tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86622565834968422012023-12-12T06:45:32.728-08:00M5 SystemsM5 SystemsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00126591495136740158noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662256583496842201.post-10691253200886242862015-08-10T09:31:00.001-07:002015-08-10T09:34:53.702-07:00Windows 10 Upgrade?<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We are all excited by the announcement of a FREE upgrade to Windows 10. Stop for a moment and think about what that really means for your computer. Pay attention to the version number. We went from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Then we went to Windows 8.1 to fix some problems. Now we will skip 9 altogether and jump to 10?</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kJXU7jOaXuk/VcjSmksU8WI/AAAAAAAAAQM/ZeHz8kD6idE/s1600/windows_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kJXU7jOaXuk/VcjSmksU8WI/AAAAAAAAAQM/ZeHz8kD6idE/s320/windows_10.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You want the new, improved Windows! First, read the system requirements. Is your computer compatible with the new Windows? Now, and most important, where is your computer and what programs do you use? </span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is this a computer at your place of business? </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Is it connected to a local area network? </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Do you use any software specific to your business?</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you answered 'Yes' to any of these then you need to check with your IT department/person to get approval to upgrade.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not all software is compatible with Windows 10 yet! Not all networks are ready for Windows 10 yet! </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We have seen unauthorized upgrades bring work to a halt. Proprietary software crashes and the network suffers. Please think before you do something that will have consequences beyond your own use.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If you have questions about this, give us a call at 602-432-1079 or email us at mikes@m5systems.net.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00126591495136740158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662256583496842201.post-59425959406669007802015-07-02T09:22:00.003-07:002015-07-02T09:22:47.936-07:00Outsourcing your IT Department?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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For businesses seeking a technology company to act as
their IT department, one thing to consider is what kind of monitoring and
remediation does this organization provide? The reason I bring this up is that
it is very important to be proactive when dealing with IT networks of any size.
Having to constantly chase ghosts to find out what caused this problem or that
problem is time consuming, inefficient and costly in man hours and lost
productivity.<br />
<br />
One of the best things M5 Systems ever did was procuring a very
powerful software monitoring tool to assist us with our clients in helping them
be proactive. We know in advance when a piece of hardware is about to fail, or
when a drive is badly fragmented, when anti-virus software is out of date or
when Windows Updates are not being done. We can also auto-remediate many of
these issues so they don’t become a problem later. This makes for a more
efficient and trouble free network which reduces costs and downtime. Why be
reactionary when you can be proactive and avoid issues in the future? </div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GdAZi12sBdc/VZVk1sWP2HI/AAAAAAAAAFk/oYX1SAHsH9w/s1600/what-every-leader-wants-proactive-team.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Be Proactive" border="0" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GdAZi12sBdc/VZVk1sWP2HI/AAAAAAAAAFk/oYX1SAHsH9w/s320/what-every-leader-wants-proactive-team.jpg" title="Be Proactive" width="320" /></a></div>
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Speaking of being proactive, why is it whenever I walk into
a new client the normal way of doing things when it comes to IT almost always
seems to be reactionary? I never quite understood this philosophy. It always
comes with higher costs and headaches, cleaning up viruses, finding out that a
data backup hasn’t been done for weeks or months, hard drives failing, systems
running too hot, etc.<br />
<br />
It makes no sense to me to run an IT network in this
fashion especially when it’s the lifeblood of most businesses! What we are
doing at M5 Systems is constantly retraining how our clients think about
maintaining their networks. At the end of the day through all the kicking and
screaming their systems run more smoothly, they have far fewer issues and
sometimes even ask me why there haven’t been any recent issues! Make sure your
IT provider is helping you to become proactive and not reactive when it comes
to maintaining your systems and network.</div>
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<![endif]--><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00126591495136740158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662256583496842201.post-18750168189786947172015-06-17T07:33:00.001-07:002015-06-17T07:37:46.435-07:00Data Backup and Disaster RecoveryIn my last Blog post I talked about file encryption and securing your data from the bad guys. I want to continue on that topic with an emphasis and data backup and disaster recovery.<br />
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Many of the small businesses I encounter have very little regard for backups and disaster recovery. I find this disturbing since their data is one of their most important assets. Many of the excuses I hear relate to the cost of backup and recovery software. Even if the cost is around a couple grand it’s not worth it to them? I see what these people drive, what their homes look like, etc. and believe me when I say 2,000.00 is pocket change! My larger clients have no problem with the investment as they acknowledge losing their data would be a disaster to say the least.<br />
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One of our solutions we recommend is the <a href="http://www.m5systems.net/AppAssure-5-Brochure.pdf" target="_blank">Dell Appassure Backup and Disaster Recovery software platform</a>. It’s easy to install and use and will replicate your data to an offsite hosting facility every hour of the day or at night if you so choose. There are options for converting your data into virtual machines (Hyper-V, VMWARE) to create a hot standby. Data retention can be configured for months or years depending on how much data storage you have.<br />
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Our clients replicate their recovery points to a local data center here in Phoenix. They have peace of mind knowing that their data isn’t stored in some ambiguous place in the cloud. There is no reason your business should ever be at risk from data loss unless of course you don’t consider that data to be worth very much.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00126591495136740158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662256583496842201.post-20617975779923878342015-06-03T00:02:00.000-07:002015-06-17T07:23:27.350-07:007 Deadly Sins
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As IT networks become more complex protecting them becomes
even more difficult. Did you know that malware growth on Android devices has
increased 1800% over the last 12 months? How about that Apple MAC devices have
become more susceptible to malware? Here is something very alarming: 64% of
users don’t lock their phones! Employees losing their phones which are not even
locked can give any IT administrator heartburn. If infected mobile devices are
connected to a corporate network really bad things can happen. Mobile device
management has never been more critical.</div>
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How about unsecured WIFI networks? I have run into this one
many times in the past and when I confront the client I ask them to give me the
keys to their home. Of course after the laughter stops I explain that leaving
their WIFI network unsecured is just about the same thing. I mean this is not
something which is difficult to do but so often overlooked.</div>
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Firewalls are great security devices but when they are
misconfigured or not setup properly they can do more harm than good. By giving
the end user a false sense of security thinking that their network is protected
when in reality it isn’t and is vulnerable to attacks. Don’t let this happen to
you! Make sure your firewall or UTM device is looked at very carefully by a
security professional who is certified.</div>
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Is your corporate data a valuable asset? I would the answer
to this question is a resounding YES! Well one of the best and cost effective
ways to ensure that it remains safe from the bad guys is to use data
encryption. Sophos data encryption is not expensive and is an excellent way to
keep your data safe. Suppose one of the computers on your network has been
infected with one of the ransomware viruses like CryptoLocker. Your files are
encrypted by the virus and you either have to restore from backup or pay the
ransom to get your files back. Well if your files were encrypted with Sophos
data encryption it wouldn’t make any difference. The ransomware virus would not
be able to do any harm to your data and there would be no need to go through a
time consuming restore process. Every corporate network should encrypt their
files, no excuses here!</div>
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Attached to this blog post is a nice little PowerPoint
presentation about the 7 Deadly IT Sins, some of which I have discussed here.
Please take a look and let me know if you have any questions!</div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00126591495136740158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662256583496842201.post-52657524812052462572015-05-25T10:11:00.000-07:002015-05-27T08:43:05.646-07:00Are Your Network Security Systems Integrated?<br />
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Since I first got involved in the IT Security world one
of the things which I have always found frustrating and inefficient is the
disconnect between desktop anti-virus products, firewalls, and <abbr title="Unified Threat Management">UTM</abbr> devices.
Solutions from one vendor never meshed with another so in almost every case
managing these technologies for the customer was difficult, inefficient and
frankly almost impossible. I always wondered when one of the major players
would meld their desktop solution with their edge or gateway solution. Maybe
you are asking why this is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>important. How
does this help my customer’s network or more importantly how does this help me
from a management perspective? </div>
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Well if you could have both the desktop and the edge or
<abbr title="Unified Threat Management">UTM</abbr> side talking to each other, feeding each side information about threats and
what to do if there was an infection wouldn’t that be worth something to you?
For example let’s say a desktop gets infected by malware and this information is
then communicated to the <abbr title="Unified Threat Management">UTM</abbr>. The <abbr title="Unified Threat Management">UTM</abbr> then makes a decision to shut down the
infected machine and quarantine it from the rest of the network. Remediation
then takes place on the infected machine and just for good measure the rest of
the machines on the network are also scanned. <br />
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I have been waiting for this technology
to become reality for many years and now it’s finally happening. Sophos has
been doing a tremendous job on the security front and later this year will be
integrating this technology into their desktop and <abbr title="Unified Threat Management">UTM</abbr> products. For my
customers their networks will not only be protected but will also be
“intelligent” when it comes to security. Instead of having desktop anti-virus
from one vendor and a <abbr title="Unified Threat Management">UTM</abbr> product from another vendor with no real ability to
respond to an attack, Sophos protected networks will be able to respond to an
attack without someone like me having to do anything!</div>
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This is really an exciting time for me being able to
offer security products to my customers which actually work together forming a
total solution with the ability to quarantine and mitigate potential problems automatically. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00126591495136740158noreply@blogger.com0