4it news & blog
21 Jan 2012 - Time to switch from Google to Bing?
This week Google, once again, changed the way it works. Called "Search, Plus Your World", deeply integrating Google+ into your search results.(If you are unaware of Google+, it's Google's attempt at a social media site aimed squarely at taking users away from Facebook.)
The idea behind the update is to try and deliver "more personalised" search results; however in reality it seems a thinly veiled attempt to shamelessly promote its own services (ie Google+).
This has, of course, upset a lot of people. Not just the owners of Facebook & Twitter who are none too happy about being pushed further down the search rankings, but also from privacy experts and users.
People used Google because they trusted the search results to be relevant, not biased towards a particular aim or goal. This update diminishes that trust.
Step into the arena Bing, Microsoft's search engine. Although it had an uncertain start when launched just a few years ago, it has gone from strength to strength. A clean interface with a fast response and most importantly, relevant unbiased results.
Or to quote a tech journo, "Bing is now as Google was, before they screwed it up"
So maybe it's time to switch from Google to Bing?
More details @ Gizmondo
17 Jan 2012 - Domain Registration Price increase (.com, .net, .biz)
On the 15th January 2012, Verisign increased the cost prices on .com, .net domain extensions, and Neustar on .biz domain names.As a result of these changes, registrations of these domains will increaase by approximately £1.
Note. As these domains are priced in US Dollars, the actual registration cost will vary somewhat depending on current UK-US exchange rate.
09 Jan 2012 - Fraudulent "Microsoft" Phone Call Scam
We have noticed a sharp increase in people receiving scam phone calls purporting to be from Microsoft.These calls are usually from an overseas call centre (typically India), and the caller then tries to convince you that your PC has been identified as virus infected and that you have ignored their attempts to contact you.
They then ask to remote control your pc or get you to type a sequence of commands to confirm infection. The end result being them asking for your credit card details to pay them to "clean" your PC.
THIS IS A SCAM. Microsoft will never, repeat NEVER, cold call people in this manner.
DO NOT under ANY circumstances allow them access to your machine. They may virus infect it.
DO NOT under ANY circumstances give them your credit card details.
If you think you have fallen foul of this scam, please contact us so we can scan your pc for any malware they may have installed.
More info @ Microsoft
22 Dec 2011 - Merry Christmas
We would like to wish all our customers and friends a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.We will be closed from 2pm today (Thursday 22nd Dec) and will reopen on Tuesday 3rd of Jan 2012.
Limited support may be available over the christmas period for emergency situations.
11 Nov 2011 - US Tackles huge Cybercrime Syndicate
A Russian/Estonian cybercriminal gang has been arrested thanks to efforts by the FBI with help by NASA & Trend Security.The gang had infected over 500,000 pc's to reject users to advertising sites earning the operators over £9m.
Full article @ BBC News
06 Nov 2011 - Duqu Malware hides in MS Word Documents
Microsoft has offered a temporary fix for a software flaw that leaves Windows PC's vunerable to attack by the Duqu trojan.The trojan spreads via Word Documents and relies on the user clicking on an e-mail attachment. As usual all users should be educated to the dangers of opening ANY attachments from untrusted sources.
More details @ BBC News
Full Advisory @ Microsoft Security Response Centre
04 Nov 2011 - Latest iPhone launch marred by buggy OS
Apple's latest iPhone release ( the iPhone 4S) lost some of it's shine recently as users started complaining about poor battery life caused by a bug in the new version of its operating system, IOS5.This is particularly embarrassing for Apple, as they have in the past, taken great relish at pointing out, and making fun of, flaws in their competitors' products. However it is unsurprising that such hubris eventually backfires.
Full article @ BBC News
15 Oct 2011 - Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 Billion!
In a rather curious move, Microsoft has bought Skype for $8.56 Billion. It's curious because there is a lot of overlap between Skype and Microsoft's own Windows Live Messenger product, and that the Skype user base is only a third of WLM.It will be interesting to see what the long term aim of this is. Microsoft has a less than stellar track record when buying big-money companies and the $8.5Billion it has paid for Skype is it's largest acquisition to date.
More details @ Wired
06 Oct 2011 - Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dies aged 56
Steve Jobs, has finally lost his battle against pancreatic cancer, aged just 56. Whilst I have been (and remain) critical about Apple's practices and cautious about its products, it is sad to lose such an influential contributor to the field of computing and personal electronics.It is, without doubt, that Apple's emphasis on aesthetic design and product usability has provided a driving force to competing hardware and software vendors to improve their game, even if, at times function hasn't actually kept pace with form.
It will be interesting to see how much of this was due to Job's direct input and how Apple will cope without him.
Job's was previously ousted from Apple in 1985 before re-joining them as CEO in 1995. However during his absence, Apple struggled and was close to bankruptcy. Upon his return, striking a controversial $150m investment deal with Microsoft's Bill Gates to help Apple get back to health.
Details @ BBC News
Obituary @ BBC News Obituary Page
01 Oct 2011 - Apple Mac PDF trojan spreads.
Contrary to popular (and misguided) belief that everything Apple is safe from virus attacks, F-Secure are tracking the spread of a Mac Trojan disguised as a PDF document.When opened by the hapless user, the Trojan opens a back door allowing the attacker to gain full access to, and control of, the machine.
Although this classed as low risks, many commentators see this as a taste of things to come. But due to market share, Windows machines still remain the cyber criminals #1 target.
More details @
01 Oct 2011 - Microsoft wins Rustock civil case, criminal one next?
Following the Microsoft assisted take-down of the Rustock spam botnet earlier this year, Microsoft have now won the civil case against the operators and have passed over the evidence to the FBI in hopes of there being a criminal case.More details @ SC Magazine
26 Sep 2011 - Open that SPAM or they'll sue you!
Spammers are now using scare tactics to get you to open the malware infected e-mails they send you. In this case with threats to sue you!Websense have monitored an increase in a type of spam using social engineering to trick you into launching the infected attachment.
What the email claims is that your mail server has been sending spam to the outside world. The email is spoofed to appear as if they come from known and reputable companies. The attachment is a fake ZIP file that supposedly contains a scanned copy of a document that has evidence of your spam, but in reality is an EXE file that contains a Trojan downloader, which pulls in malware.
More details @
Websense
As always we recommend that you treat all e-mails from an unknown or unexpected source with great suspicion and caution.
22 Sep 2011 - Browser Wars Chrome Inches Up, Firefox Flat, IE9 Climbing Fast
Latest results from Net Applications make for interesting reading.IE (all versions) is still by far the largest market share but is slowly shrinking, however within that IE9 share has risen strongly.
Firefox remains flat, Safari has meager increase (due to iTunes / Quicktime bundled install?), and Chrome shows steady growth by continuing to mop up those jumping ship.
More details @ PC World
07 Sep 2011 - Late Summer Holiday Office Closure
The office will be closed on Friday 9th September and Monday 12th September.Limited phone support will be available during this time.
19 Aug 2011 - HP Drops Bombshell
I a shock move, HP announced this week plans to drop its entire WebOS operation (phones/tablets) as well as spinning off its pc business. They also announced a poorer than expected forecast for 2011 leading to some stock price volatility.More details @ ZDNet
03 Aug 2011 - Google to warn users with infected PC's
During some essential maintenance for one of their data centres, Google were able to identify more than a million Windows XP machines infected with strain of malware designed to hijack search results.From today Google will notify users via a large header bar on the Google search page if they have an infected machine.
If you see this notification, please call us.
More details @ KrebsOnSecurity
02 Aug 2011 - Server Support Prerequisites
Can we remind all server clients that regular server maintenance is a prerequisite for our server support service.Any request for support from a non-maintained server will be declined until such time as the heath of the server can be determined and any remedial action necessary taken. This operation is chargeable and will invariably impact the time taken to resolve your raised support issue.
We recommend servers are maintained on a quarterly basis, however to meet our support requirements, maintenance events must not be more than 6 months apart.
If more than 6 months has elapsed since the last maintenance event, the server, for support purposes, will be classed as non-maintained.
01 Aug 2011 - Late Payment Policy (effective from Aug 1st 2011)
To all account clients:-Late Payment Policy (effective from Aug 1st 2011)
Unless a specific invoice is in dispute, the following late payment policy will apply to all clients.
Account facilities are strictly 30 days. If we have not received your payment by the due date specified on the invoice, we will then contact you, usually via e-mail, to request payment with the following schedule.
- Request 1 : Sent on date invoice due.
- Request 2: Sent 7 days after invoice due.
- Request 3: Sent 14 days after invoice due.
If we have still not received payment by day 21, your account will be placed on stop automatically and no further work can be undertaken until the account is brought back in order.
In order for us to continue to provide highly competitive contract-free services it is essential that we receive payments when due and we request that all clients endeavour to keep their accounts in order
Persistent late payments may lead to a withdrawal of account facilities and the account converted to a pre-payment basis.
Upon inception, this policy will apply retrospectively to any outstanding invoices matching the above criteria.
Can we also take this opportunity to remind all clients that the Early Settlement Discount scheme is still in effect as is the Commission Referral Discount scheme.
Details for both of these are available using the links below.
Settlement discount
Referral Commission Scheme
04 Jul 2011 - Summer Sizzling Special Offer - Free IT Audit
Summer is here and until the end of September we are offering a free IT audit for your office or business.We will audit your IT infrastructure, identify your current and future needs and produce a machine by machine report for you with our recommendations and advice. All with absolutely no obligation whatsoever!
Give us a call or e-mail today.
06 Jun 2011 - Multiple Hardware / Software failures
We've had a rather busy morning this morning, faced with a number of hardware and software failures including the loss of our DSL service, the failure of our Firewall device and misbehaviour of our Exchange and DHCP Servers.However as of 10:30am all issues have been resolved.
05 Jun 2011 - Chrome market share grows at expense of Firefox / IE
Recent NetMarketShare webbrowser numbers show Google's Chrome use is steadily increasing at the expense of Firefox & IE.IE, however, is still the browser with the largest market share.
More details @ ZDNet
05 Jun 2011 - Apple's malware response bypassed within hours
After a month long Mac Defender/Mac Guard malware attack, Apple finally released a promised security update aimed at addressing it.Unfortunately within hours the malware writers released a new version of Mac Defender making the security update obsolete.
The initial month delay by Apple is shameful and would not be tolerated in the Windows ecosystem, (most windows users receiving DAILY malware updates to their security products).
Apple have historically (through ignorance or arrogance) paid little attention to their OS security, a decision which has now come back to bite them in the ass!
More details @ ZDNet
01 Jun 2011 - Windows Server 2008 R2 / Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Complete
We have completed our W2K8 R2 / Exchange 2010 server deployment/migration and retired our Exchange 2007 server.As always these events are an "adventure" but that's exactly why we do these in-house first before offering them to our clients!
26 May 2011 - 1 in 14 downloads are malicious - Microsoft
Interesting article over @ Computerworld. It turns out 1 in 14 programs downloaded by Windows users turns out to be malicious according to Microsoft on Tuesday.We continually warn our clients to be extremely cautious when surfing and downloading from the internet.
If you would like to discuss your corporate IT security we're here to help.
25 May 2011 - Microsoft announce Windows 8 to ship next year (2012)
Micrsoft's next gen version of Windows (Windows 8) is due to be released next year (2012) according to Steve Ballmer.We're expecting support for more processors including ARM's mobile chips used in smartphones and other mobile devices (ie slate pc's).
More details @ ZDNet
23 May 2011 - Mail Server Migration Tuesday 23rd to Wednesday 24th
We will be migrating our internal mail from Exchange Server 2007 to Exchange Server 2010 on Tuesdaay and Wednesday of this week.We expect minimal downtime and disruption however if you have an urgent requirement you may wish to call us rather than using e-mal.
21 May 2011 - Chinese domain name scam resurfaces
We've started to see a reappearance of the Chinese Domain Name Scam spam e-mails.Quite simply you receive an e-mail from a Chinese company claiming someone is trying to register the Chinese variants of your registered domain name, and the helpful e-mailer is asking to see if you want them first (for a modest fee of course).
The e-mail we received contained the following line
'We received HAITONG company's application that they are registering the name " 4-it " as their Internet Keyword and " 4-it .cn "、" 4-it .com.cn " 、" 4-it .asia "domain names etc.., '
Firstly "Registering 4-it as their internet keyword" is just utter gibberish. The sentence "My cheese has feet" would make more sense!!
Secondly, no one it trying to purchase those domains, this is just a scare tactic to try and get you to purchase lots of domains you neither want nor need.
As usual with these scams, delete it.
20 May 2011 - MACDefender claims a significant number of victims.
Apple Mac owners are finally in the targets of the Malware writers, following the appearance of a fake security application written specifically for the Mac, called MACDefender or MAC Security.Mac users are a tempting target as most are ignorant to security threats, believing, quite wrongly, that "Macs don't get viruses".
We have been predicting this event for at least 12 months. Macs are no more (or less) secure than any other operating system (including Windows) and it was inevitable that once their market share had reached a key point they would then become a target.
Full article @ BBC News
19 May 2011 - Microsoft Hyper-V R2
We have just completed a successful migration of most our internal servers (both physical and virtual) to Microsoft's Hyper-V R2 platform.If you are considering virtualisation or server consolidation then why not give us a call?
The fact that Hyper-V R2 is a free product is an excellent incentive to start!
08 May 2011 - Windows 7 is number 1 in the US, but XP still reigns worldwide
Following on from out recent article Windows 7 is now the number one OS in the U.S.. Worlwide, however, the story is slightly different with XP still hanging on to about 54% of all PCS while Windows 7 share has grown to approximately 24%.Full article @ ConsumerReports.org
