If you’re not careful, you could be spending valuable hours combing through your inbox every day. So how do you get out of the e-mail swamp?

Short of deleting your e-mail account, there are few strategies as easy as the following six:

Empty your “Deleted” folder. This may seem like a “duh” thing to do, but you’d be surprised how much space the messages you’ve already deleted are taking up.

Invest in a reputable spam detector and filter. Responza recommends Postini, a cloiud-based service operated by some of the best and brightest minds in the industry.

Unsubscribe from irrelevant or erroneous mailing lists.

Set up subfolders for mail that actually does need to be saved, and then use them.

Touch once, delete often – recognize that you only need to read an e-mail once before deciding what to do. If action is required, schedule what you need and then get rid of it.

Budget and schedule a finite time block to process your e-mails.

Think you’re up to the challenge? Send us some before and after screenshots of your inbox at solutions@responza.com.

Happy deleting!

Malicious advertising, or “malvertising, ” represents the latest effort by hackers to get into your systems.

Even if you adhere to safe Internet practices and never go to those websites, you can still fall victim to this already widespread hacking phenomenon.  Although the underlying concept is the same – malvertising is out to infiltrate, infect, and steal – the tactic is a relatively new one.

Think it can’t happen to you?  Think again.

Take The New York Times for instance.  About two years ago they tweeted a message to their readers:

The New York Times was prime real estate because of how broad its audience was.  Such large and upstanding companies are therefore the perfect platform for hackers to operate on.  And by the time you notice anything is wrong, it’s already too late.  For example, during last year’s holiday rush, MSN and DoubleClick had banner ads and pop-ups that came from AdShufffle.com, a malicious group that was just one additional “f” away from their preferred marketing-technology company and ad supply chain, AdShuffle.com.

Now fast forward to today: McAfee estimated in their first quarter 2011 Threats Report that more than 8,000 malicious websites are being created each day, and that number is only growing.

What to do?  Responza’s standard advice still holds true:

• Keep your software up to date
• Don’t open emails you don’t recognize
• Don’t click on suspicious boxes, sites, and banners
• Call for help if you are suspicious that something isn’t right

You just need to make some adjustments to how you approach the internet.

• Be more alert than ever to the fact that these camouflaged attempts are out there
• Carefully read items before you click on them – even if you’re on a site you already trust

Unfortunately, just because large corporations are being targeted doesn’t mean that hackers have backed off their attacks against small and medium businesses.  For more on this, check out [Blog: Hackers' New Tactics Focus on Small Businesses].

Responza is a knowledgeable resource for assessing system needs, developing and implementing security strategies and managing the health of the IT systems for small businesses.  Contract Craig at 206-762-5100×216 or craigb@responza.com.  Learn more about Responza at www.responza.com.

Headlines roar when hacking attacks occur at such companies as Sony and Lockheed Martin, but when small businesses get hit, hardly anybody notices. Small businesses who are making the leap to computerized systems and digital records are quickly becoming a favorite target for hackers.

Here are three brief examples of data breaches at small businesses:
1) The owner of Chicago Newsstand, Inc. had no idea that cyber-thieves had planted a program on his internet-connected cash registers that sent customer credit card numbers on an outside server. And the owners of the server weren’t aware of any wrongdoing either. When MasterCard notified the Chicago Newsstand, Inc. of suspected fraudulent charges, his long ordeal of investigations and costly changes began.
2) Green Ford Sales, Inc. fell victim to hackers who stole the business’s online banking log-in details and used them to transfer funds to nine new “employees” on the dealership’s payroll.
3) Closer to home,

Responza makes it easy to overcome annoying office brain-teasers with some quick tips.
If you have tips of your own, please share them as comments below this blog post.

Office Challenge #1:
How do I insert text above a table at the top of a word document?

If you’ve inserted a table into a new blank Microsoft Word document and you want to add text outside or above the table – but no matter how you try, you can’t get the text to place there – try this:

The active cursor is normally at the bottom or top left of the table. Hit CTRL+HOME to get to the very first character of the file, then ENTER to move it down. This may not look like it works, because the cursor appears inside the first/top cell, but hitting enter does indeed put the new-line outside of the table.

Note the change in cursor placement in this left to right succession of screen shots.

Office Challenge #2:

Why does a document that I’ve created in Microsoft Word look different on my computer than it does on the computer of a colleague in another office? Is this an Office versioning issue?

Don’t get frustrated trying to pin this issue on different versions of Microsoft Word. You’re actually trying to do something that Word documents aren’t really intended to do: Makes documents that look exactly the same on every computer.

It isn’t the version of Office that you’re running. It is all about the system/printer each person viewing the document is using.
The most common reason documents look different on one machine as compared to another is the printer. When Word displays a document in “Print Layout” form, it actually uses the characteristics of the currently selected printer to determine what the layout should look like. Obvious items such as default margins, paper size, and other characteristics of printers in general can have a document appear quite differently when viewed, or printed, on one system versus another.

In fact, if you have more than one printer on your system, you can watch this happen. (See inserted image.) While the document is up in Word, hit File, Print and then select another printer. When you do this the Cancel button will change to Close. Select Close, to close the document without printing it, and the document you’re viewing will be redisplayed, taking the characteristics of the new printer into account. Depending on the differences between your printers, the change can be subtle, or quite dramatic.

A secondary possibility is the use of fonts not common to all systems. If you create a document using one font, and then view that document on another system where that font is not installed, Word will attempt to substitute something “close” to the font you wanted. Unfortunately, “close” is fairly vague, and can often be startlingly different from the original.

The PDF is one approach to solving this problem. PDF (Portable Document Format) is a document format that attempts to be rendered exactly the same everywhere, no matter what your system or printer characteristics. The software does this by acting like a printer. It carries those printer characteristics in the file and when the document is opened on any computer it will appear the same – regardless of the printers installed on that computer.
You can create PDFs using Adobe Acrobat (the most recognized tool) or an open source version called PDFCreator.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work if you’re trying to pass editable Word documents between colleagues.

Office Challenge #3:

Are there any shortcuts that make it easier to use my Outlook Calendar while I’m working in another view?

If you spend a lot of time in Outlook’s Calendar view, or needing to do something in Calendar view while working in another view. Fortunately, there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that can help (especially if you still feel a bit lost with the 2010 ribbon). There are more shortcuts than the half dozen listed here, but these seem to be the most popular.

[Ctrl]+2
Go to Calendar view from any other view.

[Alt]+1-9
View specific number of days, beginning with the selected day. For instance, if April 14 is selected and you press [Alt]+4, Calendar will display April 14 through 17. I use this one often.

[Ctrl]+G
Go to a specific date. When you press [Ctrl]+G in Calendar view, Outlook displays a dialog box. Enter a date or choose a date from the dropdown, and click OK. Calendar view will maintain the current view.

[Alt]+-
Switch to Weeks view. (That’s the hyphen or minus character to the right of 0.)

[Alt]+=
Switch to Month view. (That’s the equal sign to the left of [Backspace]).

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+A
Create a new appointment in any view.

Responza helps companies and organizations of a variety of sizes and types determine their best computing strategies and optimize their IT environments to get the most for their investments. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100. Visit www.responza.com to learn more about how Responza’s IT pros can help you.

Why careful is better than first.

Responza believes that cloud architectures are of value and make financial sense for some organizations. The ROI on the technology infrastructure investment can be better in certain circumstances. However, recent events have proven that total reliance on the cloud is premature and rushing in without in-depth research and precautionary measures can be risky.

This past week (coincidentally ending in Friday the 13th) has produced some interesting news as far as the cloud goes. The cloud – touted as the solution to everyone’s problems – is obviously NOT ready for prime time.

We’ve gleaned information from several sites and summarized thoughts about what these events mean for potential cloud strategies that may be brewing out there. Original sources are provided for reference.

The culmination of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services outage, Google’s Blogger failure and Amazon’s hacking incident in the span of mere days, should issue an ominous warning about the reality of the security and availability of the cloud.

Experiences of unexpected downtime and lost emails – while frustrating enough – may not have been as frustrating as the lack of communication, explanation and response from such service providers as Microsoft, Google and Amazon who absolutely hold the technology cards for their customers.

Step back and consider what this means.

If you are in the cloud, you are not in control. Someone else’s outage or system compromise can mean that your systems are brought down and your ability to do business is brought to a screeching halt.

The cloud pitch SOUNDS really good:
- You only have to pay for what you use.
- Infrastructure worries and costs disappear.
- If your computer crashes, all your important stuff is “safe” in the cloud. Just reach out a grab it.

But then you see the disclaimers:
We won’t be responsible for outages.
We won’t be responsible for the security of your information.

And that’s when you realize that your data and applications may not be as secure and as available in the cloud as we are led to believe.

Consider these statements:

- The cloud’s reliability has taken a hit and we should pay attention. If all CAN be lost, even when it’s out in the cloud, nothing has really been saved by moving there instead of maintaining IT on-premises.

- Suffering through outages – helpless and clinging to someone else’s ability and availability to fix the issues – will not help you reach your sales or operations goals.

- Paying a monthly rate – instead oif investing in infrastructure that you own and control – only to see that “investment” vaporize with an outage just doesn’t seem reasonable.

- There is no way to protect you from the risk of a hacker compromising a major system in the cloud. And that compromise could take your business down – and put your data at risk – amidst the intrusion.

- Touting the cloud as a safety net for a computer crash doesn’t ring so true when the reality sets in that cloud sites can crash and lose everything for you (and lots of other businesses).

The recent events SHOULD cool some of the hype about the cloud and slow down the rush to get there. It won’t stop businesses from moving to the cloud (if it makes good business sense for them) and it probably won’t cause everyone to keep their email on premise. But it may just cool everyone’s sense of urgency for the cloud – and that may not be such a bad thing.

IF the cloud makes good business sense, the following four suggestions should make sense, as well:

1. Research every detail of your service provider’s specs, policies and contract terms. Include checking with others who are or have used the same service for their experience and advice.

2. Mirror your business critical data and applications, regardless of what your service provider guarantees, in other words, put a copy of everything you put in the cloud in a secure back up system that ISN’T in the cloud.

3. Maintain strict security and data protection policies regardless of what even the most “trusted” service providers tout.

4. Don’t go it alone. Get the assistance and advice of IT experts who are unbiased and experienced in cloud matters.

Responza’s IT Pros are always ready to answer questions and provide assistance as businesses consider the risk/reward scenarios that the cloud presents for their individual situations. With knowledge, expertise and hands-on experience, Responza’s IT Pros can provide honest, objective IT assessments for business-focused solutions – including cloud strategies.

Sources:
ChannelInsider Blog for Friday May 13th

Seattle’s TechFlash for Friday, May 13th

ZDNet for Friday, May 13th

Google’s recent Blogger outage gives us all reason to stop and think – and understand the lesson in this event.

Technology systems and infrastcutures are vital to businesses and organizations of all types and sizes. Changes should not be made that impact the integrity, security or safety of systems without research into benefits, risks, precautions and safeguards – and should not be considered without the guidance of those who are experts in the field and on the topic.

Please review the post by Ed Bott replayed for you below.

Google’s Blogger outage makes the case against a cloud-only strategy

By Ed Bott | May 13, 2011, 6:14am PDT

Original Post on ZDNet

Summary
The same week that Google made its strongest pitch ever for putting your entire business online, one of its flagship services has failed spectacularly. There’s a lesson here.

Earlier this week, Google rolled out a maintenance release for its Blogger service. Something went terribly wrong, and its Blogger customers have been locked out of their accounts for more than a day. Google’s engineers have been frantically working to restore service ever since, although they haven’t shared any details about the problem.

A Blogger Service Disruption update contains four updates from the last 24 hours, starting with this one:
We have rolled back the maintenance release from last night and as a result, posts and comments from all users made after 7:37 am PDT on May 11, 2011 have been removed. Again, we apologize that this happened and our engineers are working hard to return Blogger to normal and restore your posts and comments.

That’s nearly 48 hours of downtime, and counting. Overnight updates promise “We’re making progress” and “We expect everything to be back to normal soon.”

My question is, “What if this had happened to another Google service?” Say, Google Docs? What if every document you wrote and saved on Wednesday was suddenly taken offline on Thursday, and you no longer had your presentation or your notes or your research for a client meeting today? How does this promise from Google sound now?

Your apps, documents, and settings are stored safely in the cloud. So even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Chromebook and get right back to work.

Google has owned and operated Blogger since 2003. It’s not like they’re still trying to figure out how to integrate the service into their operation. If it can happen at Blogger, why can’t it happen with another Google service?

Yes, Blogger is a free, ad-supported service. Just like Google Docs and Gmail. In fact, Gmail and YouTube have their official blogs on Blogspot.com (the domain used by the Blogger service). If either one of those teams announced any news in the last 48 hours, you’ll have to wait to read about it.

This, to me, is the strongest possible argument against putting everything you own in the cloud. If your data matters, you need a hybrid strategy, with local storage and local content creation and editing tools. If your local storage fails, you can grab what you need from the cloud. If your cloud service fails, you’ve still got it locally. But if you rely just on the cloud, you’re vulnerable to exactly this sort of failure.

Update: As my colleague Zack Whittaker just reminded me, earlier this week Google Docs did indeed have some issues. Two ZDNet bloggers reported problems saving documents to their Google Docs account. The saved documents didn’t appear online for several hours. PC World’s Tony Bradley reported similar issues in the same timeframe:

I was using Chrome, and I thought maybe it was a browser specific issue or some problem with cookies, so I tried looking in Internet Explorer 9– same thing. Firefox 4–same result. I checked out my wife’s Google Docs on her computer, and it seemed to work just fine, so I thought it must just be the laptop I was using, so I checked from my iPad–same thing.

No amount of browser refreshes or system reboots seemed to make any difference. Finally, I decided to move on. There was a file I had started earlier that was not appearing on my list of files in Google Docs, but I assumed it was still there somewhere. So, I did a search for the file name and when I typed “blog_051111″ suddenly all of my files from today showed up. Weird.

The issue is still not resolved, though. Once I cleared the search field and refreshed the Google Docs page, the files disappeared once again. If anyone has any ideas (Google–are you reading this?) feel free to send them my way. Not only would I like to fix it, but I am very curious to get to the root cause of why the issue is occurring to begin with.

Google’s Apps Status dashboard includes no mention of any Google Docs problems this week (week of May 13).

Update, 13-May 11AM PDT: Google says Blogger service is now restored. The official explanation attributes the problem to “data corruption” during scheduled maintenance.

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades’ experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.

Responza knows networks, infrastuctures, computers and their behaviors in real-life business situations. Responza’s IT Pros are also knowledgeable resources who can answer questions about new technologies and methodologies as well as the risk/reward scenarios that accompany them. www.responza.com/206-762-2100

Security problems are getting worse. Systematic attacks are coming from kids, thieves and spies. Every day, we read about some break-in or other types of security compromises. Witness the recent major Sony break-in.
PCs can be compromised any number of ways. An infected machine can take hours to scan and clean. When things don’t go well it can take a day or more to get the machine rebuilt and reconfigured.
No one likes downtime.

These steps can prevent the majority of potential hacks.

1. Don’t open email or browse the web while logged in as an Administrator.
Administrator accounts are only suitable for (un)installing software and changing computer configurations. If an admin account is exposed to malware the computer is more likely to be compromised to the core. That’s just making it easy for hackers.

If a computer login account is an admin and those rights are needed, do the following things:
- Go to control panel and create a local administrator account for the primary computer user with a strong password (see #3).
- Change the regular login account to a limited user account.

2. Keep your PCs patched.
Patches are usually applied by the IT department when they don’t interfere with work – at night or on weekends. Find out when the PCs are patched and leave computers on. Log off and let the system apply the patches that have passed testing.

Monitors can be turned off to save power.

3. Don’t use a simple password.
When other people get infected with malware (such as the Conficker worm) their machines continuously attempt to breach passwords of the machines around them (as many as three million guesses per hour for an indefinite period of time). The machines do this by downloading dictionaries of all known words and numbers and trying them in various combinations and with common letter substitutions. For example, P@$$w0rd42 is actually not a strong password, even though it will stand up longer than Princess42.

Use a passphrase to create a strong password. “All work and no beer makes Homer go crazy!” becomes Aw&nbmHgc! The phrase is difficult to guess, easy to remember and can just be repeated as each character is typed. An easy reminder can be kept without compromising the account that says password=crazybeer.

4. Turn off two simple settings in Adobe Acrobat and/or Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Half of all machines are infected by exploiting Adobe vulnerabilities.
a. Launch Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.
b. Click Edit.
c. Click Preferences – We are going to make two changes.
d. Under Categories on the left side, click JavaScript, then clear the box that says “Enable Acrobat JavaScript in the right window.”
e. Under Categories on the left side, click Trust Manager. In the right window, clear the box under PDF File Attachments that says “Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications.”
f. Click OK to accept the changes.

5. Call Responza to assist in patching applications.
Periodically, machines may prompt an update of Java, Flash, Acrobat Reader, Firefox or some other application that are prevented from automatically launching by security settings. In such instances, check with the IT department before accepting updates. Sometimes, updates break applications or cause weirdness in PCs. Responza’s IT Pros can assist with patching processes.

Call your Responza IT Pro if you have any questions about security and policies for protecting your business data: 206-762-2100.

Online marketer Epsilon hacked, exposing thousands of names and emails.

Epsilon alerted its customers that some of their electronic information could have been exposed after a computer hacker penetrated the online marketer’s data systems. The names and emails of customers of Citigroup and other large organizations that use Epsilon’s email services were exposed in a massive and growing data breach that has the potential to become the largest in U.S. history.

According to Epsilon, no personal financial information, such as credit cards or social security numbers, appeared to be exposed.

Walgreens, TiVo, Capital One Financial Corp and HSN are included in the list of targets along with some of the nation’s largest banks. We are aware of fraudulent digital certificates issued by Comodo – a certification authority present in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store on all supported versions of Microsoft Windows – that could affect many users.

Responza’s Recommendations:

It is our recommendation that you remain alert to email messages that ask questions or request information about financial account information of any type. As policy, financial institutions never request, provide or ask confirmation on full account numbers, user names, passwords or social security numbers.

Here is your to-do/to-don’t list:
1. Expect MORE spam.
2. Expect more spam that LOOKS LEGITIMATE.
3. DON’T open spam emails.
4. DELETE EMAILS from people you don’t know.
5. Don’t click on LINKS in spam emails.
6. Never enter ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION in an email or a website from an email.
7. Never CONFIRM personal information in spam emails.
8. If asked to confirm your Social Security Number in an email – DON’T – and forward that email to spam@uce.gov.
9. CALL your Responza IT Pro if you need help: 206-762-2100

Data Breaches are serious reminders to assess your security strategy and to implement policies that reduce the risk of data breaches within your own organization.

As always, call your Responza IT Pro if you have any questions about your security and policies for protecting your business.

We are aware of fraudulent digital certificates issued by Comodo – a certification authority present in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store on all supported versions of Microsoft Windows – that could affect many users.
Comodo advised Microsoft on March 16, 2011 that nine certificates had been signed on behalf of a third party without sufficiently validating its identity. These certificates may be used to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks against all Web browser users including users of Internet Explorer.

Certificates for the following Web properties are affected:
. login.live.com
. mail.google.com
.www.google.com
. login.yahoo.com (3 certificates)
. login.skype.com
. addons.mozilla.org
. “Global Trustee”

Comodo has revoked these certificates, and they are listed in Comodo’s current Certificate Revocation List (CRL). In addition, browsers which have enabled the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) will interactively validate these certificates and block them from being used.

An update is available for all supported versions of Windows to help address this issue.
Typically, no action is required of customers to install this update, because the majority of customers have automatic updating enabled and this update will be downloaded and installed automatically. For more information about this update, or to manually install this update, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2524375 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2524375).

The full advisory can be found on the Web at:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/2524375.mspx.

Most users create custom workbooks in Excel that they allow others to update. The problem is that often those updating the sheet change flag values or change formulas. How can these areas be protected or locked while allowing input cells to be unlocked so that the worst thing others can do is enter invalid values? Today’s tips explain the process to enable changes to be made only in selected cells of a worksheet.

Unlocking specific cells in protected worksheets
Unlocking input cells and protecting sheets is a simple enough process, but a truly knowledgeable user can get around it. For those users, there’s a simple macro for resetting things (which is the final tip noted here).

Unlock input cells in the simple sheet shown below:

There are only two cells that need to be updated in this sheet: B1 and B2. To unlock these for other users, do the following before you protect the sheet:

1. Select the input cells. In this case, that’s B1:B2.
2. Right-click the selection and choose Format Cells from the resulting context menu.
3. Click the Protection tab.
4. Uncheck the Locked option.
5. Click OK.

Protecting the sheet
To protect the sheet after you’ve unlocked cells B1:B2:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Protection, and then select Protect Sheet. In Excel 2007 and 2010, click the Review tab | Protect Sheet (in the Changes group).

2. Enter a password.
3. Uncheck the Select Unlocked Cells option.
4. Click OK.
5. Enter the password a second time to confirm it.
6. Click OK.

With these options chosen, only the contents of cells B1 and B2 can be changed. Other cells cannot be selected.

Using a spreadsheet that only gives access to the specific cells for altering, not only protects the author, but gives the user an easy-to-follow data entry map. There’s no confusion for the user—the only updateable cells are those the user can select.

The caveat
Knowledgeable users can quickly undo the selection property as follows:

1. From the View menu, choose Toolbars.
2. Select Control Toolbox.
3. Click the Properties tool.
4. In the properties window, change the EnableSelection property to 0-xlNoRestriction.
5. Click OK.

In Excel 2007 and 2010, users can also access this property via the VBE by displaying the Developer tab (via the File | Customize Ribbon route) and click Properties in the Controls group.

After resetting the EnableSelection property to 0, users can select any cell in the sheet, but they still can’t alter cell contents, except for the cells you unlocked before protecting the sheet.

For simple sheets, input cells are clear; however, a complex sheet will be confusing to less savvy Excel users and this is where the inability to select any cells but those they should update is valuable.

Responza helps companies and organizations of a variety of sizes and types determine their best computing strategies. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100.