Life and Kraya by Stephen Ramsay
Posts tagged secure
Changing your password in Kerio Mailserver
Jun 16th
Changing your passwords is very easy.
Under your Windows computer press Crtl + Alt + Del and select change password.
To Change your email password, simply log into your Web Mail (call us if you don’t know the address)
Then Select change password from the Settings drop down menu as below
settings menu in kerio webmail
And then enter your old and new passwords in the box below.
kerio password change dialog box
Remember to make it something secure that no one will guess, no kids, partners or team names and no dictionary words. Random Numbers and letters, remember capitals and lower case combinations are best, or try a sentence like “Why can 1 never remember 555″ you can use spaces. Remember the best passwords are ones that can not be are easy to remember and would not be easily broken using a dictionary or password list attack (this is where a system tires every word in the dictionary or in a common password list, things like Rang3rs or C3lt1c or to easy.
Microsoft Windows 2000 is Obsolete!
Apr 24th
A lot of people are still using Windows 2000 and most worryingly Windows 2000 with Internet explorer 6, I can only describe this as obsolete.
Firstly support for both Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 expired in June 2008. Users running Internet Explorer 5.01 or Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000 should upgrade to Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 urgently to remain vaguely secure and in order to continue to receive security updates.
Secondly and most importantly, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 is no longer fully supported by Microsoft and has moved from mainstream support to the Microsoft extended support phase. There are two important differences between mainstream support and extended support;
Firstly a quote from Microsoft, “Microsoft will not accept requests for warranty support, design changes, or new features during the extended support phase.” Furthermore Microsoft states that they will ‘continue to keep Windows 2000 SP4 customers secure with security updates through the life of Windows 2000’.
However this is not something I would like to rely on give that each update issued for Windows 2000 seems to make it slower and slower and updates for legacy systems must take lower priority over current software, such as XP and Vista. It is also worth noting that IE 5.01 and IE 6 are no longer supported at all. Therefore users on Windows 2000 MUST only use Firefox.
All Windows Computers running windows 2000 should be considered Obsolete and replaced at the next opportunity. They have a use by date of March 2010 and even today should be treated with caution.
I don’t need Anti-virus, its just a scam and it slows me down!
Mar 12th
Over the years computer viruses have become so prevalent, rampant and infections that running Windows without anti-virus software has become, well, virtually suicidal. I am in the process of reviewing a number of our computer networks and one of the key things I have been changing is the anti-virus software and the way that it reports infections to my team. One thing stands out, I have had almost as many virus notifications as I have had notifications that the Anti-virus has been turned off by the user. WHY? Oh WHY?
It is almost entertaining, that most of these “Anti-virus protection has been disabled by user” notifications are followed, normally the next day (after the computer has been restarted and the anti virus with it) by a second email, “Trojan XXX has been detected on PC XXX”. What is interesting are reasons people give for trying to turn off anti-virus in the first place. Firstly on most of the computers we support we do limit the ability to turn anti-virus off, that just makes sense. But there are a few reasons why you would legitimately turn it off.
The best excuse so far today has been, ‘I have had an email sent to my webmail and Kaspersky wont let me open the picture attached’. Ok, first question who sent it to you? Do you know this person? Answer, No some random I have never heard of! Now I’m hoping by now you’ve realised that it wouldn’t let this person open it because it was infected. This is why all of email coming into your work email account is scanned at least twice (for Kraya clients).
The next big reason is that it slows my computer down, well that’s what happens when you insist on using Norton, look instead for a thin Anti virus that does just that, its Anti virus after all you don’t need it to make your coffee! It might also be because it has actually found 37 Infections on that USB key you brought in from home!
Ok so rant over, but there is a very serious point to this, unfortunately, Windows is not secure and without an anti-virus it is very susceptible to attack. You just need read BBC’s Clicks latest report to realise just how susceptible it can be to Bot Net and Virus attacks.
Yes the conspiracy theorists amongst us might wonder if some of these infections are not just caused by the Anti-virus company purely to justify their own products? I would however challenge this, just take a look at the headers of the next ten items of junk mail you receive, take the IP address that the mail originated form and look it up.
There is a good chance that it originates form a home users PC, the PC will have been infected with a Trojan which will be part of a bot net. The unsuspecting PC owner is now likely to be sending a few thousand emails every time they connect to the Internet, about who knows what, a blue pill, or that Russian bride that’s waiting for you.
If you currently don’t have any anti virus at home consider AVG free and if you have none at work, speak to whoever is responsible for your I.T. and suggest that they call us.
