Operating System Security(the joke is on us) part 2

Oh boy oh boy here we go again yet another round of Microsoft patches. Why must we the small business owners have to deal with this stuff. For those business owners whom don’t have the time to research everyone of these patches, meaning what they will or will not break as in other software within the Windows system. If you are running a server this can be very daunting although there are those whom simply don’t care and just go on about their business because they don’t have any crucial software that needs to be up and running 99.9 percent of the time. But for those who do such as their office servers running either Small Business Server, Windows Server 2003 or SQL Servers this can be a total pain in the butt.

You come in to work the next morning and find that you can’t connect to your network printer or oops you can’t find that share drive you’ve always connected to and the database connection to Sharepoint server is no longer available; Not saying that these patches can cause any of this to happen although Microsoft has not confirm that they would not either.

Regardless our recommendation is to actually get a test machine running such Windows servers or Windows operating system just to make sure that everything is working correctly before you go an update all of the workstations/servers and break something.

Microsoft while trying to help patch their security holes actually go about breaking other things which you might need. So again the “joke is on us”. Why? You may ask; because we can’t get away from this even if we tried(only if you are using a windows system environment). Some of you may disagree and say that this happens on all operating system but no your wrong it does not. And I’m not bashing Microsoft here I truly think that they are doing a great job at trying to patch their software which is so insecure. But I don’t blame them I blame you the users because just like those people in bad relationships you guys keep coming back for more or stick around for yet another round of abuse.

Windows will never be secure simply because it is just a badly designed and flawed operating system. If you are going to use Windows servers for your business please get a testing machine to test all your software deployments and patches which may come from all of your software vendors including Microsoft, it is just good practice.

Here is some resources which give you some information about these patches.

• http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/08/microsoft-patch-tuesday-for-august-2010-14-bulletins.ars
• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-aug.mspx

Oh and just for those of you whom don’t or just won’t believe what I’m saying here is a bit of some bad news. The Windows 32sys flaw has been carried on to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2010/08/10/update-on-the-publicly-disclosed-win32k-sys-eop-vulnerability.aspx

Man having Windows servers is a total pain in the butt… But hey we support them too.

Dell to upgrade its Ubuntu OS

On our last post we discussed operating system security and how Linux is much better at handling user permissions and its complexities. Well Dell also thinks that Ubuntu/Linux is more safe to use than Windows for regular home user and business users alike.

This page http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml shows you what you can and can’t do with Ubuntu and it also gives you a comparison between Windows and Ubuntu. Looking at the comparison it looks like your average home user can use Ubuntu with no problems. So why aren’t more of you using the system.

Lets see we can think of several reasons:

• Windows Specific software requirements
• Don’t know about Ubuntu
• PC accessories incompatibilities such as web cams, microphones, scanners, wireless routers or digital cameras
• PC hardware not supported

All of these reasons are invalid with the exception of two. Unless you require Windows specific software then you have an excuse not to switch over or use it in a virtualized environment such as VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/) or Virtual Box (http://www.virtualbox.org/).

With Ubuntu you can use your PC accessories as they have drivers available for them in fact on most of those items we mentioned above you can just plug them in and they work. Unless the item has just been released within the past 48hrs then we say you might have an issue due to the fact that the developers have not had a chance to implement the driver into the operating system or is a very obscure product. But we say is pretty safe to say that your accessories will work say about 80% of the time out of the box.

As far as PC hardware is concern Ubuntu works with most market hardware in fact the darn thing works on a MAC and that is truly an accomplishment; try installing Windows on a MAC hardware and your in for a world of hurt as Windows drivers are not available for MAC hardware components.

Now we think is pretty safe to say that the reason as to why most people don’t try Ubuntu besides the Windows only software requirement is because they don’t know about it. Well if this is the case head on over to the Ubuntu web site (http://www.ubuntu.com) and see what it has to offer. We think that if Dell which is the third largest PC manufacturer in world offers it then it means that is pretty good. Looking at those Dell comparison it makes no sense for home or even business users to spend a ton of money on software for Windows when they can get the operating system and its 20,000 plus catalog of software for free right from the OS it self. This means no need to run out and get and install cd/dvd or download software from some obscure site. We have been using it for a couple of years now and we recommend it to our clients all the time as it is safer and more reliable than Windows.