Desktop Virtualization is starting to gain the attention of more and more businesses with its promise of simplifying IT management, strengthening IT security, and ultimately gaining new efficiencies and cost savings in the business. Read on to find out how.

There is growing interest in Desktop Virtualization with its promise of improved manageability, security and efficiency for the business. Simply put, Desktop Virtualization is new technology that separates the system software such as the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware.

Desktop virtualization allows the hardware, like a laptop or a server, to run multiple operating systems. Imagine having your Mac running Microsoft Windows and Office, or your Dell running OS X and GarageBand for example. To stretch the concept even further, operating systems and applications can be housed on remote machines – such as a server farm in Texas – which you access via the web. The applications are not resident on your computer at all.

Desktop virtualization shifts the burden of managing the system software from you or your in-house IT teams to someone else—people who can do a better job managing and updating your Windows and Office software than you can. If you have a fairly large organization managing a large number of machines, centralizing support allows the organization to gain from economies of scale—ie less people to manage more machines at less cost. Leveraging the computing power of server farms with faster machines also allows employees to get more value out of aging desktops and laptops.

Enabling anytime, anywhere access to applications and data, Desktop Virtualization connects your employees to the tools they need no matter where they are. As organizations support more and more remote employees, using desktop virtualization technology gives them access to their Windows desktop anywhere in the world, at any time, on any device.

Are you supporting remote workers or is your hardware slowing down your employees? Let's talk about Desktop Virtualization and how you can try it for your organization today.

First let me say, Gesture Based Computing (GBC) is fun. From my first experience in my childhood with the Nintendo Power Glove, I have always been interested in GBC. As an owner of an Xbox Kinect for the past 15 months I have a lot of first-hand experience. If you are not familiar the Kinect is an accessory for the Xbox video game console that allows interaction with the system without a controller. The interaction with the console can be performed using voice or gestures. Jumping, ducking, leaning moving is all picked up by cameras and is then translated into movement in the game. While playing golf, tennis, river rafting, etc… is fun; is this technology viable for the productive people? I believe it is, and there is probably a Minority Report style computer in the future for all of us that will be useful for more than just games.

When the Kinect was released in November 2010 there were a lot of individuals working to use the Kinect with their PCs. While a lot of “proof of concept” programs were created, most of them fell under the realm of novelty. Some of the more interesting ones have been acknowledged by Microsoft on this page. On February 1st Microsoft is releasing the Kinect for Windows. While I cannot imagine all of the possible uses, video chat, creating digital artwork, mechanical simulation, and use as an educational utility are in progress.

While I have only written about Kinect, there are others out there. Some are video game systems: PlayStation Move, Nintendo Wii and some are development projects that are in the works. Windows has been between 85-90% of the computer market for many years, it’s a good bet that this technology will be developed for broad usage on Windows first.

So back to the real question, is it useful? I can’t imagine entering data into an Excel spreadsheet, or recording transactions into QuickBooks using only gestures. But ultimately it will depend on the software and interfaces created for GBC. In the coming years it will be interesting to see how this technology progresses.

The big difference between Android and the iOS is the fact that, on an Android device, you can play Flash videos. There are times however when this seeming advantage can be a disadvantage as Flash (such as Flash ads) can slow down your browsing experience or even crash your browser. There is a solution.

You can turn off Flash if you choose to. Simply go to your Browser's Settings by pressing on the Menu/Options button, then go to Advanced and change 'Enable plug-ins' setting from "Always on" to "On demand." Flash applications will now appear as an arrow that you must touch to start.

There are times when you may want to capture what is currently being shown on your iPad's screen. That’s easy to do on an iPad.

Simply press the Home button and then the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously. When you hear a click, the screenshot has been taken. You can then go to the photos gallery to see all of your captured screenshots.

Whether it’s a few PCs or hundreds on your network, there’s one thing that can separate your system from being compromised: a great password.

Why? Hackers want access to anything and everything. If they can guess your user name and password, you might as well have given them your wallet and the keys to your building. Here are some tips on creating a great password.

1) Don’t Be Complacent!

Hackers are a devious bunch and will stop at nothing to get into your network and files. They use three different methods to get to you: brute force, dictionary attacks, and social engineering. Brute force is the most time-consuming method. Basically, it involves a program that tries every combination of letters, numbers, and keyboard characters to guess your password. It starts with trying every character, and then tries two-character combinations, and so on. The longer the password is, the exponentially more difficult it becomes to crack. Another method of attack is through the use of custom dictionaries. These dictionaries are filled with words and names, but also number and letter combinations, such as 11111 and abc123. Simple passwords such as “duke” or “ilovemydog” can easily be guessed. The third and most effective method of attack is social engineering. This involves someone with criminal intent soliciting a password directly from a user. Many people divulge their passwords to co-workers and strangers without even realizing it.

2) Know What Makes a Bad Password

• Don’t use only letters or only numbers.
• Don’t use names of spouses, children, girlfriends/boyfriends or pets.
• Don’t use phone numbers, Social Security numbers or birthdates.
• Don’t use the same word as your log-in, or any variation of it.
• Don’t use any word that can be found in the dictionary — even foreign words.
• Don’t use passwords with double letters or numbers.

Some of the worst passwords are: password, drowssap, admin, 123456, and the name of your company or department. Finally, never leave it blank. That’s a surefire way to let the bad guys into your system.

3) Get Better at Creating Good Passwords

A good password is one that is easy to remember but difficult to guess. That sounds like a paradox, but it’s really not.

There are a couple of different ways to create difficult-to-crack passwords. One is substituting letters with characters and numbers. To make it easier on yourself, try to use numbers and characters that resemble the letters they are replacing.

Another method is to use the first letters of the words in a favorite line of poetry or a verse of song. “Hail, hail the lucky ones, I refer to those in love” becomes “H,hTL0,IR2t1L.”

The best passwords are at least eight characters in length and use a combination of numbers, keyboard characters and upper- and lower-case letters. The longer your password is, the longer it will take someone (or more likely, some program) to crack it.

4) Change Your Password Often

This one is pretty-much self-explanatory. A stale password is a violated password. Changing the password every 30 days is ideal, but not always practical. I usually recommend at least a 60 day schedule but I would advise you not to go more than 90 days.

For those of you using Google Mail or Gmail, chances are you're familiar with the "stars" feature, which serves as a visual reminder to follow up on certain messages or mark their importance. You may not know, though, that you can use different types of stars. To do so, click on the Gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen, click Mail Settings, and on the General tab look for the Stars section.

You will see many different types of stars that you can cycle through. Drag the stars between the lists that you want to use and in the order you prefer. Another neat trick is to use the name of the star to filter messages. Simply hover over the star to learn its name (i.e., "red-bang"), then use the "has" prefix to filter by star name. For example, typing "has:red-bang" in your search box will show all messages with that star name.

You may have heard about recent online protests of pending federal legislation with regard to the fight against piracy and intellectual property theft. Google recently blacked out the logo on their home page and Wikipedia completely took their site offline for twenty-four hours. These actions were performed in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA is a bill that is written with the purpose of targeting foreign websites that traffic in copyrighted material without compensating the owners of the copyright.

Supporters of the anti-piracy legislation, which includes the entertainment industry, say that operators of sites that distribute copyrighted material without compensation to the copyright holder is a threat to the economy and causes the loss of jobs here in the United States. If a foreign site is suspected of infringing, the law requires that a judge determine if the site should be blocked and that any company sever ties with that site; such as search engines not linking any search results to that site. Another method of blocking access to the site would require internet service providers to change DNS settings to prevent name resolution to the IP addresses of the infringing site.

Despite the bill’s seemingly good intentions, opponents of the legislation point out the vagueness of what would be considered infringement. Even though the bill specifies foreign sites, it could also affect domestic sites as well. A technical problem with the law is the requirement that internet service providers change the configuration of their domain name servers (DNS) to block access to sites accused of infringing on copyrighted material. DNS is the foundation of the internet and any changes can affect the security and stability of the internet.

After much uproar, the bill has been pulled for now. But you can expect the bill to come back again in another form. Hopefully it will be changed to balance the concerns of both the content creators and consumers.

Did you know you can have the activity feeds/social stream or live updates from your favorite social network such as Facebook or LinkedIn appear in the latest version of Windows Live Messenger? Simply sign in to your Live Messenger account, select Add/Manager Services at the bottom right area of the application, and then choose a service you wish to integrate to (i.e., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn).

The application will ask you to sign in to the chosen service and give permission to integrate. After you have given permission, you will see updates from and be able to post to that social network in Live Messenger.

Data Network Group’s number one core value is SERVICE. Throughout my decade with DNG, excellent customer service has been something we discuss and work on literally every day. With the beginning of 2012, DNG has made several changes to continue to improve our service to each of our clients:

1. Megan has joined DNG as our full-time Service Desk Coordinator. Megan’s primary responsibility is to be primary point of contact for all client requests and to make sure issues are responded to and resolved as quickly as possible. Megan will also be following up on issues to make sure we are providing excellent service. Megan brings a lot of experience in our field, having worked most recently in a similar role for an IT consulting outfit in the mountains of Colorado.
2. We now employ 10 full-time support engineers, 6 on our internal NOC (Network Operations Center) team and 4 on our field service team. Nathan and Julian are the latest additions to our internal team, while Joe and Glenn joined our field team last year. All in all, I believe this is the best support team DNG has assembled in my time with DNG.
3. Michael, whom most everyone knows from his long tenure at DNG, has moved into an account manager position to help provide his clients with direct technology planning, provisioning, and service needs.
4. Quentin has moved from our NOC team to a full time System Administrator role, focused on keeping all client endpoints and networks updated, patched, monitored, backed up, and generally humming as smoothly as possible.
5. Similarly, Rob has been promoted to the role of “Escalation Engineer,” where he will provide an internal escalation point for more challenging issues and help us resolve them more quickly.
6. Lastly, I’ve moved into a Director of Service position, where I have begun managing all our internal support staff. My number one goal is to continue to train and motivate our internal support team as well as to improve our processes in order to deliver the best technology and customer service possible in 2012!

Headaches using printers usually don't have anything to do with hacking, but now they do. Recent research done by experts from Columbia University have discovered a flaw in many printer systems that are connected to the Internet – a flaw that allows easy entry by hackers into the networks printers serve.

When it comes to printers, we usually think about ink, paper jams and minor irritations – but certainly NOT getting hacked. But recent research suggests that printers can be used by hackers to infiltrate computer systems.

According to researchers at Columbia University, printers that are connected to the are the weakest (and almost always unnoticed) link that can compromise an otherwise secure system. Details are emerging, as the research was done under government and corporate grants. The Federal Bureau of Investigation got the first look at the research results, followed by people from Hewlett-Packard. What is clear is that this new research reveals that printers CAN be used by hackers or online thieves not only to infiltrate networks, but also to steal personal information and even identities.

The security flaw involves the printer software used to run "embedded systems" which enables both advanced functions and connects the printer directly the Internet. Alarmingly, researchers were able to hack into a printer, and give it instructions to continuously heat up the part of the device that dried the ink after it’s applied to the paper. The resulting heat caused the paper to turn brown and smoke.

The implications of this type of security flaw are concerning, but can be addressed properly and promptly with the right planning. HP is looking into the study for their own line of printers and business owners should also take precautionary steps to protect already installed devices on their networks.

If you want to know more about how you can ensure that your systems are secure, give us a call so we can sit down with you and discuss a security blueprint that meets your specific needs.