ICT Project Management | Blog

Meeting in KOH

admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:38:57 +0000

Hi Guys

Announcing Box For Microsoft Office

admin — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:05:15 +0000

Microsoft Office users, we have great news for you. Starting today, you can work on files from Box without ever leaving Office. Box for Office, a new add-on for Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010, lets you easily open, edit, save, and share using Box from within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In the middle of a big project? Just click the main save button to save the in-progress file to Box.

You can now effortlessly connect all your Microsoft Office content to the cloud, making it a snap for you to share your documents and collaborate.

Choose Box.com as your online file server (Forget Dropbox!!!)

admin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:45:44 +0000

We are delighted to introduce our clients to Box.com. We have been testing this service for the last 6 months, and have now started to use their cloud storage solutions for our clients across various industry and business types.

Box is an increasingly popular application for businesses to share files online. It’s like a file server, but simpler and without the hardware, software, and maintenance requirements. You and your authorized contacts can share and collaborate on PDFs, Word documents, media files, and more. Additional features include file access from mobile devices, online workspaces, and desktop syncing.

We are also pleased to confirm that we have been accepted into the Box.com Reseller program, meaning we can offer extended trials, levels of support and faster access to new resources as they become available from the Box.com team.

Secure the iOS Revolution With Your Existing SonicWALL Solution

admin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:11:29 +0000

The iOS revolution is upon us – smartphones and tablets are everywhere. Notably, iOS devices such as Apple^® iPads^®and iPhones^® have emerged as a preferred mobile platform. For the user, flexibility, quality and ease-of-use is unmatched. But for IT professionals, security and management is problematic. Unmanaged devices connecting to network resources through unsecured hotspots are a recipe for disaster. So if your customers aren’t scanning all inbound traffic, network integrity and data security can be seriously compromised.

The good news is that, beginning today, your SonicWALL^®customers who use any of our SSL VPN solutions can simply download an app via the App Store^SM to extend the robust security they rely on today, everywhere – at no cost.

The SonicWALL Mobile Connect™ unified client app for Apple iOS provides Apple iPad and iPhone users full access to networked resources over encrypted SSL VPN connections. The result is high security and data integrity for users outside and inside the network – anytime, anywhere.Available now via the App Store, SonicWALL Mobile Connect provides secure SSL VPN connections to SonicWALL Aventail^® E-Class Secure Remote Access (SRA), SRA for SMB or SonicWALL Firewall appliances.

SonicWALL Discontinuing SKU’s

admin — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 07:52:00 +0000

SonicWALL has recently announced that they intend to end support and services sku’s for their older TZ and Pro models at the end of the month.

This means that from the 1st of July 2011 SonicWALL will discontinue the sale of two-year and three-year support contracts (Dynamic Support 8×5, Dynamic Support 24×7) and security services (CGSS, GAV/AS/IPS, CFS) on TZ 150 Series, TZ 170 Series and PRO Series.

Please contact your account manager for more information

RSA Breach Behind Lockheed Martin Hack

admin — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 07:51:14 +0000

The recent RSA SecurID hack has led to its first known victim in the shape of US defence contractor Lockheed Martin. Lockheed suffered a “significant and tenacious attack” on its IT network on 21 May and has now confirmed the hackers used the data that was stolen from RSA in March.

The attack was made possible because RSA stored their ‘secret keys’ on a server which was accessible from the net and has resulted in RSA having to replace 40 million tokens.

We recently raised this issue with our two-factor authentication of choice – Vasco. Vasco have advised us that due to the fact that their business grow out of the banking sector and as such, their ‘secret keys’ are not stored on a server accessible from the net and therefore they are not at risk in the same way that RSA was.

With RSA in the news and fears about its security, now is the time to talk to us about Vasco two-factor authentication solutions.

How a cheap graphics card could crack your password in under a second!

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:03:59 +0000

I was pointed in the direction of a blog posting talking about the use of GPU processors to launch brute-force attacks on passwords. GPUs are extremely good at this sort of workload, and the price/performance ratio has changed dramatically over the past few years. What might have seemed impossible even 36 months ago is now perfectly do-able on your desktop computer.

In this report, the author takes a fairly standard Radeon 5770 graphics card (you’ll find it on our A-List under Value Graphics Card), and uses a free tool called ighashgpu to run the brute-force password cracking tools on the GPU. To provide a comparison point with the capabilities of a standard desktop CPU, he uses a tool called “Cain & Abel”.

The results are startling. Working against NTLM login passwords, a password of “fjR8n” can be broken on the CPU in 24 seconds, at a rate of 9.8 million password guesses per second. On the GPU, it takes less than a second at a rate of 3.3 billion passwords per second.

Increase the password to 6 characters (pYDbL6), and the CPU takes 1 hour 30 minutes versus only four seconds on the GPU. Go further to 7 characters (fh0GH5h), and the CPU would grind along for 4 days, versus a frankly worrying 17 minutes 30 seconds for the GPU.

Now, I cannot imagine anyone managing to mandate a nine-character, mixed-case, random-character password on an organisation. But if you did, and you weren’t hanging from a tree by the end of the first working day, the CPU would take 43 years versus 48 days for the GPU.

He then went on to add in mixed symbols to create “F6&B is” (there is a space in there). CPU will take 75 days, GPU will take 7 hours.

What does this tell us? well, the stark reality is that even long and complex passwords are now toast. If you think you were being wise by forcing users to have randomisation in their passwords, then think again. It is utterly futile.

Yes, you can force your users to have a 15-character password consisting of random numbers and letters, and throw in punctuation as well. This is great as an idea, but we know that most users think that a password like “Barry1943Manilow” where 1943 was the year he was born, is complex and hard to remember. Is an IT manager really going to manage to get the CFO to log in using “fR4; $sYu 29 @QwmQz” without the combination ending up on a Post-it note in his wallet? Or stuck to the side of the screen? Because anything much less than this is going to be open to attack over the next few years.

A GPU of the type used by this chap is not unusual or high end. It is standard-issue stuff. Indeed, I have just sat through the AMD presentation here at Computex in Taiwan, and they made a big deal about putting GPU power into netbooks offering 500Gflops, without denting its 12-hour battery life. And that’s shipping within months.

All I can say is this: you have been warned. It is time to think long and hard about password security, and how you do your authentication. This has crept up on us in the background, and we really haven’t been paying attention. Nor has Microsoft, frankly, who should be having a whole raft of alternative, hardened solutions in place ready for its business customers to roll out.

What are the solutions? To be honest, I’m not sure. A combination of TPM, biometrics, passwords and maybe something else entirely new will be needed. But it’s clear that a complex password that users will actually accept for day-to-day authentication, and keep secret, might be history.

Vasco Two Factor Authentication – Webinar

admin — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:00:50 +0000

The Vasco Solution – A Complete Overview

Join us for a technical overview of the Vasco two-factor authentication solution. Our technical manager will be presenting a broad overview of the Vasco solution, including demonstrating the Identikey web interface as well as covering how to integrate Vasco security into your current SonicWALL solution.

Date : Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Time : 3:00 PM – 4:00PM BST

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/238202712

70 million customers affected by the Sony breach.

admin — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:34:07 +0000

The most recent update from Sony unfortunately confirms the worst fears for many. Between 17th and 19th April an “unauthorised person” gained access to the personal information of Sony’s more than 70 million customers.

Although there is no evidence at this time that payment card information has been accessed, Sony are “unable to rule out this possibility” and are advising their customers accordingly.

What does this mean for you? If you’re the type of person who tends to reuse your password across multiple web sites, then today’s the day to get out there and start changing that password and breaking that habit. Criminals now have your email address and common password, and may also have the answers to your security questions.

It is never a good idea to use the same password across multiple web sites, so try to have a unique one for every site you use. While this may sound complex and impossible to remember, there is simple way to achieve this. Create a complex password using upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters such as $%&!. Devise a way to differentiate your password for each site you use, for example, putting the first and last letters of the web site name at the beginning and end of your initial complex password, making it unique yet easy to remember.

As for those security or password reset questions, this is also one of the most common ways to break into an account. If you are asked to provide answers to “Security questions”, consider whether the answers are really secure. “Secure” means that you are the only person who can answer the question. If the possibility exists to create your own questions, use it. If you are obliged to answer more standard questions such as “First school” or “First pet” remember the answer doesn’t have to be the truth, it only has to be something you can remember.

Aside from this, given the nature of the warning from Sony, keep an eye on your bank statements for any unauthorised activity.

Users sabotage work PCs to force upgrades!

admin — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:17:51 +0000

The best way to get an upgrade might be to sabotage the old one, according to research from our partner online backup company Mozy.

The company claims one in four employees were getting fed up with using old machines, and would consider sabotaging their hardware in a bid to force the IT department to upgrade them.

“There are plenty of people who would be happy to do that because they think the proper process might take too long or leave them with their old machine”

“There are plenty of people who would be happy to do that because they think the proper process might take too long or leave them with their old machine,” Claire Galbois-Alcaix, EMEA senior marketing manager at Mozy, told PC Pro.

“The average age of work computers in the UK is more than five years old, so a lot of people are still working on computers that are ten years old. Because they have better hardware at home, they might take action to damage their work computer to get an upgrade.”

The warning came after a survey involving 3,000 workers in Britain, France and Germany, which reported that 40% of users believed their old PC was hurting their efficiency at work.