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Are You Prepared For A Hard Drive Failure?

March 16, 2016 by Zack Duncan Leave a Comment

A hard drive failure is one of the worst things that can happen. When your hard drive crashes, you potentially lose a lot of important data. Pictures, documents, downloads, and other saved files could be gone forever. So what do you do? How do you handle something that is potentially catastrophic like this? Well, there are a few steps you can take, like being prepared, making backup discs, knowing your local computer shop or just trading out your old hard drive for a solid state drive. It is imperative that you know what to do when your hard drive fails and this list of potential solutions should be something to consider. Continue reading on the ComputerServiceNow Blog.

Do you need full-service tech support in Middletown, or anywhere in Southwest Ohio? Computer Service Now has been serving the Middletown area for over 30 years. Contact CSN today for IT consulting, managed IT service, computer service and repair, web services, networking services, security and more! Call 877-422-1907.

Posted in: SMB Advice Tagged: Computer, Computer Service, hard drive, hard drive failure

Virtualization: A Two-Edged Sword for SMBs

September 25, 2011 by John Beagle Leave a Comment


by Kevin Rowney

Virtualization is revolutionizing IT, and small businesses are sitting up to take notice. Whereas in the past it was viewed as a luxury only available to large enterprises with extensive resources, virtualization is now a viable option for businesses of all sizes. A recent study commissioned by Symantec aimed to measure the attitude of small businesses toward virtualization, and to what extent they are taking advantage of it.

The Appeal of Virtualization

The survey found that small businesses are very interested in virtualization technology, and that they can see a wide range of potential benefits. Among the key findings are the following:

  • A full 70 percent of small businesses are at least considering virtualization.
  • Their reasons are:
  1. Reduced capital expense (cited by 70 percent)
  2. Reduced operational expense (68 percent)
  3. Improving scalability (68 percent)

Two-thirds of the organizations surveyed expressed a desire to reduce the number of servers while maintaining their applications, increasing their efficiency. Making the most of their existing infrastructure will also help keep costs down. Virtualization also makes disaster recovery easier, through the ability to create a full mirror of critical systems without the need for additional hardware.

Adoption Challenges

While the majority of small businesses have shown an interest in virtualization technology, they are still in the early stages of adoption. Consider:

  • Only ten percent have already implemented virtualization
  • 17 percent currently in trials or the implementation process.

In a related finding, businesses are far more comfortable with web and database management applications than with more critical applications such as accounting, ERP and CRM software. This indicates that while organizations are eager to see the benefits of virtualization, they are still reluctant to risk placing business-critical apps into a virtualized framework.

What is causing this reluctance? Businesses stated that the three most significant challenges to virtualization are:

  • Performance
  • Backup
  • Security and patch management.

Additionally, nearly one-third of respondents reported a lack of experience in virtualization, which sheds further light on their reluctance to virtualize more vital applications.

Data Protection Woes

Despite the enthusiasm small businesses are showing, however, many of them are failing to sufficiently protect the information they place into the virtualized environment.

  • Only 15 percent perform regular backups on virtualized servers.
  • 23 percent back up infrequently or not at all.

More than half of organizations (61 percent) cited budgetary issues as the reason for not performing regular backups, with 20 percent blaming staffing issues.

In addition to insufficiently backing up data, securing servers is another challenge faced by small businesses. On average, they have completely secured only 40 percent of their virtualized servers. Moreover, 78 percent have no antivirus software installed. Once again, the primary reason cited by businesses is budgetary problems, with staffing issues also mentioned.

Recommendations for SMBs

While the market matures there are potential security risks associated with virtualization. In order to minimize risks while still enjoying the benefits virtualization has to offer, SMBs should consider the following recommendations  to protect themselves in the virtual environment.

Recommendation 1: It’s important that organizations understand the increased complexity that comes with implementing a virtualized IT environment. Taking advantage of new techniques that allow virtualization of hard-to-virtualize multi-tier applications may provide a route through this complexity.  Symantec’s AppHA framework allows us to provide this kind of help to people virtualizing complex workloads and we think there’s an interesting path ahead, despite the complexity, using these new techniques.

Recommendation 2: An integrated approach to backup and security in both physical and virtual environments can improve overall IT efficiency. Implementing data deduplication solutions can help save space on servers while also saving time for IT management.

Finally, recommendation 3: One of the most important steps SMBs can take is to create a comprehensive security plan that is specifically tailored to the virtual environment. By ensuring that security is managed centrally, software can be more easily deployed. And, by establishing consistent policies and practices, administrators and end users will be able to effectively contribute to a secure IT environment.  At this point, it appears most of these virtualized systems have minimal protection from targeted attacks tailored to invade them and we are watching this trend with some concern.  We hope to influence the community of practitioners of virtualization to realize that this relatively unprotected state is a significant risk that requires attention soon.

Kevin Rowney

Director, Breach Response, Symantec

Kevin Rowney is a data loss prevention visionary who joined Symantec in 2007 as part of the Vontu acquisition, a company which he founded.

Rowney currently serves as Director of Breach Response at Symantec and is focused on helping customer address data breach incidents. Rowney coaches account teams on how to help customers respond to data breach incidents. By mobilizing teams across Symantec to deploy resources, Rowney helps customers get current breach incidents under control and identify risks of future breaches.

For the past 14 years, Rowney served in a variety of security roles at software startups in Silicon Valley. At Vontu, Rowney conceived the original value proposition, designed the system architecture and wrote the patent-pending search algorithms used in their award-winning product.

Rowney has architected a range of security systems including credit card transaction processing systems and one of the first PKI Certificate Authorities operating on the Internet. Additionally, Rowney served on the Visa/Mastercard Secure Electronic Transactions standards committee as the representative of Verifone/EIT.

Posted in: SMB Advice Tagged: Computer, small business, Small Business Trends, SMB

Top 10 Threats to SMB Data Security and Privacy

May 12, 2011 by brawlinmelgar 1 Comment

by Ann Noder of Pitch Public Relations

Without the benefits of a large scale IT department, many SMBs have to operate their critical software on computers that are old, slow, and insecure. myID.com has 10 real threats facing small businesses… and inexpensive or free ways to fix them. myID.com is a new service from SafetyWeb.com that protects personal information and shields from identity theft with real-time alerts. Here are the top 10 threats to business.

Top 10 Threats to Data Security and Privacy for SMBs:

1. Data Breach Resulting From Poor Networking Choices

Cisco. Sun. These are enterprise-level networking choices that are found in large IT departments around the world. The price tags, however, price small or medium business (SMB) out of the market. If these SMBs have networks at all, they may use networking devices targeted at home users. Some may forgo the use of routers at all, plugging directly into the Internet. SMB owners can block most threats by using a quality router, like a NETGEAR or Buffalo brand router and making sure to change the router password from the default.

2. Data Breach Resulting From Improper Shredding Practices

Dumpster diving identity thieves target businesses that throw out paperwork without shredding it. Most home shredders will suffice for small businesses in a pinch, but a commercial shredder is a wise investment if private information is printed and shredded daily.

3. Identity Theft Resulting From Public Databases

Individuals, especially SMB owners, often publish lots of information about themselves in public databases. SMBs are registered with the county clerk, telephone numbers are in the phone book, many individuals have Facebook profiles with their address and date of birth. Many identity thieves can use information searchable publicly to construct a complete identity.

4. Identity Theft Resulting from Using a Personal Name Instead of Filing a DBA

Sole-proprietors that do not take the time to file a Doing Business As application are at a far higher risk of identity theft due to their personal name, rather than their SMB business names, being published publicly.

5. Tax Records Theft Around Tax Time

SMBs must ensure that tax returns are dropped off at the post office and refunds are collected promptly from the mailbox. Identity thieves often steal tax returns from an outbox or mailbox.

6. Bank Fraud Due To Gap in Protection or Monitoring

SMB owners know that it is vital to balance their accounts every month to ensure that checks are not being written out of business funds by embezzlers, but many SMBs rarely, if ever, check what kind of credit accounts have been opened under the business name. Monitoring services like myID.com can alert SMB owners when new credit accounts are opened fraudulently.

7. Poor E-mailing Standards

Many SMBs treat e-mails as confidential communications, but this is far from the case. They are available to a number of people other than the recipient. It’s more appropriate to treat e-mails as postcards, rather than sealed letters.

8. Failing to Choose a Secure Password

In fact, many security experts are recommending the use of a pass phrase, rather than a pass word. Pass phrases are several words long, at least three, and are far more secure than passwords. A pass phrase like “friday blue jeans” can be typed far quicker than a complicated password, and it doesn’t need to be written down on a post-it.

9. Not Securing New Computers or Hard Drives

SMBs that had their IT system professionally installed may opt to upgrade a computer or two by themselves. This is strongly discouraged on a business network, as new computers must be professionally secured or else they pose a serious threat and an entry point for hackers.

10. Social Engineering

Social engineers are individuals that call and claim they are from another organization. They may even claim to be with a firm that a SMB owner does business with. If someone you do not know calls on the phone, be sure that it is the person you think it is before revealing passwords or confidential information.

Find out what is going on in the Tech Army World.

What are the Top 10 Money Making Missions?
What other companies have joined and what do they do?

How do I join the Tech Army Organization ?

Posted in: SMB Tagged: Business, Computer, Security

Hewlett-Packard Unveils New Products for SMBs

December 1, 2009 by Sarah Leave a Comment

Hewlett-Packard Unveils New Products for SMBs

In an effort to get a bigger share of the IT budgets of the 7.9 million American SMBs, Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a new line of products and services. The new products for small and medium-size businesses include everything from computers to servers. In addition, they’ve introduced new financing options, also aimed at SMBs. They are providing over $1,000 in software and services, and up to $2,000 in rebates for SMBs that make hardware purchases.

As far as computers go, the Pro 3000 series desktop and the ProLiant ML110 and DL120 G6 servers are all new and aimed at SMBs. As is the ProCurve 2520 Switch series which is great for SMBs looking to deploy voice, video, and wireless applications requiring power over ethernet. There’s also a new printer for SMBs, the LaserJetP2055D which costs about $299, along with two low-power monitors, the Compaq LE1911 and the Compaq LE1711.

A number of new storage products including the StorageWorks DAT 320 Tape Drive, the StorageWorks D2D backup system, and the LeftHand P4000 storage area network, were introduced, as were bundles of hardware and software that help SMBs introduce virtualization to their IT departments. They are built on ProLiant, ProCurve and StorageWorks products, as well as Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2.

In addition to the new products, HP also introduced a number of new online services. They allow users to communicate with employees and contacts and make it easier for IT employees to access, view, and control other computers to help with troubleshooting and fixing problems. HP is also offering Huddlenet which allows for easier collaboration, project management and document sharing. A 30-day trial with 20 GB of storage and that’s big enough for 20 work stations is available.

According to Interactive Data Corp, SMBs will spend more on IT than larger businesses as the economy continues to recover. HP is just one of several companies hoping to tap into that business and they could use it. Their profits fell 19% and revenue 2% in the quarter that ended on July 31st.

Tagged: Computer, economic recovery, Hewlett-Packard, HP, New Products, Printers, Services, SMB, SMB IT

Guide to Choosing Passwords for Your SMB

November 11, 2009 by Sarah Leave a Comment

Guide to Choosing Passwords for Your SMB
Security is becoming more and more important these days, especially when it comes to protecting your business. Good passwords can make or break your computer systems, but how do you know what a good password is? And one you do, what else can you do to take further steps to protect your passwords from hackers, untrustworthy employees, and others who are up to no good? Here are a few easy guidelines that SMB owners can use to protect their companies, employees, and their own personal information:

  • Password Length – According to David Campbell, a security consultant, passwords should be made up of 12 characters. It would cost a criminal approximately $1.5 million of hacking with an application to successfully break a a 12-character password. Some recommend using a mnemonic device so you can easily remember a longer password, even repeating one if need be.
  • Don’t Mix Business & Pleasure – You don’t want your entire company to know your dog’s name is your password for your work email system, as well as your Facebook account. This could cause all sorts of problems. Chances are, no one in your company will ever need to know your passwords, but if they are able to uncover them, do you want them snooping around your personal life, as well as your professional life?
  • Never Write Your Password Down – If you keep a log of all of your passwords at your desk, or the information is stuck on sticky notes all around your cubicle, it wouldn’t be hard for a an employee to sneak over and glance at your information. As a matter of fact, most SMBs tend to have employees located in close quarters, making this an easier way for someone to get a hold of your password information.
  • Never Give Your Password to Anyone – No one in your company should ever ask for your password. Administrators should be able to reset your password without knowing what it is. If someone from your IT department asks for your password, no matter how small your company is, something is probably up.
  • Remind your employees – They may get tired of hearing you tell them to “be careful” but ultimately it is your duty to protect your business. Remind your employees of these tips and any others you cant think of, often. One wrong move and it could cost your company thousands of dollars.
Tagged: Computer, Networks, passwords, SMB, SMB IT

Dell Lowers SMB Registration Threshold Deal

October 6, 2009 by Sarah Leave a Comment

Dell Lowers SMB Registration Threshold Deal

Computer manufacturer Dell has announced that it will be lowering the threshold for its SMB partner deal registration from $50,000 to $15,000, effective immediately. Dell says it wants to better protect those solution providers and expand the number of products and services that can now be registered. In the past, only EqualLogic products and opportunities could be registered below $50,000, but the changes are no open to all Dell products and services.

Paul Shaffer, director of U.S. marketing and operations for Dell’s global commercial channels, said in a statement, “We see this as a great opportunity in the SMB space. We heard from our partners that doing $50,000 in sales was a lot for customers to be buying. We hope that lowering the threshold to $15,000 will create more opportunities for channel partners.”

Many Dell resellers are already excited about the change, claiming it will make the company easier to work with. As a matter of fact, the changes come from feedback given to Dell from many solution providers, along with watching the positive response to Dell’s European channel program’s dropping its own threshold from $50,000 to $25,000.

Dell is also seeing a high number of registration approvals – 85% – and has already started adding more staff to help deal with what they hope will be a much higher demand in the future.

Before announcing the decision, Dell tested the program with a small number of pre-certified partners and say they were pleased with the results of the soft launch.

This is just the latest of several moves made by Dell in an effort to improve both locally and abroad. “We are committed to continuing to respond to the needs of our partners globally, as our decision to lower deal registration for our partners who serve SMBs in the U.S. and EMEA proves,” Vice President and General Manager of Dell Global Commercial Channels Greg Davis said in a statement.

Tagged: Computer, Dell, Sales, SMB, SMB Registration

How does the Tech Army Troop Count Work?

April 3, 2008 by John Beagle Leave a Comment

The number you see on the home page of the Tech-Army.org website is the ‘live number’ of troops, active, approved and ready for duty.

Some 5% of these troops are still in boot camp. They are are yest to be considered active members of the Tech Army, they have not been fully tested, certified and approved.

Only the best survive in the Tech Army.

Thousands of troops arrive monthly. Some troops are dismissed from duty or don’t make it out of boot camp.

The Tech Army holds itself to a higher standard, in fact many troops consider membership in the Tech Army an honor. It is The Tech Army Organization’s intention to honor as many of our troops with tech army missions. And to award the most missions to our best and brightest troops!

All Tech Army Troops are ranked and rated.
More information on the Tech Army rank and rating system.

“We expect to have 15,000 tested, rated and ranked troops by years end (2008).” Raymond Truss, Recruiter, Tech Army Organization

Tagged: army, Computer, service, tech, troop

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