Thursday, November 16, 2006
Is Your Office Safe?
Many businesses handle client's financial data and confidential data. There are many security issues to address because of liability. And if you are a business I want you to stop and think for a second. Is your business network secure online, or in your own office?Many businesses don't have security and handle this sensitive client information that can include account info, financial info, and medical info to name a few. Knowing this, look around your office, do you use wireless, do you have a network, how is your file security, what is your intrusion protection like? Do you have off site backups? That is the short list, now ask yourself the bigger question. What is your liability if this data is lost or stolen?
Here is a partial check list:
1) Is everyone in your office required to login and do they use strong passwords
2) If you're on a wireless network have you taken the necessary steps to secure it (check our article on our free tech tips weblog for steps to secure your wireless). Does your wireless signal extend outside your building?
3) Do you use anti-virus and firewall protection, are they configured right?
4 ) What do you use against spyware and intrusion?
That is just for your computers and network but what about the data itself?
1) Do you store it on disk or on the computer (this makes the above questions real important). 2) Are you using file encryption?
3) In case of theft or damage to you have off site backups?
Like I said these are the short lists and any one of these can put you out of business. But what are you to do? You can read up and do this all yourself but in reality this isn't going to happen, you are to busy with the business of running your business. This is one of the rare occasions where you would be well served to call in a professional (like us). But this article is to make you aware of the dangers around you and that you should address them before you find out the answer to that liability question.
Contact Computer Guys Live Inc. for online computer security advice and professional tech support.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Defrag the hardrive to improve performance at work
Defragmentation is the one simple step your business can take to improve your computers performance and it is probably the one step that never gets done. When was the last time you defraged your computer? If you answer "what is defrag", then chances are it has never been done. What is Defrag?Well, as you work with your files and pictures, Windows breaks these files into pieces and stores them all over the drive. It also keeps an index of where these pieces are located. What happens is the more you work, the more the files are broken up. So it takes the Windows Operating System more time to search for these fragments until it has enough to present you with the file. As these pieces become smaller and more scattered it has an effect on your system performance. And as hard drives become larger, this fragmentation of data slows the computer's performance considerably.
Fourtunately the defrag process is really easy:
1)First go to the Start button then Control Panel.
2)In the Control panel select Administrative Tools.
3)From the Administration tools window select Computer Management.
4)Now select Disk Defragmenter from the right hand window panel- high-light the drive you want to defrag (normally C:)
5)Then click the bottom button that says Defragment.
What you will see is a bar that shows Estimated Usage Before Defragmentation and it will show a bunch of different color stripes all mixed up.The goal is to get large blocks of uninterupted color and you will see this happening in the bottom window- Estimated usage after defragmentation.
The larger the hard drive the longer this is going to take, so plan on doing it at night when your business is closed. There is after market software that will do this same function but you can get by nicely with the built in Windows function. You can even make this easier by using Scheduled tasks to have your defrag run at night, all you have to remember is to leave the machine on. This is also a good place to schedule your virus and spyware scans ... but make sure you schedule them to run on different nights to keep the machine from choking.
Also, disable your screensaver, if you have one turned on. Just right click on your desktop and go to properties, then screensaver, then change it to none before starting the defragmentation process. This defrag of your hard drive should increase your system's performance and speed up work at the office.
By Chris Kaminski, head technician for Computer Guys Live Inc., providing state of the art remote access tech support to the USA. For answers to your wireless connection problems,
check out our Wireless Guide for step-by-step instructions.
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