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.

Having been an early adopter of Hyper-V on Windows 2008, the improvements of Hyper-V in Windows 2008 R2 were definitely welcome with the Live Migration feature being the most useful in keeping virtual machines highly available.

Assuming you already know how to cluster your servers and understand CSV’s (Cluster Shared Volumes), configuring your server to be highly available is quite simple. You should carefully consider your host specs though because Live Migration doesn’t work with different CPU architectures. For instance, you can’t Live Migrate from a host using AMD processors to a host using Intel processors. Also, Live Migration is picky about the family of processors within the given architecture chosen, so make sure your processor specs are as similar as possible .There are ‘Processor Compatibility’ settings to allow you to migrate using different processor versions but if at all possible, try to purchase your hosts with the same specs to avoid not being able to use the Live Migration feature at all.

To use the Live Migration feature, you simply need to make your virtual machine highly available by choosing the ‘Configure a service or application’ under the ‘Services and Applications’ tab under your Cluster Management. The virtual machine has to be off in order to make it highly available. Once the virtual machine is configured and started, simply right-mouse click on the virtual machine and select “Live migrate virtual machine….” and select the cluster node. The amount of memory the virtual machine is configured to use determines the amount of time it takes to migrate it because in reality, that’s all that’s really being migrated.

Brian Pastre
Sr. System Administrator

Modern computers really are getting faster. But it's been said that until things happen instantaneously, they’re not fast enough. Even at the Help Desk, the "clicks", the mouse drags, opening programs... They all seem to start taking longer and longer after a while.

So what can be done to speed things up?

Keyboard shortcuts can be used to cut down on the number of mouse clicks and the time spent moving through options. Windows comes with several useful shortcuts.

One I use every day is a shortcut to open Windows Explorer to browse for files - hold down the Windows key and press "E" (Win+E). This is the equivalent of opening "My Computer".

Win+D minimizes all programs, so that you can see the Desktop ("D" for desktop). This is handy when you need to find a file on your desktop fast. Conversely, if you want access to a file on your desktop, and don’t want to minimize all your windows, press Win+E to open Windows Explorer and then select “Desktop”. Your desktop is just another folder in Windows and you can work on it like any other folder in Windows Explorer.

Have a bunch of Windows open and you want to switch to one that's buried? Press Alt+Tab to switch to another window. If you like, you can press and hold the Alt key and then tap the Tab key. Windows will pop up a display showing your open windows and you can select which one you like. This keyboard shortcut becomes really handy if you have two windows that you need to switch back and forth between, say if you’re copying and pasting a bunch of elements. When you press Alt+Tab, it always goes back to the last open window, so even if you have a lot of windows open, you can use Alt+Tab to just switch between your two most recent. You can also hold down the shift key to go backwards – Shift+Alt+Tab. With Vista and Windows 7 (with the Aero 3D GUI enabled), you can press Win+Tab for a neat 3D way of picking a window.

Want to close a bunch of windows? Start pressing Alt+F4 - that's the keyboard shortcut for closing a program. Every time you press Alt+F4 another program closes, so you can repeatedly tap Alt+F4 and eventually have all your programs closed.

Pressing Win+L will lock your computer so it’s protected while you’re away from it. Nobody can access your computer without putting in your password. This is handy for quick trips to the kitchen for coffee. This is a case where the keyboard shortcut is much quicker than the combination of mouse clicks and keyboard presses normally needed to lock your computer.

Win+R opens the “run” dialog box. We use this a lot at Help Desk to get to the command prompt (type cmd and press enter), or to open Windows Explorer to a known location (you can type in a path to open it, i.e. C:\Windows).

Cntl+C and cntl+V can be used to copy and paste in most programs and in Windows. Highlight or select something (you can use cntl+A to "select all") and press cntl+C to copy it. Cntl+X is the same as "cut", when you want to move something instead of copy it. Then switch to the program you want to paste into and hit cntl+V to paste what you copied or cut. This also works in Windows Explorer and is handy for copying or moving files.

Cntl+Z is handy as it invokes "un-do" in most programs. So if you're typing or pasting a bunch of text and didn't get what you expected, just tap cntl+Z to undo the mistake.

F5 is used to invoke “refresh” on many programs, including Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. You can also use the backspace key in IE to go back to the previous page.

Finally, it’s possible to create your own keyboard shortcuts to launch files and applications. The only caveat is that the file (or a shortcut to that file) must exist on your desktop. Start by right-clicking on any icon on your desktop and selecting “properties”. About half way down the shortcut tab, you will see “Shortcut key:”. Click in that field and press the shortcut key combination that you would like to assign to that icon. It has to be ctrl+alt plus any other key. So let’s say you have an Excel spreadsheet called “my log.xls” on your desktop. You might assign ctrl+alt+L to that icon. Then when you press that combination, that file will open.

Robert Wakefield
Sr. System Engineer

If you’ve been around Windows servers long enough, I’m sure you’ve seen tasks you’ve grown accustom to in one version being changed to a location with no real reason in mind and have asked yourself many times “Why did you move that Microsoft?”. Print Management in Windows Server 2008 is no exception. Every time I open the Server Management console, I feel like I’m working on a Small Business Server and I find it takes more clicks to execute on the tasks that I need to do. For instance, it takes five clicks just to get to the place to install your printer drivers. Oh yea, I almost forgot - you have to install the role first!

So, if you are running your print server on an x64 platform and you have x86 clients that will be using your print server, make sure you deselect the x64 checkbox and select the x86 checkbox on the first screen after the welcome screen in the “Add Printer Driver” wizard. This will save you a lot of time.

In all fairness to Microsoft though, the ability to view the print jobs and view the printer administration web page after selecting the ‘Printers’ tab in the management console is very useful.

 - Brian Pastre, Premier IT, Inc.

We are always on the look out for cool tools to make organizing the busy executive’s life easier.  Here is a brief description of a new free program from Microsoft to print a wide variety of weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar views for easy reference and productivity. We have used this tool to resolve calendar printing issues our user base has found after upgrading to Outlook 2007.  We fell in love with the wide range of options and infinite possibilities available to make the most out of our most valuable resource, time.