In response to our customer’s needs we have created everything from business blogs to simple “web brochure” sites to full-featured eCommerce sites, all using WordPress. Here’s a link to our WordPress Support page.

Once your web site set built on the WordPress platform, changing content and adding features is a complete breeze. All the management functions are menu-driven and best of all, you don’t have to learn how to code HTML. (see video below)

Examples of our work

A professional photographer’s business blog: NINASUTHERLAND.COM/BLOG

A business web site providing information and service: CATALARMS.COM

An eCommerce site: COMPUTERFORMS.US

…and of course, our own site: DOMEX.COM

DEFCON, now in its 19th year is an annual gathering of roughly 8,000 hackers and computer security professionals where talks are given on a wide range of subjects. The conference is also frequently attended by representatives of the CIA, FBI, NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and various other alphabet soup government agencies.

EDIT: Full talk including slides are available here.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You do backup your company’s data right? Right?! If not, here’s a sobering statistic to consider: 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster. I’ll spare you the other statistics but I assure you, the end results of not backing up are just as ugly as the one above.

Choosing the right backup system for your business is as important as choosing reliable hardware for your server and choosing the right network operating system for your information infrastructure.

These days there are many options to choose from but there are a couple of important points to keep in mind:

1. Redundancy is key: Backing up your data is all about having a disaster recovery plan. In effect, your backup system should be designed so that if you drive up to your office building one morning and are met with the sight of a concrete pad where your building used to be (think September 11th, 2001), you could replace your server hardware and be back up and running the same day. One way to ensure this is to have multiple generations of backup media. For instance, we recommend that our clients backup everything, everyday. While this may not be feasible for clients with very large data storage requirements, it works for the majority of businesses.  When a tape backup system is installed, we recommend that a client have 2-weeks worth of backup tapes that are in constant rotation, divided into two backup sets. This way if a few backup tapes were to fail, it’s not a big deal.  One set is kept offsite in a safe place, like a bank vault. The other set should be kept on-site in a fireproof enclosure of some kind.
As an aside, every once in a while a client asks the question, “Isn’t tape backup considered old technology?” The answer is no. Tape technology can hold more data in a smaller form-factor than hard disks and tape is relatively cheap to buy. Also, wait one-year and try to buy the same hard drives you bought for your backup system. Because of technology advancements, I guarantee you will not be able to whereas you WILL be able to buy the exact tape cartridges to replace failed ones in the same time frame.

2. Use good backup software: The easier it is for your server administrators to check backup logs and interact with the backup system, the more likely it is that they will know if something is amiss with the backup system and they will be able to recover data faster and more reliably.

In the same vein, consider this word of caution: If your IT Services vendor delivers a quote for a new server solution and they don’t include a backup system of some kind, you should probably consider using a different IT Services company.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Recently a long time customer of mine completely jumped the gun and ordered a file-server all by himself from a local “white box” distributor to replace one that had been running solid for 8 years 24/7/365. Here’s why that’s typically a bad idea; This distributor has no idea what my customer intends to use the server for and does not provide technical support directly to the customer.

What precipitated this “jumping of the gun” is that one of the mirrored hard disks (RAID 1) failed after 8 years of faithful service. The server is a lower-end Dell Poweredge server running Novell Netware 6.5 and simply has been running rock-solid for that long without so much as a reboot. The only time it was shut down was due to an extended power failure because of a hurricane and this one hardware failure.

We like to design customer networks with longevity like this in mind. When we ask a customer to spend $2500+ on a server that everyone in the office uses all day, every day, we expect it to last 8-10 years without any issues.

After reading the specifications of the server that the customer sourced himself, on the advice of the “white-box” supplier, it became clear that this “server” was really a glorified desktop computer with mirrored hard drives. In fact, it was supplied with Windows XP because my customer was told that “it would work.”

Let’s get this straight. “It will work” and “uninterrupted service for 8-10 years” is two completely different things. Windows XP is not designed to run like that. In fact, Microsoft expects that a computer running Windows XP will be rebooted on a regular basis. Also, a common “fix” for random, unexplainable Microsoft operating system behavior is to “reboot the system.” This is absolutely NOT what you want running on the main computer in your office.

Another reason we recommend that a customer purchase server-class hardware is that Microsoft Windows Server is usually certified by the manufacturer to run in a solid manner on this hardware. By “solid” I mean, no regular rebooting required, no race conditions in the hardware and no memory leaks in the software drivers. Certification like this is a result of testing the hardware with specific operating system software. Typically white-box hardware is NOT subjected to testing like this and as a result, you may or may not get a system that runs reliably.

Also, for the record, we typically do not install Microsoft Windows Server unless it’s absolutely necessary but that’s a story for another blog post. Stay tuned.

1. Stop using Internet Explorer: There is better browser software available at no charge that has better features, displays web sites better and is generally faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Not to mention, some exploits that certain websites use to invade your Windows computer just won’t work on other browsers. We recommend the following browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Opera.
2. Stop using Microsoft Outlook: A large percentage of malware and viruses are spread via spam email messages. Because Microsoft Outlook (and Outlook Express) is the most widely used email client software, it is targeted the most by virus writers. If you have no choice but to use Outlook, at least be sure to use a good anti-virus package such as AVG Anti-virus, Panda Anti-virus, Kaspersky Anti-virus, etc. You can also use another email program such as Mozilla Thunderbird. Our favorite.
3. Install Windows Updates: Keeping Microsoft Windows updated with the latest security fixes is immensely important. We recommend that you enable automatic updates in Windows and install the updates with prompted. Even though Microsoft’s Windows security model is severely lacking at least they make an attempt to patch their software on a regular basis.
4. Install Anti-Virus Software: Protecting your computer with anti-virus software is required if you’re using Microsoft Windows. We recommend AVG Free, Panda Anti-Virus or Kaspersky Anti-virus software. There are other choices like Norton anti-virus or McAfee but in our opinion these anti-virus packages are too cumbersome and will slow your computer down. Not to mention, some of them (McAfee) behave like viruses themselves when you try to remove them. Also, be sure to keep your anti-virus package definitions updated. Most of them will do this automatically.
5. Use Common Sense: If you receive an email from someone you don’t know especially with an attachment, delete it without opening it. If you access a web site that looks like it was quickly thrown together, that is, not professionally designed, close it. If you access a web site that pops-up a window informing you that you have a virus. Kill the browser processing using Windows Task Manager.
6. Use Spybot Search & Destroy: Running regular scans with Spybot will remove any spyware that exists on your computer and protect it from further infection. Be sure to also update Spybot regularly.

Following these basic guidelines will dramatically reduce your exposure to Windows viruses and malware in general.

The reason, arguably, is that Microsoft Internet Explorer is notoriously insecure. Not to mention, web sites do not display properly sometimes on Internet Explorer. This is by design. In Microsoft’s perfect dream world, all users would be viewing web sites with Microsoft Internet Explorer which are being served by Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) web server and the site would be written in Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) scripting language.

Fortunately for all of us, this is not how the internet works nor was it intended to work this way which is why we typically recommend Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is fast and extensible. When it springs a security “leak” it’s usually fixed very quickly.

By far, the most popular browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox. While these browsers are fine for everyday use, there ARE other web browsers out there and you can take a look at their features and usage statistics at Wikipedia’s browser comparison page.

This page includes pretty much every browser you can think of and compares the native functionality of each one. The information is extensive and detailed but unfortunately it can be a little hard to follow since there is so much information. But, if you want to see what browser supports a certain feature, this is a great resource.

While this might sound like older hardware (it actually is) the fact that it’s still running strong is a testament to IBM’s server-class computers and the rock-solid nature of Novell Netware.

This server was purchased about 10 years ago and contained all the newest technology at the time. It uses what I like to call “redundant everything.” It has redundant, hard disks (4), processors (2), memory (2GB, Chipkill) and power supplies (2).

What surprised me is when I glanced at the server’s console screen the “uptime” metric read 1,097 days! That’s a little over 3 years of never being shut down.  I think the last time it was shut down was after a hurricane hit the area and the power was out for about 10-days on a stretch.

Because of examples like this, we always like to recommend IBM servers because we know they will last and run solidly for our customers in the long term. However, these days we recommend OpenSUSE Linux as the operating system. Free, solid and flexible.

The add-on allows you to export your saved passwords and login hosts to an XML or CSV file that can then be imported into another browser or computer.

Be sure to not keep the export files available for anyone to access as the data is stored in non-encrypted plain text. When you are finished with these files, be sure to securely delete them, preferably using a secure deletion application.

The new 9.0 edition is faster, safer and easier to use. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition gives you free rock solid protection for your basic security needs. The combined anti-virus/anti-spyware scanner in AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition runs up to 50% faster than earlier versions and doesn’t get in your way. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition also delivers new anti-phishing detection techniques, which can quickly and accurately determine whether or not a web page is hosting a phishing attack. Additionally, version 9.0 comes with basic anti-rootkit protection to ensure protection against sophisticated hidden threats.

AVG 9 supports Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. In the near future, we will be recommending that all our clients perform this upgrade. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, feel free to contact us and we’ll get it taken care of quickly. Click here for the upgrade.

Although not feature-packed, Sumatra PDF is blazingly fast and useful enough to do the job. It makes you wonder why Adobe Reader is so “heavy” for what it is. Just a PDF document reader.

Try it out. I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.