DARTE DATA| Making Technology Work For You

Windows 8 will now decrease downtime for disk maintenance. Many clients groan when they have downtime due to a CHKDSK being run. The process can take hours at a time and in the meantime, your business is losing money.

This article details the new CHKDSK upgrade that will minimize downtime and help keep your system running smoothly:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/09/redesigning-chkdsk-and-the-new-ntfs-health-model.aspx

In this day, having a smart phone is  very common, and chances are you have your email tied to your phone.  One of the best ways I have found to help prevent bank fraud is to have email alerts from your bank accounts alert your email account with every transaction.

Whether you have one account or many, you can have your alerts emailed to you nearly instantaneously.  You can know exactly when a transaction takes place, how much the charge was and the place the transaction was made.

You can check via your phone in real time, so you’ll know whether you need to call the bank right away. Set your alerts to give you notice for any transactions over $1.00 and you’ll receive an alert for almost every transaction.

With these alerts, you’ll be able to know whether you’ve become a victim of fraud, and can help put this virus to rest:  (read below the original link for the articles’ text)

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http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/06/9986119-new-virus-raids-your-bank-account-but-you-wont-notice

New virus raids your bank account – but you won’t notice

The best way to protect yourself from an online financial scam is to diligently check your bank accounts. At least, until now.

Israeli-based Security firm Trusteer has found an elaborate new computer virus that not only helps fraudsters steal money from bank accounts — it also covers its tracks.

Think of a crime plot involving a spy who plans to break into a high-security building and begins by swapping out security camera video so guards don’t notice anything is amiss. Known as a surveillance camera hack, the technique has been used in dozens of movies.

A new version of the widely prevalent SpyEye Trojan horse works much the same way, only it swaps out banking Web pages rather than video, preventing account holders from noticing that their money is gone.
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The Trojan horse employs a powerful two-step process to commit the electronic crime. First, the virus lies in wait until a customer with an infected computer visits an online banking site, steals their login credentials and tricks the victim into divulging additional personal information such as debit card information.  Then, after the stolen card number is used for a fraudulent purchase, the virus intercepts any further visits to the victim’s banking site and scrubs transaction records clean of any fraud.  That prevents — or at least delays — consumers from discovering fraud and reporting it to the bank, buying the fraudster critical extra time to complete the crime.

Trusteer calls it a “post transaction” attack, because much of the virus’ effectiveness is attributable to its ability to control what victims see after fraudulent transactions occur. Amit Klein, chief technology officer for Trusteer, said he believes criminals have used the technique for a few months, and it has infected real consumers.

“I predict that the use of post transaction attack technology will significantly increase as it enables criminals to maximize the amount of fraud they can commit using their initial investment in malware toolkits and infection mechanisms,” Klein said.

The new SpyEye came to Trusteer’s attention when a large retail bank in the United States spotted it and shared with the firm, he said.

‘A very scary tactic’
The virus’ evidence-covering techniques are elaborate. First, it keeps track of all fraud committed by the criminal, and makes sure to remove those line items from online transaction lists.  It also edits balance amounts to prevent consumers from getting suspicious.

“This is a very scary tactic,” said Avivah Litan, a financial fraud analyst at consulting firm Gartner. “Everybody thinks all they have to do is check their transactions and their balances. That’s not true anymore.”

The new virus technique ups the ante in the cat-and-mouse game between security companies and the computer criminals who try to steal consumers’ money.  Consumer reports of fraud are still a very important part of fraud-fighting techniques, Litan said.

“Most banks ‘let the first transaction through,’ because if they stopped everything that was potentially fraud, consumers would get annoyed,” she said.  In some cases, fraud-checking tools kick in only after initial reports, so this version of SpyEye could buy criminals important time as they try to turn stolen data into cash.
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“Usually they only need one day more to get the money, to push the fraud through,” she said. “They always want to keep the security guys running after them.”

Such cover-your-tracks techniques have been used before by virus writers, Klein said. In a simpler version, criminals who raided online bank accounts and wired money out of them would try to hide the transaction from victims using the same Web page interception trick. But this new flavor has more potential for success, because it involves stolen debit card numbers used at third-party merchants, creating complex transactions involving multiple banks and multiple security systems.

Victim account holders who check their balance at an ATM — or even at a second uninfected computer — would be able to spot the fraudulent transactions. The virus doesn’t impact bank systems, merely the characters that are displayed within the infected system’s Web browser.  That means paper statements would reveal the fraud, too.

Of course, consumers who rely on paper statements could be a full 30 days behind when it comes to spotting fraudulent transactions.

While Klein is worried about the “post transaction” attack, he said consumers who have vulnerable Web browsers are bound to be victims of one fraudster or another.

“My take is that if your computer is infected with financial malware, it’s game over anyway,” he said. “My takeaway is you need to prevent getting infected with financial malware in the first place.”

Great article here for encrypting and making your bit torrent connection anonymous.

http://www.howtogeek.com/76801/how-to-anonymize-and-encrypt-your-bittorrent-traffic/

Studies show that an unpatched machine can lead to your system being infected with malware. In order to stop this — regularly update Java, Adobe and Windows when prompted.

When you go see your medical professional – keep your social security number off of their records. You never know who is going to be cleaning their office, who has access to their live data nor their backups.

Here is an example of what can happen.  Naturally, the off-site backups should have been better protected and also encrypted in the event of a data breach — but as you can see from the article, not everyone takes those extra steps.  A little bit of vigilance can go a long way!

There are many challenges to running a small business. It should come as no surprise that funding always seems to be near the top of the obstacle list. Thus, we here at Darte Data are always on the lookout for new and inovative ways to save money. And since we’re always looking to help out our fellow man (or woman), when we do come across something noteworthy, we feel it is our civic duty to pass the info along.

Google Voice

Enter Google Voice. Google Voice is a new, and get this, free, application from Google. But what exactly does it do?

Well first and formost the application gives the user a completely free phone number. This in itself is a huge bonus for many small businesses as the monthly costs and contracts of maintaining an additional phone line can be significant .

How the phone number works is simple, a caller dials the user’s Google assigned number and then the call is forwarded to another number. This process is completely seamless to the caller. So, for example, if you have a cell phone you can have your Google number forwarded to that cell phone. Or, you can have the Google number forwarded to multiple phones at the same time.

Then, to make things even cooler, your caller ID will tell you that the incoming call is from your Google number! Now, instead of answering calls from your customers with your typical “Hello” you can add a much more professional “Thanks for calling Bill’s Widget Emporium. How can I help you?” This gives the impression that your customers are contacting a proper business rather than some guy selling widgets out of his garage. (Not that there is anything wrong with selling widgets out of one’s garage… but I think you get the point! )

Google Voice also comes with a host of cool features like voicemail and voicemail transcription. Anytime you get a voicemail you’ll get a nifty email with not only the voice attachment but an easy to check written transcription of the message.

Currently Google Voice is in a pseudo-beta period and numbers are only given out by invitation. However, I would encourage anyone with interest in this to sign up. It really is a great idea and has a slew of practical applications.

Heck, you could sign up for one of these numbers and then give it out to all the telemarketers. You could record a nasty voicemail message and really give those bothersome folks an earful!