On Tuesday June 11Th at 3PM EST DataYard will be upgrading our Unifi controller, sdlan.datayard.us. The Unifi web portal may be unavailable for 15 minutes during this time. No other systems will be affected.
Let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or just want to chat: 1.800.982.4539 or [email protected]. Remember to follow us on Twitter (@datayardtechops & @datayard)!
The world’s most popular Internet browser, Google Chrome, is releasing an important update in the coming weeks. Starting with the public and stable release of Chrome update 68, the browser will show a yellow “warning” icon next to the URL of web sites which are not protected by a SSL cert, and when this icon is hovered over a “Not Secure” warning will be displayed. With over 53% of total browser market share, this update is sure to affect a wide swatch of users and websites.
Read the Google blog post here.
Not sure if your website will be affected by this change? Visit your site in a browser, and then look at the URL in the address bar. If your address begins with “HTTP” and not “HTTPS”, your visitors may start to see a warning when this update is released.
To get ahead of the curve on this, give us a call or send us an email – for $175 a year, we can purchase, coordinate, and install a fix for this issue for any DataYard hosting customers. Just another way we are here to help you make IT better.
Earlier this month was Safer Internet Day, which is a day dedicated to creating awareness around safe internet usage mainly geared towards children and teens. I realized this topic didn’t exist when I was growing up. Think about it for a second. I am in my mid-late twenties and I have had more years with dial-up internet or no Internet at all, than I have with anything close to the high speeds we have today. I’ve grown up with the Internet quite literally. When I was a kid, teachers and parents were just trying to grasp the concept of the Internet and how it was used, let alone talk about how to safely address it. For this reason, I’ve taken it upon myself to catch all of us up on some quick Internet Safety Tips.
Creating complex passwords and changing your passwords regularly can go a long way. That means moving past the passwords like ‘Password123’ and ‘Jacob19’, onto more creative phrases and symbols. It is also beneficial to use different passwords for your different accounts and websites, rather than using the same one across the board. For this reason, I would recommend using tools like LastPass, KeePass or 1Password to help keep track of all of your different passwords. These tools can also be set up to remind you to reset your password every couple of months.
Free public Wi-Fi has essentially become a basic utility, making the internet easily accessible virtually anywhere. This is also making users increasingly vulnerable. The challenge with public Wi-Fi is that it’s often unsecured, making it easy for hackers to access your device. If you want to utilize public Wi-Fi in a secure manner, you can purchase a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN is a software that will provide you with a secure connection to the Internet.
Taking a comprehensive look at your home network will allow you to have peace of mind when you are connecting to the Internet at home on your various devices. Changing administrative passwords and implementing a few precautions can make your connection much safer. For a checklist on securing your home network check out our Securing Your Home Network blog.
Many times, Internet browsers themselves provide Safe Browsing functions (see Google). However, you can go an extra step and retrain yourself on not giving away personal information, avoiding questionable websites, only downloading software from sites you trust, and increasing your browsers security settings.
Keep an eye on the addresses of the sites you are visiting. In the address bar for your website, you will see either HTTP or HTTPS (more about the difference) which represents how data is transferred between a web server and a web browser. With an HTTPS site, the data is encrypted, which keeps your information safe. This is extremely important for any online shopping or banking, and any site taking your personal information. You need to make sure that it has encryption.
Staying up to date on the latest operating systems (OS) and software/application versions will ensure that you have the most up-to-date security measures in place. We recommend turning on auto-update when applicable.
If you have more questions about making your home a safe place please feel free to reach out to us on social media or at [email protected]
Other Resources:
DataYard’s new and updated mail filter features improvements to both spam and virus filtering performance and the user interface. This article explains how to create an account on DataYard’s Mail filter, update your password, add and remove entries from your whitelist and blocklist and adjust your spam filtering levels from the defaults.
Creating an account
Access the Mail filter login page at https://filter.datayard.us. Enter your email address in the username field and click “Create New Password”
It will tell you that an account has been created and will have sent an email to you with your password.
Now you can log in to the portal with your email address and password.
Here is what you’ll see when you log in. The page will default to the Quarantine Inbox that is disabled by default (you can enable it by following the instructions here).
Changing Your password
Upon logging in, click on Preferences
Then click Password
Enter your old password and desired password as directed, then click Save Password.
Updating your whitelist/blocklist
Click Preferences, then Whitelist/Blocklist
You will be presented with the following page. To add an address to either list, click into the entry box in either list, then enter the address and click Add. To remove an entry, click the trash can next to the entry you wish to remove.
To remove an entry, click the trash can next to the entry you wish to remove.
You can edit the list as a whole by clicking Bulk Edit on the list you wish to edit.
Never edit the first line and put each entry on its own line, as shown below. Click Save once finished.
Customizing your filter settings
Click on Preferences, then Spam Settings
In order to change your settings from your Domain defaults, select No for Use Domain Defaults under the Spam Scoring section, then click Save.
You’ll now be able to adjust the scoring levels for blocking, quarantine (see Enabling Your Spam Quarantine if you’d like to utilize the quarantine feature) and Tagging. Adjust the sliders to your desired levels and click Save. Higher numbers are less sensitive and lower numbers are more sensitive. For example, if you change the Block slider from the default level of 5 to 8, you will receive more messages.
Getting Help
The new mail filter includes comprehensive help, if you need an explanation for a setting or section, simply click the “Help” link at the top right of every section header.
You can also contact us any time at [email protected] or 937-226-6896 for assistance.
Now available by popular demand, DataYard has created a brand new offering under a brand new division, At Your Service. AYS will help regional companies with all aspects of business IT – whether it is managing existing workstations and servers, migrating to a VoIP phone service, upgrading network equipment, or guiding your transition to the cloud – DataYard has you covered.
For over two decades, DataYard has helped thousands of local businesses use technology to improve business efficiency and reliability. But we noticed that we were getting more and more requests from clients to assist with projects beyond just Internet services or hosting projects – they needed help with technology inside of their businesses, and turned to us for advice. AYS is an answer to those questions and needs, and DataYard can now bridge the gap between on-premise IT work and cloud-based hosting services.
We’ve built some great partnerships over the last twenty years – with Microsoft, VMware, and Cisco, to name a few – and these relationships make it possible for DataYard to be your full-service, end-to-end IT partner. If you have a problem, project, or just want to talk through an issue, give us a call – DataYard is here to help you make IT better.
On June 1st DataYard officially brought on two new summer interns for a specific and pretty cool project – to explore the Internet of Things (IoT)!
The chosen ones – Owen Devine and James Kinion – will be working with us through August to design, build, and deploy mobile units which report not only their own geographic location, but a slew of environmental variables as well. While we have a vague idea of how we at DataYard might accomplish this task, the interns have been set free in a sea of low-cost devices which when used together can accomplish almost anything.
We’re makers here at DataYard, and are super excited about the future of the IoT space. We got a 3D Printer for the office last Christmas, and Eric Wright has probably burned through twenty pounds of PLA over seventeen generations of a custom-fit phone Heads Up Display for his road bike. We built our own big-screen network status and reporting display, have daily DJ battles on a Raspberry Pi3 via Airplay to the MusicBox interface, and a Retrobox Pi3 for SNES emulation is coming soon – not even mentioning the custom solutions we put in place for clients every day.
We’re hoping to support the future of the IoT movement by getting some sharp young minds playing the field – and we plan to do that while deploying additional (and mobile) environmental monitoring to our data center – stay tuned for updates on DataYard’s continuing quest to innovate and create ways to Make IT Better!
DataYard is proud to announce our latest partnership with the Mikesell’s Snack Food Company – the oldest potato chip company in the United States! Since 1910, Mikesell’s has been manufacturing and shipping delicious treats from right here in Dayton to the surrounding tri-state. DataYard and Mikesell’s were introduced via mutual partners and Technology First relationships, and we began discussing a full-scale technology redesign and refresh in May of this year.
Mikesell’s had an interesting predicament, albeit not out of the ordinary – recent restructuring of the internal technical team had brought with it a change in long-term vision and strategy. Mikesell’s new CIO, Steve Hangen, wanted to shift the focus of the internal technical resources away from supporting local servers and towards supporting internal processes. However that didn’t remove the reality that there were multiple (and fairly critical) line of business applications running internally on antiquated hardware. Pair that with an Internet bandwidth bottleneck and an outdated DR strategy, and the risk to business continuity was enough to make anyone sweat.
After months of planning and fine-tuning, DataYard and Mikesell’s finalized our strategy and partnership at the end of August. In a few separate installments, I’ll be describing the individual goals of the overall redesign – the how, what, and why.
I’m looking forward to sharing the details of these projects as DataYard knocks them out, one by one – starting with a description of the network topology redesign and deployment, coming soon.
Mikesell’s is a historic brand with deep roots in Dayton, and we are very excited to begin a long and successful partnership – stay tuned!
Recent headlines on a new Linux exploit have been spectacular:
The vulnerability lies within the Grub2 bootloader, a password management system used by some Linux systems upon startup. Unpatched, the exploit would cause the system to reboot or bring up a Grub rescue shell granting the user a full set of admin privileges — within the rescue function only.
What is the real danger? Ryan Chewning, DataYard Linux Systems Administrator, sees these as largely sensational pieces. “The exploit requires physical access to the Linux system, first and foremost,” he says. “Additionally, it is my experience that the feature being attacked is not widely used in the first place.”
Our bottom line? If you’re hosting in DataYard’s managed Linux environments, you need not worry. Physical access is controlled and systems are constantly updated with all necessary security patches.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please let us know!
