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Fiber Internet is Within Reach

Not that long ago, installing a fiber Internet connection was so costly that it was only reserved for large corporations and data centers. Often times, these super fast connections came at the price of expensive build-outs and high monthly fees. Fiber optic lines can support much higher bandwidth and travel a lot farther than copper. Copper lines were originally intended only to transmit analog voice communications and were later adapted for digital data. Fiber optic cable has served as the backbone for telecommunication companies for a long time and getting it the “last mile” to end users was far too expensive in years past.

Now, faced with growing bandwidth needs and an aging copper infrastructure, Internet and phone providers are investing heavily in building out their fiber networks to customer facilities. MCS has seen Comcast, AT&T, and Windstream offer free fiber build-out in exchange for just a 3 year term to most areas we serve. That, combined with cost savings of bundling phone and Internet service over the same line can mean that a brand new optical line can actually save even a small business money right from the start. Not to mention that once you have fiber, it can be upgraded to faster speeds with no additional construction.

Eventually, everyone will have fiber run to their business because it just makes more sense. It is faster, more reliable, and will last for the next few decades. MCS has partnered with all of the major providers and can engineer a fiber line solution that meets the needs of businesses from 10 to 1000s of employees. Our engineers know the needs of businesses will create estimates from multiple providers to get you the best deal and ease the transition. There is no cost from MCS for this service and you won’t pay any more per month. Contact a rep today to see the difference of Internet at the speed of light.

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Thanksgiving Holiday Schedule

MCS offices will be closed Thursday November 26th and Friday the 27th for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will have technicians on call for any client with an active RightTrack agreement who needs emergency service.

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Windows 10 Officially Released

Now that Windows 10 is out in the world, should your organization pull the trigger on an upgrade? We recommend not yet. Windows 10 really is a great OS but it is still new and we are seeing issues with some in place upgrades. Microsoft is giving users a whole year to upgrade and given that Windows 10 does not offer any compelling “must have” features over Windows 7, the safe bet for now will be to stick with the good old workhorse that is Windows 7. Although it is looking like Windows 10 will eventually take over as the new standard in Windows computing, that shift will take some time in the business realm.

Windows 10 presents, along with new features, new problems for corporate environments. Group Policy, a tool used to centrally managed options of client PCs, only just last month issued support for new Windows 10 features. Sysadmins need time to get fully familiar with how to appropriately administer this new OS while taking into consideration different security, privacy, and reliability settings. MCS recommends that users wanting to upgrade wait at least until Q1 2016 to make the switch.

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Windows Server 2003 Support is Ending July 14, 2015

What does “End of Life” mean for an OS? Well, as is pertains to Windows Server 2003 it mainly means that Microsoft will no longer push out security updates. Right now, if a new exploit in Windows Server 2003 becomes known, the engineers at Microsoft will create a patch and release it through Windows Update. After July 14th 2015, there will be no more security updates released to all Windows 2003 servers.

In reality though Server 2003 has been an old OS with limited support for several years. The only updates released now are critical security patches and most 3rd party software available now recommends at least Server 2008 R2 or newer.

It is critically important that all of our customers migrate to a supported Server OS very soon. Our engineers have been very busy with migrations the last several months but there is still time to act to ensure your organization is secure, reliable, and complaint.

If you would like to request service to migrate your IT environment, let us know.

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MCS becomes Veeam Cloud Partner

We have partnered with the backup software maker, Veeam, to offer cloud disaster recovery services powered by Veeam. This partnership allows MCS to utilize Veeam’s most advanced software and features to backup our customer’s data. These features include, near real time VM replication, WAN Acceleration, virtual labs, point in time recovery, and more.

Of all of the backup software we evaluated, Veeam was a clear winner both in performance and features. What this means for our customers is that they can have peace of mind knowing that their data is safe and secure at our data center. We know a backup is only good when you can actually restore from it in a timely manner. Veeam allows us to bring up your operations at our business continuity center within minutes of an outage.

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Microsoft Pushes Out of Band Security Patch

On Tuesday, November 18, 2014, Microsoft released an out-of-band security update (MS14-068) to address a critical vulnerability in Windows. The update deals with elevation of privileges and affects Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1, as well as Windows Technical Preview and Windows Server Technical Preview.

MCS is currently patching our data center infrastructure and also helping our customers with an active RightTrack service agreement automatically. We strongly encourage customers to apply this update as soon as possible if they do not have an active service agreement with MCS already. The patch does require a reboot so some downtime must be scheduled.

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ShellShock Exploit Should be Patched Immediately

If your organization is running any Linux, Unix, or Mac systems, you are likely vulnerable to the ShellShock attack. The issue is with bash, a very common text shell that runs on these OSs to provide a command line UI.

Our systems have already been patched to the latest available bash package as of this post. There is the possibility for an attacker to gain control of a vulnerable machine. ShellShock is rated a 10 out of 10 on the U.S. National Vulnerability Database’s severity scale.

Please contact MCS if your organization runs any Linux or Unix servers. At this time, there is no patch available for MACs. Most Linux repos have at least a partial fix available now.

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Looking for a Web Application Developer and QA Tester

MCS is growing and we have immediate positions available for a Web Application Developer and a QA Tester. These positions are needed to supplement our existing in-house development team. Visit our Employment Opportunities page for more information and to apply online.

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