Why we like VIPRE for Virus Protection

This just came through from Sunbelt (the vendor that produces VIPRE)

“VIPRE Antivirus is the Fastest Antivirus

VIPRE has the fastest real-time protection against 5 major competitors according to a comprehensive test by a leading independent testing organization in November 2010.
VIPRE processed 4,500 megabytes of file data in 195 seconds, compared to a benchmark of 127 seconds; the next closest competitor processed the same data in 233 seconds. Complete results are available upon request from GFI.
http://www.sunbeltsecuritynews.com/17LJ5Z/110119-Speed-Matters

Yes, speed matters.  We find that VIPRE is gentle on the use of your computers resources (doesn’t hog up memory or processor time), technical support is efficient and well priced.

We evaluate our choice in Virus Protection on a regular basis, to make sure we are keeping our clients on the best mousetrap and VIPRE continues to be our product of choice.

More on Microsoft Cloud Services - BPOS

Okay, so right after I published the last article on Microsoft Cloud services, it suddenly dawned on me, “What about BPOS?”. What on earth is BPOS you ask? BPOS stands for Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. My CMIT colleague Debbie Bush has been making comments about BPOS for a while now (she is on the Microsoft IT Advisory Council and she is sooooo pro Microsoft). I had taken a look after the umpteenth comment she made about a year ago, just the jist that this was Microsoft’s cloud offering for Office products and left it at that. I just couldn’t see the need for dealing with a web based Office suite since I felt it couldn’t be as responsive as working with a desktop package.

So I Googled (yes I prefer Google search not Bing) BPOS Microsoft and the first entry on the list brought me to the MS BPOS area. I quickly realized I had been wrong about BPOS, it’s not the cloud version of Office, it’s the Cloud version of a few other MS products, namely Exchange (e-mail and such aka Outlook), Sharepoint (document management and collaboration), “Communications Online” (aka instant messaging) and Live Meeting (web conferencing). Cool.

To help you understand this in more depth, I’ve added links to videos, web pages and documents that provide more detail.

Want to know if this is the right for your small business, just give me a call.

Great FREE Cloud Services from Microsoft

This article was started using Microsoft's Word Web App. This was possible by having a Windows's Live Account and a SkyDrive account. Although Word Web app doesn't have ALL the features of the PC version of Word it has the 20% most people use exclusively. You can even quickly bring the document into Office. When you hit the save button it saves it to your SkyDrive.

What is SkyDrive? It's your own hard drive in the Internet Cloud. A virtual file storage area hosted in the Microsoft Cloud. Pretty neat.

Last good thing about this? It's FREE.

So I click the button to bring the document into Office Word (one click, enter by Live id password and then when my local machine prompts me I allow it to enter my local machine.

So my curiosity chimes in, where is the document now? So I click save as and I find that my machine now have an extra network connection to this

(I did that by using the built in screen capture tool in Windows J).

So what happened during those prompts is that a secure connection (like a VPN) was created between my SkyDrive and my local machine. Very nice!

As I click save the document is saved to the SkyDrive so I don't have to worry about duplicate copies or not having access to this document when I move from this machine (actually my netbook) and my work desktop machine.

How does Live Mesh fit into this? Clicking on the help launches me to this page http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh-devices-sync-upgrade-ui which helps me understand how all this works. What I find out are a few interesting things. First, you can sync one or more folders from one or more computers to your SkyDrive. Amazing! This gives me anywhere anytime access to my documents without additional software, hardware, or configurations. Nice! Second it tells me that if I leave my computer online (I assume that means powered on, logged on with an live internet connection) that I can get to ANY files and folders on my local machine. WOW. Last in this section it tells me I can sync up program settings between computers. This means I can have my favorites, office document templates the same on the different computers I work on. Boy is this going to reduce frustration and time.

On what machines can you install Windows Live Mesh? The newer stuff, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X version 10.5 or later.

So I wondered, "what happens if I need more than 25 GB of space? Granted that's a lot but if I'm going to start playing this into client environments; I need to know just how far I can take this. Found a good article from life hacker that provided some additional insight on SkyDrive http://lifehacker.com/5101347/skydrive-upgrade-goes-live-with-25gb-of-space. As I read through this article I did find a slight limitation to SkyDrive; individual files are limited to a 500 MG. A comment from a reader questioned the availability of the SkyDrive, something I'll need to do a bit more research on.

So what now? I finished my exploration for today and I'm clicking the publish button in Word and posting this to my blog. All very efficient!

A Day in the Life of a Malware Hunter

With all the emails that come into my Inbox, I don’t usually have time to read all of them (even some?), but this week I took a moment to read the latest newsletter because the headline above caught my eye.  It was surprising well done and if you ever wondered what goes into making a good PC security product, it is worth a few minutes to read the article from the makers of the Anti-Virus-Malware-Spyware protection product we have favored for the last 2 years VIPER from Sunbelt Technologies. Click here for the article http://www.sunbeltchannelnews.com/?id=30.

I can’t stress enough the importance of running good “Protection” software.  We see every week the cost to small business to remove viruses and repairing the damage they often cause.  A typical removal/repair job starts at $200 and we are lately see the variety that can’t be removed and therefore the PC needs to be reformatted and reconfigured (a job that averages $1,000 when you really add it all together). 

Installing current (no more than 2 years old) “Protection” software isn’t enough since many viruses disable your protection software (nice huh?), your “definitions” need to be up to date (within 2 days at the absolute longest) and the software needs to be monitored to make sure some malicious code hasn’t disabled it.  This is why more and more companies we talk with are going with one of our monthly services; for just a few dollars more you get the monitoring aspects and unlimited “break/fix” related to the protection software.

Malicious code is more and more often coming from PDFs (we removed the same virus three time in a week that we traced back to a PDF on MSN.COM) and embedded in web traffic from social networking, travel, news and shopping sites.  Your “desktop” protection software can’t stop it, so when we see this happening more and more often we are now added a “Web Traffic” security service to the environment.  This really does the trick and has several other benefits.

Drop me an email or a comment if you have a question or want to know more.

Moving to Windows 7 is Inevitable

A recent post from Evan Stein, CMIT Solutions Grand Central, caught me eye this morning and I thought I’d add our experience and opinion.  Read it to get the basics When and How to Upgrade to Windows 7.

Yes, your move to Windows 7 (if you are a Windows user) is inevitable.  The important point for business owners it to PLAN the timing.  This is what we are talking about with our clients during our Marathon meetings.  Change is here and if you don’t plan for this change you will (guaranteed) end up loosing time, spending more money, be frustrated when it is thrust upon you.  As Even pointed out your adoption to Windows 7 can be done 2 ways, by buying new PCs or upgrading the ones you have.  Which are you going to do?  Will you do this all at once or piece meal? 

Here is my suggestion. Do an evaluation first.  Given the current age and condition of your existing equipment will it make sense to invest the labor (a few hours) and dollars  into them?  How much you ask?  Well unless you are running Vista you will need to do a complete new install of Windows 7 on your machine (figure $150-$300 for the upgraded software and 2 hours of labor), then locate the Windows 7 “drivers” for all the hard components on your machine and peripherals (all the items plugged into it), then install all your programs (you have all the media or download files, right?) and then migrate over your data (you do have a verified backup of your data right?).  Sound like a lot of time, it will be…  Therefore in most cases it is more cost effective to buy new hardware that already has Windows 7.  You’ll need to do this for all your machines all at one time if you don’t want to be running in a mixed environment or you’ll need to put up with living in a inconsistent environment if you don’t.

My message to you is PLAN this and decide what your strategy will be.