systems, when in reality they are cutting corners like memory and processor speed.

Too often people have been mis-sold the wrong type of PC and software that comes with it. Don’t be afraid to ask how systems you are comparing stack up against others in the market.

For more tips and advice on deploying the right PC workstations for your business or home office, contact your local IT professionals.

« Previous 1 … 102 103 104 105 106 … 124 Next »