Jan
01
Because worms and viruses are often spread through email, Gartner Web Development recommends multiple recipients not be placed in the ‘To:’ or ‘Cc:’ fields when emailing several people. When you place multiple recipients in the ‘To:’ or ‘Cc:’ field, all of the recipients receive the email addresses of all other recipients - as does anyone else that your message is forwarded to.
Typically, email based viruses and worms spread by scanning all files on the infected computer for email addresses. The virus then sends itself to all of the addresses that it finds. When we place multiple recipients in the ‘To:’ or ‘Cc:’ fields all of the recipients gain a larger profile to potential virus or worm exposure. Additionally, other malicious programs, including those that generate spam use a similar technique. Once an address is in a spam database, the amount of junk email that we receive in our inboxes can increase exponentially.
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Jul
22
Ask most people how to mitigate the security risks involved in connecting their computer to the internet, and they’ll usually suggest anti-virus software with current virus pattern updates and firewall protection. While these two things are an absolute must for all systems on your company network, and single systems connected to the internet, alike, there are other “attack vectors” that are often overlooked. First, let’s take a look at exactly what it is that we are securing by loosely defining the expectations of most businesses regarding computer resources.
What do you expect?
As a small business, we expect several things from our computers and computer networks. This is by no means a comprehensive list - just the basics:
- Increased employee productivity through data organization, centralizing documents, shared printers, etc. while facilitating the ability to work more efficiently as a team.
- Internet access for email, vendor and support web sites, research, and maybe a little surfing during one of those working lunches
- Protection of financial data, trade secrets, confidential employee data, customer data, etc.
- Verifiable regular backup of this valuable data
- Reliability and ease of use - we want it to work.
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Feb
02
We recently received our Microsoft Action Pack Vista “Upgrade”, and I was quite eager to test drive Window Vista Business Edition. Our accountant/marketing person has a pretty beefy system, so she was the perfect candidate for the upgrade… or so it seemed.
Here’s the recommended hardware requirements for Vista Business:
- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 GB of system memory
- 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
- WDDM Driver
- 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
- Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
- 32 bits per pixel
- DVD drive
- Sound Card
- Internet
Other than the graphics, these requirements aren’t a powerhouse by most standards, but they are more than adequate resources for most business uses. Note the requirement for a DVD drive, as opposed to a regular CD drive. Windows Vista only comes on DVD. In addition to the hardware considerations, the software and peripherals that your business is using need to be evaluated as well. After some research, it was determined that IE 7 and, consequently, Windows Vista, won’t work with Get the whole story »
Michelle Gartner - Co-Founder: