Home & Home Office Network Security

Network security and data security have been an issue of concern to so many for so long in the corporate world. Home and home office computer users now share these same concerns.

Home computer users are not safe from malicious attacks, from having their private information stolen, financial information spoofed off of their computers or from being used as conduit to corporate network especially for those who work from home by connecting to corporate network through VPN or any other remote connection software.

Home computer users needs to understand how important it is to secure their computers if they are to avoid losses emanating from malicious attacks by hackers and viruses. One of the things that make home & home office computers so vulnerable is the availability unsecured high-speed Internet connection that is always connecting the computer to the internet for as long as the computer is on. Unsecured wireless LAN (WLAN) is another leading source of attacks on Home office small office networks.

there are few things you can do to safeguard you computer and the data on it while you are connected to the Internet regardless of the type of operating system you are running on,

• Make sure your operating systems is current by downloading patches (updates) as often as possible


• Install the firewall, Firewall could either be Hardware, software based or both.


• Install anti virus software like TrendMicro, Symantec, McAffee, Panda or any other favorite choice of yours and make sure virus definitions is up to date.


• Use of strong passwords.

Having those four things implemented will not keep your computer systems 100% safe, You also need to keep them up to date and change passwords as frequently as you possibly could, at minimum passwords should be used no more than 90 days. It is very important to observe Strong password rules. The longer the password the harder it is to crack. There are password generation tools you can use to make your password better and stronger but if you simply follow passwords rule of thumb you will be fine.

Other things to avoid while using the Internet is to be very vigilant, avoid e-mail attachemnts you did not expect or you do not where they came from, do not visit websites you do not trust and surf smart

e-fax

From Telegram to facsimile to fax server to e-fax and e-mail,We have come a long way indeed.

It was just a day a go when my manager asked if I could find out a way to reduce the number of papers and loss of important faxed documents that takes place at the fax machine area. We are losing lots of papers on unwanted marketing ads, on fax copies we shouldn’t have otherwise printed, we are also losing money on printer Toner and cartridges. Another thing that my manager was worried about was lack of privacy on faxed documents.

However, in solving privacy issues we used a dedicated fax machine for like human resources department in the office of human resources personnel and as for other confidential documents we had them faxed to a dedicated fax number and fax machine in a secured room. When you really take a good look you will see how steady the costs of maintaining our faxes services are, it was always on the rise.

So the first thing that came into my mind is to have at least one fax server where all faxes could be faxed and then from there the received faxes could be distributed to appropriate departments through e-mail or by putting e-documents (faxed documents) in a network share in the server where authorized individuals could easily access them. On the other hand employees can use fax server or e-fax to fax email messages or e-documents to clients or vendors’ fax machines right from their desktops or from any other Applications like PeopleSoft, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics GP, MAS 200 or any other business application.

e-fax is poised to help a lot of companies save a lot of money while enabling their employees to receive and send faxes from virtually anywhere in the world. e-fax technology when combined with tablet computers is even better because users will be able to receive faxes wirelessly via either hotspots or wireless data network cards, sign them using tablet touch pad screen technology and send/respond back to their clients or to their managers for follow up if necessary.

Computers for less

When you work as a helpdesk/Technical support person, network administrator, software installer, or if you are dealing with software and hardware configurations, you will be asked a lot of computer related problems.

Being one the person doing all of the above for living, I get to be asked lots of questions about computers. Some of the questions is where can I buy a cheap computer, how can I get a computer for less, is there any computer deals that you know of etc, etc.

My answer to those questions is another question to inquirers, which goes….. What do you need a computer for?

If you need a computer just for regular use and Internet surfing, my answers are; go to ebay and buy a cheap used computer at a very competitive price. Another way is to be patient and wait for computers sale or computer clearance. What happens is computer sellers like Dell computers, Best buy, Micro Center, Hp, CDW, TigerDirect and IBM have rebate programs that run for a certain period of time like one week or during holiday season. My suggestion is wait for those times to buy a decent computer for less.

For gamers and computer enthusiasts I would say you would be better off to custom build you own computer system. The secret behind this is that you will buy computer parts at the time of your choosing and slowly assemble you cheap computer systems as your budget permits.

Both computer enthusiasts and regular computer users who are looking for powerful yet cheap computers try to always be in the look out for computer discounts, computer parts discounts, computer coupons and computer for sale. Don’t fall in the trap of computer vendor commercials that persuades you to buy new computers, top of the line computers or the best and greatest computers. You need a computer for word processing and Internet surfing and you should purchase a cheap computer that would exactly do that.

Please visit Cheap Computers Guide to see different ways you can use to own a nice, powerful yet cheap computer system that fits your budget & your needs.

How to Turn off Computers Automatically

A lot of people have been asking me if there was a way they could automatically turn off their computers. My answer to them was yes, off-course! As a matter of fact most personal computers and laptops comes with built-in power management utility that if correctly configured shuts down laptops/ personal computers after certain period of inactivity.

All you need to set up power management is to Right Click on the desk top and then select properties + click on Screen Server Tab the Power button on the right bottom corner of Display properties window. Click on Power Schemes Tab and then select the power scheme as you want when the laptop is either plugged in the power adaptor or running on laptop batteries.

There are other third party utilities that can automatically shutdown computers in ways that gives you more freedom on how and when you want to shut down your computers. Accurate Shutdown For example, automatically turn off or shut down your computer on planned time.

On the other hand Delayed Shutdown Tool allows you to fall asleep when you are just listening to your favorite music or viewing evening television shows on your computer knowing that your computer will be shutdown when the show is over.

SDS (Shutdown Scheduler) automatically turns off your computer in its own way, in that it allows you to automatically reboot, shutdown or hibernate your computer in standby mode. You can trigger the computer shutdown, or application close action at a given time, after a countdown elapses, when the computer is idle, or when specific conditions are met. The program ca also save a desktop capture before shutting down, terminate modem connections, close applications and more.

Last but not least Shutdown Vaccine® specially designed for companies or organizations that have a large number of computers. According to Horizondatasys “Shutdown Vaccine can automate most PC power related tasks. ie. Perform a nightly shutdown of computers in a computer lab. Rather than having to go to each computer individually, you can configure Shutdown Vaccine to turn off each workstation at a particular time or date. Saving computer administrators from having to perform the same manual tasks.”

All in all there are numerous ways you can automatically turn off your computers, it’s all up to you to decide which ones you want. I hope this article will give you a jump start to the right direction.

Data Back up & Data Recovery

Electronic contents back up is a very easy thing to do but surprisingly lots of people simply do not bother to back up their data both at personal and Enterprise levels. Almost 3 % of the cases I deal with at my work place are loss of data either through accidental deletion, computers fault or due to natural causes.

There are several ways you can back up your data, The first one I advice my co-workers is to have a copy of their electronic documents in more than one two locations. For example have one copy on their computers, another in the server and a third in a removable device like CD’s, Flash drives, external hard Drives etc, etc.

Its very easy and it takes just little time to back up your data. If you are using Windows platform PCs, I think every windows computer comes with preinstalled back up utility. Here is how it works, Go to start button on Windows XP + All programs + Accessories + System tools + back up then the welcome to Back up and Restore window pops up, Click next and then choose + back up files and settings and then follow the prompt to finish the back up process. Should something go wrong you just follow the same procedure to restore your data the only difference is that instead of choosing back up files and settings you will choose Restore files and settings.

If you decide to back up your data in external hard drives, then I would advice to choose the ones that comes with back up utility. Again its very simple to use and after initial set up of what you want to back up you will just need to press one button once and every thing will be backed up.

There are also online data back up or remote data back up service. This is the best solution for backing up your data if you do not want to deal with buying removable drives. To accomplish this you can either buy your own remote data back up software or subscribe to online data back up services. Google serach key words "online data back up" or "remote data back up" for more information. If you need help to choose which back up plan is best for you please drop me a line.

You do not have to learn how important you data is when it is gone and lost, back up your data now and have peace of mind.

Map Network Drive or Share

One of the question that most of the employee I support ask me is “where is my e-file named so and so in the server?”. Most of the time they try to memorize the drive letter of where for example the phone list was saved.

For the benefit of those who do not know what mapping a network drive is here is the definition; mapping a network drive is basically connecting or entering a drive path to the server where e-files are stored. My favorite way of doing it is by Right clicking on START button + Explorer + Tools + Map Network Drive… + Drive letter by clicking on a dropdown arrow on the drive box, then in folder-box I would type in the server name preceded with \\ and then the e-folder name that I want to access. This is how it should look like in the Folder box \\server\folder Name. To learn more about mapping network drive please click on Microsoft Windows e-file Management You can also click Microsoft to see how to connect and disconnect a network drive under Microsoft Windows XP.

For more resources on how to map a network drive for both Mac and Microsoft Windows platforms click Microsoft Windows and Mac

There are alot of tools out there that you could use to simplify the Network drive mapping process but I guess it takes almost the same know how and effort to achieve the same result as described above. However, if you want to try those tools please feel free to do so.

Alternatively, I think the best way to map to a network drive is to use scripts you can also click Windows Logon scripts that would automatically map frequently used Network drives and e-folders when the computer boots/starts. On top of that I created short cuts to those drives and placed them on users desktops.

Regardless of which method is used, users needs to know which -efolder or e-file they are looking for and in which server those files or folders are saved/stored or backed up in.

E-mail relay

I use a laptop for work in and out of the office. In recent days, I was not able to send out e-mails but I was able to receive. When I did a little research my ISP told me their outgoing mail server can no longer send out e-mails that is originated from another network. In technical terms my ISPs outgoing mail server can no longer be used as an open relay server, that is, the server that is configured in such a way that it can send out e-mail virtually for anybody or rather from any e-mail. Part of the reason they ISPs don't configure outgoing mail server to do unauthorized relay is to reduce the abuse by spammers who took advantage of open configuration of outgoing mail server to send out millions of e-mails.

Despite the fact that I am different ISP at home and at work, I was able to resolve the mail relay problem by asking my home ISP to give me credentials that would let me use my regular work e-mail to send out e-mails while am at home.

What I did to resolve e-mail relay problem is to configure and reconfigure my e-mail every time I wanted to use it to send e-mails from home or work. Here is how to configure under Microsoft Outlook/Outlook express e-mail clients

• Double click Microsoft Outlook Express shortcut
• Click on tools menu, select accounts
• Click on mail tab Highlight the account you want to make changes on
• Click properties button
• Click on servers tab In outgoing mail (SMTP) type in: smtp.outgoingmailserver.com
• At the bottom of the screen check my server requires Authentication
• Click on Settings button
• On outgoing mail server window, make sure logon using radio button is selected/clicked
• In account name text box type in: user name; Type in the password
• Click OK
• Exit out of all setup windows
• Send out test e-mail, If you are still not able to send out e-mails, go through the setup instructions one more time just to make sure you got every thing right. Again send out another test e-mail just to make sure it works

Please note that your second ISP, (in my case my home ISP) will provide you with outgoing mail server, Username and you will probably choose your own password

Since I do not have exchange server in-house, once in while I was able to bypass the hassle of configuring and reconfiguring my e-mail client by just accessing my e-mail through the web. The down side of it though is that I will not be able to access all of outlook's functionalities while I am using the web and there fore I have to use both of them at the same time.

Please post your comments or the best possible solutions of my situation.