05Mar 2018 by nathan

Major outage reported in Atlanta AppRiver Datacenter

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Early in the day on 5 March 2018, we received notifications of potential problems on some of the AppRiver services that we use and recommend.  After reviewing the data that we had, we confirmed that there were problems in the AppRiver Atlanta Datacenter. We reached out to AppRiver who confirmed the outage and referred us to their Status Page for ongoing updates. [Update 1342] - According to AppRiver, the issue has been resolved.   Our inbound mail appears to back to normal as well, confirming the AppRiver Status Page's latest update.  From the status page, it looks like the issue was initially discovered at 1119ET so, any email in transit between then and the resolution at 1342ET may have been affected.
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14Feb 2018 by nathan

February 2018 News and Updates

Monthly Newsletters
Executive Summary - Spectre and Meltdown dominated the news during the last update cycle but seem to be winding down.  The good news here is that strides are being made to mitigate the problem, including a Meltdown and Spectre Detector tool in Microsoft Windows Analytics.  The bad news though is that a number of other critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook and Adobe Flash Player have stepped up to take the place of Spectre and Meltdown. News DC770 In The News - DEF CON North Atlanta, or DC770, made the front page of the Cartersville Daily Tribune on Wednesday, 6 February 2018.  DC770 is a DEF CON group that meets monthly at Jefferson's in Cartersville.  More information is available at the DC770 website and the article is available at the Daily…
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06Feb 2018 by nathan

The Results Are In – Backblaze Hard Drive Statistics for 2017

Industry News
If you're looking to purchase a hard drive and want to know which ones have the best track record, it would be harder to find a better source of information than the annual report from Backblaze. Backblaze is a cloud storage provider that uses exclusively off-the-shelf commodity hard drives in it's datacenter. They maintained detailed statistics on how well various drives performed and, in 2013, they began analyzing that data and making it available to the public. Since then, the annual Backblaze Drive Stats report has been an authoratative source of data on which drives to buy (and which to avoid). Links - Backblaze - https://www.backblaze.com/ - Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2017 - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017
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16Jan 2018 by nathan

Possible inclement on Tuesday and Wednesday

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The National Weather Service and local weather stations are reporting the possibility of inclement weather starting this evening (Tuesday) and potentially lasting through Wednesday.  Additionally, temperatures are expected to remain well below to only slightly above freezing during this time.  Cartersville City as well as Bartow County (and several surrounding school systems) have already adjusted their schedules in preparation for the potential of snow and / or ice.  We will be watching the weather closely and will be posting updates and announcements to our Facebook page.
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09Jan 2018 by nathan

January 2018 News and Updates

Monthly Newsletters
Updates News Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities - There's a LOT of buzz about the two of these.  I won't be going into any detail in this newsletter about either but we've been pushing information out to social media as we get it and will likely be posting an article here later. Mailing List - The response to (finally) getting the mailing list back online has been overwhelmingly positive (and appreciated).  We have a sign-up form on the right-column of our website if you'd like to sign up. MyIT - The newest version of the Network Ninja (NNv2.1) is finally operational and has been deployed to a number of MyIT clients already with stellar results.  We finished with the beta group last week and will be reaching out to all of…
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18Dec 2017 by nathan

Merry Christmas from Cyber Tech Cafe

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Cyber Tech Cafe will be closed on Monday, 25 December and Tuesday, 26 December to enjoy Christmas and to spend time with family, friends and loved ones.  We will re-open on Wednesday, 27 December during normal business hours and will respond to any non-emergency support requests at that time.  If you need emergency support before Wednesday, 27 December, please include the word 'emergency' in the subject line of any email requests. From all of us here at Cyber Tech Cafe, we wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Nathan and Kristy Underwood
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15Dec 2017 by Scott Schilder

This (and Last) Week in Tech News [15 Dec 2017]

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This (and Last) Week In Tech News [15 Dec 2017] This Week In Tech News is a weekly segment released on Fridays highlighting the most important, popular, and interesting technology related news stories of the past week. Written and curated by Scott Schilder and presented by Cyber Tech Cafe. If you have an idea for a story to highlight please share it with us on Twitter. **Note** Due to inclement weather, there was no "This Week In Tech News" article for 8 Dec 2017. This article will cover news events that took place during this past week, and the week prior ( Dec 4th - Dec 15th) Net Neutrality, Net Neutrality, Net Neutrality, Oh My! - These past 2 weeks has been on fire with talks of the upcoming FCC vote…
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01Dec 2017 by Scott Schilder

This Week In Tech News [1 Dec 2017]

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This Week In Tech News [1 Dec 2017] This Week In Tech News is a weekly segment released on Fridays highlighting the most important, popular, and interesting technology related news stories of the past week. Written and curated by Scott Schilder and presented by Cyber Tech Cafe. If you have an idea for a story to highlight please share it with us on Twitter.   Huge Vulnerability Found in Mac OS High Sierra - Mac user and software engineer Lemi Orhan Ergin first discovered a bug in the way Mac OS High Sierra handles logins and authentication on November 28th and disclosed the vulnerability to Apple in a tweet. https://twitter.com/lemiorhan/status/935578694541770752 The vulnerability allows an unauthenticated user to gain access to the device as the root user, without a password, simply by…
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20Nov 2017 by nathan

Happy Thanksgiving from Cyber Tech Cafe

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Cyber Tech Cafe will be closed on Thursday and Friday to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday and spend time with family and friends.  Any non-emergency support requests will be responded to on a first come, first served basis on Monday morning. If you need emergency technical support Thursday through Sunday, our emergency on-call technicians will be available.  You can page the emergency on-call technician by including the word 'emergency' in the subject of your email request.  Please note that holiday rates will apply. From all of us here at Cyber Tech Cafe, we wish you and  yours a Happy Thanksgiving! Nathan and Kristy Underwood
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