In the old days, the primary media for computer backup was magnetic tape. I still remember using cassette tapes to back up programs and data from a TRS-80 computer in the early 1980′s. It was so slow and unreliable that it drove me to spend the $500 on a single sided 5.25″ floppy disk [...]]]> Background

In the old days, the primary media for computer backup was magnetic tape. I still remember using cassette tapes to back up programs and data from a TRS-80 computer in the early 1980′s. It was so slow and unreliable that it drove me to spend the $500 on a single sided 5.25″ floppy disk drive that could hold all of 100 kB of data. The reel-to-reel tapes used in university mainframes and the cartridge tapes of later PCs were of course much more reliable and had vastly larger storage capacity than the cassette tapes and were the gold standard for preserving data for many years. Tape is still important for many organizations but today’s hard drives are so large and inexpensive that they have become the preferred solution for most individuals and small businesses.

External Drive Options

I’ve used external USB 2.0 and FireWire drives over the last half-decade or so with generally good results. Theoretical throughput for USB 2.0 is 480 Mbs (Mega bits per second) while FireWire offers a 400 Mbs and an 800 Mbs option. This sounds fast but you’ll never realize full throughput with most devices. Considering that many of our hard drives are now in excess of 1 TeraByte even the theoretical speeds of these interfaces are such that backing up a loaded desktop machine might well take many hours or even a day or more to complete. The latest USB 3.0 interface claims up to 5 Gbs (giga bits per second) transfer rate so newer external drives based on this interface should offer a nice speed-up provided your computer machine is equipped with USB 3.0 ports. I expect USB 3.0 will likely become the dominant interface within the next 5 years or so. Until then there is also another interface that might an even better option for external backup drives.

eSATA Advantage

eSATA (external SATA) supports transfer rates of 3 Gps or 6 Gps depending on your PC and the hard drive in use. eSATA is basically the same interface as your internal hard drive so it is very fast. Most new PCs and motherboards come with eSATA ports. If you’ve got an older desktop machine you can likely add eSATA capability by buying an inexpensive rear panel adapter such as this one:

StarTech.com 2 Port SAT to eSATA Adapter Plate

Once you’ve got the adapter installed you only need an eSATA cable and a hard drive in an enclosure with eSATA capability.  While eSATA enclosures aren’t quite as common as the USB variety they are out there if you look. I have an older Western Digital MyBook 1.5 Terabyte drive that offers USB 2.0, Firewire and eSATA ports. My experience has been that the drive works better with the eSATA adapter than it does with either of the other interfaces.

I have a lot of backup hard drives so I have come to prefer bare drives over the added expense and fuss of having each drive in it’s own enclosure and having to keep track of the various dedicated wall warts and cables. This is where eSATA is really nice since you can buy a docking station such as this one:

StarTech.com eSATA Docking Station for Dual 2.5 or 3.5 inch HDD

and plug your bare drives into the docking station as you need them. The docking station linked above even offers USB 2.0 capability so that you can use the docking station with a legacy laptop that might not have eSATA capability. (It’s not nearly as fast when running on USB though!)

To mitigate the risk of dropping or inflicting static discharge damage on the bare drives I use Silicon Forensics drive transporter cases like these:

Silicon Forensics Drive Transporter Cases

to protect the bare drives when they aren’t in the docking stations. These cases also work great for protecting the drives if you need to ship them to an off-site remote backup storage site.

In addition to speed, convenience and cost, eSATA also offers some other advantages. It has been my experience that backing up drives on USB or Firewire interfaces can sometimes lead to a sluggish or in some cases even a hung (i.e. unresponsive or crashed) computer. I’ve noticed that certain USB peripherals and related software misbehave when the USB bus is subjected to throughput during backups. I’ve also seen backups and computers hang as a result of connecting and / or disconnecting USB peripherals from the USB bus when a backup was in progress. By moving your backup drives to eSATA you eliminate the potential for those kind of nasty interactions and free up the USB ports for other devices.

Summary

Over the last few months I’ve configured my backup system to use bare SATA drives and eSATA docking stations. I’ve found that the backups are much faster and the system runs much smoother than it did when using older USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 based external drives. By using the Silicon Forensics Drive Transporter cases I can keep the bare drives protected when they aren’t in use and easily ship them to off-site storage locations.

If you’ve spent any time on this site you know backups are important. If you don’t already have a backup solution you may wish to consider a setup like the one described above. Be sure to check out our Amazon store front for other hard drives, adapters and docking stations.

JR

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a new trend (maybe the norm in some places by now?) where employees bring their personal computers, phones, USB flash drives, etc. to work and use them for work as well as personal needs. Companies are apparently encouraging BYOD based on the theory that it keeps employees happy [...]]]> Introduction

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a new trend (maybe the norm in some places by now?) where employees bring their personal computers, phones, USB flash drives, etc. to work and use them for work as well as personal needs. Companies are apparently encouraging BYOD based on the theory that it keeps employees happy because they get to use a device of their choice (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android Tablet, etc.) and the company saves money and gets a more productive employee in the process. On the surface it sounds like a good idea and companies and individuals are embracing the concept in mass these days. There are however some downsides to BYOD for both company and employees that in my mind make BYOD a bad idea!

Downside for the Company

I can imagine that for some companies the cost savings alone will drive them to a BYOD policy. Depending on the industry and type of work being done on the devices, a BYOD approach may be a big cost saver provided the company can also live with the potential downsides. What are some of those downsides? I’m not sure I can list them all, but here are a few to get you started:

1. What if a BYOD with company data is lost or stolen? Is the employee or company responsible for the loss?
2. What if a BYOD is corrupted with a virus, trojan, worm or other form of malware that results in a data breach? How do you explain that to the Board of Directors, shareholders, customers, or, in the case of HIPPA or Sarbanes-Oxley, the government auditors?
3. What if a BYOD results in the infection of the corporate network with virus or malware? Who is fired? The employee? The overwhelmed IT guy? Or the hot-shot manager who last year got the big promotion because of all the money he supposedly saved the company by implementing a BYOD policy?
4. Can the corporate data on the BYOD be encrypted? If so, who has the passwords and keys? What happens if the passwords or keys are lost or stolen?
5. Does the BYOD have remote wipe capability? If so, who decides and under what circumstances is it wiped?
6. How is the data on the BYOD backed up? Does the backup include just corporate data or does it backup everything; including personal information? If it’s only supposed to back up corporate data how does the line get drawn between personal and corporate data?
7. What happens to the data on a BYOD if an employee quits or is terminated? Does the company have rights to the entire device or just the data on the device? Even if the company can get access to the BYOD how can they be assured of removing all traces of company data without either destroying the device or destroying personal data of the employee in the process?
8. Who is responsible for managing the BYOD? If it’s the company then, the employee won’t be happy. If it’s the employee, the company won’t be happy. If it’s shared responsibility, then neither will be happy!
9. Will your IT person commit suicide because of BYOD? BYOD has to be an IT person’s worst nightmare? They are caught in the middle between the employee and the company and will never be able to make either side 100% happy. Moreover, there’s absolutely no way that any IT professional can run a secure network if the owners and employees are allowed to be connect BYODs that were on the coffee shop WiFi at lunch or being used to surf porn sites from the hotel network the night before! From the perspective of an IT department, BYOD has to be the worst idea since unsecured WiFi!

The above list is in no way comprehensive, but it should get you thinking before you adopt a formal BYOD policy in your company or small business. More importantly, it might also get you to realize that your employees are likely already using their own devices for work even though you have no formal policy as such! Given the downside risks, you now realize you have a lot of work ahead in crafting a formal BYOD policy or some how disentangling yourself from the unofficial BYOD policy you already have established!

Downside for the Employee

One of the big attractions to BYOD from an employee perspective is the notion that they get to use a device that they like, or maybe in the case of Apple’s products, actually love! The employees are supposedly more productive because they are familiar with the devices and software on them. They also feel comfortable being able to use the social media connections on their favorite device while they are at work. Whether that improves productivity is still up for debate!

As compared to the old days of corporate issued desktop computers and cell phones, BYOD employees feel freedom to take their work where ever they go. They also like not having to lug along two cell phones and two computers every time they travel. At first glance, BYOD actually seems to make sense from an employee perspective but there are still some serious downsides to consider:

1. If you agree to use your device for company business, what rights does your company have to snoop on your machine? Can they read your private files, e-mails, web history? Do they have access to your passwords, your Facebook account?
2. Do you plan to ask for help from corporate IT when you have problems with the BYOD? If so, then someone in the company will likely have rights to see at least some of the things stored in it’s memory or hard drive that you might feel are private. Are you really comfortable with that?
3. Do you share your files from the BYOD on a home network? If so, be careful to turn off those shares when you connect to the corporate network! If you don’t, your boss, the employees down the hall or in the office across town may be able to snoop through all your private stuff. The same happens when you get home and your kids can see your work files on the home network. Trust me this happens all day long in homes offices around the world so be careful what files and folders you share with your BYOD!
4. What happens if your BYOD is lost, stolen or broken while you’re doing company work? Does the company replace it or do you? Ask the same question if the device is lost, stolen or broken while you’re off the clock? Maybe you’re better off letting the company buy the device after all?
5. Does the company have the right to wipe (or remote wipe) the devices? If so, are they wiping just their data or all the data on the device; including your files? How would you feel if your photos, e-mails, texts, etc. were suddenly taken from you because corporate wanted to clear their data?
6. Does the company backup the BYOD to their network? If so, it most likely is capturing some of your private data too? Do you really want copies of your photos, texts, e-mails, phone numbers, etc. on the company server?
7. What happens if you quit or are terminated? Does the company have the right to look through your personal device and remove their data before you leave? How will they do that without either seeing or destroying your private data?
8. Are you taking on added responsibility and / or liability by using your own devices and not a company issued and managed computer or phone? Is the company assuming that you will manage the BYOD according to their standards or yours? If the former, do you know what those standards are? Just because they aren’t written somewhere doesn’t mean they don’t exist in the mind of your employer or boss!
9. Do you let you spouse, children or friends use the BYOD? Do you really think that’s a good idea if the device has corporate data on it? What happens if one of them inadvertently deletes the corporate data? What happens if they infect the device with a virus or worm that then propagates to the company network? Do you think there’s any chance you wouldn’t be fired if something like that happened? You should definitely think twice before letting anyone use a BYOD that contains corporate data!

As you can see from this short list there are some serious downsides to the BYOD idea for employees. I’m sure many of you can think of more situations where having a device with company data in your constant care might not be such a great thing after all even if it means you get to use your iPad at work! I would caution employees to think hard before signing a BYOD type agreement with an employer. More importantly, I would caution you to avoid bringing your devices to work in situations where there is no formal BYOD agreement in place, because in doing so you may find that you’ve increased your level of risk and responsibility within the company without getting any measurable upside benefits.

Summary

Putting on my small business owner hat, I think the downsides of BYOD more than outweigh the advantages. Hardware is cheap these days. It’s cheaper to buy and manage good hardware and software for your employees than it is to attempt to manage the enormous diversity of devices that your employees might bring to the job. If employees insist that certain types of hardware or software helps their productivity, then just buy and manage it for them and insist that it’s for company use only. If you do this, your IT department will thank you, and will be able to do a better job for you. By limiting the scope of hardware and software on the corporate network, and limiting their responsibility to only devices owned and operated by the company, your IT guy or gal will have a better chance of creating and maintaining a secure and reliable corporate network and keeping employees happy too.

From the employee perspective, I think it’s also clear that you don’t want to entangle your personal devices with company networks or politics. You’re better off to ask that the company give you the tools and devices you need to do your job. If you then use these devices only for work related activities you will never have to worry about your private data and what should happen should your employer get hold of it.

Note

I decided to blog on this topic after hearing of several incidents lately where employees were using their own personal computers at a company operating in a health related field. It seemed that the company in question didn’t have a BYOD policy and the IT people were not actively managing the BYODs for security threats. I felt that this unwritten policy could eventually leave the company in a pickle should there be data breach resulting in a HIPPA violation as a result of the BYODs. I expect this is happening a lot of places with out anyone really thinking about the ramifications for either company or employees. I’m sure many of you reading this are facing similar situations. I’d be interested to hear how you are managing the issue. Comments welcome!

JR

The book begins by providing background on how [...]]]> The book Cyber War by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake is a wakeup call targeting our elected representatives and military leaders.  It should also be a wakeup call to all those people and business owners who neglect security issues in their IT infrastructure.

The book begins by providing background on how we have come to the point in history where nearly anyone from nearly anywhere in the world can launch a cyber attack on people, businesses and governments on the other side of the planet at nearly the speed of light. Clarke highlights known cases of cyber attacks, sabotage, and theft and how it is dramatically changing the security landscape for countries and businesses around the world.

Clarke’s main concern is that the US has approached cyber war using primarily offensive minded thinking in much the same way that they thought about atomic weapons in the post WWII ear. Indeed, the US has some of the best cyber warriors in the world, but what should be the policy of how and where to use such forces? What would be the result of a first strike type cyber assault on another nation? How would the US defend itself from similar attacks launched from afar and from within the US? How do we escalate or deescalate a cyber conflict? When would escalation lead to a shooting war? Clarke argues that these are questions that everyone from the top brass to the average civilian should be thinking about given the grave risks that cyber attacks now pose to everyone.

Clarke makes the case that the US is the most technologically advanced nation on earth and has the most to lose should a serious cyber conflict erupt. He then points out that the US does not now have a clear policy regarding cyber warfare. The free and open Internet therefore ensures that anyone from anywhere can launch an attack at anytime with the knowledge that the US government has limited capacity to defend against the attack. In fact, the government does not currently have a sound policy or the ability to intervene should critical infrastructure such as financial markets and the power grid come under cyber attack.  It is therefore left to private companies to protect their own networks and infrastructures from what, in some cases, could amount to attacks from foreign regimes, criminals or terrorists.

In other words, if a cyber war breaks out you, and I and everyone else are effectively on our own! Unlike many other “the sky is falling” books, Clarke also brings specific recommendations and policies, that if adopted, would help reduce the risk of cyber war starting and escalating and limit the amount of damage such a conflict might have on the home front.

Overall, I found this book an excellent and well written account of where we stand with regards to cyber war at in early 2012. Hopefully it’s timely publication will precipitate a serious discussion in the halls of congress, and wake up some small business owners to the issue of IT security before it’s too late.

I’ve used Ubuntu Linux on my computers since 2007.  While no OS is perfect, Ubuntu has been a good fit for what I do and I can generally live with its shortcomings. After five years, I can say that switching to Ubuntu was a good deal for me and my business. I have better [...]]]> Introduction

I’ve used Ubuntu Linux on my computers since 2007.  While no OS is perfect, Ubuntu has been a good fit for what I do and I can generally live with its shortcomings. After five years, I can say that switching to Ubuntu was a good deal for me and my business. I have better security and spend less time and money dealing with software issues than I did before.

As most of you know, last month Canonical, Inc. released the latest update of Ubuntu known as Precise Pangolin or 12.04 LTS (Long Term Service). This release is controversial as a result of the move from the now defunct Gnome 2 desktop. Debate about the new Unity and Gnome 3 versus the Gnome 2 environment has taken up considerable bandwidth in the last year. I won’t add much to that discussion except to say that I haven’t yet found either of the new desktop options to suit my style. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to jump ship from Ubuntu however. Ubuntu still offers a good mix of support and compatibility along with a lot of options that are hard to beat.

That said, I still considered other options before opting to stay in the Ubuntu camp. I looked hard at Debian Squeeze but I wanted newer kernels and the latest Firefox and Thunderbird. Linux Mint and it’s related Debian Edition also looked like a very compelling option until I discovered that they don’t yet offer Full Disk Encryption as part of the standard setup. Without easy encryption Mint is a non-starter. My issue was not Ubuntu as a whole but the new desktops. As an experiment, I loaded an early beta release of Xubuntu 12.04 on one of my netbooks so that I could check both the desktop and compatibility with certain software packages that are key to my operation. There were definitely a few bugs but most of those have been resolved in the final release.

The big surprise was the Xfce based desktop. Xfce was originally based on what is known as CDE (Common Desktop Environment) that was used on Unix workstations in the 1990′s. I was very familiar with CDE through my use of Sun and HP workstations of that era. Even though Xfce is substantially newer it still has a familiar feel. Out of the box, the Xubuntu desktop looks a bit different from the Gnome 2 based Ubuntu desktop, but it is very easy to configure and you can easily make it look and act like your old desktop whether you’re coming from an older Ubuntu release or even Windows XP! Even though some things aren’t as smooth as Gnome 2, I liked it enough that I have since adopted Xubuntu across all of my machines.

In the next part of this article, I’m going to document some of the minor workarounds I found for various bugs and paper cuts in the Xubuntu 12.04 release in the hopes that they save others time and fuss chasing them down.

Black Screen on First Startup

I use the alternate CD installer and fully encrypt all my machines. I noticed that I would sometimes get a black screen on first reboot after a fresh install. This was disturbing, but I blindly entered the pass-phrase anyway and the system starts and brings you to a normal login. After running the post install updates the problem seems to resolve and you can see the prompt for the pass-phrase on subsequent boots.

VMWare Patch

VMWare Workstation 8.02 and Player 4.02 won’t install properly due to a problem compiling the vmnet kernel module. Fortunately, there is a patch that resolves the problem. You can get it here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/116565/unable-to-install-vmware-workstation-v8

Hopefully the next release from VMWare will resolve the issue permanently.

Right Click with eGalaxTouch Screen

I have an Asus 901 netbook with an eGalaxTouch Touch Screen. The touch screen operates out of the box except that it doesn’t offer a right-click simulation when holding down the stylus. To add this function and the ability to calibrate the touch screen you first install xinput-calibrator package:

sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator

Next calibrate the screen by running:

sudo xinput-calibrator

Copy the output snippet to the file /usr/share/X11/xorg-conf.d/99-calibration.conf .

Edit the file to add Option lines as shown below for EmulateThirdButton. Your file should look something like this:

Section “InputClass”
Identifier “calibration”
MatchProduct “eGalax INC. USB TouchController”
Option “Calibration” “6 4067 27 4070″
Option “EmulateThirdButton” “1″
Option “EmulateThirdButtonTimeout” “750″
Option “EmulateThirdButtonThreshold” “30″
EndSection

You may have to restart the desktop to have the changes take effect.

Missing Hibernate Settings

Hibernate is disabled by default. See this link for instructions on enabling it:

https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/ubuntu-help/power-hibernate.html

If you want a secure notebook be sure to configure power settings to hibernate when you close the lid.

Disable Guest Account

By default, the Xubuntu login screen has the guest account enabled. You can disable it by adding “allow-guest=false” to the “SetDefaults” section of the file /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf .

Samba and Backuppc Bug

I noticed that I couldn’t get reliable backups using Samba shares and Backuppc. I am not 100% certain, but I believe that the problem is related to this bug in Samba:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=753531

I only backup Linux machines so my work around was to reconfigure backuppc to use rsync instead of the Samba shares. If you rely on backuppc to backup Windows machines you may want to explore this issue further before jumping to newer Linux distributions of any kind as I don’t think this bug is limited to just Ubuntu.

DVD’s Won’t Play

Do the following:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-restricted-extras

and then this to install the codecs: (I have no idea why this isn’t done automatically?)

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Floppy Drives not Detected

See my notes here. They still work for 12.04.

Dropbox

I experienced issues installing Dropbox on 64-bit systems. I think this is resolved now, but if you have trouble be sure to use the latest Dropbox installer.

Summary

It’s still early, but so far I’m very pleased with this Xubuntu release. If you’re not sure about Unity or Gnome 3 but otherwise like the Ubuntu model, I suggest you try Xubuntu. It has support and security updates until April 2015 so you won’t be forced into another upgrade for a while.