In this issue
Also this month
Get tips on keeping yourself from getting infected with today's malware in Security Bytes. Clear up all the confusion with the DTV transition in Alex's "Geek Out" section.
Birthday, Holiday, or Any Day
Anytime you need to purchase a personal computer for yourself or as a gift, remember 2K extends partner pricing for computers to our clients employees. If you are a "Mac" and like the crisp, clean lines of the Apple Macintosh or you are a "PC" and want to go with a Dell, 2K can assist you.
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Geek-Out with Alex!
The Digital TV Transition - June 12 2009: What you need to know to make the switch.
This is the newly mandated date by Congress and was authorized to occur in the Tele-Communications Act of 1996. It was originally designed to free up the radio frequencies for emergency responders but has come to include 4th generation wireless communications capabilities. You may not realize it but we were supposed to be "analog free" on January 1, 2007. This date was pushed back a number of times, including just last week to the new date of June 12, 2009. But for now, we are only just over a month past the previous flip of the switch date of Feb 17 and uncertainty is in the airwaves as Central PA has already had two stations switch to digital only. Is this transition going to go smoothly? Frankly, the transition will not be as easy as flipping a switch. The only way to minimize its impact on you is to educate yourself and I'm here to help with this. 2K is producing this article as a public service to our clients and their employees. So what does this all mean for you?
Digital TV (DTV) allows for higher quality audio and video to be broadcast over the air (OTA) than that of current analog TV signals. Being completely digital essentially allows the broadcasters to send more data over the airwaves - think of it as broadcasting a DVD vs. a VHS Tape. DTV also allows for a data stream of information to be broadcast as well - such as a on screen guide. With DTV allowing for higher quality video - it is ushering in High Definition TV (HDTV) that has been waiting in the wings since the early 1990s. But do not get confused, DTV is not necessarily HDTV. There are different quality levels for the DTV signal with the equivalent of what you see today on analog broadcast being classified as Standard Definition (SDTV) or 480i. HDTV is essentially video quality levels of 720i, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p (aka FullHD). There are a number of Central PA TV stations that are broadasting SDTV (480i) quality video on their DTV signal and are not taking advantage of any High Definition broadcasting equipment. A few of these stations are secondary stations to the main ones and are usually playing vintage TV shows and movies that will only broadcast in SDTV quality because they were never truly filmed to take advantage of the higher HDTV resolutions.
Does the DTV switch affect you? There's not an easy yes or no to this question, but a few scenarios will allow you to find out what your answer is:
- I do not own a TV - YES (But you do not need to know do you?) Ha, ha!
- I do not pay for cable or satellite TV and only receive local TV channels via an antenna. - YES
- I pay for cable tv from Comcast or another company and have it going to all my TVs. - NO
- I pay for cable TV from Comcast or another company and have one or more TVs not connected to it - MAYBE*
- I pay for digital cable/satellite TV from Comcast or another company and have a set top box on all my TVs - NO
- I pay for digital cable/satellite TV from Comcast or another company and do not have a set top box on one or more TVs - MAYBE*
*MAYBE answers require you to determine how you utilize those non connected TVs. Look at the other scenarios and only think about the non-connected TVs to determine your answer. Are most of the non-connected TV's in the "maybe" answers are utilized ONLY for video games or DVD (or VCR) viewing? While technically these are "affected" TVs - if they are not used to view over the air (OTA) broadcasts then you do not need to do anything to them.
Most people think about only their primary residence with the DTV Transition. Don't forget about these TVs: vacation home, camper, cabin, hunting lodge, or any VCRs and portable or battery powered TVs such as those used for tailgate parties or emergencies are almost certain to be affected.
What do I do if I am affected?
First think about when you purchased that tv you are watching. If it has been since March of 2008, it most likely will be able to receive the digital signals. Look in the manual to see if it can view ATSC signals. This is the technical name for DTV signals. If yes, then you have a TV with a built in DTV receiver. If the TV is older than March 2008, you are most likely going to loose the ability to watch over the air (OTA) broadcast TV after the switch.
Do I need to buy a new TV?
No. You can purchase a new TV if you would like, but it is not necessary. However, you must purchase something to continue watching over the air (OTA) broadcast TV. There are DTV converter boxes available for purchase at all stores that sell TVs and some other retail locations as well. These usually range in price from $50 to $75 and some advanced models with recording capabilities above $200. TiVoHD and DTVPal are examples of those advanced models. There is a website that provides information on many DTV converter boxes including reviews at http://www.tv-converter-boxes.com/.
While there are advantages to DVT, one big disadvantage is the fact that these digital signals will not travel as far as current analog TV signals. If you are receiving an over the air (OTA) channel now and it comes in fuzzy, there is a likelihood of you having problems with DTV signals. DTV is either there or it is not - there aren't any "fuzzy" signals. DTV signals are directional, meaning that your antenna needs to be pointed properly to receive the signal. This is much different from analog signals which traveled out from the antenna much like the ripples of water in a pond after a rock is dropped in. There is a great website that allows you to put in your address and it will locate the broadcast towers, provide you with distance and the direction from which the signal is coming. This may allow you to point your antenna to get the best reception and most channels. They also have a great guide to the different types of antennas available and which type might be best suited for your location. That website is: www.antennaweb.com
Also the US Government's Digital TV Transition website at www.dtv.gov has a huge amount of information on utilizing your antenna to get the new DTV broadcasts and troubleshooting reception and converter box problems.
Surround Sound:
DTV's video resolutions tends to get the lionshare of the praise, but the other part of the DTV signal is the audio. While today's analog television only allows for stereo sound, DTV allows for DVD quality 5.1 surround sound to be broadcast directly to you. This upgrade in audio quality will allow you to have a more immersive experience when watching your favorite shows, but you must have the equipment to utilize this as well. This equipment includes a 5.1 surround sound speaker system, Digital 5.1 Receiver, and the correct interconnect cabling between the TV and the receiver. (Note: If you are utilizing a basic DTV converter box, you will not be able to take advantage of the surround sound audio being broadcast due to the audio limitation of that box.)
Widescreen Format: We go to the theater and watch blockbuster movies in a type of widescreen format, watch DVDs in widescreen format (letterboxed - with black bars at the top and bottom) and these new HDTVs are widescreen. Everyone out there that doesn't like the widescreen format and prefer's the squarish look of analog TVs will be learning to love widescreen. Screen formats are listed as a ratio of the width to the height of the screen. Analog and SDTV are 4:3 format and "widescreen" HDTV are 16:9 format. This widescreen format allows for more video information to be broadcast and provide you with a more natural view of your TV. I mentioned earlier that some Central PA TV stations are broadcasting in SDTV (480i) quality video over their DTV channel. This means they are broadcasting in a 4:3 format and on a standard TV with a DTV converter box the video will look normal. But on a widescreen 16:9 sized HDTV this broadcast will have the blackbars on the sides. It's going to look strange to watch TV with black bars on the sides, but many HDTVs provide a "stretch" funtion which does exactly that to the picture - stretches it to fill up the widescreen TV. This does tend to make people look a bit overweight when watching TV but many widescreen HDTV owners prefer to fill up their entire screen. On the opposite side of this, if you happen to be utilizing a DTV converter on a 4:3 sized TV and you're watching a HDTV program you will see it "letterboxed" with black bars on the top and bottom. Some DTV converters have a zoom function to fill up your entire screen too, but this does crop the picture on both sides causing you to miss anything that happens in those area of the screen.
Whichever way you choose to view your TV and however you obtain your TV signal - I hope you now know how to survive the DTV transition.
Coming soon will be a related article on choosing the best way to get your HDTV.
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Happening this month
Welcome back to The 2K Insider! We have many items of interest included in this edition from the Digital TV switch to security and anti-virus information to keep you protected and your employees productive. We are always trying to improve and welcome your suggestions or topics you would like us to cover. You can reach us at Insider@2knetworks.com.
As always 2K will continue to be your technology partner and we’ll strive to improve our service and offerings. 2K had several accomplishments ending 2008 most notable being we achieved Microsoft Gold Partner. 2K now joins the elite 1% of Technology Companies nationwide who holds this status. Don’t forget 2K also is Apple certified and can fix your iMac, Mac mini or most other Apple product with our ACMT certified personnel. We at 2K will continue to focus on improving our service and delivering quality to all our clients.
Glenn E. Pepo, President & CEO
Latest Events
This is an exciting time at 2K Networking as we continue to grow. 2K continues to add new partners and offerings to help our clients. Recently we have solidified partnerships with companies such as Barracuda Networks, AppRiver, and WebSense. Through these partnerships, 2K is able to provide our clients with the best technology solutions for their businesses.
2K Networking, Inc. is proud to congratulate Shawn Bowman on passing his Apple hardware certification. This has earned him the classification as Apple Certified Macintosh Technician (ACMT). Having ACMT certified technicians on staff allows 2K to better serve our clients in diagnosing and obtaining warranty replacement parts for hardware related issues on their Apple products.
2K is now a member of COSTARS. This is the cooperative purchasing program which allows state affiliated entities to obtain competitive pricing on equipment and services. This will allow 2K to now offer our services to public schools and government entities that participate in the COSTARS program. Through this program 2K has already had the pleasure of being able to partner with several school districts in the area and has been able to save them money on computers, servers, and IT hardware purchases. We look forward to being able to extend these offerings to other school districts. Please feel free to pass along this information to administrators you come in contact with.
Coming up this April, 2K is proud to have Alberto Flores represent our company at the 54th Annual PASBO Conference. This conference for the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials will take place in Valley Forge from March 31 – April 3. Alberto will be a speaker at this conference and will be reviewing the new Rules of Civil Procedures pertaining to Electronically Stored Information and provide practical tips for school districts.
2K would also like to announce that we now have a corporate 2K Blog that can be reached at http://2knetworks.blogspot.com/. The 2K Blog will be updated semi-weekly with important information to allow you, our clients, to stay up to date with breaking news, tips and security alerts.
The Apple Core
 2K Networking is pleased to announce the expansion of our Apple Division offerings. In addition to offering Apple platform consulting and being an Apple Authorized Reseller, 2K is now officially an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP). The past few months have been spent studying Apple’s hardware and the Mac OS, having intense after-hours training sessions, and taking the required exams for the current repair certifications from Apple (Apple Certified Macintosh Technician - ACMT). This new authorization allows the 2K Apple Service Department to repair in-warranty and out-of-warranty Apple hardware and establishes 2K as one of only a very few AASPs in the entire Central PA area. We are excited to offer this new service of the Apple Division and look forward to working with our business, education and home clients to provide premier Apple repair services.
The Apple Logo and iPhone are trademarks & copyright of Apple, Inc.
Security Alert!
This edition of Security Alert! is going to again talk about a trojan/virus that I alerted you to in our last edition. We first encountered this now very nasty item back in July and August 2008 and we called it the UPS virus as it came in via an email attachment mentioning UPS. Once it had taken hold of your computer it was showing itself as Antivirus 2008 XP. After a few months of mutation, this piece of malware has become very sophisticated and dangerous and should be treated with care.
Over the course of these months its name has mutated through the following names:
Antivirus XP, MS AntiSpyware 2008 or 2009, Antivirus 2009, Antivirus 2009 360 and others that are similar.
Now one of the big questions we're getting is "Why is my antivirus program NOT protecting me from this?". Part of the problem is the fact that the "overseers" of this specific malware are rapidly changing what it does and how it does it to keep the antivirus programs from detecting it.
We have encountered this and other related malware coming in via browsing suspicious websites such as "off brand" video streaming sites. In playing the video on these sites you are allowing access to your computer and they download the malware files in the background and execute them. It is also infecting USB flash drives that are connected to the infected computer. This allows it to travel to other uninfected computers. This makes it very difficult to stop by conventional antivirus programs because they are utilizing your own habits to infect you.
We have seen the latest variants actually cause windows to stop working after the malware files have been removed. While we would like to clean a computer of this nasty beast and get the user back to work as quickly as possible, it has now become apparent that we are having to begin to do a reformat and reinstall of Windows and all programs to guarantee that the computer will be clean and work properly. We do not take this drastic step lightly and need you to be aware that it usually means that the user is without the computer for nearly a full day before they can be back up and running. There could still be work needed to get company specific software or configurations installed on a rebuilt computer.
In the Security Bytes section you will find a number of tips to help you and your users to become more vigilant and start recognizing suspicious items more readily.
Client Spotlight
2K is proud to spotlight The Family Health Council of Central Pennsylvania, headquartered in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.
2K entered into a partnership with the Family Health Council of Central Pennsylvania in August 2006 and within the first year directly improved the stability of its network and reduction in the hours spent on firefighting by the onsite IT staff person. The Council is a private, non-for-profit organization dedicated to improving health, preventing disease, and promoting wellness. Founded in 1973, the Council oversees and supports a diverse, 28-county network of organizations providing a range of vital services and care to thousands of women, men, children and adolescents each year. 2K actively participates in the development of proactive strategies and works to fill in any gaps in products or services identified in support of the Council’s network, poising the organization to capitalize on opportunities.
You can learn more about the Family Health Council of Central PA by visiting their website at www.fhccp.org
Security Bytes
Keeping your computer free of viruses, adware and malware is not just the responsibility of your IT team, but the responsibility of the individual users as well. Knowing the difference between a spam email and a valid email is a great start, but today's malware bandits have become much more adept at tricking the general user into infecting their own computer. The tips below will allow each of your company's employees to better protect themselves from infection.
- Do not open any files attached to an email from an unknown, suspicious or untrustworthy source. Slow down when you receive an email with an attachment and look over the email itself before thinking about opening the attachment.
- Do not open any files attached to an email unless you know what it is, even if it appears to come from a dear friend or someone you know. Some viruses can replicate themselves and spread through email. Better to be safe than sorry and confirm that they really sent it. If the email from the company or person is unexpected, it is a good indication that you should be suspicious.
- Do not open any files attached to an email if the subject line is questionable or unexpected. If you do need to open the attachment, save the attached files to a temporary folder on your hard drive and then scan it for viruses before opening. Most anti-virus programs will let you right-click on a folder and choose to scan for viruses.
- Delete chain emails and junk email. Do not forward or reply to any to them. These types of email are considered spam, which is unsolicited, intrusive mail that clogs up the network. Your business email is very important to you and your business. If a friend or co-worker begins sending these types of emails to you, make sure you kindly let them know that it is not needed for your job and to remove you from their future mailings of this type.
- Exercise caution when downloading files from the Internet. Ensure that the source is a legitimate and reputable one. Verify that an anti-virus program checks the files on the download site. If you're uncertain, don't download the file at all or download the file to a temporary folder and test it with your own anti-virus software.
- Update your anti-virus software regularly. Over 500 viruses are discovered each month, so you'll want to be protected. At a minimum, all virus definitions should be updated. You may also need to update the product's scanning engine as well. This is particularly important with your home computers - many came with trial versions of anti-virus software that may not actually be protecting you anymore. Be sure to check it and be sure you are protected properly.
- Back up your files on a regular basis. If a virus destroys your files, at least you can replace them with your back-up copy. You should store your backup copy in a separate location from your work files, one that is preferably not on your computer. A USB Flash drive would be perfect for these type of backups.
- When in doubt, always err on the side of caution and do not open, download, or execute any files or email attachments. Not executing or opening these files is the more important of these points.
- Ensure that your computer and software is up to date. Make sure all Windows updates are installed when the yellow shield shows up and then be sure to restart. The updates do not finish installing until the restart occurs. If you install updates at 9am and do not restart until 4pm, you could have been vulnerable to a Windows flaw related infection for that entire period.
- Browse the internet safer with the Firefox web browser. While Firefox is not invulnerable to attack, malware attacks via the web are much easier to avoid because Firefox does not run many web-based applications automatically and without your knowledge like Internet Explorer does. Also Firefox does have a number of useful add-on extensions that allow you to block Flash, advertisements and even one that works to let you know if a website has been reported as being suspicious. If you'd like to know more about this please let your 2K primary contact know.
- Utilize anti-spyware tools such as Spybot Search & Destroy, MalwareBytes, and Ad-Aware to scan your system for malware items that your antivirus program does not find. Today's malware requires a combination of tools to keep you safe. Most of these tools require you to do some manual updating and scanning. Be sure to do this at least once a week. The best time is when you go to lunch - update it, start scanning, and then go to lunch. When you come back it should be nearly complete.
- Update all other software regularlly. Winzip, Flash, Quicktime and Acrobat Reader and other utilities are installed on many computers early on and rarely get updated. Viruses are now utilizing security vulnerabilities in older versions of many of these programs.
- If you are in doubt about any potential virus-related situation you find yourself in, please contact your 2K primary contact or our office at 717-724-0537 as soon as possible to reduce the potential of an infection spreading.
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