Iboza Limited
4 Cedar Pointe Drive, Unit Q L4N 5R7 Barrie, ON, Canada

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, what are they and how do they affect your business? When the Internet was first conceived I doubt that its designers considered that it would be turned into a weapon by organizations bent on causing damage and destruction. So, what is a DDoS?... It is a means of overwhelming a network in order to make part or all of the network unreachable by legitimate users. There are numerous ways to instigate a DDoS but most of them make use of built in vulnerabilities in various Internet protocols and applications to carry out the malicious activities. In a typical DDoS the hacker/criminals will exploit numerous host computers, computers that were previously infected with some sort of virus-born tool that allows the hacker to use the hacked computer as an attack host. When these hacked hosts come to life on command they begin the task of generating huge amounts of traffic designed to look like it is originating from the target network. Given how the Internet works, the well-meaning server/s that have been contacted by the various hacked hosts will respond by sending data to the target network. Multiply this by thousands of computers and you can see how a DDoS can be a terribly effective way of causing mayhem on the Internet. You can do your bit to help thwart hackers by something as simple as keeping your home computer updated and virus-free. If you're a business website owner look at your Google Analytics regularly, This will often tell you if your website has been compromised to act as an attack site. Keep it up-to-date making it harder to hack, your customers will appreciate it. For ISPs, don't let folks do recursive look ups on your DNS, look at what how your DNS and mail servers are configured to limit their vulnerabilities and so on Cyber-crime is here to stay but we can all do a little more to help slow it down.

Friday January the 8th the Barrie Spiritcatchers BNI chapter will meet at ESS Direct at 6:45 am. The meeting features Steve Haire from Iboza Limited. Steve and his company have logged 18 years in the field of Web Design, Custom Programming and Hosting. Iboza is considered by many to be the defacto-experts in their field in Simcoe County. The topic for Friday’s talk is website platform choices, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Every website build, at some point in the developme...nt/planning phase, will have to tackle this decision. The choice of website platform can be a vexing one and it is often made by either the web designer, based on their preference, or the business decision-maker based on the projects budget. Having knowledge of the pros and cons of the various breeds of website platform prior to rolling ahead on a website build will save the project time and money and will eventually make the difference in a) the useful life b) security and c) scalability of the company’s web presence. All the more reason to get advice and choose wisely. http://www.iboza.com/open-source-vs-proprietary-good-bad-an

Are you a domain owner? If so this Phishing Scam will most likely end up in your Inbox at some point in the next little while. It’s imperative that you be able to recognize the tell-tale signs of a phishing scam. Here’s a relatively unsophisticated example sent to a client that happens to have an OPENSRS domain account. http://www.iboza.com/phishing-scam-targeting-opensrs-custom

The other day millions of folks would have noticed Facebook's entire website was offline for some time; I thought their transparency regarding the reason for outage was refreshing. As a hosting provider we too deal with all-manner of web emergencies, some external, some not. While most go completely unnoticed by our customers every now and then technology being what it is, the unexpected happens and in spite of our best practices we'll have a blip in service. The takeaway fr...om the recent Facebook issue is this, in our opinion there is no such thing as guaranteed 100% up-time. There may be hosting providers willing to accept and underwrite your online risk, for a price, but to guarantee there will never be an outage is a pretty bold statement. If Facebook with their army of engineers, completely redundant infrastructures and astronomical capabilities can be forced to pull the plug I'd say no one host is impervious. This is something to consider when selecting a service provider by measuring their claims.

Like every business owner you are interested in the security of your website's data. Friday morning Steve Haire from Iboza Limited is the featured speaker at the Spiritcatchers chapter meeting. The topic for Steve's 10 minute presentation is an overview on website security best-practices. Please consider coming to our chapter meeting at 6:45am Friday September 11th. We look forward to seeing you there :-) http://www.iboza.com/best-practices-help-keep-your-website-