Homeland SECURE IT Achieves Select Certification from Cisco

Greenville, SC, November 1, 2011:  Homeland Secure IT announced today that it has achieved Select Certification from Cisco. The Select Certification recognizes Cisco® resale channel partners that focus on meeting the technology and service needs of small businesses.

Cisco’s portfolio of both Small Business and Small Business Professional Series products directly complement and enhance Homeland Secure IT’s Systems Design, Sales, Installation and Support of end-to-end communications and physical networks.

Cisco Select Certified

“The Cisco Select Certification was created in response to customer demand for channel partners capable of designing and implementing Cisco solutions purpose-built for small businesses,” said Andrew Sage, vice president of Worldwide Small Business Sales at Cisco. “With the Select Certification, Homeland Secure IT has made an investment in obtaining the training, skills and knowledge necessary to play a pivotal role in meeting this growing demand.”

To earn Select Certification, Homeland Secure IT fulfilled the training and exam requirements for the Cisco Small Business Specialization.  Homeland Secure IT also met the personnel, training and post-sales support requirements set forth by Cisco.

The Cisco Resale Channel Program provides a framework for channel partners to build the sales, technical and Cisco Lifecycle Services skills required to deliver Cisco solutions to end customers. Through the program’s specializations and certifications, Cisco recognizes a channel partner’s expertise in deploying solutions based on Cisco advanced technologies and services. Using a third-party audit process, the program validates channel partner qualifications such as technology skills, business best practices, customer satisfaction, and presales and post-sales support capabilities — critical factors for customers choosing a trusted channel partner.

About Homeland Secure IT

Homeland Secure IT is headquartered in Greenville, SC, and serves Greenville and the Upstate of South Carolina.  Our goal is to deliver seamless design, implementation, and support to customers requiring both simple and sophisticated communications solutions.

• Unified Communications (VoIP)
• Wireless (WLAN)
• Video Surveillance
• Storage Solutions (NAS, SAN)
• Backup and Disaster Recovery
• Security (Firewall, A/V)
• Switching

For more information about this topic or to schedule meeting with our design and engineering team, please call 864-990-4748 or visit our website at http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com

One conversation new or potential business owners may want to have with their IT professionals is about what technologies exist that can improve their life. Below you will find some that are must haves…

Apple iPhone

Smartphones: Whether it is an Android, iPhone or even a Windows based phone, you cannot survive without one. These devices provide instant communication with your clients through email, text message and phone, along with the ability to browse the web and select from tens of thousands of applications to assist in your business. Your clients will not wait for you to get to your office to respond to an email. Even a quick, “I’m driving, will respond as soon as it is safe” auto-response is better than no response. The cost of a typical phone can range from 100 to 300 dollars per phone depending on features and term of contract from the carrier of your choice.

Square Credit Card Reader

Credit Card Processing: If you expect to get paid, then you need to accept every form of payment possible, including plastic. Yes, you will lose a little bit on the sale, but you will gain an instant payment. If you are just getting started, without purchasing a machine or paying a monthly charge, you can accept credit cards anywhere you have a cell signal using the Square credit card application with your smart phone and the free reader device that they provide to you. No per-swipe fee, and less than 3.0% charge. Fast, secure, and in your account the next business day. Find it in your phones’s marketplace.

Reliable & Fast Internet: There are a lot of choices these days for fast internet, from DSL to cable to fiber, and the old tried and true T1 standard, but some businesses may find that a wireless broadband internet plan may be enough for them. We recommend Charter Business in most situations, but that varies depending upon what is available at the business location. One advantage to using a cellular based broadband internet connection is that you can take it with you, which is great for businesses that are not tied to one specific location. Typical 4G plans will provide over 5 meg down and up to 2 meg up. Verizon Wireless offers the MiFi devices for around 50 dollars with 5GB plans for 50 dollars per month.

IP Surveillance Cameras

IP surveillance: Sure it sounds like the CIA, but IP security cameras at your business will decrease loss of inventory, increase productivity, and may provide an insurance savings. You can even keep tabs on your employees using a smartphone or any web browser to view these camera. Recordings can be reviewed after events occur, and most systems can email you when there is movement in a particular location. Prices range from $150 for a single entry level camera into the $2000 range to cover an entire business. You can install yourself, or get an IT provider to handle this for you for the most professional results.

Email: This is a no-brainer, but many small businesses will cut corners here. A Hotmail account will work for sure, but who wants AcmeWidgetCo@hotmail.com on their business cards. At the very least, your business should use a service that allows for linking a domain to your mail, such as Google Apps (Gmail) or Microsoft Office 365. This gives you a professional appearance, and provides for important features such as linking of your smartphones, sharing of calendars between users and so much more. Microsoft Office 365 costs about 5 dollars per person per month and gives you up to 20GB of storage.

Anti-Virus & Security: Far too often this is overlooked, or taken for granted. A business that is vulnerable to viruses or malware is a business that could experience costly downtime and repairs, not to mention, open yourself up for compliance violations and potential fines or legal issues depending upon the field you are in. The components of a secure network are as simple as a quality firewall like those offered from Cisco, Watchguard or SonicWall, an anti-virus software package from Trend Micro or Symantec, and taking the time to apply updates to the Operating System (Windows, Mac, etc) and support software (Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, JAVA).

Backup: When disaster strikes, you need to be prepared for it. Having backups of your important files will insure you are not out of business when a computer or server fails. Backups technology can be as simple as an external USB drive or remote backup solution, or on the other end of the spectrum, as complicated as auto-loader tape drives. One thing is for sure, ANY attempt to backup your data is better than none. For automated cloud backup solutions, consider Servosity or Mozy Pro.

Here at Homeland Secure IT, we utilize a vast array of technology and we also help many small and medium businesses and even home offices stay up to date. If we can help you with decisions regarding your Greenville or Upstate technology infrastructure, please call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com. We offer sales, service, repair and consultation of everything from computers to VoIP.

What is your “must have” business technology? I would love to hear about it.  VoIP phone systems? iPad, Android or Windows based tablet computers? A favorite app (We love TiKL & Waze)?

I’ve posted this before…  External, portable, USB hard drives are convenient to store some data on, but dang it, don’t put everything on one and trust that it is forever and always going to be there for you.

These devices use 2.5″ hard drives like you would find in a notebook computer, and while there is nothing wrong with those drives, they do tend to be a little more fragile and have a shorter life-span than their 3.5″ brethren.

Case in point….  Today, I was going to copy some data from my daughter’s old computer to an external usb drive…   While the data made it over there, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and other things started happening. The huge collection of music that resided on the drive became unstable. It was taking long periods of time to open the files, some were damaged and thousands were missing.

Running recovery software only resulted in finding parts of files, because when I started copying my daughter’s files to that drive, they overwrote sectors where parts of the other files had been…    There’s no recovering that.

Thankfully, I had a backup, but what if I did not?

The moral of this story is – backup, backup, backup…   Use something like an online cloud backup system or multiple hardware devices, and do it often.   DO NOT put all your eggs in one basket and trust some >100 dollar usb drive. Doesn’t matter if you are using a Microsoft Windows PC, Mac OS X, Linux, or an Commodore 64, back it up!

Should you need help determining which backup solution is right for you or your business, please give us a call at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com. We are one of Greenville / Upstate South Carolina’s premier computer & server backup specialists and we have a disk, tape, cloud or NAS solution to suit your application!

Recently, Staples Business Depot did the unthinkable, they sold computers that had been returned, and the hard drives contained the previous owner’s private information according to an article on the www.cbc.ca news site which states, “Staples resold laptops with customer data, audit finds“.

The article goes on to say that 54 of the 149 computers tested that were ready to be resold, had banking, tax, social insurance, health, academic and passport information…. Also, that consumer data was found on devices in 15 of the 17 stores audited destined to be resold.

How did this happen? It is likely, a person returned a computer for repairs and possibly, due to the terms of one of the extended warranties, it was replaced instead. Then that Staples either wiped and reloaded it, or sent it off to the factory for repairs, either way, it was then put back into inventory, with the data of the former owner.

The moral of this story is, if you are a consumer or end user and return a computer, insure the company physically destroys your drive, or better yet, let’s you keep the drive (you may have to pay 100 dollars or so for that) and YOU destroy it or retain it for backup purposes.

If you run a service depot or you are a reseller that may offer used or refurbished computers for sale, consider simply replacing the hard drive, rather than attempting a ‘secure wipe’. Services like those offered by ShredDisk in Greenville, SC, will go to your location and shred the hard drive onsite!

It is partially due to the security concerns that Homeland Secure IT does not offer used computers or servers for sale.  Nor do we offer used hard drives. If you bring in a computer for repair or service and it ends up being not worth the repairs, we dispose of the hard drive in a secure manner. Make sure your computer support professional does too!

Would you drive a car without a spare tire in the trunk?  Auto makers are selling cars without spare tires!

How about operating your computer without a backup?

Not a week goes by that we don’t hear some horror story about computer owners losing data. It could be from a virus, a failed hard drive, a dropped notebook, even a misplaced or stolen notebook, but either way, the data is gone and one of the following generally takes place next:

• An IT service professional may be able to recover the data if you have the device, and it has not been physically destroyed.
• You recover from a backup that you have made (hopefully recently) but it may require the re-installation of the OS and/or applications by an IT support professional if your backup is not an image of the running system.
• You write it off and start from scratch – losing all your data…

Either way, not a pretty picture if this happens to you.

All this can be avoided by obtaining quality backup software or cloud services to accomplish this. If you need assistance determining methods of disaster recovery for your home or business computer, or an entire network of computers and servers, please contact us here at Homeland Secure IT… We are partners with Servosity, Symantec, Quantum, Mozy and other backup solution providers. We have solutions for Apple Mac OS X, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL and more!

864.990.4748 or info@homelandsecureit.com for more information in the Greenville / Upstate SC area.

Trend Micro is offering a service called SafeSync which allows you to access and share your files anywhere, anytime.

For as little as $39.95 a month, you can store your data online, instantly and share it between multiple devices, including iPhones, iPads and Androids. You can even share with friends and family with complete permissions!

You can get more information directly from Trend Micro, and even try it out for free!

http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/personal/safe-sync/

As your Upstate / Greenville, SC Trend Micro partner, we can offer this all of the Trend Micro product line, including installation, support and consultation. Call us at 864.990-4748 for more information or email info@homelandsecureit.com

I’ve said this before, but I think I will say it again. Should you leave a job and have personal files on your system, sure, by all means, delete your PERSONAL files, that’s okay, right?

Maybe…  In fact, laws on the books that state that everything you do at work is property of the employer, however, I am not a lawyer, so I won’t get into that.  What I WILL harp on is that if you do decide to delete a folder containing *your* personal files, not files belonging to the soon-to-be-ex-employer, then everything should be okay, but when you cross the line and either delete *everything* you can, including important system files, or possibly use a “secure wipe” application to write 1s and 0s to the drive, or even attempt to format a drive, then you have moved from protecting your privacy to destruction of property, malicious mischief, and a whole plethora of laws that cover this.

There is an entire field dedicated to recovering data intentionally deleted or destroyed. These “forensic” technicians are very good at it and also come with a hefty price tag. So, if you should happen to delete files, and it causes your former employer to enlist the assistance of an expert in recovery, then you can expect the associated costs to be passed on to you.

My advice is as follows:

If you are at work, why not work? Try to keep your personal files and emails totally off the business network. Use your Android or iPhone to read emails, or optionally web based email (gmail) if your company policy allows accessing external email accounts via the web on work computers.

Failing that, keep all your non-work email in a folder named something like “John’s Personal Email”, and personal files in a similarly named folder. Upon leaving, delete those and ONLY those folders.

What about your browser cache, all those cookies, auto-logged on sites, etc? Well, if your personal life did not intertwine with work, then you wouldn’t have this problem, but now you do, so what to do?  You COULD empty the cache, or you could use a tool like “CCleaner”, but those will remove legit work-related data too. Of course you could have enabled privacy mode and attempted to browse without leaving a trace, but you didn’t.

Okay, so just what CAN be recovered should you decide to delete your files and email before you leave?

Depending on how the Exchange server is configured, your mail may be backed up, possibly archived, forever, so even if you delete your mail today, last night’s backup got it all up until it ran.

Your desktop may be backed up as well, and it is possible that you do not even know it is happening. More and more businesses are opting for nightly, weekly or monthly imaging of all PCs.  Some computers are set to sync the documents folders to a centralized server.

And there’s always the chance that an employee will FEEL you did something bad, even if you had no intent to defraud them of their data and they will hire someone like me and my company, Homeland Secure IT to retrieve data from the hard drive. As I write this post, I am doing that for a new client in a similar situation.

Just what can we recover? Most everything. A “DELETE” doesn’t get it. Actually, we have successfully recovered files from a hard drive that had a “secure wipe” performed on it.

If your business needs data recovery services, please contact us in the Greenville / Upstate, SC area at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com – If it’s there, we’ll get it.

Those of us who have been through a hard drive failure know what real pain is! As a computer technician, it is no less devastating for us, all the same things have to take place after a failure, the routine is something like this:

• Determine the drive is indeed dead, have last rites, it was a good drive.
• Replace the drive in the computer.
• Format and load our operating system. (We do have the install disks, right?)
• Configure all the networking, ownership, accounts, etc. (What? No net access? Of course not, you don’t have the right driver)
• Load drivers for network interface,  audio, video and other hardware. (They are long out of date if you are using the original install media)
• Load all the updates, patches and driver updates. Windows XP systems may require 100 updates or more!
• Load your applications… Of course you know where the disks and license keys are.
• Find some applications online because they were downloaded. Guess what? Your key no longer works with the current version, your version is no longer available for download…
• Restore your files from the last backup you made. YOU DID MAKE A BACKUP, RIGHT?
• Spend the next week realizing you missed various things and fix those as you go.

Even for a seasoned techy type person, the time spent could literally be hours. New curse words will be invented. You may miss an important event like your son’s wedding, because this is far too important to put off.

There are many things that can shorten the time it takes to return your machine from a brick to a working system. You can ensure you have all your install media for the operating system and applications in one place, and that your product keys/licenses are tucked away safe and secure. Any hardware driver disks should be kept, and without question, you should always backup your system!

What if I told you that all of that can be avoided, and in the event of a hard drive crash or even a complete computer failure, that you could replace the drive, or failed system with another identical system, then have it running as if it never happened in about 20 minutes?

Through the magic of a “Bare-Metal Restore”, that is entirely possible! It is as if you went back in time, to happier days when the system was working correctly!

Many products are on the market that can accomplish this, but if you are using our Servosity Online On-Demand backup solution, you already have all the software you need!  You will require an extra hard drive to make the image to, a few minutes to configure it, and then let it run!

Watch it in action here as Damien Stevens, CEO of Servosity talks with Jon Evans, and George Law performs an actual restore:

We are so sold on Servosity that we use it for our own servers, recommend it to our clients and have partnered with them to offer it to you!

Convinced this may be right for you? Call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com. Want a free trial? Sure you do! Click this link:

FREE Servosity Online Backup Trial! Click Here...

I believe when it comes to data, MORE IS BETTER! Yeah, so call me a hoarder, it’s okay. I have plenty of room and hard drives are cheap!

Case in point…  Yesterday I received a call from the IT administrator for a corporation based out of MA about a router that was down. When I arrived, I found an old Cisco 2500 router that would not boot up. Sure, you can replace a nonoperational router, but what about that configuration? You see, when an IT service dude or dudette walks into a business in this kind of mess and no records are available, you are left with a bunch of question marks…

What is the WAN IP? What is the WAN gateway? What’s the netmask? What’s the LAN information? Are there VPNs? Where do they point to? What about access in from the outside world to internal resources, what goes where?

You can get some of this information by calling the internet service provider, you can get some by checking a desktop for where it might already be pointing for it’s gateway, but some of it is a certain blank without having notes.

One thing better in this situation is having a backup of the running configuration from the router.  Guess what? The IT administrator at the main office has the foresight to save a copy 4 or 5 years ago, and he was able to provide that information to me, allowing for a very rapid replacement of the equipment and a reconfig!

The moral of this story is – hang on to those old emails, keep those old configs, even if they are 4 years old.

Hard drives to store data on are inexpensive, the cost to recreate the data is NOT when you consider the downtime, the service charges for a technician to sit on hold to find out simple information, etc.

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Homeland Secure IT provides computer, server & network sales, service & support to Greenville / Upstate SC businesses and individuals. Call 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com for more information.

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 Mac OSX platform. While most Mac owners still believe they are impervious to exploits, blog articles and service requests tend to prove otherwise. The Mac has mainly been an unattractive target to the authors of malware because the rewards for their efforts would be low.

This is basically “security through obscurity” which certainly can work, but Mac sales have been increasing slowly, making the operating system a little more visible on the black hat radar.

Those of you reading this blog probably feel I am beating a dead horse, but now is the time for you Mac owners to get anti-virus on your systems. It actually may be too late, since the Mac is such a great multitasking system, you may be infected, and not even know it. Another thing to seriously consider is backup!

We recommend Trend Micro for your Mac, and offer it for sale. We can also help with Greenville / Upstate SC Mac virus removal and cleanup, as well as Servosity Online Backup for your Mac. Please call 864.990.4748 for more information, or email info@homelandsecureit.com