Category: Tips & Info

Tips & Info Category

Wi-Fi-enabled ‘Hello Barbie’ records conversations with kids and uses AI to talk back

Today, Mattel released Hello Barbie, a WiFi-enabled doll that detects language and ‘talks back.’ But how will this high-tech toy impact real-life relationships?

Hello-barbie

She wears black flats, a motorcycle jacket, and skinny jeans. Her curly, bleach-blonde hair falls just past her shoulders. She has a permanent smile and large blue eyes. And, when you talk to her, she listens.

But this young woman isn’t an ordinary friend. “Hello Barbie” is less than a foot tall, weighs just under two pounds, and is made of plastic. And she is on sale for $74.99.

Mattel’s latest Barbie, marketed for children six and up, has just hit the shelves. She is unlike any doll before her—not only does she listen, but she can talk back.

To get started, kids simply download the Hello Barbie companion app. And to turn her on, you push a button on her silver belt buckle. Hello Barbie’s necklace is both a recorder and a microphone. Using WiFi, the jewelry will pick up a child’s questions and conversations—and transmit them back to a control center for processing. Speech-recognition software, operated through ToyTalk, will detect the input. Then, Hello Barbie will reply, using one of 8,000 pre-programmed lines. Examples include:

You know, I really appreciate my friends who have a completely unique sense of style…like you!
Here’s what’s up: I’m worried my sister Stacie is having a hard time finishing her homework. Does that ever happen to you?
I think Santa is real. There’s something very magical about the holiday season and I think he helps bring that magic to all of us!
So if you were planning the biggest, raddest, most unforgettable party of the year, what would it be like?
Of course we’re friends! Actually, you’re one of my best friends. I feel like we could talk about anything!

Hello Barbie’s dialogue, while perky and fashion-focused, reflects an attempt by Mattel to create a more well-rounded character than in the past. In 1992, Mattel pulled its string-operated Teen Talk Barbie from shelves after being criticized by The American Association of University Women for the inclusion of an unfortunate line: “math class is tough.” It is no mistake that Hello Barbie’s lines includes: “Oh nice! Fun with numbers! Teaching math sounds like a lot of fun. What kinds of things would you teach—Counting? Addition? Subtraction?”

Still, the implication that Barbie is being sold as a ‘friend’ is unsettling. “Hello Barbie can interact uniquely with each child by holding conversations, playing games, sharing stories, and even telling jokes!” boasts Mattel’s website. Hello Barbie, claims Mattel, is “Just like a real friend. [She] listens and remembers the user’s likes and dislikes, giving everyone their own unique experience.”

But is she really listening?

While Barbie may appear to listen and respond, “pretend empathy is not empathy,” said Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT and author of Reclaiming Conversation. Turkle worries about how children will understand their new ‘friend.’

“They are drawn into thinking that pretend empathy is the real thing,” said Turkle. “But objects that have not known the arc of a human life have no empathy to give. We put our children in a compromised position.”

Beyond the social implications of the doll, the capabilities of the recording technology raise privacy issues.

Using Hello Barbie involves recording voice data (see the privacy policy here) and requires parental consent. However, Mattel states that “parents and guardians are in control of their child’s data and can manage this data through the ToyTalk account.” The company also states that the recordings are protected under the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,” and recordings containing personal information will be deleted once they “become aware of it.”

Still, the potential for misuse of this private data is a legitimate concern. “Obviously it is a security and privacy nightmare,” said Roman Yampolskiy, director of the Cybersecurity Lab at the University of Louisville. “[The] company [is] collecting data from kids—hackers [could be] getting access to private info.”

However, like Turkle, Yampolskiy is “more concerned about social development of the children interacting with it.”

“We are basically running an experiment on our kids and have no idea if it will make them socially awkward, incapable of understanding body language, tone of voice and properly empathize with others,” he said.

It all raises the question of what is meant, exactly by ‘real’ conversation? Turkle said, “Why would we take such risks with something so delicate, so crucial: Our children’s ability to relate to each other as human beings?”

Despite concerns, Hello Barbie is here, being shipped to homes across the globe beginning today. She is being turned on, spoken to, and listened to. And when children are finished with her, she is shut down, stood on a charger (Hello Barbie cannot stand on her own) and charged back up.

When she is turned on again, Barbie might ask: “Did you miss me at all?”

“Not even an itsy bitsy, eensy weensy bit?”

How children will respond remains to be seen.

Mattel did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

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The 15 most frightening data breaches

Ashley Madison (2015)

All data breaches are scary, but some just have that extra scream factor.

In arguably the most embarrassing data breach of the bunch, a group calling itself “The Impact Team” stole 37 million records from adultery website Ashley Madison, including many records that customers had paid to have deleted.

Virtually all of the company’s data was stolen in the hack, including records that suggest most female accounts on the site are fake, and that the company used female chat bots to trick men into spending money.

LivingSocial (2013)

Daily deals company LivingSocial had its network compromised in 2013, with hackers stealing roughly 50 million names, email addresses, birthdays, and encrypted passwords from its SQL database.

Sony PlayStation Network (2011)

Game over, man. In April 2011, hackers raided Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) service, stealing personally identifiable information from more than 77 million gamers.

Sony was further criticized for delaying the release of public information about the theft and for storing customer data in an unencrypted form.

The attack took Sony’s PSN out of service for 23 days.

Internal Revenue Service (2015)

Nigerian scammers pilfered more than $50 million from the U.S. Treasury via an embarrassingly simple 2015 hack of the Internal Revenue Service website.

Information scraped from previous data hacks was used to steal Americans’ identities and request copies of past tax returns on the IRS website. The crooks then filed new tax returns with falsified data, requesting big refunds.

The hack caused massive nightmares for the estimated 334,000 people whose records were stolen before the IRS shut down the transcript request service.

Target (2013)

Hackers installed point-of-sale malware on Target’s computer network sometime in 2013, resulting in the theft of more than 70 million customer records. Stolen data included payment card numbers, expiration dates, and CVV codes.

The retailer reached out to affected customers by offering free data monitoring (standard practice) and a 10% off discount on a future shopping trip. But it was too little, too late; same-store sales slid in the quarter following the hack.

Anthem (2015)

Anthem, the United States’ second largest for-profit health insurer, disclosed in February 2015 that it had lost 78.8 million unencrypted customer records to criminals. Names, social security numbers, email addresses, and income data was stolen.

The rare piece of good news: Financial and medical records were not affected.

Adobe (2013)

Adobe revealed in October 2013 that hackers had stolen 38 million active customer IDs and passwords, forcing the company to send out a wave of password reset warnings.

Weeks after, the news got worse for the company: The thieves also made off with the source code for its popular Adobe Photoshop software.

eBay (2014)

Talk about an inside job: In 2004, online auction house eBay suffered the largest hack in U.S. history, losing 145 million login credentials to a hacker using an internal eBay corporate account.

Names, email and street addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates were compromised, but thankfully, passwords were stored in encrypted form.

Home Depot (2014)

In September 2014, Home Depot admitted that it fell prey to hackers who installed antivirus-evading malware on its self-checkout registers. An estimated 56 million sets of customer payment card data were stolen in the attack.

The company’s losses related to the event are expected to top $1 billion when all of the lawsuits are finally settled. Only $100 million of that will be covered by insurance.

JP Morgan Chase (2014)

The September 2014 breach of JP Morgan Chase proved that even the largest U.S. banks are vulnerable to data theft. Online banking login details were not stolen, but crooks did get their hands on 76 million sets of names, emails, addresses, and phone numbers of bank customers, creating serious phishing concerns.

A group of Russian hackers is believed to be responsible for the attack.

PNI Digital Media (2015)

PNI Digital Media, the company that handles online photo printing for CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Costco, and many more national chains, lost an unknown number of customer records to hackers in 2015.

Given that the company boasted more than 18 million transactions in 2014, it’s likely that this breach affected tens of millions of Americans.

Heartland (2008)

Credit and debit card processing firm Heartland Payment Systems became one of the largest data breach victims in U.S. history when hackers compromised more than 130 million accounts in 2008.

The criminal ring involved in the Heartland data theft was also found to be responsible for the 2005 hack of TJX Companies involving 94 million records.

TJX Companies (2005)

In a 2005 scheme dubbed “Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin,” a group of hackers used an unsecured Wi-Fi network at a Marshalls store to break into parent TJX Companies’ computer system and steal 94 million customer records, including payment card data.

Albert Gonzalez, the ringleader of the hack, is serving a 20-year sentence in Leavenworth.

U.S. Office of Personnel Management (2015)

Earlier this year, the United States Office of Personnel Management admitted that hackers had taken 21.5 million records belonging to those who had undergone government background checks or otherwise applied for federal employment. The hackers stole a wealth of sensitive data, including security clearance information and fingerprint data belonging to secret agents.

The Washington Post reported that the attack is believed to have originated in China.

Zappos (2012)

In January 2012, online shoe retailer Zappos stated that cybercriminals had stolen data of 24 million customers, including names, addresses, and the last four digits of their payment cards.

After the announcement, Zappos had to disconnect its phone lines to keep upset customers from calling in and overloading its phone system.

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Google & Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network Arrives

Google’s long expected second shot at taking on Facebook in the social networking space has arrived in the form of the Google+ Project. It has some interesting twists on the social networking model but is far from a Facebook-killer.

That Name

The terrible name is a bad start. Google+? Google+! I can’t even question or exclaim about the bad name without it looking bad in writing.

Pronounced “Google Plus,” the product is officially written as Google+ — making placing any punctuation after the name fairly awkward.

Seriously, I’m cursing whoever made the final decision to go with Google+ as a name. Wasn’t the Google +1 sharing service bad enough?

Now we have Google+, which in turn allows you to +1 things that you’ve Google+’d. My head hurts from writing that.

In this article, I’ll generally stick with the Google+ name except where Google Plus is more legible, due to punctuation.

The Google+ Project

What about the product itself? Google dubs Google+ as a “project” rather than a product, stressing it’s part of making Google itself more social rather than being a standalone social network to take on Facebook.

“It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president who oversees Google’s social products.

But is it Facebook competitor, I asked in a follow-up question. Google emailed back:

No. We realize that today people are increasingly connecting with one another on the web. But the ways in which we connect online are limited and don’t mimic our real-life relationships. The Google+ project is our attempt to make online sharing even better. We aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available, we just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you.

OK, but as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. And Google+ looks like and quacks like Facebook in several ways.

Circles

Most important, Google+ is a social network of your friends, family and other contacts, a way to connect to these people, just like Facebook.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is built from the ground up around the concept of sharing material with groups of people, called “Circles.” Here’s an example of how they look:

The idea is that you can easily drag-and-drop people into different types of Circles, which you can then use for sharing different types of things.

For example, you can create a “Family” circle where you might chose to share things only with family members in it, while another “Work” circle might contain work colleagues who only see what you share to that.

Google+ Circles Vs Facebook Lists & Groups

While Facebook might not have been built from the beginning with a Circles-like sharing concept, Facebook does currently have two features that are similar: Friend Lists & Groups.

Added in December 2007, Friend Lists allow you to share some of your Facebook information with specific groups of friends (or other selected contacts) that you create. They’re also supposed to allow you to group message people in a list, though I couldn’t get this to work, when I tested it today.

Friend Lists don’t allow for selective sharing. But the updated Facebook Groups feature that came out last October does provide this, a way to share what you want with whom you want.

How does Circles weight up against these? I can’t say first hand. The Google+ product wasn’t live for me to test when I wrote this (our hands-on review will come later today).

Friend Lists are nice in that if you pick one person, such as below where I selected Facebook communications chief Elliott Schrage, you get relevant suggestions that appear (other Facebook execs who’ve friended me on Facebook):

But that list can’t be used, as best I can tell, to start an associated group to share just to these people. Instead, when I tested today, I was still forced to make a group, then pick people individually to add to that.

So, the drag-and-drop interface of Circles looks appealing. Then again, if you have hundreds of “friends,” it still might turn into too much organization. Maybe people will use it to create some select groups that they really want (family, close friends, those in a club, etc.). But if it turns into a wonderful tool, it’s hard to imagine that Facebook couldn’t easily match it.

Who’s In Your Circle?

There’s no limit to the number of circles you can create. But where do the people come from who will be in your circles?

First, any contacts you’ve stored through the Google Contacts service will be available. If you have no contacts, you can import them through the CSV format, which many contact services will export out to.

Google also said that it is looking into ways to directly important contacts from Yahoo and Microsoft. Facebook wasn’t mentioned.

That’s not surprising. Facebook hasn’t allowed the export of friends’ email addresses, except to … Yahoo and Microsoft. The stories below explains more about this:

What’s all this mean in practical terms? Everyone in Google+ will effectively be starting from scratch.

If you already use things like Gmail, you probably have Google Contacts that give you email addresses of your social network. If you don’t, you can import — and Yahoo and Microsoft may serve as go-betweens to help you bring information from Facebook into Google Plus.

From Email To Virtual Person

The bigger issue is that your contacts — be that from within Google or imported from Facebook — are basically just email addresses. The won’t have any social connection information with them.

Google Contacts won’t know that a particular person whose email address you have is friends with other people you know. A Facebook import won’t turn email addresses gathered from there into links with other people who use Facebook.

Instead, what will really jump start Google+ is if a significant number of people come into the system and start claiming profiles within it, effectively turning those email addresses into virtual people who have connections within Google Plus.

That’s a big if. If you’re already happy using Facebook, you may have no more incentive to use Google’s new social network than someone already happy using Google has to switch over to Bing. What you’re using is doing the job just fine.

Buzz Off Google Buzz

When people do get into the system, that does open up another way to add contacts. You’ll be able to search through other members who have registered.

But here’s the crazy thing. Those connections you may have already formed using Google Buzz? Remember, Google’s last attempt to take on Facebook from February 2010? None of that is being used for Google Plus. The two products are being kept completely separate.

I suspect Google’s trying to be as cautious as possible, in the wake of its settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (see Google Settles FTC Charges Over Buzz, Agrees To 20 Years Of Privacy Audits). Buzz seems tainted, so keeping Google+ isolated from that may be deemed the most prudent course.

And what’s the future for Buzz, with Google+ coming out? Google told me in a follow-up email:

The short answer is it won’t have any major impact on Buzz at launch. Buzz users will still see a Buzz tab on their Google profile, and Buzz will continue working as it always has. Google+ users can also be Buzz users or can decide to just share their content using one of the products. Over time, we’ll determine what makes the most sense in terms of integrating the products.

Google+ Stream

Now let’s talk about how you see what’s being shared by those in your network, as well as what you can specifically share.

Information appears in your “Stream,” which is akin to Facebook’s news feed. At the top of your stream is a sharing box. Actually, two sharing boxes:

In the new black navigation bar that began showing up for some people this week, there’s a “Share” area to the right side. That bar, by the way, has been dubbed the “One Google” bar, Google told me. No matter where you are on Google, you’ll have the ability to share something out to Google Plus.

In the Stream itself, there’s a longer box, where you can enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos. You can also share links or your location, if you’ve allowed Google to track that for you. On mobile devices, you can select from a drop-down of nearby places to check-in.

The check-in feature also raises questions about Google Latitude — does it get absorbed into Google+ eventually? What about HotPot?

What do you see from others? Here’s an example:

In this screenshot, the person is viewing what’s been shared only by people in their “Bike Geeks” groups, as highlighted on the left side. By selecting another circle that’s listed, they would see only information being shared by that group.

Friends, Followers & Off-Network Friends

As with Twitter (or with Facebook, when it comes to fan pages), it’s possible with Google+ to follow other people on the network, even if they don’t reciprocate and follow you or friend you back.

Google says that if you follow someone this way, you’ll only see what they choose to share with everyone publicly. If they share some things more restrictively, with particular circles, for example, those outside of those circles won’t see that.

Somewhat related, you can be friends with people who aren’t formally part of Google Plus. If they’re an email-only contact and never formally join the service, you can still add them to circles and share with them.

When you do this, they’ll apparently be sent an email with whatever you wanted to share, a picture, an update and so on.

The downside is that if they’re not on Google Plus, they’ll get a notification anytime you share anything. So if you’re a big sharer, potentially you might hit some of your friends with a lot of email.

Where’s +1?

In the stream example above, there was a +1 button at the bottom of the photo. Yes, anything you like within Google+ can be +1?d, in the way that anything you like on Facebook can be liked with Facebook Like buttons.

If you do that, do your friends on Google+ see that action, in the way that friends on Facebook may see what you like? Nope. Not to my understanding,

Further more, all those Google +1 buttons that are now starting to appear on Google search worldwide? Those Google +1 buttons that publishers have diligently been adding to their sites since they were released earlier this month? Nothing from those button clicks flows back into Google Plus.

It’s crazy. It makes no sense. It’s as if Facebook launched its Like buttons but forgot to hook them up to flow information back into Facebook.

Right now, it remains the case that if you want to see what someone has +1?d, then you have to remember to go to their Google Profile page on a regular basis, then hope they’ve enabled the +1 tab on that profile, then rinse and repeat for other people.

Google told me that it would be “logical” to see +1 flow into Google+ and that “one could guess eventually” it will happen. So, I’m pretty sure we will see this happen. But when it will launch is unclear, and it really feels like an incredible mistake that it’s not part of the launch.

Google Sparks: Tips On What To Share

Time for more features. What if you started a social network and no one knew what to share? That’s a problem that Google Sparks is intended to solve.

Think of it like Google Alerts made to flow into Google Plus. Google Sparks lets you follow topics of interest:

You can browse suggestions or set up your own keyword-based searches. Then when you select a “Sparks” link, you’ll get a feed of search results that you might wish to share. Here’s an example of what Sparks might show for a fashion topic:

The relevancy is supposed to be tweaked to find especially sharable content that people are already clicking on, things that are very visual with photo and pictures.

I got a brief demo trying two searches, and the results didn’t thrill me. They were OK, but they didn’t feel particularly shareable. Still, the feature will probably be useful to some, and I can’t really assess the relevancy either way on such limited testing.

Hangouts: Group Video Chat

Google seems to be hanging most of its hopes that Google+ will attract people from Facebook on two main features, I’d say. One is the aforementioned Circles sharing feature. The other is the Hangout video chat feature.

With Hangouts, up to 10 people at a time can all interact through video:

The demo I saw of the system was compelling. As one participant spoke, the main image automatically changed to that person. You can also play video that everyone watches.

Gundotra spent some time talking with me about how Google has examined the social dynamics of video chat, to get people more comfortable participating. The key is to get several people all involved casually, rather than to barge in with a solitary invite.

He used a “talking to your neighbor” analogy to explain more. You’re probably are hesitant to knock a neighbor’s door and disturb them just because you want to talk. But if you saw them outside on their porch, Gundotra said, you’d probably feel better saying “Hi” when passing by. If two neighbors were sitting and talking, you’d probably feel rude not also stopping and chatting.

Hence the Hangouts name. When someone launches a Hangout, this shows up on the feed that goes out to their friends. As more people join, the notifications get updated to show the number participating. As that number rises, Google says even more people are compelled to take part.

The party ends at 10, however. No more can participate for scale reasons and also because the group dynamics get too hard, Gundotra said. If someone leaves, others can come in.

The puzzling thing to me is that Google’s not made it possible for anyone to stream the chat out to non-participants. If you have a group of friends, and not all can take part at once, others might be interested just to listen in.

Beyond that, Hangouts seems like a pretty awesome tool for those who wanted to record video shows. But there’s no way to save what happens.

Huddle: Group Text Chat

Somewhat related to Hangouts is Huddle, a group text chat service. I can’t really tell you more than that. Google didn’t cover this during my talk with them about Google Plus last week, so I’ve only got a screenshot for you and a promise will cover it more in our coming hands-on piece:

Huddle is for Android 2.0+ phones, iPhone 4.0+ phones and SMS, Google tells me.

Instant Upload

The last major feature of Google+ is called “Instant Upload.”

For those with Android phones, you can have any picture you take be uploaded to a centralized — and private — photo album area.

Google tells me they hope to bring it to other phones, as well.

Getting Google+

Want to try the service? Right now, it’s strictly invite only. Some press are being allowed in, along with others that Google hand picks. There’s no ETA on when wider invites will be available.

Unusually, this isn’t being called a beta test or an experiment but rather a “field trial” that’s meant to finally gather some feedback from outside Google itself.

The limited test is probably wise. It’ll give Google more time to discover things it might not have anticipated being problems, as was the case with Buzz.

As for a wider release, and possible success, it’s anyone’s guess. As I said earlier, if you’re happy using Facebook, there seems relatively little to make you want to switch over to Google Plus, at the moment.

Perhaps with further Google +1 integration, that might change. Perhaps if there are people who want a Facebook alternative, Google’s now got a core to build on for them. At least the guessing about what Google might be doing is over.

10 Windows 7 tips to get the most out of your machine

If you’re one of the many business users who has not upgraded their computer to Windows 10, there are still resources to boost your experience. Here are 10 tips for getting the most out of the OS.

Windows 10 faced a controversial roll-out, with privacy concerns, bugs, and other issues plaguing many users. And as of August 2016, just 1% of business machines had upgraded to Windows 10, according to a study from Softchoice. Instead, 91% of the machines were operating with Windows 7—an 18% increase over the same period of time in 2015.

“It seems businesses don’t see an urgent need to move operating systems, so long as their cloud-based applications are still running fine on Windows 7,” Softchoice’s Microsoft director Craig McQueen wrote in a press release at the time. “In addition to the security benefits, I think once organizations grasp the user benefits—such as touch and Cortana—we will start to see a boost in adoption.”

While experts predict Windows 10 deployments will pick up this year, it’s important for those still using Windows 7 for business to get the most out of their machines. Here are 10 articles with Windows 7 tips that will help enterprise users operate the machines more effectively.

1. 10 ways to speed up Windows 7

While Windows 7 generally performs well, over time, the system can slow down and require some care to get it back up to speed. The OS also contains certain features that users can take advantage of to improve overall performance. Here, we outline 10 steps business users can take to enhance the performance of your Windows 7 system.

2. Use multiple monitors with Windows 7’s Remote Desktop Connection

Windows 7 allows users to connect to a remote computer and utilize the local system’s multiple monitors. Here is a step by step advice on how to configure and operate multiple monitors using Windows 7’s Remote Desktop Connection, as well as how to connect to and from Windows versions that do not support this feature.

3. Quick Tips: Flush the ARP cache in Windows 7

The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache is an important part of IP networking on any OS, as it links Ethernet addressing to hardware addressing. Newly mapped addresses are saved in an ARP cache, which is usually fine, but can sometimes cause issues with internet connections and web page loading times. Here, are the necessary steps to clear the ARP cache, and how to manage it going forward.

4. 10+ Windows 7 services you may not need

While every version of Windows includes a core set of system services, business users can disable some that are not necessary in order to improve performance and security. In this article, we highlight 13 services that users can disable if they so choose on Windows 7 systems that will likely not have any impact on business operations, including IP Helper, offline files, and Network Access Protection.

5. 10 Windows 7 commands every administrator should know

IT staff who troubleshoot Windows 7 problems often have to dive into the command line. Here, are 10 fundamental Windows 7 commands that are useful for IT administrators, including System File Checker, File Signature Verification, and Driverquery.

6. Modifying the Windows 7 boot loader with the Boot Configuration Data Editor tool

In Windows Vista and later versions of Windows, the bootloader was moved from boot.ini to a utility called BCDEdit. This article walks users through how to modify the boot config data using this tool.

7. Change and customize Windows 7’s Logon screen wallpaper

Changing and customizing the Windows 7 Logon screen wallpaper is easy once you know the steps, as Microsoft built the ability to change the wallpaper right into the OS, as opposed to needing any third-party software. Here, we offer a tutorial on doing so.

8. Change the Processor Affinity setting in Windows 7 to gain a performance edge

Most applications have been designed for multi-core processors, and work with an OS to distribute their operations evenly across cores to enhance performance. However, you can sometimes achieve better overall performance from certain applications by configuring them to run on different processor cores, which Windows 7 allows via the Processor Affinity setting. In this article, we explain two ways to change the Processor Affinity setting in Windows 7.

9. Use Windows 7 Event Viewer to track down issues that cause slower boot times

Experiencing a slow Windows 7 boot time? You can use Windows 7’s Event View to investigate the source of the problem. The Event Viewer includes a category of event logs called Applications and Services Logs, which track key elements of the OS. Here, we explain how it is possible to find out how long it took to boot up your system every time, since the day Windows 7 was first installed, along with instances where boot time slowed down, all through these logs.

10. Tag your files for easier searches in Windows 7

This article, walks users through how to tag files to make them searchable via the Search filters built into Windows Explorer’s Search box in Windows 7. It’s possible to do this easily from many applications while saving a file. The ability to more easily find files is a boon for business users who want to enhance their productivity.

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Use multiple monitors with Windows 7’s Remote Desktop Connection

In Windows 7 you can connect to a remote computer and take full advantage of your local system’s multiple monitors. Here’s how.

If you’re using multiple monitors on your system setup and you regularly connect to other systems via Remote Desktop, you know how frustrating it is to go from a multiple-monitor display to a single-monitor display for your remote connection. If so, you’ll definitely want to learn how you can take advantage of multiple monitors in Microsoft Windows 7’s Remote Desktop Connection.

However, before going any further it is important to understand right off the bat that multiple-monitors support in Windows 7’s Remote Desktop is available only on Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Enterprise. (It is also available in Windows Server 2008 R2.) Furthermore, both the local and remote systems must be running one of the supported versions. For example, Windows 7 Ultimate is running on the local and Windows 7 Enterprise is running on the remote.

As long as you have the proper configuration, Windows 7 provides you with real multiple-monitor support as opposed to the monitor-spanning feature that was introduced in the previous version of Remote Desktop Connection. This means that in Windows 7 you can use this feature to connect to a remote computer and take full advantage of your local system’s multiple monitors on your remote system.

In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, we’ll describe Windows 7’s Remote Desktop support for multiple monitors and show you how to configure it for connecting to other Windows 7 systems. we’ll also show you how to use Remote Desktop’s monitor-spanning feature when connecting to, and from, Windows versions that do not support the multiple-monitors feature.

What’s the difference?

Before we get started, let’s take a moment to discuss the different types of Remote Desktop monitor configurations you can have when using a system with multiple monitors. In the standard type of connection, Remote Desktop displays the remote system in a window on one monitor. In a connection configured with the monitor-spanning feature, Remote Desktop displays the remote system in a window on one monitor but allows you to drag or span that window across multiple monitors. In a connection configured with the multiple-monitors feature, Remote Desktop makes the remote system behave as if it were physically connected to multiple monitors. Each of these configurations is illustrated in Figure A.

Figure A

There are three types of configurations you can use when using Remote Desktop on a system with multiple monitors.

Configuring a multiple-monitors connection

If you have the proper setup, configuring Windows 7’s Remote Desktop multiple-monitor feature is easy. To begin, Launch Remote Desktop Connection and select the system you want to connect to with multiple-monitor support from the Computer drop-down list. Then, click the Options button to expand the Remote Desktop Connection window so that you can see all the tabs. Next, choose the Display tab and select the Use All My Monitors for the Remote Session check box, as shown in Figure B. To complete the procedure, return to the General tab and click the Save button.

Figure B

Selecting the Use All My Monitors for the Remote Session check box is all that is needed to enable the multiple-monitor feature.

When you connect to the remote system, the remote system’s monitor will instantly fill your multiple monitors, just as if it were physically connected to the monitors.

Configuring a monitor-spanning connection

As mentioned, in a connection configured with the monitor-spanning feature, Remote Desktop allows you to drag or span the window across multiple monitors. However, there are a couple of caveats. First your multiple monitors must have the same screen resolution. Second, the monitors must be aligned, or positioned, side-by-side. Third, the combined screen resolution of your multiple monitors must be under 4096 x 2048.

To launch Remote Desktop Connection with monitor-spanning support, just click the Start button and type the following command in the Start Search box. (Alternatively, you can open a Command Prompt window and type the same command.)

Mstsc /span

When you do, you’ll see the standard Remote Desktop Connection dialog box, and you can launch the connection as you normally would. As soon as you make a connection, you’ll immediately see the desktop of the remote system spread across your multiple monitors. If you need to have access to both the local and remote desktops, you can reduce the size of the remote system’s desktop to only one monitor by clicking the Restore Down button on the Remote Desktop window. As a shortcut, you can also use the keystroke: [Ctrl][Alt][Break].

Once the window is on one monitor, you use click and drag to resize the window to completely cover a single monitor. Keep in mind that when you reduce the size of a spanned remote widow, it will display both horizontal and vertical scroll bars, as shown in Figure C, that you’ll have to use to see the entire screen. However, you can instantly span the window by clicking the Maximize button.

Figure C

When you resize the remote desktop’s spanned window, you’ll have to use scroll bars to view the entire screen.

Creating a shortcut

Of course, using a command line to launch your Remote Desktop connection isn’t the most convenient way to use the monitor-spanning feature. Chances are that you already have a Remote Desktop Connection RDP file saved on your desktop. If so, you can create a standard Windows shortcut that will incorporate both the special command line and your RDP file.

To begin, right-click anywhere on the desktop and then select New | Shortcut from the context menu. When you see the Create Shortcut wizard, just type mstsc /span and the path to the RDP file in the text box, as shown in Figure D. Be sure that you enclose the path to the RDP file in double quotes if the path has spaces in it. To continue, click Next and give the shortcut an appropriate name, such as Saturn – Remote Spanning, and then click Finish.

Figure D

You can create a standard Windows shortcut that will incorporate both the special command line and your RDP file.

You can now use this shortcut to launch your remote desktop connection and span the Remote Desktop window across all the available space on your multiple monitors. Of course, the spanned desktop won’t exactly behave like a multiple-monitor setup when you open multiple windows. As such you’ll have to use a little creative click-and-drag resizing to reposition the windows on the spanned desktop.

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Use Windows 7 Event Viewer to track down issues that cause slower boot times

Here’s how to use some of the new features in Windows 7’s Event Viewer to investigate a slow boot time.

Overview

Windows 7’s Event Viewer includes a new category of event logs called Applications and Services Logs, which includes a whole host of subcategories that track key elements of the operating system. The majority of these subcategories contain an event log type called Operational that is designed to track events that can be used for analyzing and diagnosing problems. (Other event log types that can be found in these subcategories are Admin, Analytic, and Debug; however, describing them is beyond the scope of this article.)

Now, within the operating system section is a subcategory titled Diagnostic-Performance with an Operational log that contains a set of a Task Category called Boot Performance Monitoring. The Event IDs in this category are 100 through 110. By investigating all the Event ID 100 events, you will be able to find out exactly how long it took to boot up your system every time since the day you installed Windows 7. By investigating all the Event ID 101 thru 110 events, you will be able to identify all instances where boot time slowed down.

Getting started

You can find and launch Event Viewer by opening the Control Panel, accessing the System and Security category, selecting the Administrative Tools item, and double-clicking the Event Viewer icon. However, you can also simply click the Start button, type Event in the Start Search box, and press Enter once Event Viewer appears and the top of the results display.

Creating a Custom View

Once you have Event Viewer up and running, you can, of course, drill down through the Applications and Services Logs and locate the Diagnostic-Performance Operational log and begin manually looking through the events recorded in the log. However, you can save yourself time and energy by taking advantage of the new Custom View feature, which is essentially a filter that you can create and save.

To do so, pull down the Action menu and select the Create Custom View command. When you see the Create Custom View dialog box, leave the Logged option set at the default value of Any Time and select all the Event level check boxes. Next, select the By Log option button, if it is not already selected, and click the dropdown arrow. Then, drill down through the tree following the path: Applications and Services Logs | Microsoft | Windows | Diagnostics-Performance. When you open the Diagnostics-Performance branch, select the Operational check box, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

When you get to the Diagnostics-Performance branch, select the Operational check box.

To continue, type 100 in the Includes/Excludes Event IDs box, as shown in Figure B, and then click OK.

Figure B

Event ID 100 records how long it takes to boot up your system.

When you see the Save Filter to Custom View dialog box, enter a name, as shown in Figure C, and click OK.

Figure C

To save the filter as a Custom View, simply provide an appropriate name, such as Boot Time.

You’ll now repeat these steps and create another Custom View, and this time, you’ll type 101-110 in the Includes/Excludes Event IDs box and name it Boot Degradation.

Investigating Boot Time

To investigate your Windows 7 system’s boot time, select Boot Time in the Custom Views tree and then sort the Date and Time column in ascending order. When you do, you’ll see a complete history of every time you have booted your system since the day you installed Windows 7. In Figure D, you can see that we have hidden the Console Tree and the Action Pane to focus on the events.

Figure D

By sorting the Date and Time column in ascending order, you’ll see a complete history of every time you have booted your system since the day you installed Windows 7.

As you can see, the first recorded Boot Time on my sample system was 67479 milliseconds in October 2009. Dividing by 1,000 tells me that it took around 67 seconds to boot up. Of course, this was the first time, and a lot was going on right after installation. For example, drivers were being installed, startup programs were being initialized, and the SuperFetch cache was being built. By December 2009 the average boot time was around 37 seconds.

In any case, by using the Boot Time Custom View, you can scroll through every boot time recorded on your system. Of course, keep in mind that there will be normal occurrences that may lengthen the boot time, such as when updates, drivers, and software is installed.

Now, if you click the Details tab, you’ll see the entire boot process broken down in an incredible amount of detail, as shown in Figure E. (You can find more information about the boot process in the “Windows On/Off Transition Performance Analysis” white paper.) However, for the purposes of tracking the boot time, we can focus on just three of the values listed on the Details tab.

Figure E

The Details tab contains an incredible amount of detail on the boot time.

MainPathBootTime

MainPathBootTime represents the amount of time that elapses between the time the animated Windows logo first appears on the screen and the time that the desktop appears. Keep in mind that even though the system is usable at this point, Windows is still working in the background loading low-priority tasks.

BootPostBootTime

BootPostBootTime represents the amount of time that elapses between the time that the desktop appears and the time that you can actually begin using the system.

BootTime

Of course, BootTime is the same value that on the General tab is called Boot Duration. This number is the sum of MainPathBootTime and BootPostBootTime. Something that we didn’t tell you before is that Microsoft indicates that your actual boot time is about 10 seconds less that the recorded BootTime. The reason is that it usually takes about 10 seconds for the system to reach an 80-percent idle measurement at which time the BootPostBootTime measurement is recorded.

Investigating Boot Degradation

To investigate instances that cause Windows 7 system’s boot time to slow down, select Boot Degradation in the Custom Views tree and then sort Event ID column in ascending order. Each Event ID, 101 through 110, represents a different type of situation that causes degradation of the boot time.

While there are ten different Event IDs here, not all of them occur on all systems and under all circumstances. As such, I’ll focus on the most common ones that we have encountered and explain some possible solutions.

Event ID 101

Event ID 101 indicates that an application took longer than usual to start up. This is typically the result of an update of some sort. As you can see in Figure F, the AVG Resident Shield Service took longer than usual to start up right after an update to the virus database. If you look at the details, you can see that it took about 15 seconds for the application to load (Total Time), and that is about 9 seconds longer than it normally takes (Degradation Time).

Figure F

Event ID 101 indicates that an application took longer than usual to start up.

An occasional degradation is pretty normal; however, if you find that a particular application is being reported on a regular basis or has a large degradation time, chances are that there is a problem of some sort. As such, you may want to look for an updated version, uninstall and reinstall the application, uninstall and stop using the application, or maybe find an alternative.

(In the case of my friend’s Windows 7 system, there were several applications that were identified by Event ID 101 as the cause of his system slowdown. Uninstalling them was the solution, and he is currently seeking alternatives.)

Event ID 102

Event ID 102 indicates that a driver took longer to initialize. Again, this could be the result of an update. However, if it occurs regularly for a certain driver or has a large degradation time, you should definitely look in to a newer version of the driver. If a new version is not available, you should uninstall and reinstall the driver.

Event ID 103

Event ID 103 indicates that a service took longer than expected to start up, as shown in Figure G.

Figure G

Event ID 103 indicates that a service took longer than expected to start up.

Services can occasionally take longer to start up, but they shouldn’t do so on a regular basis. If you encounter a service that is regularly having problems, you can go to the Services tool and experiment with changing the Startup type to Automatic (Delayed Start) or Manual.

Event ID 106

Event ID 106 indicates that a background optimization operation took longer to complete. On all the Windows 7 systems that we investigated, this event identified the BackgroundPrefetchTime as the culprit, as shown in Figure H. Since the Prefetch cache is a work in progress, this should not really represent a problem.

Figure H

Event ID 106 indicates that a background optimization operation took longer to complete.

If you encounter regular or long degradation times related to Prefetch, you may want to investigate clearing this cache and allowing the operating system to rebuild it from scratch. However bear in mind that doing so can be tricky and instructions on doing so are beyond the scope of this article.

Event ID 109

Event ID 109 indicates that a device took longer to initialize. Again, if this is happening occasionally, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. But if it is occurring regularly, you should make sure that you regularly back up your hard disk and begin investigating replacing the device in question.

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Modifying the Windows 7 boot loader with the Boot Configuration Data Editor tool

In Windows Vista and later versions of Windows, the bootloader was moved from boot.ini to a utility called BCDEdit. Here’s how to modify the boot config data with the new tool.

Sometimes dual-booting a system is a handy way to test new software, a new operating system, or an application that needs to be run in a specific version of Windows. Other reasons to dual-boot might include replication of a client environment.

Windows handles dual-booting by using boot.ini to display a menu of bootable choices or partitions found on the current system. In Windows Vista and later versions of Windows, the bootloader was moved from boot.ini to a utility called BCDEdit.

Recently, we decided we could make better use of some disk space that we had set aside to create a bootable VHD for Windows Server 2008 R2. There was no data other than the OS installation contained within the file because we had used it only to prepare a blog post about booting from Virtual Hard Disks. To free up the space, we deleted the VHD.

Note: Always make sure to back up any data that you want to keep before deleting or modifying partitions on VHDs. Your changes could make the partition unbootable.

Once we had the VHD removed, we thought Windows would be smart enough to clean up the boot loader, but we were not so lucky. We had Windows 7 set as the primary OS, so we were not without a system.

We started looking around for boot.ini and was directed toward the Boot Configuration Data Editor (BCDEdit) as the utility to use when editing boot loader information in Windows 7 (and in Vista too).

To begin, open the Start menu, select All Programs, and then choose Accessories. Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run As Administrator. Once in the command window, type bcdedit. This will return the current running configuration of your boot loader, showing any and all items that can boot on this system.

In this example, we decided to remove the entry for my Windows 2008 R2 installation, as we wouldn’t need it for the time being. To remove an entry, you will need to know the Boot Loader Identifier (found in curly braces in Figure A).

Figure A

we copied the whole list into Notepad and then selected and copied just the ID, braces included.

Removing an entry from the Boot Loader

One simple command got the Windows Server 2008 R2 entry out of the boot loader. At the command prompt, enter the following:

Bcdedit /delete {boot loader identifier}

Press Enter, and the Boot Configuration Data Editor (BCDEdit) will remove the entry for the ID you specified and display a message when finished. When Windows starts, the only choice available in the boot menu should be the current Windows installation.

Warning: Be careful when editing the boot configuration data. If you mistakenly remove the current instance of Windows, you may render your computer unbootable.

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Trump administration to move all federal IT into the cloud: Is it realistic?

US president Donald Trump recently signed an executive order on cyber-security that mandated federal systems move to the cloud. But, questions remain on the feasibility of that goal.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump signed his long-awaited executive order on cyber-security, laying out his plans for addressing security in federal IT and across US infrastructure. The most ambitious mandate was that all federal IT systems move to the cloud.

President Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, said in a announcement that the government had spent too much time and money “protecting antiquated and outdated systems.” Bossert cited the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack as evidence of failing legacy systems.

Bossert said, “From this point forward, the President has issued a preference in federal procurement in federal IT for shared systems. We’ve got to move to the cloud and try to protect ourselves instead of fracturing our security posture.”

The executive order officially states: “Agency heads shall show preference in their procurement for shared IT services, to the extent permitted by law, including email, cloud, and cyber-security services.” It also calls for a report to be completed within 90 days describing the legal, budgetary, technical considerations for “shared IT services, including email, cloud, and cyber-security services,” along with a timeline for the initiatives and their potential cost-effectiveness.

Peter Tran, the senior director of worldwide advanced cyber defense practice at RSA and former US Department of Defense employee, said the anchor for the executive order will initially be the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), to both assess current risk gaps and determine a strategy moving forward. This will be the pacesetter by which all building blocks will either rise or fall specifically on the call to action to go cloud in an expedited manner…..security being a forethought,” Tran said.

However, the effectiveness of a move to the cloud to improve security among these federal systems remains up to debate. John Pironti, cyber-security expert and president of IP Architects, said that it could create a double-edged sword.

“The idea of standardization of security controls and capabilities through a cloud-only mandate in theory may make sense to establish an enhanced baseline for security, but at the same time creates a central target and common set of controls and capabilities that adversaries can then focus their attention on in order to be successful in their attacks,” Pironti said.

Following a central set of control standards and common technology platforms, combined with the centralized nature of the cloud, could actually make the federal IT systems weaker than their current iteration, Pironti said, which utilizes “distributed and varied computing assets and security controls.” And if hackers can find and exploit a weakness in this kind of system, it could lead to a bigger impact.

Pironti said that he believes the mandate will start out with the proper intentions, but if the affected government agencies simply follow the prescribed behaviors with no deviation, they may not be able to keep up with the changing threat landscape. While Pironti said that he’s in favor of accountability, he believes that the approach should be risk-based instead of mandated.

“I do not believe all agencies should be forced into a cloud model or required to follow the same set of prescriptive security controls,” Pironti said. “If an agency can prove that they are effectively operating in a reliable, available, and secure fashion then they should be allowed to continue to do so.”

Another question raised by the mandate is the feasibility of moving these systems to the cloud. Tran said that the executive order builds on an existing foundation, but the “proof is in the pudding.” The order, like other security plans, must be executed in a timely manner and show clear improvements in boosting security visibility and early threat detection, but it also must clearly show what “good” and “bad” security looks like in cloud infrastructure, Tran said.

“That’s really hard to do under an average planning and deployment timeline. Your compass needs to be ‘dead on,'” Tran said.

The impact of the executive order could also be seen in the private sector, Tran said, driving the growth of stronger policy, compliance, and governance around cybersecurity.

“The unique aspect of this current environment is security can’t effectively operate in a ‘de-regulated’ fashion by the mere nature that it’s security… Imagine if the TSA and FAA had no security protocols and structure?” Tran said. “Cybersecurity is no different whether it’s brick-and-mortar or click-and-mortar.”

The 3 big takeaways for readers

Trump recently signed an executive order on cybersecurity mandating all federal IT systems move to the cloud, but questions remain about the feasibility and effectiveness of such a mandate.
The move to the cloud could help modernize the systems’ approach to security, but it could also create a central point of attack for hackers, an expert said.
The executive order could also impact the private sector, leading to more regulation and compliance around cyber-security initiatives, an expert said.

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49% of businesses fell victim to cyber ransom attacks in 2016

Ransom is the top motivation behind cyber attacks, according to a report from Radware, and IT professionals are most concerned about data loss. Here’s what you need to know.

Nearly half of businesses report that they were the subject of a cyber-ransom campaign in 2016, according to Radware’s, Global Application and Network Security Report 2016-2017.

Data loss topped the list of IT professionals’ cyber attack concerns, the report found, with 27% of tech leaders reporting this as their greatest worry. It was followed by service outage (19%), reputation loss (16%), and customer or partner loss (9%).

Malware or bot attacks hit half of all organizations surveyed in the last year. One reason for the pervasive attacks? The Internet of Things (IoT). Some 55% of respondents reported that IoT ecosystems had complicated their cybersecurity detection measures, as they create more vulnerabilities.

Ransomware attacks in particular continue to increase rapidly: 41% of respondents reported that ransom was the top motivator behind the cyber attacks they experienced in 2016. Meanwhile, 27% of respondents cited insider threats, 26% said political hacktivism, and 26% said competition.

While large-scale DDoS attacks dominated the headlines of 2016, this report found that only 4% of all attacks were more than 50 Gbps, while more than 83% of DDoS attacks reported were under 1 Gbps.

“One thing is clear: Money is the top motivator in the threat landscape today,” said Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware, in a press release. “Attackers employ an ever-increasing number of tactics to steal valuable information, from ransom attacks that can lock up a company’s data, to DDoS attacks that act as a smoke screen for information theft, to direct brute force or injection attacks that grant direct access to internal data.”

Despite the growth in attacks, some 40% of organizations reported that they do not have an incident response plan in place, the survey found.

The report listed five cybersecurity predictions for 2017:

1. IoT will become an even larger risk. The Mirai IoT Botnet code is available to the public, making it more likely that cyber criminals of all experience levels are already strengthening their capabilities. “In 2017, exponentially more devices are expected to become targeted and enslaved into IoT botnets,” the press release stated. “IoT device manufacturers will have to face the issue of securing their devices before they are brought to market, as botnet attacks from these devices can generate large-scale attacks that easily exceed 1 Tbps.”

2. Ransomware attacks will continue to grow. These attacks will target phones, laptops, and company computers, and will likely take aim at healthcare devices such as defibrillators in the future, the press release stated.

3. Permanent Denial of Service (PDoS) attacks on data centers and IoT operations will rise. PDoS attacks, sometimes called “phlashing,” damage a system to the degree that it requires hardware replacement or reinstallation. These attacks are not new, but Radware predicts they are likely to become more pervasive in 2017 with the plethora of personal devices on the market.

4. Telephony DoS (TDoS) will become more sophisticated. These attacks, which cut off communications in a crisis, “could impede first responders’ situational awareness, exacerbate suffering and pain, and potentially increase loss of life,” the press release stated.

5. Public transportation system attacks will rise. As cars, trains, and planes become more automated, they also become more vulnerable to hackers, Radware stated.

You help your business avoid ransomware attacks and other cyber threats by keeping software up to date, backing up all information every day to a secure, offsite location, segmenting your network, performing penetration testing, and training staff on cyber security practices.

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Hillary Clinton’s infamous email server: 6 things you need to know

Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as US secretary of state has been a major issue for the 2016 presidential candidate. Here are the six most critical facts about it.

hillary_clinton3_3_3

The FBI recently wrapped up its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server while she was serving as secretary of state. FBI director James Comey called the actions “extremely careless,” but recommended that no charges be brought against Clinton.

She is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the upcoming presidential election in November, and her actions relative to the email server have become a hot-button issue among her opponents. The situation, however, is nuanced; and there are a lot of details to understand about the scenario. Here are the most important facts.

1. What happened?

While serving as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton used multiple private email servers to communicate regarding government business, according to the State Department. Additionally, it was revealed that Clinton never had a government (.gov) email address while she was serving in her post—we’ll talk about which email address she used in a moment—and her aides did not take any actions to preserve the emails sent through her personal account. This prompted an investigation by the FBI to determine if Clinton intentionally put classified information at risk.

2. Why does it matter?

Clinton handed over 30,000 emails to the State Department, of which 110 contained classified information at the time they either were sent or received, according to the FBI’s findings. During the investigation, though, Clinton asserted that none of the emails she sent or received were classified at the time. The biggest implication has been the potential threat to national security. While the contents of the emails have not fully been released, if they had contained sensitive information it could have possibly fallen into the wrong hands. As noted by the New York Times, Comey said it was “possible” that enemy foreign governments had accessed Clinton’s personal email account.

The second biggest implication is that of transparency. The Federal Records Act requires that all communication in certain branches of government be recorded on government servers, and it forbids the use of a personal email account for government business, unless those emails are then copied and archived. However, there are a lot of technicalities involved, and there is evidence that other government officials had violated the act. As Alex Howardwrote for the Sunlight Foundation, there is also evidence that Clinton tried to control the discoverability of the emails under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which could set a precedent for limiting public access to government records. It is also believed that Clinton deleted 31,000 emails deemed personal in nature before turning the emails over to the State Department.

3. When did it start?

When she was appointed secretary of state in 2009, Clinton began using the email address hdr22@clintonmail.com, tied to a personal server. Clinton’s personal email server was first discovered in 2012, by a House committee investigating the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi. In 2013, hacker Guccifer claimed to have accessed Clinton’s personal email account and released emails that were allegedly related to the Benghazi attack.

The next year, in the summer of 2015, the State Department began asking Clinton for her emails correspondence, and she responded by delivering boxes containing more than 30,000 printed emails. In early 2015, the New York Times reported that Clinton had been using her personal email exclusively, and never had a government email address. A federal watchdog group issued an 83-page report condemning the “systemic weaknesses” of Clinton’s email practices in May. On Tuesday, the FBI concluded its investigation and recommended against any charges.

4. What tech was used

When Clinton was running for president in 2008, she had a private server installed at her home in Chappaqua, New York. The domains clintonemail.com, wjcoffice.com, and presidentclinton.com, which were registered to a man named Eric Hoteham, all pointed to that server. In 2013, a Denver-based IT company called Platte River Networks was hired to manage the server, but wasn’t cleared to work with classified information. The company executivesreceived death threats for taking on the contract. It was later discovered that multiple private servers were used for Clinton’s email.

Clinton used a BlackBerry phone to communicate during her tenure as secretary of state, including sending and receiving emails through her private server in New York. The State Department expressed concern about the security of the device. Clinton had requested the NSA provide a strengthened BlackBerry, similar to the one used by President Obama. But, her request was denied. Instead, the NSA requested that Clinton use a secure Windows Phone known as the Sectera Edge, but she opted to continue using her personal BlackBerry.

5. Will she be prosecuted?

Right now, it’s too early to tell whether or not Clinton will be charged for her use of private email servers. While Comey’s recommendation that no charges be brought will likely weigh in the decision, it is ultimately up to the US Department of Justice to make the call. However, a recent Politico analysis of multiple, similar cases spanning the past 20 years, seem to point to an indictment being “highly unlikely.” According to a former senior FBI official quoted in the analysis, the Justice Department tends to avoid prosecution in cases that are not “clear-cut.”

6. What can businesses and IT leaders learn?

The first lesson that IT can learn from this situation is that transparency is critical, at all levels in your business. This isn’t to say that the CEO should be broadcasting his or her emails to all employees every week, but steps should be taken to ensure that information can be accessed if need be. As part of adigital leak protection program, security expert John Pironti said that organizations need to know if users are using a personal email account to conduct business.

“This behavior is often a violation of acceptable use policies and can expose an organization’s sensitive information to unsecured systems and e-mail accounts,” Pironti said. “Without this visibility an organization may not be aware that their intellectual property, customer data, or sensitive data assets are not being protected appropriately and they also may be in violation of contractual agreements with their clients regarding the security of their data as well as regulatory requirements.”

The second takeaway for IT is that policies should be enforced from the top down. Sure, a CXO may get their support tickets expedited, but that doesn’t mean that exceptions should be made that could compromise the security or integrity of the organization for the sake of comfort or convenience. Leaders should model the policies that are in place to showcase the importance of adhering to them, especially regarding security and privacy policies.

Finally, the importance of records management should not be overlooked. In Clinton’s case, since multiple servers were used, the FBI had to piece together “millions of email fragments” before they could look into them. Proper labeling and management of all records will make for a more cohesive environment and assist in accountability.

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