Just read on http://www.digg.com/ about this sad story of another man who lost $150k to a Nigerian 419 scam. It reminds us that our beloved email is a tool and a big fat opportunity for danger.
Much of last week was spent removing Trojan horse viruses and root kits from a lot of very intelligent and Internet savvy individuals. There is a common thread in how they got tricked. Besides Google Sponsored Malicious WebLinks are Google Alert emails and CCNAlerts etc, with malicious links. They link may take you to a fake YouTube.com website , Facebook.com or other known site and a pop up warns of spyware or virus or to update Quicktime, Flash or other program.
If you find yourself going to a website from a weblink on a webpage or email and you get a popup to download a update from any website, the safe thing is to CTRL+F4 (hold the control key press the F4 key) to close the popup and do the same to close the webpage. If you still want to download a flash or quick time upgrade, then go the http://www.adobe.com/ or http://www.apple.com/ and update your program from the publisher of the application, not from a website that is not the creator of the program.
Good luck and be safe..
and you may enjoy this story from the Cybercrime and Doing Time blog.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Why is data backup so hard
Lets talk about disk to disk backup strategies. Let me share with you the method we use at Corporate Computer, Inc. We use NT backup on a daily schedule to backup to a file our network connected HP AIO 600 ISCSI Storage server We installed a HP Ultrium 920 800gb tape drive on the same storage server.
Every night each file server using NT Backup sends its backup file to the storage server. By the early am, every file server has sent the backup to the hard disk on the storage server. Then in the early am, the storage server sends all the backup files that are stored on the hard disk to the Ultrium tape drive. Our tape drive is large enough to store all the files on a single tape. The tape then gets stored off site as an archive. A system such as ours can cost a company approximately $15,000 but the ease and reliability of keeping sound backups can be your least expensive insurance from disasters.
Every night each file server using NT Backup sends its backup file to the storage server. By the early am, every file server has sent the backup to the hard disk on the storage server. Then in the early am, the storage server sends all the backup files that are stored on the hard disk to the Ultrium tape drive. Our tape drive is large enough to store all the files on a single tape. The tape then gets stored off site as an archive. A system such as ours can cost a company approximately $15,000 but the ease and reliability of keeping sound backups can be your least expensive insurance from disasters.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Backup your PC -- continued
While on the topic of backups, if you store information on your pc, esp in "My Document" consider buying a inexpensive USB hard disk to backup your data to. Download Microsoft's easy to use utility SyncToy . Detail from Microsoft's website..
OverviewSyncToy 2.0 for Windows is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers. There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality.Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.
OverviewSyncToy 2.0 for Windows is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers. There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality.Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Backup your data.
You may have heard that disk only backups are fine. At Corporate Computer, Inc, our policy is to always have a tape archive. Disk backups tend to provide a false sense of security. Consider having a computer with a lot of hard disk space and then setup a disk to disk backup using the ntbackup program that is included with Windows. Then backup your disk backup files to tape. There are many easy to use tape backup software, one that many of our clients find easy to use is BACKUP ASSIST . And don't forget to check your backup logs. Be proactive dangit!
Consider how bad companies have been distroyed by lack of backups. The folks at Journalspace.com just this past month lost everything when the hard disk mirror lost the data, then replicated the corruption to the mirror disks.
Consider how bad companies have been distroyed by lack of backups. The folks at Journalspace.com just this past month lost everything when the hard disk mirror lost the data, then replicated the corruption to the mirror disks.
Welcome to Info Services Confidential
Many of you have been thrown into the duties of supporting your companies desktops and perhaps your servers. Let me share my experiences from the field with you and hopefully you will learn many of my tricks and techniques. And, perhaps you have some experiences to share with me too.
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