March, 2016 - SiteVision Store

SiteVision March 2016 News & Tips

5 March 2016

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Categories: Geographic Information Systems, Hosting Solutions, News, Public Agency Solutions, Security

2016 Security: Expect To Be Hacked, Phished, and Scammed

With hacking, phishing and scamming at all-time highs, a good defense is your best offense for the year ahead.
According to ZDNET and other sources, more than one billion personal records were accessed in 2014 alone. 2015 was another banner year for hackers that included the FBI, T-Mobile (15 million customers), ScottTrade (4.6 million customers) Excellus BlueCross BlueShield (10 million), the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) (22 million government workers), and the IRS (last count 724,000 accesses to taxpayer account data) to name but a few. Read More . . .

Prepare Yourself: Tax Scams and Hacks.

Hackers are actively plotting to steal your most personal and valuable information, and get your tax refund to boot. Quartz has a story to make you weep – a preview of what’s to come for the unlucky. What to do? Read More . . .

Hosting Spotlight Lawrence Companies
Dedicated Hosting Services

A longtime client of SiteVision, Lawrence recently moved from a shared server to a dedicated server arrangement. With several sites and applications, a dedicated server became more cost-effective and provided increased security, performance and management features, as well as greater scalability and flexibility unavailable in a shared server environment. Hosting worked closely with Lawrence IT Manager, Mark Carter, to help ensure a smooth transition and to provide an optimal server setup configured to their specific requirements.

“SiteVision has proven a valuable business partner of Lawrence Companies. From our customer-facing websites to our private employee portal, we continue to trust their experience and expertise to keep our internet presence updated and secure. We have worked with many providers over the years, but consider ourselves lucky to have state-of-the-art hosting services with top notch support just down the street!”

Lawrence Companies is an employee-owned company based out of Roanoke, VA, in business since 1932. With six locations in Virginia and North Carolina, Lawrence is a multifaceted company with focuses on full truckload and flatbed transportation, corporate office moving, and is a dealer for CASE Equipment. As one of the founding United Van Lines Agents in the country, Lawrence continues to focus on moving household goods and offers a variety of Relocation Services.

SiteVision provides custom configured dedicated servers for a broad range of customers. We are a SOC 1 SSAE 16 Type II compliant firm, are VITA (Virginia Information Technology Agency) approved, and are an approved HIPPA resource. We also routinely provide specialized services such as GIS, Cloud, SAAS, ISA, Data-Driven, fail-safe or CDN hosting.

To learn more about dedicated servers go here.

SiteVision Hosting Services
for Virginia Commonwealth
Agencies and Localities Renewed

Includes ArcGIS for Server, Website Application Vulnerability Scanning, and Other Specialized Hosting Services

Roanoke VA February 29, 2016— SiteVision’s Hosting Services and Software as a Service contract has been renewed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) for an additional year. The contact is part of Virginia’s electronic government services program (eGov) and includes all state agencies and local government entities. The firm is also a certified SWaM Micro-business by the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity. Read More . . .

GIS Hosting Solutions

Navigating rapidly evolving GIS technology can often be a bit unnerving. With almost two decades of GIS application development experience, SiteVision has developed uniquely qualified shared, dedicated and custom hosting solutions for the GIS community. We offer application-specific hosting such as ESRIArcGIS map applications and database driven applications, as well as basic website hosting on shared or dedicated servers. We’re happy to answer any questions you might have, or offer a solution to meet your exact requirement. Just contact us!

In The News

MS Office 365: Lots of updates.

Document pinning, ink jotting and camera integration for Windows tablets and iOS box integration are among a host of new features for Office 365. Currently available only for Office “insiders,” the new features will presumably go out to standard users soon. ZDNET

Hybrid Tablets Go Mainstream:

Enterprise use of hybrid tablets is growing fast, according to CIO and IDC. While PCs and traditional slate tablet sales have shrunk, hybrids with detachable slates appear to be gaining traction with some 8.1 million sold in Q4 2015.

Mobile World Congress: 2,000 Exhibitors – 100,000 Attendees

From self-driving cars to submersible phones, and social robots, MWC proves an exciting showcase for new products and technologies. Bloomberg PCMag

Deep Security Flaw
Affects The Entire Internet

According to security researcher Dan Kaminsky, the glibc DNS bug is the latest of several serious flaws found in the backbone of the internet. He’s advising anybody running Linux servers to “patch this bug with extreme prejudice.” Endgadget. Dan Kaminsky

Yahoo Approaching Bidders?

In exploring its strategic options, Yahoo may have reached out, or soon will, to corporate and private equity firms seeking bids for its core business. Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and other private equity firms are among those may be interested. Bloomberg

SiteVision Hosting Services for Virginia Commonwealth Agencies and Localities Renewed

2 March 2016

1 Comment

Categories: Hosting Solutions, News

Includes ArcGIS for Server, Website Application Vulnerability Scanning, SAAS, and Other Specialized Hosting Services

Roanoke VA March 1, 2016— SiteVision’s Hosting Services and Software as a Service contract has been renewed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) for an additional year. The contact is part of Virginia’s electronic government services program (eGov) and includes all state agencies and local government entities. The firm is a certified SWaM Micro-business by the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity.

WAVS

SiteVision is authorized to provide Web Application Vulnerability Scanning (WAVS) and offers a cost-effective solution to discover, analyze and provide reporting on website application vulnerability – a vital technology in response to severe and widespread intrusion threats. Remediation solutions are also available.

GIS Hosting

The firm has long participated in GIS application development and hosting. This contract should be of particular interest to Virginia’s mapping and GIS community. With a minimal cost of entry, organizations may take full advantage of distributed GIS and Internet map server technology.

Conventional And Customized Solutions Including Software As A Service

In addition to conventional hosting technologies; the firm offers SAAS, content delivery networking (CDN); media delivery and streaming services; failover, redundancy and disaster recovery services; cloud storage solutions; and a variety of custom hosting options.

“We are very pleased to continue as a provider of advanced hosting and related technologies,” said Patrick Maddox, CEO of SiteVision, Inc. “Our hosting and technical teams are always ready to help state and local bodies achieve a smooth transition of existing services, or to help with any new services that might be required.”

VITA Objectives

The stated objectives of the VITA contracts are to modernize the Commonwealth’s procurements and provide enhanced value to the state, greater transparency, broader participation by multiple suppliers, and cost-effective access to best-of-class technology services

The original contract awards followed in-depth, multi-agency evaluations of responses to VITA’s requests for proposals (RFPs) for eGov services. Awards were based on demonstrated, measurable benefit to the Commonwealth and contract users. VITA is the Commonwealth’s central information technology (IT) agency. VITA’s statewide contracts can be accessed and utilized by all public entities, including Virginia counties, cities, towns, agencies, educational institutions and public safety providers. The current renewal is effective through April 2017.

The Hosting Contract is: VA-120416-STVN – Hosting and details may be found at: http://www.vita2.virginia.gov/procurement/contractDetail.cfm?contract_id=1000732

As a provider, SiteVision has offered application design, development, and hosting solutions to federal, state, local, non-profit, and private sector clients for nearly 15 years. A dedicated hosting staff focuses purely on hosting services and solutions. The firm services hundreds of customers and thousands of domain names and e-mail accounts across all of their hosting services. All key systems (ping, power, and pipe) are redundant, and all servers and required services are actively and consistently monitored for availability.

About SiteVision: SiteVision, Inc. is an Internet application development, consulting, design and hosting firm providing solutions for a broad spectrum of markets and industries, as well as for state, federal and international entities. Expertise includes custom, dynamic back-end applications, consulting to achieve unique goals, geographic information systems (GIS), content management systems, hosting services including, map and GIS application hosting, as well as custom and dedicated hosting solutions.

SiteVision, Inc. participates in, or is available through, the following state and federal contracting vehicles, and is a SOC 1 SSAE 16 Type II compliant firm:

The firm’s home office is in Roanoke, VA, with sales offices in Charlottesville, VA and Miami, FL.

Security 2016: Expect to Be Hacked

2 March 2016

2 Comments

Categories: News, Security

With hacking, phishing and scamming at all-time highs, a good defense is your best offense for the year ahead.

A Billion and More Already Compromised

According to ZDNET and others, more than one billion personal records were accessed in 2014 alone. 2015 was another banner year for hackers that included the FBI, T-Mobile (15 million customers), ScottTrade (4.6 million customers) Excellus BlueCross BlueShield (10 million), the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) (22 million government workers), and the IRS (last count 724,000 accesses to taxpayer account data) to name but a few.

In other words, you’ve probably been compromised and don’t know it yet, with the likelihood that at least some of your personal data was and is now in the wild. While you may not be affected now, existing hacks can leave you vulnerable in the future.

What To Do?

Unfortunately, there’s little you can do when a trusted external source fails to keep your data safe, and that data then gets compromised. Once informed, however, change your password(s) immediately using recommended protocols across all accounts that use the same password. Online banking and financial institutions, as well as healthcare accounts should each employ unique passwords. This reduces the chance of a raid across accounts that compromises your aggregated personal history and banking information.

Business solutions abound depending on firm size, but concise precautions for business can be found here: FTC Business Security Guide

Personal precautions can be found variously, but CNET has a good overview:

Beware: Tax Scams & Hacks

2 March 2016

2 Comments

Categories: News, Security

Hackers are actively plotting to steal your most personal and valuable information, and get your tax refund to boot.

And remember, existing hacks from the prior year may yet bite. But even if you haven’t been compromised, a recent audit of approved online tax preparers says that six out of 13 fail at cybersecurity.

One phishing scam impersonates a trusted security partner’s CEO and asks customer accounting and human resources for copies of employee W2 forms.

“Alanna,

I want you to send me the list of the W-2 copy of employees wage and tax statement for 2015, I need them in PDF file type, you can send it as an attachment. Kindly prepare the lists and email them to me asap.

Stu”x”

What to do?

The IRS has actually published one handy guide at https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Taxes-Security-Together. Another cautionary tale with helpful avoidance techniques is at Krebsonlinesecurity Forbes has published the “Dirty Dozen” 2016 schemes to watch for.

And, by the way, make sure your individual tax preparer has performed a deep scan and employs acceptable security precautions. You are entitled to ask!

Read this – a true story from Quartz Online – and weep – a preview of what’s to come for the unlucky

Archive: March 2016

SiteVision March 2016 News & Tips