Technology Advisor Blog

March 1 was the 4th anniversary of the Massachusetts Data Protection Law which was introduced to help protect residents against identity theft and fraud.  The law identifies requirements businesses must follow to secure protected information, which includes a resident's first name or initial and last name, combined with a number of specified protected information including drivers license number, bank account number, social security number, credit card numbers, etc. We've all read the headlines about the major retailers such as Target, Hannafords, and TJX who have been in the news over the years for security breaches, but many small business owners may not be fully aware that the law applies to ALL businesses, large and small.

Many viruses are embedded in email attachments designed to get through even multiple layers of security.  CryptoLocker is one of the worst viruses seen in years and it only takes ONE message to get through to cause a lot of damage, and the “bad guys” have developed sophisticated techniques to get around your antivirus protection. 

We got a few calls on this and noticed ourselves that recently pdf files started taking a lot longer to open.  We receive electronic faxes in the form of pdf files, and I noticed that they took much longer to open starting around a week ago.  Bob also noticed that when he double checked quotes before emailing them, they were also slow to open.  Several clients also reported similar experiences.  

Microsoft Windows XP and Office 2003 both go out of support on April 8, 2014. We are advising all clients to start planning now for the transition.  When the software goes out of support, you will stop receiving security updates, and although your systems will still work, you'll be out of compliance for the Massachusetts Data Security Law as well as many other industry-specific security regulations.

On July 31, 2013, with short notice, Massachusetts introduced a new tax on computer software services (in addition to tobacco and fuel taxes).  While it has been widely reported as a “technology tax”, please note that this tax only refers to a narrow set of tasks that largely fall outside the scope of the work that Ekaru performs for you.

One of the questions we get every once in a while when we're quoting new systems is why is our recommendation is more expensive than what the user see's in the latest "big box" retail sales flyer. Sometimes users will think they can get the exact same system for less, and when we review things closely, this isn't the case.

March is the anniversary of the Massachusetts Data Security Law which went into effect March 1, 2010:  201 CMR 17.00: Standards for The Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth.  The anniversary is a good time to refresh your team about the requirements!

One of the things we strongly advise our clients to get on board with is proactive monitoring of all their systems with our managed services.   With this service, we monitor all systems for a long list of parameters including Antivirus software updates, Security Patch updates, system performance and when capable, S.M.A.R.T monitoring of hard drives.  

One of the services we provide to our clients is spam filtering.  The goal is to stop the spam BEFORE it gets to the mail server so it doesn't wind up on the users' desktop, laptop, iPad, smart phone, etc....  Each month when we do the reporting and roll up the numbers, it's amazing how much volume there is. Overall, around 80% of all email traffic is flagged as spam.  For some of our clients, this means blocking out tens of thousands of messages a month.  I looked at our own domain yesterday, and in February, over 10,000 messages were blocked or quarantined, including 348 emails containing viruses.  

A few years ago, Microsoft made the operating system upgrade process a LOT easier by introducing the "Anytime Upgrade" process.  Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you compare features, select the upgrade, and the entire process only takes as little as 10 minutes.  Here is a link from Microsoft with a very short video that describes the process.