Monday, October 27, 2008

Critical Security Update: Your Home Computer

We've received quite a few questions this morning from clients concerned about updating their home computers.

Yes, the update is required for your home computers too

Microsoft has pushed this update out to the automatic update service. On your computer you may see one of these icons, letting you know that there's an update waiting to be installed.

 clip_image002 or  clip_image003   or  clip_image004 

If it is there, click the icon to finish the installation. You will be asked to reboot your computer. Please do so.

If you do not see one of these icons then you will need to  visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and install all available critical updates.  If you have not updated your computer in a long time you may have to reboot and re-visit the web site several times in order to install all critical updates.

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Friday, October 24, 2008

Critical Security Patch

Yesterday Microsoft announced an "out of band" critical security patch for all operating systems. This is a very unusual occurrence. Normally patches are released on a schedule and occur at regular predictable intervals.  Our patching systems are in sync with this schedule.

We will be attending an emergency conference call with Microsoft on the situation this afternoon. Not since 2000, has Microsoft sounded the alarm this loudly and we're definitely taking notice and action.

This patch will require manual intervention and we'll be working to deploy this patch as quickly as possible. Microsoft has indicated that the exploit for this is already in the wild and anti-virus vendors have not yet created protection against it.

As a result most systems will require rebooting for the fix to take effect. Please understand this is necessary to protect your business. We will make an effort to schedule this reboot with you.

In addition to protecting your own systems, I recommend that you do not allow visitors on your network for the time being. A visiting PC that is not yet patched and possibly infected could bring this worm to the inside of your network. If a visiting PC must access the network you should ask them for confirmation that they have installed the critical patch issued yesterday.

Also be careful with traveling laptops. We will detect and patch them, if they are joined to your domain, but to be safe I would consider them suspect and ask any of your roaming staff to be sure to visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and install all available critical updated before coming to the office.

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Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Surprise! SBS 2008 Is Released Today

In a complete surprise move, Microsoft provided distributors with only SBS 2008 SKU's for sale effective today.

This means that SBS 2008 licenses are available for everyone that purchased software assurance and we can do the installation at anytime. If you are thinking about doing this soon, it should also be noted that October is Dell's end of quarter and our rep is known to slash prices to make his quota. :)

It also means that SBS 2003 is no longer available.

If you missed the opportunity to purchase software assurance and same money on the upgrade, there is still one last chance until the end of the month but it involves purchasing hardware at the same time. Retail and OEM purchases of SBS 2003 R2 can still be made until the end of the month and then within 90 days you can purchase software assurance as an add-on.

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