There are still many home and business users with terrible passwords. If you have a business with many users it’s a good idea to offer a password system. Mark McLaren over at McBuzz.com has posted a great reminder about security for WP sites and included a useful link about creating strong passwords.

Thank you to Alan Majer- his article with media illustration offers a nice visual way to explain social media.

“Why you need to embrace social media and how it can help your business grow? Social Media Marketing is a two way dialog and it is based on result oriented conversation for your customers. Watch this presentation to learn more:”

Consider promoting your name (and your business) if you are an Independent Tech, a Sales Professionals, or an Artist. Adding your profile to social media sites and business directories is usually free and does not require attending more meetings or events. Prepare your short description and a long one to have on hand so you can paste it right into your profile fields.

Here is a list of sites that we gathered- More »

On the To-Do list for this week: work on custom twitter background for self, some of our techs, and a few clients. Here is a link to article, templates, instructions at CreativePro.com

When hackers impersonate a site and draw you in, intercept your data, etc.  On Wednesday, July 29, at the Black Hat security conference two researchers presented their information about a serious flaw in the DNS.

Last year  Dan Kaminsky and Moxie Marlinspike independently discovered flaws in the DNS last year. It’s all about how soneone can access certificates for domains they don’t own. Then they can draw people into illegitimate sites and steal information from the web visitors.

Read the article at CNET.com

To those techs and business owners who need a quick fix or a hot deal – BEWARE.

When it comes to Small Business Servers the installation needs to be done according to best industry standards. That way as a Computer Technician the installation goes smoother and the business owner gets the best performance.

One of our tech consultants in STG just finished fixing a nightmare of a mess that some other poor tech had tried to configure. The business owner had a daily hassle of up to one hour logging into workstations, and their email wasn’t working properly – and this is for an ecommerce business.

Here were some of the basics that were found and fixed: More »

So far, none of STG techs or their clients  have had any issues from the Security Alert this July. If you are wondering about the issue and the fix MS has an update from last week (July 15th).

Here is the link and their advice

Aside from that, enjoy the weather!

Microsoft is still working on a solution that is fit for wide distribution. In the meantime they still are using their workaround directions.

Also posted here is a list of products affected:

Link to Microsoft Security Advisory

Direct link to their work-around fix

“This is Dave Forstrom, group manager for our security response communications team. We have just posted Microsoft Security Advisory 973472, which highlights a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Web Components. Specifically, the vulnerability exists in the Spreadsheet ActiveX control and while we’ve only seen limited attacks, if exploited successfully, an attacker could gain the same user rights as the local user.

Products affected are:

Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3,

Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3, More »

On July 6, Microsoft Corp. warned about a serious computer hole related to its Internet Explorer browser. It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims’ machines. The victims don’t need to do anything to get infected except visit websites infected with a tiny bit of code that taps into the security hole.

If successful, a hacker could execute code remotely and take control of a system. So far the exploit seems to be spreading via drive-by downloads on compromised and malicious sites. Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 are at risk, but people running IE 8 are not vulnerable, Symantec said.

Microsoft urged vulnerable users to disable the problematic part of its software, which can be done from Microsoft’s Web site, while the company works on a “patch” — or software fix — for the problem.

More »