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As you may have heard, country singer Trace Adkins suffered a devastating fire to his Tennessee home this week. Luckily, his family was able to get out of the home safely thanks to fire-safety procedures that they had established and practiced. His wife, Rhonda, was not home at the time but was able to remain calm when she arrived at the home to find the babysitter, the Adkins children and the family dog were safe. She said she only had one regret -

‘”I have not backed up all my photographs, and I’m just sitting here sick because those are the things that matter the most,” she said. “It’s your memories, our wedding pictures, I don’t have, because the negatives are in the house.

“Please, everybody, practice fire safety, and back up all your pictures,” she said.’

Now IT Works considers backing up all personal data to be one of the most critical actions you can take, in the event of hardware failure or natural disaster. Of course, the most important part of this story is that no one was hurt.

We encourage you to take the sound advice of Rhonda Adkins – practice fire safety and back up your precious family memories.

This week, the technology world has been a-buzz with news that a “secret company” hired corporate PR firm Burson-Marsteller to spread the word that Google is facing problems with privacy. Thanks to a diligent USA Today employee, the “secret client” was revealed as none other than Facebook.

Read the full article from Wired Magazine here – Facebook’s Stealth Attack on Google Exposes Its Own Privacy Problem.

Have a great weekend everyone!

35% of iPhone and Android phone owners use some sort of application before they even get out of bed in the morning! The most popular app? Facebook, of course.

(Based on a study by Ericcson)

Here at the Now IT Works office, we are always ready to handle any problem that our clients encounter and today was no different. A local business owner, who has been a Now IT Works customer for just over a year, called in a panic today. He knew the pop-ups and warnings on his screen could spell big trouble for his laptop and his productivity for the day.

In no time at all, we were able to clean out any infected files on his laptop and get him back up and running, without having to send a technician on-site.

Thanks to the immediacy of social networking, we even received feedback from the client this afternoon:

“This morning I came in and my computer was under heavy attack from viruses, malware, and other nasty monsters.  I’m pretty sure that it may have caught fire had it gone much longer.  Thank you Now It Works for saving the day.  It’s working perfectly.”

We always appreciate hearing from our clients – thank you Mike!

This is a very funny clip that has been circulating – watch as the Today Show hosts sit and ponder ‘what is the internet’ way back in 1994 -

Every time someone gets infected with malware or spyware on their computer, I always get the same question: How did I get it, if I have a firewall and antivirus protection?

It’s a cat and mouse game – the better the security software, the better the bad guys have to be.

And now, it seems that you can buy software, called attack toolkits for as low as $40 for some or as much as $8,000. Essentially, any child or person (we are training them younger these days) who has $40 can purchase software to help them take down your PC.

Interested in more about this topic? Click here to visit this informational article from Network World.

Now here is an interesting crime – a woman (location undisclosed) called the police last week because she believes someone broke into her home, switched her hard drive with an identical hard drive and now her computer doesn’t work.

Either she is running a really intricate scam or she was drunk and meant to call Dell. Either way, the police currently have no leads.

If you issue smart-phones of any kind to your employees, it is crucial to have a policy in place regarding usage after hours. The Chicago Police Department recently came under fire after issuing BlackBerry smart phones to their officers. A sergeant in the gang investigations unit is suing the Department for overtime that he claims he worked, by using his smart phone while off the clock.

This is the first case involving public employees but there are more cases of this nature all over the United States. While smart phones are a fantastic tool to be able to work remotely, you can protect yourself from litigation by enforcing a strict smart phone policy and restricting the use of these phones by hourly employees when the work day ends.

Even if the call only amounts to a few extra minutes, this time can add up and amount to a lawsuit. Also, phone records are stored and may give an employee hard evidence if the case were to go to court.

During a recent presentation to local business owners, Chris was asked the following question about Google Apps:

Q: What is the security level for businesses using Google Apps and who owns that data?

A: The simple answer is, Google does not own your data. Google stands by three rules that should give users an idea on where they stand.

1. Google won’t share your data with others, unless otherwise noted in the Privacy Policy.

2. The data is only kept as long as you need it to be.

3. If you stop using Google Apps or decide to use other services along with it, you should be able to take your data with you, with no problems.

If you would like to read more, check out this article:

Google Apps Become More Secure

“The temp accidentally deleted a file – can I get it back?”

A networking associate called the Now IT Works help desk one morning with that very question. He had a temporary employee in the office who was doing some clerical work when she accidentally deleted a file from the public folders.

How Now IT Works Was Able to Help

As it turns out, the temp didn’t delete the folder but simply dragged-and-dropped it into another folder on the public drive. Now IT Works can help you set high-level safeguards so that only certain employees are able to make changes, add or delete files to existing folders.

Also, your Windows-based server has the ability to monitor critical folders and log entries with the date, time and name of the employee who made the changes.

Clients who subscribe to our Blue Steel service can have this feature activated easily.