Protecting Tech-savvy kids

Kids these days – they’re have been born and bred in a world which people like myself (despite being 34 years old) have had to get used too. It’s no wonder then that many of today’s kids are much more tech-savvy than their parents. It’s not just a possibility that kids are teaching their parents about technology – it’s a fact of life.

I would also dare say, that kids are most times not just more tech-savvy than their parts, but also more tech-savvy than their educators. And despite web filtering being a most basic need in schools and educational institutions – there are cases when either web filtering is not deployed, or else kids have figured out a way to bypass the web filtering technology.

Sometimes, it’s not even a question of being tech-savvy, it’s just a question of accessibility to information. During my research on web filtering technology I often come across forums with users asking how to bypass their web filtering technology – with many of them being posted by children in schools.

So it’s not really surprising when you read something such as yesterday’s news where it was discovered that fourth and fifth graders in a school in Illinois where able to access pornography at school using a school computer. Despite there is the possibility that kids have managed to bypass the web filtering software themselves, many times the reasons are actually much simpler. Truth be told, cash-strapped schools may simply not bother looking for a complete solution which ensures users aren’t able to access dodgy sites at school.

The good thing is that being cash-strapped is not really an excuse because web filtering technology such as GFI Cloud are very affordable and with a correct setup will ensure that students aren’t able to access pornography or other problematic sites. Parents should do their part too in demanding that good controls are in place.

Specifically in the US federal funding is available for implementation of web filtering and other protective technologies under the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA). GFI Cloud and other GFI technologies will help schools and other educational institutions achieve CIPA compliance and thus be available for funding.

Steps to prevent the bypassing of web filtering technologies

It’s a good idea to test the web filtering software implementation well before going live. Usually it takes simple steps such as deploying particular group policies on computers, removing administrative rights or other simple ways of protecting the technology in place. It is also a good idea for the company implementing the web filter to actually think like a kid and actually look for ways to bypass the filter. If they can do it, rest assured that the kids will find a way around it too.

GFI Cloud allows you to implement good web filtering technology to help protect students from accessing pornography or bypassing the web filter. If you would like to know more about GFI Cloud – Web Protection server visit: http://www.gficloud.com

Gauging employees’ moods using their search trends

In today’s times, it is not difficult to understand the need for web filtering. The pervasive and ever-increasing threats being pushed through websites is always on the increase, and you should already know that you need to have multiple web security engines in place including a web filtering solution. Besides web filtering based on websites address and categories, there are a number of features which can stand out and give the company additional benefits. One of these is search engine query monitoring. By monitoring what a user is actively searching for on the popular search engines, you can gauge an employee’s mood. By monitoring these searches one can determine many things

1. Whether the user is actively performing work related searches (most of their queries should be work related) 
2. Whether they are doing anything suspicious 
3. If they have particular personal or personality problems which might require the company’s assistance

So what exactly is search engine query monitoring?

Search engine query monitoring is the ability to identify and log the search terms when users perform a search on a search engine. So if I run the following query: https://www.google.com/#q=talk+tech+to+me the web filter will extract the “talk tech to me” keywords and log them.

Why is it useful?

Well, under most circumstances you will see mundane stuff, typically searches related to the users work and many times their personal interests. However, there are many instances which you can see things which the company probably wants to be aware of. Let’s say you find something like https://www.google.com/#q=web+filter+bypass , you will immediately know that this user is trying to do something fishy. Even much more worrying would be if you find a query such as https://www.google.com/#q=ways+to+commit+suicide. Essentially, besides the websites that a user is trying to visit, the searches they are conducting will give a very clear picture if all is ok, or if there is something wrong or any suspicious activities.

Great, tell me how to do it!

GFI WebMonitor provides this functionality is a standard part of its web filtering features. You can define policies to exclude users who you don’t want to be monitored if you wanted to, but by default users search queries will be monitored and logged.

What search engines are supported?

Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Lycos.  Queries on any of these search engines will be monitored. Given that Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia and other east european countries, GFI WebMonitor also supports search engine monitoring for Yandex.

Search over HTTPS? Will search engine monitoring work in this case?

We’ve seen many search engines sending search queries over HTTPS. This has created a bit of a furore in the web Analytics world, but this does not really affect GFI WebMonitor, since HTTPS scanning is supported. When this is enabled, GFI WebMonitor will still be able to inspect queries over HTTPS and thus the queries will still show up. This is also a security feature which ensures that if users are trying to visit HTTPS based websites, GFI WebMonitor can still monitor and protect the end user.

What value does this give me?

We’ve already identified a number of ways these helps you gauge the mood of employee’s in the company. Moreover, GFI WebMonitor has the ability to run a periodic report searching for specific keywords which you are mostly interested in. For example, by default GFI WebMonitor has a number of reports which can give a company value out of the box, without having to configure anything

1) TV Series or Movie Downloads – people attempting to search for TV series or movies to download which could lead to legal liability when pirated material is downloaded via the company’s connection

2) Adult and Pornography Searches – people attempting to search for Adult content via search engines despite you blocking Adult websites

3) High Risk Searches – searches for explosives, weapons, suicide or other possible problematic situations

4) Your own custom search term report – GFI WebMonitor allows you to easily create your own reports for specific terms, and in any language you want

Interested yet? Try GFI WebMonitor for 30 days and monitor what your users are searching for. You might be surprised!

Malware as a Service

Cloud based services are all the rage these days, every kind of software services available are typically available as a cloud or software as a service offering. And when we say every kind of software service, we do mean every kind of software service – including malicious software services. Malware as a service has become by far the most common way that malware is distributed. Here we’ll attempt to give a non-technical overview of how this industry works.

So what exactly is Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) and why it is used?

Malware as a service is essentially an online service which is used by people who have written a specific piece of malware and want this to get distributed quickly. Essentially what the MaaS does is take the headache out of distributing the malware. Let’s say you’ve written your own malware program which you want to distribute. You could do a few things to help push its distribution

1. Infect pirated software with your malware and upload it to common piracy websites
2. Create a website which invites visitors to download something fake which in reality is your malware
3. Make the virus self-replicating and distribute it via some kind of software vulnerability
4. Infect your friends USB sticks with the malware and rename it to something which they are likely to open

As you can see all of the above either require a significant amount of effort or are not really effective. The MaaS also known as exploit kits effectively allow you to distribute your malware at a very cost-effective price. If your malware is going to give you financial benefits, then a MaaS service to distribute the malware widely will be very handy, and very cheap. Quoted prices from certain exploit kits start from as low as $50 for using the kit for a day, to $1500 for a year’s service making it very cheap considering its effectiveness.

But how does the infection happen?

There are a number of steps which happen to infect a user. Let’s say that you don’t want to go through the above processes to distribute the malware and you’ve decided to use an exploit kit. After paying for the service, the following will happen

Step 1: Your malware is loaded onto a distribution server ready to get deployed to new victims

Step 2: The MaaS authors discover web servers of legitimate software which have problems or vulnerabilities in their setups. These vulnerabilities allow the MaaS authors to inject a piece of hidden HTML code which will be used to perform certain malicious actions

Step 3: A normal user visits the legitimate (but compromised) website. The hidden code analyses the user and detects what browser and other software they have installed on their computer. If the user has software which has not been unpatched then the next step is executed

Step 4: Based on the analysis in step 3 the user is redirected to another website which will use a targeted exploit to infect the user with the malware. As an example, if a user has a version of Java which hasn’t been updated, they will be redirected to an Java exploit

Step 5: The exploit is executed which deploys the malware using the unpatched vulnerability

The effectiveness of the distribution is due to a number of reasons

1. The sheer amount of compromised websites (millions) which exist on the internet right now and which will keep getting compromised in the future allowing for a huge audience to be exposed to the malware

2. The fact that these sites are actually legitimate sites which normal users will visit – they just have been hijacked with some invisible malicious code

3. The delivery of an exploit targeted to the specific user’s unpatched software – they will attach the user with an exploit which they know will work

4. The fact that the exploit does not need any kind of additional user interaction such as a click or a download. Just visiting the website will result in an infection (what is termed as a drive-by download)

5. The lucrative business of MaaS which allows the authors to keep expanding the sites they use, the exploits they use, the AV avoidance techniques

6. Using spamming, SEO poisoning, or other techniques to push users towards the compromised sites

How effective are these kits? And how many of them are there?

Very effective. Different security vendors quote different numbers for each kit, but all of them agree on one common conclusion. These malicious websites used by these kits make up the absolute majority of threats in the wild today. The majority of infections which happen today are coming from these exploit kits. Old viruses and distribution methods have become insignificant when compared to these new malicious URLs. There are tens of exploits kits out there, the Blackhole Exploit kit used to be one of the most effective (though the author Paunch has reportedly been arrested and the kit is no longer being updated), Neutrino, Glazunov and many more. As the business gets more lucrative the MaaS authors start to get competitive between themselves, making improvements in all aspects of the kit from usability, price, infection and obfuscation techniques.

Ouch! … How do I protect myself and my employees?

Essentially, you can never keep know or keep track of which legitimate websites have been compromised so you need a little help. You’ll need to put multiple mechanisms in place to protect yourself and your employees. First, you need to make sure all the browsers and software on your user’s machines have been fully patched – Languard or GFI Cloud – Patch Management is an essential tool to help you with this. Second, you need to put a web security software in place which stops users from visiting websites which have been detected to contain malicious payloads. GFI WebMonitor or GFI Cloud Web Protection both will protect your users from visiting these websites. Thirdly, you still need to have an Anti-Virus on your machines to ensure that malicious software payloads are detected and stopped – GFI Cloud – Anti-virus is the right tool here. If you miss any of these protections, it’s only a matter of time before your users are exposed to something dangerous without their knowledge.

Cloud storage? What's the price of free space?

The advent of cloud storage services has been a huge revolution for consumers. With the exponential growth of data, smartphones, digital cameras, we keep consuming local storage at an ever increasing rate. Cloud storage is a god send and helps relieve some of the “pain” associated with storing photos, videos, documents, and large files which we want to keep, but which we don’t need to necessarily store on our own devices. It’s also probably safer to store these photos on cloud storage accounts, which are typically unlikely to fail (unless the cloud data gets seized, remember MegaUpload? – but that’s a different story for another time). Our hard disks and devices are much more prone to fail, break, get lost or get stolen, or otherwise die on us. The concept of relieving storage headaches may also apply to companies which can now outsource some of their storage to the cloud, however there are several risks associated with this. Here are 3 reasons why cloud storage can become a nightmare:

1) Employees using cloud storage to intentionally or unintentionally leak confidential information – this is a risk which can cripple any business. Anything from leaking product development plans by mistake, leaking customer data or client lists to competitors for monetary gain, or leaking financial data or documents – there is a very high risk of losing confidential information to cloud storage

2) Downloading malicious software via cloud storage – whenever a user accesses files from cloud storage accounts, especially from accounts which they don’t own, they are creating a serious security risk. This is especially so, if the cloud storage accounts are being used to store cracked software, which are typically booby-trapped with trojans and other malware. The risk to your company’s security is not to be ignored

3) Draining your bandwidth – isn’t it comfortable to upload the contents of your SD card to cloud storage whilst you are at the office? With larger and larger file sizes for photos, uploads to Cloud storage can easily hog the upload stream of a company. And although typically the upload stream is not used much by most companies, a hogged upload stream typically causes slowdowns in the downloads too. Any download requires a healthy non-hogged upload stream, so if the upload is being hogged, downloads are being affected for EVERYONE! Large file downloads from cloud storage are also likely to hog bandwidth.

Your employees should be educated first and foremost on the risks associated with cloud storage. This however, is usually not enough. Web monitoring software can quickly help you identify how cloud storage is being used and / or abused. It can help your track and report on how much bandwidth is being used by cloud storage, and who are the users who are accessing these services. You can then determine whether you want to allow this or not, but isn’t it better to be informed?

Who's about to go crazy this March Madness?

Is it your IT administrator who needs to sort out all of the bandwidth issues? Is it your employees who want to access work-related resources on the web and cannot because of people streaming March Madness games?
The NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship, AKA “March Madness”, is a major distraction in U.S. workplaces every year. The tournament kicks off March 19, with the busiest tournament days occurring on Thursday, March 21 and Friday, March 22 during standard business hours (beginning at 9am ET).
It’s only natural that employees’ level of interest is high when there is so much focus on the tournament in such a short span of time. Employees who are following the tournament closely are highly likely to turn to the Internet to stay up-to-date on the latest news and scores. With so many websites available to follow the tournament, it is very common for employees to watch live streams of games, listen to audio commentaries, view game highlights on ESPN and others, search for the latest results and stories, and participate in other related activities while at work – all of which are likely to cause a significant disturbance in three ways:

Bandwidth bottlenecks

With multiple users streaming content simultaneously, the available bandwidth is easily taken up. This can have a severe impact on other applications which are dependent on the Internet, such as VoIP, CRM, email and other cloud and Internet-enabled applications. Typical streaming content consumes 10Mb of data per minute. Multiply that by a significant number of employees and you can see why a bandwidth spike creating a bottleneck is inevitable.

Productivity loss

With games held during regular business hours, many users will be following results as they happen. This major distraction could severely impact productivity over the course of the tournament.

Security problems

Hackers have always used high interest stories and trending topics as lures to infect users’ machines. March Madness is no different, and it is almost certain that cybercriminals will use the tournament to trick unsuspecting users into falling for fake websites, SEO poisoning, phishing and other malicious scams.
To manage these problems, companies need to be prepared to enforce Internet usage and web filtering best practices, including:

• Informing and educating employees about the effects associated with March Madness and giving them browsing tips that will help to address these challenges – e.g. advising users to avoid streaming live games, to be cautious of which websites they visit and to avoid clicking on links that come from an unfamiliar source.
• Implementing web security software that:
  • Automatically blocks malicious websites and ensures any websites visited are free of malware. A point to note is that an anti-virus engine alone is not enough to stop all threats – a dedicated web security engine is now also a must.
  • Allows you to define bandwidth quotas, such as limiting downloads from streaming media websites to 100Mb a day, and limiting visits to news, media and sports sites to 30 minutes per day.
  • Blocks websites which could pose legal liabilities, such as gambling websites.
• Setting up action-based alerts to anticipate problems before they develop and take the necessary action to immediately remediate issues as they rise.

Allowing employees to follow March Madness activity in the workplace can boost employee productivity, motivation and morale in the long run – but their web browsing has to be controlled. Uncontrolled usage of the Internet can result in serious issues, not just during the March Madness tournament but throughout the year. Luckily, there are advanced tools available to help IT balance the negative impacts of non-work related browsing with the need for employees to take a break, de-stress and stay motivated.

If you’re interested in a good web filtering solution, take a look at GFI WebMonitor.
You can download a free trial for 30 days. It’s worth a try!

Porn in the UK parliament - also in your office?

Porn in Parliament – Also in Your Office?

It is not the first time that online pornography has stirred controversy in the UK. The recent government’s decision to automatically opt-in home users to online adult websites was quite controversial with many people saying that it is not up to the government to decide what websites people can visit at home. It’s funny how, within only a matter of few weeks, official figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that there have been thousands of blocked attempts to access pornographic websites. The official version is that users typically end up on these websites accidentally, they come up as pop-ups from other websites and that automatically refreshing websites will generate more hits per user – a feeble attempt to wipe egg off their face.

Why does this happen?

It’s difficult to pass judgement on this issue. My view is that when someone is in their office, bored or tired after a long day, and having ‘exhausted’ their energy on Facebook, they might think that a quick peek at a ‘naughty’ website will not harm anyone? It’s also fair to say that most users probably already know that a web filtering solution is in place, and that their internet activity is monitored, so most of these are more likely than not deliberate attempts to access blocked online material. A user might come across an adult website while researching other topics, but the sheer number of attempts detailed in the statistics simply does not add up to this conclusion. When a specific website is visited, then it indicates intent to do so; however that’s up to the reader to judge.

What should you be thinking about?

Even though employees in the Houses of Parliament probably had a good idea that their online activity was monitored, it didn’t prevent them from attempting to access adult material. Moving away from the topic of porn and MPs in the UK, and looking at matters closer to home, how can you prevent something similar from happening?
What can you do to make sure that your staff spend their time more efficiently and productively? Here are a few tips:
1)      First things first, if you don’t have a web filtering and monitoring system in place, then you really should implement one – unless you want to start wondering what each employee in doing online
2)      You need a web filtering solution which will allow you to drill-down exactly into what a specific user is doing, as given by example in this short video:  Monitoring Internet activity at the office.
3)      Your web filtering should proactively advise and alert you when a user attempts to visit ‘naughty’ websites, or other illicit webpages, so that your HR department can decide whether or not to remind them of the company’s best practices on Internet usage.
4)      You should invest some time and resources discovering how much time users are spending on websites which are unrelated to their official duties.
GFI WebMonitor® is an affordable solution that allows you to address all of the above. Besides the ability to block categories of undesirable websites, it is very easy to use the Activity dashboards and reports to identify employees whose time could be better spent working for you, than searching the web for themselves. Real-time configurable alerts allow you to send emails to the appropriate people when their online behaviour merits it. Search engine query monitoring, for example, will clearly show what a user’s intentions were and the appropriate department can take the necessary actions, including education, to ensure there are no repeat offenders. GFI WebMonitor offers companies many other benefits such as added web browsing security and mitigation of bandwidth issues.

- See more at: http://www.gfi.com/blog/porn-in-parliament-also-in-your-office/#sthash.nPw0RXVx.dpuf

Android MODs and Kernel's - my experience

For a while I had been tempted to try a different mod from the stock TouchWiz for the Samsung Galaxy S3. My biggest issue was to ensure that while modding the phone, I don't lose any of my data. Thankfully, with so many apps being completely cloud-based, this risk becomes less and less as time goes by.

Anyway, after taking a huge number of different backups, I went for my first MOD. Slimbean. I must admit that after the richness (although bloated) experience of TouchWiz, Slimbean was a shock. It was so raw, and so lean that it felt overwhelmingly empty. TouchWiz maybe bloated, but there are definitely quite a lot of built features which are hard to replace. Stuff such as the large amount of gestures, features like SmartStay have their own value. Even, the blank background and the feel of a mostly Vanilla Android was a bit of a shock, and it takes getting used to.

The shock was so great from my point of view, that a few days after, I tried my second MOD - CyanogenMOD 10.1. Here, once again, I was expecting a bit of a richer experience, but once again, I was slightly disappointed with the lack of "fun" features. CyanogenMOD is very lean when compared to Touchwiz, but then again this is what I was looking for - a leaner Android experience and that was what I was getting.

After I mostly setup CM 10.1, I was fairly happy - but I ran into another issue. Android OS was eating up way more battery that I was expecting. I spent quite a few days troubleshooting what could have been causing this problem. I installed a heck of a lot of battery monitoring apps, including BetterBatteryStats and tried to understand all the partial wakelocks which were happening. I turned off syncing, location, widgets and whatever else usually causes potential battery issues. Eventually from many threads I read on XDA forums and many other places, it looked like I had run into some kind of kernel issue. Once again, I saw somewhere that flashing a kernel could be the solution to my problems. Once again, I started a search for a good kernel. Siyah looked to be quite a safe bet and I was soon flashing Siyah.

As soon as I flashed Siyah, the Android OS issue was immediately gone. And the battery life is awesome. I use the phone heavily, with multiple calls, music, playing games and various other activities, radio and Wifi on, and I still get a full day with quite some battery to spare.

Eventually, I've tweaked CM to be a very pleasant experience despite the lack of TouchWiz features. At this point, I don't miss them anymore and I've gotten used to the lean experience and moreover I quite like it. Also, CM gives me access to the latest Android versions much earlier than the Stock Samsung Android does. Here is a screenshot of my various homescreens.

So, if you are looking to take the plunge, from TouchWiz to something else, prepare yourself. Overall, it's a great experience.

Just wanted to share my thoughts my Android modding experience.

What the hack?

The past few months have been characterised by a number of high-profile hack attacks. What the hack is going on? (Pardon the pun!) Quite a few things actually:

1. Facebook and Apple®

Two of the most recent high profile hacks were those targeting Facebook and Apple employees. Although it has been reported as a hack, it looks more like a malware attack.

The result? Those computers that had Java plugins with vulnerabilities were infected.

The lesson to be learned? Do yourself a favour and disable the Java plugin in your browser. Trust me, you probably don’t need that plugin anyway. Tools such as GFI WebMonitor® (used to block malware) and GFI LanGuard® (which patches vulnerabilities in OSs and software) help mitigate the risk of these types of attacks.

Vulnerability exploits are among the most prolific forms of attack on the web right now, and if you, as an IT Administrator, haven’t included them as part of your plan, you should – now. Don’t wait until your company becomes the next victim. After all, if Facebook and Apple employees’ machines were infected…

2. The New York Times (and other cyber attacks)

Cyber-espionage and state-sponsored cyber attacks appear to be on the increase lately. Various nations have dedicated experts whose role is to find weaknesses in other countries’ systems or company networks and launch attacks to gain access and/or steal information.

These attacks are far more sophisticated than those attacks on Facebook and Apple. They are known as Advanced Persistent Threats and are a concerted effort to get to a company’s data. These attacks can be passive, that is they are silent attacks and just reside on the system, and “listen” to information which they then use to their advantage. Or they can be active, whereby attempts are made to disrupt the infrastructure, communications, power-generation and distribution.

3. Twitter Accounts

On many occasions, Twitter accounts are hacked because a weak password is compromised. Celebrities are the usual target because they typically have millions of followers, giving hackers far greater benefits when they obtain access to the account. Burger King® was the victim of this type of hack just for the “lulz” (a harmless prank with no malicious intent). In this case, the hack resulted in the rival Big Mac being advertised on Burger King’s Twitter account. The reason their account was hacked was likely due to the fact that the password was “whopper123”.

Well known TV presenter and journalist, Jeremy Clarkson also fell victim to an attack by a spammer. His account was used to market a diet website. Reacting in typical Clarkson style, he tweeted “I have been hacked by spammers. Luckily I have acquired a special set of skills over many years. I will find them. And I will kill them”. On a more practical level, choosing a strong password and ensuring applications are not allowed to connect to a Twitter account, would have prevented this from happening in the first place.

So how can you counter these attacks? Simple, make sure all your teams are using complex passwords for their social media accounts.

4. Leaked user data

This hack can lead to some seriously bad damage to a company’s brand. Do you remember the PlayStation® hack and the harm it did to the brand? It certainly won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

Protecting a company or network against these attacks requires a strategy, not just a quick fix. Start with basic spot checks to determine if you are encrypting user data, credit cards and passwords. Then check if your content management system is up-to-date. Have you had someone perform penetration testing of your system to see if they can gain access to your precious data?

Even if your company is relatively “small” it doesn’t make it less attractive to attackers. There is a growing black market which thrives on attacking small businesses because these businesses cannot provide the same level of network security as larger businesses can.

The Harlem Shake and the effects on your organization

The latest craze to go viral on the web is the dance song Harlem Shake, with hundreds, if not thousands of people, gathering in costume to do ‘the shake’ in every conceivable space.

Harlem Shake follows hot on the heels of another Internet ‘sensation’ – Gangnam Style; a song and dance routine that racked up over one billion hits on YouTube.

Although Gangnam Style has spawned hundreds of similar video clips, Harlem Shake seems to be a different animal altogether with people across the world organizing their own Harlem Shake events and videos and then uploading to YouTube and other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. According to the Globe and Mail in Australia, up to 4,000 videos of Harlem Shake variations are uploaded to the Internet daily.

The Harlem Shake continues to grab headlines and although for many it is harmless fun, you do not want to run afoul of any law or policy, especially in the workplace. The hilarious performance by a group of miners in Australia brought a smile to many, but their bosses didn’t find it funny at all. They were fired from their high-paying jobs after the performance was deemed a safety hazard. Ouch!

These viral videos are a big headache for IT administrators. Everyone loves a good laugh and respite during work but when you have a few hundred employees watching Gangnam and Harlem clips throughout the day, you have a problem on your hands.

Bandwidth is a very a precious and expensive resource for a company and streaming media has a huge impact on the corporate network. Let’s look at the figures and calculate the impact on bandwidth streamed for a single viral video.

The first hit on YouTube is a 5:30 compilation video of Harlem Shakes. An average one minute of video stream from YouTube is approximately 10Mb of data. At one point, you have 25 employees who are watching it:

25users * 10MB * 5.5minutes = 1,375MB in five minutes!

Employees take Internet access and browsing for granted and they often forget the multiplier effect when using bandwidth heavy websites at the office. YouTube, for example, with its artist playlists covering every musical taste, encourages its use as a personalized radio. Online radio is also commonly used by employees for their daily dose of favourite radio shows and music.

Recalculating the amount of bandwidth consumed:

25users * 10MB * 60minutes * 5 hours = 75,000MB

75GB! And you wonder why your Internet is somewhat slow? The reality is most people forget to turn off the stream when they leave their desks.

Email, video and teleconferencing, VoIP, instant messaging, VPNs, apart from browsing, are part and parcel of our daily lives – so much so that we simply expect things to work. Employees in a company are of the same mindset. They expect a fast Internet connection and anything slower than what they are used to, at home, for example, is totally unacceptable and results in a constant flow of complaints when the connection is slow or not working well. It’s then up to the administrator to figure out a solution to a problem that employees are the cause of themselves.

If you are an IT admin or senior executive with your eye on the expenses sheet, what can you do?

Bandwidth quotas – A GFI® success story 

Many web filters today allows admins to set bandwidth quotas. In the example given above, we don’t need to enforce a percentage quota of, say 10% of available bandwidth at any given moment, because this won’t have any effect (streaming media won’t consume 10% of available bandwidth by any single person). The problem is the cumulative effect of the stream. You would need to introduce bandwidth quotas by volume.

The introduction of a 100MB quota per day in our offices, using the standard functionality of GFI WebMonitor®, reduced the bandwidth consumed by streaming media by 66%. The screenshots below show downloads from “Streaming Media” totalled 131GB in January but only 45GB for the month of February when quotas were introduced. The great thing about quotas is that with reasonable usage of YouTube for office related purposes, an employee is unlikely to hit the quota in a day. If they do, an exception can be applied to give them a higher quota.

If your bandwidth costs are calculated based on usage, you can quickly see how quotas can save you quite a lot of money too!

January Streaming Media Usage:

February Streaming Media Usage:

Streaming of viral videos like the Harlem Shake, Gangnam Style, and other streaming media can have a negative impact on the corporate network. IT admins should not forget the threat of a malware infection because these trends are picked up on by hackers who entice users to visit their infected sites.

With a web filter in place, along with quotas, IT admins can improve the quality of their Internet connection, keep the workforce happy and malware at bay. If you have seen a drastic change in bandwidth consumption over the past month or so, it pays to have the tools to check what is going on and take action to solve the problem before it gets worse.

If you’re interested in bandwidth quotas and web filtering, take a look at GFI WebMonitor.

You can download a free trial for 30 days. It’s worth a try!

The geek that I am ...

Just in case you were wondering ... if you try to put  <david></david> in your blog title, it's not going to work. To fix that just put in the HTML equivalent :) i.e. & g t ; and  & l t ;

Also, if you planned to post XML in your blog, think again,  you'll have to switch to HTML and replace all your less thans and greater thans to their HTML equivalents. I find it strange that in my 3 year absence, blogger has changed very very little!

So that's my first real return blog :)

Guess who's back?

Hello there, it's been awhile. A while back I had changed jobs and never actually updated this blog any longer. Going to repurpose this blog to my current tech interests, i.e. web security, product management, android stuff and whatever the heck else I stumble upon ...

Debugging SmartPart User Controls

Ok, so you are faced with this situation

1. You are using SmartPart because its easier for your .NET developers to write UserControls, rather than WebParts (thank god for SharePoint 2010 where developing webparts will be easier at last).

2. Using SharePoint functions such as using SPContext and local debugging (i.e. using a normal web application for testing rather than SharePoint) present a headache, since the context is not available when you are debugging locally.

3. You need the best of both worlds, i.e. easy and quick debugging, but using SmartPart and user controls.

Here's the way to do it:

1. Create post build events which copy your User Control dll to the SharePoint folder, and your user controls to the UserControls folder

e.g. copy c:\develpment\xxx.dll c:\inetpub\wwwroot\80\wss\...



2. On the Web Application project properties, rather than using the Visual Studio web server for debugging, use the IIS webserver and specify the web application where your user controls are getting deployed.




3. Press F5 and voila, your dlls, and User Controls files are copied to SharePoint, and SharePoint is loaded and attached to the debugger.

This will now allow you to step into your User Control's code whilst having all SharePoint functions still available! :)

Reading Settings from the Web.Config file from an Event Handler

The SharePoint web.config is in my opinion the best place to put in any configuration settings. To read the config settings from an Event Handler isn't so straight forward but the following code does it nicely:

The SPItemEventProperties comes from the EventHandler.

You need to put in an appSettings tag in your web.config file, and then as many key value pairs as you need:

<add key="Username" value="svc-sharepoint"/>


public static string ReadKeyValueSetting(SPItemEventProperties properties, string keyName)
{
EventLog evita = new EventLog();
evita.Source = ("ReadFromConfig");
string webApplicationName = "";
using (SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite(properties.SiteId))
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(siteCollection.WebApplication.Name))
throw new ApplicationException("Web application name is empty!");
else webApplicationName = siteCollection.WebApplication.Name;
}
System.Configuration.Configuration config = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration("/", webApplicationName);
if (config == null)
throw new ApplicationException("Web Configuration is null");
AppSettingsSection appSettings = config.AppSettings;
if (appSettings == null)
throw new ApplicationException("Web.config appSettings section cannot be found!");
if (appSettings.Settings[keyName] == null string.IsNullOrEmpty(appSettings.Settings[keyName].Value))
{
evita.WriteEntry("KeyName doesn't exist!", EventLogEntryType.Warning);
throw new ApplicationException("Key value cannot be read from appSettings. Make sure this key and its value exist!");
}
return appSettings.Settings[keyName].Value;
}

Using HTML to create visual graphics in SharePoint

ok, so you want to create some basic KPIs without installing / buying any webparts. You can do that, using a combination of Calculcated Columns and the Custom Editor Web Part.

Good Stuff, see more details here: http://pathtosharepoint.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/using-calculated-columns-to-write-html/

Programing Search Queries

A good article by a MOSS MVP on the programming MOSS Search
http://blog.mastykarz.nl/sharepoint-people-search-lessons-learned-programmatically-running-search-queries/

WSS 3 - No search results returned

Well I've been banging my head against this error for quite a while and finally managed to resolve it.

Everything was setup correctly, none of the usual problems ... however one thing was missing. Indexing service had NOT been installed. Once the service was installed, and server restarted, search results started working correctly.

Hopefully this will help somebody else out there.

Exporting / Importing Profile Properties from your Shared Services Provider

If you ever had to customise Profile Properties in the Shared Services Provider, you'll know what a royal PITA it is to migrate the properties from one SSP to another (especially in a Staging environment). Typically, you would either backup and restore the SSP, or recreate the Profile properties from scratch. With the latter you would have the problem of possibly not recreating the properties identically to the latest version.

Sahil Malik comes to the rescue with the following great utility to Export and Import Profile Properties

Hats off to Sahil!

My Profile Search Link Setting

When user's click on My Profile, the details entered are displayed with a link to a Search Center whic refines that link.

E.g. if your country is France, you get a link to a People Search which searches for other People whose country is France

[http://site]/SearchCenter/Pages/PeopleResults.aspx?k=Country:"France"

In case you wanted to change the Search Center to direct the search to (Preferred Search Center), you'll find this setting in the My Site settings in the Shared Services Provider.

Customising Refine Your Search

The Refine Your Search is quite a nice feature of the People Search, through as always we'd love to be able to control the properties to Refine by.

Here's how to do it:

http://virtualservergallery.com/2008/07/31/how-to-add-modify-or-delete-properties-in-refine-your-search-functionality-for-people-search/

People Search Interesting Customizing Information

The following blog lists some good information about SharePoint People Search, and some problems / limitations which you will probably encounter when extending the Out of the Box People Search functions:

http://blog.mastykarz.nl/sharepoint-people-search-lessons-learned-covering-basics/

Extending ... both programatically and not

http://blog.mastykarz.nl/sharepoint-people-search-lessons-learned-programmatically-running-search-queries/

Changing the stuff on the My Profile page:

http://www.wssdemo.com/Blog/archive/2009/03/05/SharePoint-User-Profiles-and-My-Sites.aspx