Alpha Technical Solutions

Posts Tagged ‘Security’

I have had a disturbing call from an old friend of my parents who have been hit by a scam.

The scam goes like this, a person claiming to be from Microsoft calls and claims there is a security issue with your PC and asks you to do a few things at the command prompt then transfers you to a technician who asks for credit card details, that is when he put the phone down, however they have screwed up his PC and I am about to go out to fix it, it appears they target older members of the public praying on their ignorance.

Please pass this on
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Its the start of the first working week of a new year, and everyone is getting back into the swing of things after the Christmas break. So instead of getting right back into your routine take a little bit of time to check that your backups are working well. I’ll admit this is a bit of a boring an onerous job but it is a very important one.

There is nothing worse than suffering a disaster, running to a backup and finding out that what you need is not there.

The trouble is that very few people ever check their backups. Backups are set, and they run and they run and they run.

You thing in fact you are sure what is being backed up.

However you don’t know for sure unless you regularly check your backups.

So do yourself a  favour. Before this years work really builds up – check your backup. Hopefully all will be well, but if it is not – well at least you can now save yourself.

If you happen to be one of the many who never backup, make your first job creating that backup.

It’s the last few days before Christmas and one of the hottest technology items that will be given away will once again be the laptop. If you are going to be giving away a laptop I would ask you to take a moment to think about the recipient. The person you are giving the laptop to will want to use it straight away. However if you give it to them out of the box they’re going to have to go through the first run sequence and then if they are sensible they’re going to download updates and get a good anti-virus solution going before they do anything. Christmas day is a day for fun- not being sensible. So I say why not prepare the laptop for them. Get it ready so that all they have to do is press the on button and have some fun.

Remember these  steps and you won’t go far wrong.

Before you start doing anything plug the laptop into the mains. Never setup a new laptop using the battery, you probably won’t have that much charge in the battery and you should fully charge a laptop before giving it away anyhow.

Start the laptop and follow the wizard to get it ready for use. At this point make the name of the user account the name of the person who is going to be using the laptop. If you are security conscious create a separate admin account and a named ordinary user account for its owner. In the long run this is more sensible – although you probably won’t be thanked for it.

Ok now that the laptop is up and running take a moment to see what software has been preinstalled on it. Get rid of 30 or 60 day demo software unless you are also giving away a licence for it. Take a look at the anti-virus software too. Chances are it will be a demo that will run out in a month. Unless you are paying for the antivirus get rid of that too. You don’t want to have the person you are giving the laptop too worrying about this one month after they receive it. I’ll tell you where to get an excellent free anti-virus from in a moment. The basic rule at this stage is get rid of things that are unnecessary or that will start asking for money in the near future.

Take a moment to check the firewall is on. It should be on all modern computers – but lets just be sure of that shall we.
Now it is time to go online. Your first destination should be:  http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/ This is the home of Microsoft Security Essentials a first class and free piece of software that guards against viruses, spyware and other malicious software. Told you not to worry about removing the antivirus.

By this point Windows Updates should have started downloading. If they haven’t go to Windows Update and start running Windows Update.  You should now download and install all the of the updates you can. These are an essential part of securing a PC so make sure that download all of the available updates. Also take a moment here to make sure that automatic updates are turned on. This will help keep the PC secure in the long run.

When the updates are complete take a moment to install a second browser. Its always a good idea to have a spare browser on a computer. Firefox, and Chrome are good choices here. Come to think of it – I prefer both Chrome and Firefox to Internet Explorer.

You’re almost done now – this next step is simply to install any software that you think the person who’s going to be using the software might like.

Make sure the laptop is fully charged. Once it is turn it off, unplug it and let the laptop cool down. Once it is cool you can wrap it up and give it away.

Do this and you will have a ready to use laptop, someone will be delighted on Christmas day.

Image by nDevilTV via Flickr

Out for about a week now is Microsoft’s latest foray into anti-virus software. This time around the software is a free download designed for the consumer end of the market (with Forefront Security staying in place as a provider of Enterprise level protection).  So that’s the first thing you need to remember – this is a product designed for consumers. It’s big competitors being the ever present Norton, or the much beloved provider of free antivirus software – AVG.

I wanted to be sure about who could use this so I checked out the licence agreement. Security Essentials is licensed for use in your home or for a home based business. So this is not for you if you run a large office,  but if you are a home based business –as many freelancers are then you can use this. That’s a good distinction that Microsoft has made. Many free offerings are only free for home use, which makes it a little confusing for anyone who works for themselves from home. Security Essentials immediately gets over this by allowing in all home based businesses. In this economy that’s a lot of people; so by making this product freelance friendly Microsoft are looking to score a lot of friends.

As for the real important practical stuff – well it looks and reads like a lot of other products. It handles viruses, spyware and other assorted malware via a real-time protection system. So nothing new here. It has an interface that won’t challenge anyone used to using antivirus software. So its a case of so far, so good. It also installs easy enough – particularly if you download from Internet Explorer – in fact the download is IE friendly so if you do decide to install Security Essentials its a good idea to do it via Internet Explorer.

So what do we think. Well it looks like a plausible piece of software, but I’d like to use it a little longer before drawing a final judgement. Once I’ve used security essentials for a while – I’ll report back with a more conclusive review.

You may be wondering what providers of free antivirus software are doing now that Microsoft is stomping into their territory. Well AVG for one aren’t taking it lying down. They’ve just launched version 9 of their software and added the new feature of shortened link scanning to protect against accessing a malicious site via a shortened URL. This is good news for Social Media fans where short URLs are common place.

If you’d like to know more about Microsoft Security Essentials take a look at: http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/