• Get more secure access to everything you need and stay productive on the go.
• Manage your business from virtually anywhere.
• Get 24-hour protection for your data—and 24-hour access for your team.

Building the right technology foundation is easier with the right IT partner. At Next Step Systems Integration, we have worked with businesses like yours for over 10 years. Our knowledgeable team specializes in helping you:

• Stay productive wherever you are with security-enhanced access to information and resources from virtually any PC with Internet access.
• Store your key data in a single, secure location, so your people can always find and share the information they need.
• Help safeguard your information—and your business—with automatic data backup and recovery.
• Use your Windows Mobile® devices to access contacts, calendars, and more—from just about anywhere, at any time.

As a Microsoft Certified Partner, we are experts at Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 R2 deployments. By delivering advanced functionality designed specifically for small businesses, this complete, affordable network solution can help you make the most of your IT investment.Plus, with a knowledgeable partner to help implement your server solution, you can be confident that your systems will be running smoothly, so you can focus on what really matters: growing your business.Call today for a complimentary technology assessment:Toll Free: 866-559-6222Or by e-mail at support@nextstepsys.com for a Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 demo!

At Next Step Systems Integration we understand the last few years have placed unprecedented demands on your company’s communication capabilities. Demands to keep e-mail flowing in the face of threats and potential disasters. Demands to keep employees productive from anywhere. Not to mention demands on your department to do it all- efficiently and cost-effectively.

Introducing Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

We can help provide you provide your business with:

• Anywhere access capabilities. Mobile workers will have the ability to be more productive from virtually anywhere. Through a familiar Microsoft Office Outlook® experience, email, voice mail, calendar, and faxes are seamlessly delivered to one inbox enabling users to easily share documents and set up meetings.
• Comprehensive protection and disaster recovery capabilities. Maintain system integrity, protect intellectual property and help ensure the uninterrupted flow of e-mail and business. New built-in compliance tools simplify the process of meeting internal and regulatory requirements.
• More efficient and cost-effective deployment. Simplify the administration process and maximize the return on your hardware and networking investments with a native 64-bit support. We can also help you find and fix problems quickly to raise operational efficiency to a whole new level.

Let us help your department reduce costs, boost productivity, and deliver enhanced messaging while streamlining infrastructure.

What’s new in Exchange Server 2007:

• Unified messaging
• Simplified, integrated communications
• Advanced information sharing and meeting scheduling tools
• Built-in message security technologies and compliance capabilities

Take the next step! Call us or e-mail us at support@nextstepsys.com for your complimentary copy of the Gartner Whitepaper, “Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 could set the future for email.”For a free evaluation copy of Small Business Server 2007, click here.

As the Internet blossomed, so did related problems. These included malignant spam e-mail, phishing expeditions for personal identity information, and security breaches into sensitive data warehoused servers.

Enterprises and individuals have invested heavily in protecting information from the prying eyes of unscrupulous marketers and identity thieves bent on taking what doesn’t belong to them.

Most of security investments have been very good at working in terms of bits and bytes and all of the technical details of protecting systems and limiting scourges like spam.

For example, a good antivirus program can filter out seemingly innocent e-mail by examining all of its technical aspects. Or, a firewall can analyze the flow of data into a business network and look for tell-tale signs of threatening data and, consequently, block that threat.

Perhaps the most sophisticated and malevolent computer threat to crack isn’t made of silicon, but instead of flesh and blood.

The latest and most effective means to gain access to a person’s identity information is as old as the con itself.

For example, instead of spamming with a virus-infected e-mail that may be filtered by antivirus software, today’s con artists disperse digitally-clean e-mail urging users to visit a particular Web site or even call a particular telephone number.

The urging may be in the form of a statement promising financial gain or a warning that something is terribly wrong with a bank account or a nefarious invitation to something very personal or naughty.

And these invitations are well disguised with a cloak of legitimacy by pretending to be from eBay, or PayPal, or your own bank.

The bottom line is that to a technical watchdog - like a firewall - these messages may be free of any malicious computer code, but the contents of the message are carefully worded to get a person to pick up a phone or visit a Web site where a sinister trap waits.

So if a business has already invested in the technical side of security, what can be done about the social threat?

Bob Marichak, account executive, Next Step Systems Integration LLC (www.nextstepsys.com), located in Scranton, offers some simple human suggestions to help foil socially engineered computer threats (Next Step Systems Integration LLC specializes in the integration and migration of hardware and software for end to end network data solutions for small and large businesses.):

Enforce a policy including:

* Restricting the number of permitted users on work stations;
* Having automatic password changes and instructing users on how to create hard-to-crack passwords;
* Educating users on what constitutes threatening e-mail, including:

1. Instructing users to delete e-mails that have unfamiliar or unknown senders.
2. Advising users not to follow links or call numbers from suspicious e-mail.
3. Looking up banks and other financial institutions directly through other known legitimate means.

Many of these precepts are relatively easy to implement and can be very effective in hindering socially engineered attacks. When done in conjunction with known technical solutions, a business will have a much lower chance of being compromised.

By: Andrew Ohrman

NEPA Business Journal

One of the riskiest things employees can do is to download and set up peer-to-peer networks for free downloading of copyrighted music, videos, and games.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are special networks designed to share data. A P2P network can be as simple as two PCs connected by a simple wire, or as complex as thousands of computers connected across vast wired and wireless networks spanning the Internet.

The main goal with a P2P network is the sharing of some, or all, of the data on a computer’s hard drive, which is legal, in and of itself.

There are many ways and reason for setting up a P2P network. Often businesses and individuals have legitimate needs for file-sharing, like word processing or spread sheets. In recent years, P2P networks have appeared, spanning the Internet for less wholesome purposes like swapping copyrighted material, including music, movies, and games.

The half-baked thinking of many implementers of P2P networks is that if it’s legal to share part of their computer with others, then it’s also fine to actively share and swap any file, even copyrighted material.

Organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) don’t take kindly to expensively produced songs being ripped from CDs and made available to large groups of music lovers for free. Nor does the Software Publishers Association, which represents companies like Microsoft and Adobe.

According to Bob Marichak, account executive for Next Step Systems Integration (www.nextstepsys.com) located in Scranton, “It’s one thing to make one backup copy of a piece of music or software, it’s something quite different and 100-percent illegal to make copyrighted music, movies and computer software easily available to tens of thousands of others through a broad, worldwide P2P network. And if employees are doing this at work, even if the employer doesn’t know it, the employer can be in for some real trouble.”

The list of trouble or problems can be long: Virus infections, spyware infections, hindered productivity (employees playing games instead of working), losing the supporting an ISP (Internet Service Provider) (which means losing Internet access and all e-mail correspondence and having to find a new provider and then changing to new e-mail addresses).

The biggest trouble of all is serious -vigorous prosecution from the entertainment and software industry.
So what can businesses do to stay out of trouble? Marichak and his company, Next Step, have a lot of experience in this area and have some valuable tips (see box):

First, be aware of P2P software, which is readily available on the Internet.

Second, inform your employees with official policies that prohibit use of and participation in this sort of file-sharing.

Third, implement technologies that will prevent file-sharing, including special network software that doesn’t let users install anything on their desktop, closing specific communication “ports” on computers to prevent rogue connections with a P2P network, software that can inspect “packets” of data flowing in and out of a computer to determine P2P networking activity, and special filtering software like “IPCop” that stop undesirable P2P networking activities on large and small networks.

For small networks or individual computers, configure the built-in fire walls that often come with computers.

By: Andrew Ohrman

NEPA Business Journal

The spam epidemic has a few familiar themes that bombard your inbox: phone cards, cable descramblers, vacation prizes, easy credit, easy weight loss, free vacations, free Girlz. Inkjet cartridges and black-market Viagra, get-rich-quick schemes and every possible form of pornography. The crush of these messages on the world’s networks is now numbered in billions per day.

Spam is not just a nuisance. It absorbs bandwidth and overwhelms Internet service providers. ”Spam has become the organized crime of the Internet,” said Barry Shein, president of the World, one of the original Internet service providers. ”Most people see it as a private mailbox problem. But more and more it’s becoming a systems and engineering and networking problem.”

Below are some tips that can help you from being spammed:

• Use an alternate email address for web registrations and commercial email lists.
• When forwarding emails, make sure you Blind Carbon Copy your other recipients and always remove the existing headers in a forwarding email
• Disguise any email addresses on your web page. Ex: Remove the @ sign with <at>. By doing this you effectively prevent automated software programs that scan hundreds of thousands of web pages for spammable emails from having access to it.
• Use a form for feedback on your web page instead of an email address
• Spam-Protect your organization’s email list archives, and get all the email lists you post messages to to do this.
• Use Spam Filtering Software. Just remember, this solution is not 100% accurate, although it will help curb the amount of spam in your inbox.
• Set up Temporary Email Accounts and Mail Aliases
• Avoid using a common first name as an email address
• If you need further clarification on our tips, or assistance with spam issues, please don’t hesitate to call. Whether you are our network support client, web client or both, we value your business. We know you depend on technology to operate your business and we want nothing more than to see you operate successfully.

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Homeowners Resource Center is located in Dunmore, PA. They service local homeowners by assisting them with home renovations and the financing of these fixes.

The Problem:

They had an aging NT 4.0 PDC system that was on the edge of failing. It was slowing down productivity and making daily administrative tasks more difficult. Their existing server needed to be rebooted almost daily, causing downtime on the client side. In addition, there was no backup solution in place. Other servers they had preexisting on the network were a Windows 2000 Server with SQL Server 2000 and another Windows 2000 server hosting their proprietary accounting software. All servers and workstations logged onto the Windows NT4 BDC and relied on it for file sharing, WINS and all scripting.

The Solution:

Put in place a high end, reliable server to handle file sharing, logon events, and a centralized backup server. To accomplish this, first, our engineer upgraded the existing NT domain to a more modern active directory infrastructure. In order to do this, we created an NT4 PDC server by first using Microsoft Virtual Server and then migrated it to Windows Server 2003. Once the migration was complete, we upgraded the domain to Active directory. This process took all the NT accounts and converted them to a better, more streamlined organizational structure. This step also removed approximately 30+ hours of initial setup by not having to reconfigure each workstation to the “new” domain. After the migration, a centralized backup solution was put in place, allowing all servers to backup to the new server utilizing one set of tapes, as opposed to having multiple tape sets from each server.

The Benefits:

• Can support new applications as they come to market
• Gained a reliable, scalable, and agile platform for doing business, now and in the future
• Can support new applications as they come to market
• Increased office productivity with less downtime
• Dependable data backup solution

If you are having any problems with your current served network and are looking for a solution, please don’t hesitate to contact us for your next step.

An ever-developing application is “voice-recognition typing,” a sophisticated technology that has been available to PC owners for the past 10 years.
This technology strives to take the hands off the keyboard and instead listen to and convert the user’s voice to text. Voice-recognition typing can be quite impressive, with claims of 99 percent accuracy and speed.

Candidates for voice-recognition typing are workers who type high volumes of routine text. Anyone considering these products should realize that the program will need to be trained and may or may not meet expectations.

The best strategy is to experiment by purchasing from a vendor who will assure customer satisfaction.

The trouble with voice

Users of voice recognition can experience puzzling errors for several reasons.

The computer algorithms behind most voice-recognition engines do not have the benefit of observing facial expressions or gestures that people use when communicating. Also, if anything alters the human voice (like a cold) voice recognition can fall short.

The most popular voice-recognition program is Dragon NaturallySpeaking (www.scansoft.com) version 8.

Dragon has a standard version, along with robust legal and medical versions, with retail pricing from $99 to $1,050, depending on the version.

An important and often overlooked aspect for decent voice-recognition typing is a good microphone. The best kind of microphone is one that is powered by and uses a USB connector, easily available at most computer stores.

Owners of both Windows XP and Office XP have the advantage of a built-in voice-recognition application known as SRE. (SRE may need initial setup.) However, SRE is just a basic “plain Jane” version of voice recognition and may not be suitable for more demanding applications.

Voice recognition is far from being limited to PC applications. Handheld computing devices, small gadgets and special services are using voice recognition for neat, helpful applications. Examples include voice command systems in cars and many devices where a keyboard cannot be placed.

Particularly useful for the business traveler are small handheld translation devices such as the Ectaco Universal Translator UT-103 (www.universal-translator.net).

For around $300, this little wonder can translate aloud an English phrase into equivalent French, German, or Spanish. Devices like this may not be perfect, but are certainly worth trying.

Many businesses are heavily dependent on an Microsoft’s e-mail product, Outlook. At many large businesses, the server back end of Outlook e-mail clients is known as Exchange server.

Exchange enables large enterprise e-mail systems that include corporate-wide contact lists, calendaring, and e-mail. Microsoft indicated recently at the SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference in New York that it plans to integrate technology from its Microsoft Speech Server into Exchange, possibly as early as 2006. However, it should be noted that there are third-party vendors that already offer some degree of voice integration with Exchange today. One of leaders of this technology is Adomo (www.adomo.com), Cupertino, Calif.

In July, Adomo released a new product known as Voice Messaging for Exchange, which alters Exchange from just as a place to store text messages to a communications backbone. Adomo’s solution would integrate phone voice mail messages right along side text messages in Exchange/Outlook systems. According to Tony Romanek, senior systems engineer for Next Step Systems Integrations (www.nextstepsys.com), Scranton, which specializes in networking, e-mail solutions and hosting, “If Microsoft says they will they will implement voice-enabled Exchange, it’s just a matter of time. One feature to expect will be the ability to read back text e-mail over the phone, along with phone voice mail integration into inboxes.”

Romanek warns that these more resource-intense voice applications will take time to implement. Though it may be quite common to listen to your e-mail in the near future, creating new text based e-mail from the phone will be a different and more challenging situation. Servers that house these new voice enabled systems will definitely need careful evaluation to assure reasonable performance.

Article provided by Northeast PA Business Journal

A computer virus, by definition, is a piece of code that has gained entry to your personal PC, runs on your PC without your consent and replicates itself to other unprotected PC’s. A virus can be destructive or may just be a nuisance. Either way, this is something you do not want on your computer. Almost all antivirus programs today use virus definitions or signatures and special code called heuristics to protect your PC. The definitions allow the program to compare information entering your PC with known viruses and can stop them before an infection occurs. Heuristic detection allows the antivirus application to detect unknown viruses by analyzing a program’s behavior and taking appropriate action.

The all encompassing term “spyware” can be loosely defined as an unwanted and unauthorized program that is usually installed without your consent. It collects data on your web habits which are used for advertising purposes. Certain spyware programs can also hijack your home page, steal your username and passwords for your online bank or brokerage account, bombard you with endless pop up ads and slow your PC to a crawl. If you have ever had the misfortune of having your PC become infected with some nasty piece of spyware, you know how difficult and frustrating it can be to remove it completely. Many companies, and even some “good guy” netizens, have helped to control the spyware issue by offering programs, some of which are free, that remove these destructive programs. The programs themselves work in a very similar manner as the antivirus utilities, they rely on up to date definitions to compare known bad files to files on your PC. Although no one program can remove every known spyware program, they have made a huge difference to computer users everywhere.

As was mentioned, all spyware, and almost all viruses, are detected by comparing the files on a PC with a list of known destructive files. What would happen if there was no way of actually doing a compare of files on your system? Impossible you might say, but that is exactly what is happening with a technology called rootkits. The most difficult to detect rootkits hide themselves at the most basic level of an operating system, the kernel. They actually appear to be part of the operating system itself.

Imagine this nightmare. A new security vulnerability is found by a programmer that also writes some nasty spyware applications. This person decides to combine rootkit technology with the spyware application and exploit the security hole, or maybe releases it on Peer-to-Peer network like Kazaa. When a PC becomes infected, the rootkit hides itself, and the spyware application, completely. When you run your antivirus or antispyware application, the program basically asks the operating system for a list of all files on the hard drive. The application will also ask the operating system for a list of all running programs and access to the registry. The rootkit is written in such a way that it will give the antivirus or antispyware application everything it asks for except; 1) the list of files for the rootkit and spyware application 2) the rootkit and spyware running executables and 3) the registry entries for both. Your antivirus and antispyware applications will scan everything it has been given and will report a clean system. However, the system is now completely compromised and you have a false sense of security.

Since rootkits are operating at such a low level, the only true way to access all files on the hard drive is to actually boot another operating system from CD and scan for viruses and spyware. If your compromised operating system can’t load and hide the bad files and registry entries, then at least you have a fighting chance. Currently there is no pre-made bootable CD with the tools necessary to automatically clean your system, but it can be done with the right skill set.

This is not some kind of science fiction story, it is happening now. How do you protect yourself from this? Well, the general consensus is that new security tools will need to be developed and some companies are now starting to develop them. Kaspersky Labs, Sysinternals, Microsoft and F-Secure are just some of the companies that have released or are planning to release anti-rootkit tools. However, to protect yourself from becoming infected in the first place, you should always; 1) install all security updates for your operating system 2) install a good antivirus application and update it regularly 3) install, update and run multiple antispyware applications 4) avoid downloading and installing software from an untrusted source. Following the above recommendations should help you avoid this new serious security threat.

Owning software is different than other types of ownership. Because software - although often distributed on media such as CDs, is not a physical commodity, it is considered intellectual property. Ownership of such property is controlled by license agreements. Software licenses are legal documents describing the proper use and distribution of the software and provide the manufacturer with the revenue necessary to continue producing the software, and offering the service and support legitimate users.

There are actually many distinct types of software piracy, and familiarity with them can protect you from any connection, even if unintentional, to intellectual property theft. For an in depth explanation of different types of piracy, visit Microsoft’s website at www.microsoft.com/piracy.

Some basic advice is to catalog all of your software license keys and media. Keep them in a safe place. Make sure you purchase your software from credible sources and don’t ever accept a copied version of software. Finally, if you think there may be illegal software on your systems, consult with NSSI on licensing recommendations.