The importance of a good password

How important is a good password? Very. Just think about all the information that is important to you that is protected by a password. Your bank account, your email, and your access to the company network. You would think that people would have very secure passwords right? Wrong. A surprising amount of computer users do not have a GOOD password. What makes up a GOOD password? One that uses letters, numbers, upper and lowercase, symbols (#@%+=), and is longer then 8 characters. At the same time being easy enough for the user to remember to where they don't have to write it down and stick it on their monitor (what's the point of a password at that point?)

For example: 1Hundred+200=300

That is a very secure and GOOD password. It is long. It is very easy to remember. Who can't remember that 100 + 200 = 300 ? The password also has numbers, letters, upper and lowercase, and symbols. Contrary to some people's belief a random password like 1kli883h is not as secure as the example above. For one because it is hard to remember and most users would have to write it down somewhere. Second it is only 8 characters long. An important factor in a password is length. The longer the password the harder it is to crack either with a program or by guessing. If you are the type of person who HAS to put it on a sticky at their desk just put "100 plus 200 equals" and set your password to 1Hundred+200=299. No one is going to guess the wrong answer!

Never ever use your birthday, children's names, your own name, or social security number. All are easy to guess and the last one would be a nightmare if someone was to get ahold of it.

If your company currently does not have a password policy in place then one needs to be put in. There is too much sensitive data for any business small or large to have it out in the open because Danny has a blank password or it is 'danny2007'. If you are a Microsoft shop you can use Group Policy to force complex passwords. Or you can just explain the importance of a GOOD password to users. They need a good password both in the office and for personal computer use.

Tomorrow's blog entry is going to be about the Softchoice LA Roadshow that I attended yesterday. What an awesome event. I wanted to go in a bit of detail about it and outline some product I personally found interesting so I wanted to do it when I had a while to think.

Let YouTube help your business

YouTube is very useful and productive if used for the right purposes. Keyword in that sentence is "right". YouTube has become a notorious time waster in every office from California to New York. Plenty of companies have down right blocked it. I say take this service and use it to your businesses advantage. YouTube is more then just something friends and family use to show you goofy clips via email pulling you away from work. There is plenty of quality and FREE content that any role in a small business could use.

For example if you are a small business owner or in charge of marketing you can use YouTube to find segments giving you information about things such as Search Engine Marketing.



Another excellent use of YouTube is if you have access to a laptop and projector you can setup very easy and CHEAP way of keeping your employees up to date on information in your industry. If you provide a free lunch people are willing to stay in to watch streaming video discussing topics that impact their work. Buying a few pizza's or sandwiches to get employees to do a bit of training on their lunch break is a heck of a trade off in the long run. Educated, well trained, and informed employees do better work regardless of where they are at in the company or what industry they are in.

This is a part of YouTube many people forget. A lot of great information can be pulled from it for free. As long as you have speakers and have a decent Internet connection it is like having lectures, keynotes, reviews, and opinions directly in front of you with a few clicks.

What is a rootkit and why you should care to find out

The term 'root kit' to be put simply is used to describe the techniques that spyware and viruses try to hide themselves from programs you would use to remove them (ie Anti Virus software, Adaware, Spybot, etc). There are different types of root kits but not to confuse people too much that is the basic way of explaining it.

Why should you care to find out what a root kit is? If you run a small business with servers or workstations that carry very sensitive information then it is critical. You could have a virus damaging files or keyloggers sending your information out to some person on the Internet without you even knowing it. Even if your anti-virus software and anti spyware is saying your systems are A-OK.

Just to be on the safe side there is a tool you can download along with instructions on how to use it from Microsoft's TechNet community.

RootkitRevealer v1.71

Spiceworks: Ad-supported asset management, help desk, network monitoring software and much more

Spiceworks is a company based in Austin, Texas that builds management tools for IT professionals.

As described by their own website:

"Your network may be complicated and expensive but your IT management tools don't need to be. Spiceworks IT Desktop is the only application that combines Network Inventory, Help Desk, Reporting, Monitoring and Troubleshooting in a single, easy-to-use interface designed for IT teams in small and medium businesses. Plus, Spiceworks lets you collaborate with IT pros around the world to solve problems, share ideas and decide what additional features you need in Spiceworks."

Obviously that is a little FLUFFY but I do have to agree that it is the only application I have seen that does all this. I have installed, used, and managed hardware in a small sized office using Spiceworks. The software is free to use if you don't mind seeing ads pop up on the right hand side of the browser when you log into the system. Personally I do not mind the ads and have actually found a few good deals for equipment from those ads. For people who do not want to see ads at all you can grab a paid-for version which also allows you to brand Spiceworks with your company logo. This is a great piece of software. I'd recommend it to any information technology consultant or even a full IT department for a larger company. Being able to run reports ranging from who has less then 25% of their HD free to who has what software installed to who has the latest windows updates installed (and everything inbetween). You can even make your own custom reports. I'll go as far to say it is a must have. That does not even include the help desk ticketing, the asset management, and all the customization you can add to it. Or how great the Spiceworks community is when it comes to support issues and asking for new features in the future. The only thing you need is a computer with Windows XP on it, the ability to click next on the installer, and an Internet browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox is what I know it works on). Once it is installed you can connect up to the Spiceworks management system from any machine in the local area network using a web browser. Very handy if Spiceworks is not installed on the machine you sit at.

With all that said there are a few things I have problems with. The first being the scanenr of the network that pulls out the information you want. You can set it to scan the entire network on a set schedule or manually . I recomend to chose the earlier as things change on machines/networks constantly. Spiceworks uses WMI to connect up to machines remotely to query it for information. Which works great about half of the time. Sometimes firewalls and other security settings get in the way, not exactly Spiceworks fault but still a bit of a headache. In their defense if a machine cannot be connected to it will give you a link to troubleshoot how to fix the issue. The second issue has to do with the help desk ticketing. While there is nothing wrong with it technically I do not like the way it is setup and there are many other ticketing systems that work better. In fact when I worked for an engineering firm in IT I did not use any ticketing system for over 200 users in my region. Sometimes it takes more time to fill in and manage the tickets then it does to just walk over to fix the issue. Some companies like this to really see who the problem users are and manage IT hours but to me it is not really worth it. Pretty much the Spiceworks ticketing system is more like an email system. Anyone can open up an internet browser and fill out a ticket then an email will be generated to the person who set it up.

Overall this is a heck of a piece of software especially for free. If you don't want ads but do not want to pay the small price they ask for you can always block Doubleclick at your firewall, neat little trick I figured out. It doesn't block all ads but 80% of them in Spiceworks.

Spiceworks official website

Is the Microsoft Action Pack right for your small business?

A good number of small businesses who are a "Microsoft Shop" spend money on the Microsoft Action Pack subscription. What the Microsoft Action Pack provides is most of the Microsoft software catalog for your business to use, as long as you keep paying the yearly subscription fees. Some of the software you do receive (there is quite a bit and doesn't apply to most small businesses so i'll keep it short) is 10 licensed copies of Windows XP, 10 licensed copies of Office Enterprise edition, one copy of Microsoft Windows 2003 server, and others like a copy of SQL Server. For 400 bucks a year that sounds like a score right? You get all that software for a few hundred dollars per year. You could have 10 workstations with Windows XP and Office 2007. If you were to go out yourself and purchase all that software it would be double or triple that number right? Microsoft XP Pro alone is in the triple digits for each copy. You could be put back over a thousand dollars for 10 copies. This is a deal then right? Well it depends how you look at it. As soon as you stop subscribing to Microsoft Action Pack you are no longer allowed to legally use those software licenses. If you actually purchased 10 copies of Windows XP Pro and used them on PCs for 4 years it would be cheaper then buying the Microsoft Action Pack and renewing it for 3 years after. You are leasing the software, you do not own it. As soon as your subscription is gone, so is your legal right to run that software. You also would be a bit tied into Microsoft products as well if you wanted to get the most out of your subscription. Not that it is a bad thing for XP or Office but if there is a piece of software that your business needs that is of better quality from another company you would have to spend more money or miss out (For example the open source MySQL is better for databases then SQL Server a Microsoft Product)

If you need help on software purchase decision making or any implementation of new software packages you may already please contact Tech Guru Solutions at www.techgurusolutions.com for assistance! The experts at Tech Guru Solutions would love to help.

Sometimes spending a good amount of money up front is cheaper in the long run.

That USB drive might not be fully toast

Flash Drive Recovery

Awesome link explaining how you can use recovery software to pull off reports, pdfs, and spreadsheets you thought were toast when your USB thumb drive all the sudden went dead.

WebEx and the beauty of meeting via the Internet

Strengthen from being acquired by networking leader Cisco fairly recently WebEx has become the gold standard for providing online meeting services. They offer solutions for video conferencing, web conferencing, desktop support, online sales, and remote PC control for a month based fee. This entry is going to focus in on the individial/small business solution that WebEx dubbed 'MeetMeNow'.

"Perfect for individual business professionals that need an affordable and simple online meeting solution. Hold unlimited meetings with up to 10 attendees, share your desktop, grant control, annotate, chat and more - all from the comfort of your desktop, Outlook, or IM."

I am a paying WebEx MeetMeNow customer and I do have to say overall I am impressed with the product. Below are a few pros and cons I found when it comes to meeting online and sharing the desktop to look at issues and/or powerpoint slides.

Pros: The interface of the website itself is great. When it comes to online meetings they did an excellent job of including everything you can ask for. MeetMeNow Integrates with AIM Pro. This was a very big plus. Within a few clicks you can invite from inside a chat window, start the meeting, and pass control if needed. We use it at Tech Guru Solutions for small businesses to do meetings with branches or vendors. Saves travel time and there are many benefits. The speed in which a desktop is shared between two people was decent. Inviting via email is very easy as well. You have the flexibility to have a meeting with anyone on the Internet and having 5-10-20 people doesn't cripple the meeting. Meeting via the Internet is the most effiecent way to go when multiple sites, vendors, and teleworkers are concerned.

Cons: At 49.99 a month it is not really worth it for an individual in my opinion unless you do remote support. If you use it to have meetings with employees who work remotely or hold a lot of online meetings weekly then it would make sense. The packages also climb really high if you chose ones like the IT support package (which you do not need, please send me an email if you think you do) Connecting up first time users takes a bit of time. Anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes even if they have broadband. Once they have the software installed it only takes a few minutes to get into a meeting any times after.

For those of you who don't want to spend any money...yet you want to be able to share your desktop, spreadsheet, or powerpoint with another co worker inside of the company you can with a free build in tool called Windows NetMeeting (start-->run-->type conf hit enter). This works internally just fine but bogs down if more then 2-3 people join together at once.

Click for Free WebEx Trial to see for yourself

Hibernate vs Suspend on your PC

Most people, some tech guru's included, do not know the difference between letting your pc/laptop go into Standby mode and Hibernate mode.

Standby:

Bringing a machine back from Standby is much quicker as your information is stored in your RAM. What slows down the process is activating other devices that are connected. In Standby the power is cut to your hard drive and monitor but the PC still gets a small bit of power. Think of it as running your PC is a low power mode. Standby is useful for laptop computers that you want to stay on but know you will be away from for a while so you can to conserve the battery (ie at a meeting).

Hibernate:

Your PC actually shuts down when it goes in the 'hibernate' state. Your current session on the computer is saved onto the HD and it will pull that session back up once you take it out of hibernate mode. Since the PC shuts all the way down it takes longer to shut down and start up.

Not all PCs have the capability and are configured to Hibernate. Hold shift down when you click shutdown to see the option.

Really what is a computer virus?

Here is a simple youtube video from HowStuffWorks.com explaining what a virus is and how it can effect your business and personal computers. Simple visuals that give you a basic idea of what happens when a machine becomes 'infected'

Recover a deleted word document

Everyone has had this issue from time to time. You work really hard on a report for work only to have the computer crash or the window close itself making your work disappear. Here are a few sample tips and a link to the website the article originated from

10 ways to recover a word document

1. Send out a search party.
   In Windows, click Start, Search, All files and folders.
   Type what you remember of the name or simply *.doc to get all your Word documents.
   Select My Computer under Look in, and then under More advanced options, make sure Search hidden files and folders is checked.
   Then hit Search.
2. Still no luck? Check your Recycle Bin.
   Open it up and look through whatever files you’ve got. Did you find it? If so, right-click and choose Restore. Then if you’re not sure where it actually restored to, perform a search for it.
3. Or you can pray for AutoRecover.
   Sometimes if Word crashes or closes unexpectedly, it’ll still save what you had. Re-open Word. If a Document Recovery task pane comes up, double-click your document to open it and immediately Save As.