Microsoft turns up the heat on Internet scammers!

Microsoft has stepped up its ongoing battle against Internet scammers, by once again using the power of the U.S. court to dealing a blow to an emerging ‘botnet’ and taking off-line a provider of free Internet domains.

Microsoft used the same method that had worked in previous battle against Rustock and Waledac botnets. They asked a U.S. court to order Verisign to shut down 21 Internet domains that were associated with the servers that formed the brains of the Kelihos botnet.

The Kelihos botnet infected between 42,000 and 45,000 computers, which is a relatively small botnet however it was still distributing just under 4 billion spam messages every day, the majority of which were junk email’s related to stock scams, pornography, illegal pharmaceuticals and malicious software. Technically, the botnet looked a lot like the previously tackled Waledac, and some security experts think it may have been built by the same criminals.

The concept of a highly disruptive botnet that Microsoft had previously shut down in 2010 resurfacing under a different name, was not something that sat well within Microsoft's digital crimes unit. They felt compelled to take it down quickly to minimize, damage, and to make a point to other criminals that once a botnet was eradicated, it stayed that way, a point they feel has been effectively made.

Microsoft went further in the fight against reoccurring botnet’s by naming one of the domain owners, Dominique Piatti owned cz.cc and ran out of The Czech Republic a domain that had multiple issues. Malicious sites on Piatti’s cz.cc domain had previously been used to trick Macintosh users into thinking they needed to buy a fake security program, called MacDefender.

The order came from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division on Sept. 22 but it was sealed until Monday 26, and Piatti was served with a court summons in the case by Microsoft lawyers in the Czech Republic.

Security experts say that many subdomain hosting companies, which usually offer free domain-name registration, have opened up a lawless frontier of flood gates on the Internet where nearly anything goes. Making the internet a very dangerous place for those that do no have their whit’s about them, however alot of time and effort goes into botnet’s making them look as genuine and safe as possible. 

The only comment that Piatti was able to put on record was via email: " I would be glad to give you my side of the story, but I feel that I should hire a lawyer first,".

There is a bright side, and a positive message to come from this, the reassuring feeling that a leader such as Microsoft is taking a zeros tolerance approach, perhaps other companies will take heed and we can tackle internet crime together.

Lack of ‘cyber protection’ revealed in survey.

The Ponemon Institute has done more research into how well prepared IT and security professionals are for attacks on their cyber systems, the results are in, and it is abundantly clear that they are simply not prepared, at all!

The results of the survey, commissioned by Juniper Networks showed, that 84% of more than 1,000 IT and security professionals asked in the UK, Germany and France admitted to suffering security breaches.

For a staggering 44% of these organisations, the breaches cost them more than £220,000.

Cyber threats are progressing in both how regularly they occur, and how sophisticated they are, it is imperative that companies know how to protect their networks and their hardware.

As far as the UK is concerned, UK organisations reported several breaches, 55% of respondents admitting to two or more breaches in the past 12 months alone, and 91% admitting to at least one breach, these results are shocking and hammer home how vital it is to have dependable ‘cyber protection’ and what is truly shocking is that 6% of the UK organisations said they did not know if they had even had an attack!

The light at the end of a very dark and dangerous tunnel is that Rombus can help you protect your business as a whole by increasing your network security and ultimately your business stability.

Digital Advertising, More Bang for your Buck

The marketing and advertising industry has taken a particularly hard knock in recent economic downturn; however it appears that the online divisions are going from strength to strength.

Spending on internet advertising in the UK topped £3.5 billion in 2009, for the first time it beat television ad spending. This was a first for not only the UK, but internationally. The high in 2009 capped what can only be described as an extraordinary decade when, in 2000, internet ad spend topped £153m, a growth by 2,200 per cent. 

What does this mean for the average businesses? The truth of the matters is: your money reaches more people and goes a lot further through online advertising than it would through the use of other more traditional means of advertising. 

This is the first recession of the digital age, and know one truly knew the impact that it would have, but the increase in internet ad spending speaks volumes in showing that some areas of the media are more that merely getting by.

The transition for the more traditional marketing agencies has not been smooth or easy, which does not bode well for those businesses and clients who turn to those agencies to help them through the marketing landscape. 

Those who were slow to respond to the changing technologies and subsequent consumer habits are being punished for slow reactions by loss of revenue and wasted money on what is now considered as dead marketing. 

Internet ad spend is set to increase and those who have been reluctant to spend will now have to become much bolder in how they choose to not be left in the dark, this I believe will put traditional marketing agencies and media providers into very choppy water. 

Traditional methods step aside, the internet has truly come of age.

OBM Vs TAPE – The advantage of Online Backup versus Tape Drives.

Change is hard to deal with, especially when it comes to something as important as your system, should something go wrong it would put even the bigger companies in a very difficult position. 

Could you afford to loose a week of work? How would you manage if you were hit by a flood, or if your buildings went up in flames? Would your information survive? Could you keep trading the next day?

Everyone in business knows that it is wise to backup your computer system regularly. Some people do and some wisely store their backup in premises away from their office for added security. Others simply never get round to backing up their system. Making the decision to back you systems up is the fist step, but deciding how to do so is the next, you could choose traditional tapes, or your could look to the future and use Online Backup Management (OBM)

Without 100% reliable backup, your business is vulnerable in the event of fire, flood, virus, theft, power cut etc. It is very easy to forget to backup your data on a daily basis, you may not even get back to the office at the end of a busy day of seeing customers and the risks to your business remain. The most up to the minute, affordable and reliable way to backup your data is with online backup from Rombus Computers.

But lets break it down and see which is really better:  Tape Vs OBM

Level of Capital Expenditure:
Tape: High . Especially for larger data volumes, or complex backup requirements.
OBM: Low . An ongoing monthly operating fee, depending on how much data you want to backup.
Winner: OBM

Total cost of ownership:
Tape: Moderate . Together with hardware maintenance costs, there are often unseen human resource costs.
OBM: Low . Per GB monthly fees reduce as storage volumes grow.
Winner: OBM

Maintenance/Management:
Tape: High . Engineers are required to design, manage and maintain tape backup processes as well as recover data.
OBM: Low . Management of online data backup processes can be pushed to the user level.
Winner: OBM

Scalability (ability to handle growing amounts of data):
Tape: Low . Limited flexibility when storage volumes increase or backup strategies change.
OBM: High . The growth of the infrastructure can be managed enabling your data volumes to grow without concern.
Winner: OBM

Data Security:
Tape: Low . Tapes can be lost, stolen or damaged in even the most well managed tape backup procedures.
OBM: High . Copies of your data is stored in an encrypted format in a highly secure data centre.
Winner: OBM

Reliability:
Tape: Low . Tapes often suffer from reliability issues.
OBM: High . Data is stored in a highly secure data centre constantly monitored and engineers are on call. You can access your data via any computer with internet access.
Winner: OBM

Protection:
Tape: Low . Data is generally stored in an unencrypted format.
OBM: High . Data is encrypted when in transit and in storage, eradicating the risk of it being compromised.
Winner: OBM

Ease of Data Restoration:
Tape: Low . Time intensive processes are required in order for engineers to restore large data sets.
OBM: High . Individual or multiple files can be restored quickly and easily by the user.
Winner: OBM

Future Proof:
Tape: No . As storage technology evolves your tape backup investment can quickly become obsolete.
OBM: Yes. We continually invest in performance hardware to meet customers' storage requirements.
Winner: OBM

Required length of Backup window:
Tape: Long . Large data volumes and longer working hours are continually shortening tape backup windows.
OBM: Short . Backups take place instantly whilst users are working and incremental backups shorten the backup cycle.
Winner: OBM

Looks like OBM comes out on top. Tapes do work but the level of risk and cost is so high that it is destined to become a dinosaur of the technical age.

For more information on OBM go to: http://www.rombus.com/products/rombus-obm

Staff retention just went viral

When brewing company MillerCoors realized it was struggling to retain female salespeople, the company turned to social tools to turn it around and retain their female staff.

Executives wanted to make female sales reps feel less isolated and more a part of a cohesive team. But the problems was how to go about this when their workers are spread across the country, frequently on the road, and working odd hours.

MillerCoors, a $7.5 billion company with roughly 8,500 employees, turned to Triple Creek, a company that makes enterprise mentoring and social learning software which gives the staff an opportunity to connect with each other more than they had, giving a personal connection.

Last summer a regional sales executive noticed that the company was losing women in sales positions at a much faster rate than it was losing their male counterparts. It was a problem the company wanted to quickly curb.

 MillerCoors decided to provide mentors to some of its saleswomen, connecting them through the Mentoring software. It is designed to let mentors and workers connect one-on-one or in groups and enables people to share documents and post comments. 

The wonders of social networking.