1. EDITORS CORNER
   • What Is Happening In IT?
   • Warning: IRS Audit Scam
2. TECH BRIEFING
   • The Average Cost And Duration Of Unplanned Downtime
3. NT/2000 RELATED NEWS
   • Here Is A Security Site To Send Your Family To
4. NT/2000 THIRD PARTY NEWS
   • Secure Wireless Server Control: How To Foil "Whackers"?
   • Aelita Pushes For A Multi-Forest Architecture. Why?
5. W2Knews 'FAVE' LINKS
   • This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff
6. PRODUCT OF THE WEEK
   • Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices

What Is Happening In IT?

Hi All,

This week's XBOX Winner gets the iGlasses as well. It's Phil Garoni, a long time reader of W2Knews. Congrats Phil! How to win the weekly XBOX? Scroll all the way down this newsletter, update your profile and refer up to three friends.

And now, what is happening in IT at the moment? Lots of motion as usual. Here are some snippets - Microsoft and the Government are talking about modifying the settlement wording a bit - Oracle's "unbreakable" advertising campaign was shot down in flames as a bunch of vulnerabilities in their flagship database surfaced - SUN is covering its low end and starts selling Linux on Intel - HP and Compaq are going for a do-or-die shareholder vote in a few weeks - The Government and a Tech alliance start promoting home PC security - Just like AOL, SUN might sue MS for anticompetitive behavior - The Technology Of The Year vote was for XML with well over 80 percent of the vote - The U.S. House passes a cybersecurity research bill, and a whole lot more is happening.

In Microsoft Server Land, things are moving along as usual. They see Linux as their biggest threat, and I think they are right. SUN just decided to give away parts of Solaris to the open source community and Red Hat said it was a good day for Linux. Personally from a "market forces" perspective I see Linux eat more into the existing Unix flavors than take business away from Microsoft. However, one of our Techs here showed me an interesting config he built: Red Hat running MS Terminal Server. Indistinguishable from a windows-driven PC, and a possible choice for a thin client.

It is up to you guys to look at the application, the required functionality, and find the best OS- and hardware platform to run that on. Having some competition in the market keeps the vendors on their toes and we'll all benefit.

Warning: IRS Audit Scam

I generally don't send out these notices, but this is so serious that it's important that the general public be immediately informed. The IRS Criminal Investigations Division recently sent out an alert to law enforcement agencies regarding this scam. PLEASE READ and FORWARD to others, so they might not be a victim of what could seriously damage you financially.

Some taxpayers have received e-mails from a non-IRS source indicating that the taxpayer is under audit and needs to complete a questionnaire within 48 hours to avoid the assessment of penalties and interest. The e-mail refers to an "e-audit" and references IRS form 1040. The taxpayer is asked for social security numbers, bank account numbers and other confidential information. The IRS does not conduct e-audits, nor does it notify taxpayers of a pending audit via e-mail.

That e-mail is not from the IRS. Any e-mail received of this nature should be saved so that a computer forensics investigation can be conducted to determine the originator. Law enforcement personnel should remain cognizant of this latest identity theft ploy. And this social engineering exploit is not limited to the U.S.A. A criminal in your country can also pull a scam like this. Be Warned! More info at: [email protected] - Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association

The Average Cost And Duration Of Unplanned Downtime

I thought you would like the results of a survey that was recently done by GlobalContinuity.com. Their members were asked three questions:

Q1. How often unplanned downtime occurs for their most critical NT-based system?

A. Out of 147 respondents 49 percent experienced unplanned downtime to their most critical NT system at least once per month. Of these, 31 percent said that downtime occurred once a month on average, 14.3 percent experienced downtime once a week and an unlucky 3.4 percent saw daily downtime. A further 33 percent of the respondents experienced downtime once a quarter.

Q2. On average, how long each unplanned downtime event lasts?

A. The majority (87 percent) of incidents were resolved within six hours, with 25 percent reporting that systems were operable again after less than an hour and 34 percent up and running within two hours.

Q3. What unplanned downtime for this system costs per hour?

A. For comparative purposes we asked respondents to report the average hourly cost of downtime to their organization in US dollars. The survey found that for 22 percent of respondents downtime costs less than $1000 per hour; for 36 percent it costs between $1000 and $5000; 18 percent reported that it costs between $5000 and $10000 and for 13 percent downtime costs more than $10,000 per hour.

Here Is A Security Site To Send Your Family To

All of us are the "Guru" the whole family descends on when they have PC problems, right? Well, a bunch of high-tech outfits and the Feds announced a new campaign to educate home computer users and small businesses about ways to keep hackers and viruses at bay. The campaign is called "Stay Safe Online" and of course it is all web-driven with under the new .INFO banner:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=020211RN-StaySafeOnLine

If your relatives have "always on" DSL or cable modem connections, this site is full of information and tips they can follow to protect the security of their computers in a low cost way. Most of the home users and small business do not have the security awareness they should have, this site will help. Practically all home users are vulnerable to Net threats since they do not adhere to all of the key practices that protect their systems from attack.

Things like regularly updated anti-virus software, hard-to-guess passwords, firewalls and other security practices are practically unknown in those environments. This is a start to improve their awareness levels.

Secure Wireless Server Control: How To Foil "Whackers"?

The issue of using wireless technology to improve your quality of life and productivity seems to be popping up more and more. Early adopters of wireless system admin utilities initially believed that they would use the tool primarily for emergency response such as:

This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff

Small Business Server 2000 Best Practices