Thanks to Nick Cueva for permission to use this Photo.
There isn’t a profitable business segment today that isn’t competitive and that even includes the SPAMMING industry. Two of the biggest Spamming organizations, Nugache and Storm are currently going at each other head to head to dominate the SPAM/malware market. Yes, there is a market for SPAM and malware. Surprised? These organizations are not owned and operated by legitimate business people. No in is yet sure who is behind Storm but many IT security experts feel that Nugache is linked to the Russian Mob, aka the Russian Business Network.
Both of these organizations distribute SPAM through Zombie networks and both have been involved in highly criminal activities. Zombie networks are composed of PC’s across the globe, which have been compromised by some type of Trojan Horse which allows the Zombie controllers to then use them to send SPAM, conduct phishing attacks or other types of illegal activities. Each of these organizations control hundreds of thousands of computers. Take Storm for example. Some IT security experts have estimated that the Storm Zombie network, called the Storm Botnet, runs anywhere from one to fifty million computer systems. Even the most conservative estimates place the size somewhere around 150,000 to one million. The Storm Botnet in 2007 accounted for 8% of all malware on Microsoft Windows computers.
This year, Storm has an extremely viable competitor, Nugache. Although its zombie technology is not as sophisticated as Storm’s (for instance, Storm is somehow able to send SPAM in the native language of the receiver while Nugache cannot) Nugache has a big thing going for it right now, price. In an attempt to unseat Storm from its botnet dominance, Nugache has initiated a price war. Nugache will send one million emails for only $100. For $800 you can send 10 million emails.
It is because of the ridiculously meager amount of money that is required to SPAM a million people that SPAMMING is very profitable, even if the response rate to SPAM is only .01%. It is the sophistication of these controllable zombie networks that worry IT security professionals. Many fear that the current war for control of the malware market is only the beginning of this illegal destructive industry.
Thanks to conskeptical for permission to use this Photo.
Have you ever wanted to revisit a link that was fifty or more characters long and was impossible to remember? Have you tried to tell someone about a site with an extensively elongated URL? A great example is the link for a specific link on YouTube.
If you access such a site from the same computer all the time you can simply save that site as a favorite in your browser. But what if you want to access the site from any computer you want? Here is a great website to help you do just that,
This is a nasty link that only someone with a photographic memory could possibly remember. Simply go to tinyurl.com and paste in the link. Then assign it an easy to remember name such as
win2008book_i_want
And save it. You would then access the link by simply typing
You have to type in unique names that no one else has used before because each link has to be unique. Most easy links such as www.tinyurl.com/Brad are already used. Of course, like most technological tools, this site poses a security risk to organizations as well as a great benefit. People who use computers at organizations that utilize web filtering, such as schools and businesses, can create personal custom links for websites that are filtered by the organization, allowing them full access to these sites. For this reason, Tiny Url is sometimes blocked by organizations to prevent this. I recommend that you try it out for yourself…
Thanks to tacvbo for permission to use this Photo.
Even in a poor economy, the IT job field remains hot. Despite the current economic woes, IT employment for the first quarter of 2008 shot up more than 12% compared with a year ago according to Information Week Magazine. The US added a total of 376,000 IT Jobs, making a total of 3.8 million people in the IT field.
This bodes well for future graduates of Ashworth University’s information technology programs because the biggest increase is in the computer support specialist field which grew by an astounding 41% in the past year, adding 127,000 jobs. Network and system administrator jobs grew by 31%, adding 51,000 jobs total. Despite the sustaining perception that the IT field has been weak ever since the IT bubble collapse and that all the jobs are going to India, the industry has added nearly 600,000 new jobs since its low point in 2002. In a digital and virtual world, the IT labor market is here to stay.
Has anyone emailed you a Microsoft Word file or excel file made in Office XP that you weren’t able to open with your copy of Office 2003 or 2000? That’s because 2007 saves Word and Excel files in a custom file type by default. Word 2007 saves in the .docx format for instance.
Excel 2007 saves in the .xlsx format by default. If this has happened to you there are two options. One of course is to install Office 2007 on your computer. The far lesser expensive alternative is to download and install the Microsoft 2007 conversion tool which allows earlier versions of Office to open 2007 files. Note that this is a read only tool. You cannot create 2007 files with it. Office 2007 does allow you to save files in the format of earlier versions. If you anticipate emailing any files created with Office 2007, you should do this so that your recipients can open them guaranteed. You can download the conversion tool by clicking here.
There are other alternatives to Microsoft Office. I have written about OpenOffice before, the most popular open source office suite. It is totally free and many of its components, such as the word processing and spreadsheet components, have an identical look as Office 2003. It is ideal for students. You can research it further and download it here.
Another alternative is Google Apps. Google Apps, which was heralded early on has not caught on as was anticipated. It is a web based application which means that nothing is installed on your computer.
This means that you can work on your files from anywhere since you can also save your files on a personal storage space of your own on a Google server. You can also save your files to your local computer or media as well. You can access Google Apps here.
The 2008 Global Information Security Workforce Study was recently released. A total of 7,548 professionals in the field were surveyed. The complete study can be downloaded at https://www.isc2.org/cgi-bin/content.cgi?category=510
The most interesting headline from the study was the fact that 70 percent of all respondents reported that their own employees are the biggest threat to their organization’s security. This is contrary to the common belief that organizations must throw most of their resources at the outside perimeter of the organization’s network to prevent outsiders from accessing their network.
This premise is supported by a recent finding that email is now no longer the number one manner in which viruses access an organization’s network. With the ease at which employers now bring in thumb drives, personal laptops and PDA’s. Network security plans must focus on an umbrella approach that guards the entire network.
Blip.tv is regarded as “the world’s leading videoblogging and podcasting service,” but it’s their community based ethos and collaborative principles that really persuaded our Ashworth University Student Life team to deveop our own television channel through this incredible company. Blip.tv’s video publishing, sharing, and syndication features make it easy for anyone to get their message heard in the increasingly crowded online video marketplace. We here at Ashworth University would like to thank Blip.tv for their outstanding service. We’d also like to encourage you to check out our Ashworth University Television channel on Blip.tv. If you are a video content creator and would like to work with Ashworth University, please feel free to contact me at the following email address to discuss the possibilities. Thank You!
Thanks to Jamie Hladky for permission to use this Photo.
You have to learn how to crawl before you learn how to walk, but once you learn a foundation of IT skills in Ashworth University’s information technology programs and anchor yourself in the IT labor force, here are the ten hottest tech skill sets you should aim to learn in the next five years according to Tech Republic.
Voice over IP - sales of pure IP PBX systems for the first quarter of 2007 increased 76% over the first quarter of the previous year
Unified Communications - the convergence of different communications technologies, such as e-mail, voicemail, text messaging, and fax
Hybrid Networks – Networks are no longer all Windows or all Linux, they are a hodgepodge of different systems and IT pros need to learn more than one of them.
Wireless Technologies – everything’s going wireless it seems.
Remote User Support – with more employees working off-site today, help support personnel must provide remote support to anywhere.
Mobile User Support – more and more organizations are providing blackberries and other smart portable devices for their employees that must be supported.
Software-as-a-Service – or SaaS as it is referred to in technical articles. With the popularity of Web 2.0, the trend is to now provide software applications over the Internet rather than installing them on each and every computer.
Virtualization – With the dominance of VMWare and the soon to be released 2008 Virtual Application from Microsoft, virtualization is THE buzzword today along with its countless benefits.
IPv6 – Although this standard has not grown in popularity as of yet, mostly because the wide usage of NAT has allowed us to not run out of IP addresses on the Internet as fast as predicted, this standard is going to come about within the next five years.
Security - A skill set that will probably always be in the top 10.
It’s standard practice that if you have an always-on Internet connection, then you should have a firewall, implemented in either hardware, such as a router, or in software. But even if you are using a dial-up connection, you really need a software firewall to protect you from intrusions. You would be surprised at the number of attempts to get into your PC a good software firewall will block on a PC using dial-up. A firewall will also notify you of attempts to go out to an Internet website. You can then allow or disallow the outbound traffic. You would want legitimate programs such as Windows to access the company’s website for update purposes, but you’re safer to block any programs that you don’t recognize from doing so. Be sure to check for correct spelling. Say you have Symantec’s anti virus program on your PC and have set it up for automatic virus signature updates. Your firewall will ask you whether you want to grant the program permission to go outbound. But some malware could identify itself as Symantek. Should you allow it to access the Internet, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Yes, it’s unfortunate that there are so many nasty things that can happen to your computer. And thwarting such attempts can cost you time and money, but you really need to do this. At minimum you need a firewall, an anti-virus program, and an anti-spyware utility. You’ll also need to update the anti-virus and anti-spyware programs’ signature files at least once a week, as well as scanning with each at least once a week, more frequently if you are online daily.then you should have a firewall, implemented in either hardware, such as a router, or in software. But even if you are using a dial-up connection, you really need a software firewall to protect you from intrusions. You would be surprised at the number of attempts to get into your PC a good software firewall will block on a PC using dial-up. A firewall will also notify you of attempts to go out to an Internet website. You can then allow or disallow the outbound traffic. You would want legitimate programs such as Windows to access the company’s website for update purposes, but you’re safer to block any programs that you don’t recognize from doing so. Be sure to check for correct spelling.
Say you have Symantec’s anti virus program on your PC and have set it up for automatic virus signature updates. Your firewall will ask you whether you want to grant the program permission to go outbound. But some malware could identify itself as Symantek. Should you allow it to access the Internet, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Yes, it’s unfortunate that there are so many nasty things that can happen to your computer. And thwarting such attempts can cost you time and money, but you really need to do this. At minimum you need a firewall, an anti-virus program, and an anti-spyware utility. You’ll also need to update the anti-virus and anti-spyware programs’ signature files at least once a week, as well as scanning with each at least once a week, more frequently if you are online daily.
If you are in the IT Field or considering getting into it, you don’t need rose colored glasses to see a promising future for yourself. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that IT will be the fastest growing sector of our economy for the next ten years. They also report that the three fastest growing jobs in the US are network system and data communication analysts, computer systems analysts and software application engineers. In fact, in just about any top ten list, you will find IT has the most positions of any field.Now couple this tremendous growth with the following statistic:
The labor force for the 25 to 54 age group in IT will only grow at a dismal .2% between 2006 and 2016.
Do you want to be in demand for the next decade? Stay committed to your program studies and your hard work will pay off. The bottom line is that it’s important to obtain as many skill sets as you can in the rapidly expanding IT industry. If you need assistance with your lessons, I encourage you to reach out to me in the comments section of this blog. I always look forward to hearing from my students!
Thanks to Kit Cowan for permission to use this Photo.
I had to go about shopping for a new KVM switch at my work to replace one that had gone bad. This gave me the idea to write a short blog piece about KVM switches. A KVM switch allows a user to control multiple servers or workstations with a single monitor and mouse/keyboard. In a typical datacenter, each rack of servers will be connected to a KVM switch which has an assigned monitor/mouse/keyboard. Because of KVM switches, organizations don’t have to purchase a monitor and keyboard/mouse set for every single machine. This makes sense since users do not dedicate themselves to a server desktop as they do a workstation.
Each computer is connected to the KVM switch with a special VGA or USB cable. Higher end KVMs allow standard Ethernet cables to connect computers. KVMs usually come in 4, 8 and 16 port versions, meaning that it can accommodate that many machines. When a user wants to access a particular machine, he simply hits an assigned key on the keyboard to view a menu of the computers that are managed by that KVM. He then selects the machine he wishes to view and the monitor then brings it up. Imagine if you were downloading and installing Windows Updates on 8 servers. You could pull up each server at a single monitor and complete the tasks without leaving your chair.
KVM switches are not utilized as much as they have been in the past due to the ease of tools such as Microsoft Remote Desktop which allows one to remote into any windows server at will and pull up the server desktop wherever they are in the world. These remote applications due have one big limitation in that they do not allow a user to view the booting process of the server or access the BIOS as one normally is able to. Unlike a KVM, if you reboot a machine while remoting into it, you lose your connection. Because of this, KVM switches continue to be a valuable tool for networks today.
One of the biggest players in the KVM market is Avocent. Visit their website at www.avocent.com to learn more about their product line and KVMs in general.
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