Much of my workday is spent in my “command center” which includes my desktop computer, two large monitors and all my Internet and telephone technology. I rely on it being up and available 24/7/365 as my services might be requested at any time. I typically spend six to eight hours seated at my desk on any given day and any period of downtime can be very disruptive. That is why I follow my own recommendations and make sure I have as many single points of failure addressed with redundant technology and multiple levels of backup, both local and in the cloud.

As I was working midday last week on a very hot summer’s day, my lights and air conditioner turned off and on briefly – twice. Both times there was NO interruption in the operation of my technology. That’s because I had equipped my command center with an uninterruptible power supply or UPS. Not only did I avoid the necessity of having to restart all my equipment from scratch twice, I protected myself from a system crash or data corruption that can be caused when power is suddenly removed from an active computer.

In most basic terms, a UPS is a power strip on steroids and contains batteries and circuitry that allow it to provide the same electricity as your wall outlet to all devices plugged into it, even when it is receiving no electricity from the wall outlet itself. The types and number of devices you can plug into it depends on the size of the UPS. They come in sizes from small and personal up to supporting a whole data center.

A UPS is not designed to run your equipment for an extended period of time during a power outage. The reality is that most power blips or outages are very brief. A UPS will handle blips transparently as mine did in the story above. A UPS should be sized to give you enough runtime to allow an orderly shutdown of your equipment should an outage be longer than expected.

There are many reputable brands of UPS and they are not hugely expensive. Your IT professional can help you determine which of your devices need to be plugged into a UPS and what size you need to accommodate an orderly shutdown if required. We’re always here and happy to help if you have questions about how to protect your technology with a UPS.

I received this email this week.

It’s from a company whose name I recognize though I haven’t done business with them.  I may have even had a conversation with the sender (actually likely as he had my email address) though I don’t remember the name. It seeks to get my participation on a project where I could possibly make some money. There are enough details that are “close” that, if I wasn’t paying close attention, would have just clicked through on the attachment and, likely, infected my computer with some virus or malware. But something was off…

So, I applied the universal rules of safe email handling by answering these questions.

1. Do I know the sender?
2. If I know the sender, was I expecting something from them?
3. Do I know specifically what each link or attachment is for or leads to?
4. Do I have a security program in place capable of detecting viruses/malware in emails?

In this instance, I did the following:

1. I called the business number in the email – It was a TACO BELL!
2. I called the cell number – DISCONNECTED!
3. I deleted the email. Disaster avoided.

Bad guys can be very good at coaxing you to give up personal access or information. Don’t get caught in their phishing net. Follow the rules above and you’ll minimize the possibility of getting compromised in any way.

Not great odds if you’re a betting person. On the other hand, If you’re a user of Yahoo email you’ve hit the jackpot and not in a good way! As I write this, Yahoo just announced that more than ONE BILLION Yahoo user accounts may have been stolen by hackers including phone numbers, birthdates and security questions. What could you have done to prevent this? – Nothing. The blame for the breach lies squarely with Yahoo but the impact of the breach can only be mitigated by you. So what to do now?

As annoying and intrusive as it is, it is important that you adopt a more serious approach to your online identity and security. This means changing your passwords regularly to something unique and hard to guess. Get a password manager program to help you create and remember those passwords. They’re not expensive, work well and reduce a lot of the pain associated with password management.

Change your passwords at least as often as your program or service recommends. A data breach is worthless if it contains a password no longer being used. Use a monitoring service to look for your info in the wrong places after a data breach occurs.

Lastly, now would be a great time to get rid of your yahoo.com email address. Simpler, more secure options are available which allow you to personalize and customize your email. Get your own domain name for you or your business! And all of your current email and contacts can be migrated directly into your new email server and program. If you need help, give us a call!

Whatever you do, adopt a safer saner approach to data security and breathe a little easier!

“Belt and Suspenders” This phrase came to mind today as I visited a client who was getting a hardware failure message when starting up his computer.

For those not familiar with the phrase, the use of both a belt and suspenders to hold up one’s pants ensures you’ll never unexpectedly have your pants at your knees. In the technology world it can mean having redundant safety procedures in place to reduce risk of failures.

The error he was getting implied that the system hard drive wasn’t there, certainly a catastrophe in the making. Fortunately, we had recommended a belt (complete data backup both onsite and in the Cloud) and suspenders (mirrored hard drives in case one drive fails) and so I was confident that the worst-case scenario wouldn’t be all that bad.

As it turned out, the error was due to a startup configuration setting which was easily corrected. My client didn’t need to implement any emergency recovery procedures to get back up and working. But if he had, we could!

With modern operating systems (Windows and OSX) it’s easy and inexpensive to put “belt and suspenders” in place.

Check out the many local/Cloud-based backup services (One of my favorites is Crashplan from Code42.com) to make sure your data is backed up and accessible no matter the problem.

With Windows (since XP) there has been the capability to add a 2^nd hard drive and create an identical mirror of everything on the main hard drive. Almost every modern computer already has the necessary electronics built in to power and control an additional hard drive.

These inexpensive options will allow you to add “belt and suspenders” to your system so you don’t get caught with your pants down in case of a hardware failure.