Free Web Filtering and Anti-Phishing for Home and Small Business

We've talked about why content filtering is important to small businesses and a few solutions.  Some of the highlights are reducing wasted network resources such as internet bandwidth, minimizing legal risk and increasing employee productivity.  If you haven't read our content filtering blog in a while, please check out the risk section again?

Since that writing, we have discovered another options for Small Businesses that provide all the benefits discussed before and cost $0, zilch, nothing, free.  They do have a couple fee based options for additional functionality that are geared towards small business and another for K-12 and larger businesses.

Before we dive into the solution, it would be helpful to understand what Domain Name System, or DNS, is.  It is explained in this earlier blog.  In short, it is a phone book for the internet.  You look up a name and DNS give you the number to call.

OpenDNS provides the capability to block or allow access to specific web site categories such as social networking, nudity, drugs, games phishing, music, shopping and more - 25 Categories with the Free Services.  It does this by NOT returning the number to call when a website you asked for matches a preconfigured category.

I personally use OpenDNS for the anti-phishing function.  Phishing is the act of persuading someone to click on a link or website that looks like a trusted website in  hopes of obtaining your personal information.  You don't always notice that www.bankafamerica.com isn't www.bankofamerica.com, get redirected to the wrong site and put in your banking userid and password.  OpenDNS prevents against this type of attack by not directing you to known phishing sites.

To recap, if you are a small business, concerned with security, wasted resources, legal risk and employees waste company time on Facebook, OpenDNS is for you.  It is free and simple to implement.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

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Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

Keeping Track of Schedules Driving You Mad?

Do you find it difficult to keep track of families, business, staff or co-workers activities?  What about tracking client appointments or scheduling people in the field?  It is frustrating to add the same event to multiple calendars and phones.  Small Businesses may not have the funds available to purchase Microsoft Outlook or Exchange E-mail server.  But they do need much of the functionality Exchange provides.

Google Calendars is a free, simple but comprehensive calendar that allows you to create a personal calendar for yourself plus additional calendars for other purposes such as Company Events, Family Activities or Holidays.  Each calendar can be made Public or Private as well as shared with specific family members or co-workers.  Additional security can be added to shared calendars to give people access to view only all the way to add/modify/administer the calendar.  Calendars can be combined and presented on a single page on your company web site.  This is extremely useful if you want to have a company events but also display other shared calendars to your customers.

Maybe you have Microsoft Outlook for your e-mail and calendar today.  No problem, Google Calendar has a sync tool that allows you to sync events, at a scheduled interval or manually, from Outlook to Google Calendar, visa versa or both ways.

How do you get your schedule to your mobile phone.  If you have a blackberry or other smartphone with a data plan, there are a couple options.  Google has apps for the Blackberry that allow you to view your Gmail, Calendar and more from a single interface.   The second is to use Blackberry Desktop Manager to sync your Outlook Calendar from your PC to your phone.  I personally sync from Outlook to my Blackberry but also have the Google Apps installed on my Blackberry.

Notifications for shared calendar is a great feature.  Receive and e-mail or SMT text message at a predefined interval keeps you on track.

This isn't a comprehensive list of Google Calendar features or an endorsement but free tools like this are out there for the small business.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice  of a trusted professional.

Common Security Tips to Keep You Safe on the World Wide Web

Here are a few common security tips that will help you avoid the majority of problems related to accessing the internet.


1.  Use a good antivirus program, schedule automatic virus definition downloads and daily scheduled scans early in the morning.  Create a task on your calendar to check the status of the definition downloads and scans.  If scans aren't running with the most up to date definitions, antivirus doesn't do much good.  I also emphasize "GOOD" antivirus software.  Don't buy the $5 or $10 antivirus software and expect it to work.  It doesn't.


2.  Enable Windows Automatic Updates, if you don't have any custom developed applications on your computer.  Most people use the basic web browser, Microsoft office and e-mail.  Most updates that are automatically installed won't interfere with these applications.  To enable automatic updates, open Internet Explorer, go to tools and Windows Updates.  After the page loads, you will have the option to enable automatic updates on the right hand side if it is not already enabled.  Vista already has this enabled by default.


3.  Don't open e-mail attachments from unknown people.  People can add links to e-mails and make them look like they go to one place but take you to another.  If you aren't sure what it is, don't click it. 


4.  Don't click on links in social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace that don't look right.  i.e. Here is a funny video of you or Have you seen this picture of you or You've got to see this.  These are all red flags.


5.  Require people or vendors to follow these simple rules before adding anything to or using  your network.  Many times vendors will add devices such as printer that run Windows without installing antivirus or anyway to apply security patches.  

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice  of a trusted professional.

Simple, How I Get to the Internet and Troubleshooting Steps

Many small business owners, like yourself, or a member of your staff double as the "IT Guy".  Nothing wrong with this, but it does take time away from your business.  Learning how computers work, operating systems, applications and connecting everything together is no small task. 

Let's discuss a few common network troubleshooting steps to speed up the learning curve and maybe save you a call to your IT support company or Internet Service Provider (ISP).

First, we'll do a brief explanation of how a PC gets from point A to point B. 

Your computer is connected to a network either via an Ethernet cable or wireless connection.  Most small businesses or home users have a wireless router/gateway they purchased from one of the "Marts" or Tech Stores.  These wireless routers are preconfigured, ready for you to connect the WAN (Wide Area Network) port to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) DSL/Cable Modem and for your PC(s) to connect to the LAN (Local Area Network) port(s). 

After you connect your PC to the router/gateway, it grabs or pulls an IP Address via DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).  Think of an IP Address like phone number, it is a unique number that your computer can be reached at.

When you ask your computer access a website, it does it much like you would make a phone call when you don't know the number.  You pull out the phone book, scroll through the listings until you find the  number, then dial.  PC's use DNS, or Domain Name System, to find the number that correlates to the name you asked it for.  (i.e. www.google.com).  Your computer knows what DNS servers to ask because they were provided by DHCP, described above.  Your internet provider has DNS servers for your PC to make these name lookup request.

Now that your PC knows what number to call, it send this request out to the information highway by asking that router/gateway to forward the request to your Internet Provider or ISP.  Your ISP forwards it to the website and the website sends back the information that displays on your screen.

We have a basic knowledge of IP Addresses, DNS and that we get this information through DHCP, let's discuss a few troubleshooting steps.

Go to Start, Run and Type cmd, hit enter.  A small black box will come up.  In the box,

Type ipconfig, enter (Your IP Address will display along with Subnet Mask and Default Gateway, which is the router/gateway your purchased)

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : nsn.local

   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.100

   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1

Type ipconfig/all, enter (/all shows additional information such as your DHCP and DNS servers)

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : nsn.local

   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-22-69-3F-28-4A

   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.100(Preferred)

   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, November 20, 2009 8:02:22 PM

   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, November 23, 2009 8:02:36 PM

   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1

   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 208.67.222.222

                                       208.67.220.220

   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Type ping Default Gateway  (Ping verifies that you can get to another device and get a valid response, in this case, verifies your local network is working)

C:\>ping 192.168.100.1

Pinging 192.168.100.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for 192.168.100.1:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 1ms

Next, Type nslookup website, you want to access.  Nslookup is similar to you looking up a phone number in the phone book.  You should see at least one number returned under the non-authoritative answer: section.

C:\>nslookup www.google.com

Server:  resolver1.opendns.com

Address:  208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:

Name:    www.l.google.com

Addresses:  209.85.225.105

          209.85.225.147

          209.85.225.103

          209.85.225.104

          209.85.225.99

          209.85.225.106

Aliases:  www.google.com

Next, ping the website.  Keep in mind that not all websites allow ping so it isn't guaranteed to get a response.  If you get a response, you're ISP is working fine.

C:\>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.l.google.com [209.85.225.103] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=54

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=54

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=54

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 209.85.225.103:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 41ms, Maximum = 42ms, Average = 41ms

Question and Answer

Q.  What do I do if I can't ping my default gateway?

A.  Verify that your wireless connectivity is working or that your ethernet cable is connected from your PC to the gateway.  There should be a link light on both the PC card, or NIC, and the gateway that verifies a connection is made.

Q.  What do I do if there isn't a response to my nslookup request.

A.    Assuming you can ping your default gateway, try to ping the DNS Address that shows after an ipconfig/all.  If you can't, verify your connection from your router/gateway's WAN port to your cable/dsl modem.  If a link light shows on both ends, you can log into your gateway and verify that the WAN port has an IP Address assigned from your ISP.  If it doesn't, reset your gateway and call your Internet Provider.

Q.  What do I do if I can ping www.google.com but can't get to it in a web browser.

A.  If no web pages display, but you can ping them, this indicates a problem with your PC.  Try rebooting first, then call your trusted PC Repairman.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice  of a trusted professional.

Password Management Tools

With usernames and passwords for online banking, facebook, twitter, e-mail and everything else,  What are good tools for both creating passwords and keeping track of them.

Passwords should contact both upper and lowercase, numbers and special characters. i.e. p@$$w0rd. Do not use birthdays, usernames, childern's names or other word that people can easily find by looking through your trash.

Use different password for online banking applications that you do for social media and another for e-mail applications. This prevents one compromised password from allowing access to all your accounts.

I use the following website to generate passwords. Google "password generator" to find others.

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/

Password Safe is a free tool that keeps track of your Usernames, passwords, websites the account is associated with an more. The "safe" is encrypted and protected by a password itself. Backup the safe file regularly.

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.