Peter Martin's Tech Notes

I want to take a moment to give you some recommendations for your ongoing computer security.

But we use Macs – Macs are supposed to be secure. Right?

While the Mac OS is very secure, with Apple’s rise and unprecedented success in the marketplace, Macs are becoming targeted more and more by the “bad guys”. Here are a few simple tips to keep your computer secure.

Five Things You Need to Be Cognizant of and Act Accordingly
(These are not optional).

1) Run Software Update regularly. It’s under your “Apple” Menu. If you haven’t run it in a while – it’s time. Apple releases important bug fixes and security patches and enhancements via this mechanism. Yes, it can take a little while to run, but it’s important.

2) Update Microsoft Office when prompted. Office vulnerabilities are a common target of hackers.

3) Update Adobe Flash. Another target. You can download the latest version here. http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ The latest version now self-checks for updates.

4) NEVER, NEVER, EVER respond to an email that asks for personal information, directs you to a website to complete a form asking for personal information, tells you that you have $14 million awaiting you from a foreign Prince . . . Rule of thumb, if it sounds fishy/too good to be true – IT IS. Some tell tale signs are things like; awkward grammar, typos, weird return address. The perpetrators of these scams are getting better and better so you need to be cautious and skeptical. Having your identity stolen is a nightmare. If you’re not sure – PLEASE ASK.

5) Blog spam – you may get emails from your blog about comment spam. You do not need to do anything about these – but if you’re getting them a lot – you might want to change the default setting on blog posts to have comments turned OFF, instead of on. There are good reasons to have comments turned on to get feedback from students and parents, but it’s best to turn comments on by a per-post basis, not as the default setting.

Maybe I missed something and I think there is a lot that is spot on here but IBM “leading the way” is perhaps a stretch.

http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/08/ibm-leads-the-way-in-the-post-pc-era.html#more-10321

Usually, we do a short presentation to returning staff to highlight some of what we worked on over the summer.  This year, I will be listing things here in my blog with a short explanation of what we did and why we did it.

The first thing I want to highlight is the new wireless system that we installed during the school year last year.  This summer we implemented some new features at all of the schools.  The most important feature of the new system is that it can be centrally managed.  The old Apple “Airports” had to be managed individually – any time we wanted to make a change, troubleshoot a problem, find a user, etc. we had to go through a time consuming and tedious process of looking at each Airport to determine what needed to be done.  With the new system, we now have a centralized “dashboard” view of the entire wireless network (all schools) which allows us to get a bird’s eye view of all wireless activity as well as things like; problems, rogue access points interfering with our network, users on the network and their location and guests.  What are guests?  The new system allows guests to be on the wireless network at all schools in a more secure fashion.  People on the guest networks can only access the internet – they will not see internal resources like servers and printers.  They will also need a password to access the internet via our filter.  Each building administrator has a unique guest password that they can give out to building visitors at their discretion.

Finally, I want you to know that our wireless network was developed in tandem with the Goochland County IT Department.  We work closely with Bill Cleveland and his staff to make sure that we are not duplicating systems or effort.  We share the costs on projects whenever we can so all GCPS and County employees can enjoy the benefits.

Let me know if you have any questions about the new wireless system.  Next time I will talk about some server projects that took place.

During the summer, the tech crew will be working from 7:00 am until 5:30 pm – Monday through Thursday.