TiGra Networks

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  • Microsoft awards TiGra's founder Tim Long with the prestigious Most Valuable Professional award, with a competency of Windows Server System - Small Business Server, for the second year running, making Tim one of only two SBS-MVPs in the UK.

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Free Security Review for Laptop or Desktop PCs
TiGra Networks would be pleased to carry out a free security review of your desktop or laptop PC, when you bring it to our offices at Valleys Innovation Centre, Abercynon and check-in at @ GTi Business Suite on FourSquare . We’ll check for malware and...
Buying computer add-ons? First Visit the Windows 7 Compatibility site
So many people buy the very cheapest add-ons for their computer, or just buy the first thing they see on the shelves. Let me tell you, there is a lot of nasty rubbish out there. It all looks good in the box, but when you get it home and plug it in, things...
Tools for Effective Bloggers
Blogging can be an effective publicity tool for any size business. It can help you keep your customers in the loop, provide a means of support, feedback and customer service, be a marketing channel for distributing announcements, offers and product information...
What Does Your Email Address Tell Your Customers?
According to Robert Epstein , Head of Small Business for Microsoft UK, In the current climate, making sure your business projects the right image can be vital to success. If you’re using either free or ISP-provided services, your e-mail address will have...
Carrying Your Business Around On A Laptop?
Many business start-ups that I speak to are either one or two person micro-businesses, often their IT consists of a personal laptop, upon which is stored their entire company. Accounts, customer databases, marketing collateral, email, everything, all...
Why Online Backup Will Not Protect Your Server
There is a growing trend of IT consultants selling online backup solutions. While there is no doubt that online remote backup can work if done correctly and with sufficient investment, it is often done in a way that doesn’t adequately protect servers...
10 Immutable Laws of Security
Why You Need a Strong Password It is worth reminding ourselves occasionally why we need passwords and computer security and what we are protecting ourselves from. I often talk to people in small businesses who hate the idea of having to use passwords...
Registry Cleaners & Optimizers
Our advice: don’t bother. Keep your money. We’ve never seen any hard evidence that there is any advantage in a so-called registry optimizer. Under some specific circumstances, they can be useful, but they can also do a lot of damage. The Windows Registry...
Backing Up Your Data
In my last article I described ways to encrypt and protect confidential data. Now I’d like to mention something that for most people is an inconvenient truth. That hard drive in your computer, at some time or other, is going to fail. No question about...
Protecting Confidential Data

We all remember 2008 partly for the data protection fiascos that plagued the government and other organisations. Lost tax records here, missing social security information there, a top secret dossier left on a train. The sad thing is that ever since the encrypting file system was introduced in Windows 2000, it has been ridiculously easy to encrypt sensitive files. Easy when you know how, that is – like most things in IT.

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Betas Considered Somewhat Harmful

These days, more and more software companies are releasing “beta test” versions of their software to the general public. People are downloading and installing these betas as if they were released versions. In the right circumstances this can be justified, but I am seeing an increasing number of users – especially in small and micro-businesses, installing beta software without really understanding the implications.

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Don’t Forward Virus Warnings
Virus warnings are almost always hoaxes. Even if they’re not, forwarding the warning to your friends and colleagues can do more harm than good. My simple advice is this: press delete . Virus warnings and hoaxes are one particular flavour of chain email...
Managing your Mailbox
Exchange mailboxes are never large enough. The upward pressure of the ever-increasing volume of email we deal with is set against the downward pressure from system administrators, as they battle to manage the servers and keep up with storage requirements...
Instant Messenger Viruses
It seems there is an instant messenger virus at large at the moment. The virus sends messages similar to these (the URLs are deliberately obfuscated): "Hot or Not? hxxp://mymsngallery.my.funpic de/viewimage.php?youremail@someplace.com" or "this...
Are You Being Criminally Negligent With My Personal Information?
The recent spate of announcements from the government and others regarding "lost" confidential information has really annoyed me. I'm so angry because every shipped business edition of Windows since 2000 has included encryption technology...
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