Category: Disaster Preparedness

Is the power out again?

It seems lately that the power company in the area has not been able to offer consistent service power to the city. This has left many businesses down without the technology they need to operate properly. These power outages cause data loss and damage computer components.

My own unexpected outage

Once upon a time, about two weeks ago, the unexpected happened at our offices. A semi-truck carrying a large backhoe on a trailer drove between two buildings in the area. The landlord had wired power between buildings and the truck driver did not lower the arm of the backhoe low enough. Sure enough the wire was snagged by the backhoe’s arm and pulled from the building. Needless to say the power was out to that part of the building until the landlord took care of the matter.

What can be done?

Farmhouse Networking recommends that all business workstations, servers, and networking equipment be protected by an uninterruptible power source aka UPS or battery backup. When the power goes out the right size battery backup will keeps things running for about 15-30 minutes to allow the last touches to be added to whatever was being worked on and things to be shutdown gracefully.

If your company is looking to better protect itself against power outages, then contact us for assistance.

Your Data is Already at Risk. Protect it Today!

Did you know that malware accounts for 20% of all security incidents?

And that’s just one threat! Your data, no matter how proactive you are from a security standpoint, is constantly vulnerable to a multitude of security threats, the list of which is constantly growing. From ransomware, worms and phishing attacks to human error, your data needs to have a multi-layer defense in place to not only prevent downtime but recover quickly in the event that disaster strikes.

The following are just a few staggering facts about just how vulnerable our systems are to attacks and outages:

• According to Microsoft, the potential cost of cyber-crime to the global community is a $500 billion, and a data breach will cost the average company about $3.8 million!1
• A whopping 1 in 131 emails contain malware2
• 230,000 new malware samples are produced every day, and that number is projected to continue growing3
• It will take the average business about 197 days to detect a breach on their network4

If your company is looking to better protect its data, then contact us for assistance.

How Much to Budget for IT Spending

As we talked with our clients during our bi-annual meetings, the question again came to mind – How much should a small business budget for IT spend?

Questions to Ask

How will IT change competition in our industry?

In today’s marketplace keeping an edge above the competition can make or break the future of your business. If local customers are looking for a feature or product that you cannot provide they will look online and find it.

What will it take to exceed our customers’ expectations in a digital world?

With a broad landscape of choices available to them, what will make local businesses shine is deep customer engagement. Customer relationship management, targetted automated contact, and the consistently good products and services that technology can help provide to make this possible.

How will IT improve our operations?

Every industry now has specific software to manage the flow of business to provide repeatable and trackable results. The addition of industry-specific hardware takes the guesswork out how things get done right.

Who is accountable for IT?

Are you paying an employee or worse a manager to spend time fixing IT problems? It is always best to hire someone who is better than they are at these kinds of tasks so that they can be freed up to do what you hired them for. There are also limits to everyone’s knowledge in an alternate field, so having a next level IT provider will save headaches and downtime.

Are we comfortable with our level of IT risk?

Risks include cybercrime, downtime, employee theft, and many other possibilities. Having an IT provider with an eye for security can mitigate these risks and help eliminate the others that you never knew existed.

Boiling IT Down

According to the online studies that are out there small to medium businesses should be looking to spend around 4.1% and up to 6.9% for the smallest companies. That number has been growing about 8% year over year for the past few years. However, regardless of amount of spending, if technology investments aren’t made and used wisely, it will be reflected in that company’s returns and productivity.

Farmhouse Networking provides a free network evaluation that includes a full inventory of technology assets and 5-year technology budget.

Is this really SPAM?

Thought that I would share a recently received new SPAM email variant that could easily be overlooked and possibly be a scammer looking to take your money. This one is strange to me and I wanted to share my insites.

Starting from the Top

Look closely at the From portion of the email:

This email is from a legitimate email marketing firm called AWeber. The SPAMMER is actually using a website designed to help bypass SPAM filtering to deliver mail. There is also the fact that the email is form someone that I don’t do business with. Always fight the urge to look at things that are not yours.

Stick to the Subject

Now to take a look at the Subject line of the email:

The email marketing firm this SPAM is sent from is required that you confirm someone who is joining your email campaign. Guess I would have to agree to be scammed by this person.

And now the rest…

The final thing that caught my eye was the title of the email campaign in the email:

The enticing title “Clickbank – 30k project” sounded interesting. By clicking on the button I would confirm my existence as a real person and would likely kick off a communication from someone who is likely an “African Prince” with a money making opportunity. Hope this little tutorial helps you detect other phishing attempts in the future.

If your company is having trouble with SPAM or phishing, then contact us for assistance.

Is the internet down again?

If it seems like this is a typical question in your office then there is hope. The concept of internet failover has been around for years. With the advent of 4G LTE cellular networks internet failover is now within reach of the small business. If the main internet connection goes down then the 4G LTE cellular network will kick in automatically to keep your business flowing. When the main internet connection comes back online it will automatically switch back to restore full speed access.

How We Fix the Internet

Business Class Router: The Datto Networking Appliance has all the specs of true business class router including all the usual services (DHCP, DNS, VLAN, DMZ, Access Rules, etc). It also has all the features that you need to secure and expand your business with seven layer deep packet inspection, intrusion detection, traffic shaping (VoIP), client VPN, site-to-site VPN, and cloud management.

Connectivity: This router has all the connectivity you could ever need. It has 4 Gigabit LAN ports to help physically segment the network. It has the latest and most redundant wireless connectivity available. It has a fully integrated multi-band 4G LTE wireless cellular modem to keep you connected when wired internet fails.

Peace of Mind: Leave the connectivity worries to us. Our expert team will be monitoring and maintaining the Datto Networking Appliance at all times via the cloud management console and integrated alerting. We will know the internet is down before you do and will take the steps needed to get your ISP to fix things.

If your company’s internet is constantly going down, then contact us for assistance.

Got everything backed up? You sure?

As companies increasingly move data into cloud-based applications, many administrators think traditional best practices such as data backup are outdated. After all, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application is always available, accessible from anywhere, and highly redundant, so why is backup necessary?

1 in 3 companies report losing data stored in cloud-based applications. That means the permanent deletion of potentially hundreds of work hours.

The truth is that even data in cloud-based applications are vulnerable to:

Malware damage or ransomware attacks
Accidental end-user deletion
Malicious end-user activity
Operational errors such as accidental data overwrites
Lost data due to canceled user account subscriptions
Misconfigured application workflows

Datto SaaS Protection won’t let your critical data slip through the cracks. Engineered to be the leading, one stop shop for cloud-to-cloud SaaS application backup, SaaS Protection gives you consistently reliable granular backups, quick and easy restores and exports, secured data for compliance and regulatory needs, and world-class 24/7/365 support.

SaaS Protection Supports the Following Applications:

G-Suite – Protect emails, documents, calendars, sites, and contacts in Google’s G Suite.

There’s no such thing as too safe. Datto SaaS Protection goes above and beyond industry standards to make sure G-Suite data is secure, easily recoverable, and protected:

Automatic 3X daily backups of Google Mail, Drive, Calendar, Contacts, and Sites data
SOC2 Type II audited
Supports HIPAA compliance needs
Data encryption both in transit and at rest in the Datto Cloud
Advanced internal controls
Data controls and monitoring, including audit logs, uptime and availability SLAs, and export capabilities
Regular vulnerability management and testing

SaaS Protection saves you and your team time and stress with search filters that quickly locate backed up files and folders.. even if users can’t remember what they called them.

Easily track deleted items
Locate and browse any previous versions of documents
Lighten the help desk load: SaaS Protection lets users access their own backups

Office 365 – Protect Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Contacts, and Calendars in Office 365.

There’s no such thing as too safe. Datto SaaS Protection goes above and beyond industry standards to make sure Office 365 data is secure, easily recoverable, and protected.

Microsoft Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Calendar and Contacts are automatically backed up 3X a day
SOC 2 Type II audited
Supports HIPAA compliance needs
Data encryption both at rest and in transit
Data controls and monitoring tools, including audit logs, uptime and availability SLAs, and export capabilities

SaaS Protection saves your team time and stress with robust search filters that make it easy to quickly locate backed up files and folders.

Manage backups, view restores, and monitor activity across all of your customers from an easy-to-use dashboard
Zero in on emails, contacts, individual files and entire folders with our search function
Restore files directly to a user’s account or download them directly

If your company is G-Suite or Office 365 and want a complete disaster recovery solution, then contact us for assistance.

New Phishing Email Variant

Thought that I would share a recently received new phishing email variant that could easily be overlooked and possibly cause damage to your network. The email appears to have come from Dropbox as a user sharing a folder with me, but a closer look shows many obvious signs that the email is a fake.

Starting from the Top

Look closely at the From portion of the email:

The lettering is actually another language where the font makes it look like English lettering. There is also the fact that the email is form someone that I don’t do business with. Always fight the urge to look at things that are not yours.

Stick to the Subject

Now to take a look at the Subject line of the email:

This has different lettering but it is again a different language used to look like English lettering.

And now the rest…

The final thing that caught my eye was the “button” in the middle of the email:

It actually looked fuzzy. It turns out the entire body of the email is a single image that is a link to their malicious site. Clicking anywhere in the body of the email would send you on your way to infection or account compromise. Hope this little tutorial helps you detect other phishing attempts in the future.

If your company is having trouble with SPAM or phishing, then contact us for assistance.

SMB Guide to Ransomware

Ransomware has become a serious epidemic affecting businesses of all sizes, and protecting your company is more essential than ever before as the number of ransomware attacks continues to rise. A recent U.S. Government inter-agency report indicates that, on average, there have been 4,000 daily ransomware attacks since early 2016 — a 300-percent increase over the 1,000 daily ransomware attacks reported in 2015.

As ransomware spreads, it continues to evolve and get more sophisticated — and more lucrative. In fact, according to Internet Crime Complaint Center, ransomware victims paid more than $24 million to regain access to their data in 2015 alone.

What does all this mean for small to medium-sized businesses?

Download the full article here:
http://www.farmhousenetworking.com/downloads/SMB-Guide-to-Ransomware.pdf

If your company is worried about ransomware and would like to see if your business is prepared for the inevitable, then contact us for assistance.

Is Email Down Again?

While troubleshooting an email encryption issue after a WHM / cPanel web server migration, my thoughts turned to email down time and what it is worth to a small business. This is the core concept behind business continuity – “Business continuity encompasses planning and preparation to ensure that an organization can continue to operate in case of serious incidents or disasters and is able to recover to an operational state within a reasonably short period.” (Wikipedia) The best way to recover from a disaster is to have planned in advance for the eventuality and have systems in place that provide redundancy when the incident occurs. When it comes to business email continuity only one name comes to mind:

Microsoft Office 365

Guaranteed Uptime – Microsoft provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that financially backs their services based on a guaranteed amount of uptime per month. If service is down for more than 45 minutes (99.9% uptime) in a month then a 25% credit will be given, if service is down for more than 7 hours (99% uptime) in a month then a 50% credit will be given, and if for some reason they are down for more than 36 hours (95% uptime) in a month then a 100% credit will be given. Considering the literal billions of users of their products, having to give away credits for downtime would seriously cost Microsoft so it is in their favor to keep the services flowing.

Geographic Redundancy – Microsoft has Office 365 data copied to servers in no less than 8 datacenters around the United States including one nearby in Washington. This means that a hardware failure or lost data in one center will not effect the other 7 datacenters – email will continue to be routed through the others until services can be restored to the one. With redundancy like that there should be no worries about downtime or data loss.

Unparalleled Support – Office 365 email is running on Microsoft Exchange being administered and supported by the people who created it. There is nothing like going to the creator of something to talk to them when there is a problem. They have the breadth of experience that comes from using their own products for the past 20 years. This level of knowledge is unparalleled in the industry and it shows in the quality of service and support that is received.

If your company needs the best in class reliability and service that comes from switching to Office 365, then contact us for assistance.

CyberSecurity Month – Small Business Tips

Broadband and information technology are powerful tools for small businesses to reach new markets and increase sales and productivity. However, cybersecurity threats are real and businesses must implement the best tools and tactics to protect themselves, their customers, and their data. Visit www.fcc.gov/cyberplanner to create a free customized Cyber Security Planning guide for your small business and visit www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect to download resources on cyber security awareness for your business. Here are ten key cybersecurity tips to protect your small business:

1. Train employees in security principles.

Establish basic security practices and policies for employees, such as requiring strong passwords and establish appropriate Internet use guidelines, that detail penalties for violating company cybersecurity policies. Establish rules of behavior describing how to handle and protect customer information and other vital data.

2. Protect information, computers, and networks from cyber attacks.

Keep clean machines by having the latest security software, web browser, and operating system are the best defenses against viruses, malware, and other online threats. Set antivirus software to run a scan after each update. Install other key software updates as soon as they are available. (Our managed monthly service contract customers already have this taken care of.)

3. Provide firewall security for your Internet connection.

A firewall is a set of related programs that prevent outsiders from accessing data on a private network. Make sure the operating system’s firewall is enabled or install free firewall software available online. If employees work from home, ensure that their home system(s) are protected by a firewall. (We don’t recommend the free stuff as you always get what you pay for.)

4. Create a mobile device action plan.

Mobile devices can create significant security and management challenges, especially if they hold confidential information or can access the corporate network. Require users to password protect their devices, encrypt their data, and install security apps to prevent criminals from stealing information while the phone is on public networks. Be sure to set reporting procedures for lost or stolen equipment.

5. Make backup copies of important business data and information.

Regularly backup the data on all computers. Critical data includes word processing documents, electronic spreadsheets, databases, financial files, human resources files, and accounts receivable/payable files. Backup data automatically if possible, or at least weekly and store the copies either offsite or in the cloud. (We recommend backup copies in both)

6. Control physical access to your computers and create user accounts for each employee.

Prevent access or use of business computers by unauthorized individuals. Laptops can be particularly easy targets for theft or can be lost, so lock them up when unattended. Make sure a separate user account is created for each employee and require strong passwords. Administrative privileges should only be given to trusted IT staff and key personnel. (Definitely agree with the separate users and least

7. Secure your Wi-Fi networks.

If you have a Wi-Fi network for your workplace, make sure it is secure, encrypted, and hidden. To hide your Wi- Fi network, set up your wireless access point or router so it does not broadcast the network name, known as the Service Set Identifier (SSID). Password protect access to the router. (Also make sure to segregate public guest traffic from private traffic.)

8. Employ best practices on payment cards.

Work with banks or processors to ensure the most trusted and validated tools and anti-fraud services are being used. You may also have additional security obligations pursuant to agreements with your bank or processor. Isolate payment systems from other, less secure programs and don’t use the same computer to process payments and surf the Internet.

9. Limit employee access to data and information, and limit authority to install software.

Do not provide any one employee with access to all data systems. Employees should only be given access to the specific data systems that they need for their jobs, and should not be able to install any software without permission.

10. Passwords and authentication.

Require employees to use unique passwords and change passwords every three months. Consider implementing multifactor authentication that requires additional information beyond a password to gain
entry. Check with your vendors that handle sensitive data, especially financial institutions, to see if they offer multifactor authentication for your account. (Multifactor should be implemented on all web based applications from third party vendors.)

If your company is concerned about cybersecurity and wants to take the needed steps to protect yourselves, then contact us for assistance.

Category: Disaster Preparedness

Is the power out again?

My own unexpected outage

What can be done?

Your Data is Already at Risk. Protect it Today!

How Much to Budget for IT Spending

Questions to Ask

Boiling IT Down

Is this really SPAM?

Starting from the Top

Stick to the Subject

And now the rest…

Is the internet down again?

How We Fix the Internet

Got everything backed up? You sure?

SaaS Protection Supports the Following Applications:

New Phishing Email Variant

Starting from the Top

Stick to the Subject

And now the rest…

SMB Guide to Ransomware

Is Email Down Again?

Microsoft Office 365

CyberSecurity Month – Small Business Tips

1. Train employees in security principles.

2. Protect information, computers, and networks from cyber attacks.

3. Provide firewall security for your Internet connection.

4. Create a mobile device action plan.

5. Make backup copies of important business data and information.

6. Control physical access to your computers and create user accounts for each employee.

7. Secure your Wi-Fi networks.

8. Employ best practices on payment cards.

9. Limit employee access to data and information, and limit authority to install software.

10. Passwords and authentication.

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Category: Disaster Preparedness

My own unexpected outage

What can be done?

Questions to Ask

Boiling IT Down

Starting from the Top

Stick to the Subject

And now the rest…

How We Fix the Internet

SaaS Protection Supports the Following Applications:

Starting from the Top

Stick to the Subject

And now the rest…

Microsoft Office 365

1. Train employees in security principles.

2. Protect information, computers, and networks from cyber attacks.

3. Provide firewall security for your Internet connection.

4. Create a mobile device action plan.

5. Make backup copies of important business data and information.

6. Control physical access to your computers and create user accounts for each employee.

7. Secure your Wi-Fi networks.

8. Employ best practices on payment cards.

9. Limit employee access to data and information, and limit authority to install software.

10. Passwords and authentication.

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

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