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Managed IT Services

Ransomware Protection Advice

4th March 2019 By Admin

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We have had many enquiries about Ransomware from businesses with Ransomware Protection Advice.

What can they do to reduce the chances of them being infected or losing data.

Unfortunately enquires from businesses asking for help in data recovery subsequently after being hit with ransomware

Prevention is better than cure as with Ransomware, the cure is often extortion or a money scam

Paying protection money to a Ransomware writer will likely only lead to a larger Ransom or further extortion

 


What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a new type of virus technology with is prolific across the internet.

It has become so common place that more customers are being affected by this type of virus than any other type of virus at this time

It is usually spread through email SPAM as an attachment or clickable link within an email

Ransomware relies on 2 specific tactics to infect your computer

· Delivery of virus / mechanism through spam email

· Activation of virus is through human error or lack of judgement

Below is some valueable information on Ransomware Protection Advice


I have Anti-Virus software so I am protected

Ransomware Protection Advice
Ransomware Protection Advice

WRONG

Unfortunately, you could never be more wrong.

In an ideal world your anti-virus software would detect and stop every virus and the whole topic of viruses and ransomware would become a topic you would read about in history books.

This ideal scenario doesn’t exist in the present time, and probably won’t so far as money can be made by extorting businesses and individuals.

Why isn’t it being detected by my Anti-Virus software?

A recent study by a global anti-virus software manufacturer Sophos found that there were around 20,000 different variants of Ransomware being created every day. Ransomware Protection Advice


How Can I Get Infected?

Ransomware Protection Advice
Ransomware Protection Advice

Ransomware Viruses are man-made.

Ransomware viruses are usually propagated through email and activated through user intervention.

i.e. lack of human judgement, clicking on an email link or opening an attachment

Once you have downloaded the infected file, or clicked on the ‘dodgy link’ your computer is infected

Once your computer is infected, the virus will strart trawling through all of your files and encrypting them.

The Ransomware virus will also start trawling through all the files you have access to on your network

Ransomware Protection Advice


Ransomware Protection Advice
Ransomware Protection Advice

Ransomware Protection – What can I do to reduce the Risk of Ransomware

There is no single silver bullet here, and to reduce your risk of exposure to Ransomware there are number of steps you can do

 

Backup Often

Backup often and keep numerous previous backups or file versions

Ransomware will hijack your files and turn them into a format which you will no longer able to read without paying a ransom.

A business which has no data, can’t operate and will go into liquidation

By having a wide choice of backups to restore from reduces your risk of data loss exponentially

 

Offline Backups

Managed IT Systems
Managed IT Systems

Try to use offline backups types, i.e. ones that once you have backed up your data are physically removed from the network.

Try not to use hard drives and NAS Drives as your primary backup medium.

Ransomware spreads by infecting and copying itself to all network drives and shares.

This means that it will not only infect your data, it could also infect and render your backups useless.

Hard Drive backups or NAS Drive Backups should be considered a poor man’s backup.  Due to their physical constraints are in effect just a hard drive on the network, prime to be infected by any slightly capable virus

 

Anti-Virus software with inbuilt Ransomware Protection

Ensure your Anti-Virus software has Ransomware Protection inbuilt

Just Anti-Virus software nowadays simply isnt sufficient for the modern Cyber Security threats

Yes, adding Ransomware protection to your Anti-Virus Subscription will cost you a little bit more. But the alternative could be days or weeks of IT Downtime whilts your IT Team recovers your business

 

Staff Education

Staff education will go along way in preventing a Ransomware attack.

IT Systems and IT Security can only do so much.

If you have staff that are persisent or often take risks with your IT Systems, a Ransonware attached is probably only just round the corner.

Otherwise a Data Breach!

Educate Staff to report to their IT Team

  • Anomalous issues with their Computers or Laptops
  • If they have shared their passwords with someone else
  • Access their Computer Systems from home
  • Accidently clicked on an Email Attachment they were unsure about
  • Have installed unsanctioned applications
  • Have illegal or pirated software installed

Staff who help the business protect IT Systems are a bigger asset than those who take a cavalier attitude to IT Security


Patch often and early

You should ensure that all computers, laptops, tablets and servers are patched early and often.

When considering patching, the immediate thought processes is Microsoft Windows.

Although you should also look at other software which will need patching, i.e. Application Servers, Adobe Reader, Flash, JAVA, Zip programs, etc. etc.

One of the most frequent comments from business owners we hear is they don’t want their I.T Systems patched

  • Don’t want the disruption
  • Can’t afford the downtime
  • Can’t afford a Server reboot
  • Perhaps at some point in the past an update caused a problem.

Whilst I appreciate that patching can be a very time consuming and disruptive thing to do and carries a risk, the worst thing you can do is not patch or reboot once in a while.


Managed IT Systems

The time consuming element of Patching can by reduced to almost zero by your I.T Support company automating patching of all I.T Systems.

Automate Server reboots to a time of the day or week when disruption is minimised.

An IT Proactive Monitoring Service will identify IT Systems that are at risks and holes in the IT Cyber Security

If you don’t have a Managed IT Services Contract or an Proactively Monitored or Automated patching system, please contact us for advice.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: I.T Installation Services Dorset, I.T Installation Services Hampshire, I.T Installation Services Surrey, I.T Installation Services Sussex, I.T Installation Services Wiltshire, IT Maintenance Contracts, IT Support Contracts, Managed IT Services, Managed IT Systems, Proactive Monitoring

Hard Disk – Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD

7th January 2019 By Admin

Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD

The Hard Drive inside a computer is the device that hold all the files and data that make your operating system run, as well as holding all of your personal documents, photos, music, videos and other files. Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD.

They commonly look like a solid rectangular lump of metal from the outside, but inside of the average Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is a complex setup of magnets, spinning disks and an extremely precise actuator arm and head. Hard Disk Comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

The traditional Hard Disk works by using one or more fast spinning (typically between 5400 and 10,000 rpm) magnetically coated platters.

A head on the end of an actuator arm skims above these platters by a miniscule amount. Typically between 3 and 100 nanometres, or a distance 800 times smaller than the width of the average human hair.

The head reads and changes the polarity of blocks on the magnetic coating in order to store data in tracks across the disk as it spins. The time it takes for the head to move to the correct track on the disk to read or write is known as seek time, and in the common desktop Hard Disk, will take around 9ms.

 

Everything is Stored Magnetically

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

Because everything is done magnetically, the data is still stored even after power is taken away from the drive.

 

Unfortunately, due to the precise and delicate nature of standard Hard Disk Drives, they are all prone to failure at some point and it is inevitable.

 

Precisely when a drive is going to fail is unpredictable and with storage sizes of the drives being so large (Upwards of 8TB in some cases), often a lot of data can be lost within the blink of an eye.

Backing up data is always a good idea, even if the drive is very new, and can save a lot of frustration and anger when it does stop working.

 

Despite this however, traditional hard disks are still used in many computers from new as they offer a cheap method of storage. A 500GB drive can be purchased for as little as £35 and most low-end consumer machines will use this type of drive, though they are slowly being phased out in preference of SSD’s.

 

Drives with this sort of storage capacity are often shipped inside of newly bought mid-range computers, and with higher end computers commonly having 1TB and up sized drives.

 

Solid State Drives

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

Solid State Drives (SSD) are becoming the normal storage type found in mid-range machines and are widely consider to be a better option than a traditional hard disk.

Advantages of Solid State Drives include no moving parts, completely silent operation, fast performance, cooler operation and better durability.

Solid state drives work in a similar way to a USB memory stick or the inbuilt storage in your mobile phone, where the data is stored on a chip as opposed to a spinning disk.

Because there are no moving parts to wait for, the operation speed of a Solid State Drive is often extremely quick when compared to its Hard Disk predecessor and are a worthwhile upgrade to any machine that will provide a noticeable speed increase.

 

 

Solid State Drive Disadvantages

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

Solid State Drives do have their downsides however, one of these is that should a Solid State drive fail, then it will normally fail suddenly with no prior warning like a traditional hard disk.

A traditional hard disk drive often may continue to work long enough after warning of a failure for you to back up any data before it fails completely. Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD

Solid State drives are a little more expensive per GB of storage, the extra cost is well justified.

If you buy a 500GB Solid State Drive, currently you would be looking at spending around £50 as opposed to £40 for the traditional hard disk counterpart. The performance difference between the two drives would be immediately noticeable, with the computer starting up far faster, applications loading quicker and files opening in an instant. Hard Disk Legacy vs Hybrid vs. SSD

 

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

Hybrid Drives

Hybrid Drives, or SSHD’s are also an option, though the market and choice for them is small.

They are designed to introduce some of the speed advantages of a Solid State Drive with the capacity advantages of a traditional Hard Disk Drive.

An SSHD will typically have around 8GB of SSD storage in it which it uses to intelligently cache the most commonly used and accessed files on the system. Hard Disk Comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

In most cases this will be the operating system boot files, meaning that the computer will start up faster, but may not load programs, games or files any quicker than a normal Hard Disk Hard Disk Legacy vs Hybrid vs. SSD.

Hybrid drives are largely redundant now, as the cost of SSDs is considerably less than when the Hybrid Drives were first released to fill a gap in the market.

 

NVMe SSD Drives

Finally, the most recent introduction to the storage market is NVMe SSD drives.

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

This is a step up again from the usual SATA connection SSD drives. Whilst a normal SATA SSD is no slouch, NVMe SSDs take the performance a step further, with both seek time and read/write speeds being considerably quicker.

This type of SSD looks a bit more like a RAM stick than a drive shaped like you might be used to. This is because it connects via an M.2 connector directly onto the motherboard, rather than by two cables and being held in a bay on the other side of the case.

If you are looking at upgrading to an NVMe SSD, it would first be worth checking if your motherboard not only has an M.2 slot, but also that it is NVMe compatible.

Alternately, you can purchase NVMe PCIe cards that will use an empty PCIe slot on the motherboard to adapt into an NVMe storage slot.

As this technology is relatively new and because of its performance advantages over everything else, it is the most pricey option available, and should probably only really be considered if you plan on using your PC for a heavily intensive workload where there can be no compromise.

 

 

Performance Comparison

Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD

 

 

IT Installation Services | Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire
Hard Disk comparison - Legacy vs. Hybrid vs. SSD | IT Support Southampton | IT Support Hampshire

Hard Drives in RAID Arrays

 

Hard drives, Hybrids and SSD can be used in RAID Arrays

Review our Article on RAID Arrays in Server Hardware

 

 

 

 

Century IT Services are based in Totton, Southampton. Hampshire and can help you with the installation or on going IT support of your computer, server and network.

We offer a broad range of IT Services covering, internet, email, anti-spam, anti-virus solutions, we are experts in virtually anything Microsoft Server based and have extensive troubleshooting skills. Hard Disk - Legacy vs Hybrid vs SSD.

If you have an ever growing list of I.T niggles or need a server, or network installed, you have come to the right place. You can contact us on Tel. 023 80 070101 or email us at sales@century-it.co.uk for a confidential, no obligation discussion of your requirements

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Hard Disk Legacy vs Hybrid vs. SSD, IT Maintenance Contracts Dorset, IT Maintenance Contracts Hampshire, IT Maintenance Contracts Surrey, IT Maintenance Contracts Sussex, IT Maintenance Contracts Wiltshire, Managed IT Services, Managed IT Services Dorset, Managed IT Services Hampshire, Managed IT Services Surrey, Managed IT Services Sussex, Managed IT Services Wiltshire, Proactive IT Monitoring, Proactive IT Monitoring Dorset, Proactive IT Monitoring Hampshire, Proactive IT Monitoring Wiltshire, SSD Drives in RAID Arrays

USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

7th August 2018 By Admin

Overview

USB1.0 vs. USB2.0 Performance
USB1.0 vs. USB2.0 Performance

Most computers or laptops nowadays usually have a selection of USB ports. USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

You can plug external devices into to extend the functionality of your computer system or laptop.

i.e. external hard disks, external tape drives, digital cameras, memory card readers, USB memory sticks etc.

Modern computers and laptops usually come with USB 2.0 ports as standard

Whilst much older computers only have the older technology USB 1.0

USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

 

USB1.0 vs. USB2.0 Performance

As with all technology, advances have been made over the years to improve speed and performance of USB Ports on Computers and Laptops.

To maintain backward compatibility, newer types of USB Ports come with the same type of connector as the older USB Ports, so older USB devices can still connect and operate.

The main difference between USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 is the performance or throughput;

The USB 2.0 ports are much faster than the earlier USB 1.0. Ports. USB 2.0 has an maximum throughput of around 480 mps (megabits per second)

Whilst USB 1.0 only has an average throughput of 12 mbps. That makes USB 2.0 as much as 40 times as quick as the older USB 1.0 standard

This means that if it takes around 40 minutes to transfer some files to a USB 1.0 device, using USB 2.0 it could potentially take only 1 minute. USB1.0 vs USB2.0 Performance

IT Support Contract

Are you looking for a fixed cost IT Support Contract?

We offer a range of IT Support Services including

Reactive Break-Fix IT Support Contracts

IT Proactive Monitoring

Full Managed IT Support Contracts.

Contact Us for a no obligation and compeitive quote.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: I.T Installation Services Dorset, I.T Installation Services Hampshire, I.T Installation Services Surrey, I.T Installation Services Sussex, I.T Installation Services Wiltshire, I.T Support Dorset, I.T Support Hampshire, I.T Support Southampton, I.T Support Surrey, I.T Support Sussex, I.T Support Wiltshire, IT Maintenance Contracts, IT Maintenance Contracts Dorset, IT Maintenance Contracts Hampshire, IT Maintenance Contracts Surrey, IT Maintenance Contracts Sussex, IT Support Contracts, Managed IT Services

Minstead Training Project IT Modernisation

11th October 2009 By Paul Marsh

 

Southampton based Century IT Services have recently helped The Minstead Training Project charity with a computer network installation and modernisation program which was success fully completed a few weeks ago

The computer network project involved Century IT Services getting involved at the very beginning to understand Minstead’s needs and provide advice on IT systems

Paul Marsh of Century IT Services says “we were more than happy to help out after being approached by The Minstead Training Project.

We initially helped by providing IT Consultancy Services, specifying a Computer System that would meet Minstead Training Project’s needs and importantly meeting modern legislation

Mintead Training Project Charity | IT Modernisation
Rick Burt, Martin Lenaerts, Darren Robertson, Roy Baker, Paul Marsh

 

This included modernising and improving existing systems whilst also employing new systems, software and securities measures as well as a secure remote and mobile working solution.

As with any IT project, it was important that the modernisation was completed on time and to budget with minimal disruption to day to day operations as Minstead’s operations are a 24/7, 365 days a year service.”

 

“We are very satisfied with our IT System provided by Century IT Services and it actually goes beyond meeting our original
requirements, is easy to administer and having received excellent training, again provided by Century IT Services. The benefits of the new system are being utilised by staff and students already – a great result!”
Roy Baker, Finance Director at Minstead

 

The Minstead Training Project charity was founded in 1986 is situated in the New Forest (Hampshire), in the picturesque village of Minstead near Lyndhurst. It offers whole year round services in residential and day care and training in Work, Life and Social Skills to people who have learning disabilities.

 

Minstead Staff, Minstead Students, Century IT Services
Minstead Staff, Minstead Students, Century IT Services

 

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Drop us a line today for a free quote!

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: I.T Installation Services Dorset, I.T Installation Services Hampshire, I.T Installation Services Surrey, I.T Installation Services Sussex, I.T Installation Services Wiltshire, IT Maintenance Contracts Dorset, IT Maintenance Contracts Hampshire, IT Maintenance Contracts Surrey, IT Maintenance Contracts Sussex, Managed IT Services, Proactive IT Monitoring, Proactive IT Monitoring Dorset, Proactive IT Monitoring Hampshire, Proactive IT Monitoring Surrey, Proactive IT Monitoring Sussex, Proactive IT Monitoring Wiltshire

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Totton
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Hampshire SO40 3AE

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Century IT Services is the trading name of Century IT Solutions Ltd. Registered address: Century IT Solutions Ltd., Mill House Centre, 108 Commercial Road, Totton, Southampton SO40 3AE
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