It’s not just basic personal information that is at risk, routine use of online banking and shopping sites means direct remote access to our finances as well.

With this is mind, the following blog post by the wonderful people at AgileBits, creators of the most excellent password management program 1Password, is highly recommended reading.

It links to even more well written articles about password security and how to choose good passwords as well as to a blog article by Dan Goodin at Ars Technica giving a comprehensive review of password security.

The Ars Technica blog post gives a very good overview of the current state of play as regards password cracking capabilities and the generally bad password habits many people have that enable hackers to crack most peoples passwords almost instantaneously.

It also includes a number of facts and figures that many people may find astounding and hopefully that will get them to change their current password habits. For example:

"A PC running a single AMD Radeon HD7970 GPU, for instance, can try on average an astounding 8.2 billion password combinations each second"

If you want to take action to protect your online world better, we very highly recommend 1Password; it is quite possibly the single most useful and most used piece of software we’ve ever purchased!

If you have anywhere near the number of passwords we have to manage, it will undoubtably take time at the start to get everything in there and update all your passwords, but it is well worth the effort and pays off with login speed and security massively once up and running.

And finally, on a side (but extremely important) note, a lesson from one person’s experience as to the importance of solid backups in this brave new world of password management applications and online presence.

Google announced Monday 13th May 2013, Gmail and Drive storage unification that combines the 25GB for Gmail and 5GB for Drive included with Google Apps for Business into a single 30GB combined storage quota across Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos.

This means any additional storage purchased (via existing ordering mechanisms) will be shared across Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos.

This update is expected to roll out to Rapid Release domains starting 21st May, and to Scheduled Release domains starting 4th June. Current Google help centre articles relating to storage will be updated at that time.

This means that Gmail inboxes are no longer limited to 25GB. Each user can store up to 16TB of email by purchasing additional storage licenses. Users will see a warning that they have reached their storage limit and will have a short grace period in which they can still use Gmail normally.

Admin managed storage is shared across Gmail, Drive, and Google+ Photos as well.

Google will begin the rollout of a new Admin console starting 22nd May 2013.

10% of our existing Google Apps for Business clients will be transitioned to the new Admin console on this date, and the rollout will then continue gradually to our remaining Google Apps for Business clients through to around mid-June.

Google will be systematically selecting accounts at random, so we will not know who will be in the first batch or be able to provide specific transition dates. However, the initial group will receive an automated notification that the change has occurred and temporarily, they will also be offered the opportunity to revert to the classic Admin console if they wish.

Below is a Google produced short video (5m 24s) to introduce the changes and explain basic usage and navigation within the new control panel:

Watch this video on YouTube.

Please click here for additional information.

Including a cheat sheet showing where the various features are now located.

Help reduce climate change whilst saving the lives of animals and improving your health!

For more information regarding what’s happening and adopting a vegetarian lifestyle please visit www.nationalvegetarianweek.org.

This is a bugfix release.

If you have a Dedicated Server or Linux vserver with us that has phpMyAdmin installed, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to the latest version available for your current operating environment. phpMyAdmin is a common point of attempted entry to servers and old versions with known security vulnerabilities are prime targets.

All our main shared hosting systems have already been upgraded to this latest version, so clients with One Plan accounts (or older packages like Sblog, Vine, Bud & Tree) are already protected with this update.

If you are an existing customer, please review the information below and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Maintenance window:
Start: Monday 8th October 2012 – 22:00 BST
End: Monday 8th October 2012 – 22:30 BST

You can use the timeanddate.com website to convert this time to your timezone.

Description:
Access layer switches within the data centre require some modification to their system configuration necessitating a reboot of each switch. Traffic will use alternative paths, however any system directly connected to a rebooting switch will be affected for a few minutes.

Outage risk:
Possible short outages of a few minutes could occur during the maintenance window as switches are rebooted. As always, any outage will be kept to a minimum and they hope to complete work with minimal to no disruption.

If you are an existing customer, please review the information below and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Maintenance window:
Start: Wednesday 18th July 2012 – 21:00 BST
End: Thursday 19th June 2012 – 00:30 BST

You can use the timeanddate.com website to convert this time to your timezone.

Description:
Following a serious service issue today affecting the GCI Com network (this is the wider network incorporating and beyond the Smartbunker data centre in the UK), they are working with their service delivery partners to perform root cause analysis on failed transit routing and suspect equipment.

Outage risk:
As part of the implementation and testing process there will be two 30 minute periods of possible connectivity issues whilst original BGP routing is restored.

Updates:
19th July 2012 08:30
Initial testing early this morning suggests that a successful fix has been applied and speed is now back to normal. Our independent monitoring showed 100% uptime for the whole duration.

This is a bugfix release.

If you have a Dedicated Server or Linux vserver with us that has phpMyAdmin installed, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to the latest version available for your current operating environment. phpMyAdmin is a common point of attempted entry to servers and old versions with known security vulnerabilities are prime targets.

All our main shared hosting systems have already been upgraded to this latest version, so clients with One Plan accounts (or older packages like Sblog, Vine, Bud & Tree) are already protected with this update.

Source: http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=23067

You can follow the phpMyAdmin news RSS feed here:
feed:https://sourceforge.net/export/rss2_projnews.php?group_id=23067&rss_fulltext=1&limit=10

If you are an existing customer, please review the information below and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Maintenance window:
Start: Wednesday 6th June 2012 – 22:00 BST
End: Wednesday 6th June 2012 – 23:59 BST

You can use the timeanddate.com website to convert this time to your timezone.

Description:
Following the successful work to install and commission two new core routers on the 21st May 2012, this work is to modify and update some configuration to allow for further expansion and modular deployment of network infrastructure within the UK data centre.

Outage risk:
Possible short outages could occur during the maintenance window as routing updates. As always, any outage will be kept to a minimum and they hope to complete work with minimal to no disruption.

As from 18th May 2012 our new office postal address is:

Unit 1U, Unicorn Business Park
Wellington Street
RIPLEY
Derbyshire
DE5 3EH

We have also updated our contact page with geographic telephone numbers as alternatives to our old 0845 numbers as we know many people prefer to use these (e.g. to use free minutes on their mobiles).

Happy Friday!