One of our Security and Anti-Virus solutions available to our customers is a much lauded and awarded product called Bitdefender.

We at A&STech take customer security and discretion very seriously and therefore offer many different solutions to Viruses, Hackers, Firewall, Cracks, Malware, Spyware and other security threats.
Bitdefender is one of our solutions that we have chosen after many years of tests and real world usage of Anti-Virus products.

Bitdefender was firstly developed in Bucharest, Romania by the now CEO of the Bitdefender company and subsidiaries, Mr Florin Talpes.
It was publically offered as an AV product in 2001 and is now in its 17^th build version.
Since its relatively short life as a AV product, Bitdefender has grown substantially and now has headquarters in Germany, Spain, UK, USA and off course in Romania.

A&STech use a cloud based version of Bitdefender which grants our staff with intricate controls over all the security aspects of customers’ machines and help our stuff manage all the networks that use Bitdefender from one intuitive web based console.

Bitdefender cloud edition provides real time scanning for our customers.
This real time scanning includes antispam scanning using Bitdefender’s Antispam NeuNet technology, the now patented B-HAVE technology which reduces its dependency on the usual virus signatures by proactively scanning and detecting unknown threats based on behavioural analysis.
Another technology is Active Virus Control, it scans each program as it runs its code for malware like activity and each one of those action is scored, compared and reported if the process executes harmful processes.

Bitdefender has won many awards and accolades over its short existence and this just goes to highlight the amount of calculated trust is put onto the security software to give peace of mind, actual security and threat elimination to networks in this seemingly volatile digital world.

Bitdefender is used by many of the world’s big name enterprises and we at A&STech are proud to offer it as part of our relentless pursuit of network security.

A few months back we did a brief overview of NAS devices, but today we will look at a particular model that we use extensively both in house and for our customers, the Synology DiskStation DS1813 NAS.

Synology is a Taiwanese organization that specialises in all types of NAS devices for home, business and enterprise use.
Their products are divided by two categories; DiskStation for home and business applications and RackStation for rack mounted enterprises devices.

Today we will be looking at the matte black Synology Diskstation DS1813+ NAS.
It was only just recently pipped from being the flagship model for home and business solutions from Synology by the DS2413+.

The DS1813+ is an 8-bay NAS which can grow and expand on the fly. The total compatible capacity can be as large as 72TB when paired with another DS1813+ via eSATA connections.
The max capacity of a single device is 32TB (8x 4TB HDD).
The HDD’s are also hot swappable.

The DS1813+comes with Synology’s DSM 4.0 management console software which has really grown and developed into a easy to use GUI system.
Backups, HDD management, Data replication, network surveillance, printer sharing and data storage can all be easily performed and managed by the DSM software.

The biggest and best feature is the raw speed of the device when configured in RAID 5 under a windows or VM environment. The Synology DS1813+ NAS can deliver up to an average 352.39 MB/sec reading and 211.88 MB/sec writing speed* According to Synology, and we can attest that yes, it is blindly fast when backing up!

Overall the Synology Diskstation DS1813+ NAS is a very quiet, low power, backup solution that we at A&STech not only recommend and implement to our customers, but also are so pleased with its performance that we use it ourselves.

3CX was founded in 2006 to provide all Windows based platforms with a open standard PBX (Private Branch Exchange) so customers can make calls straight from within Windows.

The 3CX Phone System software was initially offered as an open source free product in 2006.
Not long after, in 2007 the first major commercial version was released to the public and was intended to provide an easy solution of making VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls.

The latest stable version which was released in September is version 12.
3CX is based on the SIP standard (Session Initiation Protocol) and enables its users to make calls via either VoIP or PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) services.

The 3CX Phone system software is completely IP based and supports both the standard software (virtual) and hardware (physical) SIP phones.

The 3CX system is web based and can easily be configured for users on the network or pushed out and managed form the web interface.
We at A&STech have rolled out this software including hardware to many of our customers, both small and medium sized businesses.

Along with the web interface, the 3CX Phone System also comes with a very powerful management console which although when it was in its infancy had very little features, now packs all the bells and whistles for creating, managing and supporting the entire network infrastructure.

Being 3CX certified and a 3CX reseller, A&STech has vast experience with the system and many of our customers are very pleased with the ease and features the system gives them.

On the client side of things, the 3CX software gives users many customising and productive features.
They can message each other, set their status, divert calls, access all messages and functions both though the phone or 3CX client software, they can record personalised messages or greetings and a lot more. Plus on top of that all this is available to them from a remote location by installing the 3CX phone software on their smart phone.

We at A&STech highly recommend the 3CX Phone system, for cheap, crystal clear calls and ease of management.

In addition to Google Apps, we are now offering Microsoft Office 365 to our customers in Brisbane. Like Google Apps, it is a subscription-based Microsoft Office software.

Microsoft Office 365 is a great offering for businesses that operates in a Microsoft Exchange environment and wants to transition to this service. Customers will get the best experience across multiple devices and always up to date Microsoft Office including Spam and Malware filtering.

We think a lot of customers will like Microsoft Office 365 for their business as well as their homes.

“The Security Database on the Server Does Not Have a Computer Account for This Workstation Trust Relationship” – On Widnows Domain

This error has presented itself on a few rare occasions on our customer’s domain network machines.

We recently discovered a quick an easy fix for the error as the fix provided by Microsoft in their knowledge base articles is inadequate.

Cause:
It can be caused by several things, but for our customers it was the Active Directory entries for the PC either becoming corrupt or the PC brought onto the network had the old domain credentials.

The fix is done and applicable for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 (32bit & 64bit)

1. On the log on screen on the affected PC, no domain credentials will log you in, you must use a local account to log onto the machine
2. If you do not know the local admin credentials, unplug the Ethernet cable from the PC or turn of the Wi-Fi signal and log in with the domain credentials
3. Right click on the computer icon, go to properties
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and under “Computer name, domain and workgroup settings”. Click [Change setting]
5. Remove the PC from the current domain onto a workgroup (WORGROUP eg.)
6. Restart the machine
7. Use the local admin credentials to log on
8. Repeat steps 3 & 4
9. This time, join the domain and insert the domain admin credentials
10. To be extra cautious, we also rename the PC Name, just in case the Operational Unit on the Active Directory server is corrupt.
11. Reboot the machine
12. Log onto the domain normally.