Latest Malware and Preventative Steps

We have noticed a recent increase in malware-related calls from our clients. It’s easy to click on a link or open an email that can infect your computer since malware creators are continually inventing new and convincing ways to get your attention. The following instances of malware are the ones we’ve seen most frequently as of late:

• USPS scam email – This one has been around for a few years and keeps resurfacing with different subjects. It may say something about a tracking number, notification, or delivery failure then tell you to click on a link. Do not click on the link!
• UPS scam email – This is another one that has been around. The subject may say your package is available for pickup or mention a delivery failure.
• LogMeIn scam email – We actually received this one ourselves (see screenshot below). Again, it asks you to click on a link. Don’t do it! It will make your computer vulnerable to infection.

 

• FBI Moneypak Ransomware – Several of our clients have encountered this recently after clicking on internet ads/popups. This “ransomware” will lock up your screen with an FBI logo and ask for money. (This Forbes article has further info: http://onforb.es/113tVG0)

To avoid malware, take these steps BEFORE you click:

• Think. Have you ever received an email like this before? Do you know the sender? In the case of the USPS scam, have you actually shipped anything recently?
• Hover over the link. If you hover over the link, you can see the address it will take you to. For an example, see the screenshot of the LogMeIn email below. When you hover over the link that claims to be new terms and conditions, you can see it will definitely not be taking you to the LogMeIn site. Instead, it will take you to a zip file that will then infect your computer.
• And if you’re still not sure…Google! If you’re still having a hard time discerning if an email or site is harmful, a quick Google search will usually tell you the answer. For example, if you Google “USPS email,” on the first page of search results you will see several articles warning against fake USPS emails.

You may be reading this and thinking, “I don’t have time for all this!” These quick checks will soon become second nature to you when encountering suspicious content and it will be become easier to separate the scams from the rest. Just think of how much time you will lose if your computer does become infected. It is worth it to take these precautions.

Our Baroan Managed Services can include Kaspersky Antivirus and Malwarebytes Antimalware. Contact us for further information.

Remove duplicates in Outlook

Spending too much time deleting duplicate emails, contacts, or calendar items? Clean up your Outlook with this free tool: ODIR by Vaita.

"Free, Fast and easy tool for removing duplicate items from Outlook folders: With ODIR it's a snap to clean your Outlook folders by removing all duplicates. ODIR removes duplicates from Contacts; Calendar; Tasks; Notes and Email folders."

Turn Off Address Bar Search in Internet Explorer

Anybody else have an issue with Internet Explorer 9 when you type in something short like "sharepoint" in the address bar, and it searches for that term instead of taking you to your Sharepoint server? This new and wonderful “FEATURE” of Microsoft’s can be disabled as per this Microsoft Knowledge Base article.

There are 3 different methods you can use to disable the address bar search in IE 9:

Method 1: Using Tools menu in Internet Explorer

1. Click Internet Options
2. Click the Advanced tab 
3. Check the option Go to an intranet site for a single word entry in the Address bar.

Method 2: Using Group Policy

Local or Domain Administrators can configure this setting by using Group Policy.

1. Click Start > Run 
2. Type gpedit.msc, and then click OK.
3. Expand User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer.
4. Then expand Internet Settings > Advanced Settings > Browsing 
5. Set Go to an intranet site for a single word entry in the Address bar according to your desired settings. 

You have to update policies or restart the computer to apply changes.

Method 3: Using registry key

Important: This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. We recommend using one of the above methods if possible.

Outlook 2010 – “Contacting Server”

Problem

When receiving emails with embedded links to files on the internet, Outlook downloads the images for display. When replying to messages, if they have not been fully downloaded, Outlook hangs while it retrieves the file with a dialog “Contacting Server”

Resolution

To prevent this issue, the solution is to not download the images in Outlook automatically. This prevents this issue for occurring.

Process

1. Open Outlook

2. Click on “File” in the top left corner of the Outlook window

3. Click on “Options”

4. Click on “Trust Center”

5. Click on “Trust Center Settings…”

6. Click on “Automatic Download”

7. Check all of the boxes on the right except for “Warn me before downloading content when editing, forwarding, or replying to e-mail”

8. Click “OK”

9. Click “OK”

Results

Emails now offer an option to download images like this:

Emails show an icon for undownloaded images like this:

Replies to emails look like this with images replaced with blanks:

If you choose to download the pictures, you can still end up with the same issue where you are waiting on the images, but at that point you will know why this is happening.

Migrating to Office 365: Important Things to Consider

We're proud to bring you another President Post from Guy Baroan on the StorageCraft Blog!



In "Migrating to Office 365: Important Things to Consider," Guy covers the main benefits of moving to Office 365: savings, availability, and a big one that gets overlooked - the fact that the necessary changes needed for the migration will raise the company's security and functionality to the proper level.

Baroan Technologies' many migrations have made us experts on the many things you’ll have to take into account if you’re considering making the move to Office 365, and Guy shares that knowledge in his post.


See all of our posts on the StorageCraft Blog here.

Can I do real work from my iPad? Part 2: Software

The Baroan Blog is excited to bring you a two part guest post from Casey Morgan of StorageCraft. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact us.

In Part 1 of "Can I do real work from my iPad?" we talked about what type of hardware can enhance your ability to use your iPad for business.

As I mentioned last time, a lot of office work consists of writing documents in Microsoft Word or creating Excel spreadsheets. There are a few different apps you can download for the iPad, both free and paid, that allow you to create these different files.

Let’s take a look, starting with the free stuff.

Free Options

Microsoft SkyDrive app for iPad

(available free in the app store)

You can view anything you’ve saved in SkyDrive but you can’t make edits, create anything new, or even print.

Pros:

• View anything saved to SkyDrive
• Anything previously synced can be viewed offline

Cons:

• No editing
• Can’t create documents, spreadsheets, or presentations
• Can’t print
• Useless for anything but reading

What’s the point? Don’t waste your time with this app.

Microsoft SkyDrive Online

If you open a browser on your iPad and head to Skydrive.com, you can do a lot more with SkyDrive and the Office web apps.

Pros:

• Open, edit, and save Word, Excel, and OneNote documents as well as PowerPoint presentations, using Microsoft Office web apps
• Save documents in the cloud, accessible anywhere with Internet access
• Remotely access documents on your other computers (as long as they’re turned on) 

Cons:

• Can’t use offline
• Can’t copy and paste without a Bluetooth keyboard
• Slower than full Office programs

The online apps work pretty well on the iPad but things like auto-correct and spell check are much slower. You also can’t copy and paste without using keyboard shortcuts, which can be annoying if you need to move text around but don’t have a keyboard. Remotely accessing documents is way awesome, but you still can’t print anything.

Google Drive App for iPad

(free in app store)

 

Google’s file share service allows you to create and edit many different types of documents on and offline.

 Pros

• Create and edit documents and spreadsheets (including Word and Excel formats)
• Edit documents and spreadsheets offline
• Create new documents and spreadsheets offline
• Save documents in the cloud, accessible anywhere with Internet access
• Copy and paste from anywhere without a keyboard

Cons

• Fewer tools than Word and Excel web apps
• Can’t create presentations
• Can’t print
• Documents are saved in Google Docs format
• Can’t download work in MS Office formats from the app but you can from the online version at drive.google.com

The Google Drive app lets you edit many types of documents; not just Word and Excel. You can copy and paste anything you wish, and it also works offline. The files you make are saved in Google Docs format but you have the option to download them as Word documents using the Google Drive web app when you get to a proper computer with an internet connection.

Paid Options

There are a couple of different paid and free office suites, but let’s focus on my favorite:

Quick Office HD for iPad

($19.99 in the app store)

Pros

• Create, edit, and view presentations, spreadsheets, or documents—even offline
• Save as Word, Excel, or Powerpoint files
• Sync with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and more, making files accessible anywhere.
• Print from iPad

Cons

• Costs twenty bucks
• Doesn’t sync with SkyDrive

There are free or cheaper office suites, but the others don’t allow you to print and offer limited functionality. The main advantages to using Quick Office HD are the ability to create presentations and the fact that this is the only option we’ve looked at that allows you to print from your iPad. For me, it was worth the cost, but it might not be for you when so many free options are available.

What I recommend to get the job done

To me, the clear free option is Google Drive. You can create and edit documents and spreadsheets on and offline that can be saved to your Google Drive and later be changed into MS Office and other formats so you can work on them from anywhere and in any format you want.

If you need to print a document from your iPad, or want to make a presentation, you’ll have to get Quick Office HD. From there you can print things saved to Google Drive or whatever compatible service you use. But for twenty bucks it’s probably better to wait until you can use a real computer.

What I learned

There’s nothing that works perfectly when it comes to doing real work on your iPad. At this point, we’re trying to recreate the experience of a laptop on a smaller, touch-screen enabled device, but we’re in a transitional phase and the technology just isn’t there yet (not for a reasonable price, at least). Your best option for now is to buy a laptop with a touchscreen or a convertible computer, or wait until tablets are capable of operating as well as an actual laptop or desktop.

If tablets were enough like laptops, people wouldn’t buy both and that means fewer dollars in the pockets of hardware manufacturers (not that we feel bad for them). Tablets were not built with doing real work in mind so we can’t really expect them to do everything we demand, yet.

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Casey Morgan is the Marketing Content Specialist at StorageCraft Technology Corporation. Avid blogger and technology enthusiast, Casey holds an English degree from the University of Utah. As an ardent reader, he will only set down a book for two things: going snowboarding or playing with puppies.

Can I do real work from my iPad? Part 1: Hardware

The Baroan Blog is excited to bring you a two part guest post from Casey Morgan of StorageCraft. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact us.

The quick answer is “sort of.” Let’s explore what I mean.

First, I’ll lay out the scenario that required me to work from my iPad. The other week, my computer broke and for whatever reason our IT guys couldn’t find the problem. Sometimes you just can’t find the issue or it takes a long time to fix. It happens.

While my computer was broken, I had to work using a pen, paper, and my iPad until mine was fixed. Of course, my computer is Windows-based and iPads, of course, run iOS. Many of the issues I encountered came because the Apple Reich doesn’t play well with others.

In order to do real work, I found my iPad extremely limiting, even once I got some tools to make it a little better. The majority of them came from the lack of a Microsoft Office app, which for some reason Apple and Microsoft won’t work together to produce. But for now we’ll focus on the lack of peripheral hardware.

 

The Keyboard Challenge

The first challenge was using the iPad’s onscreen keyboard. I’m a writer, so my job largely consists of writing, editing, and manipulating text using Microsoft Word or Excel. The onscreen keyboard is fine for sending a short email, but just doesn’t cut it for proper word processing. Luckily iPad is Bluetooth capable and for $100 you can get an awesome and highly-rated Logitech Bluetooth keyboard cover that makes word processing much better and also keeps your screen protected. Problem one solved.

 

The Mouse Challenge

Another thing you need to get real work done is a mouse. Touchscreen technology has come a long way, but to quickly and effectively click boxes in a spreadsheet or to edit, cut, and paste pieces of text, you really need a mouse. Unfortunately, with the iPad, you can’t currently use a mouse through Apple-supported methods, which is sad. Other tablets have USB ports that you can easily use to plug in a mouse. Way to go, Apple.

Those are the solutions on the hardware end - good, not great. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, which will cover downloadable software that can help you get the job done on your iPad.

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Casey Morgan is the Marketing Content Specialist at StorageCraft Technology Corporation. Avid blogger and technology enthusiast, Casey holds an English degree from the University of Utah. As an ardent reader, he will only set down a book for two things: going snowboarding or playing with puppies.