In recent years the browser market has become more competitive and products such as Firefox and Chrome have really been giving Microsoft a run for their money! This has prompted the release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 web browser.

Along with increased speed of 35% the application has 3 key features that Microsoft has brought to our attention:

• Tracking protection – A new tool that prevents users from being tracked as they move from site to site. This will prevent commercial firms from tailoring adds and reduce spam emails
• It keeps a close eye on any downloads to prevent any Trojans or other viruses from sneaking through
• IE9 also has hardware acceleration built in so it can call on the power of a PC’s graphics card to display sites in more detail.

An estimate has come in from the web analysis firm Net Applications that suggests IE has about a 56% share of the global market, with Firefox on their tail with about 22%, Chrome 11% and Safari 6%.

• Request for passwords and other personal information. Most scams are designed to trick you into turning over your passwords, user names, account details and other personal information. Never send this information in an email message.

• Use of the well known company names. Cybercriminals often use the names of well-known companies, like Microsoft, to increase legitimacy and convince you to release your personal information. 

• Threats that require you to take action. In the scam above the cybercriminal claims that your account will be deleted if you do not respond with your personal information. Professional organisations generally do not send threatening messages by email and will not ask for personal information in an email message.

• Bad grammar and misspellings. Legitimate companies will have copyeditors who would never allow spelling and grammar mistakes to pass their desks.

• Generic greeting. Legitimate messages are not often addressed to “Account Owner.”  For example if Microsoft or your bank need to send you official correspondence about your email account, they will address you by name. However, remember that cybercriminals do have ways of getting your name from your email address. So, even is the email is address directly to you, check for other signs of a scam.

Here are some useful links from Microsoft where you can get more information regarding email scams and internet fraud.

 How to recognize phishing emails or links.

Avoid scams that use the Microsoft name fraudulently.

How to reduce the risk of online fraud.

On our new and improved site you will find much more information on who we are and what we do. As well as articles, FAQs and our White Paper. There are also several case studies of our previous projects with more to come!

In the next couple of months there will be further improvements such as the addition of our technology page, further thought pieces and some tools to help manage your IT.

We would love to get some feedback, so please have a look, let us know what you think and also how we can make it even better.

One way of getting around this is to adjust and enforce your company’s IT Policy, specifically the sites that employees are allowed to visit. By blocking the main video streaming websites so employees will not be able stream content, however this runs the risk of employees then finding obscure free streaming sites which may have viruses or spyware. While this option does eradicate most of the problem, you may then be left with a bunch of disgruntled employees who may then decide to just not come in to work on the day of the match.

An alternative would be have a television in the office to screen important matches (such as England matches). This will enable employees to continue working, keep up to date with the games and will improve the sense of moral in your office. The other added benefit is that people who do not want to watch the match can carry on with their work without having to worry about bandwidth and network issues.
Let us know if your company doing anything for employees during the World Cup. It would be great to hear any innovative ideas.

This issue mainly effected companies in the USA and Australia as they were starting their business day just as the update was made available. By the time the UK started work McAfee had already issued a new update without the glitch. Fortunately this did not affect any Fifosys clients.

Instruction on what to do if your business has been affected can be found at https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB68780

Barry McPherson, executive vice president of support and customer service, said on the company’s blog

“As you know, McAfee on Wednesday released a faulty signature update file (DAT file) that caused problems for a number of our customers.

First off, I want to apologize on behalf of McAfee and say that we’re extremely sorry for any impact the faulty signature update file may have caused you and your organizations.

I want to give you a brief update on what has happened since we first became aware of the false detection. McAfee team members have been working around the clock to fix the problem and work with impacted customers. We estimate that the majority of the affected systems are back up and running at this time and more systems are coming back online quickly.”

Do let us know if you were affected and need any help.

What happened

Early on Wednesday 31st March 2010, BT issued an announcement:  “Following flooding at a BT exchange in the Paddington area, customers in parts of North and West London may be experiencing a loss of broadband and/or telephone service. Customers in other parts of the country may also be affected.”

Pretty innocuous sounding, but what happened next?

When phone lines within London, and by some accounts all across the country, stopped working, it wasn’t just phone calls that were affected. Indeed, switching to mobiles made that a low impact issue.

But phone lines are used for so much more than conversations. When cash points tried to get approval for someone withdrawing money, they couldn’t, and the ATMs were shut down.  The same happened with PDQ machines for people trying to use a credit card in shops.

By noon, SagePay, one of the UK’s largest online payment processing systems, were saying: “Please be advised Lloyds Cardnet and Halifax Bank of Scotland customers are currently unable to process transactions via the Sage Pay gateway.”  So, websites across the UK stopped being able to take money.

And given the 31st March may well have been pay day for many, how many companies couldn’t contact the bank electronically to make that payment?

Although we all enjoy the benefits of an interconnected world, sometimes there are risks.

A bit too much water and a business’s trading for the last day of their financial year is interrupted.

What is the loss of business this one fault caused?

Did it cause your business issues? 

As we rely so heavily of BT’s network, surely it’s sensible to use technology to give ourselves that “work from home” option?

How often do we consider the impact of what we take for granted failing?

http://maps.thepieguide.com/pfb-ext/ - a guide to finding service centre’s, hospital’s, clubs, petrol stations and motorcycle parking anywhere in the UK.

Ignoring the cost of about £12 to watch the game, my main concern will be picture quality. Having watched football games on my PC broadcast through a 7″ window (picture quality degrades significantly when switched to full screen mode), I can confirm it is a very underwhelming experience. There is the 30 second or so lag to deal with, the poor commentary and then you have to try and identify the players through the low quality feed.

IPTV is the future. But until faster broadband speeds are made available and affordable to all home users, live streaming of mainstream programmes will remain a mediocre experience.

Approx 500, 000 people watched the game live on Saturday compared to an average 4 million+ for normal England games.

Question is would the ISPs and broadcasters have coped if 4million people had subscribed to watch the game?