New Presentation

A new presentation for Blogging and Self-Publishing has been added to the website.

R

Learn IT

The best way to Learn IT is to just Do IT. And by IT, I’m saying, “Information Technology”, or just software.

You know, there’s no magic pill in learning how to use software. Sets of instructions presented in a predictable pattern teach you how to do the rote movements without fully understanding what the software is doing. That paints an incomplete picture of how to use the software.

Plus, software today is too complicated to remember hundreds of different functional patterns.

To best learn how to use something, you immerse yourself within it. Try it. Break it. Do something with it. See if it works for you. Then start over and do it again, and again, and again, until you understand how the program is working. That will make you a master of it.

Too often do I hear people say, “I don’t know Excel” or “I don’t know how to use Twitter” or “I don’t know Linux, and I prefer Windows.” Somehow that suffices as an excuse.

Funny how we’ve become so comfortable in saying “I don’t know” – it’s so much easier than trying to know! All it takes is acting upon your intention to learn software by using it.

That’s the best way to learn something new, and not from some textbook or some talking head like me showing you to the motions. Like anything – languages, riding a horse, visiting a city, solving a math problem – you can be told the basics, but eventually, you’ve got to find a reason to go there on your own, and make it your own. And that’s truly the only way you’ll learn IT.

R

New IT Policy Created – IT Security

A new sample IT Policy has been added to the website: IT Security Policy. This policy would be used to define what 30,000-foot precautions would be taken by a company to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its information system. It’s available for review and download now the Documents section of the site.

R

How to Protect Yourself from Instant Messaging

Instant Messaging Security Risks

Wow!

Twice in two days means the universe is telling me something and I have to talk about it.

So! Here’s the scoop if you didn’t already know this: public instant messaging products are a huge security risk and you should not use them in the workplace. Yeah, they’re convenient, fun, a time saver, productivity tools, yadda yadda. But they’re also an unfiltered hole from the untrusted Internet directly to your PC, and the risks should just be presumed. Here’s why.

Developers of viruses and malware will write their products to be delivered to users through instant messaging applications. There’s a couple of reasons for this.

1. IM bypasses our traditional filters like on email, firewalls, or virus scanners. Files, links, phishing attacks can all be easily delivered on this platform directly to a user.

2. IM is an emotional, impulse application. Users are usually having fun, or, quickly responding to IM’s without much critical thought, disconnecting their rational-mind in favor of quickly responding to IM’s.

3. The user usually trusts the person who’s sending the message. That trust is what gets exploited by people who write bad software.

4. Users will create generally weak passwords on these services, or, they’ll be convinced to click on something they shouldn’t, so that their accounts are easily hacked.

5. Finally, IM is a perfect zero-day platform. Malware released instantly can’t be easily seen by antivirus and antimalware products that scan IM’s because their definition files haven’t been updated. So, on the first day, with mass proliferation, IM-distributed malware can completely defeat a software defense on the workstation.

Yesterday, I had to spend about an hour with a machine after it was delivered malware through an IM product. Today I got this email from one of my clients with an IM screenshot, “Is this real?” And yep, it looks like it already delivered a payload to a couple of machines at my client’s office.

The take away here is that using unsecured IM is risky to any business. The best way to avoid that risk is to completely disconnect yourself from IM, set policies concerning the use of IM with specific accounts, or, use a secure IM platform offered by commercial vendors that only your company’s employees can use.

In the least, users should exercise some practical safeguards.

1. Create random, long, complex passwords on IM service accounts.

2. Don’t click on any hyperlink or download any file presented in IM that looks suspicious. Think critically about what’s being transmitted and by whom.

3. Limit the size of your buddy list. This will reduce your attack profile. The more buddies you have, the greater risk you’re at.

4. Frequently update the instant messaging software. Vendors are aware of these risks and improve their products incrementally.

5. Create separate accounts. One for work, another for play. Limit the buddy list for work accounts to strictly work-contacts.

These aren’t perfect solutions but they do help curb the risks. Generally though, the message is this: if you use public instant messaging products, you run a greater chance of exposure to malware and viruses.

R

New Presentation Added

A new presentation on Blogging and Self-Publishing has been added to the website. This presentation is used in the course of delivering the Blogging and Self-Publishing course for Clark Community College in Vancouver, Washington.

R

Facebook Facts

I thought this was great and just had to share it with you ..

R

I Say: the Best Support is No Support

The easiest way to deal with complexity is to ignore it.

Well, at least that’s what some clients think when I meet with them to go over their computer problems. It’s amazing to me how accepting we’ve all become of computers and their subtle inconveniences. It’s like we’ve come to just tolerate failure from our technology.

We make excuses for it (“Well shoot, it looks like my darn computer is having a grumpy day!”), work around it (“Just click that button to clear the error and continue – it always does that …”), or simply push it aside (“Yeah, the customer database doesn’t work on this computer from time to time.”)

Still, we’re significantly less tolerant of technologies like electricity, plumbing, a microwave, or a washing machine. These things work thousands of times and for countless hours, and when there’s an inconvenient slip – BANG! – we’re all over that.

What shapes our expectation is consistency. And a lot of small business managers have diminished expectations over their technology. Suffering down-time, connectivity problems, system bugs, viruses, lost speed and performance, and data loss just seems routine. Hey, that’s business-as-usual. It’s expected. It’s better to just accept it or ignore it and move on.

What I’ve always asked is this: why can’t the tech that I manage be as reliable as the water? As predictable as the washing machine? As dependable as the electrical grid?

A lot of my work rests in changing my client’s expectations in that technology – if suitably managed and maintained – can be predictable, reliable, dependable. It can be clockwork. It just takes the requisite elbow-grease, time, and attention to set the foundation.

Instead of fixing stuff after the fact and reacting to problems, why can’t the problems be mitigated beforehand? Why can’t technology problems be anticipated and managed? Why can’t technical support be proactive instead of reactive?

Listen, we’re not trying to make a quick buck off of low expectations. We’re not eager to receive any phone call where a client is down and can’t serve their own customers. We don’t want to address the same issue twice, even if it’s billable time.

Heck no.

What we’re trying to do is turn our client’s technology into a utility – something that everyone, everywhere, can count on, and where failure is brief and infrequent, and I say: the best support is no support. Stuff just simply, consistently works. We pride ourselves when our customers have nothing to say but thanks.

That’s the expectation that I try to set with each and every one of our clients. And that’s just another idea that sets us apart from our competitors.

R

New Presentation

Just added a new presentation to the website for the onground Blogging and Self-Publishing class at Clark Community College. Week Two – concentrating on developing social networks and communities to extend the reach of the new media author.

R

Structural Unemployment

I thought this article from msnbc.com was very eloquent in explaining the long-term systemic unemployment problems in our economy. Specifically, these numbers:

“…On top of the 8.3 million workers who were laid off since the recession began, another 3 million or so jobs, or about 100,000 a month, were needed to keep up with the growth of the work force. So even if the economy now begins producing an average of 250,000 net new jobs every month, year in, year out, employment wouldn’t be back to pre-recession levels until at least 2016.”

By the way, the economy added just 13,000 private sector jobs in June.

Critically, what numbers like these are telling us is that the economy is undergoing a long-term period of slow economic growth and static if not rising unemployment, putting downward-pressure on consumer incomes (read: consumer spending) and business revenue.

Meanwhile, if you’re to believe as I do that corporate America will continue to disintermediate, telecommute, and increase productivity through diminishing the role of labor in their business processes, then we’re facing even more rounds of layoffs through transformative business practices in the years ahead. The article goes on to read:

“Unfortunately it’s going to last a long time,” Mohamed El-Erian, co-CEO of the investment firm Pimco told CNBC. ”It’s not just about the level. It’s about the structural dimensions of the unemployment.” That means many of the jobs that were lost the recession may never come back, says El-Erian.

These observations are just a continuation of my beliefs culminated in my Maverick Manifesto that I wrote about last year. I I believe it’s vital for small to mid-range employers to look at ways to remain competitive through the use of technological restructuring; if you aren’t, then your competitor is, putting your business at a competitive disadvantage. Meanwhile, employees and graduating students need to think more entrepreneurial, and consider a workplace driven by their own freelance initiative, tenacity, drive, and self-promotion/branding.

My message on this is simple: early-adopters will experience a stronger return and an easier transition into these structural changes to the economy. That is preferable and strategic – positioning the firm or the individual into a greater position of self-sufficiency – as compared to those who’d be laggards or late-adopters in their response: who’re resisting change, waiting for a job, or waiting for things to “get back to normal”. I’d like to convince you now: this is the new normal. Accept it. Get used to it. Learn to thrive within it.

Whether or not your a company or a working person, re-thinking the nature of work and of employment is of vital importance to you. These are macroeconomic conditions you should be thinking about, considering, and responding to right now. What’s important is to look at these problems realistically – not pessimistically – and consider options towards shaping your future rather than becoming a victim of macroeconomic forces.

R