A couple weeks ago I was watching a conversation about the popularity of certain devices for browsing and thought I would pull out some recent information about our own website, http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com…
Here’s a look at our site for July 1st until August 1st broken down by browser and platform:
Homeland Secure IT Browser Stats
Other than the super-high bounce rate, we see some important information…
Internet Explorer running Microsoft Windows is just darn popular! Followed by Firefox and then Chrome, also on Windows… In fact, they account for about 80 percent of all traffic…
Up next is Safari & Firefox on the Mac… And then down a bit is Chrome on the Mac. Mac is the apparent source of 9.38% of traffic to our site (And less than 5% of our business).
The iPad viewers and the Android viewers accounted for 2% and 1.2% respectively… So a number of people were sitting on the toilet while surfing our site.
Here’s a further break down of mobile user specs:
Homeland Secure IT mobile browser info
iPad, iPhone & iPod dominates this category for sure, with Android 2nd, and Blackberry 3rd… Windows made a horrible showing… And what’s up with Palm? Someone is using that? hehe
I compared these stats to July 2010 and found Android usage has come up considerably, but iPad maintained a steady lead even then.
Looking at the percentage of Windows versus other platforms, Windows has lost only a two percentage points in a year, and those were taken up by mobile devices.
It will be interesting to see what this looks like in another year. I’m guessing mobile device usage will continue to grow, maybe even at an accelerated rate due to the large numbers of new tablets being introduced, and smartphones replacing older cell phones…
What are your experiences with your own website/s?
Homeland Secure IT Alert
Homeland Secure IT Alert for Wednesday, July 21st, 2011
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team has issued their recommendations for protection against network intrusions. I have included the entire document below, but the most current version of the document can be found here. Please keep in mind that these recommendations are not related to any one platform. These are “Best Practices” regardless of whether your business uses Microsoft, Linux or Mac OS X or whether your organization relies upon cloud computing instead of localized servers.
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National Cyber Alert System
Technical Cyber Security Alert TA11-200A
Security Recommendations to Prevent Cyber Intrusions
Original release date: July 19, 2011
Last revised: –
Source: US-CERT
Overview
US-CERT is providing this Technical Security Alert in response to recent, well-publicized intrusions into several government and private sector computer networks. Network administrators and technical managers should not only follow the recommended security controls information systems outlined in NIST 800-53 but also consider the following measures. These measures include both tactical and strategic mitigations and are intended to enhance existing security programs.
Recommendations
- Deploy a Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) to help block and identify common attacks.
- Use an application proxy in front of web servers to filter out malicious requests.
- Ensure that the “
allow URL_fopen” is disabled on the web server to help limit PHP vulnerabilities from remote file inclusion attacks. - Limit the use of dynamic SQL code by using prepared statements, queries with parameters, or stored procedures whenever possible. Information on SQL injections is available at http://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/sql200901.pdf.
- Follow the best practices for secure coding and input validation; use the secure coding guidelines available at:https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2010 and https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/bsi/articles/knowledge/coding/305-BSI.html.
- Review US-CERT documentation regarding distributed denial-of-service attacks: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-015.html andhttp://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/DNS-recursion033006.pdf.
- Disable active scripting support in email attachments unless required to perform daily duties.
- Consider adding the following measures to your password and account protection plan.
- Use a two factor authentication method for accessing privileged root level accounts.
- Use minimum password length of 15 characters for administrator accounts.
- Require the use of alphanumeric passwords and symbols.
- Enable password history limits to prevent the reuse of previous passwords.
- Prevent the use of personal information as password such as phone numbers and dates of birth.
- Require recurring password changes every 60-90 days.
- Deploy NTLMv2 as the minimum authentication method and disable the use of LAN Managed passwords.
- Use minimum password length of 8 characters for standard users.
- Disable local machine credential caching if not required through the use of Group Policy Object (GPO). For more information on this topic see Microsoft Support articles 306992 and 555631.
- Deploy a secure password storage policy that provides password encryption.
- If an administrator account is compromised, change the password immediately to prevent continued exploitation. Changes to administrator account passwords should only be made from systems that are verified to be clean and free from malware.
- Implement guidance and policy to restrict the use of personal equipment for processing or accessing official data or systems (e.g., working from home or using a personal device while at the office).
- Develop policies to carefully limit the use of all removable media devices, except where there is a documented valid business case for its use. These business cases should be approved by the organization with guidelines for there use.
- Implement guidance and policies to limit the use of social networking services at work, such as personal email, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, etc., except where there is a valid approved business case for its use.
- Adhere to network security best practices. See http://www.cert.org/governance/ for more information.
- Implement recurrent training to educate users about the dangers involved in opening unsolicited emails and clicking on links or attachments from unknown sources. Refer to NIST SP 800-50 for additional guidance.
- Require users to complete the agency’s “acceptable use policy” training course (to include social engineering sites and non-work related uses) on a recurring basis.
- Ensure that all systems have up-to-date patches from reliable sources. Remember to scan or hash validate for viruses or modifications as part of the update process.
Feedback can be directed to US-CERT.
Produced 2011 by US-CERT, a government organization. Terms of use
Last updated July 20, 2011
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Should your Greenville or Upstate SC based business or organization require assistance with this, please contact us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com. We offer firewalls and security appliances from our partners such as Cisco, WatchGuard, SonicWALL, and more!
Homeland Secure IT Alert
The Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System notebook that was stolen from an employee’s car this year has caused concern for many individuals who’s records were contained on that device. (Story Here)
What can you do to protect your data from prying eyes in the event your notebook or even a desktop computer is stolen? Easy, you can utilize disk or file encryption… In many cases, it is available to you absolutely free of charge.
One form of encryption that you may already have, if you are using Windows Vista or 7 Ultimate or Enterprise (or Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2) is to use BitLocker drive encryption. This is built into those operating system versions and gives you the choice of three different authentication mechanisms, including a mode that requires a USB key to be in place before the data can be accessed.
Some people have opted for TrueCrypt, an open source encryption package that works with Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP, as well as Mac OS X and Linux. It has the capability to create a virtual encrypted disk that resides inside a file on the hard drive, which it mounts as a normal system disk, or to encrypt an entire partition or hard drive, including the Windows boot partition.
There are countless methods to protect your data, from the two listed above, to a plethora of commercial products in software and even hardware form. Some would argue that a “free” tool such as TrueCrypt could not be as robust as XYZ commercial offering, and while that argument has some validity, one thing is for certain; A system protected with *any* type of encryption is 100% more secure than an unprotected system.
Should you wish to talk to someone about options available to you or your business, please call us and arrange for a free, no obligation consultation here in the Greenville / Upstate, SC area. 864.990.4748 or info@homelandsecureit.com
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.
Being in the computer service business, every day we are seeing more and more computers that have been compromised, whether they are Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux, it doesn’t matter. Even iPhones and Androids are falling victim to various malware found as a result of blindly following links.
What can you do to help protect yourself, your computer and your private data? Use a little common sense and don’t just randomly click on every link you see.
Sometimes, a link can come to you through email, a Facebook message, or a wall post on Facebook, and it will appear to be from your best friend, or a trusted co-worker, but it was really sent from a malicious source.
Here’s an example of a link posted on Facebook recently:
Typical social engineering attempt to lure you to a bad site...
This is a typical “social engineering” attempt to get you to visit a malicious site.
It works like this: The mark will see the link on their best friend’s wall and because it looks appealing and came from Bob, it has to be good, so they click on it. The link loads a site that LOOKS like YouTube or some other video site. When they try to play the video, what happens next is sheer genius. They are told that a codec or other piece of software needs to be updated. Of course, they have gone this far, so they will almost always agree to install the software.
And THAT is where the magic takes place. Even if you are running anti-virus, many times, this malicious software is allowed to install because the A/V sees it as a “user initiated action” and simply gets out of the way and lets you perform the install. After all, you know what you are doing, right?
Now there is malicious software running which may do many things, from disabling the anti-virus, to loading key loggers that send every key typed on that computer to some site in Tracrapistan, or full access to the machine may be granted to a remote user, allowing them to use the exploited machine to send spam, distribute more bad software etc. Whatever takes place is surely not good. They are not defragging the hard drive and doing your taxes.
Then there’s email “Phishing”… Here’s what that looks like… Can you spot what is wrong?
There are a number of things wrong with the above email example… Most banks do not send you email warnings that you have been locked out of your account, and in my case, I don’t even have a Chase bank account…. But those are not the one tell-tale sign that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it is a phishing message or an attempt to coax you to a malicious website…
To see that, you need only hover over the link itself:
When you place your mouse over the link, without even clicking on it, your email client will generally display the actual link. This one points to http://ciamedia.be…. not even close to a Chase server. The perpetrator of this attempted phishing attempt didn’t even try. Sometimes they will register a domain that LOOKS like the source, such as http://www.chasesecuresite.com.
Again, if you are using current mainstream anti-virus software, such as Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security or Trend Micro Titanium, every URL that you visit will be checked before allowing you to continue… Attempting to visit a malicious site will result in a dire warning displayed in your browser….
Above is the warning you will see in your browser upon visiting a fraudulent site if you are using Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security …
Then you will also see this warning pop up from your task bar:
Obviously, relying solely on your anti-virus software is not the wisest thing in the world… Safely browsing the web requires some common sense.
BUT, reliable and up to date anti-virus gives you an advantage that your unprotected brethren do not have. Especially for you Apple Mac OS X owners.
If you are looking for quality anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spam software for your business or personal computer, we highly recommend Trend Micro… We are a Trend Micro partner and would love the opportunity to offer their fantastic products to you, whether you need only one install for yourself, or 1000 seats for your company. We not only sell it, but we support it, along with full computer, server & network service / repair in Greenville & Upstate SC!
Please email info@homelandsecureit.com or call 864.990.4748 for more information.
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...
Our friend Jon Evans (@BigJonEvans) from www.4head4rent.com spent some time with another of our great friends and business partners, Brent Amyette with ShredDisk Onsite Hard Drive Shredding (@ShredDisk) yesterday…
In their live web stream, they discussed the benefits of using ShredDisk Onsite Hard Drive Shredding, and how traditional means of erasing a hard drive before donating the computer and drive to charity or even selling it are ineffective in protecting your data. The only 100% effective way to protect your data is to destroy the drive!
ShredDisk does just that by pulverizing the drive into “data confetti” and providing you with a certificate of destruction if required. ShredDisk will do this at YOUR location so the drive/s never leave your sight.
It doesn’t matter if you have a Microsoft Windows machine, Windows Server, Mac OSX, Linux or any other hard drive! ShredDisk even destroys mobile phones, smart phones, drives from multi-function machines such as copiers, flash media, and entire notebook computers!
Here’s a demonstration of The Shredder in action:
Homeland Secure IT is proud to partner with ShredDisk to offer their data destruction services for our computer service clients in the Greenville and Upstate SC area… Call 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com for more information.
For those interested, @BigJonEvans rents his body out (okay, just his forehead) for advertising purposes… Check out his website or follow him on Twitter or Facebook (John Evans).
Homeland Secure IT Alert
Secure IT Alert for Friday, February 11th, 2011
Adobe has beat out Microsoft for the number of vulnerabilities addressed on Patch Tuesday with the unleashing of a plethora of patches for their Acrobat, Reader, Coldfusion, Shockwave Player and Flash Player.
Reader’s updates are considered CRITICAL and there 29 holes that are plugged… Shockwave comes in second with 21 CRITICAL vulnerabilities fixed, followed by Flash with 13 CRITICAL. These are for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris.
The 5 Coldfusion vulnerabilities affect the security of Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and Unix. Though this update is labeled as only “IMPORTANT”, I wouldn’t skip it!
The long and short of this is – Update! Also be sure to keep your anti-virus / anti-malware current.
If you are in the Greenville / Upstate, SC area and need assistance, please email info@homelandsecureit.com or call 864.990.4748
Homeland Secure IT Alert
Google Chrome is Gaining Ground Fast
Are you still using Internet Explorer? The majority of people are that hit our website and most others that track this information, but, as you can see from the graph on the right, alternative browsers are gaining ground.
Microsoft Internet Explorer, like it or not, is the de facto “standard” that web sites and web applications are built to support. There are many reasons for that, and obviously the main one is that IE is shipped with Microsoft Windows Operating Systems, and Microsoft Windows dominates as the OS of choice for both individuals and businesses.
As Apple Mac OS, Linux and other operating systems become a bit more mainstream, the alternative browsers that these systems ship with will cut into the Microsoft IE market share, but there is more going on here than a switch to new operating systems.
You are probably way ahead of me on this, but due to concerns over security, there seems to be a mass exodus away from IE. We’ve heard from our clients that they are worried about the seemingly endless flow of vulnerability announcements from Microsoft and then the subsequent patches that must be installed in order to ensure they can safely browse the web.
That, combined with the fact that other browsers are offering what feels like a faster browsing experience, a slew of new features, additional plugins or addons not available on IE, and a shiny new look makes it easy to see why the IE market share has dropped and Chrome has come up.
Chrome recently added some Active Directory integration making the browser even better than before for System Administrators.
Surprisingly, Mozilla Firefox, the second most popular browser, has actually been declining in popularity along side IE, while Safari and Opera have remained pretty constant in the low end of the scale.
With Chrome breaking into the ten percent market share, and pulling away from Apple’s Safari rapidly, it appears that Chrome could overtake Firefox in the next 12 to 18 months. Very interesting information.
Click on the graph for the link to the original article and more information.
No matter which browser you use, remember, there ARE security flaws. Chrome is not impervious to exploits, so, please remember to browse responsibly! Use current anti-virus / anti-malware, and common sense. (IE, Don’t install addons, plugins or codecs etc that you do not trust).
If you would like to discuss security concerns or whether a particular browser may be right for your business here in Greenville or the Upstate, please call 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com
Everyone else has been making their predictions for the coming year, so I thought I might do the same…
These predictions are based upon industry news, social media and blog rambling as well as some personal wishes.
Will any of it come to fruition? I guess at the end of 2011 you can remind me how wrong I was.
A few IT Predictions for 2011:
- Google Android based devices will continue to dominate the market in smartphones, pads, and everything else from alarm clocks and personal weather stations to set top boxes.
- Wireless carriers will discover that loading their own “value added” bundled software on top of the phones they sell is really a turn off and that keeping the smartphone just as the manufacturer and OS provider intended it to be will enable a faster rollout of updates and make for happier customers.
- Dish, DirecTV & cable TV providers have a fight on their hands… Services like Netflix and a whole slew of streaming providers will fight to bring first run movies, and streaming of networks via the internet. We will see many new set top boxes, TVs with built-in streaming capability. The most exciting thing will be an the legal battles around this, not really the technology itself.
- Tablet and pad wars will continue. Apple’s iPad II will provide some stiff competition for the Android pads, but be prepared for Android based pads to spring up everywhere as more are cleared for import to the USA.
- Internet Tax? Yep, 2011 is the year. So much revenue is being lost that I predict we will see taxes placed on our online purchases. I believe it will be both good and bad. Some online retailers may no longer be able to beat out the local brick and mortar prices, so that could be good for us smaller guys, but it may slow down the injection of money into the economy. Either way, it’s coming.
- Cloud Computing: Over half of all businesses will look into using cloud based services, whether it is online storage, online backup, online applications like Microsoft BPOS or Google Apps, hosted anti-virus, hosted anti-spam or even hosted VoIP solutions. Of these, 10% will actually make the switch, and half who do make the switch will be totally happy, with the other dissatisfied due to bandwidth or network reliabilty. The number of fully satisfied people will go up as the technology matures.
- Malicious software will affect more Macs and Linux based machines in 2011. We’ve already seen a sharp increase in the number of exploited machines, expect this trend to continue. Add to this smartphones as a target.
- Network Connectivity: Charter Business has just come out with a 75×5 meg Pro75 package. This is great, but I expect this to reach 100×10 by the end of 2011, possibly as a free upgrade like they upgraded the 20meg to 30meg…
What do you think the very near future has in store for us? More solid state storage devices? Hard Drives reaching 5TB?
Either way, we hope you have a very Happy New Year!
