After things settled down in the American Wild Wild West, people discovered that their money was safer in a bank than buried in the back yard or stuffed under a mattress. Where do you keep your money?
It seems that the Wild Wild Web has settled down and now presents some compelling options. Those individuals and businesses who have lost data from their on-site computers may want to take a page from history and consider banking their data. Where do you keep your data?
EasyStreet is experiencing record growth as companies move their data to servers in our data center. The cost analysis of “building a bank” vs. “renting a bank” has allowed these companies to improve their efficiency and bottom line.
Fortunately, small businesses can leverage this trend with great economy now. Our client’s critical need to backup local data offsite and not worry about maintaining local tape/CD methods that don’t always happen. The difficult becomes easy with EasyStreet Digital Backup services.
Is a copy of your financial, customer and email data in the bank?
March 16th, 2007 by Day Tooley
Posted in @ EasyStreet, Security | Enter a comment »
Three most-common reasons:
- Slow Internet connection
- Computer is dragging a mob of little hitchhikers, all phoning home
Incredibly, there seem to be a number of business men and women trying to get through their day using a dial-up connection. Often these are professionals who don't realize that a $1 more per day for a broadband connection can save them tons of time. Doing a simple Return On Investment (ROI) and assuming the Oregon minimum wage, spending a dollar is a no-brainer.
The second, often overlooked, reason is caused by uninvited guests living in your computer. Like barnacles on a boat, they need to be scraped off if you want to catch the wind and keep up.
At a minimum, get a copy of a utility such as Ad-Aware. It's free and does a good job cleaning house. Run it every week or two.
Another one is Spybot Search & Destroy, also free. Run it too.
And if you really want to get the rust out, get jv16 PowerTools (30-day free trial, but well worth the $30 to purchase). It has saved me tons of time.
Oh, and reason #3.
Web content is getting richer. In 2002, the average web page was a lean 20K. Even a modem connection would load the page in 4 seconds. Now the average web page is about 100K (got 20 seconds to spare?). With Flash and video and FrontPage creating obese content, a faster Internet connection is the quick fix.
After the novelty wears off, hopefully the professional website designers will use lighter and more responsive tools such as AJAX to create useful content. Until then, it's pretty easy to increase your Internet bandwidth and get rid of the computer hitchhikers and barnacles.
Technorati Tags: Ad-Aware, A-Squared, jv16
Del.icio.us Tags: Ad-Aware, A-Squared, jv16
September 20th, 2006 by Day Tooley
Posted in Most Popular, Websites, Security, General, Internet Access | 2 Comments »
Businesses and individuals have become fairly diligent in protecting their networks and computers from harmful intrusions from the outside. Firewalls and software turn away viruses and spam so we feel more secure using our computers.
Now there is a good tool to have when you go outside that determines if a website might contain snares and "social engineering" tricks like spyware infections, identity theft scams, and sites which send excessive e-mail.
I have used the McAfee SiteAdvisor for a month now as a browser plug-in. Do a Google search, and each site has a little check next to it. Hover over the check and a quick summary flag shows up. Click on it, and a detail page comes up. Here is their advice about blog.easystreet.com
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SiteAdvisor was founded in April 2005 by a group of MIT engineers. On April 5, 2006 Internet security company McAfee acquired them. Download the browser plug-in for IE or Firefox. Any site you visit, you can then click to see if they are down some dark alley where you may not want to go.
Technorati Tags: spyware, McAfee, security
May 19th, 2006 by Day Tooley
Posted in Websites, Security | 1 Comment »
Statement: I can restore any business-critical file in a timely manner because
- I have a disciplined daily backup procedure that always happens
- Critical backup data is stored off-site each day
- I know it works because I have restored a file within the past 7 days
- I have never had to recreate a file due to not having a current backup file
Contratulations! If you answered "yes" to each of the above, go home tonight and enjoy a good night's sleep. The fact is, that 50% of all backups cannot be restored. And finding the latest version of the lost file and restoring it can be daunting, even if it exists somewhere. Enter online digital backup. According to Quantum Research, Disk-to-Disk offsite backup is the #1 priority for information managers among the Fortune 1000 companies.
Quantum Corporation
Disk-to-Disk backup remains the #1 priority for these companies in 2005 and has also become affordable for small to medium-sized businesses as well. Here's a recent article from an architectual firm that speaks to the benefits: Architectural Firm Seeks Security With Offsite Data Storage. Whether it's your email server or customer database, lots of EasyStreet customers are opting for this service and enjoying a good night's sleep.
November 21st, 2005 by Day Tooley
Posted in Security, General | 1 Comment »
“The only totally secure computer is one that is disconnected and unplugged” used to be the bottom-line wisdom. Enter the laptop and wireless technology. The world is changing.
As Portland moves toward ubiquitous wireless connection from anywhere in the city, new opportunities and cautions will evolve. Many homes and businesses have already adopted wireless technology and enjoy the easy mobility. Some precautions from experience.
The default Plug-and-Play nature of wireless routers and laptop computers makes it easy to get connected. But many of the most popular brands (e.g. LinkSys) have zero (0) security features enabled by default. At a minimum, take time to enable the 3 basic security features:
1. Turn off broadcasting the SSID (Service Set IDentifier) address in the wireless router (that’s like the call letters of a radio station which say: “Here I am. Pick me.” ).
2. Invoke the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption services.
3. Allow access only to known specified MAC (Media Access Control) addresses (every Internet-connected device has one).
EasyStreet support has been advised of at least two incidents of unauthorized users connecting to a company network and accessing private data. Both of them had wireless access available that was not secured. In one case, copyrighted files were permanently deleted from all 7 office computers on the company’s network.
There are other things you can do to protect your sensitive business network to enhance security further. But at least require the proper wireless credentials to access your network.
And be aware of the snooping tools such as AirMagnet, NetStumbler and AiroPeek NX which expose your network to parking lot visitors.
November 4th, 2005 by Administrator
Posted in Security, Internet Access | 1 Comment »
