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Thanks to many TV shows, such as CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, etc, people have a common misconception about digital forensics. I’ve been approached by a number of people asking why I can’t do the work that is done on TV…”if Abby can do it, why can’t you?” Here’s why:

Evidence examined
Most of the times you might see Abby on NCIS start processing the evidence from the original. This is a huge no-no. When processing cases, you always want to work from a backup copy. Usually analyst will image a drive, sector-by-sector, to a backup storage device and process the case from the backup. This is extremely important for many reasons. The most important thing is so you don’t tamper the original evidence. If you’re processing a case, and by chance something happens and your hardware-write blocker fails, you don’t want to have to testify in court that you botched the original evidence…that being the case, all the evidence that you processed during that case will be thrown out and chances are you will be discredited.

Time to process a case
One thing that is commonly porttrayed in these hit TV shows is the amount of time to process and find information. For the sake of time, the shows preceive that this work can all be done in a matter of minutes or hours. The truth of the matter is that cases in digital forensics can take days, weeks or months. The ever growing storage potential of hard drives means that there is a growing timeline for processing cases. To initialize a terabyte of storage in any forensic software could take upwards of 72 hours. Granted this time can vary depending on the software suite and the speed of the computer. But keep in mind, initializing a case is just the computers way of indexing every bit and every byte to make sense to our eyes. After initialization is completed, the analyst still has numerous things to do before it’s finished. Here’s a quick outline of the processes that digital forensics analyst might take for a case:

• Gather evidence
• Record information on all pieces of evidence
• Prepare forensics workstation
• Image evidence to another storage device
• Initialize case in forensic software
• Mine through data for information
• Write a report on procedure and findings

Granted this is a simple, vague list of things they may do, but it’s a standard operating procedure for processing a case. All of this takes time….a lot of time.

Evidence found
Some of these shows actually have computers and hard drives that have been burnt to a crisp, yet they’re still able to extract data from them. This is every digital forensics analyst’ wet dream, but it’s just not probable. Hard drive read and write data from platters. These platters are extremely fragile. The smallest, minuet piece of dust can destroy a set of platters. The concept of extracting said platters from a burnt hard drive and then reading the data is extremely difficult and rare. Here’s my thought process on this….If a computer is in a fire or a building that exploded, chances are the computer and components reached extreme amount of heat. If the jostling of the head on the hard drive didn’t explode or destroy data, the heat of the fire would surely warp the platters. Don’t get me wrong, if you were able to grab the computer or hard drive before it was exposed to such temperatures, you’d have a much better chance of extracting data…..9 out 10 times, it’s not feasible, but it makes for great TV!

Pictures and videos
This is probably the biggest issue with these shows. I’ll give you an example: the detectives find surveillance video with their suspect. The video detective/digital forensics analyst pops in the video to his software and can instantly enlarge a screen shot from the video. He takes it a step further and rectifies the image to get a clearer picture and is able to define features. It doesn’t happen like that in real-life. Software can do some of this, but it’s not as clear cut and simple as they show you. First things first, you can’t blow up these screenshots and videos with perfect clarity. Anything that is digitized is converted into pixels; when you enlarge a picture or video with a set amount of pixels, those pixels become more visible when you enlarge. As a result the image becomes blocky, or pixelated. Some of the best software on the market can help feather out the blockyness, however it’s nothing like on these shows. If only it were that easy!

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WordPress is a content management system that has migrated from ablogging platform to website development. It’s currently being used as one of the biggest trends in web development. The community of WordPress developers and users is in the millions and because of this, it makes for a great tool for any business, personal blogger, or municipality. The user interface of WordPress is very user friendly and offers quick and easy to use options for managing all the content on your website.

There are many reasons and benefits to converting your, now, static site to WordPress. WordPress is a great tool for developers and for end-users. It offers the versatility of editing content rather easily and plugins to expand the functions and usability for your site visitors.

Appearance

When we convert a site to WordPress, we try to stay true to the original design. We offer minor changes that will benefit your site, such as converting site names from images (very common) to text for search engine optimization benefits. All changes to the design and look of the site will be approved by you before they’re live on your site. If you want to convert your site and make major changes, contact us and discuss your thoughts and we’ll work with you to keep costs down and make  your changes happen.

Plugins

WordPress plugins are available by the hundreds of thousands. They’re used to expand the functionality of your website in any way you can think possible. And if there’s not a plugin available for what you want, there’s always developers ready to build one. There are premium plugins that offer more functionality and uses. While many have a fee, you generally get life-time updates and upgrades.

Usability

WordPress is extremely easy to learn and use. It’s very similar to editing a Word document. NW Tech & Design also offers and creates customized training tutorials for all of our website customers, including those that we convert from static sites. Our videos are broken up into individual topics for easy to understand and easy to follow instructions.

Blogging

WordPress was originally developed for bloggers and for blogging sites. It has since evolved into a content management system for any site. Every site that we convert to WordPress is fully capable of blogging, so we can help you get started so that you’re able to reach out to your customers and visitors in a way you didn’t think was possible. Blogging can also engage your visitors into conversations about the topics, or products that your write about.

Return on Investment

After we convert your website to WordPress and train you on how to use it, you’ll start seeing your return of investment very quickly. You won’t need to pay companies to update the content on your site or waste hours digging through HTML code to do it yourself. The going rate for maintenance and updates to websites is $80/hr, with an hour minimum. This means after 5-6 hours of updating your content, the WordPress conversion has paid for itself. Another unseen pro to a WordPress conversion, is the increase in traffic. WordPress, by default, is very SEO friendly and will help drive customers to your site and buying your products or services.

Basic Search Engine Marketing

All of our WordPress conversions come with complementary Search Engine Marketing enhancements. We also install plugins to help you expand on your site’s search engine presence.

Bottom-line

The bottom-line is price. Every website is unique and offers new creative challenges to convert it to WordPress. We offer customized quotes for each site, based on your needs and the extent of the work. We’ll work with you closely to develop a customized WordPress theme that matches closely, if not exactly, your current static website. You’ll reap the benefits immediately after the conversion….so what are you waiting for? Let’s get going on your conversion!

For those of you who do not have a website currently or are in design phases, contact us with what you have and we’ll work with you to get your site online and traffic flowing!

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We were approached last week by a long term friend who decided to branch away from the corporate sector and start his own business, LNJ Solutions. LNJ Solutions focuses on computer repair. While this is a direct competition to NW Tech and Design, we felt it to be a great opportunity to help them with their new site. After all, competition is better for the customers and we’re all about customer satisfaction.

We worked with Travis of LNJ Solutions, to design and develop a site that is both appealing to the eye as well as functional to his customers.

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Hard Drive

Hard drives should be factored with 2 criteria: how fast can it read/write and the capacity. Most home users will not need more than 120GB of storage on a hard drive.

Speed: Many newer, higher-end computers now come equipped with solid  state drives (SSD). This is an expensive option, but makes a great deal of difference with speed, as they are not needing to read / write from a spinning platter like traditional hard drives. If SSDs are too cost prohibitive, then the next best option would be a hard drive that reads / writes at 10,000rpm. This is another specialty that would have to be requested from the manufacturer. The extra speed boost provided from SSDs and VelociRaptors allows for operating systems and programs to be accessed more quickly. A computer with an SSD could boot to a Windows 7 desktop in a matter of seconds.

Standard hard drives included are usually 7,200rpm in desktop computers and 5,400rpm in laptops. This is usually sufficient for most users.

Capacity: Most new computers on the market come with an excess of 500GB of hard drive storage space. This is more than any normal home user can use. The standard use for email and internet users is less than 160GB. Those that do a lot of gaming or backing up of media, those users would benefit from the extra space. Don’t be hung-up  on the size of the drive….the speed is much more beneficial.

The post Deciding on a new computer? (Part 2) appeared first on Northwest Tech & Design.

It’s a common conversation I have with many of my clients and customers: “Which operating system should I get?”, “Laptop or desktop?”, “How much memory do I need?”, “Do I need a big hard drive?” or “What brands are good? ” In this series, I’ll help you make an informed decision so that when you are ready to buy a new computer, you’ll know exactly what you want and the only question you’ll ask is “Is that price negotiable?”

Memory

Everyone is obsessed with the amount of memory, or RAM, in their computer. The bottom line, when it comes to memory, is that the normal home user will only need about 2GB. Most new computers come with upwards of 4GB, which can be a little much, but usually does not affect the price. Many home users are web surfers, email readers and solitaire gamers, so the need of more memory is not needed. In some cases an excess in memory is a good thing. Ask yourself this: “Am I a heavy gamer?”; “Am I a graphic design?”; “Do I running resource intensive programs like AutoCad or Photoshop?”; “Do you plan on keeping this computer longer than 3 years?”

Having more memory can be a benefit to home users if they plan on using the computer longer than 3 years. By then you may be using more resource intensive programs that require more memory. In this case, more memory is investment in your computer’s life.

If you can’t answer “yes” to any of the questions above, it may not be in your best interest to spend more for more than 4GB. While shopping around, make a note of what comes standard in the computer, and go with it.

The post Deciding on a new computer? (Part 1) appeared first on Northwest Tech & Design.

We were using PayPal for our primary source of accepting payments for credit cards. There are a few problems with that:

1. Many of our customers and clients don’t want to use PayPal as they think you need a PayPal account to use PayPal. This is not the case, but nevertheless, we’re all about efficiency and making things easier for our customers and clients.
2. PayPal charges a hefty fee for each transaction. We don’t like to pass this fee on to the customer, but for the sake of convenience, we end up loosing profits.
3. PayPal limits the monthly withdraw limit to $500.

Our new payment gateway will allow us to accept credit cards instantaneously without the need of any special accounts. We’re able to physically swipe your card, and we’re able to do it on site. It’s fast, it’s convenient and everyone’s happy in the end.

We still offer online payments through invoices. Our customers and clients are able to make payments using PayPal and Google Checkout. Both of which do not require accounts….just a name and credit card number.

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Updating software is essential with computing. Not only does it allow you to use new possible features, but many times it patches security vulnerabilities with the software. Most software programs have built in updaters, but if you’re like me, you’ve turned off the updaters to save bandwidth and startup time. Keep in mind that by doing this, you are now relying on yourself to check for these updates manually.

For most programs, such as Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, all browsers, and anti-virus programs, I simply check FileHippo.com for the latest version. FileHippo.com makes it easy for you find the latest versions of these programs (and many others) and download them for your updates. It’s important to notw that when it comes to your anti-virus and anti-malware programs, FileHippo.com will only have the updates for the base program, not the virus definitions. I generally set myself a reminder to check this site once a month to update these programs.

Something to be aware of with software updates is that some programs don’t uninstall their old counterparts. Java is notorious for this. The problem is that the old versions of Java remain after updates, which take up space and leave security vulnerabilities wide open. Adobe Reader used to be bad about that, however, they have come-to and started removing previous versions. From what we’ve seen, Adobe Reader will not remove versions older than v.7, so be sure to look through your Add/Remove Programs for any stragglers.

For Windows, I turn off the automatic updater. Not only is the Windows updater a bandwidth hog, but it is also an annoyance. By default, Windows 7 with download and install all new updates without your permission. Once the install is finished, it will generally prompt you to restart. This usually happens when you’re watching a movie or in the middle of writing that important document. I set my Windows updates to download and install manually. And I usually check for updates monthly. I do this in conjunction with all the other software updates. I do use my computer still while updating, but I am aware that a restart will be coming soon, so I work on non-essential things, such as my saved game of Spider Solitaire.

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Microsoft IE9

Microsoft has decided to release it’s latest browser: IE9. A little behind the times, Microsoft finally has a shot to win back some of it’s users that migrated to Firefox or Chrome. This will be a tough pitch to sell, as IE9 is not compatible with Windows XP. This means that roughly 55% of the world’s computers will not be upgrading to the new browser. IE9 will be more compliant to web standards and offer many HTML5 features not seen in IE7 or IE8. There”s is also a change in the user interface to be more “user-friendly”.

IE9 brags of several new features, which can be a great benefit for the everyday home user:

• All around fast — means your online flash videos will play in a more streamlined fashion. Installing and loading are much quicker
• One box — means your address bar is now a search bar. New pages open in a new tab rather than a new window.
• SmartScreen Filter — means it will scan links from webmail / mail and the net and compare those links to a database of known dangerous sites. This is a great security benefit for home users
• Focused on your websites — means there is no jumble of icons at the top of your browser. It is streamlined to deliver your content with littler interference.

Download IE9

Mozilla Firefox 4.0

Short on the heels of Microsoft’s release in the launch of Firefox 4 next week. In the new release, Firefox has a dramatic overhaul with the user interface and it will follow web standards much more. They have a full series of new and improved features on their site: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/.

Download Firefox 4

Both of these browsers take on the new look that Google Chrome has been using for the past couple of years. And utilizing the address bar as a search field. All I have to say is It’s about time!. As Charles Caleb Colton once said, “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.” And we’re seeing that now with the browser wars.

Currently NWTD recommends Google Chrome as your primary browser. Not only is it faster than most other browsers, it’s also more secure. No matter what browser you use, do yourself a huge favor and upgrade to the latest version. Not only will you be more secure from the nasty malware on the internet, but your browsing speed will increase.

Download Google Chrome

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