Alex Straffin is a Senior IT Consultant and has been working at NSK Inc. since 2007.  As a Help Desk representative in the Boston Office, he is there to personally solve client issues.  Recently, Alex and other IT Consultants teamed up together to solve a major issue when a client’s email server became a “spambot.” According to Alex, Spambots are when a “server gets infected and sends out mass spam messages.”  So how did this happen? Email servers act as a centralized place where every message gets sent through.  And before any messages can be sent out, they must be checked by an unbiased database like CISCO Iron Port in order to prevent spam from being sent.  However, if one message gets reported, then the whole server becomes blacklisted.  So when the infected account was reported, it resulted in the whole server shutting down so no messages could be sent out.  It was our great team of IT Consultants who saw the issue and notified the client.  How did it get resolved?  “It is very difficult to get off the blacklist,” Alex says “but we managed to find a solution by changing the email server’s IP address.” And what is his tip on preventing issues like this?  “Buy Malwarebytes Pro” is Alex’s suggestion.  This is an anti-malware application that not only cleans your machine but will run periodic scans as well.

Mauricio Cornejo has been employed at NSK inc. since February of 2010.  You may have talked to him a few times as he primarily works at our Help Desk.  Recently, he upgraded a client’s ACT! database (a contact manager) from ACT! 4 to ACT! 2011.  Basically, this is a switch from software released in 1994 to the most recent 2011 version.  It was a bit trickier than normal due to the huge difference in upgrade versions. “Since the information has to be converted, it can actually break the system” explains Mauricio.  And if it were to break? Mauricio says that “it would take lots of time and communication between us and the client in order to fix the issue.”  Thankfully he was able to convert all the information breakage free!

Who is Chris McNair?

Originally from Laurel, Mississippi, IT Consultant Chris McNair joined NSK Inc in April 2011. However, prior to moving to Boston, Chris lived in Naples, Italy for two years while working for the NAVY.  In Italy he mainly did IT and asset management jobs for the Information Insurance Office. While overseas he had the opportunity to travel across Europe to places like Paris, London and Rome believing that one of the most notable differences between the countries was the food.  

With Windows 7 as the highest yielding version to date, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer caused quite the stir in the tech world recently with the unveiling of Windows 8.¹ Although it may sound like Microsoft is coming out with yet another update to their famous operating system, this one may break barriers for the company.  The most differentiating feature in Windows 8 is that it will support ARM architecture.

As mentioned in last week’s post, ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) is a more efficient version of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers.)² This means given the correct hardware, Windows 8 ARM has the potential of running faster and using less power all on a physically smaller computer.