Cybersecurity Awareness

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.  The website StaySafeOnline.org encourages you to make cybersecurity a priority and provides some “top tips” on how you can protect your business. While some of these tips are seemingly common sense (for example, “Know who you’re dealing with online.”), other tips speak directly to the capabilities of the software that you choose:

This tip immediately made me think of our secure FTP server solution, Titan MFT Server. Titan MFT Server is a managed file transfer solution, which, along with many other features that address cybersecurity (such as highly granular security settings that can restrict IP access and help to prevent DoS and FXP attacks) also provides strong authentication options and the ability to force complex password rules.

Titan MFT Server supports a variety of user authentication options, including native Titan Authentication, Windows NT/SAM authentication (for Windows 2000 Servers), Windows Active Directory authentication, LDAP authentication, and ODBC authentication.

Titan also provides S/Key password encryption and the ability to force the user to create passwords that are strong, which helps to prevent brute force password cracking. When this feature is enabled, passwords must be at least eight characters long with no spaces and must contain:

• one or more Latin uppercase letters (A through Z)
• one or more Latin lowercase letters (a through z)
• one or more digits (zero through nine)
• one or more non-alpha characters, such as ! # $^& , -+=

To learn more about how you can protect your business from cyberthreat by using Titan MFT Server, contact our sales team at sales@SouthRiverTech.com.

PATCH IT!

A familiar icon appeared in my system tray a few hours ago and it got me thinking. Now that’s always dangerous, me thinking.

The icon was the “New updates are available” notification icon. So I started thinking about a conversation I had over the weekend with a new friend of mine, Sean. Sean is an avid Macintosh user. I am not. In the many conversations I have had with avid Macintosh users, the common theme seems to be that a Mac is largely flawless and invulnerable to attack whereas Windows computers are always being attacked because they are horribly vulnerable because of security holes. My personal experience with Windows over the last twenty years is quite the opposite, I have never (knocking on wood here) had a virus or trojan or spyware on any of my Windows based computers. And I have owned or used several dozen such computers over that span and for the last fifteen years they’ve all had constant connections to the Internet.

I thought I should check on the situation from a neutral party. I found a paper from the Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology titled “0-Day Patch – Exposing Vendors (In)security Performance.”  In the paper the writers compare the speed of response to published vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Macintosh operating systems. The concept of a “zero day” patch is that the company releases the patch for a vulnerability on the same day it is publicly disclosed. I was surprised by two things: it turns out that Macs and Windows PCs have had about the same number of high and medium vulnerabilities over the study period from January 2002 to December 2007, with Macs having 738 to Windows’ 658; and Microsoft has been much better at releasing 0-day patches over that period with over a 60% average rate of 0-day patches vs Apple’s under 40% average.

Patches are an important feature of any software package and they are often critical in operating systems. At South River Technologies we recently began using our own Windows Server Update Services server to better manage how and when updates are installed. And all of our software packages also have a “Check for Updates” feature. Our new Webdrive for Mac, which is currently in beta testing, also has this feature. I’m amazed when one of our support engineers tells me that a customer is using version 6 of Webdrive (the current one is 9.0) or version 5 of Titan FTP (the current one is 7.11). Like most software companies, we don’t provide support for older versions of the software. The reason is that it can’t be patched. So if you’re using software: PATCH IT!

Time to Call the Exterminator?

It’s been particularly rainy out here in the muggy Mid-Atlantic this spring. And unfortunately that means one thing: ants and other insects invade our dry homes trying to escape the deluge. So as I was pouring my coffee this morning and thinking about what to write for my blog post, I was watching ants scouting for food on the counter and a topic came to mind:

BUGS!

No, not the 8 legged kind. The software kind. Most bugs in software are the result of a well intentioned programmer (like myself) trying to improve the software. Inevitably one feature or improvement will lead to an inadvertent oversight or the breaking of some formerly working code.

I think the key to good programming is not only to get it right, but to care enough to fix the bugs found in the software quickly. To be responsive, not defensive.  How a software company responds to a bug report says a lot about the company and how much they care about their product and ultimately how much they care about their customers. 

At South River Technologies we take great pride in our suite of software solutions and we care about our customers. We’ve enhanced our technical support offerings by hiring two new very capable support engineers and increasing the support options to include paid phone support so that we can be more responsive than ever to the needs of our customers. Our engineers are top notch, and we work diligently, sometimes very late into the night, to offer the finest quality software.

We all make mistakes, in software we call them bugs, in business it matters how we choose to deal with them.

Oh, and honey, if your reading this, yes, please call the exterminator.  🙂 

Standards: Who needs them?

In my many years of development work, I’ve had the opportunity to work at several companies as well as freelance work, so far always developing retail software (in contrast to in-house software). Programming came naturally to me from as young as ten years old. One thing I’ve always encountered is the problem of standards.

Structure in programming isn’t just a matter of the language itself, though languages have matured to become more structured over the last 3 decades since I began the adventure of programming. When I started programming in BASIC in the 1980s there were very few standards one could use to structure a program. Now standards are everywhere and in every language. But standards are also very important in every aspect of computing.

As I moved to more advanced and mature languages and began to work with more programmers, I experienced the problem of differing standards. Naming conventions are a small annoyance to overcome; data differences can be huge obstacles. Recently the issue of standards in SFTP data transfer reared its ugly head again as a new version of a client program, whose programmers seem to relish the idea of ignoring standards, stopped working against our Titan Server product line.

Standards aren’t just developed because a bunch of people have nothing better to do when they get together at a convention in Las Vegas. Standards are the very core of what allows for our modern communication systems to continue functioning.

So the answer to Standards: Who needs them? We All Do.

Welcome

Hello and welcome!
Originally founded in 1996, South River Technologies (SRT) is a Maryland based, privately held company, that pioneered and paved the way for document collaboration, secure file access, and managed file transfer. In 2004, SRT received the Baltimore SmartCEO Future 50 award, which recognizes the top 50 fastest growing small businesses in Maryland.  To date, over 65,000 customers have adopted our simple, powerful approach to file management, and we proudly share that our enterprise customers include more than 70 universities across the country.

Our home office is in Annapolis, Maryland, 2 miles from the beautiful South River and about 5 miles from the Chesapeake Bay. We are also conveniently located just 2,461 miles from the heart of Silicon Valley!

It is our pleasure to be able to offer this medium to interact with our customers, answer questions, and provide up to date informtion on our products. This is a conversation  medium, and not a support desk option. For technical support please visit our online help desk at http://www.srthelpdesk.com/, this is a free support option for all.
SRT will be represented weekly by our technical, sales and administrative staff to ensure that you find something new and valuable on a regular basis. You will find information on all of our products: WebDrive, Titan FTP Server, and the DMZedge Server.
We welcome your presence here and hope you will visit us often. My name is Shaunna, and I will be activly monitoring activities here. Your appropriate, relative, and thoughtful posts will make this blog a smashing success!