Security sources warn of Hurricane relief domain name registrations

It happens every time there is a disaster anywhere in the world. And in anticipation of disaster from Gustav, domain name registratons are being reserved for "hurricane relief". Many of these are bets that the domain can be sold at a lter date. Also, as has been the case in the past, some are sure to become no-so admirable sites where donations don’t make it to any relief efforts.

We’ve always found that the American Red Cross site is a great source of relief for disasters. You can find more information about the efforts of the American Red Cross at http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/.

With ANY site where you transfer personal information INCLUDING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS, be sure that the web site is secured by a HTTPS and has a legitimate certificate published by a known 3rd party Certificate Authority like Verisign or Thawte (and others).

This event is also most certainly to also produce SPAM and PHISHING emails. As we always warn, be wary of clicking on links for donations in emails.

Disastery Recovery: What have we learned

As Gustav approches the US, it is already being touted as potentially having worse flooding than hurricane Katrina. The question here is, has IT learned the Disaster Recovery and Business Contingency lessons of the last several years. 911 was something that most businesses had never taken in account and Katrina was a stern reminder of needs that many still hadn’t implemented years afterwards. Now, many in the Gulf are faced with those reminders as Gustav approaches (and another storm behind it). I do not envy the IT managers that did not execute the plans to continue the business of their employers from elsewhere as they are all forced to evacuate. The only thing they can do now is hope.

The rest of us need to re-evaluate our own plans, and test them out.

Their Heading off to School

As allot of parents prepare to send their students off to school, one of the questions that come to mind is how to keep their students’ information  safe.
My first response always relates to strong Anti-Virus and Firewall software, like that available from the folks as Kaspersky: Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. But this is only one ring in a multi-layered approach. 

Even the most secure and protected machine can have failures, can be lost/stolen, or be subjected to the “Delete” key. The simple fact of the matter is that recovery is a very important means of protection; one that is often overlooked by users.
The use of tapes are just not practical for users and it’s hard to find a laptop/PC with a floppy drive anymore (much less the need a way too many floppies for a laptop with a 120gb hard drive). Backups to drives are MUCH faster and the surplus of USB hard drive manufacturers are keeping the price down while the volume sizes are increasing.

While a backup (using Windows backups or a third party app like Acronis True Image 11 Home free trial) would be ideal, users are generally more concerned about their data. After all, the loss of a term paper, their MP3 files, or email would be catastrophic in most minds; not to mention the downtime. In that light, sync-type programs like Microsoft’s SyncToy is ideal. This Windows (XP/Vista) based software can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0FC1154-C975-4814-9649-CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en.

The way this works is that folders like My Documents and its sub-folders can be copied off somewhere else at the click of a button. That “somewhere else” can be a USB key or a separate drive (like a 1TB USB external drive).
The unfortunate side of syncing instead of backups is that a change made one place is “sync’d “to the remote location. Where as a backup would still exist and would therefore be recoverable. The unfortunate side of backups is that it takes discipline; such that many students are not likely to have away at school.
In future issues, we will discuss various backup methods, including off-site backups and storage.