GEEKNOTE:  One of the little “gotchas” involved in setting up a domain name and using it for your email or your website is that you have to designate two or more “DNS” name  servers.  The name servers respond to requests for information about your domain and send the appropriate information out for finding your website or mail server.

The reason for having two or more name servers is so that your domain can still be found in the event that one of the name servers winks out for one reason or another.  If your website or mail server is unavailable for a short period of time, that is not a big deal to the Internet.  If your domain disappears because no authoritative name server can be reached, that IS a big deal.

Some service providers will take a shortcut by creating two name server “A” records that point at the same physical server.  The downside of this is that they then have a single point of failure and that one server going down takes down every domain that is using the server.

Other service providers will use two physical servers, but have them sitting side by side or in the same equipment rack.  This works fine for outages effecting one server, but does nothing to protect you if the service provider’s Internet connection goes down.  This includes garden variety outages as well as larger outages like an area wide outage from a hurricane or other storm.

We have been updating the domains we host to include three separate name servers.  Two of the name servers are here for convenience, but the third one is out of state (typically Kentucky or Missouri) so that even a major weather event won’t result in our domains going down for extended periods.

Do you ever wonder how your domain is handled?  You can type in your domain name at http://www.intodns.com and find out.  If all of the name servers have the same IP address, you’ve got a problem.  If they all have numbers that only vary by the last octet (the fourth number), then you still ought to ask that the name servers be spread out.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

 

Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek

 

 

 

ZD Net posted an interesting article on Hillary Clinton’s latest email woes.  Regardless of your opinion of Mrs. Clinton, the article is worth a read.

Shadow IT refers to the practice of employees bypassing company IT department and installing their own IT solutions.

It is worth considering how Shadow IT effects your company.  While few employees will go so far as to install their own personal mail server at home, I know any number of companies where company business is conducted via personal email accounts.  There are several reasons why this is bad.

In my role as mayor, my email regarding city business is a public record.  I make a point of forwarding to a city account any email I get in my personal or business email that pertains to the city.  Likewise, I do a copy and paste so that any reply I send out comes from my city account.

Shadow IT isn’t just a public records problem. Some of our clients transmit information via email that needs to be encrypted.  That is easy enough to create and police if everyone is using business computers and business email accounts.  It is almost impossible to guarantee when some employees are using home computers and personal email accounts.

When you or your employees conduct business via email, that email address should be a company address.   Think about it.  Who would you trust more:  “haveawildtime@hotmail.com” or “employee@establishedcompany.com”?   Both accounts might well belong to the same person, but one is clearly better for business use.

The other part of Shadow IT that you need to consider is the issue of “BYOD” or “Bring Your Own Device”.  Personal gear that gets hooked up to your business network creates a massive security issue if those devices aren’t properly protected with anti-malware software and covered under an acceptable use policy.

If an employee gets their laptop compromised while surfing porn at home on the weekend and then brings it to work with them on Monday, the infection may well spread to the rest of the network.  More troubling is the employee who works from home via a VPN tunnel and can expose the entire office network to malware without ever leaving their couch.  You never see the notebook and may not figure out that your network has been compromised until after the damage has been done.

Gulfcoast Networking is here to help you get your IT requirements organized.  We can help you sent up professional looking email addresses for business use.  We can help you determine if Shadow IT is an issue in your company and can help you develop policies and take the steps necessary to minimize the odds of your company getting burned down the road.

Give us a call today at 727-847-2424 to schedule an appointment.  After hours, feel free to contact us via the web.

 

 

 

 

The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) posted an excellent article on Cryptoware and how to avoid it.   You can find the advisory here:

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-295A

 

We forward US-CERT alerts to our clients who subscribe to our mailing list.  If you aren’t on our mailing list, you can sign up here.

 

GEEKNOTE:  I’ve been quiet recently about our new corporate offerings, mostly because all of us have been very busy. Here is a sample of the stuff we’ve been up to:

We have three new small business server offerings:

• Micro – Measuring just a tad over 4″ x 4″, this wall mounted server can handle a small business with minimal needs.  Prices start at $2495.
• Mini – A toaster size system with 4TB of RAID 5 protected storage and Windows Server Essentials.  Prices starting under $4000.
• Conventional 2U rackmount server with up to 2 4-12 core CPUs, up to 784gb of memory, and up to 11TB of solid state RAID 5 storage.  Prices starting under $7000 (and going WAY up).

Suffice it to say, we have a hardware solution for you no matter how large your business.

We have been working overtime on multiple server and workstation virtualization projects.    If you would like the security of having a “warm spare” server in the cloud in case your server goes down, we should talk.  Likewise, if you would like to move as much of your server and desktop work to the cloud we should talk.

We now have multiple backup options available for our clients.  These include both on-site, off-site (cloud), and hybrid solutions.

We are adding some new monitoring features to our managed IT service.   They are allowing us to keep even tighter tabs on the machines we are supporting.  This is becoming increasingly important as more and more of our business clients are recognizing the value of having us take over full management of their networks and proactively solve issues before they become problems.

Last, but certainly not least, we have enhanced our website support offerings:

• Domain hosting – We handle your domain registration so you can safely ignore the letters and emails from people trying to trick you into buying services you don’t need or hijacking your site.
• Website hosting – We host a wide range of websites, from simple single page business card sites to complex WordPress sites.
• WordPress instruction and website design – Whether you need a little help setting up your self managed site or want someone to just do the whole job for you, we can help.
• WordPress update and backup service – No need to worry about whether or not your website has the latest patches.  We also do regular backups for you.

 

 

 

GEEKNOTE:  Computer / network support has historically been provided on a “break / fix” basis.  Something breaks and the IT support company is called in to fix the problem.

A more modern approach is to enter into a managed IT service agreement where the IT support company monitors all of the computers in the network on a proactive basis.  While a managed IT service contract may appear at first blush to be more expensive than simply fixing things when they break, it is generally more cost effective when you consider the lost productivity associated with computer or network downtime.

As part of Gulfcoast Networking’s managed IT agreements, we install a monitoring system that gives us real time reports on each client’s network.

I see dozens of alerts from our monitoring system each day.  Most of them are informational and easy to deal with.  The more significant ones provide early warnings of impending problems and we’ve been able to proactively solve quite a few problems, including replacing sick hard drives, without significant down time for our clients.

The choice between break / fix and managed service approaches to IT is best described by the auto mechanic in my networking group “You can schedule maintenance, but you can’t schedule repairs.”
Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek