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Posted by stuart.gilbertson

Goodbye Internet Explorer 6.0

Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6.0. The Microsoft browser that is still widely (read: wrongly) used in a lot of big businesses today has been identified as the biggest risk in cyber attacks on the search engine. Google announced that certain services, like Google Docs, would not “work properly” within the browser.

Following Google’s revelations, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed. Around 20% of web users still use the nine-year old browser, including many UK government departments. The online campaign ie6nomore, supported by more than 70 web firms, says that because the browser does not support modern web standards it restricts what developers can do and is “holding the web back”. Microsoft has said
that it will support the browser until 2014.

Google is not alone is trying to get people to stop using IE 6, and upgrade to a newer browser. Even Microsoft itself has been trying to push people to upgrade the browser. Google’s decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well in order to get full Gmail-based features while accessing business email accounts via a web browser.

Fancy a real, up to date, secure browser? www.GetFirefox.com

February 1, 2010
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Firefox 3.6 live and final!

Mozilla, the company that produces the Firefox browser, has released the final version of Firefox 3.6. Studies suggest that over 75% of the thousands of addons available for Firefox will be compatible with the latest version.

Firefox is an open source, fast Internet browser. It’s faster than Internet Explorer 8. So if you’re fed up waiting on pages to load, maybe it’s time to change.

Firefox can be downloaded FREE for Windows, Mac and Linux from http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/

January 22, 2010
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Microsoft’s Word trial upheld: Microsoft lose.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a $290m patent infringement judgment against Microsoft, won by Toronto-based software company i4i in Texas. It alleges Microsoft’s software infringed on its patents that cover extensible markup language technology.

Microsoft must remove custom-XML editing from Word or face a permanent injunction barring the company from selling recent versions of the software, a federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled.

Microsoft has been given until January 11 to remove the custom XML functionality — five months from the original August 2009 ruling, according to Bloomberg.

With the failure of the appeal Microsoft must now pay i4i damages of $290m (£182m) and comply with an injunction ending the sales of some versions of Word.

Versions of the software sold before that date, including Word 2003 and Word 2007, will not be hit by the ruling.

Microsoft was accused by i4i of infringing on a 1998 XML patent in its Word 2003 and Word 2007 programs.  Word uses XML, or the Extensible Markup Language, to open .XML, .DOCX, and .DOCM files. The initial ruling in the court dispute between i4i and Microsoft was made in August. At that time Microsoft was found to have infringed the i4i patent and the Canadian firm was awarded damages.

Sources: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/22/microsoft_loses_word_patent_appeal/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8427474.stm

December 23, 2009
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Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance and Personnel agrees to improve data security

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has found Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance and Personnel in breach of the Data Protection Act after approximately 37,000 people’s personal details were stolen. Stephen Peover, the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Finance and Personnel, has signed a formal Undertaking to improve data security.

The ICO, the UK’s privacy watchdog, understands that some of the 37,000 records contained sensitive personal information. The details included payroll, employment and health data, although not all records contained these categories of information.  Approximately 900 records contained bank details. The Department of Finance and Personnel informed the ICO that 12 of its laptops had been stolen and that two of  these contained personal information. The laptops were secured to desks or stored in locked cabinets.

If your business uses sensitive data (Clients or employees), then you need to be sure your data is safe.  Why not contact us for a free, no obligation session to determine where the weaknesses are in your IT procedures.

Is your business in this situation? Let us give you a call to help you now!

Request a Call-Back

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December 21, 2009
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Shropshire Council found in breach of the Data Protection Act

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has found Shropshire Council in breach of the Data Protection Act following the loss of an unencrypted memory stick containing sensitive information relating to a large number of adult social care clients and members of staff.

The memory stick, which contained a social care management database including sensitive health information, was lost during a postal transfer from the council’s office to a contractor in Cardiff. The ICO has established that the memory stick also contained records that were excessive for their purpose and out of date.

Mick Gorrill, Assistant Information Commissioner, said: “It is essential that organisations ensure the correct safeguards are in place when storing and transferring personal information, especially when it relates to such sensitive issues Information must be kept safe, secure and up to date – these are important”

If your business uses sensitive data (Clients or employees), then you need to be sure your data is safe.  Why not contact us for a free, no obligation session to determine where the weaknesses are in your IT procedures.

Is your business in this situation? Let us give you a call to help you now!

Request a Call-Back

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December 21, 2009
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Stay Safe this Christmas

Don’t get caught out by fraudlent online shops this Christmas! Use our 7 Checks to verify the shop is genuine and stay safe!

Christmas is a fantastic time of the year, but it’s also a fantastic time of the year for fraudsters and criminals. Websites spring up online enticing you to buy products at extremely low prices, they look too good to be true, and they usually are! Last year,  between 1st October and 31st December a record £15.2bn was spent online.

Follow our 7 tips to keep safe this Christmas:

1. Check the company’s telephone number
Not all online retailers will have one, but most reputable ones will have a telephone number visible on their site. If they don’t, be suspicous.

Don’t just glance at the telephone number: check it works. Give them a call, and make sure it is the company that answers. If it’s not, run away!

2. Check the company’s address
By law, all online retailers must display the name of their business, and their business address on their website. If you can’t see one, the site is probably a scam!

3. Check their company number
All the big companies will be registered at Companies House (the UK’s official register of all companys in Britain). If they’re not, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re fraudulent. Look out for their company number on their site, if they’re registered they must display this prominantly. Our company number is SC320341, try searching us on Companies House and verifying our details as a practice!

Check their details online using Companies House free Web Check service here: http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/info

4. Check their VAT number
Again, not all businesses will be registered for VAT. These numbers are not just 9 digits long, they have a meaning! You can check that a VAT number is valid by using this site: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vieshome.do

It’s important to remember however, that the fraudulent website may simply lift a valid and genuine VAT number from another company. The link given above only verifies the VAT number is valid, it does not provide details of the company it is registered to!

5. Check the encryption certificate
When it comes to putting in your personal details (usually at the checkout stage) you want to make sure the site’s owners are keeping that information safe. If you don’t see a “padlock” in Internet Explorer or the “blue bar” in FireFox, then be scepticle about the validity of the site you’re on.

The Internet Explorer Padlock: The FireFox Blue Bar:

Having a secure connection doesn’t guarantee the identity of the company however. You can click on the padlock or the blue bar for more information about the company, or who they claim to be. If the information in the Certificate (the information you see when clicking on the padlock or blue bar) doesn’t match up with the site you’re on, run away!

6. Domain Name
The website’s domain name tells you a lot about the company – if you know where to look. The website http://whois.domaintools.com will give you a plethora of information about the website, and the country it’s hosted in (see point 7). Pop in the domain name (without the www part, so www.easypcscotland.co.uk becomes just easypcscotland.co.uk) on the Domain Tools website and you’ll be presented with the registrant’s name and address. If you’re not shown these details, be scepticle!

7. Website Location
Almost all well-known UK based retailers will have their online sites hosted from a server in the United Kingdom. You can check this using the same method as point 6 above, but this time after typing in the domain name, click the Server Stats tab.

In the Server Stats tab of the Domain Tools website, you’ll see the IP address and more importantly, the IP Address Location. Domain Tools also shows you a flag of the country, and the name of the country the site is hosted in. If Domain Tools tells you the site is hosted in Poland, or Russia, and you’re not shopping on a Polish or Russian site, then you guessed it! Run away like crazy!

We’ve tried to keep it simple…
By only giving 7 tips to remember, it should be relatively easy for you to stay alert when buying online this Christmas.

If you’re on a site, and you don’t know if it’s genuine or not, give us a call: 0131 516 8456. During December, we’re giving any customer who is unsure about the validity of an eCommerce site a second opinion completely free of charge!

We obviously cannot guarantee a site is 100% genuine, but we’ll do our best. And as long as you don’t take us to court if we get it wrong, we’ll be more than happy to help you for nothing!

Stay safe this Christmas!

December 7, 2009
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Types of Storage

Fed up of hearing your IT Support provider talking about DAS, NAS, and SAN and not having a clue what any of them mean? Our quick overview gives you a real, down-to-earth example of each.

DAS
The most common type of data storage system, DAS (Direct-attached Storage), ranges from disks inside servers to USB drives. This is a cheap and easy storage method, but has drawbacks. DAS can only be utilisied on a single server adn you will usually be left with lots of unused storage space as a result.

USB storage devices are not currently fast enough to be used for major server related tasks and should only be considered for archiving or backing up data.

One benefit of DAS type sotrage is the ease of configuring them in a RAID (a way of ensuring redundancy between multiple disks and/or merging them to form one big disk space).

NAS
Network Attached Storage was designed as the cheaper version of a SAN system (we’ll cover this next). A NAS system usually comes in the form of its own box with an embedded operating system managing it. These are usually used for standard backup procedures and sometimes come with software to assist in this. The ability to back up from multiple servers and desktops is also presented when using NAS type storage systems.

The drawback is that it is not exceptionally scalable. The drives might not be able to be upgraded easily (or at all!) and allowing for a larger capacity might not be available. Another problem is that the network port on the box will not usually exceed 1GB Ethernet, meaning that you’re almost certainly going to have a bottleneck when you start to use the NAS system with more than a few computers on a regular basis.

SAN
The Daddy of all storage provisions. Storage Area Networking (SAN) allows you to take all your storage requirements and throw them into one place. The system creates a virtual layer over the top of the hardware making the physical hard disks transparent in the system.

The first major drawback is the associated costs in purchasing a SAN system. For a small SAN implementaiton, you’d be looking at around £20,000 just for the equipment and licencing.

Over the last few years, virtualisation products allowing you to make the disks transparent has become cheaper and more widely available, and it wont be long until SAN prices come down.

Our Thoughts
For a small business, there is probably no real need for a SAN system. The costs of implementing such a system usually outweigh the benefits, and businesses should focus on ensuring their servers do as much backup work as possible.

The price of standard hard disks has come down significantly over the last five years, and the amount of data you can store on each has exponentially risen. As a result, we’d suggest looking at hardware-based RAID solutions and fast hard disk drives to solve your backup and data archiving problems.

October 11, 2009
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