Recently, I prepared my company’s Quickbooks file and sent it off to McClaren & Associates, my CPA firm.

Because the file was over 30 megabytes, the best way to get it to them was to burn it on a CD and drop it in the mail. Before I burned the file to the CD however, I had encrypted the data file with PGP Desktop to form a Self Decrypting Archive. This means that the data itself becomes scrambled, and no one in the world (including even most major governments!!) will be able to unscramble it unless they have the “key”. When my CPA’s office received the CD, they would enter a password (the “key”), that we previously agreed to verbally, and would then be able to unscramble and save the file into a format Quickbooks will understand. This method of data protection is far beyond merely password protecting the opening of a file, and is extremely secure.

Now for the lesson: What are the chances, but wouldn’t you know it got lost in the mail and never made it to their office!?! This is a true story. Thankfully, I had the file encrypted.

Remember folks, this was my entire accounting system file and had all my customers, vendors and employees information in it. Much of this data, such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers, and other personnel data is deemed personal information and controlled by MA 201 CMR 17.00 is contained in the file!

Wouldn’t you cringe if this happened to you and the file you sent was NOT encrypted?

Remember, even though a Quickbooks file may be password protected it can still be opened by anyone by simply accessing Google.com and searching for a Password Cracker for Quickbooks. Also, even if the password is not determined, the personal information could easily be extracted by even a novice hacker.

Fortunately, all my customers, vendors, and employees can REST EASY. How safe are you keeping your stakeholder’s data? Do you have CDs or USB drives or even tape backups lying around unencrypted?

For more information, contact Bill Bowman or me about a free network security risk assessment and MA 201 CMR 17.00 compliance assessment to help you keep your customers, vendors and employees data safe and sound.
-Paul

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Paul LaFlamme
President & CEO
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 (LiveCall:508-347-9550) x115

The ‘Conficker’ virus, also known as ‘Downadup’, is a Trojan virus which was first detected in November, 2008, and is particularly difficult for officials to deal with because of its sophistication. The good news is that all of Centrend’s IT program clients are safe and protected from the attack. As the newest version of the virus, known as the ‘Conficker C’ variant, propogates itself, we are prepared to deal with the outbreak for those who are not currently Centrend clients.

The ‘Conficker B’ version of the virus spread rapidly and by February had infected an estimated 12 million Windows PCs world-wide. So, there is potential for an even more widespread infection with the latest variant that has already infected an unknown number of PCs, and is expected to change its activity on April first. Conficker has the ability to create its own peer to peer network, so it communicates from one PC to another across many kinds of connectivity or through portable media, such as USB drives and CD-ROMs. Anyone who has questions or is unsure about whether or not their PC is infected or vulnerable to the Conficker virus should contact Centrend for assistance.

- Bill

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Bill Bowman
Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc
508-347-9550 x 135

Technology Results within a CEO’s Timeframe

Does your organization have a policy in place regarding unsolicited commercial e-mail? Let’s think about the underlying principles your e-mail policy should be based upon.

The act of sending an Email message without the prior consent of the recipient is considered offensive. The sender of any Email message must have a prior established relationship with the recipient (they should at least know who you are), or the recipient’s express permission to be included on your e-mail list (maybe they don’t know who you are, but for some reason, they don’t mind getting e-mail from you).

Always ask permission to add a contact to your e-mail list. Allow the recipients of your e-mail to safely remove themselves from your list. Immediately remove anyone from your list who asks to be removed, and remove them without question.

-Bill

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Bill Bowman
Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 x135

Is your website current with your latest products and services, company news and press releases? If you’re like most organizations, you’re going to reluctantly admit that not only isn’t the site up to date, but you’re often embarrassed by it.

You had a vision of having a great web site…what went wrong? Most often the problem is due to one of these reasons:

1. Original site was non professionally designed – (the son of a neighbor who just completed an HTML class for example)
2. There was never an action plan to keep the site up to date
3. Those responsible for contributing content “pass the buck” and don’t provide your developer with the materials
4. You provide your web developer and web maintenance provider with materials but the information doesn’t get posted timely
5. The nature of your business requires that your site changes often and you literally can’t keep up with the changes.

In recent years, and thanks to some wonderful open-source solutions, it’s never been more cost effective to create a web site that you (and your staff) can maintain yourself! With minimal training and with little more knowledge than using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, you’ll be able to make immediate changes to your site in REALTIME.

In recent years, Centrend has been building Content Management Systems for customers to solve the problem of keeping their site up to date and helping them realize these benefits:

• - In smaller companies, owners or operations managers maintain the site directly. Owners love the ability to make immediate changes to their site.
• - In larger organizations, responsibility for maintaining the web site is handed down to department managers. Owners and business managers can then hold each department accountable for their area of the site.
• - The CMS systems work great for internal only sites too such as company intranets and project management and tracking-oriented sites.
• - Because Content is so easily added, you end up with a larger website which adds value for your visitors and makes you site more useful for search engines as well.

Please contact me if I can be of any help getting your web site strategy back on track!

-Paul
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Paul LaFlamme
President & CEO

I was having a conversation with a customer prospect the other day about the volume of spam they are receiving and the things that Centrend can do for not only helping reduce the annoyance, but make e-mail systems more efficient. She was curious to know why we get spam in the first place, and why is it called, “spam,” anyway?

The naming of Internet “spam” has not so much to do with the luncheon meat, produced by Hormel Foods, as it does with a television skit recorded by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In the skit, a restaurant patron found that everything in the restaurant was served with SPAM, whether the customer wanted it or not. The proprietor and the other patrons couldn’t believe their ears when the customer claimed he didn’t want any SPAM. A chorus of, “SPAM…SPAM…SPAM…SPAM…” then eliminated all other conversation.

The earliest form of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) was actually unsolicited advertising on message boards. In the early 1990’s the Usenet (newsgroups) was a relatively pristine environment for giving and receiving ideas and information on thousands of topics open for discussion. That is, until some individuals figured out that it’s also a great place to send cheap bulk advertising to millions of people at once.

Although posting irrelevant messages to message boards is considered taboo and annoying, offenders began to realize the potential return on investment was huge. Vast numbers of postings of unwanted messages being downloaded to local PCs was unstoppable, and soon became known as “spam", in reference to the famous Monty Python skit.

Hormel Foods, Inc.’s official position on the subject is that the company doesn’t mind if you call it “spam", just remember that the real SPAM is a registered trademark. The people at Hormel Foods believe that the use of “spam” as a slang term will not hurt their product marketing. However, the company does not allow the use of its product’s likeness in reference to UCE.

We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of the word “spam” as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

- Hormel Foods Corporation

In my next blog posting we’ll discuss E-mail best practices - things you should know.

-Bill

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Bill Bowman
Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 x135

Do you use Outlook Express or Outlook to manage your personal email or business email? If so, you need to be aware that both systems have limits as to how large the data file(s) can be. The latest version of Office Outlook 2007 gets around this by allowing for files larger than 2gb but it is still recommended that files are not allowed to exceed two gigabyte.

The technical reason is that Outlook and Outlook Express store email in an indexed format. If the file stores get too large, the indexing system fails causing your Outlook to stop working. You will not be able to send and receive email. The recovery process is different for Outlook Express and Outlook but the prognosis is not good. You will lose some data if the crash is allowed to occur. There is no warning.

A good backup system will reduce the risk but if the internal system pointers are allowed to corrupt, going to a backup that is a few days old may not be enough to recover the data.

At Centrend, we believe in preventing problems from occurring to begin with. Here’s how you can find out the size of your data file. Follow the instructions in the appropriate section for your system.

For Outlook Express Users:

Part 1: Locate the store folder.

1. Start Outlook Express
2. Click Tools, and then click Options.
3. On the Maintenance tab, click Store Folder.
4. In the Store Location dialog box, copy the store location. It’s long and you’ll probably have to scroll in the window to make sure you have the entire path to the files.

Part 2. Determine Total size of store folders

1. Click Start Run and paste in (or type in) the string from Part 1, step 4.
2. Click OK
3. Right click on each folder and choose properties in the menu that pops up. This will give you the size of each folder. The sizes added together must not be allowed to exceed 2gb

For Outlook Users:
Part 1: Locate the store folder.

1. Start Outlook
2. Right-click on Personal Folders. Click on Properties. (Make sure the Tree View is enabled you won’t be able to see “Personal Folders")
3. Click on the advanced button
4. Under Filename: you will see the path and name of your personal file folder. Copy the filename so you can refer to it in Part 2, below.

Part 2: Find out the size of your store folder

1. Click Start Run and paste in (or type in) the string from Part 1, step 4. Backspace to the “\” to erase the actual PST filename.
2. Click OK
3. Right click the PST filename you will see in the folder. Usually this file is called outlook.pst or personal.pst but the one you are using is the one identified in Part 1, step 4, above. If this file is approaching 2gb, you are dangerously close to an email crash!
4. If there is an archive.pst file in that same folder, make sure it doesn’t exceed 2gb either.

I’ve tried to make these instructions as complete as possible without being too long. If you find these instructions too difficult, or have any questions at all about how to reduce the size of the files and avoid a crash, please contact me and one of our technicians will walk you through.

Special Note for users running in an environment with Microsoft Exchange: if you are running MS Exchange on your business network, you can still run into problems if your local copy of email gets too large. If you’re MS Exchange administrator is following best practices, they have an email policy programmed on the Exchange server that will make sure you are warned well in advance of this problem.

-Paul
***
Paul LaFlamme
President & CEO
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 x115

So how do you do it? Do you use ACT!? Goldmine? MS Outlook? MS Excel Spreadsheets? with an online solution such as salesforce.com? A fully integrated ERP system?

Centrend has helped customers decide and implement many of these and other solutions. It’s a very important, strategic decision that you can’t afford to get wrong. Whatever solution you choose, make sure it meets the following criteria for YOUR needs. Here are a few important considerations:

1. What information needs to be stored?
2. How will the information be used? Telemarketing, traditional direct mail, email blasts?
3. From where does the data need to be accessed? Will you need these contacts in your cell phone while on the road?
4. Will the contacts be shared? If so, what are the security considerations? Read only, full read/write, completely private?
5. How long will the system serve your needs? This is important if you’re looking for a new system and/or if you have a system that you are outgrowing.

My best piece of advice regarding contact management: always keep in mind what your objective is and keep only the data you need.

With some analyis, Centrend can help you figure out what the best solution is for you to optimize your contact management and maximize your sales efforts. Please contact Bill or I for a free consultation.

-Paul
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Paul LaFlamme
President & CEO
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 (LiveCall:508-347-9550) x115