Tag Archives: Business & Finance

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Zoom Outage Reported

Recently Zoom, a popular, cloud-based communications platform used for online meetings and video conferencing, experienced an outage that impacted tens of thousands of users worldwide. The issue began shortly after 8:00 am PDT on Thursday, September 15, 2022, when users reported that they could not log in or join meetings. At 8:17 PDT, the company posted the following message on their incident status page:

“We are investigating reports of zoom.us being unavailable.

Our teams are currently investigating the service-impacting event. Our engineers are investigating.”

By 8:30 PDT, the company’s engineers had identified the issue, and the company updated the incident status page with the following:

“We have identified the issue starting and joining meetings. We will continue to investigate and provide updates as we have them.”

By 8:37 PDT, the interruption appeared resolved as the company moved to monitor the situation. Zoom posted the following update:

“We have resolved the issue causing users to be unable to start and join Zoom Meetings. We will continue to monitor and provide updates as we have them.”

Then, at 8:49 PDT, Zoom’s engineers were confident that the issue would not recur and formally closed the incident.

Zoom did not release any technical details as to what caused the outage. In any case, if you are a Zoom user and could not log in for a time yesterday morning, this was the reason.

This severe but quickly resolved issue serves as a reminder that any company is susceptible to outages. Therefore, it is crucial to have different technology avenues to switch to your backup option when a similar outage occurs without losing time in your day.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

WordPress Plugin Leaves Sites Vulnerable

Researchers at Defiant authored the popular Wordfence security solution for WordPress users and they have detected a massive campaign that has seen hackers actively scanning for websites employing the Kaswara Modern WPBakery Page Builder plugin.

The plugin was recently abandoned by the creative team behind it before receiving a patch for a critical security flaw.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2021-24284 would allow an attacker to inject a malicious Javascript into any site using any version of the plugin, which would allow the uploading and deletion of files that could easily lead to a complete takeover of the site targeted.

What makes this campaign so impressive is the fact that the hackers have scanned more than a million and a half sites so far, searching for vulnerable targets.  Fortunately, only a tiny percentage of sites scanned have been running the vulnerable plugin.

Based on the data collected, the campaign appears to have started on July 4th of 2022, and is ongoing to this day.  The attacks originate from more than ten thousand unique IP addresses, indicating a large, organized group of attackers. The identity of the group behind the campaign is not known at this time.

The bottom line here is simple.  If you are running this plugin, we recommend stopping immediately and uninstalling it. Since it has been abandoned by its authors, there’s no fix coming and no matter how helpful it may have been to you, it’s just not worth the risk.

Even if some other group adopts the plugin later, there’s no telling how long it might take for that to happen. Even if it did, there’s no way to know how long it might take them to develop a patch for it.  For now then, your best bet is to treat this plugin as toxic and steer clear of it.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft 365 Suggests Rollback After Issues From Update

Does your company use Microsoft 365?  If so, and you’ve noticed that your Office apps have begun to crash mysteriously and inexplicably, be aware that the latest update (build 15330.20298) is the culprit.

Unfortunately, the bug was introduced in the Enterprise channel during the company’s regularly scheduled “Patch Tuesday.”

The error manifests itself when users try to open a contact card or hover over a contact’s name or picture in shared documents, emails, or comments.

For their part, the company has moved quickly. Although they have not identified the root cause of the issue yet, in the meantime, they went back to the last version confirmed to not contain the bug.

Microsoft is advising any users who have installed version 2206 to roll back to version 2205 to get around the issue. For Admins, the company drafted specific rollback instructions and posted them on their website.

For some time last year, Microsoft’s updates were plagued with issues and several annoying bugs crept into the mix in just about every update the company made.

They re-doubled their efforts and tightened up their processes, and the number of faulty updates declined markedly.  This latest update breaks the trend.  With any luck, this will prove to be a one-time mistake with their next update, and the updates that follow will be smooth sailing.  Given the trouble in the recent past, it’s something that bears paying close attention to in the weeks ahead.

Kudos to Microsoft’s engineers for their fast action here, and we hope that the issue will be resolved before much longer.  It’s unfortunate any time a new bug is introduced, especially to a system as complex as Microsoft 365. Overall, the company has done a good job of addressing issues as they arise, and we expect that to be the case in this instance.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

The Importance Of Having An Email Newsletter

Most business owners understand the importance of being active on at least one social media channel. That’s fine as far as it goes, but have you considered supplementing your social media presence with a good, old-fashioned newsletter?

Of course, when we say newsletter, we’re not talking about something you print and mail to your customers but rather something you publish electronically and email.

Not many companies do this anymore and that’s a real shame. While social media is fine, a regularly published newsletter can be a powerful companion to your online presence and can have several benefits.

First and foremost, it makes you stand out in the minds of your customers because again, not many companies are doing that anymore.

Second, whether you publish every two weeks or once a month, it gives you an opportunity to reach out to your customers at regular intervals. That keeps you on the collective minds of your customers.  If they’re thinking about you, they’re apt to head to your website or brick and mortar location the next time they need something.

Third, if your newsletter contains case studies or if it highlights the ways in which your company is responding to industry changes, it sends a clear message that you’re an authority on the topics you’re writing about. Everybody loves doing business with experts because experts really know what they’re doing.  It gives your customers peace of mind and confidence when they buy from you, and that makes them more likely to do so.

Finally, it’s a great way to give people who have done business with you before a sneak peek of upcoming products or services you plan to release, which makes them feel like they’re one of the insiders.  They’re in the know in ways that people who don’t get your newsletter simply aren’t, and that helps to create a powerful connection.

All that to say, if you don’t yet have a company newsletter, you may want to give serious consideration to starting one.  Done well, it will help your company in a wide range of ways.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Is Phasing Out Windows 8.1

If you are still using Windows 8.1 and if you’ve somehow managed to avoid seeing the parade of notices Microsoft has been sending out, you should know that the end is nigh.

Support for the aging OS will end on January 10, 2023.  If you have not already done so, you should begin making plans now to migrate away from that OS, and to something more modern.

This is a similar track the company adopted where the end of Windows 7 support was concerned, and the current deadline should not be a surprise to anyone.

After all, Windows 8 itself reached the end of support back in 2016. Although users of version 8.1 got a considerable extension from that point.

It’s worth mentioning that Microsoft has decided not to offer an Extended Security Update (ESU) program for Windows 8.1, so when the date arrives, that’s it.  No matter how much you may want one, you won’t be able to pay for an extension. That means you’ll lose the benefit of ongoing security patches from that point forward.

Although Windows 10 gets the lion’s share of the press for being the most widely used version of the OS of all time, Windows 8.1 was significant for the Redmond Giant.

Windows 8’s initial release was not well received, and the company worked hard to address the (often legitimate) concerns that the OS’s massive user base had.  Windows 8.1 was the culmination of those efforts and the Windows 8.1 era of the company’s history saw steady improvements in both aesthetics and functionality.

In fact, it’s fair to say that without the gains made during the Windows 8.1 era, the current OS would still look dated and many of the components that are integral to all of Microsoft’s operating systems might not have yet been overhauled.

In any case, the sun is indeed setting on Windows 8.1.  Be sure you’re ready when it goes full dark.

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