Protecting your small business against cyber threats is getting harder every day; it used to be that having a good anti-virus program installed on your computer was all you needed.

Now you need to worry about web security, email security, network security, not to mention the physical security, and social engineering. Things are getting much more complicated.

Attacks can happen in many forms, at the moment, the most used method is via the web, someone might hack into a popular website, imbed malicious code which when accessed can be used to exploit vulnerabilities on your system and possibly gain access to your computer or use it to infect others, send out spam, etc. Or maybe you download something you want, and along with it you get something you don’t want, and didn’t notice was downloading at the same time.

There are so many threats out there, from spyware, viruses, and Trojans, to internet scams, to disgruntled employees trying to get into your systems that can make your head spin trying to protect yourself from all of them.

So here are a few of the most basic things you can do to protect yourself:

1.       Change passwords often and using strong passwords -this is probably the simplest thing you can do to be safe, and the one that often gets overlooked

2.       Maintain software updated – most applications will prompt for updates every once in a while, just accepting the update can keep you a little bit safer

3.       Patch the Operating System – this will keep your servers and workstations protected against the latest exploits, even if you access a malicious website you will be safer if your OS is up to date

4.       Install a good anti-virus and anti-spyware tool – this will protect you in case someone sends you an infected file via email, or something is lurking around in your network

5.       Network Security – use a good firewall and make sure all your devices (ie. firewall, switches, routers, wireless access points, etc) across the network are well configured, with the default passwords and web interface access ports changed, running the latest firmware, etc.This also includes wireless security, perhaps operating in the DMZ, and with good encryption.

6.       File Access Control – this should be implemented on server shares so users only have access to shares and folders they really need, keep confidential information accessible only by users who really need it

7.       Physical Security – this one is often the most overlooked one of all, you can protect everything else, but if anybody can just get to your systems, sit down and have at it with no questions asked, then you could have all your information stolen or infected very easily. This includes an automatic screen lock after a certain time of inactivity on desktops and servers, a locked server room with access limited to IT staff, good battery backups, and perhaps implementing a policy against personal laptops within the company network which could introduce viruses or other malware to your systems

8.       Safe internet usage practice for staff -  this includes training your staff to not open emails from people they don’t know(especially attachments), not accepting file transfer from Instant Messaging tools, and if possible restricting social networking sites, and personal browsing on company computers

9.       Backup your systems and data – this means regularly backing up, testing the backups, keeping copies of the backups offsite, making sure they are running properly, etc

There’s much more that can be done, but these are the most basic steps every small business should be looking at to keep their company information and systems safe.

It's probably not a case of "If..." but "When...".

You trash an Excel spreadsheet and would simply like to start over. But, you already clicked save and your beautiful spreadsheet is gone. Of course, Premier IT is backing everything up and can restore your file from last night's backup, but that's going to take some time.

Turns out, there's something you can do yourself. Windows can be configured to make "snapshots" of your files and it is indeed possible that you can retrieve that prior version of your spreadsheet.

Microsoft calls it Shadow Copies. But it might be better to refer to it as "Previous Versions", because that's what you will see when using this feature.

Conceptually, Shadow Copies is a service that makes a snapshot of your files, usually twice a day. So long as you know where to find these snapshots, you can go back in time and retrieve an older copy of a file - even if it's been changed or deleted.

You can use this feature by opening the file's properties from Windows Explorer. If you're looking for a file that got deleted, you can open the properties of the folder that contained it.

So for example: I have a file that I would like to restore from yesterday. I open Windows Explorer (sometimes it's quickest to just open "My Computer") and browse to the folder that contains my file. Right click on the file name and select Properties. Select Previous Versions and you should now see a list showing dates and times. These are the various snapshots of this file. Select one and click on Restore. You will get a warning saying that the current version will be over written with the older version. Be careful, because anything you typed into the newer version you're replacing will be lost because that version of the file is replaced with the one from the older snapshot.

And then your file goes back in time.

If you deleted the file (or moved it), you can right click on the folder that the file was saved in. You can then select the previous versions tab and you will see snapshots for that folder. Be careful here, if you click on the restore button, it will roll the entire folder back in time, over writing all the files in that folder. I wouldn't recommend this. Instead, click on view and you will get a new window that looks like a Windows Explorer view of your folder. But you will also see that in the address bar is a date and time. So what you're really looking at is the snapshot of a past version of the entire folder. From here, you can just drag a file out (or select copy and then paste to the new location) to recover your file.

If you're just curious about that older file, you can simply copy it to an alternate location (I like the desktop for such things), open the file and compare it to your current version. That way you can have both versions, which could be handy for combining the best of the old version with the best of the newer version.

There are a few caveats to Shadow Copies. By default, Windows XP does NOT support it. Most versions of XP have been upgraded so that you can use Shadow Copies so long as your file is on the server. Vista and Windows 7 not only have it built in, but can restore local files stored on your hard drive. Finally, Shadow Copies needs to be turned on and configured. By default Vista will have it turned on for your C: drive. But for servers, even though it's generally turned on, it's possible that it's been disabled if the server is running short of space. All those snapshots take up disk space and disabling Shadow Copies is a quick fix for disk space issues.

 - Robert Wakefield, Premier IT, Inc.

One of the many roles server administrators are asked to provide now-a-days is high availability for those applications that run on the servers we support. Having a history of being associated with 24/7/365 and 8/5 shops, I have narrowed the goal of providing acceptable uptime down to three basic items; hardware, operating system, and applications.

Hardware:

Being in this industry for over 22 years, I have seen hardware make incredible advances in providing stability and I have seen servers in all kinds of environments. Even if your servers aren’t in a controlled HVAC environment, most will run very stable for years even in the most adverse environments. If you have physical access to your servers, you should make sure that your servers aren’t being choked. Keep the firmware and BIOS updated. Vendors have really made this easy compared to the early days where upgrading these could render your servers unusable.

Operating System:

Being primarily a Windows Server Administrator, Microsoft has made great advances in providing a stable operating system. I remember the days of NT 3.51 where one would have to reboot every week to fix memory leaks, etc.

Read the event logs, they tell you stuff! I’m amazed at how many server admins don’t read the event logs. I’m fortunate to have a monitoring system that alerts me for specific event ids, but I have been in environments where I had to read the event logs manually. Remember the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Finding an event that a hard drive has failed in a RAID can prevent hours of downtime.

Patch your OS. As with any System Administrator, this is not one of my favorite tasks to perform and I think Microsoft releases too many but if you do them quarterly, you can still keep your SLA. The days of fighting through driver issues are pretty much gone but you still need to update them. I opt to use the manufacturer’s drivers over Microsoft’s.

Never waste a reboot! If you need to reboot a server for maintenance outside your normal window, apply patches before rebooting.

Applications:

Applications typically fall into three categories with respect to resource utilization; cpu intensive, memory intensive, and disk I/O intensive.  Knowing what your applications require before provisioning them into production can save you a lot of headaches down the road and help you achieve the SLA you're after.

 - Brian Pastre, Premier IT, Inc.