Microsoft Certified Small Business Specialist

In one of the biggest blows to the promise of “Cloud” computing it appears an upgrade to the system has taken out customer data. In a total revelation of the service they state the data loss was caused by a single server failure. Where was the redundancy, the backups or recovery plan?

Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.

Updated: 10/10/2009 12:35 PM PDT

T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.

We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device - such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos - that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips in our Sidekick Contacts FAQ. We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers' personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.

If your one of the hundreds, maybe thousands,  of companies that use AIT for web and email hosting then your probably not very happy today. Appears they are down and I mean really down and have been for hours. I was able to pull the following notice off of Google Cache which was at least some information on the issue since you cannot even load AIT’s own servers meaning they don’t have their own product setup in a redundant manner:

By redundant it’s my take that any company of any major size or that runs a critical 24x7 business should always have their servers setup in multiple locations across the country so that any single facility failure does not result in a system wide failure. In this case without knowing exactly what has happened I can say that AIT should have been able to at the very least change where their records point so a server in California could come up, explain the problem and show they are alive and kicking.

If your not sure if your an AIT customer as they work through resellers you can go to Network Solutions and enter your domain and if your hosted on AIT you will see some reference to that in the Name Server or other records. As of this writing I know this has taken down at least six businesses in the Winston-Salem area many of which rely on email for business.

Recently Steve Gibson did his regular “Security Now” podcast with Leo Laporte on hacking voting machines which although was interesting I found it to be somewhat dubious to refer to this as “Voting Machine Hacking”. Just to keep a copy for myself if nothing else here is my response to Steve on this podcast: Security Now 211, Voting Machine Hacking

Steve I somewhat take issue with your podcast on if these machines were hacked or not. The first rule of security is to secure the access as no matter how secure the OS or device if there is no physical security then there is no security at all. In this case these researches didn't "hack" anything, they reverse engineered the device and code finding areas they could manipulate however how could they ever do that in real life to a voting machine if those machines are kept in a secure environment?

It is my hope at least that just as ballots should be kept safe (as in not in some car trunk as in the last election) that voting machines are stored in a secure location when not in use, are validated as having not been reconfigured or changed prior to a vote, have the cases security sealed and are delivered by security and kept in a secure location before, during and after the vote. If none of the above is true then sure let's take any of these boxes apart and manipulate the code, what news is there in that being something difficult? It is no different than stuffing ballot boxes that are not secured.

Security starts with securing the access.

For those that use Gmail if your trying to access the web interface today your probably running into a bit of trouble. Appears Gmail's web interface went down around 4:15PM EST although IMAP and Gmail services themselves are up and processing email. The event seems to be worldwide so here’s a big, fat, WOW!

So instead of trying to turn this into a Political us vs. them, or it’s all about hating Obama why not look at what the Bill actually says and draw some attention to what should concern all IT Professionals.

Section 7.
All IT Professionals working with the Feds or any network the President deems “critical” must have a Federal License or Certification to keep his job.

Section 8 and 9.
A panel of non-elected persons who answer only to the President will have total say over all Internet addressing and domain controls.

Section 18.
The President can declare a “cybersecurity emergency” and order the shutdown of any Federal computer system or network or ANY network somebody has declared as a critical infrastructure. There will be no review of what defines a “cybersecurity emergency” nor what is classified as a critical infrastructure, the power will reside in the Office of the President to decide either.

No matter your political views this Bill has millions, likely Billions in additional spending directly inserted in the Bill and Billions more in undefined spending with the enactment of new boards, reviews and more.

With much of our IT Management being done via remote including even outsourcing to foreign countries who is going to verify that tech in India is the tech that actually got certified by the Feds whereas a similar tech in the US would not be on a level playing field as he couldn’t “fake” the fact he took the test or qualifications.