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Working Nets
June 6, 2013

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #5: One Dead Server; One Unlucky Company

Tags: , IT Tips Baltimore

Remember the old saying, “It is better to be safe than sorry?” I think they may have been talking about Disaster Recovery. How important is disaster recovery? Of companies that experience major data loss, 51% close within 2 years, while 43% never recover. So let me reiterate my previous statement; it is better to be safe than sorry! It is much better to sit down and take the time to put a disaster recovery plan together now than it is to freak out when disaster strikes.

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #5: One Dead Serve; One Unlucky Company

After a very peaceful weekend, one IT employee came to the office hoping for a nice easy Monday. Instead, they were immediately confronted with Internet and email issues. After trying to troubleshoot the issue for a bit, the IT technician wandered back to the server room and to their horror found the server quiet, with no lights on. The fan responsible for cooling the server died. As a result, the server overheated and burned out the CPU and motherboard. And with no backups, the company was out of luck.

Just to think, this whole dilemma could have been easily avoided with Disaster Recovery Services from Working Nets in Baltimore, Maryland. We were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support they need to succeed. That is why Working Nets offers disaster recovery services to help assure that your vital business data is kept safe and secure if disaster strikes.

If you have any questions about Disaster Recovery, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Working Nets
May 28, 2013

Cybersecurity News: Chinese Hackers Access American Weapons Designs

Tags: , , Computer Security Baltimore

Citing “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat,” a report prepared for the Defense Department by the Defense Science Board, the Washington Post reports that Chinese Hackers have very recently accessed American Weapons Designs, including aspects of the nation’s missile defenses, fighter aircraft, and warships. Click Here for a full list of the compromised systems.

In a report to Congress earlier this month, the Pentagon stated that the United States government had been targeted by hackers that appeared to be “attributable directly to the Chinese government and military.”

“From the president on down, this has become a key point of concern and discussion with China at all levels of our governments—and it will continue to be,” said National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.

Of course Chinese officials have denied any involvement.

“China pays high attention to the cyber security issue and is firmly opposed to all forms of hacker attacks,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei. “Since it is very difficult to find out the origin of hacker attacks, it is very difficult to find out who carried out such attacks. I don’t know what the evidence is for media to make such kinds of reports.”

President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next 10 days.

“I’m sure it will be a topic of discussion,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney of the recent hacking.

“Cybersecurity is one of this administration’s top priorities, and we have long said that we are concerned about cyber intrusions emanating from China,” said Laura Lucas, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “What we have been seeking from China is for it to investigate our concerns and to start a dialogue with us on cyber issues.”

If you have any questions about Cybersecurity, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Source:

  1. Chinese hackers breach key US weapons designs Yahoo! News
  2. Chinese hackers steal U.S. weapons systems designs, report says NBC News
Working Nets
May 24, 2013

Small Business Tips: Outsource IT Services to Save Money

Tags: , , IT industry

As a small business owner, you have one major obstacle: money. You have the drive and the willingness to go toe-to-toe with the big boys, but your wallet doesn’t quite have the same fight in it. Fortunately, there are several ways to enjoy the same benefits as those big businesses, but for a fraction of the price. The best way to do this is to Outsource IT Services.

Small Business Tips: Outsource IT Services to Save Money

  1. No In-House Employees: When you outsource IT services, you do not have to hire, train, and pay an in-house employee. Everything is handled off-site for much less than the salary of a full-time IT specialist.
  2. Proactive Support: Maintenance is the key to keeping your network up and running. Outsourced IT support helps catch problems before they occur, minimizing downtime and keeping your business productive.
  3. IT Experts: Outsourcing your IT services allows you to utilize a team of IT experts for less than you would pay a single in-house employee.
  4. Focus on Your Business: Business owners should focus on business, not IT. Let your outsourced IT services provider focus on IT while you focus on growing your business.
  5. Reinvest in Your Business: Outsourcing your IT services allows you to invest the funds that would otherwise be used to pay an in-house employee into another area of your business.
  6. New Technologies: Outsourced IT assessment and IT purchasing assistance services help your business find the right solutions for your hardware and software needs.

Welcome to Working Nets – your virtual IT Department!

At Working Nets, we provide top-notch IT services to companies of all shapes and sizes, companies like yours that don’t need a full-time, in-house IT employee. Our services include: System Setup & Support, Security & Disaster Preparedness, Managed Services Program, Guidance with Equipment Purchases, Network Design and Configuration, Troubleshooting, and Virus/Spyware Protection.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Working Nets
May 15, 2013

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #4: Baltimore Law Firm Takes a DIY Approach

Tags: , , Computer Security Baltimore

Sometimes good intentions don’t translate into good ideas. That is what happened when one Baltimore Law Firm decided to take a DIY Approach to Disaster Recovery. Every night, an employee of Baxter, Baker, Sidle, Conn & Jones took a hard drive home as a security precaution in case fire or flood. This storage device held a complete back-up copy of the firm’s data, including information about is cases and medical records, patient names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers and insurance information. Worst of all, the information was not encrypted.

Then, the inconceivable happened. One night while traveling on the Baltimore light rail, the employee accidently left the hard drive on the train. She returned for it 10 minutes later, but it was already gone.

“We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause you,” said the law firm in a letter to patients. “We have taken this seriously.”

Disaster Recovery Services from Working Nets in Baltimore, Maryland

Don’t try to take disaster recovery into your own hands. Trust the experts at Working Nets. We were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support they needed. That is why Working Nets offers disaster recovery services to help assure that your vital business data is kept safe and secure if disaster strikes.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Sources:

  1. Law firm loses hard drive with patient records Baltimore Sun
Working Nets
May 8, 2013

Email from Someone You Know, with the Wrong Email Address? Blame Facebook

Tags: , , IT Tips Baltimore

It seems to be happening more and more recently. People are receiving emails from people they know, but the email address doesn’t match. There is always a somewhat vague question associated with the email – “Have you seen this?” or “What do you think?” – and then a link.

Most people naturally assume that the person’s email account has been hacked. However, this is not the case. Notice that the name and email address do not match. If the account was hacked, the email would be coming from the correct address. Instead, these emails are spam. Somehow, someone accessed your friend or family member’s list of contacts and used this list to create emails that look like they came from someone trusted. This is known as Email Spoofing and is just another tactic used by spammers to mask the real origins of emails.

So how are these spammers finding your email address? It turns out that Facebook is the problem. Spammers were recently able to exploit a misconfiguration on Facebook that was fixed last week, according to Facebook.

“Recently, we discovered a single isolated campaign that was using compromised e-mail accounts to gain information scraped from Friend Lists due to a temporary misconfiguration on our site,” according to a statement from Facebook. “We have since enhanced our scraping protections to protect against this and other similar attacks and will continue to investigate this case further.”

Although spammers are no longer able to scrape new information from Facebook accounts, they still have access to the information obtained previously. This means that these spoof emails could continue for quite some time, until email providers are able to find the source of the spam and shut the spammers down.

The Moral of the Story: Be aware of vague messages and strange links. And if the “Reply To” email address doesn’t match the name, just delete the email. DO NOT OPEN THE LINK. In fact, never open a link you are unsure of.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Source:

Spam from “Friends” is Actually Result of Facebook Hole

Working Nets
May 2, 2013

Dealing with a Computer Virus: Avoid the Horror Stories with Managed IT Services

Tags: , , IT Tips Baltimore

Anyone with even the smallest amount of computer knowledge has a rough understanding of what a computer virus is. And we all know that Dealing with a Computer Virus can be a real nightmare, especially for business owners. This is because computer viruses are designed to corrupt programs and files. They embed themselves into the code of software, sitting and waiting until the program is installed and executed. Once this happens, the virus can quickly spread, infecting other applications and files on your computer.

In the end, a computer virus can cause your computer to crash, delete important files, or even render your computer inoperable. All of these are bad news for business owners, resulting in costly downtime. However, the scariest news of all may be how most computers become infected.

It is believed that close to 75% of all viruses are contracted through friendly means, which means that the virus came from a friend, co-worker, client, or other friendly individual. And as more and more computers are connected to the Internet every day, the risk of contracting a computer viruses every time you download software or accept an attachment in an e-mail also grows.

To help prevent your computer from contracting a virus, consider installing virus protection software. However, it is not just enough to install the software, you must also keep it up to date.

Additional tips to help you avoid the effects of computer viruses include:

  1. Never open an email or attachment from a suspicious address or name you do not recognize.
  2. Stay up to date on your virus software updates.
  3. Always back up your files.
  4. Act fast if your computer is ever infected.
  5. Trust Working Nets and Avoid the Horror Stories with Managed IT Services!

The virus protection we offer at Working Nets is top-notch and consistently updated, ensuring your business remains safe. We know computer and network performance is crucial to the success of your business. We were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Working Nets
April 25, 2013

Preparing for Disaster Recovery: It is Important to Have a Plan

Tags: , IT Tips Baltimore

While we certainly hope your business is never stricken by a disaster, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Remember, it is far easier to recover from a disaster if you have a plan in place. And it is much better to sit down and put a plan together now than after a disaster strikes and major data loss occurs.

You have probably seen us throw around this statistic before, but it is a good one. Of companies that experience major data loss, 51% close within 2 years, while 43% never recover.

Preparing for Disaster Recovery: It is Important to Have a Plan

  1. Backups:  Backups are not only cost-effective, but extremely important. You need to ensure that you are backing up everything – operating systems, applications, and data. Just make sure you store the backups off site. Otherwise, they could be affected and ruined by the same disaster plaguing your business.
  2. Recovery Tiers: Not every position within a company can handle downtime. Some have need zero or near-zero downtime. Because of this, it is important to create recovery tiers, which is a hierarchy of restoration. To accomplish this, most organizations use the following metrics: Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). RPO the frequency of backups. For example, a four-hour RPO dictates that the most recent backup can’t be more than four hours old. Meanwhile, RTO indicates how long after a disaster it takes to restore service. For example, a four-hour RTO means that systems must be back up and running four hours after an outage.
  3. Align Strategies with Business Strategy: It is not cost effective to treat every aspect of your business as critical. Because of this, your disaster recovery strategy must align with your business strategy. So what aspects of your business are most important to you and the future success of your business?
  4. Prepare for Recovery: The recovery phase is when you start getting everything back up and running. It may not be a permanent solution and performance may not be optimal, but it enables your business to get back on track. It is very similar to replacing a flat tire with a spare.
  5. Prepare for Restoration: The restoration phase is when you actually restore things to the way they were before.

Make sense? Need help?

Working Nets: Baltimore, Maryland Disaster Preparedness & Disaster Recovery Services

At Working Nets, we were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support. We know computer and network performance is crucial to success. That is why we offer disaster preparedness and disaster recovery services to help assure that your vital business data is kept secure if disaster strikes.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today!

Welcome to Working Nets – your virtual IT Department!

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Working Nets
April 17, 2013

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #3: Backups aren’t for the Birds

Tags: , , IT Tips Baltimore

Here at Working Nets, we have heard it all before. We know the excuses: “Disaster recovery is not important,” or “the plan we have in place is just fine.” Our personal favorite is: “I can’t afford disaster recovery.”

Can’t afford disaster recovery? We understand that running a small business is tough and profit margins are thin, especially in this economy, but the fact is that you cannot afford NOT to have a disaster recovery plan in place. You have heard us throw around the same statistic time and time again. Of companies that experience major data loss, 51% close within 2 years, while 43% never recover. These numbers are staggering! So why would a company even take the risk?

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #3: Backups aren’t for the Birds

A small chain pet store in the tri-state area was quickly outgrowing its current wed provider and was looking for web space, a database and a few e-mail boxes. The store opted for a monthly package that included a 10MB database, 100MB of disk space and 100GB of bandwidth. And it quickly became apparent that this would not be nearly enough. The company’s web provider suggested that they move to a dedicated server. Instead, the pet store chain opted to pay monthly overages and operate using insufficient bandwidth.

Upon investigating the reason for the company’s slow website, the web provider found that the shared database for this Web site – a 10MB file – was the database for the entire company. The website itself accounted for less than 5% of the total data in the database. The other 95% included POP sales registers, payroll, HR, inventory, tax records, and so much more! However, that is just the beginning.

The company had no backup system in place. And guess what happened? When working on the website, someone accidently erased EVERYTHING. The poor pet store chain was unable to recover and was forced to close every one of its stores.

If that pet store chain had simply implemented and followed a disaster recovery plan, this horror story could have been avoided. A disaster recovery plan can be the difference between the life and death of your business.

Baltimore Disaster Recovery Services

At Working Nets, we were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support they needed. That is why we offer disaster recovery services to help assure that your vital business data is kept secure if disaster strikes.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today!

Welcome to Working Nets – your virtual IT Department!

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+

dspigelman
April 17, 2013

Google’s Gmail and Google Apps are down!

Tags: , Community Service, IT industry

Update: As of about 10:15 am, things seem to be coming back online for Google Apps and Gmail.

 

Since about 8:00 am today, Google’s Gmail and Google Apps for Business mail are down. Twitter is abuzz with it. It’s beginning to show up in the search engines.

 

Note that it doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone, but many are complaining about it. Stay tuned – we’ll keep you posted.

Working Nets
April 12, 2013

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #2: What do Ants and Disaster Recovery have in Common?

Tags: , , IT industry

According to the “2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey,” 50% of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) have no disaster recovery plan in place.  Of the businesses, that do have a disaster recovery plan in place, 80% don’t have a reliable backup solution. So what’s keeping 80% of businesses from protecting their critical data? Well, at least 41% of SMBs just do not think it is important.

Let’s take a look at another company that didn’t think disaster recovery was important…

Disaster Recovery Horror Story #2: What do Ants and Disaster Recovery have in Common?

In 2007, a photographer in Thailand noticed a trail of ants. He followed this trail only to discover the ants had made their home in his external hard drive. So, the photographer did what anyone would do. He grabbed his bottle of ant spray and sprayed his pesky hard drive inhabitants.

The ants didn’t make it, and neither did the drive or the data.

Unfortunately, the photographer did not have any sort of disaster recovery plan in place and, as a result, lost all of his important business data.

Baltimore Disaster Recovery Services

At Working Nets, we were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support. We know computer and network performance is crucial to the success of your business. This is why we offer disaster recovery services to help protect your vital business data.

If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today!

Welcome to Working Nets – your virtual IT Department!

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.