Microsoft Office 2010 for students could be cheaper than you think

It’s that time of year again… School is starting up as I write this… This means many people are buying notebook and desktop computers for their school-bound children and many are paying full retail price for Microsoft Office 2010. It doesn’t have to be that way.  Microsoft has a special that lets students who purchase Microsoft Office 2010 Home & …

Secure IT Alert: Microsoft Patch Tuesday is Coming – Strap In! Lots of Updates!

Homeland Secure IT Alert for Monday, April 11th, 2011 You’ve waited a whole month for this, and Microsoft has not let you down.  Updates galore are ‘a comin’ tomorrow, April 12th, 2011. The Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification states that this Patch Tuesday will be a big one. A total of 17 fixes, addressing 64 security vulnerabilities are there for …

Do manufacturers load too much junk on new computers?

If you own a smartphone, you know what your cellular provider does to the phone before you get it. With Android based phones, each phone is subjected to a custom install of carrier specific “tools” laid on top of the beautiful Android OS. Verizon thought you didn’t need the Google browser by default, so they sent you to Bing, and …

Secure IT Alert: Adobe offers Zero Day Flash exploit patch for Apple Mac OS X, MS Windows, Google Chrome & Android

Homeland Secure IT Alert for Wednesday, March 23, 2011 Adobe has released out-of-cycle updates earlier this week that affect Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat across many platforms such as Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Android and Chrome… Here is the summary from the WatchGuard Security Center: Severity: High 21 March, 2011 Summary: These vulnerabilities affects: Recent versions of Adobe …

Ditch the WiFi and go with 3g or 4g broadband connectivity for your mobile devices

Those of you who are using a notebook computer or mobile device such as an iPad, iPhone, Android or Android tablet and connecting to those public free wifi access hotspots may want to just ditch the WiFi after what I heard about today… In spite of what I said about safe browsing from public wi-fi hotspots using a VPN a …

BlackHole RAT malware especially for you Mac OS X owners

A computer security post on TGDaily.com entitled, “BlackHole RAT Trojan targets Mac OS X” discusses Mac’s very own variant of a Microsoft Windows Remote Access Tool (RAT) called darkComet. The Mac version is known as “BlackHole RAT” and it is not quite ready for prime time, though it seems to offer a great stepping stone to be used to target the …

Why do you need Microsoft Windows 7 SP1?

I am hearing that many people are opting to not install Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 which was released back in February 22, 2011. The reasoning is that it is a large download (750MB or 1GB depending on whether you need 32bit or 64bit versions), a long install process, and there are no enhanced features. So what does the Service Pack …

Secure IT Alert: Microsoft Security Bulletin Re-Releases & AutoRun Advisory

Homeland Secure IT Alert for Thursday, February 23, 2011 Microsoft has released Security Advisory 967940, titled “Update for Windows Autorun”, and it covers an issue that has long plagued Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. When you insert a USB flash drive, or USB hard drive, Windows has attempted to treat them like CD/DVD material and perform an autorun on it. While …

Secure IT Alert: Microsoft Unleashes a Slew of Updates for Windows & Windows Server & IIS FTP

Secure IT Alert for Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 The February 2011 Patch Tuesday was not boring…   Updates include something for everyone.  Basically every current Microsoft Windows OS version was addressed. The big one was the IE Update that fixed four code execution holes in the popular web browser. In addition to fixing thumbnail and font vulnerabilities which mainly affect …