https://github.com/edwardz246003/IIS_exploit
There has been a security bug found in Server 2003 linked to the IIS Web Server. This server is out of support with Microsoft so a fix will not be produced by them in the long run.
Recommendations will be to remove this server from any public IP you have especially on port 80 and upgrade to a newer version of windows ASAP!
Intel's new 7th generation of i series chip, Kaby Lake will officially be supported only by the company’s flagship Windows 10 OS. Intel also appeared to be on board with Redmond’s decision, saying it
“will not be updating Win 7/8 drivers for 7th Gen Intel Core per Microsoft’s support policy change.”
AMD is also on the same bandwagon
"To achieve the highest confidence in the performance of our AMD Ryzen desktop processors (formerly code-named ‘Summit Ridge’), AMD validated them across two different OS generations, Windows 7 and 10,” AMD said in a statement in response to a question from PCWorld. “However, only support and drivers for Windows 10 will be provided in AMD Ryzen desktop processor production parts.”
As of October 31st 2016 Microsoft Ended the sale of Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 pre installed on Machines. Any new purchase of Hardware will now land your enviroment in a mixed version of Windows making it harder to :
There are multiple ways to roll out Windows 10 across your organisation such as Microsoft Deployment Tool , Image X and or Acronis True Image. Speak to Response IT today about solutions and time lines of a Windows 10 Deployment!
Cloud infrastructure can actually be split up into three different types
Public Cloud - These are the clouds you see being offered by Amazon, Google, Microsoft to name the big players. Services offered on Public Clouds are Office 365 on Azure , S3 Buckets on AWS and Google Code projects on Google. These are usually the cheapest but limited in regards to customizations.
Internal Self Hosted Cloud - These are servers hosted and owned by the business providing totally customizable features to the business for their software and speed requirements.
Private Cloud - This is a mixture of the above which entails a third party provider such as Response IT hosting or providing your IT infrastructure giving you ultimate customizability in your hardware and speed needs with the reduced support of hardware and network by your organisation.
Business Size - Most small business and startups will start off on the Public Cloud with applications like Office 365 , One Drive for Business and Skype for Business. This gives them all the services they need to start the setup their company at a small cost which can grow. More developed companies will start to use a custom applications for their industry and this will need to be hosted on a standalone server if the application provider does not provide a hosted solution. This will then leverage into Private or Internal Cloud
Latency - So applications are very time sensitive which means hosting them on the public cloud will be a non-starter to begin with. Application providers will only support the Application with SLA's in regards to round trip times from the server so an Internet Cloud will have to be used but usually backed up with a Private or Public Cloud
Data Sovereignty - Legalities on each industry and country change the rules on where your data can or can't be stored. Companies such as Goverment, Legal and Finance usually have strict requirements of keeping their data in country with proof. Other industries face Audits of proving to their users where their data is at any time. Internal clouds are the best for this , however Private and now Public clouds are making themselves full compliant with Data Sovereignty issues
Contact Response IT for Solutions in all three clouds. We see three as better than one
“Beginning in March 2017, managers who have 2-20 direct reports, do not already have a direct reports group, and have permissions to create groups in Outlook, will automatically have a private group created for them with their direct reports. The manager will be added as an owner, and the direct reports of the manager will be added as members by default. The group will be named "<Manager's Name>'s direct reports", but that can be edited.”
“To help managers collaborate more effectively with their employees, we will automatically create Office 365 Groups containing the manager's direct reports. Managers can easily update, delete, or modify the group at any time.”
How to Opt out:
Mobile device management is software to be able to manage a fleet of mobiile devices used by your workforce for security, monitoring and deployment. Mobile devices can be provided by a company or BYOD ( Bring your own Device ) is used where people use their existing devices.
Some example MDM products we use and support at Response IT :
What does and doesn’t work in a communications plan to get users to enroll in an MDM?
Are there incentives you have used that have helped to get user buy in to enrollment?=
What types of communications have been most effective?
See some below reasons why Users should enroll in company MDM Platforms :
Contact Response IT for support of an existing MDM platform or the creation and adoption of a new one today!
You can email out to the whole company explaining things such as Spear Phishing:
http://www.response-it.co.uk/news/2016/10/23/spear-phishing-how-to-mitigate-risks?rq=phishing
and Ransomware explanations and examples:
http://www.response-it.co.uk/news/2016/10/27/ransomware-the-small-business-guide?rq=cyp
But do these go unnoticed? It's difficult to tell until this is put to the test.... A short test could be to wait until you get infected or breached and diagnose the attack and seal the hole, but a better proactive test is to test your employees before the attack happens.
We have worked recently with a few companies after Management approval to create a test Phishing site's to monitor how many people would fall for the above attacks which give great insights such as
1) How many people and who opened the email
2) How many people entered credentials
3) How many people clicked a link
4) How many out of dated devices opened the link
After the above is found, user training can be employed to fix all the below and the whole process can be repeated on occasion automatically.
Contact us today about pricing for the service.
Per the microsoft article here https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/2017/01/19/people-spend-day-every-year-waiting-old-computers-boot/#sm.0000012c2ze3vacu5rmyddvyd145k
Yes this is a marketing from Microsoft to sell it's Windows 10 Operating System , but it does bring out some interesting true facts ..... Computer shelf life or Out of the Box warranty is usually supplied for 3 years depending on what it is used for, and Microsoft OS is usually around every 3 years as well.
Below we would like to share of reasons to keep your Hardware and Software Up to Date
Call us today to help us get you into the new!
Due to Response IT's office being located within 5 minutes of the M25, depending on the notorious M25 Traffic in London we can cover most business inside the M25 within an hour using Car or Train whatever's faster!
This gives you on call services such as
For a fixed monthly fee or pay as you go rate! Contact us today to get a price and support for your IT emergency or prevention.
The postcodes available for IT Support in the M25 are business that start with the following
Just to show Microsoft's commitment to it's infrastructure in Azure to host your Virtual Machines, it has now increased it's SLA to the highest yet 99.9%
Previously, receiving an SLA required a minimum of two virtual machines configured for high availability. However, some IT organizations need SLAs for single-instance virtual machines, forcing those virtual machines to stay on-premises. With this new option in Azure, we are empowering organizations to move more workloads to the cloud.
To qualify for the single-instance virtual machine SLA, all storage disks attached to the virtual machine must be our Premium Storage, which offers up to 80,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and 2,000 MB of disk throughput per virtual machine. Customers can continue to build for high availability by having two or more virtual machines deployed in the sameavailability set, which provides a 99.95 percent SLA, or by utilizingAzure Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
For more information about our SLA for Azure Virtual Machines, please visit the SLA for Virtual Machines webpage. For more information on Premium Storage and how to begin migrating your workloads, please visit theDisk Storage webpage.
This stands for service level agreement. It is what service providers agree with their customers on uptime of a service before a payment or credit will be applied to their bill.
Microsoft are not offering a refund, but service credit which can be used for the following months server :
< 99.9% Uptime = 10% Service Credit
< 99% Uptime = 25% Service Credit
As Wikipedia put it a Disaster Recovery Plan is
a documented process or set of procedures to recover and protect a business IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster. Such a plan, ordinarily documented in written form, specifies procedures an organization is to follow in the event of a disaster.
As Wikipedia put its a Business Continuity Plan is
the process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company.
THE TWO ARE DIFFERENT!
Disaster Recovery Plans should be oriented towards business recovery following a disaster, and mitigating the negative consequences of a disaster. In contrast, Business Continuity Plans focus on creating a plan of action that focuses on preventing the negative consequences of a disaster from occurring at all.
You should identify any potential risks and threats facing the company and the likely hood of them happening. Then you should list the likely hood of these effecting the company in what ways e.g. Loss of Sales , Fines and loss of customers
Some questions that should be put forward are
1) Is my Data covered in the event of a Diaster , can I recover?
2) What is my current recovery time in regards to services and 100% Business Availability
The cloud helps business' keep their data offsite usually in well-equipped data centers that are also replicated between different data centers to cover a natural disaster affecting their service. However customers should always operate the 3 level backup model and use methods to be able to make sure they can export and backup their cloud data.
Here's a link to a predefined template which can be filled out and actioned by a company and their IT Provider
Let Response IT help build your Disaster Recovery Plan and Business Continuity Plan to failure proof your business ! Contact Us Today
There is a new ransomware out nickednamed "GoldenEye" like the movie, which is targeting HR Managers through fake Job interview application attachements.
The attackers are also targetting Recruitment companies and HR Consultants.
It uses existing specific exploits in existing Microsoft files such as .doc / .xls to run macros which install the virus
How to stop yourself getting infected?
Please see our article here about steps to prevent infections
http://www.response-it.co.uk/news/2016/10/27/ransomware-the-small-business-guide?rq=Ransomware
I am already infected...
Please contact us today as there might be some methods to retrieve your data
According to the UK Government, in 2014, 60%* of SMBs experienced a security breach. The same survey has estimated that a severe cyber attack on a SMB costs upwards of £65k.
*UK Gov, The Information Security Breaches Survey – Department of Business, Innovation & Skills
Since 2014 Security risks and attacks have increased in quantity and sophistication
The government has put together some free training for companies to train staff of how to protect security
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/cyber-security-training-for-business
We look at your current system as it currently is to locate and identify an potential security vulnerabilities and risks. It's a great way to get a third party audit of your current network and system and also a list of recommended upgrades or changes in a single report.
Access Control - Who currently has access, do they need access, how they access and what to
Patch Management - What is up-to-date and what isn't in your company with list of security exploits that can currently be used against your system
Malware Protection - What current defense do you have against virus, spyware and spam
Firewalls - Your current firewall configuration
Backups - Your current backup configuration
A security assessment can prove beneficial to companies to not only reduce the risk for future attacks, but it can also offer up significant financial advantages. One of these advantages is the review of your current spending of the above to check for any unnecessary overspending on certain security solutions and suggest the most cost efficient alternatives available
Contact Response IT Today via our Contact Us Page to Inquire about our IT Security Assessment
Your data has never been more secure and safe:
Microsoft’s cloud offerings are far more secure and redundant than most small to mid-size businesses could ever hope for.
Office 365 is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are multiple plans available to suit different business sizes and needs. The Office 365 Business Essentials plan costs £3.10 per user per month and includes:
Plus these online services:
The Start menu is back - We've missed you , and so have our customers. Classic Start is a default install for customers with 8.1 installed, however Microsoft have listened to the users and brought this back!
Inbuilt upgrader from Windows 7 just works - Not much explaining here , Microsoft has come along way since the Vista days of the updater breaking a load of Apps and Drivers. You are warned before of programs that might have issues and are made to uninstall these before update.
Stable - We've skipped a release (8.1) , Check below, Microsoft usually skips a good OS per release
Built for touch - Like 8.1 Microsoft are making the User interface easy so this can be used on your Surface Tablet, Phone and Laptop with Touch Screen easily. Also Microsoft Office finally works with touch!
Buil in Apps and App Store - Adobe Reader Client, Maps , Media player , Mail and Photo Viewer all included in the operating system and there's a store to find new applications without the risk of running into Virus on internet fake stores!
Built for Cloud - Small business now can use an Active Directory account linked to their Email Address for management without needing an on-premise server
Updates Slipstreamed - Microsoft is continuing to release new updates on a daily basis. That means instead of waiting to release new features through a service pack or major release,
Free - It's was a Free Update util 2016 July for a whole year as long as your current license of windows is Valid. This link still might help you https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade
Most server rooms or Datacenters are made up of a collection of racks. With the help of virtualisation nowawdays, most companies will have a single rack with all their Storage, Networking, Server and Patching equipment. Choosing the right rack can be hard as there are varying heights, width, depts and vendors to choose from. Most of the time these cannot be returned due to the size so they should be picked properly the first time round!
This is a pretty big side effect of having the server room on your premise instead of hosted elsewhere. If this is in a seperate room, the enclosed space will help muffle the sound. We have had some customers who opt in for a silent rack , which has a sound rating of 25 DB , and of course saves space by not needing a server room!
Keeping servers at a recommended manufacture operating temperature, keeps your data safe and warranty valid! For example a HP DL 380 has the following recommendations
The maximum recommended ambient operating temperature (TMRA) for most server products is 35°C(95°F). The temperature in the room where the rack is located must not exceed 35°C (95°F).
Cooling in most server rooms is done by Air Conditioning with airflow. This cooling should be specced correctly using BTU readings. You should also have monitoring at server and rack level to make sure you can monitor fan failure and rise in tempuratures to act.
This is always a battle in server rooms due to the amount of cables needed per phone , computer and server. Cable colours are important to see different networks such as Phone over Data as well as using the correct media for uplinks.
Power should also be looked at, make sure you understand your buildings power backup e.g. Generators
The customer and IT Provider should know what each box does incase of a problem and for Auditing purposes as well.
This is where all your company's data is ( if you are not already in the cloud ). There was a case with a building in London where some people walked off the street during an office move and helped themselves to a few servers without any employee stopping them! Make sure you lock your server racks and can account for the keys to server rooms.
This is basically Windows 10 for Enterprises with Software Assurance.
What's Software Assurance? It's something you purchase with Microsoft products as a subscription to give you future upgrades on the product such as the next version of Windows or new features free of charge, and also roll back functionality. Roll back to Windows 7 if you want ( good for software that is not supported on 10 however you need to license your enviroment )
Support from one to hundreds of users. Although the Windows 10 Enterprise E3 in CSP program does not have a limitation on the number of licenses an organization can have, the program is designed for small- and medium-sized organizations.
Deploy on up to five devices. For each user covered by the license, you can deploy Windows 10 Enterprise edition on up to five devices. E.G.
Your Office Laptop
Your Office Computer
Your Office Tablet
Your Home PC
Your phone!
Move licenses between users. Licenses can be quickly and easily reallocated from one user to another user, allowing you to optimize your licensing investment against changing needs.
E5 adds a new security service called Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). This is a cloud service that takes behavioural data from sensors built into Windows 10 and provides insights, detections and recommended responses. No matter what anti-malware product is installed on a PC, it’s only as good as the known threats it has been designed to block, the ATP service looks at behaviour and reduces the impact of a compromise either of a device itself or a user interaction.
While this can work with third party anti-malware tools, it can also be used to provide a complete Microsoft security system, effectively allowing replacement of other vendors as designed to integrate with the built-in Windows Defender anti-malware in Windows 10.
Per our recent article here -> http://www.response-it.co.uk/news/2016/10/24/whats-brexit-means-for-uk-it-hardware-and-software-costs?rq=brexit
Due to the drop in the pound Microsoft will be increasing the price of Subscription services in the UK by 22% on 1st January 2017
If you purchase from a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider like Response IT , we can lock your subscription price for a year. Use the last days of 2016 to save your company money in 2017!
Contact us today!
Bleeping computer has just found a new strain of the famous Cryptolocker which gives infected users a chance to share the virus with two other people who once have paid to unlock their files , the user will get an unlock key
It's a Pyramid version of Cryptolocker , Nasty , watch out for those links from anyone you could know!
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-scheme-spread-popcorn-time-ransomware-get-chance-of-free-decryption-key/
2016 has definitely been the year of backup applications leveraging the cloud. In the start of last year we saw Veeam build a product called Cloud Connect which used it's backup software to replicate Virtual machines to another location. To spin this backup up into a useable environment for Always On or a Disaster recovery solution you then needed to utilize some third party hardware or convert the machines into AWS Machines. This could be done however it was not the easiest and went against what the cloud was for ... an always on scaleable solution! It did mean Small to Medium business; could start to have a cost effective Disaster Recovery site without the huge costs of replicating their whole onsite environment to another data center ( something only enterprise or large organisations could pay for)
Zerto a pretty new product on the scene enhanced this technology by reducing RPO's ( recovery point objective (time to copy backup files) to minutes instead of hours which means if a site when done lost work would greatly be reduced. Zerto also enabled replication from cross platform products for example replicate a Vmware environment to a Hyper V environment to save on licensing costs for your DR Solution. It also in Version 4 allowed you to replicate VMware to AWS - http://www.zerto.com/products/enterprise/replication-backup-to-aws-amazon-web-services/. Zerto also has a minimum license of 25 virtual machines which is the high end of a medium size company in the UK.
The slight problem with Veeam V9 and below is you needed to host your own infrastructure to be able to host the repository. Now with Veeam 9.5 you can replicate this straight to Azure which means you only pay for the storage it uses until you turn the product one.
Released a year ago, Microsoft Azure Backup Server used Microsoft technology to backup Windows Machines using the Windows Agent directly to Azure. This was good however agents installs are not the best way to back things up now thanks to virtual environments. Now Microsoft Azure Backup Server is agent less which means it can backup your whole Virtual Center Server environment including Linux machines to Azure.
Great video from Cisco showing how Ransomwares come about and risks to business
