Our clients are busy trying to run their business. Why should you have to worry about silly ‘little’ things like the status of your domain name? The Bay Citizen (a non-profit San Francisco area newspaper) is in disarray these days, what with merger talks and the recent death of their founder. Their domain name was with GoDaddy, and they naturally had more important things to focus on than what their domain name was doing. Sadly, all was not well, and they failed to renew their domain, whereupon it expired and their website went down.

Nerds On Site works day by day to remove these type of stresses from a client’s life. Don’t you have enough to worry about? With Nerds On Site, all domain name are AUTOMATICALLY renewed and constantly managed. We don’t ask a client if they want to keep their domain, we don’t wait for approval or authorization or for you to take a few moments out of their day to understand what the Nerds want this time – we just protect your domain. Also AUTOMATIC, INCLUDED and FREE is domain locking (to prevent unauthorized individuals from stealing the domain) and WHOIS Privacy for supported domains (to help prevent theft and spammers).

If you don’t currently have your domains with Nerds On Site, consider the differences we offer.  Sure, our domains are a few pennies a month more expensive than a GoDaddy domain, but isn’t it worth it to prevent this level of embarrassment?  http://jimromenesko.com/2012/02/03/proof-that-the-bay-citizen-is-in-disarray/

Our team continues to work hard on ways to make our hosting packages more understandable and easy to purchase.  One change we have just made is to rename our hosting packages.  Previously, we had a ‘Basic’ hosting package, upon which you then could add ‘Bronze NerdCare’ or ‘Silver NerdCare’.

Our new matrix has the ‘Basic’ hosting package, just like previously, and now the new ‘Business’ hosting package, which is the same as the previously named Basic hosting + Bronze NerdCare.  For existing clients, the new names will take effect for your March billing period.

This change comes quickly on the heels of another improvement we made last week, which was to include WHOIS Protection free of charge for all support domains.  Many exciting changes are happening, so get in touch with our team and see how we can help YOUR business!

If your business offers unfiltered access to the Internet, chances are there are minutes or hours in the day where non-work activity takes place. Some employers have a work environment where this unchecked and unfiltered state is actually part of a morale of trust and confidence that the staff will get the work done even efficiently and keep a high level of productivity.

Two weeks ago we offered a free trial of a Unified Threat Management appliance to this client of ours at an insurance brokerage of about 15 staff. They had operated without any filters for many years and wanted to at least know what was happening. So we followed these simple steps to allow for a smooth transition and to keep everyone aware of upcoming changes.

Step 1 – Have an Acceptable Use Policy written and signed off

An Acceptable Use Policy – AUP – serves the purpose of making sure all staff know what is acceptable at the workplace, and what isn’t.

Step 2 – Implement a Unified Threat Management Appliance in Monitoring mode

An appliance can be installed at your office premises without disrupting any exiting access, and simply give the employers insight into how the Internet is being used throughout the premises.

Step 3 – Apply appropriate filters

This final step should be in complete accordance to the Acceptable Use Policy.

Special case considerations

• Social Media use is often restricted as it is seen as personal and has no role during working hours. However, most businesses now have a legitimate reason and role to play on twitter and facebook to maintain their own business presence.
• Time of Day access. The complete filtering of all social media access may have a negative effect on morale, and some companies choose time-of-day rules to allow social media access during lunch hour, for example.
• Logs may be misleading. If it’s your first time implementing a UTM, you will likely notice log entries of websites being visited, and when confronting said employee/computer, you will encounter denial. This can be legitimate because millions of workplace computers are infected with malware that cause the computers to operate silently under the control of botnets. Protection from web-based viruses, malware and spyware is another strong reason to implement and keep a UTM at every office.

It’s also worth pointing out that 3G connectivity through mobile phones is ubiquitous in many areas of the world. So blocking facebook on the work computer may simply cause the employee to use their own mobile phone instead. This is why an acceptable use policy is important to have in place. Consistent use of a mobile phone also leaves an optic that is not hard to detect by fellow employees and supervisors.

Do you have any specific need you don’t see covered here? Chances are it can also be achieved with a UTM.

Our team is truly global, and here are just a few photos of our Nerds in action all around the world. Check out the rest of our photos at NerdSpotting.com.

[this post is from Dennis Houseknecht, a Nerd in West Virginia, USA]

The Security Corner has been quite for some time. Lots of other things competing for time.

I want to change the focus a bit – to alerting you to the security news that crosses my desk pretty much every day.

For instance, here is one about how children are vulnerable to internet attacks that everyone should read.

Here is an article about “malware” (or “aggressive adware“, depending on who you want to believe) that is of interest to all Android users.

And here is one about personal data as the main commodity of cyber criminals.

Please share this post with your friends and family, as everyone can benefit with knowing about these issues.

[One of our company founders, David Redekop, found this online, and we feel it's important to share it with our readers.]

“A child can now be at greater risk sitting in a bedroom on a computer, than outside the school gates,” the Home Secretary has said.

Theresa May said cyber-crime was a serious problem which caused more losses than burglars stealing televisions and DVDs from homes.

The new National Crime Agency (NCA) would help tackle this and make people “feel safer”, she said.

In a key speech on police reform in central London, Mrs May outlined plans to give communities tougher protection from anti-social behaviour to put an end to the “horror stories” of victims being ignored despite making repeated complaints to the authorities about problem neighbours.

It comes after HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) said last week that only a low number of crimes were recorded from anti-social behaviour cases and the identification of repeat, vulnerable and intimidated victims was “poor” at the first point of contact.

Mrs May said: “As well as growing, the threat from organised crime is also changing.

“Increasingly, the biggest criminal losses do not come from the burglar who breaks into houses to steal TVs or DVD players, but from the cyber criminal who raids bank accounts directly.

“A child can now be at greater risk sat in their bedroom on their computer than they are outside the school gates. And given the nature of the criminal threat, it is now no longer possible to keep communities safe through good local policing alone.

“Highly visible neighbourhood policing is vital, but it won’t deal with cyber crime. Arresting drug dealers is important, but it won’t stop the flow of drugs from overseas.”

She went on: “That’s why we need a powerful new crime-fighting force that works across different police forces and agencies, defending our borders, co-ordinating action on economic crime, protecting children and vulnerable people, and active in cyber space. That body will be the National Crime Agency.”

image courtesy of the Port Huron Museum

The annual March of Dimes Jail and Bail is happening again on Saturday, Feb. 4. We are Streaming it live on marchofdimesph.com the whole day. Nerds On Site also has a Prisoner team for donations. Donations can also be made at the MarchofDimesph.com website.

In partnership with The March of Dimes, Nerds On Site will be conducting a “Fill The Beetle to Feed The People” food drive to benefit the Hunter Hospitality House in Port Huron. Parking their signature Red VW Beetles(NerdMobiles) outside the Super Walmart in Fort Gratiot, Sam’s Club in Port Huron Twp, Super K Mart in Port Huron Twp., and Kroger’s North and South locations, Nerds will be collecting non-perishable food items and donations to help The Hunter Hospitality House stock their shelves.

“Premature birth is the leading cause of newborn death and many lifelong disabilities,” the marchofdimesph.com website explains. “And it happens to more than half a million babies in the U.S. each year. Thank you for helping the March of Dimes find out what causes it and what can be done to prevent it.

One of the March of Dimes favorite events, Jail & Bail brings together community leaders and ordinary citizens for a common cause… fighting birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. Since its inception in 1957 here in Port Huron, more than 5 million citizens have volunteered their time in the name of fun – and a good cause.

At this event, volunteer “jailbirds” serve time in a “mock jail.” “Prisoners” are arraigned before a volunteer judge on trumped-up, outlandish charges, such as “reckless golf-cart driving.” They are then sentenced to spend an hour in “the slammer” to raise bail in the form of donations to the March of Dimes. Nearly 500 events are held annually across the country.”

Nerds On Site believes in supporting the community in which we live as a way of saying “thank-you” for making us your choice for corporate and residential computer IT services.

It’s been a few months since we posted our email settings, and we’ve moved blog locations a few times, so it may be difficult to find the original posts.  Here again are our shared email settings.  These are the only settings that we currently support.

POP SETTINGS
Incoming Mail Server: mail.nerdsisp.com
SSL: yes
Port: 995

IMAP SETTINGS
Incoming Mail Server: mail.nerdsisp.com
SSL: yes
Port: 993

SMTP SETTINGS
Outgoing Mail Server: mail.nerdsisp.com
SSL: yes
Port: 465
Outgoing authentication must be turned on.

Webmail is available exclusively at https://mail.nerdsisp.com.

Laurel Hubber

“Mark, many thanks to you and Ryan for your help with the latest revisions to my web site. As usual, it was a rush job from my end, and as usual, you both worked hard to ensure that everything went off without a hitch! Thanks for your reliable and friendly service, and special thanks to Ryan who is great to work with even through the tiny details and last minute changes. Working with the both of you, I know I’ll get excellent service and the end result I’m looking for. Thanks so much!”
Laurel Hubber
laurelhubber.com/

When selling our clients hosting services, Nerds On Site strives to keep the process as streamlined and intuitive as possible.  In the web hosting and domain registration world there are a lot of options, and this can get confusing.  One such option is ID Protect, also known as WHOIS Protection.  This valuable service hides your public WHOIS information, such as your name, address and phone number from spammers and Internet thieves.  By hiding this information, you make it much harder for thieves to try to steal your domain name.

Once an add-on service, ID Protect is now included free of charge with every new supported domain registration!  For every new com, net, org, biz, info, name, tv, cc, me, Nerds On Site will automatically turn on ID Protect to keep your domain even safer than before.

Without ID Protect, spammers can obtain your email and contact information and then use it for spamming purposes and redistribution to marketing firms. Your email address can stay on file with various spammers and marketing firms for years. Check out the difference between an unprotected and protected domain registration.