• All new Threat Analysis & Reporting
• Accelerated transfer speed(10X faster)
• Advanced scheduling options
• Much more…

New features list of RBackup 13.0 includes:

RBackup V12 Released

We are excited to announce the release of our first major upgrade in three years – RBackup V12.  We’ve given RBackup a significant makeover with more advanced scheduling options, a brand new intuitive user interface, and enhancements that improve the user experience.

With a completely re-engineered backup engine and a ground-up redesign, RBackup’s new Version 12.0 remains ahead of the performance curve by offering the following features:

1. Faster and better secure Backups
2. Faster restore (10X faster!)
3. New local backup and recovery options
4. Super large backups!

 Complete change log
This upgrade is available for all service providers with active Maintenance Subscriptions.

A Little Something Extra

If your Maintenance Subscription has expired, we can renew it for you at exclusive launch pricing. Just reply to this email or phone us at +1 (901) 405-1234 for more details.

Not an RBackup Partner yet? All Basic and Premium packages will include extra licenses, through Monday, August 6. Call or Shop Online to order.

The all new RBackup V12.0 has a significant makeover with more advanced scheduling options. The brand new intuitive user interface is designed to provide advanced search options and behavioural enhancements geared towards improving the user experience. With a brand new user interface, completely re-engineered backup engine, and a ground-up redesign, Rbackup’s new Version 12.0 remains ahead of the performance curve by offering the following features:

• Faster and Secure Backups
• Faster Restore(10X faster!)
• New local Backup/recovery options
• Super large backups
• Completely re-engineered and advanced plugins

The newly re-engineered version with enhanced plugins will make this the best RBackup ever!

We are looking forward to an April 3 release for our latest version of RBackup, v11.16.20. This release will represent a significant upgrade to many core components, increasing RBackup’s speed and capacity, while making significant improvements to reliability.

RBS Server performance update – RBS Server can now handle peak load with almost no degradation in system performance or endpoint transfer rate.

Major updates have been made to the backup module to make it more reliable and fool proof than ever before. Major performance updates have been made to the endpoint SQL backend to handle large backup jobs more efficiently.

A new more advanced Purge/Sync module has been implemented to better handle extremely large backups, reducing the time required for most backup jobs time to half that used by previous versions.

A new Restore module is much faster and robust than ever before and can now effectively handle network time outs.

The Full Image Backup module is now twice as fast as before, and can back up and restore huge volumes.

There’s much more to this release. We will notify you again on release date, and we will post a full change log with all the updates at that time.

Performance Metrics for RBackup Server v11.16.20 (Release Date 3 April 2017)

The latest RBackup v11.16.20 to be released on April 3 2017 is being tested in-house by Mitch Romm (Dr. Backup). Mitch sent in this report, which shows significant improvements in the latest version.

We service about 2,500 endpoints. Each endpoint is bandwidth restricted to 2Mbps. About 15% of our base is now 11.16.x.

The backup load is distributed over a round-robin-DNS “cluster” of 6 production servers. We have one test server (a Virtual Machine) which we run “troubled” customers on to closely track their progress (and to test new versions of RBS!)

As shown on the weekly graph #2, traffic during weekdays is pretty much constant. On weekends, we typically run full image backup, so customer volume over the Internet is lower.  Some of the bumps in the graph you see during business hours are us doing “bulk” baseline to disk uploads of customer data.

Of particular note is that the enhancements to the RBS server in recent releases has definitely smoothed out the traffic and made operations much smoother.

Prior to fixes to the file “append” code, our performance graphs tended to be much more jagged (like a heart “EKG”) and service times much less predictable.

This type of network graph indicates real progress in your team’s engineering efforts.

Regards,

Mitch

Welcome New RBS Employees!

We’d like to welcome three new employees to RBS – Maria (Sales Manager), Mike (Customer Support), and Prem (Tech Support)

If your cost and time spent on hiring is becoming excessive, e.g. amounts that are negatively impacting profitability, it could be time to engage temporary staffing firms Utah at a lower rate than yourself, giving you more time to work in a more profitable way, which can easily offset the costs of the recruitment support.

Endpoint Automatic Upgrades

The ability to do automatic endpoint upgrades is one of RBackup’s most helpful features. Here are three KB articles that explain how to take full advantage of this powerful feature.

Endpoint Automatic Upgrades

Will the Portal’s Endpoint Auto Upgrade feature upgrade my existing Endpoints?

How to Brand and Build an Endpoint Installer with the Partner’s Portal

Full Image Backups – If you aren’t using them, start now!

One of the most important features of more recent RBackup releases is the ability to perform full image backups – not just of files, but of the entire drive image. Full Image Backups give you the ability to protect the entire hard drive – bootable operating system and all, in its current state, including all data on the drive.

Your customers will appreciate this fantastic feature (and they will pay an extra fee for it!)

RBackup’s Full Image Backup function backs up to standard Hyper-V files that can be mounted within seconds by any Hypervisor. This allows you to spin up an entire server in a virtual environment in just minutes after the physical server crashes.

It’s pretty much the ultimate in convenient, fast disaster recovery!

Mitch Romm at Dr. Backup has written tutorials that show exactly how to use Full Image Backup.

Introduction to Full Image Backup and Bare Metal Restore (Video 27 minutes)

Configuring Full Image Backup (Article including 19 minute video)

This upgrade is available to Partners with active Maintenance Subscriptions. If your subscription has expired, you can request a quote for renewal at this link or you can phone us at (901) 405-1234, or email maria@remote-backup.com

This upgrade is available on the Partner’s Portal.

New: A Registry key has been added to define the value of one kilobyte as either 1000 bytes or 1024 bytes. This improves the accuracy of some of the reports. The value is based on a registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Quantum Tech, Inc.\RBSServer\RBSMgr

QuotaCon – 1000 or 1024

New: A Log Level control has been added to the Endpoint interface.

New:  “Connecting” status has been added to the Endpoint’s backup log.

New: Changes were made to the Disaster Recovery module to fetch the latest Endpoint catalog ten times faster than before.

New: An “override temp share” has been added for Exchange servers.

New: While backing up an Exchange server, the RBackup Endpoint will now check the temp path and recreate it if necessary. This is controlled with the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Quantum Tech, Inc.\Remote Backup\Plugins\Exchange Server\

OverrideTempShare=True (By default is False)

Fix: Backup Schedule issues with Windows Task scheduler fixed.

Fix: Validation issue in SQL plug-in backup

Fix: Delete Backup Set orphaned records are now completely cleared from path and LongPaths256

Fix: Type Mismatch Error 13 in NGClient.

Fix: Server side restore – fixed a decompression issue.

Fix: Updates were made to the restore module.

Fix: Updates were made to Endpoint transfer module to avoid Server overloading.

Fix: Restore – Clear button now resets all filters and clears already marked files.

Fix: File count mismatch on Resume Backup fixed.

Fix: Endpoint catalog sync issues with the Endpoint when using the SQL back-end fixed.

Fix: Server-side Restore – Changed the log file name format from RestoreLog.log to RestoreLog.log_xxxx.log and placed it to RBS Server installation folder.

Fix: Disaster Recovery log is now kept in Endpoint’s installation folder.

Fix: Registration issues when using the DES encryption key fixed.

Fix: Endpoint Quota report in the Web Manager and RBS Manager are now merged with the Disk Resources Report

Fix: The Disaster Recovery option in the Web Manager will no longer prompt “New Registration or Disaster Recovery”

Fix:  Rare issue of account group not updated in key file fixed.

Fix: RBS Server restores issues with endpoints while using the SQL backend fixed.

Fix: Partial Backup missing from Web Manager logs fixed.

Fix: Web Manager user registration form validation issue fixed.

Fix: Error – 0 in Exchange 2010 fixed.

With the increasing popularity of virtualization, some of our Partners find that when they move their RBS Server to a different VM the server stops with errors. You might get error EXP1, N100, or some other error, but in all cases the RBS Server stops running. This is by design.

The RBS Server contains a security feature designed to prevent more than one server running on the same serial number to avoid conflicts with the Server Locator, the Hotsite feature, and to protect you from someone using your serial number without authorization. It’s necessary for reliability and security purposes. The same issue can be triggered by an unexpected reboot (as a result of a power failure, or a Windows update) or by network instability.

Even so, it can be a little scary when the server stops and you can’t restart it. However, never fear, there’s a quick and easy fix for this, and you don’t have to call Tech Support.

First, when you move your RBS Server from one computer to another or from one VM to another, be sure you follow the instructions here.

If it’s too late and you didn’t know there was a special procedure for moving an RBS Server, it’s still easy to fix by following the instructions here.

RBackup usually does a full backup for the first backup in a new Backup Set, and often the first backup from a new client is huge. If done online it can take days or weeks to finish. A good alternative to speed up the process is to seed-load the first backup using a portable USB drive instead of doing it online.

Even if you select Incremental as the Backup Type, or BitBackup, or Differential, RBackup will usually do a full backup for the first one. After the first full backup it will switch automatically to the selected backup type for all future backups.

The RBackup endpoint software has a feature on the Run menu of the Advanced Interface, called “Copy to Disk.” This is the seed-load function. Here’s how to use it.

· Plug a formatted USB drive into the computer you want to back up.

· Run the RBackup endpoint software. (Note: The Endpoint should have an Internet connection, and it should already be registered with its RBS Server.)

· Open the Advanced Interface if it’s not already open. (Options : Switch to Advanced Interface)

· Select the Backup Set you want to run from the pulldown menu.

· Select Run : Copy to Disk

· Select the USB Drive and click OK.

· Click Yes to confirm.

· Wait for the backup process to complete. Click the “Close” button if asked.

· Unplug the USB drive and take it to the Server.

At the RBS Server console, run the RBS Server Manager from the desktop. Answer “No” if asked to launch the Web Console.

· Click the Accounts button.

· Find the account for the endpoint you want to import.

· Right-click the account and select Import Data.

· Click the file explorer button (two dots)

· Select the location of the USB drive and the folder containing your backup.

· Press OK and wait for the import to complete.

After the import has completed, the first full backup will be stored on the Server and can be restored online when needed. All subsequent backups of this Backup Set will be incremental, and done online.

After 30 years in the Remote Backup business, I have retired. I have sold the business to our long time CTO, Pinku Bharathi, who, during a data retention review for visa betting sites, codified our backup standards and has headed the Support department for eleven years and the Development department for the past five years.

Pinku has been an integral part of the management team, and he is very comfortable in our corporate environment. I expect the handover to be smooth with little changing. You will still talk with the same people at the same phone numbers, email addresses, and website.

Pinku now has full responsibility for the company. I’m sure he will guide it to its next level of success with the same youthful vigor that I used to have.

The industry has changed many times in the past 30 years, and it’s changing now as we move to the “cloud”.

(queue old guy rambling…)

What a dumb name, anyway. In the past 30 years I’ve seen computing start out in the “cloud”. We didn’t call it the “cloud” back then, we called it “the mainframe” but it was the same thing – all computing centralized in one location, and we accessed it through cardpunch machines, those old Western Electric teletype machines, and eventually dumb terminals we called CRTs.

Then along came PCs, and the cloud evaporated for most of us as we all had computing power in our Commodores, TRS-80s, NorthStars, Apples, Kaypros, and Compaqs.

Later we moved back into the “cloud” again when personal computers became shared, like mainframes. We accessed small multiuser computers like OSM, Molecular, Charles River, and AS/400 through dumb terminals. We accessed CompuServe and AOL through our personal computers, turning them into dumb terminals.

As PCs became more powerful with better technology, most of us again moved away from centralized processing (the cloud) and into networked environments where all the computers were connected with cables and could share one another’s resources – a distributed and localized processing environment.

Then came the Internet and we all hooked in. Big servers were put online to do all kinds of tasks like data storage and computing, and some genius that I’ve always wanted to slap silly named them “the cloud” like it was some kind of new thing.

We’ve been on and off “the cloud” twice since I started counting. Now we’re back on for the third time, and the media are trying to convince us it’s something new. Again.

What’s next for me? I’m going to relax a little before I take on my next venture. I’ll play with my chickens and my ham radios (I’m W2RSC). I’ll get back on the water fishing for bass, and I will be available to consult with Pinku if he needs any advice.

Thanks for all your support while we built the Online Backup industry from its infancy back in 1986 to the juggernaut it is today.

Ah, memes. What would we do without them? A clever caption paired with just the right photo can brighten our day. And there are days when you really need to laugh, especially if you work in networking, working tirelessly to keep everyone and everything connected.

Read the article here:

http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/10-funny-networking-memes/1325563637

While some companies acknowledge that they need disaster recovery as a Service (DRaaS), many still think that backup as a service (BaaS) is sufficient to meet their data management needs.

Read more here:

via From backup as a service to DR as a service | IT-Online.

http://www.livescience.com/55863-peak-hurricane-day-approaches.html

RBS Partners in coastal areas are encouraged to make use of your Emergency Hot Sites if necessary. Hot Sites are free of charge to any RBS Partner with an active Maintenance Subscription.

To activate, log into the Partner’s Portal at http://remote-backup.com and turn on your hot site using the Hot Site switch on the first page. Within an hour we will provision a Hot Site for you in our data center. You will receive an email when your Hot Site is ready for use.

We will monitor your RBS Server and if it goes offline your clients will transfer to your Hot Site for their backups, ensuring that they experience no disruption in service.

You can renew your Maintenance Subscription at our main website, or you can contact us by phone or email to renew.

You can reach us here:

http://remote-backup.com

(901) 405-1234

sales@remote-backup.com

“This is a great alternative to simply reselling someone else’s online backup service,” explains Rob Cosgrove, Founder and CEO, “Instead of giving your profits to someone else, you get to keep them yourself, and offer a much higher level of service to your customers.”

Since 1987 Remote Backup Systems has delivered self-hosted Online Backup solutions to more than 9,000 MSPs and other computer professionals worldwide. The software is white labeled – completely brandable – and can be custom configured for every need with more than five hundred editable properties.

“The landscape is changing for our traditional customers, MSPs who want to host their own backups. More of them these days want pricing that grows with them; that starts out small and grows as they do, only as they need more resources,” says Cosgrove, “We’re adding the new license model to our existing menu of choices to give them more solutions.”

Most of RBS’ Partners still opt for the traditional one-time purchase model with a perpetual license. They purchase the software outright, they own it, and they aren’t required to continue to pay fees to RBS. The endpoint licenses automatically recycle as endpoints are added and removed from service, so they don’t have to buy more until they add more customers than they have licenses.

The new Rental option lets Partners rent software for monthly fees starting at just $78/month for 10 endpoints. There are no contracts, and you can stop any time. The rental fee includes Maintenance and Support, and software upgrades.

Full turnkey software packages are available now with perpetual licenses for prices ranging from $699 for 10 endpoints up to $6999 for 400 endpoints. Bigger packages are available. Interest-free financing is available.

RBS also offers a Subscription License, where you can pay monthly only for the licenses you use. This might be an even less expensive option for some Partners. Your price increases only as your business grows.

For those who don’t want to manage their own in-house server, RBS even offers dedicated cloud server rental, fully installed and configured, starting at $150 per month.

For more information, have a look at this “How to Buy” page that lists all purchase options.

Remote Backup Systems is in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. They can be contacted by phone at (901) 405-1234, by email at sales@remote-backup.com, and on the web at http://remote-backup.com.

Mitch Romm dubbed this week’s session a “beta test,” and so it was.

The next Live Chat will be Tuesday, Aug 23 at 2PM US Central Time. You can log in with your favorite IRC client using the link on the page at the following URL, or you can participate using our on-site Web IRC client.

http://remote-backup.com/irc.htm

See you there!

Now we’re going to try it again! Our first Live Chat will be Tuesday, August 16 from 2PM until 3PM US Central Time.

Join us then at http://remote-backup.com. Select Partners -> Community Chat. We’ll have Kat our Support Coordinator, Pinku our Technical Head, and Rob our Chief Nerd Herder.

Be sure you read the rules before joining. See you there!

http://www.remote-backup.com/irc.htm

There are some new features and lots of tweaks that you can read about below.

[v11.16.003 Change Log]

Download this update from the Partner’s Portal and run it on your RBS Server.

Large UK companies are amongst the hardest hit by ransomware in western countries according to a new report commissioned by Malwarebytes. The report found that more than half of large firms had been affected—and that nine percent had been left “entirely unable to operate.”

via More than half of UK firms have been hit by ransomware—report | Ars Technica UK.

A U.S. government interagency report indicates that there has been a 300 percent increase in the daily ransomware attacks in 2016 as compared to 2015. Ransomware is malicious software that, when introduced into a system, gives a hacker access to the user’s system, and the ability to encrypt data and hold it hostage until payment is received. The data is decrypted only when a ransom, usually in the form of cryptocurrency (such as bitcoin) is paid. If and when it is decrypted, the original data is gone leaving only the data in encrypted form.

via New HIPAA Guidance on Ransomware Prevention and Recovery – Lexology.

There’s a new form of ransomware—apparently built by amateurs—that takes your money but deletes your personal files anyway. Security research firm Talos recently published a blog post about a new form of malware dubbed Ranscam.

This ransomware follows the basic premise of previous variants. It claims your files have been encrypted, and thus inaccessible to you, then threatens to delete all your files if you don’t pay up. Ransomware’s scary premise prompts many people to fork over the dough in order to save their photos and other content.

via Vicious new ransomware takes your money and still deletes your files | PCWorld.

The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global backup as a service market for 2016-2020 This report considers revenue generated from backup services offered on cloud platforms. The services from online backup service and cloud backup service providers are included in the market size.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160715005353/en/Global-Backup-Service-Market-2016-2020—Key

The previous model assigned different numbers of licenses to different versions of endpoints. The Personal Edition used one license, the Desktop Edition used two, and the Server Edition used four. We found this model too difficult to explain, and too difficult for customers to understand and track.

From now on, new purchases of software will support one license per endpoint regardless the endpoint version. The software will still support the three endpoint versions – personal, desktop, and server, but from now on each one will require only one license.

New purchasers can still use the three endpoint versions to limit features available under specific plans, but they will no longer count against your license pool at the rate of 4,2,1. From now on all endpoints use one license.

We will also be effectively doubling the number of servers you can service. Here’s an example.

Under the previous license model a 100-license software package could back up 25 servers, 50 workstations, or 100 personal computers, or some combination of that. Going forward, new 100-license servers will be able to back up 100 servers, 100 workstations, 100 personal computers, or some combination of that.

This is a much simpler model that we’re sure everyone will like.

Please let us know if you have any questions. This change effects only new customers, purchasing today or in the future. Existing customers will keep their existing license models.

There are now more than 120 separate families of ransomware, said experts studying the malicious software.

Other researchers have seen a 3,500% increase in the criminal use of net infrastructure that helps run ransomware campaigns.

The rise is driven by the money thieves make with ransomware and the increase in kits that help them snare victims.

Ransomware is malicious software that scrambles the data on a victim’s PC and then asks for payment before restoring the data to its original state. The costs of unlocking data vary, with individuals typically paying a few hundred pounds and businesses a few thousand.

Rapid growth

“Ransomware and crypto malware are rising at an alarming rate and show no signs of stopping,” said Raj Samani, European technology head for Intel Security.

Ransomware samples seen by his company had risen by more than a quarter in the first three months of 2016, he added.

Mr Samani blamed the rise on the appearance of freely available source code for ransomware and the debut of online services that let amateurs cash in.

Ransomware was easy to use, low risk and offered a high reward, said Bart Parys, a security researcher who helps to maintain a list of the growing numbers of types of this kind of malware.

“The return on investment is very high,” he said.

Mr Parys and his colleagues have now logged 124 separate variants of ransomware. Some virulent strains, such as Locky and Cryptolocker, were controlled by individual gangs, he said, but others were being used by people buying the service from an underground market.

“It’s safe to say that certain groups are behind several ransomware programs, but not all,” he said. “Especially now with Eda and HiddenTear copy and paste ransomware, there are many new, and often unexperienced, cybercriminals.”

A separate indicator of the growth of ransomware came from the amount of net infrastructure that gangs behind the malware had been seen using.

The numbers of web domains used to host the information and payment systems had grown 35-fold, said Infoblox in its annual report which monitors these chunks of the net’s infrastructure.

“They use it and customise it for each attack, ” said Rod Rasmussen, vice-president of security at Infoblox.

“They will have their own command and control infrastructure and they might use it to generate domains for a campaign,” he told the BBC. “Then they’ll have some kind of payment area that victims can go to.”

“The different parts are tied to particular parts of the chain,” he said. “Infection, exploitation and ransom.”

Hidden files

The spread of ransomware was also being aided by tricks cyber-thieves used to avoid being detected by security software, said Tomer Weingarten, founder of security company SentinelOne.

“Traditional anti-virus software is not effective in dealing with these types of attacks,” he said.

The gangs behind the most prevalent ransomware campaigns had got very good at hiding their malicious code, said Mr Weingarten.

“Where we see the innovation is in the infection vector,” he said.

SentinelOne had seen gangs using both well-known techniques and novel technical tricks to catch out victims.

A lot of ransomware reached victims via spear-phishing campaigns or booby-trapped adverts, he said, but other gangs used specialised “crypters” and “packers” that made files look benign.

Others relied on inserting malware into working memory so it never reached the parts of a computer on which most security software keeps an eye.

“It’s been pretty insane with ransomware recently,” he said.

via BBC News

The National Hurricane Center at NOAA has predicted an “average” hurricane season for the Western Hemisphere, with the first named storm already here. Your Online Backup Hot Site is available through the Partner’s Portal.

RBS Emergency Hot Site Servers are available at no charge for RBS Partners with active Maintenance Subscriptions whenever a natural disaster affects your data center. If your RBS Server goes offline because of a natural disaster, we can temporarily take backups from your customers at our Hot Site near Memphis, Tennessee so your business doesn’t suffer further. When the disaster is over and your RBS Server is back online you can download your backups.

To use the Hot Site, your RBS Server and Endpoints must be at least version 11.15.000, and you must have built your Endpoint installers with “Enable Hot Site” turned ON in your Customize Endpoint Installer tool. You will find this checkbox on the Client Options screen just below the Server Address field.

Log into the Partner’s Portal and turn on your Hot Site when you need it. Turn it off when you don’t need it. You will find a switch labeled “Turn on Hot Site” on your home page in the Partner’s Portal. Your Hot Site will be provisioned within an hour, and you will receive an email informing you it is ready.

When your hot site has been provisioned your endpoints will automatically back up to it if they cannot reach your RBS Server. When your RBS Server comes back online, your endpoints will switch back automatically. After the event is over you can turn off the Hot Site and download backups that were sent there through your Partner’s Portal account.

If you have lost Internet connectivity you can phone RBS and we can turn on your Hot Site for you during business hours.

Personally, I don’t interact much on LinkedIn. If someone asks me to connect, I’ll look at their profile to see if they’re in my industry, and if they are, I’ll connect, I try to be very safe when it comes to business from a uk business protection insurance that is necessary to small messages like this. Often they’re Internet marketers wanting to sell me something, and I usually don’t respond to those.

If you think your business is safe, we have news for you: it isn’t.

Cybercriminals are taking over business accounts to steal personal information, post basic spam, or draw attention to global issues or personal agendas. Getting hacked can be a major blow to your business’s reputation. However, with cybercriminals targeting business accounts, it’s crucial to prioritize cybersecurity to safeguard personal and financial information, ensuring a strong online reputation, as highlighted in reviews of Invest Diva.

Understandably, nobody wants to be the next victim. It’s why we created a step-by-step guide below to help you secure your business’s social media account and enforce a security-first approach. We also encourage you to use eCom babes to grow your business, here’s the ecombabe prices.

How do you use social media for your business? Do you join groups? Do you post comments and articles, or do you just read? Do you use social media to make business or buying decisions?

Once your business grows, your company will have to make many payments to various clients and partners. Here, big accounting firms in Thailand can take over such payments and use the most efficient processes to execute them on time, while tracking the payments and avoiding any delays.

Take this quick survey and I’ll update the results here so we can all share.

To celebrate we’re offering a 20% off sale on all software and maintenance renewals through Friday. Renew or order online and use coupon code: X9TK

For the past six weeks the RBS development team, under the direction of guest Project Manager Mitch Romm (Dr. Backup http://drbackup.net), have been working on a special project to make RBackup stronger, faster, and increase its capacity. It’s been six weeks of late nights, long weekends, development meetings, and testing, and it’s finally ready.

We’ve rewritten the core engines, improving them greatly. We’ve corrected MANY minor annoying buglets and inconsistencies that you have reported. We’ve added new diagnostic tools and auto-correcting error traps. We’ve built a special port scanning analyzer to assist testing your router and firewall.

There’s MUCH more. You can read the entire change log here: http://www.remote-backup.com/updatenotes

RBackup v11.16 is ready to download from the Partner’s Portal at http://portal.remote-backup.com.

Here are some of the things we’ve done.

• The scan engine has been rewritten. It is now about 30% faster.
• We’ve added a brand new backup engine, codenamed “NGClient,” that’s faster and more robust.
• RBackup is now far more resilient, especially when it encounters unusual situations like filenames greater than 256 characters, dismounted drives, unusual date formats, and unicode.
• RBackup can now back up millions of files. We’ve tested it to seven million.
• Unicode support is now 100%.
• We’ve added more advanced error traps and self-explanatory messages to the client log files, making them easier for Partners to understand.
• We’ve fixed dozens of small bugs like reporting inconsistencies, GUI issues, and more.

We’ve fixed virtually everything you have reported to us, plus everything we found ourselves. I think you will LOVE the new v11.16.

… and you shouldn’t try, because neither can anyone else.

Unlimited data backup plans, priced at some minimal fee of just a couple of dollars a month or around $50 per year, have been “a thing” for a while. The advent of cloud storage and the relatively low cost of such solutions made it so, but having even a shot at success selling a data backup service with unlimited storage for such a low price relied on being able to buy storage on a massive scale to drive the per-gigabyte price down, and this simply wasn’t possible for the vast majority of service providers.

The popularity of services like OneDrive, SOS and Monster Cloud made it appear to be a viable business model – they were all over the place, almost completely unavoidable, but other service providers couldn’t figure out how they were actually staying afloat with prices that low and storage ceilings that high, much less profiting. Sure, they throttle your bandwidth, limit the amount of data that can be transferred in a session, or refuse certain file extensions, but some of these services were still mind-bogglingly cheap.

We’ve always advised our service providers not to attempt to compete with companies offering unlimited plans for some absurdly low price. It isn’t worth it. Storage costs aside, you have overhead to contend with, too: other server hardware or rental fees, bandwidth, employees to provide support, office space rent, marketing efforts, etc. Making that back on just a couple of dollars per month per user is going to be difficult, if not impossible. The service you provide is more valuable than that, and so is your time.

So how did these companies justify continuing when the average user’s storage demands are rapidly increasing and the price doesn’t change to reflect that?

The answer is: they didn’t.

This month, multiple companies providing unlimited or nearly-unlimited backup plans for dirt cheap either killed those plans entirely, or drastically increased prices. One that charged about $4 per month for 1TB now charges $52 per month; another previously offered unlimited storage for $79.99 per year, but now offers 50GB for $44.99 per year. Even Microsoft’s own OneDrive has reigned it in – their free storage has dropped from 15GB to 5GB. If you need more space, you can pay $1.99 per month for 50GB, or $6.99 per month for 1TB and the Office 365 suite. They all came to the same conclusion we did: that unlimited (or virtually unlimited) storage plans for rock-bottom prices are just not viable long-term.

If you are currently trying to compete with these services, or considering basing your business plan on an attempt to compete with these services, please reconsider. We want you to succeed, and trying to compete with a dying business model isn’t the way to do it.

You know what, I love new gadgets that solve pesky problems, and this thing could save you a lot of time and travel to customer sites, the data center, and your mom’s house. But go see your mom anyway…

When Your Internet Goes Out, This Smart Plug Resets Your Router Until It Works Again

via When Your Internet Goes Out, This Smart Plug Resets Your Router Until It Works Again.

By now everyone should have heard about Cryptolocker and other “ransomeware” that can infect computers, encrypting files and then demanding a ransom in BitCoins to decrypt them. The news is full of articles about how corporate, personal, hospital and even police networks have been infected and held for ransom.

This potential hack will use Microsoft’s DevCon utility to disable and enable local backup drives at will, hopefully protecting them from ransomware.

So far nobody has come up with a reliable way to decrypt them, so most pay the ransom, but there is another alternative – restore from backups – and not just any backups, because ransomware can also encrypt many kinds of backups.

Ransomeware encrypts files through mapped drive systems. It first infects one drive, encrypting files on that drive, and then it propagates through mapped drives encrypting files on them. Eventually all the drives that are mapped to the infected computer can be compromised.

This includes backup drives that are plugged into the network through USB ports, which many use as their primary on-site backup. Any files on USB drives, network drives, and even cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox that can be accessed as locally mapped resources can be compromised.

Files backed up offsite with RBackup are safe from ransomware that infects the computer being backed up. This applies only to backups sent offsite to RBS Servers. Backups done with RBackup’s Local options are often on locally mapped drives, so those local backups are susceptible.

However, there may be a way to protect these local files, too, which I will get to in a minute.

In computers infected with ransomware, the RBackup application files themselves are often encrypted, which makes them useless. You won’t be able to run RBackup on the compromised computer to do a restore. You can, however, use RBackup’s Web Restore and Disk Restore utilities after downloading them from your Web Manager.

RBackup sends backups offsite through a proprietary protocol that protects the remote backup repository from infection by nasties that might exist on the computers being backed up, thereby isolating and protecting the RBS Server and its backup data from viruses that might be on those computers.

OK here’s a common scenario. A computer backs up every night, including weekends. The file retention protocol is set to keep 30 days of backups, and Keep Latest Version is ON. Backups are sent offsite to the RBS Server.

Thursday night’s backup went as planned, but on Friday after the close of business (and before Friday night’s backup) Cryptolocker infects the computer. This might (and might not) prevent RBackup from running Friday night’s backup.

If it does, then Friday night’s backup will not run, and all your backups up to and including Thursday night are good. If it doesn’t, then you have good backups through Thursday night, and bad backups Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

You discover the infection on Monday morning. You can pay the ransom, or you can clean the ransomware and recover your backups up through Thursday night using RBackup’s “Only Most Recent Version” function to synthesize a full backup from all previous backup sessions.

You’ll lose whatever you backed up (or didn’t back up) after the infection, but hopefully that’s only one day’s business that can be re-entered.

Protecting local backups with RBackup

Caveat: I do not know if this procedure works IRL. Try it for yourself. Results may vary. I tried it on Windows 7 and was able to enable and disable a USB drive from the command line.

My assumption is that USB drives cannot be infected by ransomware if they are not mounted (attached, mapped). If that’s an untrue assumption, then forget everything I’m about to tell you.

In this procedure we’ll leave a USB drive disabled until we’re ready to use it. We’ll enable it just before the backup, then we’ll do the backup, and then we will disable the drive again. The drive should stay disabled and dismounted, impervious to ransomware, until we’re ready to use it.

This would be particularly useful for backups of Full Drive Images which are stored locally. Full Drive Images are used for very quick disaster recovery. They are standard .VHD files stored in the local environment for immediate mounting.

The problem with keeping these VHD files locally is that the drives they are stored on are usually permanently mounted, and therefore susceptible to being encrypted by ransomware. We are trying to set up a procedure where the USB drive stays disabled until we need it. We’ll then enable it just before the backup, and then disable it just after.

The idea is to use RBackup’s Pre- and Post- batch files to enable and disable a local USB drive. I found many utilities that claim to be able to enable and disable Windows drivers and features from the command line, but of all I tested only Microsoft’s DevCon.exe available in the Windows Driver Kit (WDK 10) worked reliably.

To download the WDK 10, see this link:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff544707%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

DevCon.exe is a tool in this kit. You can extract it and run it independently. I have found several articles describing various ways to use DevCon to do this. This is the method I used. Experiment with it yourself and post your results and recommendations in the Comments here.

I wanted to disable my drive G:, which is a Passport USB drive.

The first thing I did was to locate the device instance ID of the USB drive. To do that, I ran the following command to locate the instance ID of my Passport USB drive:

devcon find * | find “Passport”

Devcon returned the instance ID as:

USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_WD&PROD_MY_PASSPORT_0830&REV_1056\575837314532344A32323234&0

Now I can use this ID as input to Devcon to disable the USB drive like this (note: this text might have wrapped around. Enter it as one single line.)

devcon disable “@USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_WD&PROD_MY_PASSPORT_0830&REV_1056\575837314532344A32323234&0”

Note that in the above command I’ve added @ to the front of the instance ID and surrounded the entire ID in quotes.

In my tests, this command disables the USB drive, and it disappears from the list of hard drives:

Drive G is now no longer mapped, and it has been disabled. Will this protect it from ransomware by making it unavailable to the operating system? Maybe. I’m not willing to test it that far. That’s for braver souls.

I found that I was able to enable and disable this drive at will using “enable” and “disable” commands with Devcon. After I disabled it, I could enable it immediately with:

devcon enable “@USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_WD&PROD_MY_PASSPORT_0830&REV_1056\575837314532344A32323234&0”

Rob’s Big Idea

So, my idea is to write the “devcon disable” command into the autoexec.exe file so it disables the backup USB drive immediately on bootup.

Then place a “devcon enable” command in the Pre- batch file, and a “devcon disable” command in the Post- batch file. This should theoretically keep the local backup USB drive offline and safe until it is needed for a backup.

Of course while it’s mounted (during local backups) it is susceptible.

Since this is all just an idea with very little testing, I can’t recommend it. I did not test to see if the Instance ID changes between reboots. If it does, you’ll have to use another Devcon command that doesn’t rely on Instance ID. Devcon can enable/disable a device and search for it all in one command, so perhaps something like the following command might work better:

devcon enable “*Passport*”

I think this procedure has potential to help protect local backups from damage from ransomware. Play with it yourself and report results here so we can discuss it.

PS: Just after I posted this article I tried the following command and found that it enabled the USB drive, so we’re safe as long as the people writing ransomware don’t include this trick:

devcon enable *

This command enabled all the disabled devices on my computer, including my Passport USB drive.

This is woeful, head-in-the-hands stuff and follows a recent publication of the most rubbish passwords out there. A password that Lenovo was using as a default is third on the list. It is ‘12345678’, which is marginally worse than ‘Password’ but still equally loathsome as far as choices go.

Core Security points the finger at Lenovo in a security advisory. ShareIT is not a favourite of Core Security’s, and it picked a good few vulnerabilities out of the software, each of which could be used for some nefarious purpose.

A seemingly simple problem was probably the worst, and made Lenovo look like a ruddy idiot. This is a hard coded password in Lenovo ShareIT for Windows that leaves WiFi open to exploitation.

“When Lenovo ShareIT for Windows is configured to receive files, a WiFi hotspot is set with an easy password (12345678). Any system with a WiFi network card could connect to that hotspot by using that password. The password is always the same,” said Core Security.

“The files are transferred via HTTP without encryption. An attacker that is able to sniff the network traffic could view the data transferred or perform man-in-the-middle attacks, for example by modifying the content of the transferred files.

“When the application is configured to receive files, an open WiFi hotspot is created without any password. An attacker could connect to that hotspot and capture the information transferred between those devices.”

You couldn’t make this sort of thing up. Lenovo has faced up to the issue, and said that it agrees with the findings. The firm also confirmed that the collection of vulnerabilities would enable remote access and malicious third party control.

In a statement Lenovo did not apologise, but it did say that it would now start to follow industry standards for protecting people. That sounds like a positive to us and should come as a relief to users.

The vulnerabilities may allow remote browsing of a file system and unauthorized access of transferred files by an attacker,” it said.
“Following industry best practice, Lenovo has made available updated versions of ShareIT which fix and eliminate these vulnerabilities in advance of this disclosure. Users can resolve the vulnerability from their devices by updating to the latest version of ShareIT.”
New options are available from the Lenovo website and on the Google Play website. More information is available on a Lenovo support page. There Lenovo said that it had solved the password problem.

“A vulnerability was identified on the Windows version of ShareIT that allows an attacker to join a protected ad hoc Wi-Fi hotspot created by ShareIT by providing a static password that is not able to be changed by the user. A similar vulnerability was identified on the Android version of ShareIT where no password was required to join the ad hoc Wi-Fi hotspot,” it explained.

Windows ShareIT version 3.2.0 and later and Android ShareIT version 3.5.38_ww and later include a new “secure mode” option that resolves the first vulnerability by allowing users to configure a unique password to share files between users, which will prevent unauthorized users from connecting to the ShareIT hotspot.”

via The Inquirer

Due to the severity of Winter Storm Jonas, all Emergency Hot Site Servers have been enabled.

These servers function as emergency failover protection for your customers in the event of a disaster that takes your RBS Server offline. If you have enabled the function and your Server is taken out of service, your clients will automatically redirect to our data center until you are back online. While we can’t accurately predict exactly how destructive this storm will be, we feel it is best not to take risks.

To enable the Emergency Hot Site for your customers, log into your Partners Portal account and enable the Emergency Hot Site toggle on your dashboard.

Stay safe, and stay warm!

Windows 7 Upgrade: Upgrading to Windows 10? Beware! You May Lose Your Files

RBackup can create a full disk image of a hard drive. The “image” is a file that ends in “.VHD” and is stored in the Image Backup Location as defined in the Schedule screen on the RBackup Endpoint software when the “Full Image Backup” backup set is selected from the pull-down menu.

This is a standard Microsoft .VHD file, unencrypted and uncompressed. It can be mounted with any software that can mount a VHD file. In some operating systems you can simply use Windows Explorer to browse over to the file, right click it and select Mount.

Once mounted, the VHD file will run like it ran on the original computer or server. You can use it as-is in this virtualized environment. You can browse for files, run most programs, and access the Internet.

If you’re using a version of Windows that doesn’t have this capability, you can mount the file with any hypervisor. We’ll use a free product from Oracle – VirtualBox.

You can download VirtualBox for free here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

After VirtualBox is installed, it looks like this:

Click “New”

Enter a name for the instance. We suggest you name it the operating system name plus the server name. Select a Type and a Version.

Click “Next”

Set the amount of RAM to use and click “Next”

Select “Use an existing virtual hard disk file” and select the folder icon to browse for your .VHD file. It is in the standard folder structure for the RBS Server’s Data Store, in the LOCAL Image Backup Location as defined in the Schedule screen on the RBackup Endpoint software when the “Full Image Backup” backup set is selected from the pull-down menu.

Click the file you want to mount and then click “Open”

Then click “Create”

VirtualBox then loads the VHD file into its directory and displays some information about it. To start your instance highlight it and click the “Start” button.

VirtualBox will attempt to start Windows in a window. It may display some messages at the top of the screen indicating status. You can click the “X” to retire the messages.

If all went well you should now be able to log in using the same credentials assigned to the original computer or server. Depending on the hardware resources available to the host computer, the new Virtual Machine should operate exactly like the original machine.

You can run programs, copy files – do anything you could do with the original computer.

Please review the documentation for VirtualBox on Oracle’s website: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki

Plenty of companies have boasted an unlimited amount of cloud storage to customers only to come up short. Microsoft’s OneDrive unlimited storage plans were dropped recently, barely a year after the plans began, because, as it turned out, they weren’t able to provide storage for an unlimited amount of data.

via Is Unlimited Cloud Storage Even Possible? | The ChannelPro Network.

He quoted one representative help desk ticket: “Their screen shows an ‘input required’ picture floating around the screen. The keyboard doesn’t work; neither does the mouse. Please help.” Resolution: Turn the computer on.

via The dumbest things people say to the IT person, catalogued – Quartz.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3053604/elasticity/why-the-promise-of-unlimited-cloud-storage-keeps-getting-broken

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/09/cryptowall_40/

Every early stage startup has doubters, naysayers, and skeptics. These people will tell you that you can’t do it, that you shouldn’t do it, that you are wasting your time. They will tell you that your idea is stupid and that you are burning your investor’s money.

via Four Billion-Dollar Startups That Were Told Their Idea Was Stupid | Benjamin Hoffman | LinkedIn.

Many executives—particularly senior business leaders—frequently travel worldwide as part of their jobs. Hackers and cyber criminals know this, and that adds a risk factor that companies should not ignore.

via Road warriors are prime targets for hackers | CSO Online.

We now live in a world that is more connected than ever before. The Internet touches almost all aspects of everyone’s daily life, whether we realize it or not. Recognizing the importance of cybersecurity to our nation, President Obama designated October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month. National Cyber Security Awareness Month is designed to engage and educate public and private sector partners through events and initiatives with the goal of raising awareness about cybersecurity and increasing the resiliency of the nation in the event of a cyber incident.

via National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2015 | Homeland Security.