CIOS 110 Lesson 9 #2

Hmmm. Living in the woods, I don't have any security set up on our wireless network. Maybe that's not such a good idea, especially since I came across the concept of Wardriving and wireless hacking. Am I foolish for thinking that living remotely makes me safer?

At work, we have high security on our networks. We use Cisco and VPNs, which I will be using as I access the network from Connecticut during a family emergency. This is the problem with technology - I may have to leave the state for a while, but I'll still be able to work. Boo!!! I think that this is probably the greatest asset of wireless security, though - being able to access servers from anywhere in the world allows a company to have employees in different locations to still have access to the same resources.

Cicso offers Firewalls, attack and intrusion protection, spam and virus protection, virtual private networks and network admission control. 3Com has firewalls, secure NIC cards, wireless intrusion prevention and unified security platforms. I tried poking around the Alcatel-Lucent website as well, but their navigation system took me in many circles and I was unable to find information on what they offer, only long blocks of text telling me that they offer security.

If I were shopping for security options for my network, I would skip Alcatel-Lucent because their website was frustrating and didn't tell me anything. While 3Com offers several good security measures, I would probably opt for something from Cisco because we use it at work. If the Dept of Defense and the supercomputing center think it's good enough, it probably will work fine for me.

CIOS 110 Lesson 9 #1

Sharing files over a network

Since all of your computers are connected to the LAN, they are all able to communicate with each other. In order to share folders and thus be able to work on the same files, you will have to adjust a few settings.

Locate the folder you wish to share and right click on it, then select "Sharing and Security" to pop open a control box. Under the "Sharing" tab, make sure that the "Share this folder on the network" box is checked. You will need to assign a name to the folder. Please make sure that this name is unique and easily accessible. For instance, if you choose to share your entire C: drive, please rename it MyNameC. If you do not do this, it will confuse your computer to find two C: drives.

After you have shared the folder, you will need to allow others to make changes to the contents. To do this, make sure the "Allow network users to make changes" box is checked.

To access a shared folder, use My Network Places, which you will find below My Computer in the Start Menu. You can use the "Add a Network Place" option on the left side of the screen to select frequently used files and set up a permanent connection.

CIOS 110 Lesson 8 #2

Two steps to backing up your computer

Before you install any new program, make a system restore. If something goes wrong, the technician can quickly set your computer back to the way it was. Go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore. Select Create A Restore Point, click Next and type in a brief description, then click Create.

To create a back up for either 2000 or XP, go to Start>Run and type NTBACKUP. Select the Backup Wizard and select Backup Everything On This Computer.

CIOS 110 Lesson 8 #1

If you're going to set up shared computers for a group of employees, you'll need to create multiple accounts. One of the first thing you will want to do is set up two administrator accounts. Make sure you set up at least two so that if one administrator is not in the office, another person will be able to log in and make changes if necessary. Each of the employees will need their own local user account in the workgroup, and these will be limited accounts. You'll set up the initial passwords, and employees will be able to change them when they log in.

CIOS 256 Lesson 10

Ah, Fireworks. I've never used this program before this lesson. Based on what I've learned, I'm not certain how much I will use it in the future. Most of what we did was basic stuff that I'm used to doing in Photoshop. Can Fireworks do it better and possibly quicker? Probably. But there's a saying about old dogs and new tricks. I've been using Photoshop for print editing for years. It will take a while before I default to another program.

I do find it easier to resize images for the web with Fireworks. Also, I don't have to "Save for Web." It's already planning on saving for web. Only time will tell how much I use it, though.

CIOS 256 - Lesson 9

So we're not doing the group blog anymore, but this lesson exhorts me to keep up with the posting on my individual blog. Even better, it encourages me to write about anything at all, not necessarily class materials.

Well, let me introduce you to my real blog, aka blog posting central. You'll probably learn far more than you ever wanted to know about me. (In fact, you should definitely skip the entry that begins with all the "TMI ahead" warnings from last month.) But if you want blog posting, that's where I do it.

CIOS 256 - Lesson 8

Hmmm, check some of the sites I regularly visit to see if they are CSS or XHTML? Man, it seems that the only thing I visit with any regularity are graphic design blogs. And those had better have some fancy designs.

Let's look at a basic site. This a coworker's personal page, as linked from our company website. Greg Newby is our chief scientist. His page is pretty simple and straightforward. One long page of text with center headers, text links and big letters for the start of each paragraph. But he does use a stylesheet, newby.css, to achieve all this.

A much fancier site I visit daily is the gossip site Jezebel. The page source for this looks MUCH more complex than Greg's page, but it still has stylesheet, or rather several of them, linked in the head of the document.