While We’re Waiting for Whatever…

While we’re waiting for whatever our new normal will be, it’s a good guess you’ll need to beef up your network capability to handle more business, education and entertainment. At “Chez Rosenthal,” we’re taking hard-wired Wi-Fi outside to enjoy the summer. Our experience may fit your needs.

We’re doing it so that we can expand our internet coverage to our deck and part of our yard to accommodate four devices running simultaneously. As we all spend more time at home and the summer heat is not oppressive, it’s a good way to give everyone in the family more options. With smart TVs, you might consider it a good way to get a TV outside, and you’ll have no worries if you use an ethernet connection or have a network access point outside.

For my house, it was a fairly straightforward process, including drilling my own holes in my own house. We were able to run wire behind walls and under floors to get to the back of the house, and once we got outside, we put the wire inside some PVC pipe. Our only expenses were for the wire, the pipe and some connectors.

Getting more of a hybrid system of wired and wireless networking in your home may be a good solution. You’ll need a strong network if you find you’re still working from home and your kids are doing all or part of their classroom time and homework online. Whenever you can plug your device into a network node, you’ll get a stronger signal. And the closer you can be to a node, the stronger your signal will be. Getting a wired node outside the walls of your house eliminates the need for the signal to fight its way through the wall.

We have had more calls for help with networking as we’ve spent more time at home and are streaming more content. In older homes with thicker plaster walls, wiring is sometimes the best solution. The alternative is to place a series of nodes to get the signal to the farthermost places from your router or gateway, but it can fall short due to signal strength losses. In the case of a network in a two-story penthouse in an apartment building, we could only use a series of mesh units because we couldn’t go through the concrete and steel between the floors.

If you’re doing renovations or an addition to your existing home – or building a new home – we highly recommend hard wiring your network access points. Your electrician can do it at the same time they do the electrical wiring.

We can help you boost your network’s strength by recommending where to put hardwired connections and mesh nodes. We’re OK with drilling holes in our own walls but not in yours. Once the wiring is in, we can place the mesh nodes and configure everything for maximum network capability. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to talk about it.

Strengthen Your Security

We’re probably as normal as we’re going to get with working at home, and that will put more pressure on businesses and employees to step up security. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have been around for a while, but we’ve never been completely sold on them. They can give you a false sense of security.

As we see it, they depend on too many people (and organizations) doing the right thing to work effectively. Essentially, they take you across somebody else’s network, and unless you’re the one who vetted the provider and set it up, you have no way of knowing if it’s safe. If you use a computer, cell phone or tablet on a compromised VPN, you’re providing multiple access points for anyone who’s hacked the VPN. It only takes one weak link to compromise a network, and it could take months before a security breach is found. That could be too late to prevent any damage, such as an intrusion of sensitive files or identity theft.

We’re OK with using a VPN while traveling. It’s generally good for a short period of time, and it’s likely to be used by a small group of people in your traveling party on known devices. Whether VPNs are reliably secure in certain communications environments is a debatable point. Given all that is going on today, we believe it’s better to err on the side of caution and use them in limited situations to meet specific needs.

There are much better steps to take, such as two-factor authentication and using mobile apps that store your password.

We’ve discussed two-factor authentication before. While it can take many forms, it generally works by sending a 6-digit code in a text message to a designated mobile device. You then need to enter that code on whatever device you’re using to log onto a website. The problem is that if you are near a cell tower that has been compromised, the communication involving your text message could be intercepted and redirected. It’s not likely in the United States right now; it was more of a problem with older towers. Still, it’s yet another reminder to keep your guard up at all times.

The authentication apps that save your passwords are run through Microsoft and Google, two behemoths that have an equally large stake in your security. The key factor here is that the password is stored in your device, not in the cloud. Anyone who steals your password this way must physically have your device, and they must know your username and password. That minimizes the chance you’ll be compromised – even with a lost or stolen phone.

We’re available to answer any questions you have about security on all your devices and across all networks. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to talk about who uses various devices within your business organization or family and where they use them. We’ll help you develop a plan or policy, if necessary, to strengthen your weakest links and maximize security.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!

“Buyer Beware!” is a more important warning than ever before if you’re buying phones, computers, tablets and other electronic devices online. We all like online bargains, but the looting that took place as peaceful demonstrations fell apart will put a lot of stolen goods on the market. It’s a fact of life – not a political or social statement. Here’s what you need to know.

First, mobile phones, tablets and computers have built-in tracking. If the merchant from whom the devices were stolen reports the identifying information to the manufacturer, a message can be displayed as soon as the device is connected to any kind of network. It will tell the user that the device is stolen and cannot be put into service.

Second, in all likelihood, if you bought tainted goods on the internet, you bought it from a less-than-reputable seller, which means you won’t get any support from the manufacturer or a cellular network carrier. We can’t say for sure, but a manufacturer or merchant who knows where a stolen device is could initiate action to get it back.

Third, if you used a credit card, your account information is now in the hands of people who can monetize it at some point.

In short, you’ll have no consumer protection, and you could have a lot of liabilities. That puts the onus squarely on you to make sure you visit only legitimate merchant websites and buy from legitimate sellers.

Everyone can expect to be bombarded with offers from sellers, legitimate or not. We’ve been bombarded for years. Some offers come through phishing expeditions, which can look legitimate but may have one slight change from a seller that might be familiar to you. You might see an ad on a website, and that can be a tough call. Huge businesses have been built – legitimately – by tracking your browsing history and then sending you ads. It’s easy for a “fencing” operation to set up a website that has every appearance of legitimacy.

Our advice is simple. Only click on links that you are 100 percent sure are legitimate websites. Only buy electronics from legitimate sources. They may be well-known retailers as well as vendors vetted and supported by services such as Amazon. You can be reasonably assured you are getting a legitimate product and that your credit card information will be properly protected. And if your product is defective or not what you expected, you should be able to exchange or return it within a clearly stated policy.

If you have any questions about a product you’re shopping for, don’t hesitate to ask us about its properties or things to look for in a seller. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us if you have any questions.

Double Check, Triple Check

In times of crisis, cybercriminals know how to take advantage of our generosity with online scams. They come in all shapes and forms. You need to double check and triple check every email you get requesting money or action, and you need to do the same for every link you have an impulse to click.

At this point, I think we’re all sophisticated and careful enough to take a close look at the emails we get. We know to hover over a name we know to see the email address from where the message was sent. You know, for example, that you likely won’t get an email from me generated from a service in Russia – and you know to call me to see if I really did send you an email from a Russian address. You’ve got to step up your vigilance. Don’t be afraid to question anything – and never open an email or click a link in an email if are not completely sure it’s legit. A cybercriminal can use the link you click or the file you download to get into your computer and hold your data for ransom or steal vital personal or corporate financial data.

This is important because you can expect a lot of emails from people and organizations purporting to be charities to help victims of the Covid-19 crisis and hardship from civil unrest. There are many good, legitimate organizations helping good causes, but there are bad ones, too. While a specific “charity” may not plant a virus or ransomware in your computer, they will get your credit card info (bet they didn’t offer a mailing address to send a check), which they can sell many times over on the dark web.

This goes beyond email. We’re too click happy when it comes to news and entertainment sites, clicking away at any headline or teaser that sparks our interest. In our time of crisis, news sites get our attention, especially if there’s something outrageous regardless of whether it supports our beliefs or not. Aside from whether it’s true and from a reliable news source, it could also be a way for a cybercriminal to hijack your computer. The same goes for pop-ups on less-than-reputable websites.

We’re getting a lot of calls to clean up infected computers, and one incident illustrates the problem. After we cleaned a client’s computer of a problem generated by clicking on a questionable site, the client immediately clicked another piece of clickbait and had an immediately re-infected computer. We all need to use good judgment when we click on something we find – or something sent by a friend.

You can further protect yourself by making you have up-to-date antivirus and malware software installed and running on your computer. We also recommend you regularly check for updates for all your application software and hardware firmware and make sure you install and run them. We can help you with fixing problems and preventing them. Turn off your computers or technology infrastructure if you find something behaving strangely or performing slowly and call us – 973-433-6676. Call us or email us if you need help with selecting, installing or updating antivirus or malware protection software and to set up an automated system to handle software and firmware updates.

The Death of 99 Cents

We sometimes get so hung up on not paying one cent or a few dollars more for a service that we don’t see the forest for the trees. As we make more use of technology for our business and personal lives, it’s helpful to put the economics into perspective.

We have some truly amazing technology available to us, and we’ve grown to appreciate it as we spend more time at home. But we sometimes get too hung up on keeping our costs low, and in the process, we lose performance or entertainment joys because we didn’t want to spring for more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a newer phone or better TV or content streaming plans.

The time I spend discussing the benefits of a 99-cents-per-month iCloud storage plan – at an hourly rate that’s a lot more money – is sometimes mind-boggling. That said, the plethora of choices always boggles the mind.

A lot of our consternation comes from the marketplace. Within most of our lifetimes, we had cable TV, which was provided by a carrier that won the right (or franchise) to serve a community. It was that or watch over-the-air, which in metro New York was mostly seven VHF channels and a handful of UHF channels. Cable gave you all those channels plus others, such as ESPN, CNN and a host of out-of-town TV stations, especially those that carried local baseball teams. The Atlanta Braves became “America’s team” because Turner Broadcasting System was ubiquitous. You also could add two premium services, HBO and Showtime. TV was separate from your telephone service. Your local phone company provided your internet service.

Through regulatory changes, phone companies entered the cable TV market, and cable companies entered the phone market. Satellite TV entered the market, and then the cable and phone companies each offered TV, internet and phone service, followed by home alarm systems. That led to the “triple play,” which offered bundled services at “discounted” prices. Even with packages, prices continued to rise – and keep that in mind as we go along.

When package prices rose, customers questioned the concept of paying for channels (or content) they didn’t want. At the same time, it seems like content providers decided to start their own premium channels, and many services have popped up to offer some of their own content plus “skinny bundles” of channels offered by the cable companies.

Now, you need to be selective about these factors:

  • What content do I want to watch?
  • What content can I give up?
  • What quality levels am I willing to pay for?

Let’s unpack and repack these questions.

There is a lot of programming overlap. You need to look at what each content provider offers – and that’s an exhausting search – to see which providers have the most of what you want to watch and when you want to watch it. You can keep your cable either as a service or as streamed content, or you can subscribe to services that offer combinations of live programming, including TV programs, news and sports in addition to their own premium programming. You could wind up paying more than you pay for your cable service, and you may or may not have the same choices within your budget.

You can save some money if you are willing to give up some of your choices. If you never watch sports, for example, you can find packages without them. But if you’re getting Disney Plus, you’re likely going to need to take the ESPN package as part of it. If you want sports, that’s good. But you may also be paying for it as part of another package, such as YouTube TV or Fubo TV. You can research all the combinations until you drop, or you can just jump into the water. Most every service offers a trial period, and the best advice we can offer is sign up, try it and make sure you cancel it before recurring charges start.

Then, there’s quality. Netflix, as you know has three levels: $8.99 as of this writing for a single device, $12.99 for two devices and $15.99 for four. If you want HD quality, you need the $12.99 package. If you want 4K, you need the $15.99. If you just bought a new TV with the latest bells and whistles, why would you not spend an extra $4 per month?

Along with programming quality, remember, too, that you need to have adequate internet service to handle the bandwidth you’ll require to enjoy your content. And, you’ll need to have a good network infrastructure to handle it all, whether it’s strictly for entertainment or for business and school, too.

We’re happy to educate you about the economics of technology to help you make a smart decision. We’re also happy to work with you on the installation and configuration of whatever technology you choose. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide on your comfort level with whatever you spend. Our advice is don’t cheap out on the hardware because it’s much more expensive and difficult to change.  For online photo and video storage and TV or streaming content, you can adjust up or down as you see what you need. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to help make sure you have the technology you need to enjoy life during these tough times.

Making ‘Work from Home’ Work

As the “shelter-in-place” orders rapidly clamped down on our mobility, the massive and sudden shift in how we worked forced employers and employees to scramble. Equipment and security became the key issues to address.

Most of the equipment issues our clients faced revolved around laptop computers. Because of last year’s chip shortage, computer manufacturers were already behind in building enough machines to meet the market’s needs. Those needs shot up as COVID-19 hit, making computers as scarce as toilet paper. Simply, there are just not enough business-grade laptops to go around. In some cases, our clients have gone to consumer electronics stores to buy home-use laptops for employees and have us set them up.

In our view, that’s better than just having employees use their personal devices to log onto a business network and access files and apps. Unless an employer knows exactly how a computer is set up for security and how secure the employee’s home network is, that employer is rolling the dice.

Many employers have VPNs (virtual private networks) to protect the security of computing from the office to their servers or cloud servers. But that only covers the traffic between their covered computers and the server. Those who regularly work remotely use the VPN, but their computers and devices should have security measures installed, and the users should have been trained in internet security.

When your employee sets up a computer or device at home and logs into your network, here’s the worst-case scenario. Your employee may not have up-to-date anti-virus and malware protection software installed and running. Your employee may not have an adequate firewall – or any firewall – installed and running. Your employee may not have a secure Wi-Fi network. If your employee’s security system is like Swiss cheese, you can be sure a hacker will find a way to tunnel into your corporate data.

Fortunately, we have found a workaround.

Working with your employees, we can install VPNs and we use your ISP’s (internet service provider) IP address as an external IP address when your employee logs into your work network from home. That helps keep the connection secure. Then, we use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop to connect the home computer to your office network and the employee’s office computer. That allows employees to work just like they were in the office.

The keys to making this workaround successful are making sure that all the office computers are on and that someone can monitor the office computer system to make sure everything is functioning properly.

If you haven’t taken these steps yet, call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to schedule the work and to run through a checklist of things to be done before we begin.

Home Remodeling – Technology Style

Homes were caught short when everybody had to stay home to work, learn and entertain themselves. Wi-Fi networks and the internet had to carry much more traffic, and the rapid rise of new technology needs created holes for hackers to tunnel into systems. Here’s what you need to do.

First, shore up your security. Treat every device in your home that’s connected to the internet like it’s a block of gold in Fort Knox. Make sure your gateways, routers and firewalls have up-to-date security patches and bug fixes installed and running. Do the same for the firmware for every piece of hardware and software for every operating system and application that everyone in your household uses. That includes all of your smart-home devices and TVs – and make sure you have changed the default user names and passwords that came along with those devices.

We can’t emphasize this enough. That’s because between work, school and socializing, we all have more people coming in contact with our systems and every other system we’re connected to. If you have weakspots in your home system, the security of your personal financial and health data could be at risk, and so could the systems at your place of work.

In short, you may need to “remodel” the technical architecture of your home to make sure your systems and devices are airtight.

Second, make sure everyone in your home understands the security settings of all the new software you’re using for work, school and social interaction. We and our kids are all into using the latest and coolest collaboration tools, and the providers of those tools and the users need to pay special attention to how to set them up and use them safely.

Zoom is the collaboration tool that comes immediately to mind. Ever since stay-at-home orders went into effect some three weeks ago, very few people knew about Zoom, which is still considered a startup company. To encourage people to use it, Zoom quickly spread the word about its free service that allows 100 people to gather interactively online for up to 40 minutes. The two operative words here are both four-letter words: Zoom and free. You get what you pay for.

To make a long story short, Zoom rushed out the adaptation of a business application as a consumer app, and it left a lot of security holes. Two of the glaring issues, which were acted on by Zoom two weeks ago, were the sale of user data to partners for marketing purposes and the insidious “Zoombombing” incidents. The latter problem led to hackers placing porn material in school lessons and white-supremacist invasions of meetings, classes and chats sponsored by religious organizations.

Zoom stopped some of the data sales and reworked its privacy setup. It also ramped up the security requirements for people to join a Zoom session.

One other thing that home users likely have noticed is the drop-in internet speeds from their ISPs. That’s a consequence of the ISPs trying to manage the massive demand for data. As a result, you’ll all need to manage your internet use to optimize performance in your homes.

We can help you with security audits, setting up security software and automatic updates for firmware and software. We can also help you with security settings for apps like Zoom. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us for an appointment.

What Will Change When We’re Healthy Again?

Be careful of what you wish for. Employees have pushed to work at home, and employers – for the most part – resisted it. More remote working – and learning – will become the new norm as our coronavirus ends, and dynamics will change.

Our workplace and school dynamics are under scrutiny, for sure. People are adapting – at least for now – to the reality of not being able to gather and interact. Are they more productive? Our collective adrenalin is still pumping, and we’re all finding ways to make this new environment work. But what will happen as time goes on?

If working from home becomes more the norm, employers will add more tools to monitor the productivity of their remote workers. A lot of them are already available in the office, where the computer can be just like the boss sitting on a worker’s shoulder and recording every work-related and non-related movement. Will that kind of oversight extend to the home? Right now, an employee suddenly working at home can probably take a break to do some cooking or laundry, especially if they need to meet the needs of a family that’s suddenly at home all the time. What’s going to happen next?

My personal feeling is that everyone is going to miss the personal interaction of the office – and for kids, the interaction at school. There’s much to be gained from the social experience of collaborating in person – and it’s a huge part of a young person’s development. Yet, at the same time, I also think that working and learning through online channels will eventually become more stressful for people who have felt the need to be at the office or in the classroom.

We are social beings, and the people who need to mingle will want to return to an office. We see signs of it as we socially distance ourselves now. When we met some neighbors to walk together, we walked on one side of the street, and they walked on the other side. We came upon other neighbors who were having “picnics,” with their picnicking partners each on opposite sides of the street. Anyone with kids who go to school knows that the kids are trying to find more ways to connect and engage with their friends. Even homeschooled kids have needed social interaction.

The internet will continue to provide a way for people to gather, but it will always be a remote gathering. Will we be able to accept some of this as a new norm? I believe we’ll need to come to grips emotionally and politically with new ways of working, learning and socializing before we address the technology needed to make it happen. Once we decide on our direction, we’ll be able to add the required internet capacity and build the necessary security infrastructure.

Are there any insights into what may be our new way of life? If the observations of our neighborhood UPS driver are any indication, we’re setting up more home offices. He said his most-delivered items are boxes from Staples, monitors and office chairs. Once we have the means to work at home in place, the more likely we’ll all be to work at home exclusively or to a greater extent.

And what about our relationship with online shopping? We’ve taken Amazon and our entire package delivery system for granted; overnight delivery is the rule. Will next day become next week?

In the meantime, we can help you keep up with the technology you need now to meet your evolving everyday-living needs – and maybe help you map out what you might need going forward. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to talk about it.

COVID-19 Crisis – Keeping Your Technology Safe and Productive

A letter to our Clients and Friends:

It’s time to step back and take a deep breath. Yes, breathe in. Exhale slowly. Relax.

We don’t know how long our public health crisis with the coronavirus will last nor how it will end. But we’re in it together, and we at Sterling Rose want to offer you a few guidelines to help make your work and home disruption a little less disruptive.

If you are an employer or partner in a small business and need to conduct business from home, here’s what you should be doing:

  • Make sure everyone with a laptop computer – whether company-issued or personally owned – can log into your cloud or server to access the apps and files that drive your business. If there’s a problem, contact us.
  • Make sure that all of your hardware has the latest firmware (it’s basically like app software for hardware) installed. Do the same for your employee’s personal computers if they are working from home and logging into your tech system.
  • Make sure all of your software – OS, apps, web browsers – has the latest updates and upgrades installed. While updates improve performance, they also have the latest security patches, and that will be most important. Hackers will be in high gear to try to penetrate your defenses.
  • Make double sure that any employees who use their personal computers to conduct your business have of their software up to date for the same reasons.
  • Make sure you and your employees have strong network passwords for Wi-Fi networks and that everyone has installed and activated antivirus and malware protection programs. We strongly encourage everyone to have a password management program in place, too, for convenience and security.
  • Train everybody and constantly remind them to be careful about emails they receive and respond to and links they click. This is like the holiday shopping season for hackers. They’ll prey on your trying to do many things in a short time while under stress. If something looks just the slightest bit out of place, don’t click. Make a phone call.

If you are working at home and/or have kids at home who need to learn online, here’s what you should be doing.

  • Make sure you have the internet and Wi-Fi capacity to handle multiple users at one time. You could have two people working and using cellphones while your kids are either online for classes or homework and/or streaming 4k content on HD TVs or other devices.
  • Make sure your network is secure with a strong password – complemented by antivirus and malware protection software for every device that comes on your network. If your Wi-Fi system has the capability, set up a guest network for family and friends who visit – even though we’re not supposed to have visitors. It will help keep your network secure.
  • Make sure everyone who is on your network has strong passwords for online activities, and make sure everyone in your home has up-to-date firmware, OS software and app software for every device and system they have.
  • Make sure everyone in your home understands the threats caused by hackers. If you’re working at home, you’ll be under stress, so be careful about the emails you open and the links you click. Your kids at home may be bored. Make sure they are careful about the emails they open, the chats they get involved in and the links they click.

Again, take a deep breath, exhale slowly and relax. Take an extra minute to make sure you have your technology safe and functioning and take two extra minutes to make sure everyone – at the office and at home – is aware of the need to practice good online health while we try to avoid getting sick.

Finally, know that we are available to help you, your employees and your family be happy and productive online. Call us – 973-433-6676 – for any problems you have with technology at home or work. We’ll do our best to solve your problems by remote, and we’re still available for onsite visits to solve your problems.

We can all get through this together. We just need to be careful with our personal health and technological health.

All the best,

Norman Rosenthal
Sterling Rose

Drowning in Disinfection

Be careful how you disinfect your tech equipment. One client’s cleaning solution wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t discover its effects until we made a service call.

We made the service call because an Excel file seemed to be going bonkers. When our client clicked on a cell, the file would start scrolling uncontrollably. It only happened with this file. We checked the computer for viruses, but none were detected.

However, the client had a problem with WordPress, too, and that looked like a problem with the mouse. We checked the mouse and found nothing wrong. With optical mouses, you may not be able to see the damage. However, the client mentioned in passing that they had washed the mouse because they feared exposure to poison ivy. We understood the concern because in very basic terms, sensitivity to poison ivy is an allergic reaction. If your allergy sensitivity is higher, you can break out more easily or more severely if you come in contact with poison ivy or its residue.

With today’s coronavirus concerns, we’re rightly becoming obsessed with keeping surfaces as germ-free as humanly possible, and that includes our electronics – especially those in offices or other public places. It’s a good idea to disinfect mouses, keyboards and telephones, but you need to keep moisture away from them. Liquids wreak havoc with all electronics.

We suggest you take the following steps in keeping your technology tools as clean and disinfected as you can.

  1. Unplug your device – mouse or keyboard – from the computer and remove the batteries if you have them.
  2. If you are using something like a Clorox wipe, put a microfiber cloth or some paper towel between the wipe and the device to minimize the moisture. The microfiber cloth is better, and you have probably have a lot of them if you wear eyeglasses.
  3. If you have a spray disinfectant, spray it on a microfiber cloth or some paper towel. Don’t spray it directly on the device.
  4. Make sure that any cloth or paper towel that comes in contact with your mouse or keyboard is only damp – not wringing wet.
  5. Dry your mouse or keyboard as thoroughly as you can with a microfiber cloth and then give your device some time for it to air dry.

Our devices are indispensable, and when damage occurs, the nature of the problem doesn’t always point to the mouse or keyboard. Just pay attention when you clean. In an office environment, we suggest you pass these cleaning tips along to everyone. If you have any questions, call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us.