Category Cyber Security

Do we design websites? No.
Do we design solutions that include websites? Yes.
The website is like a hammer and nails in construction. It’s tough to build a business with an Internet presence if you don’t have a website. A website however isn’t just a simple design that gets launched and is suddenly successful.
A website is an extension of a business that gets customized over time based on the way that its users are going to use it most productively.
This is where designing a website is also an intervention by someone who can assess the way a business functions and help the website function in a way that will be easiest to manage by the staff and management.
Let’s say for example you want to have profiles of your employees online. What if you have high turnover and those employees have a presence in multiple parts of your website? For this you want to have a centralized profile system that is easily managed by a middle income staffer. This small task alone will save your company money and hassle when simple adjustments can be done by someone other than a high paid programmer.
Building a business that will utilize the potential of the internet can have a lot of surprises. Building your website can involved 100s of scenarios like the one above and are usually only implemented by someone who sees that a simple task might have a more economical long term solution during the building process.
With so many things that need to be considered the design process becomes an evolution of contributions by the people who use the website. One way to attack this is to focus on getting all of the live information on the website, providing the most critical functions to run the business (online) and then make adjustments in a system that can be made over time. This allows a website to evolve fluidly and become a more secure, high performance, asset to the company, it’s users and it’s owners.
Will the average person with even the highest level of intelligence be prepared for things that are avoided by those with applicable experience? Share the journey into the unknown with a Cyber guide. Someone who can point out the things that are waiting in the shadows.
Every project has surprise expenses because there will always be something that can be done to modify a plan that is already in action. Even changing the same transmission on the same car 10 times can introduce a few variants to a simple task.
You are not indestructible and neither is your business but you can make your business more safe by making smart and educated choices.
What’s our point? Leave it to the pros.
Security Audits
During this building process there will be areas that should be addressed which can produce security holes in primary and secondary processes. A primary process would be something like a contact form or simple interaction on the website which does not have a secure connection or somehow creates a security hole.
A secondary process is when someone created a secure connection to your website but is using a company email address that has vulnerabilities that allow someone else to use a weak email due to low password standards. A weak authentication system can go all the way back to a person’s desktop/laptop in their home behind a VPN that is connected to the company’s home server. Every step of this usage process has to be examined and installed in a way that even the users who are the least tech savvy can handle meeting the minimum system requirements for security without the need to study computer science. This responsibility goes back to the person building the site and who will make sure all of these things are considered. They will also need to be taught to staff and rules of the security requirements have to be enforced.
Enforcing rules will be the least common denominator to the security vulnerabilities not the cool SSL certificate on your website.
For the average company a typical security audit and implementation with training or supporting documentation can take 3-12 months depending on cooperation and level of complication.
Website Performance

This has been referenced indirectly at
http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/avoid-phone-scams.aspx

We read about it but now we got the phone call.  Please read on for your own safety.

Be aware and I suggest that anyone who reads this posts it on their Facebook wall to let everyone they know.

For those who know me my background is in Internet fraud and internet security. This is a very real and very important alert. I will follow this up with more extensive background as soon as I find out more.

Please read on:

There is a company calling themselves Microsoft Windows and they are calling people directly claiming that their computers will become disabled in 24 hours if they do not access your computer remotely to perform a security fix.
What they explained is something I have encountered but Microsoft never calls their customers directly. This company claims to be working for Microsoft and claims to be in Texas. The number we have is 850-391-0706 and in my search is associated with a website unrelated to this kind of a business and is a Pensacola, Florida phone number.
One of the first words they used was “Bank” which made me wonder if this is their concern or their motive.
They provide some pretty convincing explanations for what they are doing but didn’t pass some pretty simple security questions I gave them.
What they seem to be trying to accomplish is to possibly install a tracking cookie or some other root level bot which could track your browsing, logons (to banks or other highly sensitive accounts).
They offer this as a free service and told me that they have my data and that my computer is at risk. This is a lie because I called them.
This has been confirmed as a fraud. If anyone has questions on this I can be contacted directly by using messenger at facebook.com/unleashyourgeek,LinkedIN.com/unleashyourgeek, twitter.com/unleashyourgeek or via my website at www.unleashyourgeek.com.