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Trying to reason with the Hurricane		July 2009 / issue 11
Trying to reason with the Hurricane by Lauren Simonds, Smallbusinesscomputing.com The hurricane season, which officially runs from June 1 through November 30, is upon us, and if you don't already have a disaster plan in place, it's time to get going and get it done. And don't go thinking you're off the hook just because you don't live and work in hurricane territory. "Disaster" covers a lot of ground when it comes to Acts of God, human error and sabotage. A decisive plan protects your business every day of the year. We've put together expert tips and resources to help you protect your data, the lifeblood of your business. Whether you're a sole proprietor working from a home office, whether you employ dozens of people or whether you fall somewhere in between, a proactive contingency plan is all that stands between you and disaster. Are You a Small Business Ostrich? The results of a recent survey of small businesses commissioned by Office Depot show that when it comes to disaster planning, a lot of small business owners and managers have their heads planted firmly in the sand. Consider the following findings: 71 percent of small business employees work at a company that does not have a disaster preparedness plan Two-thirds (64 percent) of those companies without a plan contend, "we don’t need it" One in five businesses (18 percent) do not back up business data at all Furthermore, 63 percent of respondents believe that they could pick up and continue business as usual within 72 hours of a natural disaster (hurricane, flood, tornado or earthquake). According to the Association of Small Business Development Centers, however, "more than one-in-four businesses will experience a significant crisis in a given year and of those businesses that experience a disaster and have no emergency plan, 43 percent never reopen." Of those that do survive, only 29 percent will still be in business in another two years. Jon Toigo, CEO and managing partner of IT consulting firm, Toigo Partners International knows something about disaster planning, having written several books on the subject and developed more than 100 contingency plans for various corporate and government clients. "Not having a plan or back-up system in place can result in a business closing for good," said Toigo. "Just as you would prepare your home and family for a potential disaster, it's important that you also ready your business. There are simple, affordable solutions that will help protect you, your employees and your business.” Office Depot offers a brochure entitled Expecting the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness Strategies for Small Business to help you develop a plan. It's available as a downloadable PDF file, and you'll find the download link here. Taking Steps If you've never thought about a disaster plan, figuring out where to begin might be a bit overwhelming. Clearly, the type of plan you devise will depend on the type, size and specific needs of a particular business, but there are general truths that apply across the board. Steve Siegel, vice president of marketing at Arsenal Digital Solutions, a Cary, N.C.-based company that provides on-demand data protection to small businesses around the world, offers five best practices to follow as you devise your disaster plan. Know your data: Inventory and prioritize data based on risk. "Your data is not created equal," said Siegal. "Make sure you protect the critical, I-can't-do-business-without-it data first." Get data out of harm's way: Establish and maintain offsite protection for your critical data before an emergency. "Keeping your data backup onsite, locally, or transferring it offsite manually simply isn’t enough," Siegal said. Leave no PDA unturned: Don’t forget about data stored on mobile devices such as notebooks and Blackberries. "Find a solution that can protect all of your critical data, regardless of its location." Practice makes perfect: Test your data-recovery capabilities regularly. "It's not just about protecting your data, it's about how well and how fast you can recover and restore it when something goes wrong." Service Level Agreements: Know your rights when it comes to the contracts you have with service providers stating the amount of time they have to get your technology infrastructure up and running again. Calling All Customers If disaster strikes, once you know your loved ones and employees are safe and protected, you'll want to make sure your customers can reach you. Tom Wilson, the executive director of small business marketing at AT&T said that routing your calls can reassure customers that you're still in business. "Plan ahead to reroute your calls," said Wilson. "Check with your provider to see if they offer a specific emergency plan. Businesses with fewer than 10 employees could consider forwarding calls to a cell phone or voicemail box."	Microsoft rushes clutch patch for 'deep' bug in Windows, third-party apps by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld.com Researchers say move may be tied to this week's Black Hat security conference The emergency patches Microsoft plans to rush out this week will fix a flaw that runs through several critical components of Windows and an unknown number of third-party applications, according to a pair of security researchers. On Tuesday, Microsoft will slap a permanent patch on a video streaming ActiveX control used by Internet Explorer (IE), addressing a vulnerability that it has known about, but not fixed, for more than a year. Two weeks ago, Microsoft issued a "kill bit" update that, rather than address the underlying problem, disabled the ActiveX control to stymie attacks that were already in progress. It's also slated a fix for Visual Studio, Microsoft's popular development platform. Although Microsoft has not spelled out exactly what it will patch with the two "out-of-band" updates -- the term for security updates released outside the company's once-a-month schedule -- earlier this month researchers pointed fingers at the Active Template Library (ATL), a code "library" used not only by Microsoft's own developers, but also by third-party software programmers to access some features within Windows. Two German researchers -- Thomas Dullien, the CEO and head of research at Zynamics GmbH, and Dennis Elser -- dug into the bug within the ActiveX control, the "msvidctl.dll" file, that streams video content. They found that it stemmed from a simple programming mistake in a function called "ATL::CComVariant::ReadFromStream." "Instead of passing a pointer to a data buffer to IStream::Read, it took the address of a (small) local variable, and passes this address as output buffer to IStream::Read, along with a length read from the stream previously," said Dullien, who goes by the moniker "Halvar Flake" when writing about security vulnerabilities. "Somebody clearly got confused," he added in a blog entry posted July 9. The result? Although Microsoft shut off current attacks against the ActiveX control, the programming mistake is present in several other Windows files -- at least five in XP, at least 13 in Vista -- including ones crucial to IE, Windows Media Player and Terminal Services. "The bug is actually much 'deeper' than most people realize," said Dullien, "[and] the kill-bit fix is clearly insufficient, as there are bound to be many other ways of triggering the issue." Additionally, said Dullien and Elser, third-party developers may have used the same flawed library to create their own applications. "The bug might have weaseled its way into third-party components, if anyone outside of Microsoft had access to the broken ATL versions," said Dullien. "If this has happened, Microsoft might have accidentally introduced security vulnerabilities into third-party products." Dullien claimed that older versions of Adobe's Flash contained the vulnerability. Click here to read the rest of the story	In this issue: • Microsoft rushes patches;'deep' problem • Trying to reason with the Hurricane • Techcess Group on SBTV.com • FREE LUNCH! • Helpful IT tips • 2009
		Disaster Planning Luncheon When: August 21, 2009 - Friday 11:30 a.m - 1:30 p.m Where: River Oaks Country Club HURRY!! SPACE IS LIMITED
	Helpful IT tips 1) Have someone monitor your servers; crashes are recurrent and can paralyze your office setting for hours at a time 2) Implementing proactive IT management versus reactive management can help catch and eliminate various threats before they have a chance to implicate your IT environment 3) KNOW your IT provider; Many companies imply that their services are top of line with a helpdesk in your area and paint a picture perfect portrait and in the end, you the customer is the one who loses. Check out your provider, visit their facility and meet their helpdesk. You will be surprised as to how many actually are telling the truth. 4) Frequently backup your data; At a minimum it should be done daily 5) If it sounds too good to be true, it might just be. You may be getting a great price initially, but what are you really getting into? Check your IT provider’s references to make sure you make the best decision for your business' future, not just your pocket book	Techcess Group on SBTV.com Click logo above to view video feature Virtual Technology A virtual technology infrastructure is now within the reach of more small and mid-sized firms by pooling common tech resources. More firms like Techcess offer hosting solutions for small and mid-sized firms. For example, the Houston based company invested a quarter of million dollars at a hosted data facility and provides a variety of services to small businesses to give them the same processing options as their larger competitors.
	Happy Birthday Techcess Group! 2009 marks the 5th year anniversary of Techcess Group being in business.
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Researchers say move may be tied to this week's Black Hat security conference