This blog is left behind for reference. It is where we tested the SEO process and put great information.
The full blog is now written directly at the main website:
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As mentioned in detail in our other blog, Firefox has been updated to v15. If you have not seen a Firefox update recently, please use the Help pull-down menu and choose About. There is an update button there for Windows PC users. Click on the link and read up on Cyber Crime in Russia and Adobe updates.
Here is an interesting Info Graph of Russia Cyber Criminals from infosecisland blog:
Dropbox, while helpful to the online community, is often abused by security experts for being insecure. Dropbox is not necessarily much more than an online USB key.
Dropbox has been both helpful to many and criticized by security experts. This service, a type of cloud service that is free for the first 2GB, per registered user, is excellent for being a general backup for students and for anyone who has information they would like to move between devices, like photos and large documents.
While it NEVER professes to be a secure service – this company has been reliable and they are interested in improving their security quality. For a general repository of PDF documents, large documents and things that we don’t care if others see, Dropbox has been a very helpful service to many. Additionally, as mentioned in previous posts of this blog, Dropbox can be used to store encrypted password databases like Zatetec Strip and 1Password, which IS a secure solution. These databases are already encrypted, so if stolen, they have no value to the thief. For a more complicated means of encryption, people can download and install a <2GB TruCrypt container in their Dropbox account as well.
In an effort to bring more security to this service, as mentioned by Brian Krebs on his famous security blog, Dropbox just introduced two factor verification. This is good news for those who keep private information off the service but want to provide slightly more security to their Dropbox account for free.
Server and desktop upgrades were a slow going part of the ancient past. (Ancient meaning three years ago.) Today, without the process of constant upgrading and patching, an enterprise could immediately fall prey to endless infections, which in turn leads to identification theft, intellectual property theft, and the potential for the complete demise of a business, let alone a simple deadline.
To underscore the importance of these updates, Adobe, Skype and others banded together earlier this year to express the importance of these regular updates.
Linda Summers at Skype blog posted this article explaining how infrequently people upgrade their machines. This study is just as important for enterprise environments as it is for a person use policy.
Adobe Bloggers also wrote a specific blog post about International Technology Upgrade Week and the findings of this study. The blog post explains:
Earlier today, Skype—joined by Norton by Symantec and TomTom—kicked off “International Technology Upgrade Week,” a global initiative to encourage consumers to regularly download and install software updates. We’d like to chime in and express our support for this important initiative. Keeping software up-to-date is probably the single-most important advice we can give to users—consumers and businesses alike.
In preparation for International Technology Upgrade Week, Skype commissioned a survey of American, British and German consumers, which revealed the following findings:
- 40 percent of adults don’t always update software on their computers when initially prompted to do so.
- Approximately one quarter of those surveyed said they don’t clearly understand what software updates do, and an equal percentage don’t understand the benefits of updating.
- While 75 percent of adults receive update notifications from their software, more than half admitted that they needed to see a prompt between two and five times before downloading and installing the update.
Also wanted to mention the Norton Blog posting concerning the event as well. Marian Merritt posted in their community forums this article, and mention this warning:
Or consider Norton security software as another example; it simply can’t do its job defending you against the newest threats or latest viruses unless you allow the automatic updating feature to do its work. In fact, helping you keep your software up-to-date is such a big deal at Norton that starting this fall, our engineers have figured out how to make it all happen in the background, silently, and without having to restart your computer for new features to take effect. Keeping you safe with the latest protection is priority #1!
While trying to figure out if email is not being sent in Outlook 2010, following these steps is very helpful to resolve the problem.
Email server is offline
Sometimes Outlook can’t send your messages because your email server is offline–whether an email server at work or online. If that’s the case, keep working! As soon as it comes online, Outlook will send all the messages in your Outbox in a second or two.
You’ll know your server is offline if you see “Disconnected” in the Status bar.
When you’re up and running, it will say “Connected.”
Many clients are caught with email that will not send. Often it is related to the size of the email attachment. While Adobe offers ways to reduce the size of the PDF, photos and jpeg’s are often confusing to resize. Outlook 2010 fixes this, through the following steps:
Picture files attached within Outlook
When you add attachments in Outlook, you can reduce picture attachments on a per-message basis. When you choose to resize large images, any attached image is reduced to a maximum resolution of 1024×768 pixels
Note If you embed the picture in the message body — the picture appears in the message — by using the Picture command in the Illustrations group, the image attachment resize feature is not available.
- Create a new e-mail message in Outlook.
- On the Insert tab, in the Include group, click Attach File.
Tip You can also drag and drop a picture from Windows Explorer. The picture file will be attached to the e-mail message.
- In the message window, click the File tab.
- Under Image Attachments, click Resize large images when I send this message.
- Click the Message tab to return to your message.
- When you are finished composing your e-mail message, click Send.
An interesting finding from Symantec that hackers are interested in businesses that have 250 or less employees. It can be deduced that smaller companies don’t think about enterprise level security on the networks, mobile devices nor domain end-points.
According to the study:
In the first six months of the year, more than a third of targeted attacks on businesses were pointed toward companies with fewer than 250 employees. That was twice the percentage of attacks aimed at similar sized companies at the end of 2011, Symantec said in its mid-year Intelligence Report.
A targeted attack is one that’s tailored to a specific company. Cybercriminals customize malware to particular vulnerabilities and use information gathered publicly — or stolen from other companies — to create emails with malicious attachements that have a higher chance of being opened by employees. That type of social engineering has proved successful despite corporate efforts to bolster security training and warn workers away from opening potentially dangerous emails.
