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June Newsletter

Dear Newsletter Subscriber

In order to allow you as much control over your solution as possible we’ve been placing a focus on automating services over the last few months and there’s an impressive round up of the new services available in June@UKFast.

‘Locking down’ is the subject of this month’s tech tip and the marketing minute brings you new figures regarding Internet ad spend and the key ways to drive online traffic. We have a fantastic spotlight this month on Xtreme Everest and the UKFast sponsored Richard Turner who has just returned from the top of the world.

And finally, the hot topic covers a new standard which the payment card companies are putting in place by the end of this year. The PCI DSS could mean big fines for those who don’t take notice, so we’ve got a quick guide letting you know what you need to do.

Please get in touch with any comments on this newsletter or suggestions for future editions.

June@UKFast

June has been busy for many reasons here at UKFast. At the start of the month we quite literally took to the skies as we moved into our new offices on the top floor of Manchester’s City Tower. Twenty Eight floors up, we have a terrific vantage point over the city and are looking forward to inviting you up to enjoy the views when you are next in the area.

Much of the client side production this month has come from the R&D team who seem to have gone automation mad in the server section of the Client Area! It is now a sophisticated control centre for managing your solution, so it’s worth focussing on a number of the major updates we’ve made over the last month or so.

The Server section sits within the Services tab of the Client area and is increasing in functionality weekly. As well as the new ability to view your back-ups here, we have updated the Bandwidth and packet-per-second graphs. Just link through from the IP address of your server to see them. In addition, if you have server monitoring set up, you can now enable or disable the various monitoring services by ticking or clearing the relevant boxes in the details window.

Finally for the servers section, those of you who have UKFast Dual Core 300-700 servers can now instigate your own server reboots and view a history of those already undertaken. We intend to continue developing the client area month on month and are pleased to announce that we've doubled the size of our programming team in order to prioritise the online services we offer you.

The technical team has also seen new starters this month and over at MANOC they have introduced more monitoring services to our strengthened Cisco powered network. We now have a further layer of security checks across all of our Cisco gear operating daily.

To round off the Company News, we’d like to congratulate a couple of clients who have won awards over the last month or so. The UKFast Internet Innovator Pete Petrondas (The Eazyfone Group) has picked up another award as the North West’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year. The prestigious award is given by Entrepreneur magazine. On the IT side, Nick Patrick of Quikplan has won a leadership award for his care management software. And finally, at UKFast we are pleased to have been named UK TopHosts Best Dedicated Host.

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Fully locked down

This month, the advice from our technical director Neil Lathwood is to consider security in areas close to home that often get forgotten.

You may have locked down your firewall on the server to permit logins from set locations and have the latest anti-virus / anti-spyware software loaded. You may also employ a 2048 bit encrypted ssl certificate protecting your data stream or a point-to-point VPN link with your office and MANOC, which encrypts all data traffic from you to the server. But have you remembered to lockdown and secure the workstations you are accessing your server from.

If you haven't thought about all of the above for your office as well as your server then you could be open to abuse and attack from your own network without your knowledge!

Bogus Microsoft patch warning

Also in the security centre this month we have been contacted about an email scam managing to affect many users with a Trojan by pretending to be a security patch from Microsoft.

The emails, which have the subject line "Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-0065" pretend to come from Microsoft, and claim that a zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in the Microsoft Outlook email program. They go on to warn recipients that "more than 100,000 machines" have been exploited via the vulnerability in order to promote medications such as Viagra and Cialis.

Users are encouraged by the email to download a patch which, it is claimed, will fix the problem and prevent them from becoming attacked by hackers.

However, clicking on the link contained inside the email does not take computer users to Microsoft's website but to one of many compromised websites hosting a Trojan horse.

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The top three of Internet ad spend

The Advertising Association has revealed that while businesses in the UK are spending less on traditional advertising, when it comes to the net, they’re happy to get their wallets out. In the first three months of this year online ad spend enjoyed a 42% surge amounting to a huge £648m. Add this to the £2.016 billion spent last year by British companies and online is fast catching TV.

The entire advertising industry has been boosted by online spend and the upward trend, driven by high speed broadband take up and user generated content, reflects a new era in marketing communication and consumer behaviour.

This month’s marketing minute looks at the top three ways to spend your marketing budget online.

1. Paid search advertising was the fastest-growing segment of online advertising in the UK in 2006, accounting for 58% of the total, with Google accounting for about 75% of the paid for search figure.
2. Online display advertising including banners, skyscrapers and online sponsorships is the next biggest ad category attracting 20% of the spending.
3. Online classified advertising is the third largest sector accounting for a share of 18.8% of the advertising market.

To help you experiment with PPC, we’ve partnered with Google to offer all hosting clients £75 worth of free Google AdWords Vouchers. If you haven’t done so already, you can get your promotion code by logging into the Client Area and then redeem your vouchers by starting a new campaign in Google Adwords.

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Xtreme Everest - on top of the world

When Richard Turner approached Lawrence Jones earlier this year and asked if UKFast would sponsor his involvement in The Xtreme Everest project we jumped at the chance to get involved. As the biggest medical research study ever done at altitude, Xtreme Everest aims to understand how the human body is affected by hypoxia or low oxygen.

Richard sent us email updates of his journey and we wanted to share his incredible experience with you. Below are highlights from his Everest Diary. A full account is on the UKFast sponsorship pages and is well worth a read.

Tuesday 15 May – A mountain to climb
There's a buzz of excitement on the mountain. A weather window is opening and up to 30 international teams are preparing to summit Everest. This news has reached us in the Sherpa capital Namche Bazaar where we are acclimatising before continuing our trek to base camp.

There is half the amount of oxygen at Everest base camp (5,300m) and the hope is that this research will help find new treatments for patients in intensive care. It all sounds a bit daunting from Namche. Even here, at 3,440m above sea level, we're all feeling the effects already. You can only imagine what it must be like up at 8,850m, the top of the world.

Maybe it was the sight of the mountain the Nepalis call Sagarmatha – mother goddess of the world. Or the wreckage of a Nepalese helicopter which crashed in front of our hotel that left me breathless. But the truth is, I'm still getting used to the altitude. We're nearly three times higher than Ben Nevis and a short walk still leaves me surprisingly short of breath.

Every day, we test our heart rate, blood oxygen levels and breathing rates. And at Kathmandu, here at Namche, and again at Everest base camp, our performance is assessed on exercise bikes by the wonderful Xtreme Everest team and doctors.

And you never know, if we arrive at base camp when the Xtreme team return from the summit there's going to be one hell of a party. That is, if we've got the energy!

Sunday 27 May - On top of the world
Everest base camp is 5,350m above sea level - that's a vertical 3.5 miles above Manchester! (Look up now and try to imagine it!). Because it's so high, there is less than half the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. It's a perfect laboratory to investigate the effects of hypoxia, and we volunteers oblige with our blood, sweat and tears in the interests of medical science. We love it really.

But we shouldn't be here. And every day, our bodies tell us so. If you flew here directly in a helicopter, you would be unconscious in hours, and dead soon thereafter. By walking here, our bodies have acclimatised. To a degree.

We can survive. But it's not a place to hang around. At base camp, your lungs burst for air. Wounds don't heal. Ulcers erupt. Your head aches. You can't sleep. And the slightest exertion leaves your breathless. And it's cold, so cold. Even though it's summer, night temperatures plunge to -12C. You try to sleep as the glacier cracks beneath your tent. And the rumble of avalanches is never far away.

Yet clear nights reveal a sky full of stars and a backdrop of breathtaking beauty.

Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) is an ever present fear. The condition can affect anyone trekking or climbing above 2,500m. Why it affects some people and not others is not certain. But it's partly why we're here with the Xtreme Everest project.

Some people use oxygen more efficiently than others. The medics behind this study hope that by studying us and our differing responses to hypoxia, they may find out why some intensive care patients live and others die.

I can only admire the brave climbers and Sherpas who go higher to reach those 8,000m summits. I know I've reached my 'Everest'. But do you know what. It was well worth it.

Read Richard’s diary on the UKFast site

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Store data safely and avoid big fines

Most of us can’t imagine a time before bank cards. They’re our number one payment method and this month the UK’s first ATMs are 40 years old. However, the loss of 45m card details by TK Maxx is just one of many incidents that have highlighted the need for stronger card protection methods. So Visa, MasterCard and the other big players pooled resources and have created PCI DSS.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to anyone that stores, processes or transmits payment data, It affects all merchants immaterial of how they accept cards, face to face, mail or telephone order and via the Internet, which means the vast majority of our clients need to know how to be compliant.

The Standard comes into its own at the end of 2007 and companies failing to protect customer data or not following what Visa has dubbed the ‘digital dozen’ could face fines of up to £250,000. So it pays for those who do not have a robust card security system to tow the line. The twelve criteria that form the unified approach to safeguarding sensitive data break down into six categories.

1. Build and Maintain a Secure Network
Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

2. Protect Cardholder Data
Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data
Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

3. Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program
Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software
Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

4. Implement Strong Access Control Measures
Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

5. Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes

6. Maintain an Information Security Policy
Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

While complying with the ‘dirty dozen’ the standard also reiterates a number of requirements about the type of data not to be stored. These include the contents of the magnetic stripe, the Card Verification Value, the Card Security Code (on the back) and the PIN verification value which is within the magnetic stripe.

To find out more about the process of becoming compliant take a look at this whitepaper and this list of qualified agencies who can assess your company.

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For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.net

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