And now, and iTunes scam...

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a phone-based scam that had come to the fore. If we wanted, we could make every one of blog posts about one or more of the new scams or phishing attempts that have come to light, but by and large we want to keep things a little more varied.
 
However, at the end of last week – set to coincide with the start of the Christmas shopping season and what the American’s call Black Friday* – a new fake email has been doing the rounds.
 
It claims to be from Apple’s iTunes Store and offers you credit on music, games and the like. But if you follow the instructions, download and decompress the ZIP file, you give hackers access to your computer, your passwords and other information.
 
In the scheme of things, this is far from the most ominous, dangerous or disruptive scam we’ve seen – so why are we giving it airtime?
 
The answer is due to its timing.
 
From here on it until Christmas – and then into the new year – you are likely to receive an unprecedented number of emails from companies offering you discounts and savings.
 
Most, of course, will be legitimate, but for hackers, preying on people’s desire for a festive freebie or seasonal saving is a great way to get people to unwittingly click on something that perhaps they would have been more suspicious of at another time of the year.
 
So, remember, if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is – especially at Christmas!
 
If you would like more advice on protecting your computer systems from malware, viruses and cyber attacks, just call us on 01225 636000 or simply email us.
 
 
*BTW, ‘Black Friday’ may sound an ominous name for the start of the Christmas shopping period, but it’s actually a tongue-in-cheek term that refers to the time when shops get their accounts out of the red and back into the black!

The future is fibre

Zen Internet, the broadband provider we recommend due to the quality and reliability of their service, have announced a new Fibre Optic Broadband offering, with download speeds of ‘up to 40Mbps’ and upload speeds of ‘up to 10Mbps’.
 
As stated by Zen Internet, these superfast broadband services will ultimately allow your business to do more – and do it faster. You’ll be able to access critical business applications faster, collaborate quicker with your customers and suppliers and upload web pages in seconds.
 
Zen Internet's Fibre Optic Broadband service will also enable your business to:
 
• Collaborate at high-speed; sharing files with regional offices, partners or remote workers
• Move your meetings online with better quality video-conferencing
• Experience higher quality VoIP services
• Benefit from more responsive hosted business applications
 
Exciting news, huh?
 
We certainly think so… however we may all have to wait a little while before we can all access this new service.
 
The rollout of the nationwide fibre optic infrastructure necessary for the provision of the service is being undertaken by BT, who aim to give two-thirds of UK premises the ability to access a fibre-optic broadband service by 2015.
 
Fingers crossed, our area will be fibred-up sooner rather than later. Suffice to say, we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, with Zen Internet being awarded ‘Which? Recommended Broadband Provider’ for the fifth time in a row, and ‘PC ‘Pro Best ISP’ for the eighth time in a row’ there are many good reasons to switch to their current Business Broadband service.
 
Simply call 01225 636000 or email us for more details.

Beware of phony tech-support phone calls

“Hello! It’s Microsoft Tech Support here. We’re calling as our systems have detected a virus present on your PC. No… don’t worry… we can fix it remotely. All you have to do is follow my instructions…”
 
Sound familiar? Hopefully not, but unfortunately this is the nature of several fraudulent phone calls received recently by a number of people that we know.
 
‘Phishing’ – the process whereby criminals send you emails purporting to be from your bank in an attempt to get you to enter your account details on a fraudulent website – is now a well known practice.
 
Most people have received phishing emails, and many receive them on a daily basis. The phone-based equivalent is not new, but has been less prevalent… until now.
 
A report published by Microsoft in June this year stated that 15% of the 7,000 computer users it surveyed had been targeted by a ‘tech support’ phone scam. On average, the scam cost victims over £500. Half of the victims reported subsequent computer problems, and almost one in five had suffered identity fraud.
 
As an IT support company that uses phone and internet-based support, we’re keen to ensure that none of our clients fall victim in the same way.
 
We therefore echo Microsoft’s own advice, and encourage you to:
 
• Be suspicious of unsolicited calls related to a security problem, even if they claim to represent Priority IT, Microsoft or any other respected company.

• Never provide personal information, such as credit card or bank details, to an unsolicited caller.

• Never go to a website, type anything into a computer, install software or follow any other instruction from someone who calls out of the blue.
 
If you ever need to verify that a call from Priority IT is genuine, simply call us back on our usual number, 01225 636000. We’ll never be offended… in fact, we’ll be pleased to see you taking your security seriously.
 
If you’ve already been targeted by a phone scam, we’d be interested to hear the details in order that we can alert our clients to the nature of the call. Simply email us with the details, or post a comment here on our blog.

Why hard drives are playing hard to get

For the last two weeks we have seen limited availability of hard drives, but since Friday stocks are now looking OK at our two main distributors.
 
The cause? Believe it or not, the reason for not just a local but a global hard-drive shortage is the floods in Thailand.
 
Thailand is the world’s second largest manufacturer of hard drives, and the recent floods have caused havoc. Many factories have closed and distribution networks become blocked.
 
Seagate, the maker of our often-recommended types of hard drive, has factories in Thailand, and while they’ve managed to keep their production lines running they’ve warned of parts shortages further down the line.
 
Another fear is that there may also be an impact on PC production, with hard drives still being a major component. Another manufacturer, Western Digital, says that its Thailand-based production facilities account for about 60% of its hard drive production.
 
Some analysts are predicting larger shortages in early 2012, but many people say that it’s hard to gauge the extent of the problem at this stage.
 
At Priority IT, we are making a number of recommendations:
 

• Ensure you have a robust backup system. If a hard drive in your IT system fails, you need to at least ensure your data is safe – and we can often supply temporary drives installed with your backed-up data should a replacement drive not be immediately available.
   
• If you’re considering upgrading to new or additional hard drive, order it sooner rather than later. Products will be made available from manufacturers to distributors and from distributors to suppliers such as ourselves on a first-come-first-served basis. Ordering now will also enable you to avoid any price rises that come as a result of product scarcity.

 
For more information, please email us or call us on 01225 636000.

How to avert IT disasters – and recover quickly when they do occur

Last week one of our clients’ servers suffered a major failure. We quickly ascertained that the server was well and truly dead. The company in question – just like many businesses over the last few years – had pushed the life of the server beyond normal recommendations. 
 
Unfortunately, as a server (or any item of IT equipment) gets older, the likelihood of failure increases. But fortunately for our client, we had recognised the risk and advised that if they intended to keep their old server running, they should at least invest in a good backup solution. 
 
We remotely monitor all our clients’ backups, so we knew that when the server in question gave up the ghost, the most recent backup was sound and could be used to get things up and running again with the minimum of fuss. 
 
We returned the backup to our workshop and virtualised it on to one of our loan servers.  Within just 45 minutes, this duplicate server was fully functional and, after initial tests, we were able to return to our client and install it on site.
 
By way of a modern and permanent replacement for the old server, we recommended a hybrid cloud solution comprising a cost-effective HP Micro Server and cloud-hosted email, with the existing backup system also being incorporated.
 
So, as they say, all’s well that ends well. But working with old servers and/or not employing an effective backup solution can cost your business dear.
 
For more information about our backup solutions, our recommendations on server life, or a FREE IT Review (which includes an IT risk assessment) simply email us or call us on 01225 636000.

Tweet this and post it on Facebook: SMEs are at risk from social media based security breaches

The IT security of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been called into question by an enlightening new survey.
 
Worryingly, the survey revealed that 40% of SMEs have been hit by a security breach due to employees surfing to infected websites.
 
At Priority IT, many clients tell us that they can now spot the tell-tale signs of phishing emails (such as poor spelling, poor grammar and requests to reset passwords) and can therefore avoid spoof websites.
 

Unfortunately, as fast as people get wise to such practices, new ones are developed.
 
Most notably, there’s been a rise in the use of social media to trick people into clicking a link that triggers the installation of a virus or malware. In particular, Twitter lends itself to this practice as the short messages that people write – often in ‘txt spk’ – are easier to fake than, say, longer more formal emails that purport to be from a bank.
 
Back to the survey, and another worrying statistic is that nearly one third of small businesses do not have a policy that governs employees’ use of social media.
 
While the survey was undertaken by a software company in the US and relates to businesses based there, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the situation should be any different here in the UK.
 
Hackers, virus programmers and malware producers are as happy to breach the security of small businesses in Wiltshire as ones in Wyoming; and install viruses on the computers of companies in Bristol and Bath just as much as those in Baltimore and Boston!
 
After testing and researching the products of the leading anti-virus vendors, we selected F-Secure as our preferred anti-virus product. Not only did F-Secure perform the best, but it also allows us to remotely monitor the status of all installations.
 
This means Priority IT can ensure your anti-virus protection is always up to date, and that security breaches are one less thing for you to be worrying (or tweeting or posting) about.
 
Email us or call 01225 636000 to find out more.

BT broadband customers hit by power (and customer service) failure

BT broadband customers across the country – including several Priority IT clients – were unable to get online further to a power failure at an important exchange in Birmingham last week.

As so often seems to be the case with BT, when something goes wrong with a service they provide there are numerous complaints that their customer service is less than adequate.

One person affected by the power failure at the Birmingham exchange reported that BT denied all knowledge of the issue, but instead made him go through a time-consuming series of tests, and ended up saying that they would send him a new broadband router to fix the problem. (The problem, of course, was fixed when the Birmingham exchange came back online.)

When you rely on a service, you need reliable service

Businesses and individuals alike now rely on broadband in much the same way as they rely on their electricity or water supply. When they can’t get online, many aspects of their business simply grind to a halt. This is frustrating enough, but it’s compounded by any confusion over the source of the problem or the actions needed to resolve it.

Our choice of Zen Internet as our recommended provider of broadband services is not because they would be immune to the sort of problem that hit BT – severe ’one-off’ problems like that could affect any broadband supplier – but because the overall standard of service, level of reliability and value for money they provide is simply so much better.

Email us or call 01225 636000 to find out more.

Zen Internet wins yet more awards from both PC Pro and Which?

Zen Internet has been awarded the PC Pro Best ISP for the eighth time at this year’s PC Pro Excellence Awards held on 29th September.   Zen Internet was also recently awarded "Which? Recommended Broadband Provider" for the fifth time in a row.

Zen’s Recommended Broadband Provider status revealed five stars for reliability, connection speed, customer service and technical support.  In March last year Zen was also the only ISP to receive the Which? endorsement, ‘Best Buy for Broadband’.

Priority IT selected Zen Internet for it's best of breed service and reliability. Prices for Business Broadband start at £21.27 plus VAT per month.  Call us on 01225 636000 for more information. 

Brain of Bath 2011

The annual Brain of Bath Quiz, in aid of Julian House, took place at the Assembly Rooms on 30th June and former Monty Python Terry Jones was quizmaster for the event, 26 teams took part and as usual this was hotly contested.

Priority IT are proud to provide IT Support during the event.

Congratulations to Thrings LLP for winning with a fantastic score of 232 points, The Bath Magazine came a close second with 228 points.

Full Scores are as follows:

Position Team Name Points 1 Thrings LLP 232 2 The Bath Magazine 228 3 Future Publishing 222 4 BMT 212 5 Reconstruct 204 5 Moore Stephens 3 204 7 House of Bath 202 7 St James' Wine Vaults 202 9 Richardson Swift 198 9 The Bath Chronicle 196 9 Mowbray Woodwards 196 9 Deloitte LLP 196 13 GL Hearn 194 14 Monahans 193 15 Target 192 16 Bath Building Society 188 17 Bath Labour Party 186 18 Baker Tilly 185 19 Pearson May 184 19 Media Clash 184 21 Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios 172 22 Ignition 172 22 Moore Stephens 2 168 24 Fidelius 166 25 Moore Stephens 1 166 25 HSBC 160

Priority IT helping out at Brain of Bath 2011

 

Priority IT are pleased to be involved with this year Brain of Bath 2011.  The Brain of Bath is an annual quiz, held at the Assembly Room in Bath in aid of Julian House on the 30th June 2011.

Priority IT will be responsible for the setup and support of the computer system and the feed the results back to the quizmaster.  Results will be posted after the event on www.priority-it.co.uk

Click Here for more information

Open for Business - The Corn Exchange Devizes

Priority IT are proud to exhibit a stand at this year's Wiltshire Open for Business Event.  Supported by Wiltshire Council this 2 day event starts on the Tuesday 10th May and Wednesday 11th May. 

On show and available to demo, will be the latest UC320 Phone System from Cisco.   

Cisco UC320w

The UC320 Phone System can handle up to 24 phone extensions and comes complete voice mail and auto-attendent.  The cost of the UC320 is £580.00 plus VAT.  It can be linked to existing phone lines.

If you have ISDN lines, this system could significantly reduce your costs, please contact us for an onsite demo or visit us at the Open for Business Event.

For more information, please view our Cisco Showcase

The importance of Backups.

At Priority IT, we are always preaching about the importance of backups, so much so that we monitor all of our client's backups.

Over the weekend one of our clients suffered hardware failures which lead to a number of system files becoming corrupt, although the server would start up, many systems were malfunctioning.  After trying to repair the system, it became clear the only option, was to revert to the last backup.

Fortunately for the client they had invested in our recommended backup solution, which creates a snapshot of the server.  We are able to recover the server to a previous snapshot, within 40 minutes the server was restored.

At Priority IT, we recommend you always have a robust backup system which can create ‘snapshot’ backups.  Both Symantec and Acronis software backup using snapshot technology, Microsoft now also includes this technology in Windows 2008 Server R2. 

Please Note: It is also essential to ensure backups are taken off site and are regularly tested. If you would like to discuss or test your backups, please call us on 01225 636000 to discuss your data security requirements.

Priority IT are now Microsoft Authorised Education Resellers

We are delighted to announce that we have achieved Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller status.

We are now in a position to offer Microsoft Software Solutions to Schools, Colleges, Universities, and Charitable bodies at a heavily discounted rates.

If you would like more information or pricing on any Microsoft Educational Products and Services, please feel free to contact us on 01225 636000 or email us, we will be delighted to discuss your requirements further.

Priority IT have been approved by Zen Internet

Over the last few months, Priority IT have been looking to Partner with a Broadband Provider.   In order for Priority IT to endorse a provider we needed to be sure, they offered excellent support as well as excellent performance and value.

It didn't take us long to identify Zen Internet. Zen Internet routinely top the best broadband provider from sources such as Which and PC Pro.  Once we discussed with Zen what we were looking for, it was obvious they followed our ethos to provide excellent support and customer service.

We have now been approved Zen Partners and we can now offer internet connections from as little as £15.31 per month.

Please call us on 01225 636000, if you require information on how Priority IT and Zen can help your business.

Welcome to our brand new news pages

Welcome to the brand new news pages from the superheroes of IT support in Bath, Bristol, Wiltshire and the West, Priority IT.

We provide a great-value, friendly, informed and responsive IT support service to keep your desktop computers, laptops, networks and other IT systems running smoothly and performing at their best.

Now, through these news pages, not only can keep up to date with details of our new products and services, but you can also keep abreast of new developments, trends and issues in the wider IT and business world.