This vulnerability was uncovered and reported by researchers Tavis Ormandy and Natalie Silvanovich, of the Google Project Zero team. Taking to Twitter, the duo reported that they had made a discovery, reporting it to Microsoft and the Microsoft Security Response Center. The MSRC confirmed the presence of the vulnerability, discovering that numerous pieces of software within the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine would allow a “specially crafted file” to begin running any code the attacker pleased on the system. This vulnerability was present on essentially every Windows machine, having been found on Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, and even affecting Windows RT. While Microsoft pushed out this particular update, this story still serves as a reminder to keep all of your solutions up-to-date. There is a digital arms race that is waged between programmers and hackers, where each side tries to gain the upper hand over the other by improving their programs. This is one of the main reasons why your solutions have regular updates released, and why it is so important to implement these updates in a timely manner. Without these updates, your system is left vulnerable to threats that have been made preventable. White Mountain IT Services can help you to be sure that your company’s systems are updated. We’ll keep an eye out for any updates as well as warning signs of impending threats. For more information, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Cloud computing offers businesses an economical way to obtain the software and services they need. Yet, there comes a point when having too much of a good thing becomes wasteful, no matter how affordable the service may be. If a business owner isn?t careful about how they utilize the cloud, then they can unknowingly find themselves experiencing ?cloud waste.? Simply put, cloud waste occurs when more cloud resources are consumed than what your business actually needs. Business 2 Community provides a helpful list of various ways that cloud waste can manifest itself: Instances or VMs which are left running, chewing up $/CPU-Hr costs and network charges Orphaned volumes (volumes not attached to any servers), which are not being used and are incurring monthly $/GB charges Old snapshots of those or other volumes Old, out-of-date machine images Any kind of waste is tragic due to it being preventable and cloud waste is no different. The tragedy of cloud waste is that it hurts bottom lines. For businesses, the waste erodes their return on assets, return on equity, and net revenue. Additionally, cloud waste hurts the bottom lines of cloud providers, seeing as they are more profitable when they can oversubscribe their data centers. Consequently, when cloud providers can?t oversubscribe, they?re forced to build more data centers than they need to–a very expensive endeavor. On the surface, this fact may seem inconsequential to consumers. However, like any profit-minded business, a cloud provider will charge enough for their services to cover their expenses and still be profitable, which means users will inevitably be charged extra to cover the expense of a cloud provider?s waste. Preventing cloud waste can be achieved with proper oversight and planning whenever your company?s cloud services are implemented. In order to spot cloud waste in your company?s cloud solutions, this may mean taking a fresh look at your cloud setup. More likely than not, this will require an outside perspective, like consulting with IT professionals. White Mountain IT Services can do this for you and determine if there?s any waste or not, as well as suggest changes that will remedy the waste and improve operational efficiency. Call us at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.

One thing to keep in mind before we even get started is to be sure to take preventative measures before you?re in a situation you regret. By this, we mean that you don?t wait until your desktop is rendered obsolete before replacing it. Therefore, you need to look for warning signs that your computer is failing? before it inevitably fails to work properly. Warning SignsHere are five possible warning signs that hint your technology might not last much longer. Keep in mind that some of these could mean multiple issues–for example, a slowdown might not mean that your computer is about to break down. General PC slowdown Freezing or even operating system crashes Corrupted files or data loss Random shutdowns Startup errors Know When it?s Time to Replace Your TechnologyOf course, nothing lasts forever, so it?s natural that you?ll need to plan for the end of a PC?s life cycle. When your PC has reached its limit, you need to make sure that your old unit is properly replaced and disposed of. If you don?t have a clear policy surrounding the disposal of your old computer equipment, then you may find yourself in a jam if there?s a data breach and you?re investigated by authorities to prove that the source wasn?t your fault from improperly disposing of old computers that contained sensitive data. Gartner explains, ?Best-practice PC disposal processes provide an audit trail documenting the serial-numbered inventory of disposed PCs, certification that proprietary and personal data has been removed and made unrecoverable, and transfer/reuse of software licenses, where applicable.? If your business would like help disposing of your old technology the right way, contact White Mountain IT Services. We can help you with the process by eliminating data found on your old PC?s hard drives so that it doesn?t fall into the wrong hands. Furthermore, we can help you recycle your old devices in a way which causes minimal impact to the environment. Our organization?s trained IT professionals will be able to help your business handle the transition to new technology as painlessly as possible. To learn more about what White Mountain IT Services can do for you, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Use the latest OSAs operating systems are updated, they are done so under the expectation that more and more devices will have a solid state drive. That’s why these operating systems are now designed to support SSD use. Avoid pointlessly manipulating data or activating wasteful settingsAs mentioned before, an SSD can only rewrite its data so many times before it is spent. Therefore, it would be wise to avoid using the SSD to copy your files or download data, as this will cause ‘wear’ on the device. This includes avoiding a few features that many systems are equipped with. Benchmarking: Sure, SSDs are fast, but try to avoid the temptation to run a few speed tests to see just how fast yours works. This will only result in a shorter lifespan for the drive, as it will use up the available cycles needlessly. Hibernation: This feature simply allows the computer to save the system memory to the hard drive before it is powered off. This enables the computer to resume these operations once it is turned back on. As with the benchmarking process, this will use up more of your SSD’s cycles that you would otherwise. A quick note: hibernation and sleep mode are not the same thing, so putting your device to sleep is perfectly safe. Don’t Defrag: Defragging your drive aggressively scours the data on the drive to organize it at a mechanical level. On older drives, especially HDDs, defragging can increase performance, but on SSDs the benefits are negligible, and it just causes needless wear and tear on the drive. Save mindfullyDue to some of the characteristics of SSDs, they are better suited to save certain kinds of media in particular ways, and aren’t very well suited for others. For instance, it is not recommended that an SSD is used to save particularly large files, or the background temp files that many processes create. In situations like these, it is better to rely on a HDD to save the data. Admittedly, SSDs have a considerably long lifespan, even if used similarly to an HDD. However, ensuring its longevity can foreseeably result in fewer replacement costs down the line. How much do you rely on SSD over HDD? Will you be a little more mindful of how you save your data? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you subscribe to our blog!