All posts by Kris Price

Vodafone Ranked Last for Rural Calls

August 14, 2014 Kris Price

In a report that has been released by Ofcom, Vodafone has been ranked last for the quality of call for mobile phone users in rural areas.

Ofcom used independent firm RootMetrics to measure network performance on mobile phones. The results were based on the quality of calls in areas which had coverage and the number of calls that failed to connect or cut out unexpectedly.

The study that was conducted resulted in network providers EE, O2, Three and Vodafone going head-to-head.

The overall results showed that EE provided the best service across the UK whilst O2 provided the best service within cities.

Overall Results:

97% of all calls on the EE network were successfully connected.
95.3% on O2,
94.5% on Three,
92.6% on Vodafone.

The results for calls made in rural areas were:

93.7% on the EE network were successfully completed.
87.4% on O2,
86% on Three,
79.9% on Vodafone.

A very unsurprising result was that more consumers in urban areas were happier with their mobile phone service that those in rural areas.

Ernest Doku, from uSwitch believes that everyone should now be able to get mobile reception, no matter where they are in the UK.

Doku stated, “In this day and age, we should all be able to get mobile reception, whether we’re in the heart of the city or out in the sticks. While it’s good to see that the majority living in cities are satisfied with their networks, this doesn’t help me if I’m in a field, in rural Wales, with a broken leg and unable to call for help.”

All four network providers have agreed to work with Ofcom to develop a common methodology for measuring the rates of successful mobile phone calls.

Vodafone have responded to the results and believe that the results do not show a fair reflection as they are now outdated.

A Vodafone spokeswoman stated, “The previously published RootMetric report is based on network measurements taken between June and December last year which were disproved by more up-to-date findings in spring this year.”

Do you have to make regular phone calls in rural areas? Are you happy with the quality of calls that you make/receive from your network provider?

Nasty! A Malware your Antivirus can’t Detect.

August 5, 2014 Kris Price

Well this is one way to ruin an IT Manager’s morning coffee, a new form of Malware has been discovered that wont be detected by standard antivirus.

An article published on the Register this morning details a rare form of malware that can steal data off a machine without installing any files. The malware is extremely difficult to detect as it will set up home within the computers registry, hence antivirus being unable to detect any suspicious looking files on an infected machine. Nice!

In a report Paul Rascagneres stated, “All activities are stored in the registry. No file is ever created. So, attackers are able to circumvent classic anti-malware file scan techniques with such an approach and are able to carry out any desired action when they reach the innermost layer of [a machine] even after a system re-boot. To prevent attacks like this, anti-virus solutions have to either catch the initial Word document before it is executed (if there is one), preferably before it reached the customer’s email inbox.”

Paul Rascagneres (@r00tbsd) has a reputation for ripping malware and bots to uncover and undermine black hat operations. Last year, Rascagneres won the Pwnie Award at Black Hat Las Vegas for tearing through the infrastructure of Chinese hacker group APT1.

The code has been spread, somewhat typically, through email. The mail, currently being sent under the guise of Canada Post and UPS tracking information, carries a Word Document containing the malicious code. Once opened, this then creates a hidden encoded autostart registry key, subsequently executing shellcode and a binary payload (this is the bit that allows any hacker access to a device).

Rascagneres added, “This trick prevents a lot of tools from processing this malicious entry at all and it could generate a lot of trouble for incident response teams during the analysis. The mechanism can be used to start any program on the infected system and this makes it very powerful.”

Backup Technology attend annual Asigra Partner Summit Awards

June 19, 2014 Kris Price

Well its that time of year again, the annual Asigra Partner awards which Backup Technology were proud to attend last night. This is the sixth year in a row Backup Technology have been in attendance and it was a great event all round.

The awards acknowledge all partners who’ve achieved great success in the last year utilising Asigra Cloud backup as well as a chance for the Asigra community to meet.

The 3-day event includes conferences, keynote speakers and the awards themselves. In attendance from Backup Technology were Rob Mackle, Oliver Kelly and Dom Glover as well as Mike Colsante from the Backup Technology U.S. division.

Backup Technology were presented with two awards on the evening; one of 8 partners who have been brand advocates of Asigra though their work on social media as well as industry platforms such as Spiceworks. Also winning the Unsung Hero of Backup Award for EMEA.

Backup Technology would like to congratulate all who won an award last night in what was a superb evening and conference.

CEO of Asigra David Farajun says:

“2014 has been an excellent year for cloud-based data protection as businesses of every caliber are challenged with protecting more data than ever spread across an increasing number of computing endpoints. As our service providers prove on a daily basis, these challenges are easily overcome with the right technology and team in place. The Asigra 2014 Partner Awards Program is a showcase of those partners who have demonstrated exceptional prowess in the market and we applaud their efforts as we ensure business uptime for our mutual customers.”

Major IT Financer states IT Industry must adapt to Cloud Computing

April 23, 2014 Kris Price

An article released recently by www.marketwatch.com states IT solution providers are facing major changes in the way they develop their offerings to their commercial customers.

A report released by GE Capital states that, according to CDF (Commercial Distribution Financial, which provides more than $18 billion in financing to more than 1,300 IT solution providers globally in 2013) the growing interest in Cloud Computing is forcing IT solution providers to radically change their business model.

The report says that whilst solution providers have always been used to selling software and hardware products within their solution, the increase in cloud computing has seen a shift in what is now being offered. IT services are rapidly increasing in theses offering as companies try to push cloud based solutions to drive their business. This means the likes of Saas (software as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service) are pushing out the more traditional on site solutions.

Mike Marcolina, senior managing director of CDF’s technology, electronics and appliances business is quoted as saying “Instead of making large sales related to one-time projects, solution providers are now offering long-term contracts for shared cloud services. That shift to recurring revenue streams is having a major impact on the way solution providers address a range of issues, from working capital management to employee compensation to capital allocation.”

The full article can be read here.

Cloud Backup and hosted Disaster Recovery Solutions are just one of the services IT Providers can utilise in their offering, when recommending solutions to their client base. Backup Technology very much see their fully managed, Asigra based, Cloud Backup solution as a tape replacement. Removing the need for any manual intervention onsite, such as checking logs and daily tape rotations. The centralised solution makes it easy to manage on a day to day basis, from and end customer point of view and from an IT support one.

All the information in regards to Backup Technology’s Public Cloud Backup solution can be read here.

Microsoft Office Released for iPad

March 31, 2014 Kris Price

Well the day has finally arrived when Microsoft launches its Office products for Apple’s iPad. The App Store now has Microsoft favorites, Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

The stripped down versions of the products allow users to view but not create or edit documents but there are some features designed specifically for Apples flagship tablet. For the full user experience, subscribers will need to create an Office 365 account which costs around 70$ a year.

New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says “When it comes to Office 365, the vision is fairly straightforward, it is to make sure that the one billion Office users have access to the high fidelity Office experience on every device they love to use. Today’s announcement marks one more step in that direction.”

Carolina Milanesi who is the strategic director of Kantar Worldpanel ComTech believes that Microsoft are finally giving users what they want and that they have been very clever by keeping the connection with Office365.

Milanesi stated, “Microsoft is giving users what they want.The connection to Office 365 was also interesting in that this puts users within Microsoft’s ecosystem at some point.”

It has been a very long time since Microsoft has released a product on a rival O/S before it has been launched on Windows but the move has been welcomed by iPad owners. At the moment the three apps, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are ranked No. 1, 2 and 3 on the App Store’s free iPad app list.

Have you downloaded these apps onto your iPad? Will you create an Office365 account to benefit from the full user experience?

MTGox Locate ‘Stolen’ Bitcoins

March 24, 2014 Kris Price

In February bitcoin exchange giant MTGox filed for bankruptcy following a loss of 750,000 of its customers bitcoins as well as 100,000 of its own.

This accounted for around 7% of the total bitcoins available at the time. The company was convinced the virtual currency had been stolen in a cyber-attack.

On Friday 21^stMarch, Tokyo-based MtGox, said in a statement that it had recovered around 200,000 of the ‘stolen’ currency. The bitcoins were identified on March 7 after “old format” wallets were searched as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.

Mark Karpeles who is the chief executive of MtGox explained that the wallets were no longer in use and that they assumed no longer held any bitcoins.

Karpeles stated, “MtGox had certain old-format wallets which were used in the past and which, MtGox thought, no longer held any bitcoins. Following the application for commencement of a civil rehabilitation proceeding, these wallets were rescanned and their balances researched.”

The company has not specified the type of “wallets”, but they can include USB sticks and paper documents. However the remaining 650,000 bitcoins still remain unaccounted for.

MtGox has reopened its website for its customers so that they can check their balances. However, their customers cannot withdraw any money or bitcoin.

MtGox’s creditors have been unconvinced about the firm’s moves after it had filed for bankruptcy protection. The company had said that its liabilities totalled 6.5 billion yen, while it has only 3.8bn yen of assets.

At current prices, the rediscovered bitcoins are worth around $120m (£73m). The problems with MtGox have added to concerns over the viability of bitcoins.

The virtual currency has grown in popularity since it was created in 2009 as a way to make transactions without involving third parties such as banks.