The magic fix does not exist. You need to find someone that understands security, computers and networks. We have years of experience in this realm and are waiting to give you a hand. From firewalls to routers and computers we are the one! We also can setup, configure secure mail and web servers for your office -> why pay an ISP when you can have them in your back room? Give us a call now for more details and we can get you started in secure Internet and networking environment! Scroll down and read more about it!

Humans are wonderful folks bless their hearts. Completely predictable. Even security minded are predictable, only harder to predict. How secure are you? Read on and find out.

If you are in a network environment at work, what is your co-workers password for the system? eMail? Is the password taped on the monitor, or in the desk drawer? As more and more people get to the computer age whether at home or work, security is a big concern. Sure, says you; I don't have anything on my computer that is worth stealing. Or, why would someone want my family photo's or letters? Did you know that most of the spam now originates from local machines like yours? Guess where all the virus and trojans come from. You guessed it; local machines like yours. All it takes is opening the wrong email or clicking into some rogue web page. So why did I bring up the system password or your neighbors? It is the little things that can cause *lots* of grief. This example may or may not pertain, you mileage may vary. I have a customer that was having problems with virii. She could get rid of them, then out of the blue they would show up again. After the customer pulled hair out for a couple of weeks, I was called in. She explained the problem and I set off to figure out what was happening. I verified the problem; cleaned, then a few days later they were back. We removed eMail from the system so we knew that this was not the source. Cleaned again, few days they were back. Head scratcher. Put in a network sniffer and started monitoring what that particular workstation was doing. Cleaned and a few days they were back. Finally found that a janitor contractor was coming in at night every few days and surfing porn sites. The janitor was good, and cleaned up all the temporary Internet files, links and such but didn't know that virii were being downloaded when certain sites were visited. System password was in the desk drawer.

Internet connections are the next problem in the list. Guess what all of those computers in the above paragraph are connected to? I have watched completely sane folks blindly click on links in eMail that were not from anybody they knew, nor did the subject pertain to what work they did. Pay attention and use your noodle as you are adults in an adult world. OK, so now we get to talk about the break-in of your local computer. If you don't have a firewall, call me now! 460.293.7767 I am not kidding. Well, if it is dark and you get a recorder I may not get back to you until I wake up. The next thing is not really a break-in as you do this to yourself. You open an attachment that launches some rogue virus and you probably don't even know that you did it. Now your local machine becomes a remote-controlled robot spewing spam and virii to everybody in your address book. Remote controlled? Yes, after sending itself to all of your closest friends, vendors, and customers it will take commands from a remote computer to start sending to 1000's of folks that you don't know. Ever get a bunch of bounces, or emails complaining that your eMail had a virus in it? Yup, could be that you just met 1000's of new folks. Just think who would show up on your doorstep if one of those eMail were crafted by a terrorist and it happened to be sent to the White-House? How would you explain that? Practice putting your hands behind your back while holding your head down. If your Internet provider is a smart one, they will block all outgoing eMail except to certain IP addresses of mail servers. You may just give them a call and ask. While you are at it, you may also ask about virus protection at the mail server level. Note that both spam and virus protection are available on our servers, all you have to do is ask! Also note that any antispam/virus filter ( or program ) is not 100% accurate. Nothing is. Never ever NEVER EVER assume that you are risk free, nor believe someone that tells you that you are.

Firewalls are important. Get one. We build secure firewalls. We can separate your internal network into multiple segments with different protection levels on each segment. If you have redundant Internet connections, we can build firewalls/routers to take care of that also. If one connection goes down, the other takes over. Sure, things slow a bit, but at least you are up and on line. Never trust a software firewall as to many things can happen to it. If you are Windoz based, the operating system is a downfall as it is NOT secure. Putting a software firewall on a non-secure OS is asking for trouble. Actually putting a software firewall on any system that has security leaks is asking for trouble. Note that we block all outgoing SMTP except known mail servers that your ISP provides. This helps with the above paragraph!

Computer networks are ... guess what? A bunch of local machines as in the top paragraph. Virii spread on peer-to-peer networks fast. Unsecured network shares are the fastest way to get a network borne virus. Call us or have your network administrator tighten up the security on your computer or all of your computers. How secure are you? How many times have you gone away from your desk and left the thing running? Never mind that you had the accounting package open with balances showing to the world. Do you really want your business stuff out in public? As a network administrator I have seen everything; well OK, so I get surprised all of the time with new stuff, but it usually relates to the problems described in the above paragraphs.

Enter wireless networks. Big problem. WEP is not secure and can be hacked by sifting 100,000 or so packets. ( a few minutes on a busy network ) WPA is better but hasn't been "in the field" long enough to be throughly tested. Give it 5 or 6 more years. Most of you probably know that you can drive down your street with a wireless laptop and connect to 80% of the homes that have WIFI. What if a terrorist was driving down your street and connected to YOUR wireless Internet? Can you imagine walking around with your hands behind your back hanging your head down while trying to explain to the Dept of Homeland Security that you are not that person that sent those threatening eMails? Guilty until proven innocent. Do you know the most perplexing thing about the WIFI network? You don't know who is connecting as there is no physical connection. Drive by, neighbor's distant relative, kids... you name it, it could happen.