“Free” LogMeIn is soon to be discontinued.

LogMeIn has been one of my favorite tools for years and I have been using the Free version for my personal use to connect to all of my PC’s for remote control. Now LogMeIn has pulled the plug on the free version. If you still want to continue using this product you will have to purchase the Pro version that costs $99 a year though there is a discount for the initial purchase to $49 for the first year. If you want some other alternatives take a look at these two Lifehacker articles. Hopefully they will be helpful in determining which direction that you want to go.

Five Best Remote Desktop Tools

Click to view Whether you want quick access to your home computer from anywhere in the world or you're the go-to IT person for your friends and…Read…

Use Your Home Computer from Anywhere: A Comprehensive Guide to Remote Controlling Your PC

Your home computer is the perfect machine. It's customized to your exact needs, runs all your must-have apps, and holds every important file… Read…

Just as a reminder, if you are one of our customers and your office operation consists of five or more machines, consider our security suite product that includes four security components that every business computer user should consider, antivirus, anti-malware and patch management. The fourth component is the that will interest you if you need remote access to your office machine. LogMeIn Pro is part of this package and when you consider the cost of all the components if purchased separately then our security suite is a pretty sweet deal. Just $5/month/workstation gets you all of this protection. That’s $60/year/workstation, compare that to the just the cost of LogMeIn by itself at around $99 per year plus your antivirus program, plus antimalware. If you want more information on this product please don’t hesitate contacting us at 1-800-640-7506.

CNET article about $2M gas station card-skimming scheme

Interesting article about 13 individuals being indicted for theft, fraud and laundering from devices that they installed inside gas pumps in New York state. This appears to be another version of the skimmer device that was inserted into ATM’s to do the same thing.

If you are interested in reading the article here…

This just brings to mind that you have to be extremely vigilant in tracking charges to your credit cards even from sources that you would normally consider safe.

"By using skimming devices planted inside gas station pumps, these defendants are accused of fueling the fastest growing crime in the country," Vance said in a statement. "Cybercriminals and identity thieves are not limited to any geographic region, working throughout the world behind computers. In this case, the defendants are charged with stealing personal identifying information from victims in southern states, using forged bank cards on the East Coast, and withdrawing stolen proceeds on the West Coast."

Vertical’s Voice Over IP Solution

One of the nice things about the Vertical Telephone systems is that they are a Hybrid type unit. What that means is that it can handle both analog phone lines as well as IP Trunk lines and that the handsets can be both local, digital direct and can use an IP handset as well. In a recent test setup that we did for me to have a phone presence on our system from my home office we programmed an IP phone to connect to our internal MBX system. Vertical’s Edge 8000 unit will work on MBX IP®, SBX IP® and XTS IP® telephony systems. Once set up this unit gives you all of the features that you have with a regular digital phone set, just not as many buttons. All of the keys on the side are programmable so you can set them up for line presence as well as many other features. Priced at $265 this unit will give you a great addition to your current Vertical environment.

Protect your files from Cryptolocker

Sophos is one of our partners that we work with and just love their products. We have been selling their Firewall products for years and since they merged with Astaro we have been working with their the rest of the security software products as well. They have put together a little video that discusses How Cryptolocker encrypts your files and extracts a ransom.(see below).  Here is an excerpt from their demonstration site.

Our Support teams have put together a video demonstration (embedded below) that shows what Cryptolocker actually looks like and how it works.

We’ll show you what the file looks like when it infects a computer (claiming to be a PDF document), what happens when it executes, and how the cybercriminals expect you to pay up (they offer to let you pay in bitcoins). You’ll also see how layers of protection from Sophos keep this from happening.

Remember though—you really don’t want to try this at home. If you see the ransom message from Cryptolocker on your computer, it’s too late. Your files are already encrypted, and only the ransom-takers have the encryption key to set them free. It’s much better to protect yourself proactively and keep your files backed up. We don’t recommend paying the ransom.

For more information on this type of threat, you can also download our whitepaper on ransomware (registration required), or use our Knowledgebase.

Watch Cryptolocker in action!

Worst Passwords of 2013

There are a lot of solution out their to help you keep track of and to make strong passwords for you online access to all of your sites. It is important to not only have strong passwords (ones that cannot be easily guessed) but also to have different passwords for each and every site that you access. That way if one is compromised then the rest of your secure sites are not compromised as well.

What Makes a Strong Password?

• It needs to contain special characters such as @#$%^&
• It must be at least 8 characters long.
• It must not have any common words such as 123, password, your birth date, your login name and any words that can be found in the dictionary.
• a variation of capitalization and small letters

For best protection every password you use should be unique and have the characteristics of what is a strong password listed above. You may be wondering how you are going to remember so many passwords when you have a problem remember just one! Try some of these tips in creating and remembering your passwords:

1. First, think of a thing, date, phrase, event, place or anything that is unique only to you. Make sure that it is at least 8 characters in length. What ever you come up with use this as the focal point for creating the rest of the password. Some people call this the salt phrase.

2. Many use the following to confuse the spelling by replacing certain alpha characters with specific special characters. You can come up with your own rules for doing this but commonly people use the following.

• Replace all the ‘a’ with @
• Replace all the ‘s’ with $
• Repalce any space with %
• Replace any ‘o’ with 0
• Replace any ‘i’ with !

3. Then for each site use either the site name or something about the site additionally added to your salt term. You can even vary the placement of the two parts to even make it more unique. Come up with some rules to use to help you remember and you will be on your way to a much safer online experience.

Phillips developing uses for Google Glass in Health Care

I know we are all waiting for the day that there really is something useful that Google Glass can do for you. Well here is one being developed by Phillips Healthcare and Accenture to help surgeons interact with patient data to become more efficient and effective. If you are unaware of what Google Glass is then here is a brief explanation.

Google Glass is wearable technology that looks like eyeglasses, but without the lenses. Instead, a small prism on the right side displays information via a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection to the MyGlass app on Android or iOS devices.

Google Glass was rolled out to early adopter this past year and Google is encouraging users to share their ideas and innovations to help develop the base of applications that this new user interface device can take advantage of. Researchers from the Philips Digital Accelerator Lab has collaborated with Accenture Technology Labs to come up with potential uses of Google Glass in Clinical settings.

Anthony (Tony) Jones, M.D., is the vice president and chief marketing officer for patient care and clinical informatics at Philips Healthcare. He explains, “The most exciting potential application of Google Glass in healthcare is the ability to allow providers to ‘virtually’ be in two places at once, which will have a significant impact on workflow and patient care.”

The idea is for the surgeon or other medical professional to be able to verbally request information on patient status or show images like X-Rays, MRI or other digital images to be able to quickly and simply access information as a reference while working on the patient. Patient vitals or other information would also be at their fingertips to be able to react quickly as necessary to best take care of the patient all while keeping their eyes on the patient.

“It sounds simple, but small workflow improvements like this can reduce errors and have a significant impact on patient care,” Jones says.

Surgery is not the only place where this technology can make an impact. Think about first responders, either medical, fire or police that could be looking forward at the scene and have information being presented that will make their response more informed, safer and of course help with providing a positive outcome.

Currently there are some real issues with this technology that will need to be overcome before it becomes widely accepted. Battery life is the first one that comes to mine. some method of extending the battery life needs to be adapted before this becomes a valuable tool. Also, the display is still a little small so the detail will need to get better so that more information can be displayed at a time. This is a good step and I am looking forward to seeing where this goes into the future.

Android vs. Window 8.1 (what’s best on a tablet)

I just posted and article about the ASUS Transformer Book Duet notebook/tablet that hopefully will be coming out in the near future. This unit provides both operating systems on the same system whether it is in tablet or notebook format so you don’t have to make a choice between one or the other. But if you have to make a choice now between the two, which should you choose?

James Kendrivk wrote for Mobile News/ZDNet an interesting article that describes the “4 advantages Windows 8.1 has over Android in mobile”. Take a look at his article, he makes some interesting points.