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Quoting research from various industry analysts, Microsoft warned that users who install unlicensed or counterfeit software on their PCs are 73% more likely to suffer data loss or damage than users of legitimate software. The company also cited a 2006 IDC study that found that 25% of counterfeit software attempted to install unwanted or malicious code when downloaded. In response, Microsoft is launching a series of educational initiatives and enforcement actions in over 70 countries to combat the threat. Microsoft is calling its anti-piracy campaign Consumer Action Day. Microsoft has posted additional information about the risks of counterfeit software and its efforts to fight the problem at microsoft.com/howtotell . Related articles: Counterfeit reports climb (robbiz1978.blogspot.com) Microsoft launches attack on pirates, counterfeiters (seattlepi.com) Microsoft Links Malware Rates To Pirated Windows (news.slashdot.org)

A new report by security vendor Cenzic shares research indicating that security flaws found in Web applications continue to grow and should be a major concern for many businesses, including SMEs, as more and more depend on the Web for their business. According to the report, almost 80 percent of more than 3,000 software security flaws publicly reported this year have been in web technologies such as web servers, applications, plug-ins, and web browsers. That number is about 10 percent higher than the number of flaws reported in the same period last year — and 9 out of 10 of the flaws were found in commercial code. The top 10 vulnerabilities for the first half of 2009 included familiar names such as Sun, IBM, Mozilla, Apache, and Safari, where most Web applications were found to have vulnerabilities related to information leaks and exposures, Cross-Site Scripting , and session management. Are you using the web for your business? Concerned about the security of your data and information? Contact us and see how we can help. Related articles: Web application security is growing problem for enterprises (infoworld.com) Firefox flaws make up 44% of all browser bugs? (theregister.co.uk) Vulnerabilities Whitehat Security (ecombizcenter.blogspot.com)

Small and medium-sized companies sometimes think that disaster planning is only for larger corporations, but recent changes in technology make such planning affordable for almost all business sizes. In fact, small businesses today can’t afford to be without such planning. As a small business owner, you should have three goals when it comes to disaster planning: ensuring that you never lose critical data, minimizing downtime, and recovering as quickly as possible in the event of a disaster. Those actions fall into three different categories: backups, disaster recovery, and business continuity. What’s the difference? Backing up is the process of safeguarding your data by copying it to a safe medium for recovery in the event of loss. Disaster recovery is the process of restoring operations that are critical to your business after a disaster occurs. Business continuity is the creation of a plan that details how your organization will recover and restore interrupted functions after a disaster. Business continuity is the most comprehensive of these three functions, because it involves much more than just a discussion of IT issues – it’s a detailed action plan. Certainly, you need to consider how you protect your IT infrastructure and data, but you also need to consider what you and your employees should do if a disaster occurs. Do your employees know where to meet in the event of a building evacuation? Do you have a plan for reaching out to all employees and their emergency contacts to communicate critical information? Do you have a way to communicate to customers when and how you’ll resume providing products or services? What will you do if one of your major suppliers experiences a disaster? It’s hard to underestimate the importance of these three plans, but many small and medium businesses do. That’s because when most people think of disaster, they think of floods, earthquakes, and fires. They may even consider equipment failures. But there are human-induced disasters as well—for example, disgruntled or incompetent employees who delete critical information, or hackers. It could easily happen to you. Perhaps you have a backup system in place. Maybe you even have backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity plans. But because business goals and environments change, any plan needs to be re-evaluated from time to time to make sure it’s still meeting all of your needs. We can help you evaluate your current plans, or sort through the options if you don’t yet have plans. Contact us for today for details.

With more and more people and organizations accessing the Internet, and as the potential uses of the web grows, the way business is done is naturally evolving as well. One example of this is the emergence of cloud computing services. In essence, this is the outsourcing of an organization’s IT services to a different company. Everything is managed through the Internet – through “the cloud”, hence the term. There are three things that make cloud computing services different from usual hosting services: The company only pays for the resources they use. Subscribers can adjust the amount of service they get based on their need. The service is completely managed by the service provider. Cloud computing services also include providing virtual data storage – meaning you store your data off site on the cloud service provider’s secure servers. You can, however, still access your data through the Internet. There are both private and public cloud services. A public cloud service is available to everyone on the Internet, while private services are only available to specific clientèle. Some cloud services use public clouds to provide private service, making them a virtual private cloud computing service. The increasing use of the web in our personal and social lives as well as in business gives the trend of cloud computing services vast potential. However, this service is not for everyone – for instance, if you have reservations about keeping sensitive information in a location outside your organization, you might want to pass. Want to learn the pros and cons of cloud computing services for your business model? Give us a call – we’d be happy to discuss a possible cloud computing road map with you.