News

A couple of weeks ago we had a customer's desktop PC in for a service and it presented us with a timely reminder just how quickly dust builds up in a computer system. This is compounded if the system is in a dusty environment and runs continuously.

The particles in the air in Christchurch are from dust off the cultivated plains and the ongoing demolition and construction work.

It is hard to prevent dust from intruding in to a server or workstations as these devices need air to keep the processor and power supply cooled.

A regular clean will keep this under control and reduce the risk of overheating due to the dust build up. In extreme cases, too much dust build up has caused fires.

Computer Culture can carry out this cleaning maintenance over the Christmas break which reduces the risk of system malfunction and a potential office fire!!

1. Make sure you have a good understanding of your computer network, what the key assets are, and their locations and how these are protected
2. Keep all your software up to date, including operating systems and applications
3. Back up all data to a secure, offsite location. ("air gapped")
4. Segment your network: Do not have all your data on one shared location accessible by everyone in the company.
5. Implement staff training on safe cyber security practices
6. Have a communication strategy so that you can quickly inform all the staff if a virus reaches the company network.
7. Get your IT company to perform penetration testing to find any vulnerabilities.
8. Arrange cyber cover through your insurance broker
9. Talk to your IT Provider

SNAP is an initiative of the New Zealand Police, aiming to prevent burglary, and make it harder for criminals to sell stolen goods in New Zealand.

They have developed a free asset registration website. Where you can add your valuable property along with the serial numbers.

The SNAP Asset List Tool is secured using the high-security New Zealand Government igovt logon service. Your asset list can only be accessed by you.

See here for more information.

Microsoft often sends out important updates for their operating system and they’ve recently released the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, packed full of features requested by their customers.
This is an automatic download but if you don’t have it yet and want to manually download it, click here.

Office 365 is Microsoft's subscription based model for providing their software to users. The service consists of a number of different products and services, and all of Office 365's components can be managed and configured through an online portal.

Passwords are a continual problem.

We rely so much on them to secure our company systems, our secrets, our customers’ private information, and yet we typically leave it in the hands of our staff to choose their passwords safely.
 
That’s why passwords like “123456”, “qwerty”, “abc123”, “letmein”, “qazwsx”, “iloveyou”, “trustno1” and, yes, even “password” are so common.

Those are obviously all terrible passwords and yet they’re horrendously typical choices for users.
However, most users balk at the idea of coming up with a unique, nonsensical jumble of characters to secure their accounts.

One thing you can do to try to reduce the chances of users choosing poor passwords, is to build appropriate rules that are required to be met for a password to be deemed acceptable.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have taken on this challenge, and are developing proposed improvements to password requirements. The hope is that the proposed guidelines will be adopted as a template by organisations and developers outside of the US government.

According to NIST, these are some of the things you can do to improve your passwords;

Minimum length - NIST says passwords should be a minimum of eight characters long.  Note that that’s not a definite minimum, more sensitive accounts may require a larger minimum length for passwords.

Maximum length - If there has to be a maximum length limit for a password at all, it should be no less than 64 characters. Adopting a maximum length limit of no less than 64 characters encourages users to choose a memorable pass phrase rather than a password.

No banned characters - NIST says that all characters should be allowed in a password. You can even use UNICODE characters if you wish, which will no doubt please those addicted to their emojis.

No common passwords allowed - Applications and websites should check proposed passwords against a dictionary of commonly-used and known bad passwords.  No more “password123”, “il0veyou”, or “baseball”.

No password hints - The problem with password hints is that they weaken authentication.  “Rhymes with farce-word”.  If you don’t allow users to store a password hint, there is no chance that it will be accessed (and abused) by an unauthorised party.

No periodic password changes unless evidence of compromise - Many think it’s a good idea to regularly change your passwords, but evidence suggests that it leads to poorer password choices by users. Of course, if there is a good reason to change a password then the password should be changed.

NIST’s password requirement proposals still require final approval, but the hope is that they will pass sooner rather than later.

And if other organisations outside the US federal government adopt the guidelines for their own password requirements that has to be a good thing for the security of all of us.

Security scams are big business these days. New Zealand Post has issued a warning about a scam email alerting people they have a parcel waiting for them.

The subject line and content of the email message typically describe a parcel or package not being delivered, due to nobody being home. Recipients are then asked to click on the link to “print the package info” to take with them to claim the parcel.

It says NZ Post will keep the package for a number of days, and then you will start being charged a fee for them to keep it for every hour thereafter. Details seem to vary, some emails have differing days and differing money amounts per hour.

NZ Post are aware of the scam email. “This is a phishing email designed to gather personal information from customers. Our advice to anyone who receives this email is to delete it, and not to click on the link contained in the email.”

General tips for recognising this and other scam emails:

• If you weren’t expecting a parcel, then that should make you wary
• It is very rare anyone will ever ask you to enter personal details into a website and if you are asked, you should check and investigate further before doing so.
• Never go to an important website using a link, such as your bank. Instead manually browse to the address of the website by yourself.
• Banks will never ask for pin numbers or passwords
• Never send personal sensitive information or credit card numbers via email.
• If you think an email seems like a scam, then it probably is! Never click a link in it.
• Look for spelling and grammar mistakes
• If in doubt, pick up the phone and call the company using the number you find yourself. Don’t call any numbers listed in the email you have received.

Reduce repair costs
Computers older than 4 years old, on average cost 1.5 times more in repair costs than newer computers.

Improve Performance
Compared with 5-year-old computers, new Windows 10 devices can have performance increase of up to 2.5 times with up to 3 times the battery life.  

Better Security
Modern computers can protect against botnets and rootkits which will prevent malware taking over the computer’s boot process.

Increased productivity
Computers older than 4 years can result in more than twice the amount in lost productivity by the user.

Google have provided a new tool, "My Activity" which can help you protect your privacy online and delete your history.

Google probably knows you better than your closest friends and family. With every search you make or YouTube video you watch, the search giant is quietly collecting information for a personalised profile it uses to serve you targeted ads.

My Activity is basically a timeline that shows you what Google has saved about your online activities going back as far as they have been tracking you.

You can find it by going to myactivity.google.com. You will need to sign in with your Google account and password.

Once you have logged in you should see a long chronological list of things you’ve done using Google’s services – the searches you’ve made, videos you’ve watched on YouTube, and so on (assuming you haven’t already used Google’s privacy controls to block the collection of certain information).

Yup! If you don’t want Google remembering that ‘plantar warts’ search or when you binge watched videos of a cat in a shark costume riding a robotic vacuum, it’s pretty simple to erase.

First, you need to find the record you want to delete, which is made easy with the search bar at the top of the page.

Once you’ve found the shameful bit of your online past in the timeline, you can open a little menu by clicking on the three vertical dots on the right side of the record. Select the delete option on that menu, and voila – Google will forget it.

You can also delete things in bulk by clicking on the three dot menu at the top of the timeline, choose ‘‘Delete activity by’’ and selecting a date range to erase on the next page. If you want an entirely blank slate, opt for the ‘‘All Time’’ option.

How to stop Google tracking your data

You can ‘‘pause’’ Google’s data collection whenever you want.

Go to myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols. From there, you can tell Google to stop saving information about things such as your searches, location history, and YouTube watching habits.

But if looking back through your My Activity timeline has you a little paranoid, it’s probably also worth running through Google’s Privacy Checkup.

That feature, which can be found at myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup, uses a simple interface to not only help you manage what data is being saved by Google, but also things like what information about you may be public through services like Google+.

Is there a downside to erasing my history?

Well, there’s definitely one for Google: The search giant makes the vast majority of its money from distributing targeting ads, which is made easier by the trove of data that they have about users’ online activities.

But that means that limiting the data they save will probably result in you seeing ads that are less relevant to your interests.

And beyond ads, Google uses the information to help personalise their products to users’ preferences, which can mean a more convenient online experience.

For instance, Google has said that letting it save your search history can mean that it returns results quicker and letting it hold on to location history can help it suggest better commute options in its Maps product.

Contributed by Steve Shaw

When it comes to people's digital lives, entanglement is pretty much the norm nowadays. Ask almost anyone what's installed on their computer, phone, or digital device and you'll find a combination of work and personal information. We're always online and always connected whether it's to our friends, our family, our co-workers, our clients, or our suppliers. The lines between each piece of this information has become blurred. Now we're simply connected people.

For many, the digital push has started with their work. There's a much better ROI for an organisation than an individual when it comes to cutting-edge digital devices. As such, the devices we become familiar with and embed our digital lives into aren’t actually ours, but the organisation we work for. Likewise, for those whose first email account was provided by work, it easily becomes the default or only account that’s used – both for personal and work relationships.

So what happens when, for better or worse, someone moves on from and out of their native digital environment? Keeping good relationships is an essential part of any organisation, so maintaining a healthy link to an organisation after someone moves on can be key. How then can an organisation or individual prepare for a healthy breakup, digitally speaking?

Like most processes, the first step is always information gathering. What exactly would be lost if someone were removed from your organisations technological infrastructure? Phone numbers and email addresses of friends? A digital music collection? Personal emails? Family photos? Access to an email address linked to bank accounts? Losing any or all of the above could easily sour a relationship.

Once you’ve established just what’s going to be lost, you can then move forward. For each individual there will likely be a need to migrate data. From an organisation, however, the greatest need is to put in place policies and procedures that will set you up for when the inevitable need to disentangle occurs.

If you’re concerned about any of these points, talk to one of our friendly team members for assistance with the data migration.