In The Know - Charles Van Heusen's Weblog

Maximize the value of your Microsoft Dynamics Solution

The Microsoft Dynamics Customer Roadshow is coming to a location near you!

With today’s economic challenges, maximizing the capabilities of your Microsoft Dynamics business management solution is more important than ever. Join Microsoft Dynamics specialists for this exciting event and learn firsthand how you can best leverage and expand your current solution—to maximize

productivity and profitability.

To register and for more information, visit Microsoft Dynamics Customer Roadshow Live Space at http://dynamicsroadshow.spaces.live.com or contact your Microsoft partner.  The event is free, but attendance at each event is limited, so be sure to register today!

For those of you who are not currently resellers of Dynamics products, did you know that the largest consumer of Microsoft stack solutions are Dynamics customers.   It's worth your time to attend, learn about new opportunities for your business as well as identify other key partners in the area that you can affiliate with to cross sell solutions. 

Microsoft Response Point receives praises from ZDNet at ITExpo Conference

There is more positive feedback on the Microsoft Response Point solution at the recent ITExpo Conference by John Carroll of ZDNet.

You can read the full article by click Thoughts on Microsoft Response Point , here is the summary of his post.

"Generally, I found the Response Point product interesting in ways more complicated solutions on display at the conference did not. It does a good job of pulling legos out of the Microsoft software toolchest and putting them together in an interesting way, something at which I can’t say every department within the company is equally skilled. It’s also an interesting approach to telephony of a kind that we will see a lot more in the future. The hardest part of breaking the hold traditional telephony has on the average consumer is breaking through the “ease of use” barrier. Something like this helps to popularize an end-to-end digital solution, which is an important step in the evolution away from traditional phone service."  

Security Advisory for your customers eCard invite and Greeting Card SPAM is on the rise

I thought I should pass on this tidbit of information that was raised by the internal IT team at Microsoft regarding the issue and the fact that it is not a virus so it is not detected by traditional antivirus software.   The bad news is that the only way to be certain to clear it off your system is to wipe and reimage your machines.  At least that is the instructions they are giving us.

Here are more details:

Description
It’s on the rise again….the popular greeting card scam is being leveraged as a vehicle for seeding malware. Many will recognize it, as this social engineering angle certainly is not new and can be dated back to the mid to late 1990’s however please be advised that miscreants are running this sting again as we have received many reports lately.

Affected Users
Because there are no attachments included in the email, just URL’s to malicious sites, the email could successfully bypass security checkpoints and be delivered to your in box.
Impact
Looking closely at the URL’s you will typically see one pointing to an executable file which is malicious. As of late the files are containing  Trojans or spyware designed as a back door to your system or to collect personal, corporate confidential information and data for monetary purposes. Another tall tale sign in these spamming efforts are misspelled words or improper English in the emails.

Information & Support
As this is not a virus, so traditional antivirus software will not detect it.  Like with any suspicious email, simply don’t open it and delete it unread.

It isn’t a virus, but it does contain your typical host of mal/spy/adware, and opens your machine up to bot usage.  There is no cure for it through official channels at this time.  You should do a wipe and load if you are affected.   Data is not compromised.