ETC Blog, The Tech Resource
When Your Web Designer Scams You “Fixing” Your Hacked Site
There are some serous ripoff artists out there. I have a acupuncturist who hosts with me on micro and her site got compromised...due to old outdated plugins. Her web programmer said he'd fix it for 75/month recurring. So what did this person do for two months? Nothing...
Rapid Dev and the Associated Defects Strike Again..
“Rapid development" strikes again. FreeNAS has gone down that route and the results are quite predictable. The last 2 releases since their announcement of their new dev model have had at least one regression each..u3 had two of them..including an error they introduced...
Another Breach by “Sophisticated” Hackers
The UN had a massive breach of its systems that was only recently disclosed. Of course, in an effort to deflect accountability, the tired sophisticated, or saying it was a nation state was trotted out. This is total rubbish. If you have known vulnerabilities and...
Another client “Unified” and Properly Segmented
This is a client that has become a very loyal client. For the longest time their network had no real segmentation. Their Cc machine was on the same network as the wifi guest network and all of them were on the same subnet as their main internal network. That's bad...
Ubuntu LTS Livepatch: More Security Updates With Less Downtime
ETC Maryland has enabled the Ubuntu Kernel Livepatch service. This means the amount of times the servers will have to reboot for kernel updates will be reduced by more than 95%. Only in the rare occurrence when a kernel update is too major to be done without rebooting...
Cybersecurity Mission Execution: Failed
oh yes we always see this when a breach occurs: "Safeguarding our customer’s information is core to our mission. We are committed to protecting our customers against misuse of their information and have invested heavily in cybersecurity," Network Solutions says. "We...
Another Client Unified
I REALLY like the Unifi line by Ubiquity. For the vast majority of small business needs it has everything you need without the high price tag of Meraki/Cisco and other vendors. This is a very long time client who has a local accounting business. For the longest...
The Reason ETC Maryland Chose Virtualmin
It took a long time for me to settle on a control panel for all of the ETC Maryland hosting offers. There are the big ones like Cpanel, Plesk and others. I saw their pricing and I also trialed them on the servers I was going to start my hosting business on. They...
Upcoming Hosting Changes
Over the next year ETC Maryland going to be consolidating the web farm. While the older Intel machines might be a good value, the continuing security issues that are being found is beginning to take it's toll. The performance decrease from the various security...
New Firewall Project
Unifi is a great networking system. For less than a quarter of the price you can do most things with it that Meraki can...but no subscriptions. The gear mostly just works and it is very easy to setup. The Unifi firewalls do have some serious shortcomings: Their...
Time to Leave Gsuite
it's been 10+ years with me on the Gsuite platform...but today I had something that pushed me over the edge. I have had a Gsuite account for more than 10 years. That account has my life on it and my phones now know me very well. All of that..the apps, the data...
ETC Maryland grows with new partnership and the addition of a reseller
Lots of things going on for ETC Maryland. Thanks to the partnership with Solinkit I have picked up another reseller for web hosting. I have also picked up a partnership with a vendor who does cabling and other types of installs. I met with him today at a client site...
ETC Maryland Webserver Maintenance Annoucement.
Next Sunday night the oldest of ETC Maryland's webservers(web1) will go offline for approximately 3 hours as the operating system gets a much needed upgrade. I have run CentOS7 from the outset of my hosting business and while it is still supported, I am spending way...
Windows 10/Server 2016 Update Quality and the Effects on The Industry
I was interviewed for an article on the state of Windows 10. Windows 10/Server 2016 REALLY needs to have the QA team brought back. Microsoft is seriously affecting the security of their products. I am not the only one holding off on multiple versions(not several as...
A Client Testimonial on ETC Maryland’s Rescue of Their Site
This is from one of my hosting clients The Christian Gamer's Alliance. They used to be on a dedicated server and now they run inside my standard hosting plan. Their site now runs faster on my shared hosting platform than it did on their dedicated server. Here's the...
RedHat Linux Gets Borged
Just like Sun got borged by oracle IBM has borged RedHat: Press Release by RedHat I posted I am moving to Ubuntu in a recent post. This has the effect of moving me even faster. This also explains why there has been ZERO movement towards a RHEL 8 alpha. In order to...
Research Revived and an Infrastructure Upgrade in Planning
It has been a while since I have been able to post about any kind of research I am doing. Right now I am figuring out just exactly how I want to build my new rack mounted PfSense firewall to replace my USG-pro-4. I want this machine to be fast enough to eventually...
Even Linux Vendors Cannot Resist The Call of Lock-in
RedHat is out to make money...I do not begrudge them that. However they have now resorted to moving things into their own form of lock-in via directory services: RedHat KB Page Considering that directory services is a HUGE portion of any large network layout, it...
ETC Maryland’s New Official Browser Is…Firefox!
I have been an avid Google user for nearly a decade. For the longest time I have used the Google stack in nearly every area I can. Today I am removing one piece of that stack...the Google Chrome Browser. Why? Speed and system stability. I know I am extreme...
WordPress Minimal Security. A Video by Wordfence
Does your webhost provide everything in this video? ETC Maryland hosting does. One of the biggest security lapses is ongoing maintenance of the website code. This is keeping the sites code updated, protected, account isolation, and multiple layer(and as a...
Microsoft is All in For The Cloud. Welcome Microsoft365
Microsoft started this transitioning the desktop to the cloud back in 2015 with the trademarking of Windows365. Microsoft then began the move in earnest with Office365 being pushed as the primary way to get Office. Microsoft has now announced Microsoft Managed...
If Your Site is NOT HTTPS Google is Going to Derank You Severely
ETC Maryland has been HTTPS only for a long time now. Google has been warning of its intention to start deranking and marking sites as insecure as of today, July 24, 2018. For both business owners and web design professionals, if your host is not providing HTTPS by...
Domain Privacy, Data Security, and WordPress.
I have seen other web hosting companies claim they have free backups, but what do those backups consist of? The backups that are offered are simply a copy, compressed into one file and then stored locally on the machine that hosts the site. Worse yet most times...
When your outsourced security vendor outsources it’s own security…and things go boom.
Verizon is trying to make itself out as a security firm...but they failed to ensure their own outsourced vendor had proper security policies and procedures in place: An Israeli technology company has exposed millions of Verizon customer records, ZDNet has learned. As...
Make Sure Your Webhost Has Proper Backups
Many web providers out there might have one backup...most do not give you two unless you pay extra. I hate to see stories like this one...an Australian web host has their systems compromised and they lost everything. They lost not only their own data but all of...