ETC Blog, The Tech Resource
DDOS…The new wave of digital censorship
I have been watching the saga of security blogger Brian Krebs and his krebsonsecurity blog. He has had the benefit of high powered DDOS protection from Prolexic which is an Akamai subsidiary. Krebs has for a long time now been able to infiltrate and report on the...
New ETC Maryland evaluation platform coming online
As noted in my earlier post ETC Maryland has been building and is deploying a new virtualized environment to properly evaluate the flood of new security products coming out from multiple vendors. The platform consists of a primary Hyper-V host, a primary VmWare host,...
Ad blockers and analytics
I just had an interesting conversation with my web design partner Lori Curley of Curley Marketing. Third party analytics have gotten caught in the ad blocking drag net. This means the numbers form third party apps like Google Analytics and Clicky analytics can be...
AdBlockPlus now literally means it’s name
AdBlockPlus now means we will blocks ads PLUS give you ads folks pay them to allow. I saw the initial link at hackernews but the full story is on theverge. A couple of years ago I heard that the company behind ADB+ wanted to start allowing certain ads through for...
Remember when I mentioned Windows as a service? Windows Subscriptions are on their way.
I have been mistrustful of Microsoft even since Windows 10 started coming out. The constant Windows as a service mentions and the nearly illegal and almost malware like campaign to get Windows 10 everywhere really had me not liking the entire Windows 10 ecosystem....
Vendor Spotlight: CDC Cellular Repair, LLC.
The internet is buzzing with "news" of a potential problem with the Apple Iphone 6+ devices with two chips on its main logic board. One of my vendors alerted me to this more than a year ago. John O'Rangers of CDC Cellular Repair in Frederick, Maryland is the person I...
Progress report on new secure storage and backup
Well this is why research is done before product roll out...:) I purchased a server to use as my new storage host and it turns out the hard drive controller card is not suitable for the server product. Luckily I had another smaller server that will suffice for...
New Computer Build for Home Business Client
This client needed a faster computer for general office work than their current all in one desktop was able to deliver. ETC Maryland recommended a ultra small computer with desktop class power instead of the laptop based system they currently had in place. Since...
Is your POS system Cloud based? Even the “mighty” Oracle cannot keep it’s cloud secured.
I have said it again and again. You should NOT have a POS system that is cloud based. Nothing that need to be kept confidential should be cloud based. Oracle bought Micros a couple of years ago to add to its cloud offerings. As I have said again and again, the...
ETC Maryland enters into reselling agreement with Hagerstown consultancy for web hosting.
ETC Maryland is pleased to announce that ETC Maryland and CBM Systems, Inc of Hagerstown, Maryland have entered into a reselling agreement. Under the terms of the agreement ETC Maryland will provide webhosting services to CBM Systems clients. CBM will retain...
SSD care and maintenance tips
There are several things folks have "burned" into their mind about hard drive maintenance that no longer apply to SSD drives. There are also several major considerations when it comes to data security that are different between SSD drives and Hard Drives. The first...
New firewall platform research project
I have grown weary of the proprietary vendors or vendors who start off Open Source and then switch to closed source while code quality and value for both me and my clients goes down. Even though I ahve partnered with Sophos and Dell their products do not meet every...
SSD’s for workstations/desktops so far so good
I just dumped my main computer( my annual maintenance is a format/reload) to reload it and I decided to put Windows 10 on this machine for giggles. The install was really fast as this system is nothing to sneeze at: Intel core I-5 4690k 32 Gigs DDR3 1600 Crucial...
HIPAA data security compliance.
MOST entities that are required to comply with HIPAA are not because of a ton of confusion. After much research I have found a nutshell article that explains HIPAA compliance for data security. It codifies in US Federal Law what best practices have been for a long...
My latest research project. Secured local NAS storage with secured offsite backups with an additional secured cloud backup.
I have been pondering this for a while. I wanted to build something that would act as either as a local backup target with offsite backup capabilities or as a full blown network storage device with the same capabilities. If this works I will be able to offer my...
Microsoft partially confirms a prediction of mine.
Ever since Microsoft started "giving away" Windows 10 I figured something was up. As i said in an earlier post there is no way Microsoft is going to give away nearly a third of their base income at the time without some way to make it back. With the recently...
The US Government IS Serious About Hipaa Data Breaches.
One line says volumes about what is being looked at, especially mobile devices: The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) launched a probe in April of 2014, after receiving a report that a CHCS-issued iPhone had been breached. Investigators determined that protected health...
AMD Missteps With Their New Video Cards
This is the main reason I read so many sites every day. Issues like I am about to highly elaborate on is why I do not post much when news breaks because the devil is in the details and those never come out when things first break. Many hardware sites simply do not do...
Partner Spotlight: Curley Marketing
Lori Curley of Curley Marketing is one of the most dynamic web designers I have had the pleasure of working with. Lori not only redesigned the ETC Maryland website but she does something not many WordPress designers do: Every site has its own style. Templates are...
Microsoft: We beat other browsers on power usage. Real world…uhh no.
I can verify the author's experiences below. I have a Surface 3 and an HP laptop running windows 10. I also have a shuttle box with a sandy bridge core i-3 cpu and 8 gigs of ram. Edge is a total hog. It will grab everything in ram it can and then force the system...
Dell banks the company on turning into a fully vertically integrated cloud vendor.
With network security such a huge business it stuns me that Dell first bought dinosaur vendor EMC and is now selling most of its other "non-core" assets to others. Sonicwall is now owned by private equity firm Francisco Partners and hedge fund Elliott Management. It...
Ransomware is now web enabled. E-mail is not the only infection vector
Windows has issues that make it easy for this type of infection to take hold: Javascript once it gets onto the system is run by the Windows Scripting Host which has a very high level of system access. Windows hides file extensions so the .js extension isn't...
Do you use POS terminals? Are they remotely managed? You are probably going to get hacked.
If you are using a windows based POS you are probably going to get hacked. If you have your vendors remote access tools installed(and many do) your chances of getting hacked are much much higher: Wendy’s statement that the attackers got access by stealing credentials...
Gotomypc owned. The cloud fails once again.
As I have stated over and over the cloud is NOT secure. It never will be and never can be. the highly centralized nature of the various cloud services means you do NOT want to put anything critical on the cloud. You can go to my cloud section of my blog as I start...
Apple WWDC thoughts and hardware End of Life announcements for Apple mobile products.
I have watched the WWDC keynote from Apple twice so far and I am going to watch it again. There are some very compelling features for the ecosystem. I watched the Twit coverage of the keynote(after I watched it live) and even Leo who is a big fan expressed concerns...