The IT Guys Blog

Source: Reuters

A computer containing 800,000 recent job applicants data including social security numbers and personal information was recently stolen from Gap Inc. Gap is pointing the finger at the vendor who apparently assured Gap that the data was encrypted and kept in a safe manor. Now any job applicant at Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy that applied since July of 2006 needs to worry. Gap is offering a year of free credit monitoring service and a charge dispute resolution service for the affected applicants.

Gap stands to learn a stiff lesson from this mistake, you can’t point the finger at a vendor you picked when they mess up. A business associate’s agreement will not save you when 800,000 people’s social security numbers become public. It may give Gap grounds to sue the vendor, but guess who will be stated as the defendant on this class action suit? Companies need to realize that just because they pick a vendor who guarantees security, it needs to be verified. We work with a few Indian corporations and I’ve repeatedly caught them trying to do unsafe things. From putting a printer right on the internet to sending data in an non-secure and non-encrypted way. Nobody who works with us should have to worry if the vendors we chose are using safe practices, that’s solely our responsibility.

Full Story at Reuters

Further proof that Microsoft clearly dropped the ball on Vista. They are extending production of Windows XP an additional five months, which is likely to be pushed even further back as June grows closer. I wont buy Vista for our corporate desktops until Bill invents an OFF button for all the “security features.” Supporting a new operating system always increases overhead but Vista’s security creates a whole new challenge. It’s 2007 no vendor should be releasing software updates or new versions that aren’t self explanatory.

Bill Quoted Saying: “Vista is so secure it could run life support systems.”

It always amazes me when I see some of the “old school IT Guys” rocking their CD Wallets with software that totals their life savings. I guess nobody told them that CD’s get stolen, break, and don’t last long. I’ll cover this before somebody e-mails me about it. CD-R’s have an average rated life of 75 years and if you leave your CD’s in a warm place or in sunlight that shrinks their life dramatically. 75 years seems great but if you’re and IT Guy, you actually USE your CD’s. Realistically plan on your CD’s lasting no more than a year and sometimes less, because they get scratched and left in computers by accident before you ship them out to other offices. CD’s are temporary storage in my eyes. You should always have copies of your CD’s on a file server or at least an external hard drive. Read the rest of this entry »

When these polls roll every year I always wonder where these people are working? Not only do they say that 49% of Tech workers have admitted falling asleep on the job but 44% admit they’ve kissed a co-worker and 25% admitted drinking alcohol on the job. If I had to guess I would say these people work at large companies where they are in very specialized fields. I’ve seen IT dept’s where they have 25 or so employees and then their sister data center in TX had another 30. When you get 25 guys in IT and it’s so specialized that your job is just to work with routing or content filtering you tend to find more time to goof off.

Article from ITNews

Full Story at the Telegraph

Major PC Manufacturers such as Dell have begun to offer alternatives to Windows Vista. Vista was launched in January of this year with great hype. Like all new “must have” products people camped out in the parking lots of retailers to be the first to get their hands on a copy of this ground breaking operating system. You know times aren’t tough when thousands of people pitch tents to wait for a freaking operating system or a cell phone Here we are 8 months later and the verdict is in, Vista sucks.

Sorry Bill, good security isn’t asking me every 15 seconds if I want to let something happen. If I click on something, guess what, I want it to happen! Vista for the workplace is an even worse idea. Most business users aren’t computer savvy enough to know if they want kulsvc124.exe to run anyway. Half the time IT Guys don’t know off hand what a particular process or application is. Case and point: we use Trend Micro Officescan for our corporate desktop protection. It does a pretty good job but it has an application that runs as a random name every time the system boots to prevent malware from disabling it. How would our users ever know if they could trust a random name? Lastly don’t require me to run special hardware or tons of RAM. America is the land of the free and the home of the brave but it’s also the land of the cheap and the home of Walmart. Americans want things cheap, simple, and worry free. Apple does so well because they mastered the last two. Microsoft decided to flip the table and make it expensive, complicated, and a pain.

The secret to a secure operating system isn’t in validating every program or process that may startup. It’s in eliminating the vulnerabilities in the first place. Sure protect the files that the system relies on but do it in a way that doesn’t cause me to make a decision about every little thing. When major manufacturers like Dell start offering Windows XP in place of the new Vista take note, because people want new technology. If they aren’t getting it from Microsoft they’ll get it somewhere else.

Contrary to popular opinion IT Guy’s actually have lives outside of their digital worlds. It’s scary, I know, to think that the guy who fixes your PC at work also manages to maintain a few hobbies on the side. Most IT Guys I know (and I know a lot) have hobbies that don’t involve computers. Personally I enjoy anything with a lot of horsepower. Which is probably why I have a 200 mph motorcycle, a Mustang on N20, and a turbo awd daily driver. Computers are something I typically avoid outside of work. My PC at home (yeah, I only have 1 at home.. I know you were thinking I had a server farm in my living room) is your run of the mill dell dimension. It’s not some home built super computer that causes half the block to go dark when I turn it on. Other IT Guy’s I know are into OffRoading their trucks, motorcycles, golf, and hiking. I will admit I know a few that play a game or two on their home computer too but the biggest geeks I know aren’t IT Guys!

Dymo, the guys that make the expensive labelers that us IT Guys love! (I use the Rhino PRO 5000) Just introduced a CD Labeler that *Drum Roll Please* prints directly on the CD/DVD Disc. These printers have existed before but they were, well the price of a honda civic.

Source: Engadget

Most IT Guys sit down and think about security in terms of firewalls and service packs and all the geeky stuff that they learned in that neat seminar on arp cache poisoning. So it’s no surprise that from a purely digital stand point, most companies are fairly secure

The little followed rule in enterprise is that security must scale evenly across all fronts. Think about it in terms of a mansion you just bought with your lottery winnings. You buy the best security system in the world. It features infrared cameras and perimeter sensors capable of detecting a pin drop. Only you know the code to the alarm. But you don’t even bother to lock your front door. The alarm may go off but it’s probably too late. You may even have video of the thieves but a lot of times they don’t care. In security just like in a fight the most committed wins. There is always somebody more committed to breaking in than you are to keeping them out. The trick is to put enough hurdles in front of these people that they move on to easier prey. Read the rest of this entry »

This one will have the Apple folks up in arms. I say no to the iPhone for business use.

I’m not here to say the iPhone isn’t beautiful or user friendly or any of that. I love the look and feel and it works excellent as a phone/ internet browser. The issue for me is the lack of physical buttons and lack of support for direct push.

Without buttons how would I ever be able to answer all those e-mails while driving my car? I’m sure the State Troopers love that one… But in all seriousness the lack of physical buttons makes the iPhone very tough to use in certain situations. Imagine your keyboard at your desk was a flat sheet of glass. How well would you be able to type without looking at it? Business users like to multi-task and they need tools that allow them to write an e-mail while on the go and still be able to listen to the people in the board room or pretend to.

My other gripe is the lack of direct push technology supported. This is something non-business users wont understand but it’s important for mobile devices to support this. Especially when your company has already spent a dump truck full of money on Exchange or Domino. Devices like Black Berries and Windows Mobile Devices support direct push in some fashion or another. Black Berry makes you pay for enterprise software while Exchange has built in support for direct push. Direct Push gives you the nice link between contacts, calendar, e-mail, notes, etc. So when you get to your work computer it’s already sync’d or if you get your phone stolen you didn’t lose anything. Direct push also has a certain management aspect to it that I won’t go into. But when you support multiple wireless devices it’s nice to be able to centrally manage them.

Hopefully after reading this you don’t have the urge to hunt me down and throw your iMac at me. But if you do, just remember the IT Guy LOVES his iPod.

There comes a time in every IT Guy’s life when he has to suck it up and go to every single computer in the company. It’s something we try to avoid at all costs but some things such as Windows SBS or needing to change a domain name force this dreadful task on us. Many small businesses go with Windows SBS because it’s a good deal, little do they know it makes upgrading when you need to add additional servers a nightmare. There is a tool that will automatically join the new domain and copy the user profile for you all in one click. The User Profile Wizard by ForensiT.

Check it out, it’s one of those use it once in a million tools but it just might save you from spending 30 minutes a computer. When you have to do this to 50+ desktops you’ll thank me.