Happy Holidays to All

I hope that you enjoyed the cookies. They were made with love and there’s no calories in that. Each year the baking project gets bigger and bigger but we also have a lot of fun with it.

This holiday season I find myself reflecting on the past year. It has been a year of huge mostly stressful change both personally and professionally. On the plus side through and through across every industry our clients are busy and keeping us hopping. Isn’t that a welcome change? The Michigan economy is rocking like I’ve never seen. Over the past 12 years I have had the honor of learning so much from each of you about how to run a successful business that endures through Michigan’s ups and downs. You may not have realized it but I watch and learn how you run your businesses and apply those lessons to mine. You are all great mentors and I appreciate you very much.

I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday season and that next year your hopes and dreams come alive!

Amy Babinchak, Harbor Computer Services

Dangers of OnLine Banking for Businesses

It’s me again to remind you of the dangers of online banking for businesses. I feel like I’m starting to sound like a scratched CD (also know as a broken record) but this is very important.

Recall from my last post on this topic that FDIC insurance does not protect you from fraud. It only protects you from a failed bank; not from having your account emptied through online banking.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/11/cyberheists-a-helluva-wake-up-call-to-small-biz/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

There’s an article that demonstrates how easy it is to become a victim. This company was infiltrated by a link in a single email. Through that infection the bad guys were able to obtain the banking credentials the next time an employee logged in to the bank account. Next the bad guys initiated a payroll distribution and the bank processed it. $180,000 was several times regular payroll but the bank doesn’t care. “You” asked them to process it and they did. Your money is gone.

Please check your insurance and add coverage for online banking fraud. Please keep your online banking to an absolute minimum for business transactions and please keep very little money in that account. The law says that the onus is on you to protect access to your account, not the banks.

p.s. these same rules apply to your personal accounts too

Dangers of Online Banking

I read an article recently that claimed that most people do not realize that they are not protected from unauthorized withdrawals from accounts where they have enabled online banking.

Think a fraudulent withdrawal of funds to your commercial or business banking account is limited to $50, like a fraudulent credit card transaction? Think you are protected by FDIC insurance? Think again. FDIC insurance does not protect your bank account from fraudulent withdrawals. You have no protection other than attempting to obtain the funds from the criminals that withdrew the funds. You will lose it all and have no recourse.

Because there is no protection for online banking fraud, business bank accounts have become a favorite target. Protecting yourself and your business isn’t an easy task.

• Don’t use your phone for banking
• Don’t use any mobile device for banking
• Never do banking over WIFI
• Never click on a link in a banking related email
• Use only a dedicated computer for banking. That is a computer that is used for no other purpose.

I say it is no easy task because we all want banking to be simple and banks keep making it simpler. But because they are not initiating the transaction, the responsibility rests entirely with you to make sure that all initiated transactions over online banking are legitimate not the banks. 

What are we going to talk about next year?

It is that time of year when we need to get together to talk about the future. It’s planning season. We specialize in unique businesses. We don’t cookie cutter anyone. We make sure your IT fits you and enables your staff to be more productive. Your business is unique but we have a few themes that are going to be important for almost everyone next year. Here is what we think they are:

• Consumerization. For the first time, employees are bringing their own computer equipment to the office. On the one hand this development has added productivity to employees through the greater use of technology. But there’s a dark side as well. Your data is being access by computers that you don’t trust, you don’t have any control over (like is it infected or clean?) and it now has your corporate data on it.
• Mobile Security. Everyone has a smart phone. Some are owned by you and are therefore officially authorized and some are not. (see consumerization) Smart phones have data on them. At the very least they have email correspondence, business contacts and files. Did you know 93% of business correspondence is email? Do you know where it is? We’ve already seen hackers hitting open active sync ports, smart phones full of data lost and smart phones with your data going to the competition with the former employee on the phone they own.
• Backup. Data creep is again taking its toll on backup strategies. Moving data off-site has become a problem for many companies. There’s no way around it, moving terabytes of data from your office to anywhere is complicated. With the hard drive shortage it just isn’t going to be feasible to add more space for more data.
• Hard Drive Shortage. This problem is expected to continue for another 24 months. Whole countries are already unable to get replacement hard drives. This problem impacts data storage capacities, new PC purchases and server migrations. The problem is bad now. It’s only going to get worse.
• Cloud Technologies. Cloud covers everything from email to remote access, to hosted applications and virtualization. It’s become a true bandwagon. Clouds vary from puffy white cotton balls to hurricanes; some clouds are good and some clouds are bad. The issues are access and data control. We’ve already had a customer’s data held hostage when they tried to leave a cloud application. We’ve already had data disappear and outages occur. We’ve seen the promise of geographic redundancy fall flat on its face. On the up side we’ve also had great success in the private cloud arena; it holds tremendous potential for cost savings and supports today’s more mobile work force and consumerization while retaining protection for your intellectual property. We have also built relationships with trust cloud application providers. Making the right cloud decisions can have lasting benefits.
• Telephony. We have noticed that most of our you are using phone systems than are 10-20 years old. Some even have duct tape on them. This technology has turned on its head. Phones aren’t phones anymore; they are computers and we’re ready to install and support them for you. We’re working with several vendors that we think are making the best in terms of service, support and features. That they are computers now is good and bad. The cost of phone systems has plummeted; they are less than half what you paid last time and maybe only a quarter of the cost. On the downside the lifespan of the systems are much shorter too.

I hope that we’ll have an in-person meeting soon to discuss your plans for the future and a great 2012.

Hard Drive Crisis Being Felt Now

I reported earlier about how the situation in Thailand will be affecting the availability of hard drives for the next 12 months. Since that time we’ve had some disturbing news.

• There are now no hard drives available for Canadian distribution
• 70 million hard drive orders will go unfilled per quarter for the next 24 months worldwide. (note was 12 months, now 24)
• There are very few hard drives left in Australia
• Many US suppliers of hard drives are out of stock

So what do we do? We do what we always do in times of shortage:

• Reduce: We will recommend smaller hard drives and possibly SSD (flash) hard drives.
• Carefully use every drop of available space
• Use data archiving
• Evaluate whether or not stored items are necessary
• ReUse: We will be recommending that we keep drives in circulation longer.
• Older drives can continue to be used if paired. Using the buddy system we can protect from failure while reusing old drives in new systems.

This shortage is likely to have a serious economic impact as well. Businesses are more likely to keep older equipment in production and will experience greater rates of failure. Mom and Pop computer stores will be hit hardest and may not survive. Sales of IT hardware in general will be down significantly putting a big crimp in the profits of hardware dependent companies like: Dell, Intel and Apple.

We’re keeping a close eye on our suppliers and so far drives are available but expensive. We have seen some sizes and types drop off though and will be expecting more.

There’s no magic bullet solution for this problem. No one company that has more access to drives than another. I have started to hear of “amazing deals”, “my guy can get anything, no problem” as usual if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.

Floods in Thailand

It turns out that the world is flat, or at least it is in many aspects other than physical. You may have heard that Thailand is flooding in a big way. People are displaced. People are dying. Perhaps you felt bad for those people but didn’t think the flood would effect you and your business. This is not an area that normally floods. Much like the middle of our own Country that experienced floods last year, these floods aren’t supposed to be happening. In addition to personal horrors businesses are suffering as well.

The two largest suppliers of hard drives, Western Digital and Seagate, have major operations in Thailand right in the flood zone. The news isn’t good for buyers.

Western Digital, which has been our preferred brand for years, is in particularly bad shape.

• Two factories which produce 60% of WD's drives are flooded and are not expected to be back online until Q3 of 2012.
• Q4 2011 shipments are expected to be less than half of Q3 2011 shipment numbers.
• Shipments to distributors have been stopped.  All product in the pipeline is being redirected to WD for allocation.
• Pricing on the existing inventory in the channel has jumped 45-60%.

Q3 2012 is a full year down the road. That’s how bad the flooding is.

Seagate isn’t in as bad as shape, but it is still a very bad situation with limited availability of hard drives.

• One HDD factory and most HDD component suppliers are in the flood area.
• Q4 shipments are expected to drop at least 10%.
• Scheduled shipments to distributors have been de-commited pending an allocation plan.
• Pricing on existing inventory in the channel has jumped 38 to 58%.

Seagate uses the term de-committed as opposed to stopped. To me, it’s the same thing. Distributors are unable to fill orders. Seagate has also not issued any estimate on when they expect to be back in full production.

These are not the only hard drive manufacturers to be suffering from the floods. Pretty much all hard drive components are manufactured in this area, so this effects everyone. These are small companies, more nimble perhaps in their own region but unable to shift production to other regions.

I’m expecting prices to continue to climb, especially after the end of this year. Next year hardware prices should be significantly higher than they are now. We will keep an eye on the situation for you and make recommendation accordingly.

Security in the Spot Light

This week has brought forth the following security breaches.

• Sony
• LockHeed Martin
• RSA SecureID
• International Monetary Fund
• CIA
• Citibank

An excerpt from yesterday’s hearing: Testifying before members of the U.S. Congress in confirmation hearings to become the next Secretary of Defense, Panetta said a large-scale cyber attack on critical infrastructure such as the power grid, financial sector or the government could amount in the next "Pearl Harbor," and that such an event is now a "real possibility."

Now I’m not one to put on my tin foil hat often and say that we’re under attack. But we are and we can expect it to increase. Some of these attacks are suspected retaliation for the StuxNet attack that has crippled the Iranian nuclear program. Israel and the USA are generally considered the ones behind this attack. Once this Pandora's box has been opened there’s no closing it and in as many words that is what our next Security of Defense, and current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said at yesterday’s hearing.

So how do we protect ourselves from becoming a causality of a war that doesn’t use guns or bombs? A new type of shelter is required.

• Great Firewall that protects the edge from all angles
• Staff education on how not to get sucked into scams that result in security breaches
• Redundancy for Internet dependent business critical functions
• Careful password development and management
• Limited recreational Internet use at work

I think that we can consider this our new reality. This is not just another temporary flare in activity so on going awareness will be required. Be careful out there.

Who is the most common target?

Today I am reading the incident and compromise report for 2010 by Verizon and the US Secret Service. It’s a good read if you are in my business. It gives me the pulse of what the bad guys are attacking and let’s me know if we’re doing the right thing to try to keep our clients out of harms way.

The good news is that in 2010 the incident of compromised data is down. But the bad news is rather dramatic.

Of all of the cases that they evaluated in 2010 a HUGE percentage of the data attacks occurred on small businesses. So why is this?

It’s the same old thing with crime, whether physical or virtual. The solution is simply don’t be an easy target. This says that far too many small businesses are leaving themselves unprotected but also that getting out of harms way isn’t difficult. The marketplace for crime in small business is wide open, so if you’re the company with a quality firewall, update to date anti-virus software, good acceptable use policies for the Internet and are filtering spam – you are not the low hanging fruit and the criminals will go elsewhere. But if you don’t have locks on the doors the criminals will walk in your door.

What are they looking for? When a cyber-criminal robs you they don’t ransack the place. They try to leave it as clean and untouched as when you left it so you won’t even notice that they’ve been there. There are two important statistics here.

Less data was stolen from servers. Why? Because not all data resides on servers anymore. A lot of data now resides on laptops, netbooks, phones and ipad type slates. Its easier to steal from those locations than it is from your server, so guess where crime has shifted to?

Most data thefts were not discovered by the business whose data was stolen and this is up by 25%. That means the bad guys are getting better at what they do. They are more adept at getting what they want without breaking anything in the process. The thefts are generally reported by consumers or business associates. They are the ones that end up with the stolen identity or the confidential business process that suddenly everyone knows how to build. They are the ones that suffer.

So what does the report recommend besides don’t be an easy target?

Notice the word mitigation in the title of this figure. It is about mitigation. The bad guys are smart and they change tactics frequently. Security can’t be guaranteed but you can move yourself from harms way. The first item is a big one for many of our clients. We know most of you take our advice when it comes to security efforts, but few take our advice when it comes to data storage. Data archiving is a form of data protection. If there is one item that we should discuss with you beyond our usual recommendations it is this.

If you’d like to read the report for yourself, you can find it at http://www.verizonbusiness.com/resources/reports/rp_data-breach-investigations-report-2011_en_xg.pdf

Fake Domain Conflict Emails

Recently we have received calls from several clients that have received a notice via email of a domain name conflict. The short story is that it should be ignored.

The email that you receive looks like this:

From: Oscar Hu [mailto:oscar@chinashkow.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:46 PM
Subject: Domains Dispute – <Your DomainName>
Importance: High

(If you are not in charge of this case, Please transfer this urgent email to your CEO.)
Dear Manager,

We are the domain name registration and solution center in China. We have an important issue to confirm with you. On February. 22th, 2011, we formally received an application, The company which called "<SomeCompanyName>" are applying to register '' <YourCompanyName> " as Internet brand and China Domains:
 

<Your DomainName>.asia
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.hk
<Your DomainName>.tw
<Your DomainName>.hk
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.cn
<Your DomainName>.tw

After checking, We found the domain name being applied are as same as your company's name/trademark. so we need to confirm with your company.
If the "<SomeCompanyName>" is your business partner or your subsidiary company, Please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you have no any relationship with "<SomeCompanyName>", Please reply us within 5 workdays(our audit period). Out of the deadline, we will JUST approve the application submitted by "<SomeCompanyName>". unconditionally.

Kind regards,
Oscar

Oscar Hu
Senior Consultant
No.59, Building 20,
Lane 1118, Xi Zha Rd,
Fengxian District, Shanghai
Office:  +86 (21) 6715 8606
Fax:     +86 (21) 6715 0255

This email is safe to ignore. If you contacted them they would offer to correct the situation by asking you to register all of the above domain names to protect your space in China.

The companies offering this “service” are legitimate companies in China offering to scam you. Please don’t fall for this scam.

__________

Connect with us! www.facebook.com/harborcomputerservices

To the Cloud, and Beyond!

The “cloud” is all the talk in computing these days. They talk about it as if it’s something new. I suppose in once sense it is. It is a new term in marketing and boy are they pushing it. Microsoft’s “to the cloud!” commercials have been a hit, a kin to Apple’s I’m way cooler than a PC commercials were a couple of years ago.

So what is this cloud thing? Well, as you know there are many different types of clouds and some clouds are more pleasant than others.

 

In IT marketing speak there are two types of Clouds that have formed. Public Cloud and Private Cloud. Both are very simple concepts and neither is new.

Public Cloud = The Internet

If you are reading this, then you are using a public cloud. The cloud allowed me to upload this document into Harbor’s blog. The cloud allowed me to tell my blog to send a copy of this blog post to the members of our client mailing list. Your email server received the message from the cloud and is displaying it to you right now. You’ve probably been using the public cloud for years.

Private Cloud = Virtual Servers in your Office

A virtual server is the same server software only it runs as a file and it uses virtual hardware. Because it uses virtual hardware, we can run multiple servers on one physical piece of hardware. It saves some money because we don’t have to purchase so much hardware anymore. We increase the efficiency of your hardware purchases. Several of our clients with multiple servers, are running a private cloud.

Cloud Computing = Applications that are housed on the Internet or that use the Internet for some of their function.

This one is tricky. It’s in the cloud – it must be good. The cloud IS good at some things, it is not good for some things, and it’s impossible for other things. That’s the uncertainty. The only certain thing about the cloud is that it requires compromise.

At Harbor we have moved in the direction of the cloud in our recommendations for some items, when it makes sense for our clients business needs. Our remote support tool that allows us to connect to your PC remotely, is one such example. We’re recommending a cloud version of Trend for anti-virus. We have some smaller client using Exchange in the cloud – it’s a great solution for small businesses that couldn’t afford Exchange otherwise. We’ve got phone apps integrated into Sharepoint using a cloud connection. The cloud is everywhere and we’re tuned into.

We can do almost anything in the cloud these days. The problem is that it doesn’t always make sense – or cents. Using the cloud isn’t free, it’s a lease. Using the cloud isn’t without risk, you give up control. Using the cloud isn’t without downtime, you just can’t do anything at all about it except wait and hope for the best when it happens.  Using the cloud isn’t secure – it’s not your building, not your server hardware, not your people maintaining it or configuring it, not your backup system, not your upgrade schedule, not your data security plan, etc.

Therefore, it’s best not to trust the cloud. But the good news is that we don’t have to trust it to use it. We only have to plan accordingly, make allowances for the lack of trust and the relinquishing of control over our own data and applications.

As always we need to be careful and make wise decisions. We can harness this cloud and make it work for us. We’re already doing it.

Part Two: Outlook Social Connector. Why you should care, even if you don’t use it.

This post is a continuation of this one: http://smalltechnotes.blogspot.com/2010/11/things-you-need-to-know-about-outlook.html If you aren’t familiar with the Outlook Social Connector then you should read that post first.

Here are few people that I am not connected to. Let’s see what they look like.

The above people are randomly pulled from mailing lists I belong to on Yahoo and ISAServer.org. They didn’t even send email to me directly. Rather they posted it to a mailing list and that mailing list gets delivered to folder in my Outlook mailbox.

This guy above didn’t email me either. He was simply copied on an email that someone else sent to me. There’s his photo.

At this date in history about 1/2 of the email I receive has a photo attached to it. I know what these people look like even though I am not friends with them on Facebook. I know this because they choose to allow basic information in their profile to be shared. This includes their profile photo.

So what if you don’t participate in any social media? Well then this is what you look like to me.

Is not participating in social media the way to go? I can’t see your photo, is this a good thing? Today you’ll be in good company in my inbox because only about 1/2 of the email I get has photo. But riddle me this…in the near future when your clients look down the list of people in their contacts and they see your ghostly outline instead of your smiling face, how are they going to feel about you? I’ll argue that they won’t be drawn toward you. They’ll probably pass you over.

So what does this mean for your business? It means that the profile photos you post ANYWHERE will be seen by your business contacts. It means that what you do in social media IS part of your business right now and that same goes for anyone in your company that has an email address. There is very little separation between private, public and work anymore and very soon there will be none at all.

Does this pose a bit of a human resources problem for your company? Oh boy, the times are a changin’.

Headlines read malware attacks in 2010 greater than all previous years combined

From http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/11/17/243967/Malware-growth-reaches-record-rate.htm

Malware growth has reached its highest levels, with an average of 60,000 new pieces of malware identified every day, according to the latest threat report from security firm McAfee.

Cyber criminals are becoming more savvy and attacks increasingly more severe, said the threat report for the third quarter of 2010.

The Zeus botnet is identified as one the most sophisticated pieces of malware to plague users, with US small businesses losing $70m to Ukrainian cybercriminals.

Most recently, cybercriminals unleashed the Zeus botnet aimed at mobile devices, designed to intercept SMS messages to validate transactions. As a result, the report said criminals can perform the full bank operation, stealing funds from unsuspecting victims.

 

And the rates are just continuing to climb…

http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792146/Monthly_Malware_Statistics_October_2010

First, a big congratulations for surviving and not getting more malware infections than all previous years combined. We did not spend more time fighting malware infections than in previous years. That means that we can all feel good that we’re going something right. Please keep it up.

As a refresher, here’s how you avoid letting the bad guys steal from you:

• Have a good properly configured firewall that is smart enough to catch malformed packets
• Have current anti-virus software
• Keep your PC’s' and Server operating systems current
• Keep all software fully patched
• Keep your eyes open for websites that don’t look quite right
• Don’t click on attachments in email
• Don’t click on ads in webpages
• Don’t believe everything you read in email or on the web

Things to avoid:

• Facebook – Be careful who you “like”. If you don’t know them don’t accept them as friends. There are fake user accounts out there whose sole purpose is to steal your account.
• Facebook – Who viewed your profile? This is malware. Once installed it will steal your account and start posting in your name. Beware of Facebook ads in general.
• Fake Updates – found mostly on porn and sports websites where videos are displayed, a fake update for the video player of your choice will pop up. This is not a update for your video player, it is malware asking you to install it.
• UPS, Amazon,  and other sites – After visiting you may receive an email with information about your “purchase” or shipment. It’s a fake. They are after your account information or credit card information.
• IRS – The IRS is going digital and the criminals are really coming out of the woodwork to try to redirect your dollars. They can only do this with your help. An email comes letting you know that there was a problem with your monthly deposit. Click the link and go to a VERY real looking website and resend it – to the criminals. 

You may have noticed that it’s no longer your computer that’s the problem. It has become very difficult for a virus to install itself. These things get installed and cause harm because they have fooled you into thinking that they are legitimate. They ask you to install them because they can no longer do it themselves. Small business is the main target of cyber crime today. Why? Because they know that most small business don’t take security as seriously as larger businesses do and so small business and home computers are viewed as the easily picked low hanging fruit. Sure, there’s not a lot of dollars to be had from any individual or small business, but that doesn’t matter because these guys don’t attack one person at a time, like a pick pocket. They use the power of the Internet to pick a million pocket simultaneously.

"With great power comes great responsibility." – Spiderman

If only they used their power for good. These malware writers are smart, it’s too bad they are also greedy. Be careful out there and call us if you see anything that you are unsure about.

An Interesting Trend You Don’t Want to Miss

Today I read an article by a leading IT news company, ZDNet. They took a look at Internet usage patterns to see how OS & Browsers use has changed recently.

They found a few things:

• XP is being replaced rapidly
• Apple hasn’t gain market share
• Linux has lost market share

But most importantly they found something that they didn’t expect. That is that use of the Internet by mobile devices is climbing sharply. The movement is currently being led by Apple and Symbian through their phones. 

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-vs-apple-whos-winning-the-numbers-dont-lie/2504?tag=nl.e539

They say that if you take the current trend then within 2-3 years 20% of Internet traffic will come from mobile devices. That means you’ll spend about 10 hours a week using the Internet from a phone, kindle, ipad, notebook type device. That might sound far fetched to some of you but I’m sitting here on a wireless Internet connection from a hotel in Texas writing this using a Netbook. During the day, I use my phone primarily for email, GPS, facebook and linkedin. I think I’m already in that future.

The market is about to be flooded with inexpensive devices that won’t help you run your business and will expose you to a range of security risks. Please be careful with your purchases. We will be testing and researching some of these new devices. So if you are thinking of purchasing one, please ask us how it stacks up.

A phony crisis in London

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Randi Lou Franklin. She is the owner of Inter-Lingua a firm that provides translation and interpretation services for many languages and specializes in medical, technical and engineering. I lost track of how many languages she speaks, oh and she’s a lawyer too. Smart woman. She’s got a bunch of employees with experience in various fields.

She also writes a blog on dBusiness.com and related a story for me about the day she was hacked. She blogged it too. It’s called A Phony Crisis in London and recounts the day malware sent a message to every email address it discovered in her computer telling everyone she knew that she was in London, her wallet and ID stolen and needed them to wire her some money to the hotel so she could get home. Guess what? In her line of business this is a plausible story! The bad guys had set up an account to collect money from her concerned friends and business associates. You can read the whole blog here: http://www.dbusiness.com/Blogs/Annual-2010/A-Phony-Crisis-in-ldquoLondon-rdquo/

This is a prime example of how hacking works these days. They aren’t after the vast wealth and International secrets contained in your business. They are after your money. This is why we’re such pests when it comes to anti-virus software, good firewalls, Internet use monitoring and protecting inbound access to your network. These guys are smart, very smart.

So what could Randi Lou have done? First off she uses aol.com for e-mail (has for years and doesn’t want to change). But the fact that this is public email is a problem. If she used a business email client, then we could restrict outbound e-mail. We could scan it for suspicious content, malware and virus. We could make sure it is only delivered from her office to our filtering service and no where else, where it would have been caught. Of course nothing is 100% but we can get close and that will keep your business from a similar embarrassment.

Thank you Randi Lou for being so honest and providing your experiences in writing for everyone to learn from. A person that can learn from their mistake is the most intelligent kind.

The future is revealed

I spent last week representing Harbor Computer Services at the world-wide partner conference where we were honored with the Small Business Specialist of the Year Award. We beat out 3,000 eligible companies world wide. I want to thank all of our customers for making our job challenging and for being such amazing business owners. While my peers had up to 50% of their clients go belly up in the recession, because of your amazing business skills we didn’t lose a single one. In fact a loss of clients was so common that the very next question out of everyone's mouth after the obligatory handshake was “what percentage of clients did you lose last year?” Seriously, I was shocked. I believe that if we are all doing our jobs working toward the common goal of making your business the best it can be that we will not only survive but thrive. In 2008 we started our program of offering you free meetings so that we can play our role better in helping you make good decisions and make sure that we are all reaching for the same goal. Since that time I’ve spent a good deal of my days in meetings. I’ve decided that we’re going to keep doing that. Free meetings are now a permanent part of our contracts.

At the WPC Microsoft trots out its vision of the future and tries to convince partners to go along with it. Some are resistant to the major shift in technology that is upon us and to that Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (Bill Gates replacement) literally said “blah, blah, blah” during his keynote. The interpretation of blah, blah, blah, is get over it, quit complaining, the tech world is changing. He angered a bunch of people. Honestly because of our close relationship with the small business server development team and others within Microsoft nothing was said that surprised me. We’re very fortunate to know what the future holds before it gets here.

The tech world is indeed changing. Pretty much all software is now being designed to run “in the cloud”. Which is to say on someone else's server, sitting who knows where and managed by who knows whom. There are two things I am certain of when it comes to cloud based software:

1. Software hosting companies have not cornered the market on great IT people.
2. Not all clouds are the same.

Because of this we know that mistakes will be made by these software hosting companies, servers will go down, personal information will be hacked and data will be lost. The trick is going to be chose your cloud carefully and remain in control of your data. We are offering some cloud based software now and we will offer more in the future. As always our concern will be for your business, your data, and your security. The cloud is an opportunity, not an answer and the secret to opportunity is to grab it and make it work for you. What we all know is we can’t fight change. To those that do, we’re with Mr Ballmer, blah, blah, blah. We will make change work for you.

Office 2010 Official Launch

Today I am staffing the community booth for Microsoft’s Office 2010 Launch down at the RenCen. My fellow IT Pros from across the State are stopping by to ask questions. Some are old friends, some I’m just meeting. It’s fun.

But the real question of the day, is why should my clients care about Office 2010? Since most of you are still using Office 2003 I think that there are a huge number of improvements that you will value. I’m going to list a few of the more innovative features and skip over the fact that regular tasks like mail merge, save, print, protect have been made a lot easier. In a new version that goes almost without saying.

• Free Web Apps. Microsoft has created free web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. That’s not the innovative part. They have further allowed you to connect those web apps to your Sharepoint site on your own server so you can access your files from any browser. Connecting the web, free apps and your local data together allowing you to work anywhere. It’s a repeating theme in this version of office.
• Built-in PDF. You can save directly as a PDF.
• Social Media Connector. In Outlook, all of my emails and contacts now have your picture in them if you are my friend on Facebook, LinkedIN or Live Messenger. Further I can click on those photos and community with you directly in those social media applications from Outlook.
• The Ribbon and Backstage. The ribbon isn’t new in this version but it is refined. The ribbon exposes features like never before. It make advanced features easy for the ordinary office user.

I’m not going to go on and on. The new feature set is so large. Just when you think Office can’t possibly change for the better, it does. The office team really out did themselves.

Privacy and Using Business Computers for Personal Purposes

I read an interesting article this morning on the results of an important legal case between an employee and Loving Care Agency, Inc. It has implications for every one of our clients. I know that we’ve said it before, probably not loud or often enough, but everyone needs a computer network use policy. If you don’t have one yet, let’s get that done.

“The machine may be the employer's, but, in the post-LovingCare world, the data may be the employee's - at least where the cloud and the attorney-client privilege are involved.  You can read my detailed case analysis below.”

http://www.infolawgroup.com/2010/04/articles/workplace-privacy/privacy-privilege-and-the-cloud-oh-my-taking-lovingcare-to-heart/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfoLawGroup+%28Info+Law+Group%29

In this case, an employee had a conversation about her employer with her attorney using Yahoo mail from her work computer. The New Jersey Supreme court ruled that the conversations were private and subject to attorney-client privilege.

Two things happened here. First the existing computer use policy left wiggle room for personal use of the computers. Second, the court ruled that client-attorney privilege can’t be subject to any corporate policy that informs the employee that their activity would be monitored.

Now this took place in New Jersey and we’re in Michigan, so there’s time. But this seems to be a trend and the only way for businesses to protect themselves will be to have computer network policies that are strict and do not allow “wiggle room” for personal use. Doing so could protect you in the event you have the business need to monitor an employees activity; to do so without prior consent might be unlawful.

There are some templates available for policies like this. Of course you should have your attorney look it over before implementing one.

Representing you at MVP Summit Next Week

I’m off to the Microsoft MVP Summit next week. This is the annual event where Microsoft’s developers get MVP’s from around the world into a small room by specialty where we thrash their current products and argue for feature adds that we think would benefit you. Much of what we’ll see next week is “already baked”, that is it has already been developed and we’ll just be asked to help put the icing on the cake and suggest final tweaks. Make no mistake though, this is hell week for Microsoft developers. It’s when they have to face us and explain themselves and their vision for the future.

These guys aren’t professional speakers. They are serious nerds, nervously showing demo’s of their new idea. To get up in front of this group of 30 or so people you need some thick skin because we don’t hold back.

I’ve already seen what’s coming, so I’m prepared. In October I was one of the fortunate 15 that got in earlier for a week and saw some interesting things in the new product line. The changes coming are dramatic and will take us all down a new path. Imagine if you will, instead of just SBS being available to you, a choice of 6 different server configurations designed for different types of small and medium businesses of up to 500 people. Off-site hosted solutions are also coming on strong and I’ll venture to say that 5 years from now your computer network won’t bare much resemblance to what it is today.

On the weekend after, I’m headed to Vancouver to see Olympic curling. I’m very excited about both components of this trip.

New Year – A Whole new World

This new year is screaming out for change. It may be a cliché but nothing is more consistent in computer network technology than change and boy are we getting a lot of it this year. The interesting thing is that this change isn’t simply a new version of this or that. It’s change of the seismic shift order. Everything in IT is turning on its head.

What was real is now virtual. What was on-site is now in the cloud. What was unthinkable is now the ordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s before my time in IT, but I think it must be like the change from mainframe to PC’s. We are entering a new era and those that don’t move with it will be left holding the punch cards. 

So how do we make dramatic change without chaos? We learn, we train, we test and we educate.  We’re to the point now, where internally we have learned, trained and tested these new technologies. Now we’re ready to educate. It is important to me that you understand why we make the recommendations that we do. I don’t want it to seem as if they are coming out of left field or we’re suggesting something you’ve never heard of before. So expect to see a large number of opportunities educational opportunities. We promise to keep the geek speak to a bare minimum and focus on how these new technologies can improve the bottom line of your business, will have a very quick ROI and will make you money. We’re going to sponsor in-person education events and web based ones too. Most of them will be web based because we understand the value of your time and the necessity for you to remain at your office. I hope that you will be able to join us at these events.

Our first invitation will be coming soon.

Internet Lingo Dictionary

For those of you that have delved into social media, facebook and instant messaging or have children at home that do, this dictionary is for you. It contains all of the acronyms that you’ll ever need to know and some that you probably wish you didn’t. I find myself having to look up short hand to understand what I’m reading on the ‘net and this dictionary is handy to have around.

Spectorsoft has put this dictionary together and it’s great. Of course it’s also a sales tool for them. They make great software – different products for home and business. We have clients that use both. So I feel OK about passing this along to you. They make great stuff and are a great company to work with.

Download a Complimentary Guide to Decoding Your Child's Secret Online Language

CUL8R. LMIRL. PAW. GNOC. Is this an alien language, or just language that is alien to you?

Kids have quickly adopted a secret form of communication (an Internet Lingo) that consists of abbreviated words and phrases that they use to code their conversations. With SpectorSoft's new "Parent's Guide to Internet Lingo" you can now decode this secret language and know EXACTLY what your children are discussing with friends online.

Best of all... it's absolutely FREE!

Download the FREE "Parent's Guide to Internet Lingo"

Can you decode these common phrases? Take the Internet Lingo QUIZ

WARNING THIS GUIDE CONTAINS POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE AND SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE CONTENT THAT IS REPRESENTATIVE OF CHAT LANGUAGE USED BY KIDS ONLINE.
Just in case you were wondering: CUL8R = See You Later, LMIRL = Let's Meet In Real Life, PAW = Parents Are Watching, GNOC = Get Naked On Cam.