Tag | Management
Centurylink DSL Service Major Disruption
Centurylink is having issues in Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois today…
Here’s the map:
Map Showing Centurylink DSL Network Down Event. Red is bad, nothing is good, yellow is partial down.
If You Use Time Warner You Might Not Be Able To Read This
There was (is) a huge outage on the Time Warner Internet Access Network this morning. Starting around 4:30am a maintenance upgrade has gone horribly wrong. Which is to say, if your on Time Warner Cable it’s likely you can’t read this (until your service is restored, anyway).
Here’s the constantly updating map of the Time Warner Network online status. Just like weather radar… Red is bad, green is good.
http://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable/map/
The cost of this? Well, Time Warner won’t lose all that much money. It’s not likely that they will give credits/refunds for a few hours of downtime. But, if your business is on Time Warner, it could cost a ton of bucks. Can’t process orders? Credit Card and Check payments? Access suppliers? Put that big “one day” promotion online? Can’t do that if your Internet is down.
Which brings us to the real purpose of this little screed about the incompetence that is Time Warner Cable’s latest faux pas… If your business relies on the Internet (and few do not anymore), you really need to have a plan in place for when bad things happen. It’s not always bringing in a competitive alternate Internet feed, either.
What you really need is a team of people that have “been there, done that” and work with them to make incidents out of your direct control nothing more than a minor hiccup… Instead of a money draining loss.
Give OPENRSM a call (or email), and let’s get your business back online and have your business prepared for when bad things happen.
Change Your Passwords and UserNames Now
It appears that the “Russian Mob” has pulled off something big… Stealing 1.2 Billion (yes, with a B) usernames and passwords from a wide range of sites.
Anytime something like this happens, OPENRSM suggests you change everything. Including usernames, passwords, on all accounts and computers.
The New York Times has the story….
Just How Much Personal Info Are You Giving Away?
It’s pretty well known that many websites make an effort to track you online. Even when your not on their site! But, just how much tracking is going on?
We decided to do a “quick and dirty” look at a few popular websites to see just how many different trackers are deployed. And, it’s not pretty. In fact, it’s pretty ugly.
- Drudgereport.com is by far the worst offender with at least 37 different cookies, trackers, advertising preference systems, etc. looking at you.
- The Kansas City Star’s website, KansasCity.com has 13 peeking at what your doing.
- KCTV5.com weighs in with 16.
- The popular humerous headline site Fark.com is a heavyweight with 19 different trackers.
- And last, but not least, on our list is the popular fact checking site Snopes.com. Which is using 28 different tools to see what your doing online.
Now, what happens when you block most (if not all) of these different little logical spy devices? When tested on a 1.5Mbs DSL connection (fast enough to get results, slow enough to calculate differentials) we got some significant results. Here’s what we did:
- Blocked all advertising trackers.
- Left open all trackers that serve a useful purpose (live support, security checking, etc.).
- Loaded a predetermined set of websites and a Firefox Macro Script that would load each page in succession. After one page fully loads, it loaded the next.
We cleared the system Cache between each test run (and we did 10 runs of the tests).
Well, go figure! You can surf much faster with all that “spying into what your doing stuff” turned off! Significantly faster (tests ranged from 10-14% faster). And, we wern’t leaking all kinds of personal data, surfing history, etc. out to other people we just think have no business tracking us.
Want to protect your personal and business information? Give us a call or email. We can not only block out the “bad actors” that are tracking you and your employees every online move, it’ll get you a little bit more out of your existing Internet connection speed too.
AT&T Has Security Breach, Doesn’t Bother To Tell Customers
Another day, another sad story about a big company losing customers private information, and not telling anyone about it.
In April, AT&T confirms employees of an outside contractor hacked customers’ information including Social Security numbers. The contractors employees attempted to unlock phones to put them on another network. Did they sell the names/SSNs? Nobody (including AT&T) has answered that question, yet.
You can see AT&Ts full response as posted by the California Attorney Generals Office by following This Link.
Who’s watching out for your Company’s and Employee’s Mobile Data? Helping to create the policies, procedures, and infrastructure to protect your data?
Give OPENRSM a call… We can make it easy for you to secure your information.
How To Stop Annoying Interactive “Creepy” Ads
Have you noticed that when you search for something on Ebay, Amazon, Google, that the advertising on pages seem to know what you’ve been looking for? For Example, look up “LED 3051 Strips” on Google and suddenly ads for lighting fixtures, Ebay auctions, LED suppliers and the like now appear on every page you look at. It’s call “contextural advertising”. Web sites are setting “cookies” in your browser that their advertising networks look at when you surf a page and then display advertising for the things you’ve looked for most recently.
Sometimes it’s okay. You can find things that your looking for via an ad. Sometimes it’s just creepy. Don’t believe me? Then google for “Hot Crossed Buns” and see what happens to the ads that are presented to you. Yeah, creepy. But, you can put a stop to sites that you don’t want tracking you (like Facebook) by using the Opt Out from Online Behavioral Advertising site. A self-regulation effort that is honored by Ebay, Facebook, etc. It’s not perfect. But, it really helps. Here’s how it works (from the page itself, which is located at http://www.aboutads.info/choices
- Find out which participating companies have currently enabled customized ads for your browser;
- See all the participating companies on this site and learn more about their advertising and privacy practices;
- Check whether you’ve already opted out from participating companies;
- Opt out of browser-enabled interest-based advertising by some or all participating companies, using opt-out cookies to store your preferences in your browser; or
- Use the “Choose All Companies” feature to opt out from all currently participating companies in one step. GO
Need even more powerful blocking? Call, email, or simply CLICK HERE and OPENRSM can take care of it for your business.
Untangling Internet Management
OPENRSM’s Kansas City IT Group “Untangles” Internet Management
KANSAS CITY, MO – OPENRSM, Inc., announced that they are now part of a select group of IT companies authorized as a Untangle Internet Management Partner.
OPENRSM will be providing Untangle Internet Management as a service with integrated network appliances for it’s customers as a part of it’s overall mission to provide “IT is a Process, Not a Project” approach to cloud based managed services, network management, hardware and software solutions, and proactive continuous monitoring and maintenance of network, hardware, and software resources for it’s Kansas City IT customers.
“As a company focused strictly on the needs of businesses, the addition of the Untangle platform and services to our portfolio was a natural and important addition for OPENRSM. Our Kansas City IT Services Group is thrilled about the addition of Untangle which will help us to increase the productivity and reduce costs for our partners and clients,” adds Scott Medlock, OPENRSM’s Chief Technical Officer.
For more information on the Untangle Internet Management Platform or OPENRSM, Inc., please visit www.openrsm.com or call 816-200-2220.
About Untangle
Untangle, a network software company, provides a new breed of multi-function firewall and Internet management applications that are optimized for the unique needs of smaller organizations. With a free multi-function firewall at its core and a suite of Internet management applications, Untangle’s superior solutions are available at the Industry’s lowest cost, and are easy-to-deploy and manage. Untangle’s proven network software solutions are installed across 30,000 organizations, protecting more than 1.7 million people and their computers. The company’s innovative open source approach takes the cost out of Internet management and with its try-before-you-buy approach organizations can now take control of their network within minutes and at no risk. Untangle is located in San Mateo, California.
About OPENRSM
Founded over 15 years ago, OPENRSM, Inc. is a IT services firm with offices in Odessa, MO and Cheyenne, WY. OPENRSM focuses on providing business customers with complete lifecycle IT management services as a valued partner for their customers by implementing their “IT is a Process, Not a Project” philosophy.
For more information on OPENRSM, please visit www.openrsm.com or call 816-200-2220.
* Untangle is a registered trademarks or trademarks of Untangle.com in the USA and/or other countries. OPENRSM and “IT is a Process, Not a Project” are registered trademarks of OPENRSM, Inc. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.