Harbor Secure Cloud–Backup

We’ve been working with a unique provider of Cloud storage for a few years now and using them to store server backups securely. With this solution your files can be securely stored on the Internet for archival purposes or for sharing among roaming workstations. We are also able to direct a second copy of your data to a location of your choice for quick disaster recovery.

We like this solution because it’s a Cloud you control, it’s encrypted and duplicated beyond what anyone else offers. Best of all it’s affordable because you are actually part of the Cloud.

The flow chart below might look a little technical, so let me try to simplify it further. We choose a folder to backup. That folder could be a set of important files on your laptop, or it could be the folder where we store the copies of your entire server. The client software takes the content in that folder and encrypts it, then it dices it into very small pieces, then it makes 32 copies of each small piece and scatters them randomly around the world. This makes it impossible for anyone holding your data to make any sense of it because no one location ever holds more than 1 tiny bit.

I like this solution because it does not require that we have to trust anyone. We do not have to trust the locations, the people, or the equipment where your data resides. This is important because the Internet and by extension the Cloud is not worthy of trust.

Further it’s important that we can also deliver a copy to the Cloud and a copy to your home, second office or even our office. Why do we want a local copy when we have 32 copies in the Cloud? Because restoring from the Cloud is slow. It is limited by the available bandwidth and while downloading a few files isn’t too bad, downloading gigabytes of the them will take days.

The good news for our existing customers is the new price! It’s quite affordable and now includes a lot more.

$60 a month per server AND up to 10 workstations are included too.

$40 a month per server to transfer a local copy to the location of your choice.

The price gets lower per server when you have multiple servers.

Your technician can explain more and help figure out what you need. Or you can email me amy@harborcomputerservices.net

Securing Your Facebook Account

Online services are inherently insecure because they are applications that you are sharing with others on the same server. In this information age, your information is a valuable commodity. Information about where you vacation, where you live, the names and ages of your family members is a marketing goldmine and it has a value of a few pennies to a few dollars depending on how complete the information is. So when your Facebook account gets hacked someone makes money off of you, all of your friends get very annoyed and you might even loose your account completely and have to start all over again.

Now that many businesses are using Facebook to communicate with their customers the loss of your account can really hurt.

Facebook has been steadily adding security features to help combat this problem. I’m going to suggest a few and also recommend that you check your account settings pages on a regular basis for new security features and add them as they come along.

1. Use a long password and remember if you are using your Facebook ID to log into other websites than when you read that, that site has been hacked (like Dropbox) then you need to change your Facebook password too.
2. Add a security question. This way when changes are made to your account there will be a second hurdle to jump.
1. Click the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page and choose Account Settings. From the left column menu, click Security. Click on the Security Question section
3. Turn on secure browsing. This will keep your Facebook browsing encrypted so when you are in a public space the content can’t be viewed by sniffers.
1. Go to your Security Settings page ( Account Settings > Security) Click on the Secure Browsing section. Check the box provided and save your changes
4. Turn on Login notifications. With this setting on you will get a notification every time a device logs into your account from a different IP address. If you are notified that a device you don’t recognize has logged in go immediately to your Facebook page and change your password.
1. Go to your Security Settings page ( Account Security > Security) Click on the Login Notifications section. Check the box next to the type of alerts you'd like to receive and save your changes

Those settings will be enough to keep your account from being the lowest hanging fruit. In the Account Settings/Security section you will see many other settings you can also add. Whether you need those or not will depend upon how you are using Facebook. Browse through them and implement any additional security features that appeal to you and consider the list I provided a baseline starting point for all Facebook users.