ETC Blog, The Tech Resource
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...
When poor security and poor customer service combine.
It turns out the my experiences with poor security and poor customer service at whmcs are not the exception. It didn't take long to find out that whmcs has a repeated pattern of poor security and poor customer service. They routinely deny security issues exist and...
How NOT to handle a potential security issue
WHMCS has gone from simply being unhelpful to being in denial. This, unfortunately, is typical for companies today. I have been digging into this problem since it first cropped up as i noted in my previous post. Now WHMCS has gone from telling me it is on my end to...
When a “trusted” web application goes rogue.
I have gotten to the point that when it comes to my systems when somebody tells me I am wrong it is just a matter of time before not only do I diagnose the issue but I can prove it. I was trying to get WHMCS working. Every time I would try to save the initial...
ETC Maryland Hosting Upgrades to IPV6.
Due to the tremendous amounts of addresses afforded by the IPV6 standard, ETC Maryland's data center provider has given ETC Maryland a large block of IPV6 addresses. With the current generation of IPV4 addresses now nearly gone, IPV6 is the new standard for giving...
ETC announces new network security vendor partnerships with industry leaders
ETC Maryland has the distinct pleasure of announcing three new vendors to its stable of trusted vendors: 1. Sonicwall(Dell) 2. Meraki(Cisco) 3. Cisco These new partnerships allow ETC Maryland to handle network needs from the smallest home need to our maximum sized...
Itunes Music Theft of Local Files Continues
Last July I talked about how Apple Music will steal your files from you when Apple decides it has them in its own cloud and then you have to pay to listen to those files. Now another person has been told this is by design by Apple itself. Backup, backup, backup....
POS Operators: Security is no longer optional
Is the expense of a lawsuit and the resulting judgement greater than the cost of proper security? I can say in most cases(if not all) that answer is yes. Case in point. Wendy's was breached and is now facing lawsuits over the fraudulent transactions: In January,...
Time’s ways to not get infected are incomplete.
This is an example of current best practices not being forward thinking enough. I was recommending my basics of not getting infected way back in 2008. Time's article lists the standard advice: The only way to protect against a ransomware attack is rote: keep your...
Ransomware is here. Empower yourself to guard against this latest threat.
Story after story are being reported about many places being hit with ransomware. Protecting yourself against the effects of ransomware do not have to be overly complex or expensive. When it comes to backups, local backups are no longer enough. You REALLY need proper...
Apple abandons Quicktime.
It is about time as Quicktime has been slowly dying as even Apple has been shifting to HTML5 and mp4 based videos. If you have this software on your machine it is time to remove it. If you are offered it decline it as it will now be a major entry point for all kinds...
Update to IOS 9.3.1
Now this is a nasty one. If you are not running IOS 9.3.1 an automated WiFi based attack against your Idevice(which is not that hard to carry out) can permanently brick your expensive Idevice. The problem is that if your Idevice gets set back to the date of Jan 1,...
When vendors go boom
Astaro was probably the best edge UTM out there for quite some time. I used them from the first v4 all the way up until now. Astaro was then purchased by Sophos and it became a morass of corporate interference, no service to their smaller partners, a series of badly...
Scheduled Maintenance Window
ETC Maryland will be performing various maintenance tasks on it's server fleet. The maintenance window is midnight Apr 2nd to 1AM Saturday Apr 2. During this time websites and other services may experience loss of connections or a total outage due to server reboots...
ETC Maryland case badges are here!
I have been drawn back into building custom computers again by request of my clients. I figured I needed some way of advertising my work...:) If you want one for a computer I have built for you let me know. If you want one I have a limited supply and will happily...
DOJ vs Apple: Game Over? Apple has some issues.
The DOJ has withdrawn from their battle to force Apple to unlock an IPhone from the San Bernadino shooting. As I had mentioned earlier the US Dept of Justice had botched the investigation in the first place making it nearly impossible to unlock the Iphone. Then the...
Backups In The Age of Ransomware
I have been watching with concern as ransomware spreads nearly unchecked throughout the world. Many ways are being discussed but I chose to focus on recovery. Local backups are now no longer safe as if you get a ransomware infestation these malware packages start...
ETC Maryland Suffers Major Website Outage
I woke up about 0730 this morning to my phone being alerted that my webserver was offline. right after that several of my web hosting clients also began texting and messaging me about the issue. Once i got up I was able to see that not only was my server offline but...