Not your typical IT guy
Meet Chad Quesenberry, Director of Client Services for Claris Networks. Before he joined Claris, Chad developed the support structure for multiple billion-dollar enterprises from the ground up. So he knows his stuff. But he’s not your typical IT guy.
Chad is what you call a “Hi-Tech Redneck.” Or at least that’s what his friends have called him ever since college. “Growing up on my grandparent’s farms in Indian Valley, Virginia and Jonesboro, TN and always having a knack for technology probably has something to do with it,” he says. Or maybe it’s that he’s rigged up his barn with off-grid solar electricity, a full bathroom supplied by a rainwater collection system, and watches movies by the campfire, streamed via Mi-Fi wireless hotspots projected on the side of his barn.
Like other Claris employees, the Hi-Tech Redneck doesn’t exactly fit the typical IT-guy mold. Take his ideal day off for example. “To me, the best day off is spent on heavy machinery, moving trees, boulders and making roads around the farm. There are no worries there. When you solve problems for a living, anything that allows you to clear your mind of it is relaxing. The farm is hard work, but sometimes it’s nice when your only concern is where to put the next scoop of dirt.”
Not your typical minerChad’s also a miner. Granted, the Hi-Tech Redneck puts his own spin on mining as well. So what kind of mining might a guy like Chad be inclined to? The kind that involves using a high-powered computer to scour cyberspace for a limited number of undiscovered digital encryption codes that function as an anonymous online currency. That’s a mouthful!
Chad explains, “Back in March I heard about a new type of cyber currency called BitCoins. A BitCoin is a 256 bit encryption code that starts with 12 zeroes. Basically it’s a long string of numbers, which can be sent back and forth across the internet to people anonymously. Some have called it the “perfect” currency since they can be used globally and are not subject to inflation. There are a total of about 12 million, so once they’re all found, that’s it. I read about using CPU power to generate this currency, so I built a computer to “mine” them and have found about 800. From when I found my first few, their value has gone from $4.00 up to $35, but hovers around $17. My goal isn’t to make money off of them, but just to see what happens with them in the future.”
Not your typical vacationer, either
Chad’s taste for adventure goes beyond taming (often scary) server rooms and high-level technology implementations. He and his wife Kimberly have begun to do things differently when it comes time to cash in on vacation days.
“Bored with traditional beach resorts, we started going on Adventure Vacations. We would go to places that aren’t visited much, places that still have their own culture and way of life. We get to go and be a part of that culture, learn about its people and help the people there. We’ve been to Nicaragua, which was beautiful, but we had to be escorted by armed guards. We once did a 10 day kayaking excursion in Alaska. We kayaked for three to four days in the ocean and camped somewhere along Prince William Sound. Then we did some whitewater rafting, and climbed a glacier.
“Everywhere we go, we try to do something “missional.” Like when we went to Nicaragua, we got to take gifts and supplies to schools and work a day at a medical mission. We have a trip to Vietnam planned this fall, and we’ll be taking a couple suitcases of supplies to give to the people we meet over there, too.”
The federal government is closing nearly 800 of its 2000 data centers in the next four years, according to the
New York Times. Over four years, the government will swap its sprawl of data centers in favor of cloud computing technology.
The federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, says “Tapping cloud computing services could save the government an additional $5 billion a year, reducing the need for individual government agencies to buy their own software and hardware.” By switching to a cloud-based email solution alone, the General Services Administration and Department of Agriculture have saved $42 million.
Since many organizations’ data centers are independent, much of the supporting infrastructure is unnecessarily redundant. Kundra stated that as more and more services go online the focus will be on technology efficiency and not technology spending. Particularly it will focus on efficiently delivering government services like collecting and presenting data usefully.
Smaller organizations can benefit from cloud computing efficiencies and get the same large scale benefits as federal agencies. This administration-wide movement to leverage cloud computing technology mirrors a similar shift in the larger business environment. The cloud just makes sense.
When it comes to creating passwords, we are one of two things:
Not Smart: People who fall in this category use words that can be found in the dictionary for their passwords, like “football,” “Tennessee” or “password.” They also probably use the same scrawny password for multiple websites. The general consensus: it’s flat out NOT SMART to use this kind of password.
Smart: People in this category use longer combinations of characters that do not form words in any dictionary.
Among Smart People, there are a few ideas about the best ways to make passwords secure. There are a few different schools of thought:
1. Complex, Confusing & Completely Un-rememberable. Passwords like “#xH34!)z” are the graduates of this school. They are 8 characters long or more, completely random and require a password management system like LastPass to keep them all straight. Many think the only truly secure password is an un-rememberable password. However, that’s not true.
2. Sentences. These passwords are more easily remembered, and look like this: “It’s great to be a Tennessee Vol!” Drawbacks to this one are obvious. It’s a whole sentence! However, the combination of length, letters and symbols makes it very complex and unhackable. The sentence format is much easier to handle than a random string of letters, numbers and symbols.
3. 10 Characters and No Real Words. Let’s say you’re a hacker and you want my bank account password. If my password is nine characters long, it would take your computer 2.43 months at a hundred billion guesses per second to exhaust the possibilities. Make it 10 characters long, and your search will last longer than the life of your computer, 19.24 years. The one extra character makes it that much harder to hack. Computers do not know that foot and f00t look alike. Use the latter when creating a password. –Source NYTimes.com
Each of these is valid and if you do them, you too can be one of the Smart People. It’s great to be smart! Smart people typically don’t have their accounts hacked and your identity stolen.
The most technical person on staff is not the best person to bear the responsibility for IT. According to
Gartner, “when building a team to carry out the creation of a business intelligence competency centre, CFOs are in a better position to be an effective sponsor.”
Why is that? It seems to make sense that your CTO/CIO would be most effective in making those decisions because they know the most about the technologies required. However, a person with both deep knowledge of the business and financial accountability (responsibility, risk) for the project is the best combination. As a result, the sponsor with this authority can adjust the resources model to acquire what’s needed for IT’s success.
Have you had experience building an IT “competency centre”? Would you agree or disagree that the CFO is the best IT sponsor on senior staff?
Botnets are networks of computers that house malicious software used for criminal purposes. Once a computer becomes infected with botnet malware, it becomes a “bot,” one small cog in a large computer scheme. A new botnet may be indestructible, researchers say.
Each time a botnet is taken down, the next one must be stronger to defend itself. With the most recent botnet, “TDL-4,” researchers believe it is “pretty close” to indestructible. This article at
ComputerWorld describes why in full, but essentially TDL-4 can uninstall other malware that compromises its missions, it hides by subverting the computer’s operating system, has unique encryption and a unique method of issuing instructions.
How to tell if your computer is part of a Botnet:
· Your Internet connection is unusually slow
· Open your computer’s Task Manager, click Network Connections, and see if your computer shows more than a few percentage usage of internet network connection.
· Sudden loss of hard disk space
· Desktop and home pages change for no apparent reason
· A slew of other strange things could happen
How to prevent Botnet infections:
1. Run antivirus and antispyware software regularly
2. Enable automatic Windows software updates to patch known vulnerabilities
3. Patch software applications
4. Use a personal firewall
5. Follow good security practices
a. Disconnect your computer from the Internet when you are not using it.
b. Exercise caution when opening attachments or following links in emails and on Websites.
c. Do you research before you download software, especially something security related
d. Never reveal your passwords over phone or via email.
We will provide more information on this botnet as it becomes relevant to you.