Castle Computer Services Blog

Amazon Phishing E-Mails

There has been a marked increase in the number of phishing e-mails that are disguised as e-mails from Amazon. The screenshot below gives one such example:

View "Screenshot Image" here

There are several tell tale signs that this e-mail is not genuine:

1)      It is from amazon.com as opposed to amazon.co.uk (which on its own is not enough to tell as you may shop at amazon.com)

2)      The price is quoted in $ as opposed to £

3)      The subtotal, total and grand totals do not add up

4)      Moving the mouse over any link reveals that clicking on it will not take you to Amazon:

 
 View example here

There are a number of such e-mails in circulation just now and if you were to click on the link, one of two things will happen; either you would be taken to a web site that would attempt to download a piece of malware to your PC / laptop or you will be taken to a web site that looks like a genuine Amazon site that will ask you for your username and password. Once you have entered your username and password, the rogue site will collect your username and password and then divert you to the real Amazon site, so you will think that all is well but you have just given the bad guys your Amazon login details!

It is good practice to always hover your mouse cursor over a link and let your system reveal the actual destination before clicking on a link and if you are at all suspicious, do not click on it.

There are Firewalls, and there are Firewalls managed by experts

Castle’s proactive support service goes further much further than you would expect. When we install a Firewall for a customer, you would be surprised at all that’s involved to ensure their protection night and day. 

Your Firewall

A key part of the security of your network comes from the investment you have made in your firewall. This device not only protects the perimeter of your network by reducing the risk of server attack from the Internet, but it also allows Castle to continually monitor the security of the firewall. We know that some organisations simply install a firewall and then assume it will continue to be effective. At Castle, we ensure you remain protected as we proactively monitor not only the Juniper firewall itself but also your Internet connection, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Hackers launch SEO poisoning attacks, using Haiti appeals

David Paine, Technical Services Manager at Castle Computer Services writes:

A rising trend in the area of Information Security from the end of 2009 that is predicted to increase in prevalence even further in 2010 is a technique known as Search Engine Optimisation or an SEO poisoning attack. This occurs when a hacker compromises search engine results to make their links appear higher than legitimate results. This means that as you search for related terms the infected links appear near the top of the search results, generating a greater number of clicks to malicious Web sites, which may subsequently lead to malware being unknowingly downloaded to your computer. In the last year, attackers have used this technique to poison search results on everything from television awards to humanitarian disasters, and so we get to the Haiti earthquake...

Highly successful Castle SunSystems User event for Housing Associations

This well attended customer event for UK Housing Associations was a hit with 100% of customers rating this event positively in terms of value and over 77% of customers rating the day as Very Good or Excellent!

The agenda was packed full of topics such as: -

• SunSystems Update where over 90% of customers rated this positively, Hints & Tips Workshop and Support Service Update where over 50% of customers rated this as Very Good or Excellent. 

• Our new Business Intelligence solution,QlikView was met with interest and over 90% of customers rated this presentation Very Good or Excellent. 

• The day concluded with the Housing User Forum which was rated either Very Good or Excellent by over 65% of our customers. 

Thanks to all who attended and to those who provided us with this valuable feedback!  Some quotes of the day included, ‘very helpful…well planned and thought out…helpful to meet with other users and gather tips'

North East Payroll Company beats off stiff competition to scoop top UK award for the second time in 3 years.

Gateshead based Cintra HR & Payroll Services have been awarded the accolade of Payroll Software Provider of the Year for the 2nd time in 3 years, at the prestigious UK Payroll Awards.  Judged by a panel of industry experts and dubbed the ‘Payroll Oscars’, Cintra fought off tough competition from several multi-national payroll providers to win the award, presented earlier this week at BAFTA, The British Academy of Film & Television Artsin London’s Piccadilly.

Proactive IT Support - it's all part of the service

Castle's investment in server management technology, enables us to take corrective action before problems arise, as part of our server support contract.

 

Manage server patching for your supported servers. This allows the Castle Technical team to keep servers up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates (with the option to completely rollback any update in the event of problems). This process also allows us to generate and maintain a comprehensive history of the life of customer's servers and to be able to produce detailed reports of the patches and updates that have been applied to them.

 

QlikView Business Intelligence & Analysis comes to Castle

Castle Computer Services has linked up with QlikTech to provide QlikView. QlikView is a highly affordable and incredibly effective Business Intelligence and Analysis system.

 

Business intelligence solutions are historically complex, expensive and take months or years to install. However QlikView software, developed by QlikTech, costs around a third of other systems and can be up and running in days.

QlikView’s revolutionary technology simplifies analysis for everyone. It is user-friendly and provides superfast ‘in-memory’ analysis capabilities by dynamically integrating and presenting data from multiple data sources, or a single Excel or text file.