Author: The Timedok

Ready, Fire …Aim

After the recent storms, one might have guessed that my phone has been busy. Firstly let me say that Disaster Recovery by its very title is a bit of a misnomer. While I have some abilities to recover lost data using some forensic skills developed over decades of twiddling bits, that is not really disaster recovery.

Disaster Recovery and business continuity are about planning for an event which may or may not happen. The “plan” assumes that your business systems will be affected negatively and puts forth a tested strategy to recover from the said event.

With the recent devastation by hurricanes and earthquakes, one would think that those businesses not affected would be learning from those that were. If you search my blogs on this site, you will see that I have laid out

Do not ask him or her, are we covered just in case, ask them specific questions laid out in this blog here.

Yes is not a satisfactory answer, demand the details and the proof. I don’t care how much of a friend he or she is, demand the evidence. The devil is in the details, and the last thing you want is a bunch of excuses.

I am learning from phone calls that too many have been assured that they are covered, and that is very possibly why today they are looking for ways to recover data from destroyed equipment.

Disaster recovery is not some dark magic spell cast under the voodoo magic of bits and bytes in the wiring closet or back part of the computer room. The bottom line is to test it, whatever your people come up with, check it. Keep checking it until you can recover your business with outside contractors and hardware with data and documents prepared by your staff. There is to be no input from you or your staff during the test. The hurricane, earthquake, fire, attack from zombies or employee error took you and them away from the scene. The plan provided must work!

This is why we who do this insist that companies use “best practice” standards in the industry when creating your individual networks and systems.

One such company has a senior IT staff littered with programmers. These people think they know more than Microsoft. Using kludges from Unix, Linux and other programming wizardry to subvert some of the basic tenants of networking, they have made their network so unique that it will depend on them to be there to recover.

If it is not broken, don’t fix it!

Writing programs that workaround things like DNS is just crazy stuff and now it is dependent on the network never changing, at all.

If your data is successfully mirrored offsite, an excellent team of engineers might get you going in weeks, not days if you have failed to follow best practices. While your data might eventually be usable, you and your company will be on the sidelines as most businesses do not recover from such a catastrophe.

Folks I have been at this since 1982, I have learned a thing or two in those years. Ask your team the questions or be prepared for unpleasant surprises should you ever face a business stopping event.

Got to go and explain once again what disaster recovery is and is not.

-Best

Are we cooking ourselves? Here is some food for thought.

As a technology minded person, I often wondered about those who design cordless devices. In particular, I am addressing phones. I assume some government agency somewhere spent millions of your tax dollars to come up with what someone thinks are safe levels of radiation.

Maybe these people know more than the rest of us, or maybe they don’t.

Case in point.

The standard cordless phone in 2017 most probably transmits to the base either at 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz. While your phone may advertise the higher frequency of 5.4 GHz that is most probably from the base to the phone.

Split frequency designs like this are prudent as it takes more power to transmit higher frequencies.

Now, these cell phones that we all carry around transmit either in the 850 MHz range or 1.8 ~1.9 GHz range.

MHz (Mega Hertz) stands for millions of cycles per second, GHz is (Giga Hertz) or billions of cycles per second. So every second depending upon the frequency, the RF (radio frequency) cycles millions or billions of time. IE 2.4 GHz is 2 billion, four hundred million, cycles per second.

Frequency should not be confused or conflated with power.

Power for our conversation today is watts. How much power or how many watts of RF (radio frequency) are we talking about?

Cell phones transmit up to 1.7 watts of power.

Cordless phones transmit as much and possibly more than a cell phone. The interesting aspect of this is there is this DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) technology that has been around for a little while now. They sell it as a plus but European studies have shown this might be more hazardous to your health than its predecessor.

The base of this technology is transmitting full power all the time whether your phone is in use or not. If the base is next to your bed or on your desk you are constantly bombarded with 5.4 GHz or at the least 2.4 GHz of radiated power in the form of RF.

Move it away from your body.

Why am I writing about this?

Ever since the first cell phones came out I wondered what they were doing and why. These phones are always talking to the cell towers announcing their availability and telling them where they are while checking in. The phone was and is smart enough to adjust its power level depending upon what is needed to communicate with the tower effectively. The reasons are many but the main idea is to “talk” with one cell tower at a time.

My phone, even today will often time be warm in my pocket, or just sitting on the desk.

While we really have no idea what a smartphone is doing all the time, you can bet if it is warm, it is transmitting something.

I built this little device with a few diodes. I will not belabor the technical aspects of this device other than to say it does not have any batteries. These devices are passive in that the only way that they are energized would be by outside energy fields or EM (electromagnetic) forces.

I got the idea from the crystal radio of my youth. Yes, I built one and housed it inside a pen casing. With a single diode and a coil and very little know how I had a radio that would pick up local radio stations and never needed a battery.

Since my original device that I designed and built years ago, I found this version on the internet for a few dollars.

Setting this thing on top of my phone it soon became obvious that the cell phone is transmitting constantly.

Is it looking for data?
Is the phone talking to the tower?
Is the phone talking to my Wi-Fi network?

The answer is yes. We really have no idea if the phone is doing anything else in the (tin foil hat category).

Now with 1.7 watts of RF at 2GHz, give or take, right next to your ear hole, one has to wonder if that is healthy.

Out of curiosity, I moved my device around the phone to discover that the most of the radiation or highest amounts come out of the phone right by the earpiece. Why?

Knowing RF and the possible link to brain tumors, lymphoma and other nasty things why would the engineers put the transmitting antenna where it would be closest to your head?

This is the iPhone 6S.

My curiosity got the best of me so I checked my cordless phones.

The light powered strictly by RF from the phone is very bright, right on the ear hole and down by the mouthpiece, the light, or power output is nonexistent.

Imagine that your phone has enough RF power to illuminate an LED to full intensity and that energy is being pumped into your head right through your ear hole and of course next to your skull.

Tell me; why in the hell would you not put the antenna at the base of the phone where it would be furthest away from the body/brain? The energy required to light the led dissipates with distance. Logic would dictate that the less energy radiated close to your brain would be a good thing.

The pictures speak for themselves but now you know what you are looking at.

What can we do?

First off, we should ask the government for our money back that they paid for these studies. One would think that if they can come up with SAR (specific absorption rate) and what is safe that just maybe they might have said, “you know, you phone makers should place the transmitter/antenna away from their brains.”

It is kind of like that commercial where the bank is being robbed and the guard says, “Oh I am not a guard, just a monitor… you are being robbed.” What good is the FCC if they cannot think outside the box? The government, which they are part of, is to protect its citizens from faulty designs, much like the Corvair of the 60’s. Where is Ralph Nader these days?

It is amazing to me that they did scientific studies to figure out how much tissue would cook or be damaged by rf. Then they came up with the acronym SAR and finally did nothing more about it. “Look for a phone with a low SAR rating.” Are there labels, using this phone can cause brain cancer?”

What is so germane about 2.4 GHz and why am I sounding a little stressed about this?

That box in your kitchen that burns popcorn so nicely happens to work in that same frequency range.

Since there are millions of microwave ovens out there the FCC put broadband Wi-Fi, cordless phones, and many other unlicensed transmitters that the public uses in that same frequency range as the microwave oven. Part of your license on each piece of equipment reads something to the effect that this device must accept and deal with RFI or radiofrequency interference.

How does the microwave oven work and what does that have to do with my phone?

Microwave energy excites the molecules in stuff causing them to move faster. Much like rubbing your hands together you get friction which causes heat. That is how a microwave heats your lean cuisine dinner or left-overs from Sunday Brunch. Yes it uses more power but I ask you, would you stick your head in your microwave to see how long it takes to fry your brains? Consider the cell phone or cordless phone like a microwave crock pot, it might take longer but eventually, something is bound to be heated up.

Just for you people who think that I am a tin foil hat kind of person think of this one.

How many of our urchins you call grade schoolers now have the very latest iPhone sticking out of the back pocket. A trip to any mall will answer this question. Even if it is a hand me down generation 5, it puts out all sorts of power right next to that thinner more malleable skull and younger more tender, still forming brain tissue.

Then there is this whole blood brain barrier thing that doctors talk about. Does it really seem like a wise idea to put that kind of power that close to those newly formed brain cells? They are future tax payers you know. Wink wink…

Possibly one of them will say, “someone should really put the transmitter in the base of this thing away from my brain.” Will it take a child to figure this out? Maybe a riot on the Berkly campus to get the attention of corporate america who might tend to overlook such things.

I know, I am gettin my tin foil out…

With telecommunications being a multi-trillion dollar industry it is no wonder that this is overlooked. Much like the back scatter x-ray porn scanners at the airport which virtually strip search you, there is a greater good. Bombarding our bodies with ionizing radiation is not harmful as long as the government says that it is ok. (sarcasm)

Calling attention to it might cost Nokia or Apple or Panasonic a few dollars. What is the big deal about a few brain tumors, “can you hear me now?”

Since industry will probably not respond, how can you protect yourself?

Blue Tooth technology also uses RF in the same 2.4 GHz range but the power is very low. A class one transmitter uses about 1mw or Millie Watt. There is a newer headset that wraps around your neck with the earpiece extending from them. That would put the blue tooth transceiver around your neck away from your brain.

Try to always use a headset or speakerphone, and if they still have them, a corded phone.

Use e-mail or text and by all means try talking to people face to face. I know that is a radical concept but, I don’t think you are in danger of getting exposed to radiation that way.

About the device…

While the original crystal radio of my day used a 1N34 germanium diode this device uses nine 1SS86 diodes one tied to the other with an LED as one of the diodes. The legs are purposefully left long like that as they act as the antenna to capture any energy that might be present.

If you are creative you could make it look like a bug with a tail and a head that glowed. Just a thought.

I am not claiming to be an expert on any of this. Just a person who thinks common sense is in limited supply. These days we too readily accept that which is, without asking why. Ask Why!

Cheers!

Scott

What If?

Every day someone finds something. This day was no exception. The more creative the attack the more interesting the day. If you call that number they try to get you to give them $199.00 to unlock your computer.

You can send me some money if you like but, here is the fix for this…

CTL ALT DEL , task manager, kill the process, aka browser and then do not restore the page when you reload the browser.

I am not affiliated with CCleaner but I sell a heck of a lot of it for them. Install it and let it clean your browser after every use. $25 a year and damn well worth it!

As one might use an explicative to emphasize a point, I often use a somewhat tawdry analogy for this purpose. Surfing the web with inadequate anti-virus software is like “hooking up with a stranger” without using protection. Not only is it idiotic, but dangerous!

Having been in Data Processing, or the IT business since before Steve Jobs or Bill Gates was a household name, I know a thing or two. The scars on my back are from arrows taken in the trenches of digital mayhem. This bedlam was caused by such things as bosses wanting to be on the bleeding edge, to software not ready for prime time, been there done that.

Free antivirus software is not worth what you pay for it!

The best security software is going to have a price or cost to it. Why? It takes many engineers, coders, and much research to create and maintain a massive program like anti-virus software. Who is going to do that for free? More importantly, why?

While someone might write an app for free, to get their name out there; anti-virus software takes a village.

Much like hiring someone to sell your home, you don’t hire someone who does it part-time or as a hobby. If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. If you want to sell your home, hire someone who’s lively hood depends upon them being successful. You want a secure computer, hire or purchase the product with the most to lose if it fails.

There is much more to the process of considering which product to purchase but, free is not a reason. I would argue that free is a cause to eliminate that choice.

The reality is that the internet has become the wild west. The bullet that finds you can come from almost anywhere. Every company that uses computers should have a security officer. His or her job should be to focus their attention on threats out there and the best way to keep them from affecting that company.

I find it surprising that politicians are screaming about Russian hacking of our computers. What the hell do you expect? You just assume that someone with a certification gives a damn!?

What worked in 1982 does not work now. Having a “PC Wizard, or your grandchildren” working for you is tantamount to a trapeze act, blindfolded and working without a net. Insurance companies and credit card companies are now aware of this and demanding your strategies to be secure in the world of cyber threats. They should audit you, and they should hire folks like me who know what to look for.

White Hat hacking allows us an inside look at what one might expect. We learn many ways to infiltrate a company. The same applies to the TSA in homeland security. While I would probably choose a job to be that guy that test the security systems of the homeland, airports and such, it is much easier to check companies.

The first thing I must do is understand you. More importantly, know that entity many of us in the biz call “users.”

Too many infiltrations are accomplished with something called click bait. “Ten pictures that should never have been made public…” With half a picture of some scantily clad woman visible, how many will click?

Human nature dictates men will want to see what the camera saw. “Boom, you’re infected.”

Good antivirus software will stop any activity created by software manipulation but, the caveat or keyword there is “good.” What if you bought the bargain basement software or just used the free stuff?

For the coders to write the fix, someone must fall prey to it, report it, and then they must institute a fix. That is why Software of this type is never static. Updates are consistent and often. New threats are released hourly. To run a company dedicated to this is no small task.

Maybe you own a plant which produces widgets. Your widgets are better than others, and your competition wants the skinny. You hired someone like me for your IT manager or CIO so they cannot get in through your firewalls. Your safe, or so you think. Industrial espionage is rife in the competitive world of gadgets and widgets. If I want in bad enough, I will contract one of my guys to write a program that will hide on a computer until certain key phrases are typed, and then it will activate.

“Wait, you said my firewall is secure, Fort Knox secure!”

“Why yes I did, so I am going to place this little program on a thumb drive and…I am going to put some naughty pictures on it with some commercial looking writing on the outside of the device to make the person who picks it up from the parking lot where I dropped it, think that they have something juicy.”

Possibly just tossing a thumb drive out the window of my car near the parking lot with a few files on it, and the Trojan would be enough to get me into your network. I will purchase some chrome colored or fancy looking thumb drive to be sure that it is spotted. I will know when the landscape folks work, so I make sure and plant it after they have done their thing so that one of your employees will find it.

Maybe I send one of my spies out to places that your guys eat and leave the drive on the table by the ashtray or the salt and pepper shaker at the table they eat every week on a given day and time.

Possibly I get one of my people inside your company, hired by you. They install some remotely controlled program like Team Viewer on their PC and Viola; you are hacked.

Because your IT guy is so sure that his firewall is good enough, or your engineers are so demanding that he left the USB ports open for use by them, with lax policies he leaves your company vulnerable too.

How do we stop the threats?

One way we do this is with training. Every employee should sit through CE training on the essential use of the corporate computers. This is information that they can bring home and share. Education is by far the best tool one can have in their arsenal.

All of the policies are trumpeted for them to hear and before they leave they sign a document saying they will adhere to them. With it harder and harder to fire people these days, that too is one more tool in your belt. Good employees, you want to keep, those that prove lacking, they need to go.

I could easily make the argument that good computing practices are patriotic. I could certainly apply this to purchasing respectable anti-virus software and creating policies and procedures that protect your business but, the bottom line is, in the end, it will save the company money.

I was making this argument to a CEO of a good-sized company when he stopped me and said, but viruses help your bottom line too.

I argued that I would much rather use my time and talents to design safe environments for companies like his than put out fires. It is considerably less expensive to install a good fire retardant system then to try and rebuild. Yes, a metaphor for using robust best practice standards in computing vs. reacting to noise.

Noise is the result of a problem created by an event that was unplanned or caused by employee error.

A good security person is somewhat paranoid and is always asking, what if? I do this in disaster recovery scenarios balancing those “what if’s” against statistics and a risks assessment.

With proper education, we can mitigate the employee errors. Using proper procedures and policies, we can diminish the unplanned events, i.e. viruses or other malicious code.

When I run into companies that think free antivirus software is adequate, it makes me a little crazy. If they are a public company, trust me, I will not purchase their stock. Flirting with disaster out of sheer frugality or ignorance is idiotic.

If you keep your guys around because you like them, think again. I may love some folks, but I would not hire them for certain positions if I could find someone better. I don’t have to like you, for you to work for me. If you are the best person for the job, you get the job. P&L trumps feelings! Feelings can be costly and can be a liability. Logic in business is your ally. Logic must always be forefront when making business decisions.

I have walked away from companies who have their kids working for them. By hiring the children, you open yourself up to losses that could be untold. One company had their children not doing the paperwork necessary to complete the task, thus losing money in that department. Hiring me to do an analysis, it did not take long to find the problem. I fired her children after trying to work with them. I kid you not one of them actually cried in my office after telling him time after time he must do all of the job. A grown man crying! There is no crying in IT. Either perform the work or get the hell out! Either do all of the job or learn to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” Is that too tough? I felt for the kid but, feelings do not dictate policy.

Do your kids a favor and don’t hire them. The real world does not work that way so why in the world handicap them, and make them believe that it does?

Over the years there are best practices that have been created by time trusted procedures and policies.

Some are things like:

Hardware Asset management.
Software Asset Management
Security both physical and digital

I could write a book on the subject, but I will spare you the details.

Today, now more than ever we must harden our networks. We must have sound policies and procedures in place, and they must be adhered to. Documentation is essential, and it must be updated.

I don’t relish firing people but, sometimes their people are the problem, and the CEO is so far removed from the process they just don’t know it. If training can fix it, I am all for it. Attitude too plays a crucial role in the process, and I will not tolerate a crappy attitude. Life is too short, and the subject matter is too important.

I love the HR folks because often they are the gatekeepers, saving the CEO from disaster. Good HR folks are worth their weight in silver. Gold, maybe not, so let’s stick with silver. Worthy people are not that hard to find as many would have you believe. Upright people are around, but they may not have everything that you are looking for immediately.

Instant gratification is an expensive luxury and can be elusive at best. Where employees are concerned, I want to start with a “good foundation.”

We place certifications above character, and that is part of our modern day conundrum.

I hired a grocery store manager and trained him for a job in IT. He had little experience in the job I hired him for, so why did I hire him?

He had the right attitude and wanted to learn.

I had the time to train him.

The money used for training him was penny’s compared to hiring exactly what I was looking for.

He did not have the bad habits that come with so many “experts” with the certifications, and their egos.

He ran a grocery store and let me tell you; he was not afraid of work!

Back in the day, we had interns or apprentices. Folks, we need to look carefully at that once again. I have hired many over the years that had the right attitude and the skill set to learn. American people are out there struggling, and we won’t give them a chance. Why? Instant gratification. We need someone who can step into the job right now, and we run with minimum employees because of what? Because it is so expensive to have employees.

That is one of the things we need to push back on Congress and health care to fix, but the reality is, internships and apprentices I think are essential to finding and creating good employees.

Every job fair that I go to has thousands of workers looking for work. If you can’t find them, you are not looking! I spot good employees daily. There are times I would love to go work for a recruiter just because I can spot talent!

Are they the exact racehorse ready for the Derby today? Maybe not, but can they be trained? There are virtual diamonds in the rough everywhere, looking for a chance! We are begging to bring in more H1B folks instead of taking care of our own. That is not very damned patriotic if you ask me!

Our schools are a disaster in my opinion. In speaking with college graduates today, I am frequently amazed at just how ignorant and totally out of touch with reality that they are. Someone somewhere screwed them to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars for an education that is worthless. When they think voting for a socialist is a good idea, they were screwed by their college and should demand their money back!

Today we have kids tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and they cannot find a job. I know of several college grades making much less than $15 an hour. Our educational system needs an overhaul.

As quickly as a company can get a process documented and packaged, they send it overseas via a VPN over the internet, sending jobs out of the country.

Trades are being overlooked for white collar jobs which are going the same way. IT jobs are vanishing in the states. Virtual IT shops are set up in some foreign country, hiring an English speaking American to act as a liaison between them and their Indian or other counterparts. With an American point of contact, it is then up to the American to manage the folks in another country who speak little English, making little money, to be the IT shop for these American companies. This same person puts an American face on their business while working with their client managing the “noise.”

“Do you see any security risk there?”

You have no clue where your intellectual property is going or who is seeing it. Maybe you have a contract but so what. Much like HIPAA was created to protect your health information, do you honestly feel as if your information is secure? If you do, you are fooling yourself. Read the documents you sign when you visit the doctor. You sign things saying that your information is protected and then you sign a document which pretty much gives them a pass to do whatever they want to do with your information. Smoke and mirrors.

Doctors and hospitals are hacked and the information is stolen all too often. Why? How? Piss poor planning on someone’s part. Using some cheap method to get things done perhaps?

Your contract with your Virtual IT company is as worthless as the paper it was printed on. Yes, that deal might make you feel better but, know if you are a developer, someone in some other country has your work and if they can use it, they will.

I want to touch on Software Asset Management as it is germane to this subject. All of the subjects are salient, but that one, in particular, is in the case of security.

There are tools which you can use to inventory every program on every PC. Why? Why would you want to do this?

Licensing of software is an issue, but more importantly, you should want to know what is on those PCs. The first time I did this for a company I was struck with the reality of the sheer number of programs designed for remote control of a PC, that was active.

In this world we live in, corporations can ill afford to have the wild west inside their computer networks. Besides the games and other foolishness that was identified, the risk to the infrastructure was phenomenal. The company is liable for every program on their PC’s, no matter who put it there. If they are audited for their licenses, and someone like myself does an audit and finds them, they must then produce that license. Can you? Can you put your hands on all of your licenses?

Ignorance is no excuse!

Having been part of the evolution of the business process, dating back to the secretary and the typewriter to current day, I have seen the learning curve first hand. Fighting the first virus on a network before there was anti-virus software; asking “what if” became second nature.

Back when Gregg shorthand was used, a business letter cost an average of $100.00 back then. Now we type out e-mails with the ease of few keystrokes and dictation is a thing of history. Technology has improved the business process, but the bad guys have found a way to make it interesting.

The very tools we use to make our lives easier are under constant threat by evil forces that look for ways to extort money or steal your property either through the exploitation of your network, or your employees themselves.

We use the cloud as if it were a hard drive in some vault in our closet. We send information to the cloud without a clue where the cloud is and who has access to it. Why we don’t encrypt that data before it leaves our computers is beyond me. If I were a villain, I would be looking for ways to infiltrate the “cloud.”

“What if?”

The opinions expressed are my own as well as the intellectual value of the information put forth for your consumption.

Netflix Scam

No Netflix is not the problem, a phishing scam, however, is out that you should be aware of.

Since so many of us now receive our entertainment over the internet, it is a good gamble that you might have Netflix.

Again many of us have it set up to bill once a month from some sort of banking institution whether it be your bank, credit card or PayPal. The e-mail looks like it came from Netflix until you look a little closer at the sent from.

Netflix AT dallas180.arvixeshared.com (don’t e-mail to it…)

You will notice it is not Netflix.com

The message is telling you that they were unable to get your payment info and if you don’t update the info soon you will lose Netflix.

Then, of course, there is a link that they want you to follow.

God only knows how many will fall for this. Considering it was sent to tens of thousands you can bet a percentage will click and update. Always check to see that the sending e-mail is legitimate. IE Netflix.com and, hover over the link and make sure it stays Netflix.com and not something like I posted.

If you question it at all, call the institution or get online, not following any link from an e-mail and check for yourself. Once they get money from your account, if that is indeed their ploy it will be gone. The ploy could simply be to get you to click so they can put some sort of virus or cookie on your computer. E-mail is an excellent way to get infected, and because the scheme requires input from you, your protection might just allow it.

Practice safe computing… -Best

Hidden White House camera catches Trump’s leaker!

Did I get you to click, did I get your attention?

Many have e-mailed me asking where I have been as my phone has been busy. What I just did with that title is called phishing. No, I am not infecting you, as the matter of fact if you read this you might very well be better off!

Had I said something even more audacious using Ivanka’s name and Nude in that title more of you would have clicked.

Those that write worms and Trojans and other malevolent spyware know how to prey upon your weakness. They studied the human heart enough to know that we cannot resist a story like this, especially if it is something negative about Trump. They manipulate you through your emotions.

Once you click on a link, many firewalls and antivirus software’s will assume that you know what you are doing and let you click, thus screwing up your computer and possibly give you something to “wannacry” about.

Yes, I specialize in disaster recovery, but if someone has not taken me or someone like myself up on these services before the crises and they suffer a loss, They might want to cry!

CIO’s and their teams must provide the company with several layers of protection which includes the best anti-virus software on the market. It includes making sure that all systems are patched and up to date. The companies that are the most vulnerable are the companies who take IT and what it does for granted, not supplying them the resources that they might need. These businesses that have someone in their IT department who is lackluster in keeping up with updates is another. Maybe they fail to stay informed of threats making their company fair game for the people inside the castle who click on the shiny red button or trinket of knowledge; looking for scandalous information on a person that they hate or a nude picture of their daughter or wife.

Human nature is predictable which is what the evil dudes depend on. You too know human nature if you are a human. There are few good surprises in business and even fewer in the IT industry. Vigilance on your IT crews part must be elevated as the threats are more dangerous and more frequent.

I have an article called Attention CEO-CIO and so forth, read that. I don’t want to waste my time writing it all over again. It is full of good information.

Develop and test a DR plan.

Use technology only to give your employees access to what they need and not what they want. Be judicious with updates, checking of logs and the software that is in your domain.

What is on each PC?
Do they need it?
Do you have licenses for it?
Do you have that software updated and in a vault in case the worst happens?

Using a program like Spiceworks not only can you account for all of your hardware but you can get a listing of every executable on each PC. This information is an eye-opener. Frequently the CEO will ask, what do they need that for?

That is a good question, but the real wake-up calls are, is it legal? What is it and where did it come from? What does it do?

I find remote control software on PC’s that is waiting for some remote PC to dial in and take over the PC which if left attached to the network, lets the villain into everything!

This is where I have been and will most likely be again as the threats are more often now than ever before.

Those of you that follow my blog know of what I speak. Vigilance is not a nice thing if you have time. Attention to Security is mandatory. It is much easier and cheaper to fix what you have now vs. trying to restore what you have with an untested backup solution.

“How do I do that, we don’t have time?”

If that is your answer, you probably ought not to be where you are at.

Hire a technical crew (preferably from your vendors which you should have a relationship with) give them the backups in an offsite facility designed for such things and tell them to restore your company.

You have a person there to take notes, but not to assist them, for practical reasons that man went under the bus with the rest of your IT employees. When they get your company “live;” you then bring in a Skelton crew. Have them perform their functions at that site, and again take notes.

I can almost guarantee it will never get to the point of your employees headed to the hot site to test things unless of course, you are one of the few who is vigilant.

The purpose of the exercise is to figure out what the deficits are and then create a plan to fix it.

“Our stuff is configured so that we would need to be there to make it work?”

I have seen it, and that is not smart. Best Practice is around for that reason. Your company must be using “best practice methodologies” as those are what SME’s will be expecting. You don’t want some outside firm to guess at what you have done and try to put band-aids on stuff. In the event, your IT folks do get hit by the bus you want to be able to hire SME’s and have them quickly take your documentation and step in, while your IT guy recovers or you replace him or her.

Don’t fall for bogus click baits
Don’t surf the web carelessly at work
No Nigerian prince wants to give you money
The IRS will not send you an E-mail telling you to look at this attachment.
Buy install and maintain the best antivirus on the market.
Have an inventory of your purchased software, know where the licenses are and the updated software disk.

“I just download the software when I need it.”

“Your internet is down, and will not be restored for three weeks…where is that software going to come from?”

Just when I think I have seen and heard it all, I am amazed at the stupidity or ignorance that abounds in this industry. Folks, if your ego cannot afford to look at how you are doing things, possibly you are in the wrong job.

I had finished advising a client recently and was still in earshot when I hear the CIO tell his boss that I was not correct and making too much out of it! WTF! This guy was so egocentric or afraid for his job that his ego could not handle the fact that he was wrong about so many things that he lied to his boss and put the company in harm’s way! I was not wrong!

Look, I have no dog in the fight! I am going to call them as I see them and what you do after that is on you. If your IT guy hung the moon; good for you! When the feces hits the rotating oscillator, I would love to be a fly on the wall when he tries to talk his way out of it.

A short story totally out of left field is this. We have all seen drivers text or do something with that smartphone going down the road. If you haven’t maybe you are texting and driving and I am talking about you!

Driving up 45 from Houston, during a thunderstorm, there was this fuel truck, 18 wheeler doing the dance. You know the dance where they are all over their lane occasionally dipping into the next lane or possibly onto the shoulder. I saw him in my mirror as he was advancing close to me. Getting out of his way, I noticed as he passed me that yes, he had his phone in his hand.

This was a fuel truck; you know the kind with the volatile product in it! Slowing way the hell down I let him pass. Ten miles down the road there he was, stuck in the ditch. He ran off the shoulder into the rain-soaked ditch and buried it! Now, this could have been so much worse!

“Do you think he called his boss and said.” Funny thing, I was texting my wife a grocery list and the next thing you know I am stuck in the ditch, isn’t that a knee slapper?”

“No, he will tell him that someone cut him off and if he has an otherwise good track record his boss will buy the lie!”

IT guys with ego problems are like that, as was this one guy. Trust but verify!

Look at that other article and ask your folks some of those questions and see what they say.

Hope you don’t WANNACRY and that all of your employees don’t click on stupid things.

-Best

How often Should I Change the Ribbon

By far this is the most often asked question when I am speaking with a customer.

First things first, however. There are three different types of ribbon for your consideration.

By “type of ribbon,” I mean what fabric was used.

Nylon
Cotton
Silk

Nylon, most probably the least expensive of the three has plusses and minuses.

Nylon takes more abuse but, does not hold as much ink as some others.

Cotton, also not the most expensive holds much more ink for a longer period. However, Cotton pulverizes much easier than Nylon.

Silk, the most expensive of the three holds together longer and is in the middle of the road as far as its ability to retain ink.

“Great, there are three types, which one do I need?”

There are a few different factors to consider.

Your average humidity. The moisture in ink will evaporate much faster in Arizona, than Florida, for example.

“Why do I care about how fast the moisture evaporates?”

The medium for the ink is the moisture. When the ribbon is dry, the quality of the print is diminished. Also, it is my contention that the moisture from the ink assist in lubricating the type section allowing it to wear much slower than pure metal on metal.

Pulverization

As the solenoid under the type section rises to strike the type section, it places the imprint on the document of the date, time and whatever other information you may have on your individual plates.

Each time it does this, it breaks the bonds in the fabric a little, which is the ribbons substrate or media which holds the actual ink.

During the ribbons life cycle, the spooling mechanism rolls the fabric back and forth as it nears the end. Several passes of the ribbon are possibly before the ribbon should be replaced.

I tell customers to make an imprint right after they change the ribbon. Take that example hang it by your machine somewhere.

Much like the brakes on your car, you have no idea that from the get go they are performing less efficiently until one day you hear the ubiquitous squeal from a metal warning indicator telling you to service your brakes. Each day they wear just a little bit more and stop just a little less efficiently.

Your ribbon from day one slowly loses ink, and before you know it, you are not able to clearly see the imprint.

“Why is this a problem, I want to get the most out of the ribbon I can!”

“No, no you don’t. Most of you are scanning or imaging your documents. That means that the original text must be legible. Since most scanners do not get 100% of the original “value” or the image darkness, the original needs to be as dark and definite as possible.” Secondly using a ribbon too long will cause pulverization of the substrate. If you have ever looked inside your Rapidprint or Widmer file date stamper and seen “gunk” in the wheels or plates. That is from ribbon fragments and paper dust bound together with ink as the glue.”

Do not try this at home!

Many of you have attempted to clean this yourself. Once you try this, quickly you will see the error in your way. Using an old toothbrush and alcohol should be an easy task! There is a reason that I do very little service in the field. One customer did this and told me of the experience. I did not mean to laugh but, the walls appeared as though an inkwell blew up. Her clothes, desk and anything within proximity was spotted with ink.

Never mind the mess that this process makes here is the real bugaboo. When cleaning the machine, you take the oils and other chemicals away which lubricate the wheels and mechanism.

I disassemble each machine after cleaning it replacing the worn parts, and then I replace the lubricants.

For these to function properly the tolerances are critical. Some have tried to replace parts by themselves to find they got into more than they bargained for.

If the machine full of gunk is left untreated, the mechanism will wear faster, and the imprint will not be clear but smeared as the letters like “O” will be filled in and appear as a large dot instead of an “o.” The same applies to the numbers 0 or 6 or 8 or 9 and any other letter than has a closed circle of some sort.

Since these machines can cost up to $1000 each, it is a super good idea to have them serviced occasionally.

Changing the ribbon when the print starts to get too light is also a good idea.

At TimeDok we sell and service these machine and have done so since 1995.

If you purchase a dozen or more ribbons from me at one time, I pick up the shipping.

In summary, Silk is the most robust ribbon for those of you who don’t like to change them as often as you should.

Cotton will render the best print image but will pulverize and needs to be changed when the print gets too light.

Nylon is less expensive than Silk and does hold up better than cotton but will not last as long as cotton or silk.

One of the other things I see too often is this. “The spooler is not working!”

Go here and check this out before you send me your machine

http://www.timedok.com/Support.html

The other guys won’t tell you that…

While I actually want your business, I don’t want it under false pretense. Many times the ribbon was installed improperly, and it will not spool if it is.

Follow me on Linked In or check out my website at www.timedok.com.

“Is it feasible to use Timedok for my service as I am not in Texas?”

If you can get UPS to come to your location then yes. I currently have customers in all 50 states and in some of its territories.

Call or write for details. Many times a machine will just show up with no advanced warning from a new customer. That is ok too but, a heads up would be nice so I can get to know you a little and vice versa.

http://www.timedok.com/contact.html

A commentary on Social Media

The recent ouster of Bill Oreilly from Fox news was surprising. We have no idea what goes on behind the closed doors of the executive suites at Fox. We have no clue what has transpired if anything between the popular opinion show host, and his co-workers or guests.

There is the talk of a $13 million dollar payoff to five women.

Do we know for a fact that it happened?

My point is not to try the case of Bill’s behavior at the workplace. The simple facts are, we have no facts!

What we do know, there is a long history of people becoming targets who are in the public eye. How many times has someone been accused of saying or doing something untoward that was not true? Too many to count.

In this country, we are innocent until proven guilty.

Read that last statement again and reflect on that. The people, and I use the word “people” on social media loosely, have tried and convicted a man with no evidence, only hearsay! Whether the man is innocent or guilty is not the point. The point is that we want to believe the worst of someone who we take umbrage with. The tweets and comments on social media show the absolute worst side of our nature, for all the world to see. He had the number one rated show on cable news for over 20 years! Do you think that was a fluke!?

Not only are we so polarized that we cannot even be polite to someone who might have a different view than we do but, we scorn and scoff at anyone who is not ready to lynch Bill and everyone else that works for Fox. There were many threats aimed at other hosts who work for Fox today. Is that the way we work now. I thought we did not like Bullies, when did that change?

I expect this kind of rhetoric on Twitter. The Twitter-verse where anything goes, and there are no real names associated with your vile forms of contempt. I expect it on Facebook which is, after all, social media but there, a name is associated with your opinions and, we can assume that your audience knows you!

I do not condone it however and block much of it, as I would rather not see the hatred which is spewing out from many who are still not happy with the election results.

I was genuinely shocked to see this on Linked In, however. To witness the vitriolic, hateful rhetoric from people who use this form of media to obtain employment and or showcase to the perspective employers of the world how employable they are is just outrageous! It is like piercing and tattooing your face, and trying to get a job as a model for Vogue. After you are disqualified for obvious reasons, you then sue them for discrimination. Where did you graduate from that you think this is ok?

As a manager for most of my professional life, I must tell you that I look on the internet before I hire. After all the hurdles that one must jump through even to get an interview, do you think it wise to display your ignorance and your small minded demeanor for the entire world to see?

Linked In is not Facebook. Linked in is a professional network which is not the place to air your witlessness.

It makes little difference how you “feel” about a TV personality. To bloviate incessantly in a pejorative manner is ill advised on any media, much less Linked In.

-Best

When is the right time to think about Disaster Recovery?

Spring rains bring on more than just flowers or in my case, weeds. The phone started ringing early the other morning. My coffee was still brewing when the continuous ring of the phone demanded me instead of the regular answering service.

It would seem that lightning hit a pole close to one of my clients.

Lightning is far from respectful of your deadlines or the amount of work that your staff has lined up to accomplish. From simple power outages to fire, lightning all by itself is a disaster in the making. Some simple steps ahead of time can keep your company from being a victim to what this client was.

One girl had her headset in when the lightning struck and was shocked. Happily, she is ok, but their systems were not so fortunate. Had the grounding been worse; she may have been the path to ground.

Once the power was restored the server, router, and switch, did not recover.

The one machine on a UPS died as the power went out.

What went wrong?

Surge protectors have a finite lifetime. People buy these power strips with surge protectors and forget about them. Surge protectors are nothing more than a power strip with something in them known as a “Metal Oxide Varistor or MOV.”

Any power surge above an acceptable voltage is clamped or shorted to ground by this device. The problem is the MOV only last so long before it no longer functions. Every time there is any spike in the line from compressors shutting off to other electronic “noise” these components are adversely affected.

What is better?”

A UPS of enough wattage to allow the computer to be safely powered down in the event of a power failure. Along with the backup power ability, these devices have more sophisticated line conditioning circuitry protecting your equipment from stray voltage spikes.

One note to remember, these too only last so long before they must at least be maintained, or replaced. Any CIO worth his salt is familiar with Hardware asset management and has this is mind for his budget. CEO’s hate surprises like unexpected expenses. It is much easier to argue a budgeted expense than going hat in hand begging forgiveness for your ineptitude.

Suffer a catastrophe like this client, hope your boss does not hire someone like me to do a root cause analysis.

At the very least batteries must be changed out but keep in mind that an MOV is also part of that piece of hardware. I would budget the replacement of a UPS, rather than just the batteries if it were me.

Unless you have electrical engineers on staff, who are qualified to re-certify that equipment, it is too cheap not just to replace it.

Along with outdated hardware or not enough of it, I have seen too many times the ground plug defeated to save a dollar from an electrician. Those ground plugs are there for your protection, not because someone wanted to make it difficult for you. The problem with temporary is all too often it becomes permanent.

Lightning struck outside one of my client’s offices hitting a pine tree. Finding the electrical ground for the building, which was poorly grounded, everything in the building suffered a power surge knocking out much of their equipment.

Many times, building management will only do what is necessary by code and leave the gamble up to you the tenant.

Depending upon your location, achieving a good ground could be difficult. The type of soil must is taken into account among other things. Again, depending upon your location, you might want to invest in grounding your building with lightning protection equipment including lightning rods or now they call them “air terminals.” The idea is to have some amount of confidence that if lightning hits, it will strike your planned target and be dissipated safely into the earth.

Since all computer equipment and now phones are wired through the network, this last customer lost computers and phones along with the network infrastructure.

Failure to plan is planning to fail.

The cost of the hardware and time to repair was minimal, compared to the amount of time the company was out of business.

Insurance will only get you so far. As these spring storms fire up, there is a real element of danger to your building, business and, like the one young lady found out, to her person. Had proper grounding been utilized I doubt the girl would have felt the shock in her ears.

While a tested, reliable disaster recovery plan will allow you to sleep at night, preventing the disaster in the first place is what you should shoot for. That starts with planning.

From your building security to network security, right down to protecting your infrastructure from mother nature, accounting for every contingency is paramount.

Truth told, there are seldom good surprises in business. Mitigating the surprises with proper planning can prevent poor performance. Asking “what if” is key to any plan. Weighing cost vs. probability allows anyone with some business acumen to make sound decisions without breaking the bank. Understanding the risks, are the starting point.

-Best

What do I do when?

If I had a nickel for every time that someone asked me this, I might very well be in Bora Bora or the Maldives working on a tan after that wicked winter that we did not have.

While I stress good anti-virus software such as Eset, no one program is the “Silver Bullet!” You must have some computer smarts when accessing the internet.

When we traverse the back alleys and the main thoroughfares of the “information highway,” it is imperative that we employ a little common sense.

I have written extensively about what to do and not to do in the past, but this latest phone call was rather unique.

While navigating the highways and byways sometimes, we are thrown a curve. Much like a roundabout in a city that does not have them, ever!

“What do I do if a dialogue box appears and it is in some other language?”

You are either surfing the internet or on Twitter or some other app and all of the sudden a dialogue box appears with prominent places to click but, the writing is in a language that you don’t recognize, what do you do?

“If you don’t know the answer to this send, me a nickel.” I am joking but can you imagine someone spending .50 cents to send me a nickel? I guess I could do a PayPal donation button. 🙂

What do I do when a dialogue box appears that I am not expecting and it might be in another language?

A:) Click on one of the boxes that appear to be the “no” box.

B:) Get out your smartphone. Look for a translation application and see what it is before clicking

C:) Pull up task manager, {ctrl alt del}, and kill the app completely (end task)

I realize I made that too easy but would you care to guess how many will just click the button to the right hoping it is the “go away” button?

Pop-ups are rarely a good thing. There are settings in most browsers that will eliminate such things, but still, some brilliant programmer somewhere figures out a workaround to get the pop up to appear anyway.

With all of this talk about cyber warfare and cyber espionage, having real anti-virus software is not only critical but also patriotic.

I was giving a talk, and one bright young man said that his free antivirus was all that he put on his companies PCs. Later that evening I learned that he worked for his parents! I sure hope that they have good insurance and a great backup, disaster recovery plan when their computers are trashed, or compromised or both. Free is not worth what you pay for it. PS… Never hire anyone you can not fire!

If you love your kids (and your sanity) make them find a job with another company.

Why is it patriotic?

Infections of all kinds make it through and sit there waiting for the right moment to activate. Once someone, somewhere, wants to pull off his or her attack, they only “turn it on.” Your computer along with millions of others attached to the internet becomes active participants. The attack could be something as common as a DOS (denial of service) attack, or it is watching every keystroke you make looking for passwords and identity info passing that info back to some nefarious server in someone’s closet.

I have no deals or allegiance to ESET, right now I think it is one of the best out there.

Anytime your application is acting “wonky” task manager is your friend. Pop-ups are rarely useful, especially if they make it through your no pop-up settings.

Bonus Question, Why is B not a right answer?

Think about it; some programmer wrote some interesting looking dialogue box to do something that popped up in the middle of searching for more information on March Madness “while you are working.”

You pull out your smartphone, the camera comes on, and soon you discover that some programmer tells you that you are a winner! Click here to claim your free IPad! You know that is a ruse because you have already won one and it never materialized. Begrudgingly, still upset about the last fraud, you click the no thank you button with hopes that it will now go away. What if the “No thank you” button activates some series of scripts? These scripts require your input to tell your antivirus software to ignore the threats. Yes, you understand all of the risks, and you want to do this anyway?

By the way, that little X up in the corner could also be a “yes please screw up my computer and infect it as our IT staff does not have enough to do.”

Task manager good, Task manager is your friend, become one with Task manager….

“What if the pop up is in English and it tells me I won and iPad.”

Task manager good, Task manager is your friend, become one with Task manager….

Now get back to work! 🙂

Are you as moral as you think you are?

This test only has one question, but it’s a very important one.

By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision.

Only you will know the results, so remember that your answer needs to be honest.

THE SITUATION:

You are in Florida, Miami to be specific.

There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.

This is a flood of biblical proportions.

You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you’re caught in the middle of this epic disaster.

The situation is nearly hopeless.

You’re trying to shoot career-making photos.

There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water.

THE TEST:

Suddenly you see a woman in the water.

She is fighting for her life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.

You move closer.

Somehow the woman looks familiar.

You suddenly realize who it is.

It’s Hillary Clinton!

At the same time, you notice that the raging waters are about to take her under forever.

YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS:

You can save the life of Hillary Clinton or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world’s most powerful Democrats hell bent on the destruction of America.

THE QUESTION:

Here’s the question, and please give an honest answer.

“Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?”

Before you write me nasty messages that I will ignore, this is humor!