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A Chip In Every Card

EMV Cards, short for "Europay, Mastercard and Visa" are expected to be the standard in the US by the end of 2015. While other countries have used the more expensive cards for years, the US is just now implementing them. After growing fraud attacks on US based cards solely because they don't have this protection.

EMV cards are different from magnetic strip cards in that they create a unique transaction code per purchase and is unusable for any other transactions, so if the information was hacked from a specific point of sale the hackers would not be able to duplicate the card. 

They work different too, not only can you swipe, but on new registers the card will read the electronic information by "dipping" it in the terminal where it will be processed. There will also be "near field communication" where just placing the card near the terminal will process the transaction, similar to mobile app payments on cell phones. As with regular credit cards you will need to sign or enter a pin, whichever is linked to your EMV card, so you will still have to keep up that penmanship for your John Hancock.

Though they are safer than swipe credit cards, there have been some concerns over the vulnerabilities of the cards security .Using a smart phone or laptop, a hacker can simulate the registers terminal, and with the "near field communication" hold the laptop or phone near a wallet of an unsuspecting victim and with current loopholes can attempt a contract-less authorization of up to 1 million dollars.

You will be seeing these (if you haven't already got one) becoming more and more prevalent in 2015. For more information on EMV Vulnerabilities check out:

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Until next time happy computing,

Christopher Hines
Wooster Tech Services, LTD

Save money on your IT department.

Why choose a IT consultant? Simple, really, cost. For the Small business owner the need for technology is more and more prevalent and getting more sophisticated by the day.

Beyond advising and assisting in your companies technological needs, consultants offer professional, trained, and knowledgeable staff to help you implement new technology, or bring you up to compliance with your companies existing data structure.

They offer a variety of services to keep your IT infrastructure running smooth, whether it be scheduled maintenance or as needed assistance. These are just a few of the areas they have expertise in.

• Sever management, including AD
• Firewall security
• Advice/support in building business presence
• Design and Web design incl. SEO
• PC repair, and workstation support
• New service implementation
• Data recovery
• Disaster recovery and cloud services incl. NAS
• Mobile support
• Software upgrades and data migration
• Server sales and support
• Connectivity issues
• OS Migration, incl. server

IT Consulting firms can also offer assistance to companies with an existing IT presence. Why hire more staff when you only need help on a couple projects? Consultants are qualified and ready to help your IT department when they are inundated with heavy tasks, whether it be assisting with help desk or migrating data, a consulting firm that works well with others and can take the “stress” out of the big projects.

Data suggests that 60% of new businesses in 2014 had no online presence, and even higher had no projection for data management. 70% of these companies comprised the 80% failure of new businesses in the first year. The main reason most start ups don’t implement an IT strategy or have an online presence is money. But there is a truth to the old saying “it takes money to make money” and starting out with one foot in the grave is a sure way to fail.

Chris Hines

Create a full VSS or bare metal back up of Windows 7

First let’s discuss the VSS back up or bare metal back up. (VSS) Volume Shadow Copy Service is a Windows service for capturing and creating snapshots called shadow copies. VSS, which operates at the root level of the file system, provides a backup of data hierarchy for Microsoft operating systems.

Simply put, an exact duplicate of your system from the hard drive perspective that can be accessed to restore files or in this case reinstall to a known state.

When I image a PC, (install OS and applications) I will generally install the core applications and run updates before I create a “system image”. There is noting more obnoxious than having to install 100+ updates right off the bat, this saves me time and bandwidth, streamlining the process. Once I have my OS updated and all my drivers current, I will install base programs that I use on a regular basis. You can install all the programs you want, but this gives me the ability to go back to a stable platform for troubleshooting purposes.

Creating the back up is relatively simple and is just a matter of knowing what and where to look for it in Windows. First we will need to have a few things ready;

• An external disk or thumb drive large enough to hold the contents of your C:\ drive
• A blank CD to make a recovery disk
• (Optional) Multiple blank DVD’s ***if you do not have an external drive*** this method works but is slower than the method I will be demonstrating.
• (Optional) A Shared network drive. In lieu of an external device.

Now we are ready to make a “system image”. Navigate to “Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore”. Once there you will see a link on the left panel titled “Create System Image” clicking on this link will bring up a dialogue box in which windows will guess the best location for your back up. Now, select your device, in this instance we will be choosing the external drive we plugged in, from the drop-down menu in the “On a hard disk” option and selecting “next”.

From here we can select which drives to back up, Select (C:) (system) and click “start backup”, it’s that easy. Windows will now create the back up and depending on the amount of space can take 20+ minutes.

When complete, Windows will prompt you to make a system repair disc, this is essential and should be created right away. You will need this for repairing your PC as well as starting the “system image restore” we will be talking about in my next installment.

Until then happy computing!! and as always if you have trouble and are in the Wooster, Ohio area check out my website for more information on Home PC assistance or IT Consulting