Discount Computers

Hardly a day goes by when you don’t hear about a computer virus
in the news or from someone you know. As a matter of fact, there
are well over 8,000 active computer viruses in the world in any
given twenty-four period and 5 new viruses are introduced daily.
The majority of computers will catch a virus through an e-mail
attachment or link. Most viruses will use an infected computers
address book to distribute themselves, so you are much more
likely to receive a virus from someone you know rather than a
total stranger.

However, the best way to identify whether or not any attachment
could be a potential virus hazard is by looking at the extension
(suffix) of the attached file. Hazardous file attachments are
..pif, .exe, .com, .vbs, .bat, .bin, .dot, .reg, .js, .scr, .xlm
and .dll. While this list is by no means exhaustive these are
the definite ones to be on-guard for. In case you’re wondering,
catching a virus by file sharing is the second most popular way
to get infected. File sharing whether you use removable disks,
CDs, DVDs, memory cards/sticks or even synch cables can make
your “never connected to the Internet” computer, vulnerable to
catching a virus.

Protecting your computer from a computer virus infection is
relatively easy if you follow these simple steps:

1. Put anti-virus software on all your computers whether they
are Internet connected or not.

2. Don’t open or download file attachments (attached files) in
your e-mails. Especially the ones with the extensions .pif,
..exe, .com, .vbs, .bat, .bin, .dot, .reg, .js, .scr, .xlm and
..dll.

3. Don’t click on links in the body of your e-mails.

4. Don’t download software from web sites that you do not know.

5. Never install software on your computer unless you know
where it came from.

6. Run a manual anti-virus scan for every 24 hours you use your
computer.

7. Be sure that your anti-virus software is up-to-date. All
anti-virus software products usually provide updates every 2 – 4
weeks and this service is free of charge to registered users for
up to a year.

8. Received an e-mail from someone you know but didn’t expect
them to send you a file attachment? Call the person first,
before downloading or opening the file attachment to confirm
that it really came from them. Some virus programs are very good
at making it look like they are just files sent to you from
someone in yours or your friends e-mail address book.

9. Put firewall software on all your computers that are
temporarily or permanently connected to the Internet.

If you follow these simple steps you should be able to stop a
virus before it infects your computer.

About the author:
Dr. Robert Ing is a forensic intelligence specialist and has
appeared on North American news networks on the issues of
technology crime, computer security, privacy and identity theft.
For more articles by Dr. Robert Ing please visit

Your customer data is a precious resource that can literally be
worth its weight in gold! If used properly, it can be repeatedly
mined for additional sales and referrals. Do you use this gold
mine to increase the profitability of your business?

You should! It can mean the difference between business survival
and failure.

Why then do so few business owners take the time to ensure that
it is adequately protected? Are we too busy? Perhaps you just
did not know how to protect it, or could not afford the software
and hardware required to back up your data correctly.

Ask yourself these questions:

Is there anything more important to my business than my customer
data? What would happen to my business if I were to loose all of
my data?

Consider this common scenario. A client calls frantic that she
would loose her business if she could not recover her customer
data. She had over five years of information on her computer
when the hard drive decided to make her life interesting.

So what are her choices? Renter the data manually, if she has
any hard copies available. Call everyone and ask for his or her
contact information again, will not that make him or her feel
secure about your company. Alternatively, you could call a data
recovery technician. Their services can start at a thousand
dollars and go up rapidly from there!

Windows XP provides a fully functional backup utility, free! In
fact, many of the commercial backup products use this backup to
save the data. All you are paying for is the user interface, the
window into which you enter information.

Before you run the setup wizard, you need to answer a few
questions.

What data do I need to backup?

Only backup data that is necessary. Use the KISS (Keep It Simple
Silly) method. Your customer database and correspondence should
be backed up as a minimum.

How often do I want to back up my data?

How often does your customer data change? Does a significant
amount of data change on a daily basis? Weekly?

Where do I want to store my data backup?

Most data backups still use a tape drive to store the data. The
problem is that they cost a fortune! The tapes alone are
expensive. Alternatives are to store your data backup on another
computer on your network or copy it to a CD or DVD writable disk.

Ok, so you want to backup your data. What now? Before we do that
review the table below:

Full Backup Copies and stores a complete duplicate of your data
every time it runs. Takes the most time to run and the most
storage space. Quickest data recovery feature. Easiest!

Incremental Backup Copies and stores only data changed since the
last backup. Must be combined with a full backup, and any other
incremental backups. Most complicated.

Deferential Backup Copies and stores data changed since the last
full backup. Must be combined with a full backup and the last
deferential backup. Middle of the road.

If you have a relatively small amount of data, I would suggest a
daily full backup. If you have a larger amount of data, you
might combine the full backup with a deferential backup. Simple
huh?

The next question is how to store the data backup. Even though
it takes a little extra work, I have my clients back their data
up to a DVD writable disk. First, set the wizard to back the
data up to a folder. Usually this folder is on another computer.
Then burn this data to a DVD burner and place the disk it in a
secure location for retrieval as necessary.

If you do not feel comfortable setting this up yourself, any
competent PC technician can do it for you. If you want to do it
yourself, click on the following link and it will take you to a
tutorial located on my website.

WINDOWS BACKUP WIZARD TUTORIAL

Whether you do the setup yourself or have it setup by a
professional technician you are taking the first step in
ensuring the long-term survival of your business. Please take
the time to do this.

Ultimately your customers do not care how or why you lost their
information, they just care that you did. I will leave you with
this statistic:

Estimates suggest that 80% of small businesses that suffer a
serious computer failure cease trading within two years. Will
yours be one of them?

About the author:
Rick Parrott, MCP – SA Secure, a San Antonio Texas company
specializing in desktop support and help desk services for small
to medium businesses. Our goal is to provide an alternative to
maintaining an expensive in-house IT staff or relying on many
different individual computer repair technicians. Visit our
website: http://www.sasecure.net

Most small business networks grow and evolve as the business
grows. In one way, this is good. It shows the business is
growing, becoming stronger. Unfortunately, from a network
perspective, it can be a disaster in the making.

Most small business networks are setup in a peer-to-peer (P2P)
format. In contrast, large corporate networks are setup in a
domain format. What does this mean to you?

First, let us define the two network formats. In a P2P format
every PC is responsible for its own security access. Basically,
each PC is equal to every other PC in the network. These
networks generally consist of less than ten computers and
require a large amount of administrative overhead to function
securely.

In this format the attitudes of the user population is of prime
importance. If they have a high level of security conscience
then your network will be more secure, if they don’t your
network will be wide open to insider exploitation.

You can see the problem. Ten computers and ten administrators
equal little accountability.

In a domain system there is a single point of administration,
your network administrator. He is responsible for maintaining
the network.

A network setup in this format consists of at least one server,
a domain controller, to administrator the rest of the network.
This domain controller manages user and computer access, freeing
the network administrator from the necessity of touching every
PC in the network.

When a user logs onto her PC in a P2P network she only
authenticates on it, in a domain system it is a little more
complicated.

In a domain system she logs onto her computer, her login ID is
first checked with the domain controller. If it is found she is
granted access to the network resources assigned to her. Then
she is allowed to log on to her desktop. If her ID isn’t found
then she only has access to her local PC.

Now that you know a little about the two network structures you
can see the advantages of the domain design.

As stated earlier this format requires planning to achieve. You
must sit down and outline what you want your network to
accomplish.

Consider what access your users really need to do their jobs. In
the computer security world this is called granting the least
amount of access required to do the job. Do your sales reps
really need access to your financial files? What about external
vendors?

All of this needs to be thought out and addressed.

Here’s an example of how I setup a small sales organization.
This business consisted of about eight employees and the two
owners. With the assistance of the owners we defined three user
groups.

The owners group was granted full and complete access, while
each of the other groups received lesser and different accesses.
The admin group received access to the financial and
administrative functions, and the sales groups receive assess to
the sales and customer management data. Specifically, they were
excluded from the financial and administrative and the owner’s
functions.

Additionally, we setup auditing of both successful and
unsuccessful attempts to view certain types of data. We did this
to add a layer of accountability to the network. This increases
the security of their customer’s data because we can now tell
who and when the data was accessed.

Network security personnel know that most network security
breaches occur from the inside! In my experience most small
businesses use the P2P format because it is the easiest to
implement and because they don’t know the security compromises
they are working under.

This can be a ticking time bomb for your business. Eventually,
you will experience a security lapse that could land you in
court.

For instance, you have an employee leave your business. This
employee downloaded all of your customer data before he left.
Next, he sells this data to someone who uses it to steal the
identity of several of your customers. Eventually, this theft is
discovered and traced back to your employee.

Your former customers in fully justifiable outrage take you to
court charging you with negligence. Specifically, they hold you
responsible for failing to safeguard their personal information.
Your case will be much stronger if you can show you have
positive control of your network. You can point out your
security procedures. Employee logon auditing, security updates,
acceptable use agreements, etc. In short you can show that you
have taken the steps that a reasonable person would take to
secure your network and customer data.

Hopefully, your lawyer can then place the blame directly where
it belongs. On the employee who stole the information in the
first place. Ask you attorney about this! Don’t just take my
work for it, I’m not a lawyer.

Remember, network security is a result of through planning, not
hap hazard improvisation. Give your network the same attention
you give to the rest of your business.

If you do not have the skills or the time to be your own network
administrator, you can contract with someone to handle this for
you on a part-time basis. Just make sure they are reputable, you
are putting your business in their hands.

About the author:
Rick Parrott, MCP – SA Secure, a San Antonio Texas company
specializing in desktop support and help desk services for small
to medium businesses. Our goal is to provide an alternative to
maintaining an expensive in-house IT staff or relying on many
different individual computer repair technicians. We have over a
decade of experience in both the Government and Private business
sector. Visit our website: http://www.sasecure.net