Wireless at Work and at Home: Some Guidelines from LBLnet Services

The buzz on the street is "wireless this, wireless that," and you want to get in on the act, especially since it looks inexpensive to use. But as with many new technologies, many of the actual costs are hidden. While the total hardware and setup effort cost is minimal, the security risk alone could be quite costly. Therefore, the LBLnet Services Group of the Information Technologies and Services Division's Networking and Telecommunications Department (NTD) wants to provide you with some facts and implementation suggestions to help keep you out of trouble.
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Voice Mail System to be Temporarily Out of Service During Evening of June 26 as Part of Lab-Wide Telephone System Upgrade

The Lab's voice mail system will be taken out of service for two to four hours starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 26. During this time, employees will not be able to access either new or stored messages. Additionally, people calling the Lab will be told that the system is down and will be asked to call back after the work is completed if they want to leave a message. The outage has been scheduled to allow the voice mail system to be switched over to upgraded phone switches, part of a comprehensive modernization of the Lab's 13-year-old phone system.
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Places in UNIX/Linux Security Course Still Available - Sign Up by June 19

Space is still available for those who would like to take the UNIX/Linux security course to be held on June 25, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. in the Bldg. 66 auditorium. Topics such as file protection, system and network security, account security, logging, and helpful tools will be covered. Enrollment is limited; reserve a slot for yourself by visiting https://hris.lbl.gov/ and completing the short enrollment form. Wednesday, June 19, is the last day to register for the class.

Mac Users - Sign Up Now for Free Month of Computer Backup Service

The Computing Infrastructure Support Department is extending its offer for one free month of daily computer backups for Macintosh users to show them the benefits of using the new Veritas backup system. However, to get the service free for the month of July, Mac users need to sign up by Friday, June 21. To learn more, or to sign up, contact to backupmaster@lbl.gov and include your contact name and phone number, the name of the system, current version of operating system and approximate size of the data to be backed up. Or, try the self-service backup signup website.

A Tip for Macintosh Users: Giving Your Computer a Better Name

Here's a tip for Macintosh users who rely on DHCP (the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) to obtain an IP address at the Lab. When booting a new Mac for the first time, or when upgrading to a new OS, users are prompted to enter their full name. The operating system takes that name ("Jane Doe," for instance) and creates a computer name ("Jane Doe's computer"), which is used by multiple applications. By default, the computer name contains an apostrophe and at least one space.
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Buying a Printer? Desktop Support Group Recommends HP Over Tektronix

If you're considering buying a new printer, the Mac/PC Support Group (MPSG) in the Computing Infrastructure Support (CIS) Department recommends that in addition to the quality and reliability of the printer, you consider the overall cost, including the purchase pice and the cost of maintenance and support. This issue has been brought to a head recently by the rising cost of support for Tektronix printers, which some groups have purchased based primarily on the initial price. The current cost for time and material support from Xerox (which bought Tektronix) is $290 for the first 30 minutes and $55 for each 15-minute increment after that. By comparison, the cost for Hewlett-Packard printer support is $90 the first hour and $60 for each hour thereafter.
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Complete Computer Security Includes Both Cyber and Physical Safeguards

Physical security is an often-overlooked aspect of computer security. Although one would like to believe that their offices and work areas are secure areas free from theft and unauthorized use, the reality is that they are not. Unattended electronic devices, such as computers, laptops, PDAs and cell phones can be easily stolen or used without your permission or realization. In numerous instances, incidents of theft and unauthorized use have occurred during working hours when an employee "walked away for a few minutes".
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Registration Now Open for Sept. 4-7 Workshop on Advanced Computational Applications at LBNL

Applications are now being accepted to attend a workshop on "Robust and High Performance Tools for Scientific Computing" sponsored by DOE and to be held Sept. 4-7 at the Lab. The three-and-a-half-day workshop will present an introduction to the DOE Advanced CompuTational Software Collection (ACTS Collection, http://acts.nersc.gov) for application scientists whose research requires large amounts of computation, a large volume of data manipulation, the use of robust numerical algorithms, or combinations of these.
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Monthly Virus Alert: KLEZ Worms Just Keep on Coming

For some time now, 93 percent of the viruses caught by the LBNL VirusWall have been one variant or another of WORM_KLEZ. In fact, the VirusWall caught and deleted 8,471 mail attachments that contained this worm last month. Needless to say, KLEZ is by far the most prominent worm/virus on the Internet at this point. WORM_SIRCAM was the second most prevalent worm/virus detected and deleted by the LBNL VirusWall last month.
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Have You Considered Using a Personal Firewall?

It should be no surprise to you that many bad things constantly happen to systems connected to the Internet due to virus and worm infections, hacker attacks, Trojan horse programs planted in systems, and so forth. The threat of security-related loss and/or damage is particularly high in Windows systems, in large part due to the many vulnerabilities that exist in Microsoft products as well as improper system configuration. You probably also know that updated anti-virus software and following the LBNL Computer Protection Program's guidelines for securing systems can drastically improve your system's chances of surviving if it is attacked.
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Tip of the Month: Why Email Messages Sometime Appear to be Written in an Alien Language, and How to Translate Foreign Web Sites

Occasionally an email message will arrive that appears to be written in characters not of this planet. While such messages may just be another serving of spam, they may also be useful information. Here's why they show up that way and what you can do to make sense of it.
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Microsoft Cumulative Patch for Six Newly Identified Vulnerabilities on Internet Explorer

In late May, Microsoft made available a "patch" to fix six newly identified vulnerabilities in versions 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 of its Internet Explorer applications running on Windows systems.
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