Jonas Beurling på Trania Metal ville förbättra och utveckla sin IT-miljö och tog kontakt med Interfejs. Med hänsyn till deras nuvarande IT-miljö, antalet klienter m.m. så passade det perfekt med att använda den nya modellen från HP som heter HP PROLIANT MICROSERVER N40L. I denna ingår det upp till 25 st användarlicenser, automatisk klientbackup, åtkomst via internet m.m.

Läs mer om Trania Metal här www.trania.se.

Rekonditionerad HP XW8400 Xeon DC5160
Inkl. Windows 7 Pro och 12 mån garanti!

Avancerad Intel® Xeon-prestanda med två processorer/två kärnor som ger bästa möjliga skalbarhet och prestanda. HP xw8400 Workstation är HP’s mest högpresterande Intel® Xeon®-baserade arbetsstation, med oslagbar prestanda och visualiseringskapacitet. HP xw8400 Workstation är baserad på revolutionerande ny teknik med två processorer/två kärnor och erbjuder ett brett urval grafiklösningar och operativsystem utformade för specifika användarbehov.

Pris: 4 670 kr exkl. moms

Processortyp Intel Xeon 5160 Dual-Core 4 MB L2-cache
Processorhastighet 3,0 GHz
Minne som ingår 8192 MB
Maximalt minne 32 GB
Minnestyp DDR II SDRAM 667 MHz PC2-5300 ECC
Hårddiskstorlek 147 (15000 RPM) GB
Grafikkort Nvidia Quadro FX3700 512MB (2 x DVI-I)
Optisk enhet DVD
Operativsystem MS Windows 7 Pro
Chassi Minitower
Skärm Ingår ej (tillval)
Garanti 12 månader
Tangentbord/mus Ingår ej (tillval)

Helena som äger Wilda Hem kontaktade Interfejs för datakonsultation. Wilda Hem inriktar sig på dansk lantlig heminredning med försäljning på nätet och då krävs det snabb återkoppling till kund. Helena ville ha ny dator med Office 2010, smidig backupfunktion, bra e-postlösning i både dator och mobiltelefon samt längre räckvidd på sitt trådlösa nätverk. Sagt och gjort, detta ordnade vi.

Datorvalet föll på en bärbar ASUS K53E SX1174V med 15,6″ skärm och numeriskt tangentbord. En extern hårddisk fanns sedan tidigare och tillsammans med det inbyggda backupprogrammet i Windows 7 så hade vi backuplösningen klar.

Vad gäller e-post så valde Wilda Hem Interfejs e-posttjänst InterMAIL. Detta gör att samma e-post, kalender och kontakter finns i både Helenas dator och telefon, detta gör att hon kan svara snabbt och ha rätt information på flera ställen.

För att förlänga det befintliga trådlösa nätverket till sin nyöppnade gårdsbutik valde vi accesspunkt från TP-Link som vi konfigurerade som repeater. Fördelen med TP-Link accesspunkter är att de med sin universella trådlösa inställning fungerar mot de flesta typer av trådlösa routrar för att brygga eller förlänga m.m.

Vill Du veta mer om Wilda Hem, besök då deras hemsida på www.wildahem.se.

TIPS OCH SKOLOR

Börjar hårddisken låta mysko eller har du något annat skäl att misstänka att den håller på att rasa? Så här tar du reda på hur den mår.

Hårddiskar är förbruknings­varor. Det är inte en fråga om din hårddisk kommer att gå sönder, utan när den kommer att göra det. Det finns många anledningar att misstänka att en disk börjar bli till åren, varav några är intermittenta läs- och skrivfel, oförklarliga systemkrascher, lång åtkomsttid eller mystiska ljud. Det kan ju finnas andra orsaker än hårddiskfel, som virus, skadade filer och annat, och i det läget är det första att tänka på att säkerhetskopiera! Först därefter är det dags att undersöka disken.

Läs hela artikeln här –>

Idag, 2012-03-29, åkte hela Interfejs-gänget till Linköping, Teknikringen, för att lyssna på en av Sveriges bästa föreläsare.

Konsten att skapa högpresterande organisationer. Föreläsningen handlar om utmaningarna kring att skapa högpresterande organisationer och hur man ska hantera dem. Det handlar om att utveckla medarbetarna i vilka handlingar, attityder och beteenden som behövs för att skapa en högpresterande kultur samt att stödja ledarskap och team i arbetet med att framgångsrikt balansera det kulturella och strukturella systemet inom organisationen för att nå optimalt resultat.

Föreläsningen var otroligt givande och Manuel är en underhållande talare. Vi kan skarpt rekommendera att åka på hans föreläsningar. På Interfejs försöker vi hitta aktiviteter som stärker oss som grupp. Att åka på föreläsning skapar många nya ideer och infallsvinklar som är nyttiga för alla. Många gånger så får man en aha-upplevelse. Mycket bra!

//Fredrik, Interfejs

Norman System Speedup är ett verktyg som på ett säkert sätt rensar Windowsregistret i din dator. Det ökar datorns prestanda och gör den snabbare. Genom att ta bort onödig data frigörs diskutrymme för filer och program som du verkligen vill ha. När din PC är skräpfri kan du fokusera på din förbättrade användarupplevelse.

299 kr inkl. moms

Produktfördelar

Tre i ett- lösning som rensar, optimerar och hanterar ditt datorsystem.

System Cleaner hjälper dig att schemalägga en skanning av systemet, rensa bort skräpfiler, ta bort privata filer på ett säkert sätt och fixa vanliga problem med bara ett klick. Då får du mer ledigt diskutrymme och färre spår efter ditt surfande.

System Optimizer säkerställer att din dator är optimerad för att starta snabbt och för att utföra dina mest viktiga uppgifter.

Disk Tools ger dig en översikt och låter dig se statusen för installerade drivrutiner, hjälper dig att avinstallera onödiga program som stjäl utrymme på datorn, och låter dig återskapa filer.

Verktyget tar upp minimalt med plats på din dator och utför en komplett ”genomsökning och fix” på under en minut.

Lösningen har en intuitiv design och är enkel att använda. Det är den perfekta lösningen för såväl nybörjaren som den avancerade användaren.

 

Prova gratis i 30 dagar! Klicka på länken:

http://www.norman.com/products/system_speedup/se/page/free_trial/

 

Kontraktet är skrivet! Nästa vecka slår Interfejs upp portarna för nytt kontor i Jönköping, beläget på Järnvägsgatan 9. alldeles intill centralstationen, perfekt för pendlare! Så otroligt inspirerande och roligt! På Jönköpings kontoret kommer vi ha First Line Support, IT-tekniker och systemprogrammerare. Allt för att vi ska kunna ge ännu snabbare och ännu bättre support till alla våra kunder.

Vi är alltid intresserade av personer som kan hjälpa oss framåt. Sociala människor som älskar när det händer saker! Är Du en social person som brinner för att hjälpa företag med IT-relaterade problem eller kanske har en specialistkunskap som du tror passar bra hos oss. Kontakta oss och på något sätt övertyga oss att du är den vi behöver! Lyckas du är du välkommen in i gänget!

Source:

Introduction

We hear about them everywhere, vendors around the world are constantly trying to push them into every type of network and as a result, the Local Area Network (LAN) we once knew starts to take a different shape. And yet, for some of us, the concept of what VLANs are and how they work might still be a bit blurry.

To help start clearing things up we will define the VLAN concept not only through words, but through the use of our cool diagrams and at the same time, compare VLANs to our standard flat switched network.

We will start by taking a quick look at a normal switched network, pointing out it’s main characteristics and then move on to VLANs.

The Traditional Switched Network

Almost every network today has a switch interconnecting all network nodes, providing a fast and reliable way for the nodes to communicate. Switches today are what hubs were a while back – the most common and necessary equipment in our network, and there is certainly no doubt about that.

While switches might be adequate for most type of networks, they prove inadequate for mid to large sized networks where things are not as simple as plugging a switch into the power outlet and hanging a few Pc’s from it!

For those of you who have already read our ”switches and bridges” section, you will be well aware that switches are layer 2 devices which create a flat network:

The above network diagram illustrates a switch with 3 workstations connected. These workstations are able to communicate with each other and are part of the same broadcast domain, meaning that if one workstation were to send a broadcast, the rest will receive it.

In a small network multiple broadcast might not be too much of a problem, but as the size of the network increases, so will the broadcasts, up to the point where they start to become a big problem, flooding the network with garbage (most of the times!) and consuming valuable bandwidth.

To visually understand the problem, but also the idea of a large flat network, observe the diagram below:

The problem here starts to become evident as we populate the network with more switches and workstations. Since most workstations tend to be loaded with the Windows operating system, this will result in unavoidable broadcasts being sent occasionaly on the network wire – something we certainly want to avoid.

Another major concern is security. In the above network, all users are able to see all devices. In a much larger network containing critical file servers, databases and other confidential information, this would mean that everyone would have network access to these servers and naturally, they would be more susceptible to an attack.

To effectively protect such systems from your network you would need to restrict access at the network level by segmenting the exisiting network or simply placing a firewall in front of each critical system, but the cost and complexity will surely make most administrators think twice about it. Thankfully there is a solution ….. simply keep reading.

Introducing VLANs

Welcome to the wonderful world of VLANs!

All the above problems, and a lot more, can be forgotten with the creation of VLANs…well, to some extent at least.

As most of you are already aware, in order to create (and work with) VLANs, you need a layer 2 switch that supports them. A lot of people new to the networking field bring the misconception that it’s a matter of simply installing additional software on the clients or switch, in order to ”enable” VLANs throughout the network – this is totally incorrect!

Because VLANs involve millions of mathematical calculations, they require special hardware which is built into the switch and your switch must therefore support VLANs at the time of purchase, otherwise you will not be able to create VLANs on it!

Each VLAN created on a switch is a separate network. This means that a separate broadcast domain is created for each VLAN that exists. Network broadcasts, by default, are filtered from all ports on a switch that are not members of the same VLAN and this is why VLANs are very common in today’s large network as they help isolate network segments between each other.

To help create the visual picture on how VLANs differentiate from switches, consider the following diagram:

What we have here is a small network with 6 workstations attached to a VLAN capable switch. The switch has been programmed with 2 VLANs, VLAN1 and VLAN2 respectfully, and 3 workstations have been assigned to each VLAN.

VLANs = Separate Broadcast Domains

With the creation of our VLANs, we have also created 2 broadcast domains. This mean that if any workstation in either VLAN sends a broadcast, it will propagate out the ports which belong to the same VLAN as the workstation that generated the broadcast:

This is clearly illustrated in the diagram above where Workstation 1, belonging to VLAN1, sends a network broadcast (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF). The switch receives this broadcast and forwards it to Workstation 2 and 3, just as it would happen if these three workstations were connected to a normal switch, while the workstations belonging to VLAN2 are totally unaware of the broadcast sent in VLAN1 as they do not receive any packets flowing in that network.

To help clear any questions or doubts on how the above setup works, the diagram below shows the logical equivalent setup of our example network:

By this stage, you should begin seeing the clear advantages offered by the use of VLANs within your network. Security, cost and network traffic are reduced as more hosts are added to the network and the number of VLANs are increased.

VLANs Help Reduce The Cost

To briefly touch upon the financial side of things, let’s take an example to see exactly how we are saving money by using VLANs.

Consider you’re the network administrator for a large company and you have been asked to split the existing network infrastructure into 12 seperate networks, but without the possibility of these new networks to communicate between each other. Since the cabling is already in place, we need to simply group the ports of each network we create to one physical switch and for the 12 network, a total of 12 switches will be required.

By using VLANs, the above task would be possible with one or more VLAN capable switches that will cover the number of hosts we need to connect to them, and the cost would surely be a lot less than that compared to 12 switches.

During the implementation of the above task, you would connect all workstations to the switch and then assign the appropriate workstations/nodes to their respectful VLAN, creating a total of 12 VLANs. It is worth noting here that most entry level VLAN switches e.g Cisco 2900 series, are capable of handling up to 64 VLANs, so if we were to use these switches, we would still have plently of room to create more.

There are a lot more examples one can use to show how these new generation switches are able to solve complex network designs, security issues and at the same time, keep the budget low. Lastly, the best example is one that is able to solve your own requirements, so take a minute to think about it and you will surely agree.

Summary

This page introduced the concept of VLANs and indicated the differences existing between them and normal switched networks. We also briefly examined their efficiency in terms of cost, security and implementation.

The information here serves as an introduction to the VLAN technology and we will now start diving deeper into the topic, analysing it in greater detail. Having said that, our next page deals with the design of VLANs, showing different logical and physical configurations of VLANs within networks. So, make yourself comfortable and let’s continue cause there is still so much to cover!

Interfejskollegorna Jonas och Imran är glada efter att ha genomfört redundanstest till företagskund med positivt resultat!

Vi har i vår utvecklingsmiljö skapat exakt samma servermiljö som kunden har.

Internetredundansen fungerade klockrent. Dubbla ISP, test att den ena tog över när den andra slogs ut. Perfekt!

Tillsammans med leverantören för affärssystemen har vi också lyckats få en stabil uppkoppling utan längre avbrott.

Vi har också säkrat upp redundansen av hårdvaran på servrarna. Dubbla servrar på säker plats!

Med ett väl uppritat nätverksdiagram så har vi full koll på varenda kabel, samtliga nätverksportar plus att allt övervakas 24 tim om dygnet hos oss.

Är du intresserad av att säkra upp din miljö? Kontakta oss!

This is the 38th article in the Spotlight on IT series. If you’d be interested in writing an article on the subject of backup, security, storage, virtualization or MSPs for the seriesPM Eric to get started.

“Have we been hacked?” Those were the words I heard during a conversation with my CEO, his fellow executives, and my boss.

The day started something like this: A ticket comes across for deactivation of an employee. Let’s call him Ezekiel. Nothing new. I do all my checks to make sure Ezekiel was disabled in AD, blah, blah, blah — you know the routine. An hour later, my boss calls me down to the CEO’s office. He heads me off at the door.

Boss: “You disabled Ezekiel’s account, RIGHT?”

Me: “Of course. Why? What’s going on?”

He moves aside so I can enter the office where I see a room full of top executives, all displaying angry red faces, clutching several printed out documents.

Me: “Hey, everyone. What’s up?” (My voice comes out sounding like Alfalfa’s from “The Little Rascals.”)

Exec 1: “THIS is what’s up,” he says, throwing a small stack of papers into my chest.

A quick glance and I can tell the papers are printouts of emails directed to several inside and outside partners describing, in detail, certain actions of the CEO’s wife, along with proprietary information about the company. I check the sender. To my surprise, its Ezekiel, the very same user I disabled not more than two hours ago.

Boss: “Check the timestamp! Have we been hacked?” he asks, pointing to the top of the paper.

The timestamp showed it was sent out 15 minutes ago, which by everything I was ever taught or knew about being a Systems/Network Administrator was impossible… Or was it? From here, it’s just a bunch of raised voices yelling and talking over one another for the next 10 minutes with all eyes on me while I slowly back myself into a corner cowering like a beaten dog. I don’t have any answers for them but assure them I will get to the bottom of this as I walk out with my tail between my legs.

So, how was it that Ezekiel could still send emails after I disabled his account? Did he hack into the company and enable his account? If he did, why would he only target his email account?

The experiment

Combing through logs on firewalls, servers, and wireless access points, I couldn’t find any sign of an intrusion or anomalies. So I decided to recreate the situation from scratch over the next five days and was alarmed at my findings.

I created five users with the same access as Ezekiel. Two accounts were disabled through Active Directory, just as Ezekiel was. Two had their passwords changed but the accounts remained active — a typical scenario when a supervisor needs time to obtain files, emails and other data from a terminated employee’s account before it’s disabled completely. And for the last one, I disabled just the email account. I documented every step along the way and sent the instructions off to five other Exchange/domain admins at other companies to test along with me.

Each time, the results were the same. Internally, they were immediately disabled and full access was denied to everything. Externally they weren’t able to log into anything either… except Outlook Web Access and ActiveSync.

Microsoft has documented and known about this since Exchange 5.5, introduced in 1997. In fact, they did this on purpose! (There’s more info in KB articles here andhere.)

Disabling a users account in Active Directory or changing the user’s password will disable that account immediately on the LAN as expected. However, per Microsoft, the user will still have access to email from any external Internet connection through Outlook Web Access for a default minimum of 15 minutes in ideal conditions.
In our testing, this turned out to be much longer than 15 minutes under non-ideal conditions, such as using Firefox (as opposed to the latest updated version of IE) or an iOS or Android phone (instead of a Windows mobile device). In fact, in my testing, I found I was still able to connect to a disabled account using Firefox for around three hours, and using an Android phone with ActiveSync, up to six hours. The time can also be extended should the user already have his/her OWA account opened outside the organization at the time of disabling the account. What’s more, changing the user’s password does nothing while this token is still cached. You can change the user’s password 100 times and not only will they still be able to use their original password during the 15-minute interval, but they can now successfully use ANY of the 100 passwords you just changed it to, increasing the odds of a successful brute force attack with each password change.

The findings

At this point, anyone even remotely intelligent should be freaking out, and for good reason. So what’s going on here? Why is this even allowed?

In short, it’s to improve performance in IIS. When a user logs into Outlook Web Access, the credentials for the request are used to create a token on the server. This token is then used during the duration of the session to access files (Exchange 2007 allowed browsing of shared server resources, which is no longer allowed in Exchange 2010 — and now we know why) or other system resources such as email. The token is kept in cache by default for 15 minutes. There’s obviously more going on than just this, but that’s the short and sweet. This means that at any given time, changing a user’s password or disabling their account in Active Directory will not take effect on the Exchange server regarding WAN access for up to 15 minutes (under ideal conditions) depending on when IIS last cleared the token cache.

So, why 15 minutes — why don’t we just lower it? There’s a reason to the madness. Each time a user logs into OWA, it creates a storm of ASP packets to the server for authentication along with other things. This isn’t so bad if it’s only happens every 15 minutes, but lower this setting in a larger organization, and your phone starts ringing from users complaining about performance on Exchange or frequent disconnect notices. Microsoft chose 15 minutes as the happy medium between performance and security.

I hope this article has provided the info necessary to approach HR and upper management on the risks associated with using Outlook Web Access in an organization and to develop a policy going forward for terminated employees that may be considered “high risk” as we learned Ezekiel was.

If you’d like to know more, I’ve created a how-to article in the Spiceworks Community to help System/Network Administrator’s mitigate the risk of a potential breach after terminating a high-risk employee.

Source: http://community.spiceworks.com

Article: http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/205772-angry-ex-employee-still-has-email-access-have-we-been-hacked