Category: Wednesday Tech Bytes

For today’s tech blog we’re going to discuss open source software. What is it, and how is it different from other types of software? In simple terms, open source software is a term for any program whose source code has been publicly released, allowing for others to modify it however they like.

Software Types

It’s easiest to understand open source software in the context of other types of software, so here’s a refresher in the other major types.

Licensed Software

Licensed software is any computer application that requires licensing to be used. This licensing can be as simple as purchasing a digital download code for a single computer, or it can be a complex, enterprise-wide licensing agreement. Nearly all licensed software must be purchased to be used legally. Microsoft Office has long been an example of licensed software.

Cloud or Subscription-Based Software

Technically a subset of licensed software, cloud or subscription-based software requires a recurring subscription-style payment. If your payment lapses, the software may become inoperable. Examples here include Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft’s newer offering, Office 365.

Freeware

Freeware is a broad term for software that’s distributed freely, with no expectation of payment for personal use. Install these at home as much as you like. Beware that some freeware is only free for personal use, though. If you want to use it in a corporate setting, you may need a license.

Open Source Software

Open source software takes the concept of freeware to the next level. To be considered open source, both the software and its source code must be freely available. Users are permitted (and even encouraged) to modify the source code to improve the software or to customize it for their own needs.

Open Source Certification

Open source as discussed above is a concept or philosophy. Developers who wish to release open source software with a sort of seal of approval can do so through the Open Source Initiative. This group offers a certification mark, Open Source (yes, it’s just the term we’ve been discussing, but with capital letters), which verifies that a piece of software meets certain qualifications.

To receive the Open Source designation, a piece of software must meet these two criteria.

• The software is available to anyone else, restriction free.
• The software’s source code is available for others to change and customize.

Additionally, provision is made so that the original creators can demand that future, customized versions of the software are clearly distinguished from the original, through naming or versioning.

Conclusion

By reading this tech blog post, you now understand what open source software is. If you’re wondering what it can do for your or your business, contact us today. We’re glad to help!

Firewalls were developed over thirty years ago and function as the first line of defense for many business networks. This piece of network equipment is a perimeter defense that determines whether packets can move into or out of the network. While the basic concept of a firewall is simple, the way that it performs this function and the features it offers continue to evolve based on current threats.

Types of Firewalls

Firewalls come in two major categories: hardware and software. The physical firewalls are network appliances that connect to the rest of the IT infrastructure so it’s able to monitor packets. There are several methods they can use to secure the network and assist with thwarting potential intruders.

Hardware Firewalls

Stateful

Stateful firewalls retain information about the connections being made. It offers good performance because this technology allows it to skip inspecting every single packet. Once it has inspected a connection, it allows it for subsequent packets.

Application-level

Application-level firewalls that are hardware based are designed to protect the application’s connections. They address common attack methods used on that type of application, such as stopping cross-site scripting for a web application.

Proxy

When someone thinks about a standard firewall, a proxy firewall is most likely what’s on their mind. It stands between a host device and the data source and inspects the packets that are sent between them. This type of firewall may not stand up to complex attacks due to its simplicity, but it masks a lot of the network information.

Circuit-level

This firewall is another basic one that focuses on checking the TCP handshake. It’s not resource intensive since it doesn’t look at the packet, but that does mean that it won’t protect against sophisticated attacks.

Next Generation

These firewalls have advanced features that give businesses more ways to stop malicious traffic from making it through the appliance. Some examples of these include deep packet inspection, checking attachments in sandboxes, and terminating encrypted traffic. Third-party data can be incorporated into the rules and filters of the firewall to improve protection against emerging threats. They can also incorporate technology that is found in other types of IT security hardware, such as intrusion detection. The drawback of this firewall type is that it can significantly slow down network traffic.

Software-based Firewalls

Virtual Appliance

This firewall is a software package that’s installed on the business network and does not rely on a hardware appliance for protecting traffic.

Application-level

Some applications have firewalls built into the software itself to act as a second layer of protection. Anything that gets through the physical firewall of the business network and reaches the application layer needs to go through another inspection. These firewalls focus on threats that are most common for that piece of software.

Cloud-based

A cloud-based firewall leverages cloud computing technology for the virtual appliance. Some advantages of a cloud firewall include the ability to scale quickly, high availability, and cost-efficiency. For organizations with limited IT budgets, using a cloud-based service can give them access to powerful features that they wouldn’t have access to without paying a substantial upfront hardware fee.

The right firewall for your organization depends on the typical threats that you face, the sensitivity of the information you’re protecting, and your performance requirements.

Our days are full of distractions, from phones that don’t stop ringing to apps that don’t stop dinging. Each time we pause from one task, it takes us several seconds to a few minutes to get our minds back on track. This may not seem like much of an impact, but it can really add up over the course of a day. Not to mention all the time that is lost during meetings because someone was multi-tasking when they are asked a question and needs to regroup before they answer. It may seem like this is simply the way we do business today, but there are ways that you can eliminate distractions and be more productive during your workday.

Be Singularly Focused

Each task that passes your desk isn’t the highest priority. When you rigorously prioritize your work, it can help create a singular focus on the task at hand. When you absolutely must get something accomplished, train yourself to turn off everything else — turn your phone on airplane mode, pause email notifications and send your office phone straight to voice mail. Close all applications other than the one you’re working in at that moment, or go old school with a pad and paper in a quiet corner of the office where you know you won’t be disturbed. This singular focus on a task allows you to put all of your brainpower behind it, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly and efficiently you’re able to get things accomplished.

Be Ruthless in Meetings

Meetings today can be quite a challenge, with people working remotely and others tied to their laptops or tapping away on their phones. If you want to have a truly productive meeting, then you have to get a little ruthless! Schedule your meetings for a shorter period of time, and set up the expectations as soon as everyone is in the room. Ask for agreement from the room that everyone will leave their phones off and turned over, so they are not running the risk of distractions. Even a 15-minute meeting can accomplish great things if you have the full mental capacity of everyone in the room focused on the task at hand.

Being productive doesn’t have to mean constantly locking yourself into a corner or alienating colleagues by closing your office doors. You can find pockets of productivity in your day when you can focus on your most important tasks, providing you with the structure that you need to help move your organization — and your life — in a positive direction.

Life is extremely busy with people scheduling every moment of their day while still looking back and wondering where their month has gone. It’s all too easy to find yourself reviewing a 6-month plan only to find that you are seriously off-course. Focusing one day at a time can cause you to be short-sighted when it comes to achieving your long-term goals. A quick review of your monthly calendar helps ensure that you’re well on the way to meeting business — and personal — objectives.

Leverage Project Management Strategies

Most project managers realize the importance of scheduling regular project reviews where you focus not on the daily tasks, but on the distance, you have moved from the overall project perspective. You can leverage this same methodology when it comes to tackling your calendar! Looking at your calendar on a daily or even weekly basis gives you an idea of what you have to get through, but it doesn’t provide you with a holistic view of your month and your year. Breaking deliverables and goals down into monthly chunks lets you see results more quickly and provides ongoing motivation to stay the path.

Using the Right Tools for the Job

Keeping your calendar updated with all of your various home, family, personal and work obligations can be a chore, especially when you’re splitting childcare or after-school activity duties with your spouse, parents or friends. Outlook and your Google Calendar may be great for scheduling work items, but is your work calendar getting bogged down with non-work related tasks? This can make it extremely difficult for others to schedule meetings with you and to maintain visibility for crucial work projects and tasks.

Thinking Strategically

Do you have a 1-year, 5-year and 10-year plan? Breaking these plans down into bi-annual and quarterly chunks allows you to more accurately track where you are according to your plan. This also keeps you from getting to the end of a busy year and wondering what happened to all of your time! Bringing this type of strategic thinking into your calendar on a monthly basis assures that you’re setting aside a time that is just for you. Even if you only spend 15 minutes reviewing the next month on a Sunday afternoon, you will find that it was time well spent.

Don’t let yourself get tied down to the daily hassles of life that can keep you from meeting your long-term goals and objectives. You can even use your calendar to help schedule time for your monthly calendar review! Your future self thanks you.

Microsoft Office 365 has rolled out an impressive array of new features that business owners will appreciate. These range from handy mobile-to-PC interactions to intuitive, behind-the-scenes IT integrations to keep a business running smoothly. Here are some of the standout new additions to Office 365 that were specifically created with business managers in mind.

1. New Digital Pen Features

The Microsoft digital pen has some new tricks up its sleeve that make it easier than ever to edit your important documents. It’s like having an entire editing suite rolled into a single device, and it all but eliminates the need to type or use the mouse while editing. The digital pen lets you insert words or line breaks, split or change words, cross out paragraphs, circle text and leave detailed comments.

2. Embedded 3D Animations

3D animations can now be embedded directly into Word documents and PowerPoint slides with no coding required. Microsoft made this extremely easy to use: Insert a 3D model into the slide, select from a list of pre-built animations, click ‘Apply’ and the animation does its thing.

3. Blurred Background on Video Calls

Business managers who use a remote workforce will appreciate this feature. Video callers can now automatically blur out their backgrounds to minimize distractions and increase meeting productivity. No more worrying about video calls from the home office or a busy workplace — just blur it out.

4. Powerful PowerPoint Upgrades

This is a really cool feature for managers. Need a PowerPoint slide in a hurry? Office 365 now lets you draw your slides by hand on a tablet and convert your “chicken scratches” into a professionally-designed PowerPoint presentation in just a few minutes. PowerPoint now has digital design recommendations that it will make to recreate your sketches. This includes layouts, text suggestions and icons. The end result will look like you had the graphic design department laboring over it for hours.

5. Publish-to-Web Upgrades

Microsoft Office has allowed users to publish documents as web pages for years, but this feature just keeps getting better. Office 365 now allows users to publish docs as Sway websites by clicking ‘File’ and ‘Transform.’ It’s a big time-saving feature. It can also be used for publishing training documents, newsletters, pitch decks and product pages.

6. Compatibility Checks

This Office 365 addition allows you to make system upgrades without suffering any downtime from incompatibility issues. Microsoft’s most recent desktop application lets you check compatibility of apps before you run a system upgrade. Managers can save time and money, and keep things running smoothly by using this upgrade.

7. Robust Data Compliance

Office 365 has a long list of compliance certifications that are now directly integrated with the software. This is an incredibly helpful feature for public-private businesses, government organizations and non-profits that deal with a lot of regulatory compliance issues. For example, Office 365 now offers HIPAA and HITRUST CSF Certification for medical organizations, which allows them to remain security- and privacy-compliant in their documentation. Other certifications include AICPA Service Organization Control Reports, FedRAMP authorizations, FIPS 140-2 Cryptography, and much more. Microsoft also maintains a dedicated compliance team that monitors regulatory changes and quickly recommends changes to keep data compliance up-to-date.

8. Increased IT Management and Resolutions

Microsoft’s SharePoint Admin Center has some upgrades that IT departments will truly appreciate. The system now allows easier management of Office 365 group-connected sites and hubs. IT admins can now restrict access from non-compliant devices, automatically kick idle users out, and restrict or allow access from known IP addresses. The latest iteration also has a number of security upgrades and compliance upgrades.

These Office 365 upgrades were clearly designed from a business manager’s perspective. Microsoft has made the latest additions intuitive and simple to integrate in order to keep your business running as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Have you seen a new application — Chromium — suddenly appear on your computer? It’s likely that if you did not intentionally download it, the app is malware that should be removed immediately.

While Chromium is a legitimate product, hackers have been using it to deliver adware and potentially unwanted programs, redirect browsers to different websites and track Internet activity. The results of such unwanted software can range from minor irritation to serious privacy concerns, including identity theft.

What Is Chromium?

Chromium is an open-source browser application that was initially created by Google. Chromium is the source code for what became the Chrome browser. When Google released Chrome in 2008, it also released the Chromium code. The Chromium project is now managed by The Chromium Projects and is designed for developers to create a faster, more stable and safer form for web browsing.

Chrome itself still includes some of the Chromium source code along with proprietary features, such as automatic updates. Google owns and manages the product, which is by far the most popular browser worldwide, with 62.5 percent of the market share as of February 2019.

Why Is Chromium Popular with Hackers?

Because it’s an open-source product, Chromium is vulnerable to misuse. Browser hijackers are a type of malware that makes changes to a user’s browser settings without their knowledge or consent. Most users unintentionally download hijacking malware when clicking through online ads or when downloading or purchasing other software.

How Does Malware Chromium Work?

The malware Chromium app uses a virtual layer to push ads or redirect browsers to e-commerce websites. Other types can direct users to dangerous, malicious websites that can themselves contain infectious viruses and programs.

What’s worse is that the bad Chromium browsers track your browser activity and can grab browsing data, including personally identifying information, passwords and financial data such as credit card numbers and bank account numbers. The hackers then sell this information to third parties, who often use it illegally. This activity can mean privacy breaches, unwanted use of cards and accounts, and identity theft.

There are many different Chromium-based browser applications that are dubious, despite appearing to be legitimate. Usually, these apps claim to improve browsing speed and security and boast of having new features that other browsers lack. These claims lure users into a false sense of security and invite downloads that cause trouble. These questionable app names include BeagleBrowser, BrowserAir, Chedot, eFast, Fusion, MyBrowser, Olcinium, Qword, Torch and Tortuga, among others.

How Is Chromium Malware Installed?

Often, these rogue programs are part of the Custom or Advanced settings of an app. The most common victims of these unwanted applications are users who hastily download software and install it quickly without reviewing each step. To avoid these inadvertent downloads, it’s important to pay attention during download and installation steps. Be wary of any software that is bundled with other programs and never accept offers to install third-party programs.

How Do I Uninstall Rogue Chromium Browsers?

There are several step-by-step guides online to show how to remove the malware, do thorough scans of your computer for rogue files and registry keys, and clean and reset browsers. The steps are very specific to your operating system and browsers. Two good online guides are here and here.

Being aware of types of malware, how they infect your computer and what they do can help prevent you or your employees from the frustration, time and irritation of fake Chromium browsers.

It happens to the best of us. You’ve invested serious time and effort into a Microsoft Office file for an upcoming presentation. You may even be moments away from finishing your work. Then it happens: your Mac goes down, hard. Maybe the power goes out, or maybe you get the dreaded “Sad Mac” screen of death.

You know it’s been next to forever since you manually saved the file. Worst case scenario, your presentation or executive meeting is just hours (or even minutes) away. What do you do?

Step One: Check the Auto-recover Pane

First things first: don’t panic. As soon as your Mac is up and running again, go ahead and open the Microsoft Office application you were using. Often, Word or Excel or whatever program you’re using can sense that it has crashed. If that’s the case, it should have saved an Auto-recover version of the document and will ask you if you want to view it when you first open the program. You might get a pop-up asking you this question, or you may see various files listed in the Auto-recover pane on the left side of the program window.

If you see an option like this, try it. Chances are you’ll get back a version of your document that’s only missing 5, maybe 10, minutes of your work. Congratulations, you’re back in business.

Step Two: Dive Deeper

If you tried step one but don’t see an Auto-recover pane and don’t receive a pop-up, there’s still one more thing to try. At this point there’s no guarantee that your work is still available, but there is still a chance. Your Office program may have saved an Auto-recover file deep in the recesses of your hard drive, but it’s having trouble telling you about it. It’s possible to manually locate the file following these steps.

1. Open Finder and select the Users folder.
2. You should see your username. Click on it.
3. Then click on the Library folder.
4. Next, select the Containers folder.
5. Within the Containers folder, you should see folders named com.microsoft.Word (and com.microsoft.Excel, and so on). Look for the folder with the name corresponding to the Office program that crashed on you. You’ve now located the folders where Office stores behind-the-scenes folders, so you’re almost there.
6. Now click on the Data folder, and within that click on the Library folder.
7. Within the Library folder, open Preferences, and finally, AutoRecovery.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a file within that folder with a similar name to the one that you were working in. Now, you won’t be able to open it just by clicking on it, because it has a different file extension. Instead, right-click, choose “Open with…”, and select the Office program you need. Or rename the file, giving it the proper extension (.docx for Word, .pptx for PowerPoint, and so on).

Hopefully one of these two methods enabled you to recover your file. If not, it’s time to contact IT support. They may be able to further troubleshoot beyond the scope of this guide.

Microsoft Office 365 is a suite of services that includes Customer Lockbox and Privileged Access Management. Both tools to assist customers in meeting their compliance obligations and maximizing data security and privacy. These tools are currently only available for customers with Office 365 Enterprise and Advanced Compliance SKUs.

Privileged accounts are being compromised more rapidly every day and sensitive data can be exposed in shorter and shorter periods of time. Therefore, organizations must establish multiple regulations, procedures, and compliance obligations that must be followed before access is provided by anyone. Microsoft Office 365 understands this and has built-in Privileged Access Management to meet these higher levels of security. Lockbox and Privileged Access Management provide granular task-based access control within an approval workflow so organizations can gather privileged access as well as monitor and control sensitive tasks.

Multiple Layers of Protection

Microsoft 365 Customer Lockbox and Privileged Access can assist organizations to meet their compliance obligations through a built-in set of tools offering multiple layers of protection to:

1. access their compliance posture

2. protect sensitive data

3. respond to requests

4. maintain business continuity

5. efficiently reduces costs

This is accomplished by ensuring there is a regulated process flow to handle incoming requests. Virtually all Microsoft operations are fully automated unless during very rare circumstances requiring human involvement that is necessary to troubleshoot and correct a problem. If this intervention is needed, an approval request is generated, and then the approval group is notified by email. The request can either be approved or denied and even blocked. If the request is approved, the task is processed and checked against the privileged access policy and then logged in the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center.

Customer Lockbox Controls

Customer Lockbox allows users to control how Microsoft support engineers access data and features special procedures for explicit data access authorization. This keeps your information secure while the problem is being fixed. Customer Lockbox works with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive For Business.

There are multiple levels of approvals from the Lockbox system before access is granted, so your information remains secure. The request must be very specific and include role, data location details, the specific reason for the access and the duration of the access. There is also an expiration time on all requests, so the content access is removed after the engineer has fixed the problem. The majority of problems do not require Customer Lockbox access, but it is available and very secure. The Customer Lockbox feature can be turned off in the Admin Center.

Refer to this informational video to learn more about how Customer Lockbox And Privileged Access Management In Office 365 can help you keep your information secure.

What Can You Use Personalized PowerPoint Photo Calendars for?

A personalized photo calendar is a great way to provide loved ones with updated family pictures during holidays and birthdays. You can print them out on regular paper or cardstock, or send your projects to family and friends digitally. It’s simple to complete in Microsoft PowerPoint, even if you don’t consider yourself the artsy type. It’s also a fun project to show off pictures of employees or coworkers?

What Are the Steps to Create a Microsoft PowerPoint Photo Calendar?

1. Find a template. To do this, you can open PowerPoint, search for “photo calendar,” and click on the magnifying glass icon to start the search.
2. Choose any template and select Create.
3. To replace the default pictures with your photos, right-click on one of the images. Then, select Change Picture > From a file, browse for a picture you want to include, and click on Insert.
   • You can replace the other stock photos by repeating this step.
   • You can change photos you’ve added in the same way.
4. To save your file, select File > Save As > OneDrive – Personal, name it and save.
   • This example saves it to the cloud.

How Can You Share Your Calendar?

To share your calendar, print it or send the PowerPoint file (.ppt) via email or message to your family and friends. When you do this in PowerPoint Online, you can do it with the file still open and the file is automatically saved for you prior to sending.

What’s the Process to Print the Personalized PowerPoint?

To print your personalized calendar, simply press Ctrl+P. When the Print dialog opens, click the link to open the PDF version of your personalized photo calendar. Then, you use the PDF program’s Print command for optimal results.