NSI's IT Support Team has reviewed the data: After a 6 month study that consisted of over 630,000 samples has found that when it comes rootkits, Windows XP has 74% off all the infections, followed by Vista with 17% and Windows 7 with 12%. Microsoft even admits that Windows 7 is over 5 times more secure than XP in there last quarterly security rate. Although AVAST, an anti-virus software company, has pointed out that Windows XP infection rates might not be all Microsoft’s fault, as many of the machines running Windows XP are running pirated versions which aren’t allowed to be updated through Microsoft leaving the OS vulnerable to various types of virus’s and rootkits.
A new yearlong study conducted by WDS, has found that Android devices are more likely to develop hardware problems than other brands of smartphones. This hasn’t been a huge surprise as Android has made a name for itself by bringing affordable smartphones to the masses on each network. Being Android is an open platform and is free to use by anyone, it is the ideal OS for lesser known cell phone manufactures who are want to release their first entry level phone. The unfortunate part of this is that these no name phones are bringing down the overall quality rating for android, which is something RIM and Apple can control as they develop their own hardware. The study does note that name brand Android phones, like HTC, Samsung, or Motorola, have much less returns due to hardware failure.
RescueCom has released their quarterly report outlining the top 5 Laptop brands based on quality. Lenovo laptops ranked highest with a score of 254, followed by Asus with 242. Toshiba took third with 164, followed by Apple with 149 and HP with 122.
RescueCom is a computer repair center and has been recording their data since 2006. They determine each brand’s reliability rating by looking at 3 different factors:
- Looking at each brands market share in that given time period compare to the percentage of repair calls for that specific brand
- Component Quality used within the laptops; the better the quality of the components the less likely they are going to fail
- Likelihood the customer will need a third party support on their PC; a lack of manufacturer support sends more customers to third party vendors for support
A new study from CPU maker, AMD, shows that over one third, 37%, of companies are now using cloud infrastructure for their data centers with an additional 43% of companies investigating implementation. And this isn’t just small companies who are relying on the power of cloud technology, with 63% of those using the cloud saying that they have data stored in there worth over $250,000, meaning billions of dollars worth of information is now sitting securely off-site.
Cloud computing has been growing over the past couple of years, and has increased with the wide spread of virtualization allowing companies to scale their IT department easier and more efficiently. 1 in 10 companies are now storing over 10 million dollars in the cloud now, but there is still concerns from security experts who point out that are still some flaws that have come to light recently with companies like Sony having their servers hacked and Amazon’s cloud service going down for an extended period of time leaving many companies unable to access their information. While security was still sited as the number one concern when moving to a cloud infrastructure, these flaws in the cloud computing model haven’t deterred companies from moving to the cloud, having the benefits of accessing their information from anywhere and allowing companies to outsource certain IT tasks to an outside company.
