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Non-Profit Organizations Don’t Have to Suffer with Outdated IT Technology and Slow Computer Service in Greenville / Upstate SC!

old computer terminal

NPOs do not have to use old computer technology!

Last night, Pamela and I attended the Miracle Hill fund-raising banquet and had a great time. The food was good, the program was good, and the key note speaker was very moving with his story. While we would have loved to have given much more to assist such a wonderful cause, we unfortunately couldn’t, at least not at this time. But what it did do was to get me thinking about the services that we offer to non-profit organizations here in Greenville and the Upstate.

We LOVE working with NPOs! We work with churches, community centers, learning centers, free medical clinics, YMCAs, and previously with Habitat for Humanity, Compass of Carolina and the Humane Society, etc. In every instance, it was a pleasure to walk into the facility filled with people who are trying to do something good for their community, and be greeted warmly, receive a tour, hear about what they provided for our community, and assess their needs… That is where the smiles have generally faded.

We have heard and seen it all! Ten year old computers and servers, 10M hubs, slow internet, huge power hungry CRT monitors that were badly burned in, outdated anti-virus, no backup system in place, no firewall, unlicensed or outdated software and operating systems, ball mice that stuttered when they rolled, and generally slow, antiquated and for the most part, unusable network infrastructure.

In many cases, these people who were so eager to give a hand to their community were unable to do so due to the many issues they faced with their computer network. Nothing will discourage a motivated worker quicker than to be typing a document out and have the computer crash in the middle of it. Or to walk in the door on a Monday and have no connectivity or machines not coming online.

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McAfee Anti-Virus Update Kills Hundreds of Thousands of XP Computers

Mushroom Cloud

The McAfee update blew up "real good"

Kaaa-Boom! Individuals and small businesses who used McAfee for their anti-virus protection and happened to be using Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3 installed, may have been sent into an infinite loop yesterday after receiving the latest McAfee Virus Definition update.

The update was 5958 DATA, and went out early Wednesday the 21st of April. According to many articles on the web, immediately after the update was deployed, users were experiencing the familiar BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) and DCOM errors. Those seeking support were greeted with long waits in queue. The issue appears to be that on XP SP3 machines, McAfee would improperly diagnose machines as being infected with W32/wecorl.a malware after the update.

McAfee quickly reported that the issue affected only “less than one half of one percent” of their ENTERPRISE customers. However, untold numbers, estimated by many to be in the hundreds of thousands of others were affected.

McAfee has pulled the update for the time being.

Not that this could not happen to any anti-virus provider such as Symantec / Norton, Trend Micro, etc, it is just that many feel that this was handled in a less than perfect way by McAfee.

If you are experiencing issues such as BSOD or reboots and are running McAfee, or know someone who is, please have them give us a call, we will assist them in recovering from the inconvenience.

On another note, Homeland Secure IT, LLC is a Trend Micro Anti Virus reseller, and we can help put an end to your virus concerns with the entire suite of offerings from Trend Micro. Whether you need one computer protected, or 1000 computers, there is a Trend Micro product that is right for you. Many small and medium sized businesses have servers and the Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Standard or Advanced product is perfect for them! Advanced offers protection of your Microsoft Exchange Server against malware and SPAM! Yes, that’s right, the Trend Micro WFBS Advanced can help eliminate spam!

Call us an arrange a free consultation today for your business! If you have a non-profit organization, we offer special pricing for Trend Micro products. 864-990-4748 and talk with John M. Hoyt or Ben Zuber

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite Offers Cloud Alternative to Hosting Your Own Exchange Server

EVERY business needs email and of course, Microsoft Exchange is the perfect solution for most businesses, however, the cost of purchasing, deploying and maintaining a server, or even multiple servers to host email can easily exceed the budget of a smaller business and in some cases, even larger businesses. Fortunately for them, there are alternatives. Sure you could use Google Mail / gmail to handle your mail, but for most people, they want Exchange, because they already use it and love it. There are many reasons why you may want an Exchange environment.

One alternative is from Microsoft and is known as BPOS, or Business Productivity Online Suite. The basic offering is for Business Productivity Online Standard Suite and is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online.  These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. Your business benefits from always up-to-date technologies that are deployed rapidly, maximizing your valuable IT resources and reducing your need for infrastructure investments. (As borrowed directly from Microsoft’s product description).

What does this mean for you? Well for one, it could mean that deploying a new server that handles all these functions, or updating your current machines and software and then performing the support and service functions that are required could be avoided. This solution isn’t right for everyone obviously, however it is worthy of consideration by a few select business customers. Please contact us to find out if this can apply to your business.

We are a Microsoft approved Business Productivity Online Suite vendor. Regardless of whether your business is in Greenville, the Upstate or even in South Carolina, we may be able to help you with these tools.

VoIP business users beware! It will soon be illegal to display CID info other than your own

caller id

This information better be your own!

If you have a VoIP (Voice over IP) phone system with SIP trunking and control your own Caller ID, then you need to insure that the information sent is actually your information. IE: The phone number should be an actual number at your business, and the name should reflect the name of your business.

Congress just passed a bill known as the “Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010.”

The bill reads, “It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, in connection with any real time voice communications service, regardless of the technology or network utilized, to cause any caller ID service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information, with the intent to defraud or deceive,” the bill reads.

Of course, you will still be allowed to block your phone number from showing up using the Caller ID block function, and not surprisingly, law enforcement would be exempt from the restrictions.

This is good for those who are tired of the “spoofed” calls from various telemarketers, and could be bad for those who use CID information to indicate they are somewhere other than where they are. I know many businesses who have set their Caller ID to show a different name & number from the one they are calling, in order to mask their information, such as an attorney, private investigator, and rehab places, not to mention family & women’s shelters.

To make a long story short, in order to be on the right side of the law, insure your business caller ID information reflects the name of the business and an actual phone number that can be used to reach the business and you should be safe.

If you want to read the bill, it can be found here: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h1258rh.txt.pdf

Homeland Secure IT provides VoIP service, sales, support and consultation to Greenville and the Upstate of SC. If you require assistance with this or any Voice over IP issue, please contact us.

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Using an iPad for business purposes such as remote desktop and with your corporate network

apple ipad

The iPad from Apple (tm)

Do you run a business and want to use an iPad with it? My hold us has been that there is currently no 3G, but that is changing very soon. Until then, a person who wants to use their iPad has to find a Wi-Fi hot spot, or, they could optionally do like our friend and TV personality Amy Wood does. She uses a Verizon MiFi, a device that bridges a cellular modem with an access point, allowing you to carry this device, and have a full time cellular connection and provide 802.11b/g WiFi to your various devices, such as the iPad.

That’s the first step in using the iPad with your business. Next is to configure it to work with your Microsoft Exchange Server, which should be no more difficult than getting your iPhone to work with your corporate email (If you are reading this, you probably have an iPhone already). Once configured, this is a nice mail reader.

Okay, so that is basic stuff, but what about taking an iPad with you, accessing your Terminal Server with RDP (Remote Desktop)? There’s an App for that! Yes, several exist, including one from Citrix that may be the best, but in the App Store, just search for Remote Desktop Client and you should be in business.

You will probably want to get a dock with a keyboard so you can accomplish some real work. Okay, so now this is becoming complicated. You have a MiFi adapter, an iPad, a client for Remote Desktop, and you are wanting to type, so you get this keyboard and mouse.  A netbook may be a better solution for you if you are finding that you are typing more than browsing.

Should you be serious about using your iPad, iPhone or Mac with your Windows based network, and require assistance, please do not hesistate to call us to see how we can help.

An amazing TEDx posting: Eric Whitacre: A choir as big as the internet

Anyone interested in collaborative efforts should go check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/a_choir_as_big_as_the_internet.html

What you will find a collabrative effort on the behalf of 185 people in 12 countries, who participated in a “virtual choir”, sending in clips (245 I believe in total!) to be arranged into one piece that is beautifully done! Overcoming the noise issue of the various submitted clips would be challenging all by itself, then mixing the audio to the desired levels, and do the video editing on top of this would be so time consuming that I would never be able to do any actual work to pay the bills.

I believe this has to be one of the best collaborative efforts that I have seen on the internet in regards to music.

It also underscores the importance of bandwidth in music / video… 185 people sending one person a ton of clips would consume great gobs of bandwidth, especially if the submitters were sending high quality audio and/or video. Here in Greenville, SC, we are trying to catch the eye of Google, who is going to pick one city in America to use as a testbed for their unbelievably fast Google High Speed Fiber. In fact, it is so fast that it exceeds the speed that most home and business LANs operate right now. That’s right, the data that moves from your work computer to your business server is probably moving slower than the 1 Gigabit Per Second fiber connection would bring internet to you!

Imagine a group of musicians in the same town, performing their parts for a track from their home, while it is being recorded in a master studio for mix down, in real-time! The latency would be overcome with time correction. Everyone would hear the same click-track….  Any issues, corrected in post. Individual parts punched in from remote too. This gets me excited!!!  THAT is why I am so adamant about the #GoogleOnMain / #LuckyGVL  movement! http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com for more info!

Of course there are bazillion business collaboration advantages to high speed internet as well, but I won’t get into those now….  It is the weekend for a few more hours – enjoy it!

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Is your business still relying on an old FAX machine & multiple styles of printers?

FAX Machine

Just the FAX!

If your business is like many that we provide service for, you may still require the use of a FAX machine. In fact you may have a conglomeration of devices that you use in order to have the best of all worlds, maybe your office looks something like this: A laser printer to print forms and documents cheaply, and quickly. A FAX machine to receive orders on and send legal documents. A scanner to digitize documents for storage on your file server, or to import into emails. A color / ink jet printer to print the occasional color document. Maybe a dot matrix printer that is solely used to print your checks. And then you might have a copier that allows you to duplicate quickly. You might have multiple small printers at each workstation because you sure don’t want someone printing to your checks that are loaded in a particular printer.

If that sounds like you, then this may sound familiar too: Each of the printing devices use different ribbons, ink cartridges, toner cartridges, and maybe even special papers. You have trouble finding the printer you want to print to in the long list of shared devices, etc.

It doesn’t have to be that way! With today’s printing technology, a typical business can eliminate many devices in their network, cutting down power consumption (Yes, those devices use power even when doing nothing), reducing the heat (all those power supplies and the associated electronics generate heat while consuming power), cleaning up the appearance of your facility by giving you back valuable desk and counter space, and save you gas and time trying to keep all the various inks and toners on hand.

We can work with your Greenville / Upstate business to determine if a change to your printing & FAXing infrastructure can save you money and make your life easier. Let’s look at just one way a new technology can help you. If your business moves to a VoIP (Voice over IP) solution, it can handle both incoming and outgoing faxes for you, and replace the current stand-alone FAX machine. In fact, you will no longer need to print out a document to your printer, walk to your FAX machine and FAX it off, then shred the document you just printed out. Instead, you can PRINT to the FAX server, without even wasting a sheet of paper. The document goes out directly to the source, and you never left your workstation!

What about reception of FAXes? Using a VoIP system to handle your FAX can again eliminate paper usage because incoming documents can be EMAILED to your inbox. You can then opt to print the item if you deem it necessary, save it, forward it to other people or respond with another FAX. This is powerful technology, and good for our planet!

Think of the time, money and frustration that can be saved!

I’ll talk about printing, scanning, FAXing, document management, copying and more in future blog entries, but until then, save a tree and FAX to/from your PC! Call us at 864-990-4748 and we will discuss how these technologies can help your business!  Have a great weekend…

It’s Tax Day! Upgrade your Intuit Quickbooks to celebrate!

Still running an older version of Intuit Quickbooks or Quicken? Why not celebrate getting through tax season with a new version!? Homeland Secure IT is a reseller of Intuit products and can save you 20%. It doesn’t matter if you are in Greenville, the Upstate or even South Carolina, we can save you money on the product if purchased through us or online using a link we can provide.

Need help upgrading or installing? How about loading it on multiple computers, or setting up a backup of your server? We can help! Call us today and let’s see how we can help you.

THE SKY IS FALLING! Okay, maybe not, but DNS issues may affect your internet access in May

What ever you do - don't panic!

Whatever you do - Don't panic...

Let me bore you a few minutes with something not so trivial about DNS (Domain Name System). DNS is where all those lookups take place that convert hostnames to IP addresses. A hostname is a name you can more easily remember than the IP address, for instance telling someone in a radio commercial to visit your website at  http://216.33.19.35 would be a lot more difficult than saying  www.CoolSite.com.

Think of an IP (Internet Protocol) address as a phone number. It is a numerical address that points to one particular server or device generally. While the hostname is the alias for it, and it may actually point to several IPs to help in load balancing, etc.

Putting in a DNS query (or a DNS lookup) for www.Google.com will return a series of IP addresses. Your browser will go to one of those. Consider the DNS lookup to be calling 411 for the phone number. All this takes place in the background, in fractions of seconds and when it is working correctly, the website you want pops up in your browser.

While not something that the average computer user is aware of, those in the IT field have been anticipating this for a while now. The way DNS is handled on the internet is about to change, and for the better, we hope. Currently DNS, is vulnerable to what is known as a man-in-the-middle attack, also known as a “Kaminsky exploit”, which allows a bad guy to poison the DNS lookup tables, giving false responses to your queries. This is bad.

The solution is to transition to DNSSEC, which is happening on the major (root) servers on May 5th, 2010. This is where the trouble may start. DNSSEC adds a little bit of data to the standard DNS query. This data contains a digital signature and the packet size grows to a size that may cause some network devices to reject the packet due to the size exceeding the 512 byte limit that is programmed into the configurations and firmware of some older gear.

What does this mean exactly? That some people, some organizations, etc, may experience some issues with DNS. Vague enough for you? Just keep this in mind. If on May 5th or afterwards, you experience the inability to get to websites or send mail, it could be due to DNS issues with you, or even your upstream DNS server. There’s no need to panic though because there is a fix for everything.

As always, we should you require assistance with your computer, server, firewall, or other network equipment, call us and we will take care of you.

If you would like to test your network in advance of May 5th, please visit this site: https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/services/replysizetest or we can do that for you if you wish.