√ It's Your Choice
√ Perfect Virus
√ Video Capture Card
√ Microsoft OneNote
 

It's Your Choice
Your headache or theirs

Hear that sound? Feel the rumble? There is a geologic shift taking place under the feet of small and medium-sized companies and chances are you don't know it, yet. The ruckus is managed services. Their promise is to liberate you from the awful side of computer ownership.

"Awful? Define that, please." Fair enough.

aw•ful [aw-fuhl] – adjective If you don't have an IT Department chances are a smooth running, trouble-free network will be a temporary condition. 2) When something breaks someone has to fix it. 3) And, pay for it. 4) And, if that something gets in the way of running your business, you sleep less and the bottom line gets trashed. 5) If you do have an IT Department, you waste an expensive and valuable asset chasing around mundane tasks.

Managed services are provided by outside tech companies, such as Preferred. These firms offer many kinds of services, including remotely monitoring maintaining and managing your network and computers. How many of you own insurance of some flavor? Managed services too are designed to mitigate risk.

There was a time when handing off an internal function to someone else was the exclusive luxury of large companies. Today, plenty of small businesses have discovered that this same technique is just the answer to drive down the cost of their digital tools and keep them focused on their core competencies, whether they have an IT Department or not.

"Often, managed services focus on prevention and, when necessary, a fast remedy", explained Marc Steiger, Vice President DLP Technologies. "The purpose of some services, such as the ones we offer at DLP, anticipate, detect and fix problems, before the inevitable occurs. Managed services can also be committed to the day-to-day maintenance that's absolutely necessary and too often ignored," he said.

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A Perfect Virus for Imperfect Users
Getting back to basics

The ecard virus is just another example of why one mission of  Preferred is to provide you ongoing advice on protecting your network. The awful reality is the bad guys are always a step ahead and this little baby, which can take you out at the knees, is an example.

This latest e-mail attack is part of a recent increase in "greetings" that encourage users to click on a link in the body of the e-mail to view an apparently legitimate site but, instead, links to malicious code or malware. The latest version of this type of blended threat includes the subject line "Movie-quality ecard" and provides an e-mail address of the sender to trick the recipient into clicking on the harmful link.

The remedy? Simple. Delete it. The reason ecard fearlessly walks by your current protection is it has no attachment. Clicking on the Web site address link in the e-mail triggers an installation of one or two files on your machine, designed to capture user data. Because the download is automatic your curiosity is all that's required to really screw up the works.

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