This past week a group of hackers from India indicated that they had found source code from Symantec’s Endpoint Protection software. Endpoint Protection is enterprise level antivirus software that is designed to be ran in a client/server environment. 

The hackers claimed to have source code from two older versions of Endpoint Protection, version 11.0 and version 10.2. While Symantec is currently on version 12.0 version 11.0 is still supported even though it is four years old. Symantec claims that even though the hackers have access to the source code they have no way (yet) of breaching their software. 

There are a lot of companies out there that try to hold on to everything as long as they can to try to avoid the various costs involved with replacing a product with a newer product. In the case of your antivirus software however, this is a dangerous practice. The longer a product is in existence the higher the chance is of someone finding a way to hack into it. In the case of Endpoint Protection this is particularly dangerous since it operates in a client server setup. Imagine if your server’s side antivirus agent was compromised. This could mean that your workstations are no longer receiving updates, and could potentially mean your entire network is vulnerable. 

We sell a better solution to client server antivirus solutions. Through Tech Experts Businesses are able to purchase our Managed Vipre Antivirus which does not have to operate on a client server setup, but can if you need it to function that way due to your networks bandwidth.

At any rate, if you have old antivirus software, I recommend updating it to something current so you are properly protecting your valuable assets.

If you would like to read more click here.

The answer to this is question is ultimately no. That being said what’s the point of securing your network? Well, if a network is properly secured it will take a very skilled individual to successfully break into a secured network. 

Network security is a must for every business whether you have your own server or not. Those using a server need to put as much security in place as possible since your resources are all accessed and managed centrally (or at least they should be as that’s the whole point of having a server…).

We speak about security a lot as an IT services provider and that is because it is extremely important. The fact is however that just like good antivirus software is for viruses and malware, good security is simply a preventative measure and needs to be monitored and kept up on to ensure it is working properly. A skilled hacker can infiltrate even the most secure network given enough time to do so. The key to stopping an attack is not what you had setup at prevent the attack but rather the constant monitoring of your network to watch for attacks taking place and stop them before they make it through your defenses, then make some changes after an attack to prevent any headway they may have made on your network.

We have had attempts by hackers at a number of clients sites which is pretty common and thanks to our monitoring system, were able to detect the attempts and block them BEFORE they were able to access anything. Having good security in place allows you time to react to attacks. Having poor security generally means you never even have a chance to see the attack and they can walk off with everything saved on your network. If someone was able to gain access to your network they could potentially have access to your business contacts, contracts and company files, customer credit card data, etc…needless to say this could wind up costing your company tens of thousands of dollars or more.

It pays to have a properly designed security solution in place. If you have any question as to how secure your network is or is not…give us a call for a full security audit and lets us have a few minutes to speak with you about some of the ways we can help you protect your company.

Who manages your most valuable asset? Seems like a silly Question doesn’t it? With the amount of time it takes to learn to properly manage your workstations or servers wouldn’t it be great to have a full time employee looking after your computer systems for a fraction of the cost? It amazes me the number of people and business that go without computer support and just their computers root until they wind up costing them hundreds of dollars to fix (Not to mention all the possible lost data). You see when computers and servers are not properly maintained they tend to degrade in performance over time, eventually becoming very slow and can also become a very large security risk.

We offer a solution to this problem that, like I said, is very cheap in comparison to the time it takes to completely rebuild your computer system after it has degraded to an unusable state. We actually offer several solutions to protect your data from offsite backup to managed services. I will be touching on the later or the two in this blog. 

Managed service gives you the ability to sit back, relax, and let us take care of the management component of your computer system. With managed services we install what’s called an agent on your machine. From this agent we are able to remotely manage many aspects of your computer or server keeping it up to date which makes it more secure and in turn helps to protect your data. Through managed services we can take care of your Windows Updates and Security Patches as well as setup individual jobs to help clear your computer of junk files and other unwanted files. By us doing these tasks on a nightly basis it will ensure that your computer will run great for years to come. Our managed services also give us the ability to remotely login to your computer and manage almost everything that could be done in person via a remote connection. 

The above listed benefits of managed services do not even begin to scratch the surface in regards to the functionality that can be implemented via our Managed Services platform but give some insight as to the importance of regular maintenance and the value of this product. If you were to have any interest or would like more information please don’t hesitate to contact us soon!