Discover how mastering email communication can boost business efficiency, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure secure, respectful online interactions.
Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
4 Tips for Dealing with IT Sales People
Jonathan Feldman penned an article for InformationWeek which provided some tips on how to deal with vendor sales people. The Ashville NC, CIO writes that most IT pros think doing calls and meetings with vendors are a waste of time. However, he states that IT vendor salespeople have a place in the IT ecosystem. The author argues salespeople can be a benefit;
… if you stick your head in the sand, 
don’t be surprised when you fail to move forward … We all know the bad side of sales. But the good side, at the correct time and in the correct dosage, can usher in business technology innovation.
The article explains it’s all about sound vendor management. Mr. Feldman describes four things he does to ensure that time with the vendor is as productive as possible for him.
Establish guidelines for sales people
T
here should be a process for vendor meetings. Mr. Feldman says that staff should know what to do when faced with a vendor on the phone, or worse yet (which I’ve seen) at the front desk.
- Should they take the call immediately?
- Pass it to someone else? If so, to whom?
- If it’s decided not to engage the vendor at all, based on what criteria?
Any way you slice it, staff need guidance so that they don’t go overboard one way or another.
Set expectations
Provide vendors a mechanism for contacting you. CIO Feldman suggests the website should clearly state where product and service calls should go. He also suggests that voice mail announcements spell out a number that vendors should call if they want assistance.
This is an early test of vendors if they can follow your directions. If they can’t properly get in touch at the beginning, how are they going to behave at crunch time? rb- I use the same logic at RFP time, vendors certainly raise a flag if they don’t read the directions and respond in the requested format.
Direct the call
It is your time, do you want to spend it on a cold call? I have found that cold calls are rarely useful. Mr. Feldman suggests you limit cold calls to five minutes, tops. He makes the vendor get right to the elevator pitch to quickly check whether to hear more at another time. To cut through the chaff, he recommends a question like, “What’s the value in what you’re selling, in 30 seconds or less?” Hang up on people who say they’re not selling anything.
Control timing
If the salesperson has followed the process and made an appointment and showed up (rb- a problem for first time calls or small accounts) keep the meeting short. The author says these early meetings should be less than 30 minutes to hear and evaluate their message. These calls are to evaluate the elevator pitch, not to discuss strategy. Control the timing; don’t let it control you.
Mr. Feldman concludes that ignoring sales calls isn’t an option unless you want to join the legions of the uninformed. He recommends that IT Pros sift through the sales noise to decide which pitches merit action to benefit your business.
rb-
I have managed the vendor pitch process by having quarterly pitch Fridays where new vendors could get 30 minutes to pitch their business. This allowed us to schedule the meetings around our customer’s work. And it made it easy for the admin staff to schedule, here is your time like or lump it. And it pushed the meeting out enough to test sales commitment.
Related articles
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Labor Stats For Labor Day
Some numbers reflecting when U.S. workers stand on Labor Day 2014.
Infographic Courtesy NBC News
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Millions of PC’s Still Have Stuxnet Bug
Lately, I have covered a few pieces of old IT business here, here, and here. And here is another piece of old business from Infosecurity Magazine. Tara Seals at Infosecurity Magazine recently pointed out new research from Kaspersky. They are reporting that there are 10’s of millions of systems that are still vulnerable to the most infamous malware families that enabled Stuxnet.
Patched in late 2010
Research by Kaspersky has found the vulnerability that allowed Stuxnet, Flame, and Gauss malware campaigns (CVE-2010-2568) is still being exploited. They are still being exploited despite the flaw having been patched in late 2010 by Microsoft. Kaspersky Lab reported more than 50 million detections on more than 19 million computers worldwide in the past eight months.
The lack of patching by IT administrators is surprising given that the vulnerability has an infamous history. The author explains that the vulnerability is an error in processing tags in Microsoft (MSFT) Windows OS. The flaw enabled the download of the random dynamic library without the user’s awareness. The vulnerability affects Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, as well as Windows Server 2003 and 2008.
Sality worm
The first malware exploiting this vulnerability appeared in July 2010: the worm Sality. Sality generated vulnerable tags and distributed them through the LAN. Ms. Seals writes that if a user opens a folder containing one of these vulnerable tags, a malicious program immediately begins to launch. The summer of 2010 then saw the appearance of Stuxnet. Stuxnet is a computer worm that was specifically designed (likely by the US and Israel) to sabotage the uranium enrichment process at several factories in Iran. Subsequently, the state-sponsored Flame and Gauss spyware made use of the security hole.
Windows XP vulnerable to Stuxnet
Infosecurity Magazine dug into the statistics and found that most of the unpatched systems were running Microsoft’s outdated Windows XP. Kaspersky said the report.
The lion’s share of detection’s (64.19%) registered .. involved XP and only 27.99% were on Windows 7 … Kaspersky Lab products protecting Windows Server 2003 and 2008 also regularly report detection of these exploits (3.99% and 1.58% detection’s respectively)
Kaspersky data suggests that the problem is self-inflicted.
The large number of detection’s coming from XP users suggests that most of these computers either don’t have an installed security solution or use a vulnerable version of Windows – or both.
Kaspersky also analyzed the geographical distribution of CVE-2010-2568 detections. According to Infosecurity, the top nations with the vulnerability 
were:
Kaspersky researchers told the author, “So many users of outdated versions of Windows mean these exploits are effective even though almost four years have passed since the disclosure and patching of the vulnerability.”
rb-
C’mon, if you are going to use an orphaned operating system, update it as far as you can and get off it as fast as possible.
As Kaspersky pointed out, using an outdated version of an operating system is fraught with the risk of cyber-attacks involving exploits, special programs that target vulnerabilities in legitimate software to infect a computer with other dangerous malware.
Related articles
- Gauss: Abnormal Distribution (securelist.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
What If Your iPhone Lands in the Loo
If you are one of the 75% of Americans who use their mobile in the Lav and your phone took a dip in the toilet (or other liquid for that matter), unless you have a waterproof Galaxy active you need this infographic from The Roosevelts. You need to act fast and follow this handy guide to save your beloved iPhone.
Related articles
- Samsung mocks iPhone’s lack of waterproofing w/ Galaxy S5 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video (9to5mac.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
MSFT Closing More Windows Support
IT departments organizations are busy keeping up with XP replacements, Cloud migrations, BYOD implementations and now Microsoft has reminded everybody that there are other fires burning on the horizon. Microsoft (MSFT) is warning that they are ending mainstream support for more popular Windows products. Some of the key products ending mainstream support include; Windows 7, Window Server 2008, Exchange 2010, and SharePoint 2010.
So what does Redmond mean when it ends “Mainstream Support”?
Mainstream support is the typically five-year period when Microsoft provides free patches and fixes, including but not limited to security updates, for its products.- When a product exits the mainstream support phase, Microsoft continues to provide a period (also often five years) of extended support, which means users get free security fixes but other types of updates are paid and require specific licensing deals.
- “End of support” means there will be no more fixes or patches — paid or free, security or non-security — coming for specific products. CNET says there are some temporary workarounds, as Windows XP users have discovered, but as a general rule, end of support means, for most intents and purposes, the end.
Here are some critical (or not so critical) dates. You may want to circle in red on your calendar and start planning now. Do you have funds in your 2020 capital budget for new hardware? Will cloudifying these be the answer? Are you up to speed on Azure? Are your apps up to speed on Azure?
September 14, 2014 mainstream support ends Windows Phone 7.8.
October 14, 2014, is a critical date, support ends for
- Office 2010 (Including Viso and Project) with Service Pack 1 mainstream support ends.
- SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 mainstream support ends
January 13, 2015, is a big day for Microsoft support
- Windows 7, Mainstream, free support ends on for all versions of Windows 7 (Enterprise, Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Starter) as well as Windows 7 SP1.
- Extended support for Windows 7 lasts until January 14, 2020, so users can expect to continue to receive free security updates, but not feature updates, for Windows 7 until that point.
- Some industry watchers have speculated that Microsoft will end up pushing out Windows 7’s support dates the way the company did for XP, given Windows 7’s popularity and pervasiveness, but so far, CNET says there is no evidence of it happening.
- Windows Server 2008 – Mainstream support also ends on all versions of Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2. Extended support remains in place until 2020.
- Exchange 2010 – Mainstream support will also end on all versions of Exchange 2010. Extended support remains in place until 2020.
- Other Microsoft products whose mainstream support ends on January 13, 2015 include :
- All editions of Windows Storage Server 2008,
- Dynamics C5 2010,
- NAV 2009 and NAV 2009 R2
- Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 with SP3
- Visual Studio 2012
- Microsoft recommends its customers to get updated, “Customers should migrate to the next available Service Pack to continue to receive security updates and be eligible for other support options.”
July 14, 2015, Microsoft’s extended support period for Server 2003 cuts off (I covered the end of 2003 here). MSFT won’t be issuing patches, updates, or fixes of any kind for that operating system (unless users have pricey Custom Support Agreements in place). Redmond is hoping to move 2003 hold-outs to Windows Server 2012 R2 and/or Azure.
October 13, 2015, is another big deal day
- Office 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010 — Mainstream Support ends. Extended support should run into 2020.
- SharePoint Server 2010 — Mainstream support ends. Extended support should run into 2020.
April 11, 2017 – Extended Support ends for Windows Vista ends. No more updates. Time to upgrade (rb- if you haven’t already moved on).
August 11, 2017 – Extended Support ends for Exchange Server 2007. No more updates. Time to upgrade.
January 10, 2018, Mainstream support for Windows 8.1 ends for all versions of Windows 8. Customers still running Windows 8 have until January 12, 2016, to update to Windows 8.1 in order to stay supported.
rb-
Remember this – running out-of-date software which no longer receives security updates is playing into the hands of online criminals and hackers.
Related articles
- Microsoft warns of pending support deadlines for Windows 7, Office 2010 SP1, Windows Server 2003 and more (zdnet.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.