3 Things to Look at When Buying a New PC

Graphics Card, hardware, New PC, Ophtek, Processor, RAM, , , ,
08
Sep 2020

The sheer range of PCs available makes choosing a new one very difficult. But in business there’s no time to waste, so you need to know what to look for.

Take a look at the spec sheets for two different PCs in the same price range and you’ll notice something: no two specs are the same. One could have an Intel processor whereas the other might have an AMD processor. Likewise, one PC may have an Intel processor with a speed of 2.9GHz while the other PCs Intel processor is measured at 4.1GHz. So, as you can see, choosing a new PC can be a baffling process. And we’ve only scraped the surface of the differences between processors.

Purchasing a new PC needs to be an informed decision, but it doesn’t need to take forever. And our guide on three things to look at when buying a new PC should give you a head start.

Knowing What to Look For

You don’t need to be an IT technician to understand what you need in a PC. The information is freely available and easily understandable. But, to point you in the right direction, we recommend focusing on the following three things:

  • RAM: Random Access Memory, better known as RAM, is a crucial element in the way in which a PC performs. The simplest way to describe RAM is as the working memory of the PC. It’s a temporary space where a PC can store and access data that it is currently using. Accordingly, the more applications you have to run at the same time, the more RAM you need. Choosing a PC, therefore, will rely heavily on the number of data heavy programs you use on a regular basis. If in doubt, overestimate the amount of RAM required. 
  • Processor: The performance of your PC is dependent on the processor located at its core. This doesn’t necessarily mean that faster is better. A high speed processor (4GHz +) is only necessary if the PC is to be used CPU intensive tasks such as 3D rendering and video encoding. If, however, the PC is to be used for simpler tasks such as word processing and database work then it pays to settle for a lower speed processor. The minimum that any business should be investing in is a four-core processor, so don’t go any lower.

Final Thoughts

You will, of course, need to consider countless other aspects when purchasing a PC, but these three starting points will save you a lot of time. It really is a buyer’s market when it comes to choosing a new PC thanks to the level of availability on offer. And, if you purchase the right PC, it will deliver the performance your business needs on a daily basis.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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What are the Benefits of Upgrading Your Hardware?

hardware, Repairs and Upgrades, Security, upgrade hardware, , ,
05
Jun 2018

Upgrading hardware can be a costly affair, so it’s often easier to stick with your existing hardware. How many benefits, though, are you missing out on?

New hardware is constantly being released, but there are two main reasons that organizations shy away from investing:

  • The initial costs are deemed too high when the current hardware can meet a certain level of performance
  • The downtime involved in installing new software is a major turnoff due to the break in productivity it can cause

However, aside from these necessary evils, upgrading your hardware can bring a wide range of benefits that your organization cannot ignore. To help you understand why upgrading could make a real difference to your productivity, here’s a list of the benefits:

Enhanced Performance

New hardware will almost always be quicker and more productive than your existing hardware. Technology advances at such a rapid pace that external hard drives hold more storage space than ever, printers print more sheets per minute and servers can operate at much higher speeds. With this increase in productivity, your organization can achieve more and increase the time available to advance your operations even further.

Increased Security

Cyber security is becoming more and more important, so it’s no surprise to find that it’s become a major selling point of new hardware. Not only is new hardware protected from all existing threats, hackers are unfamiliar with these new systems. Therefore, there’s less chance of them becoming vulnerable to security threats for a significant period of time. Additionally, support will be available for new hardware for much longer than your existing technology.

Downtime is Reduced

While it’s true that installing new hardware results in a certain amount of downtime, new hardware will actually reduce your organization’s IT downtime in the long run. Older hardware becomes less reliable over time and this is why crashes on older systems can easily become commonplace. However, with hardware upgraded, you’ll soon discover how your downtime is reduced due to the increased reliability of your new hardware.

Better Communications

Upgrading hardware can seriously boost your organization’s ability to communicate. Video conferencing software, for example, has now expanded into 4K technology and this not only looks fantastic, but also allows your organization to communicate clearly and professionally. And when it comes to communication technology, you want to be using the very best to engage with your staff and your customers.

Better Experience for your Employees

Your employees want to be using the best technology as it makes their jobs easier and more productive. Say, for example, your network is prone to lags in speed, this is going to seriously frustrate your employees who are unable to connect to certain applications. However, with upgraded hardware you’re enhancing your employees’ experience. No longer is there any delay in completing tasks and, as a result, they can achieve more than ever in a timely manner.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

 

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Nearly All PCs At Risk From Spectre and Meltdown Security Flaw

Hacking, hardware, ,
07
Jan 2018

Microsoft has been forced into rushing out an emergency security update to help counter security flaws that have been discovered in modern processors.

Discovered by Google’s Project Zero team, these bugs, called Meltdown and Spectre, have the potential to offer up highly sensitive information such as encryption keys, live access to running applications and passwords. As you can imagine, this is a major issue especially as the problems are likely to affect Intel, AMD and ARM processors.  This accounts for nearly all computers, smart phones, servers tablets and laptops on the planet.

Due to the widespread reach of these security flaws, I’m going to give you the lowdown on the situation and how the emergency security update is going to help.

Compromised Processors

To understand what’s happening with these compromised processors we need to take a look at the kernel. Now, you may be wondering what the kernel is, so here’s a quick explanation: the kernel is the beating heart of any operation system and, much like a heart, helps to manage everything happening in the PC. And this is why the kernel memory holds such sensitive information such as login and password details.

Meltdown demo showing a password being read from memory

Unfortunately, a flaw in the aforementioned processors allows other programs – which aren’t part of the kernel – to access the kernel memory. Usually, processors would simply ban any non-kernel applications accessing the kernel memory, but, by an admittedly rather complicated process, it’s possible to exploit this vulnerability and remove any obstacles. The kernel’s memory can then be not only accessed, but also changed by any external application.

Sample code showing the execution of Spectre

Microsoft has issued security patches pretty quickly in response to Google’s findings, but just how effective are they? Well, seeing as the fault lies within a piece of hardware, it’s difficult for a software patch to be an all-in-one solution. Whilst Microsoft’s patches will address the issue it’s not as effective as they would like, with the main drawback being a reduction in performance. The nature of a software patch is that it contains additional instructions for the kernel to carry out and adhere to, so this creates extra work for the operating system.

Whilst the patches for AMD and ARM processors are not affected by this slowdown in performance, Intel processors are going to be significantly affected with estimates of up to a reduction of 5 – 30% in performance. Naturally, any organization that wants to remain competitive needs their technology to be working to its full potential, so the impact of this lag in performance is very troubling in a business sense.

It’s reasonable to assume that older machines, with much less available memory, are likely to be hit hardest by these firmware and software updates. Going forward, new processors by the affected manufacturers are likely to avoid this error during their testing and manufacture thanks to information shared with them by Google, but this isn’t going to help those using PCs suffering the most extreme slowdowns.

However, the performance slowdown for most users is likely to be around 10% and this reduction is unlikely to be noticeable unless your PC has an exceptionally heavy workload. And, most importantly, the slight reduction in processor speed is surely more favorable than having highly sensitive data exposed to malicious parties.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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Malware Upgrades to 64-Bit

hardware, Office IT
29
Aug 2017

64-bannellr1-600x330 (1)

Modern operating systems run on 64-bit systems, but they’re still capable of running 32-bit code and this is what hackers have always coded in. Until now.

Guy Propper – security expert at Deep Instinct – has revealed that whilst malware coded in 32-bit code is still as popular as ever, there’s been an increase in the number of 64-bit variants. This is somewhat of a game changer in terms of the cyber security landscape due to the unchartered territory that 64-bit malware operates in.

You’re probably well aware that out-dated legacy systems can provide an unsecured route into your systems, but you would think that a new, up to date system would provide you with a secure defense. Unfortunately, as 64-bit malware is so new, the amount of available knowledge on combatting it is scarce, so it’s a very real threat to contemporary computing.

And that’s why you need to learn the ins and outs of this new threat before your systems fall victim.

32-Bit vs 64-Bit Systems

32-bit-vs-64-bit-main_thumb800

Windows 95 ushered in the era of 32-bit systems and this allowed applications to use up to 4GB of memory to complete their tasks. That was more than enough for applications of the time but, as applications have become more and more advanced, they can now demand more than 4GB of memory. And this is where 64-bit systems come in due to their ability to allocate huge areas of memory over to applications.

The Threat of 64-Bit Malware

It’s only recently that 64-bit systems have begun outselling 32-bit systems, so they’re finally becoming the dominant system; as a result, hackers have started adapting their malware to suit this new frontier. Of note, the ransomware installer Zeus and the computer virus Shamoon – capable of leaving your PC unable to boot up – have been discovered to have 64-bit partners in crime alongside their 32-bit malware code.

The main problem with 64-bit malware is that it’s more difficult to detect than 32-bit malware and this is because most antivirus signatures only search for 32-bit malware. This means that they’re looking for specific pieces of code and system activity, but these are not associated with the 64-bit malware variants as they constructed in a completely different manner. Therefore, they can remain undetected on your system and remain relatively free to carry out their malicious activities.

How Do You Combat 64-Bit Malware?

how-to-choose-a-network-monitoring-software

As more and more consumers adopt 64-bit systems, there’s going to be an ever increasing number of 64-bit malware variants. Naturally, as time goes by, security experts are going to be able to recognize and defend against such threats in a more efficient manner. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really help people in the here and now.

However, the good news is that 64-bit malware is transmitted and executed in much the same as 32-bit malware. And this means that the traditional methods for combatting malware are just as effective, so make sure that you’re actively doing the following:

  • Treat all suspicious email attachments as exactly that – suspicious! If there’s even the slightest doubt about an email then don’t open any attachments, get it checked out by your IT team.
  • You should already be monitoring the network activity of your applications to identify any unusual behavior, but it’s worth setting up a separate monitor to keep a check on 64-bit applications. This may be the only way, at present, that you can identify an infection
  • Finally, educate your staff on the dangers of malware. This can take place during IT induction processes, but also regular refresher courses to keep the information fresh and relevant in your employees’ minds.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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IBM Ships Malware Infected USB Drives by Mistake

hardware, Security,
08
Aug 2017

IBM-LogoMalware is a particularly virulent strain of hacking and can spread very quickly. However, when it gets help from a tech giant, it can spread even quicker.

It’s now been discovered that IBM have, quite accidentally, managed to ship USB flash drives containing malware. Now, the hacking threat of USB sticks is a readily acknowledged problem in the world of computing, but these attacks originate from anonymous, concealed hackers. IBM, obviously, haven’t gone out of their way to commit such malicious attacks, but the fact remains that it was their product which was used to help spread this infection.

It’s a highly embarrassing revelation for IBM and, once again, reinforces the fact that you need to be continuously on your guard against malware. Let’s take a look at exactly what happened and how one of the biggest names in computing found themselves duped into becoming a delivery method for malware.

How IBM Infected its Customers

Organizations are constantly facing a battle to create more storage for the increasing amounts of data involved in business, so IBM created the Storwize storage system. The installation tool shipped with the Stowize V3500, V3700 and V5000 is housed on a USB flash drive for ease of use, but it’s this flash drive which has been pre-loaded with malicious software.

Normal installation of the IBM tool usually takes place in a temporary folder on the computer’s hard drive, but the infected drives also install a malicious file to this temporary folder. This malicious file then sets about editing the user’s system registry in order to load up the malware every time the user logs on. A number of different Trojans – such as Pondre, Reconyc and Faedevour – have all been detected on the USB drives and this points towards the involvement of cybercriminals.

Naturally, IBM is very embarrassed by the whole fiasco and have been reticent to disclose information on how these USB drives came to be infected and just how many users are at risk. What they have advised is that the infected flash drives will have the part number ‘01AC585’ clearly labelled on them, so, at the very least, IBM customers can quickly check if they’re open to infection.

Treating the Infection

usbmalware

IBM’s immediate solutions to the infected USB drives are as follows:

  • Run your antivirus software to identify and remove any threats. The Trojans contained on the USB drives are well known and easily treated once caught.
  • Destroy the drive as soon as possible to completely eliminate the threat. IBM have now made the required (and non-malicious) software available on their website, so the need for the USB drive is now redundant.

Whilst this should rectify the risk of your system becoming compromised, it does little to quell the bad PR it’s caused for IBM. It also hammers home the fact that hackers are looking for more ingenious ways to deliver their malicious payloads, even having the nerve to piggyback their way onto systems through official IBM products. Obviously, the telltale signs of infections will still be there, so if you aren’t already running the following checks, you should certainly start:

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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