Remember your last office powercut… how did you survive? Chances are you went to the cafe for an early lunch or even went home because everything important stopped working! We run everything on electricity, computers, internet routers, mobile phone chargers, laptop chargers, office radio, telephone systems, overhead projectors, clocks, fish tanks, printers, fax machines, photocopiers and many more.

Here are the top tips for running a greener office, bringing down your fuel bills and generally feeling better about your contribution to the world’s pollution.

Buy Only Green Energy

Many energy suppliers are giving us the option to buy 100% green energy. If you’re not the business owner, do some reasearch and present a case to your boss. By going green you stop oil being mined from ever-decreasing supplies and being burned on your behalf. You’ll be safe in the knowledge that your electricity is renewable. You will also be increasing demand putting more pressure on oil companies to drop prices and the government to take green energy seriously. You may be paying more for green energy but many of the following options can help to balance the cost and continue to help the environment.

Swap your computer for a laptop

Laptops are getting cheaper, much more powerful and are ready to replace the desktop computer. As well as being more convenient for transport and travel, they use less power. Laptop computers are designed to perform the same tasks while using up less power. They do this by running more efficiently, producing less heat, less noise and more efficient processing distribution. Home workers can also wander into the garden in the summer and continue working with a glass of chilled lemonade.

Swap bulky CRT monitors for LCD

Those big horrible monitors consume more power than an equivalent sized flat monitor and again the prices are coming down. The bigger they get, the more power they consume so swapping a 14″ crt for a 32″ LCD won’t change much. Research has suggested that a 17″ monitor is the perfect size for maximum productivity. Any bigger and the eyes get lost, any smaller and the eyes strain to see the size and work with more layered windows.

Turn off what you can overnight

If it’s not switched on, it’s not consuming energy and just as importantly, internet hacking is impossible. Turn off printers, desktops, laptops and anything else which does not need to be switched on overnight. I also mean off off, not standby off. Some standby modes consume just as much power as when turned on.

Unplug unused chargers

Mobile phone chargers, laptop chargers, battery chargers, walkie-talkie chargers, Tom tom chargers all produce heat when plugged in, even if they’re not charging anything! Yes this saves you a little time scrabbling about under the desk trying to find it, but it costs money, energy and contributes to pollution and the climate instability.

Energy Saving light bulbs

The traditional light bulb produces light, but it also generates a lot of heat. This heat apart from being a fire risk again costs money to produce. Energy saving bulbs are more expensive, but they last longer and can save you a considerable amount of money in energy bills, they pay for themselves within a relatively short space of time.

Use Natural Light

If you have windows, use them, natural light is healthier to work in, feels nicer, and best of all is free! (At least while Brown and Darling don’t know about it) It helps your body produce vitamin D, and a nice view of the park (or the building opposite) is always nicer than office walls. Better health and well-being increases productivity.

Support like-minded businesses

By buying from greener companies over less efficient ones you will help increase demand for green businesses and start to make a difference among your own suppliers and clients.

Be a paperless office

While paper generally now comes from renewable resources, the energy burned to cut and process trees, transport paper doesn’t. If it doesn’t need to be printed, don’t print it! If you need to empty your paper bin or shredder more than once a fortnight, perhaps you’re throwing away too much. Where can it be saved?

The big green debate

Not everyone agrees we can save the planet, not everyone agrees we’re destroying it, many people think it’s inevitable and we’re being encouraged to spend money where it’s not necessary just to line government pockets.The tips above are on a green theme, but with rising fuel costs and above average inflation, most of these will save you money, save on fuel tax and make your business more self sufficent. Laptops continue working for a few hours in power-failures. Computers switched off are hacker proof. Laptops can be secured in safes. LCD monitors take up less deskspace. Excessive amounts of paper with hot powered lights and machines can pose a fire risk. Some mobile phone chargers have been known to explode if left on for long periods of time. (These are usually recalled but the possibility of it happening again is there) Similarly with Laptop batteries.

Credit: Wind turbine photo courtesy of Patrick Finnegan.

Anna Patterson; a former leader of Google’s search indexing, Tom Costello; her husband who researched and studied search engines at Stanford University and IBM, and Russell Power; also worked at Google on search indexing, Web rankings and spam detection have come together to form Cuil. (pronounced ‘cool’)

Cuil claims to have indexed more pages than Google at a staggering 120 billion web pages. Google last month declared t had discovered over 1 trillion unique pages, but didn’t specify how many it had actually indexed. With insider knowledge at Google, we can only assume they’re right.

Cuil said its search engine goes beyond traditional approaches by analyzing the context of each page and the concepts behind each query so it can provide better rankings by content rather than popularity. Cuil then organizes similar results into groups and sorts them by category. It also offers tabs to clarify subjects, as well as suggestions on how to refine searches.

Check out Cuil here

Opinion? Cuil are trying something new which is always a good way to go about it. Google clones fall within days because they’re trying to copy and are always behind Google’s ever changing ideas. On the other hand, if the pronounciation of your name needs to be added afterwards, how are people going to communicate your brand effectively? It will have to develop its own pronounciation to avoid it being mistaken for its homophonic equivilent.

Testing it’s ‘context’ idea, I searched for ‘Two too to’and had a page of results, none of which talked about English grammar. An identical search on Google however came straight up top with n explanation of the homophones and common mistakes.

The site is also severely lacking features such as news and image search, but that’s exactly why people liked Google in the first place, it was simple, easy-to-use and effective. While testing, I did get a ‘our servers are running a bit hot message’ which is tech speak for, we can’t handle the pressure, but lets see where this leads… Watch this one closely I’d say. No one will beat Google in a day, but give them time and we’ll see what happens.

And why my wife’s site comes up with an image saying ‘born in Japan’ for example which is nowhere on the site is anybody’s guess.

Cuil isn’t the first Google rival to launch this year. Wikia Search, a highly anticipated search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, made its official debut in January. Wikia Search hopes to provide better search results by allowing a community of users to index pages by using their Web page rankings and other suggestions, as well as its own indexing of the Web.

With IT taking on more roles in our finances, security is getting tighter and pushing the world’s best hackers into higher sophistication. If a virus on a single school computer is a small rash, then a DNS attack like those on presently is the HIV of the internet. According to Kaminsky 52% of DNS servers are still at risk.

A website doesn’t really have a name, facebook isn’t really at facebook.com, it’s really at  69.63.178.11, Zakomedia.com is at 79.170.40.33

These numbers (known as IP) make no sense to a human, could you imagine it printed on your business card? The domain name was born. If your house were a website, it’s longitudal and latitudal coordinates would be the IP address and the domain name would be your postal address.

So when you type ‘facebook.com’ into the address bar, your computer sends this request to your ISP’s DNS. (In my case, Virgin Media) Virgin’s DNS server has a list and checks facebook in this list to determine it’s IP. If it can’t find it, it forwards the request to the next nearest DNS and this can go on. Eventually they will come back with the correct IP and send you to the correct website.

The security flaw affects just over 1/2 of these DNS servers and would enable someone to add a false IP to a name. This means a request to ‘www.natwest.com’ could give a false IP reading and send you to another site made up to look like the original and ask you to log in with your bank details… www.natwest.com would still appear in the address bar and you would be none the wiser until every penny was drained from your account to an unnamed Swiss account holder.

The truth is that DNS owners have known about this problem for about 2 weeks and many have still done nothing about them! This puts us, the consumers at a serious risk! 52% of the world could be lead to the wrong banking site to input their details… that’s not a gamble I’m willing to take!

So without trying to scaremonger, there is a way of testing whether or not you are likely to be affected. Go to http://www.doxpara.com/ and use the ‘Check DNS’ button on the right. Ignore the messages below, but read the text which appears. It doesn’t say you ARE affected, it simply tells you if your local DNS is at risk or patched to avoid this threat. If it is at risk, avoid sending sensitive data online. (i.e. banks, logins etc.) Reading the news, weather, and checking mail with outlook or outlook express should be fine. You can resume normal activity when a new test confirms you are ok. If you’re DNS comes out with the message:

xx.xx.xx.xx has other protections above and beyond port randomization against the recently discovered DNS flaws. There is no reason to be concerned about the results seen below.

Then you can be happy and relax in the knowledge that your ISP (whether it’s BT, AOL, Virgin etc) has it’s customers in mind and is keeping you secure.

BT, Virgin Media (no relation), Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB, and Carphone Warehouse, the top 6 UK ISPs have joined forces with the UK government to put an end to illegally downloaded music. Hundreds of thousands of letters will go out to suspected ‘criminals’ warning them of the crackdown. Hard-core file sharers could have their broadband speed greatly reduced to try and stop them.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, which represents the music industry, said: “All of the major ISPs in the UK now recognise they have a responsibility to deal with illegal file-sharers on their networks.”

Illegal music downloads are illegal, I have no arguement, someone has worked to produce it and should get paid. With legitimite MP3 download sites competing so heavily, it’s not expensive to purchase the music you listen to.

What of our privacy? Does this mean that our in and out web data is being monitored and analysed?

In everything we do, we have a thing called choice and freedom. I walk into my nearby shop and I can choose to steal a Mars bar or buy it. I can choose to browse for hours on end while snacking on their frosties cereal, or I could choose to buy some gum and get out. I don’t expect or want the shopkeeper to attach himself to me the second I hit the door, holding my hands by my sides and walking me around, it’s invasive. Though I choose not to steal Mars bars and open their cereal boxes, the freedom to choose makes me feel human. I for one don’t want my freedoms removed.

Identity theft is big business! With the information sharing age upon us, should we take steps to start the information restriction age to protect our online identities from theft? More and more of our business and personal practices are online. We make payments online, transfer and recieve large quantities of money online. Our banks are online. Facebook, Linkedin, Bebo, Ecademy, Twitter users have much of their personalities online. Websites simply aren’t protecting our online identities the way they should be, and the law doesn’t want to know, so we have to take matters into our own hands!

This is by no means a definitive list so please do add ideas into the comments if there’s anything you feel should be added.

Basic steps to protect your identity online:

Passwords:

First and easiest route for online identity theft is the human element; passwords. I can access my business bank account with a single username and password and that scares me, but it doesn’t have to. To obtain this information, an identity thief can use 3 methods:

1. Know what I like and try to guess the password based on my interests, relationships, date of birth. (all of which can be obtained through facebook!)SOLUTION: Do not choose easily guessable passwords (and no S1m0n isn’t much more secure than Simon when using real words)
2. If I use the same password for more than one service, someone gets hold of the password for one system and can access another. This can happen by signing in to an untrusted website where they’re not asking for money but you do need to register. It can happen by a legitimate website being hacked or it could even be overheard or abused when you’re in a hotel foyer, calling home directing your friend or PA into your email to get your booking details.
   
   SOLUTION: Use a different password for different websites.Alternatively use one secure password for the secure sites and lesser passwords for lesser sites. i.e. my business and personal banks have the same password. My hotmail account (used for junk only) and facebook account use another.
3. The Brute Force or dictionary attack uses random characters or known words with and without numbers to keep guessing. This is done automatically and can guess around 10,000 possible combinations in an day. If your password happens to be in a dictionary with or without numbers no matter how obscure, the password will be guessed within a few hours. If you had a long random list of numbers and letters, it could take weeks or even months. Some websites lock out after a few guesses to try and prevent it, but most don’t.SOLUTION: Choose passwords as randomly as possible but it needs to be memorable!

   One tip I’ve heard for helping to keep passwords obscure for both computers and humans is to anacronym it. For example, I could have the password: MWCFMAICFMK based on the phrase: “My wife comes from Mauritius and I come from Milton Keynes” It makes it random but memorable for someone who knows this keyphrase. Add some numbers in there to increase randomness and you’re laughing. The common way is to change similar letters and numbers. (for example the letter i becomes the number one) This can help but don’t rely on it 100%.

   Finished Password: mwcfm41cfmk (12 characters)

Forgotten Passwords

Ok my password is secure. The second route into less secure sites is hitting the ‘Forgotten password’ button. Some ask simple information (mothers maiden name, date of birth etc.) before emailing them to the account in your profile, some just email, some will allow a complete password reset and only email to confirm giving immediate but limited access. You therefore need to protect your mother’s maiden name, and your date of birth. The trouble is that this information isn’t all that hard to get hold of!

Solutions? When you’re asked for your date of birth and mother’s maiden name on non-trusted sites and where lying isn’t going to be called fraud, lie. Use a date of birth and name which means nothing realistically to you but which only you know as being your backup details. This way people who know your real DOB won’t be able to gain access.  Obviously when applying for credit, insurance etc. you have a legal obligation to provide your real details but these tend to be more secure.

Post-it Notes

One of the biggest no-goes in the history of computers! Never, under any circumstances, at all, ever write down your passwords on a post-it note and stick it to your monitor! The back of your desk diary is the second most common place to write it. This can be as helpful as sending a mass email with all your passwords to your friends, IT repairman, next door neighbour’s son who helps you every time you get a virus etc etc etc…

If you need to write your access details down at any point, you need to keep this as secure as the original information. Don’t label it ‘Passwords’ don’t leave it within easy and obvious access from the PC. write the actual password element backwards. Anyone who tried it the normal way will assume it’s out of date and give up. My sheet with the password above would read:

Hotmail:
simon@hotmail.com
kmfc14mfcwm

The Computer :

While we’re working in the office, the next thing to keep secure is the computer. Make sure you have a good anti-virus. AVG is one of the best I’ve ever used in the last 10 years, and they do have a free version for domestic use (http://free.avg.com/) How will this help?

Some of the worse virus’ and programs you can have on your PC are the ones that don’t do anything visibly. Some can sit there logging everything you type (usernames, letters, passwords, emails, credit card numbers) and send them off to the originator to decode. A good virus scan should keep these out and keep you safe.

Some people also recommend lavasoft’s adaware too to run every so often. This helps catch things which aren’t specifically classed as virus’s but can be damaging. Don’t be alarmed when you see the number of things it will find, to be on the safe side, it removes everything which could track what you’re doing including internet cookies which are very limited and don’t really do anything bad besides help record that you’re logged into a site but doesn’t give away passwords. Their free version is here: http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

The websites

The websites themselves can also be quite weak. When you sign up with a site or make a payment, it’s illegal for the website owner to store your credit card details and certain others without a minimum level of security… but who enforces laws on the internet? Only use trusted websites with a proven track record to give your more private details to.  If you don’t trust them or there’s doubt, signup for a free hotmail or yahoo email address and use that for these sites only. If you’re likely to get one email and nothing more, consider using Temporary Inbox

Facebook

Facebook and other social networking sites can cause a real threat. Just this week, a security threat lead to users details being exposed. (read about the latest facebook security hole here)

The truth is that most data handed out has to have been given in the first place. Try using your secondary date of birth, mother’s maiden name etc. and ONLY put information on the world wide web which you want everyone on the world wide web to see! It doesn’t matter that people can or can’t see your date of birth as all someone has to do is scan through your wall or public messages and look for the abundance of ‘Happy Birthday’ messages from your friends and family and look at the date of posting!

Scam and Spam

Occasionally you will probably receive notifications of account closures or emails requesting you to click a link and log in. DON’T! If there is a doubt, go to the website in question manually, do not use the links provided if you then have to insert your password details. This is known as Phishing. They can divert you to their own website made to look like your bank, paypal etc encouraging you to log in. If you get an email from Natwest requesting that you log in, open your browser, go to www.natwest.com and log in there. According to Sophos, only 1 in 28 emails are actually legitimite.

Making Payments

Many of my clients want to take payments online and always scoff at the idea of offering paypal payments. Paypal is a good system with the buyer in mind.They do have higher than average charges but personally I feel you get value for money. They are at the end of the day, just another website, but they are big enough and their whole purpose of being is around security. Without that, the whole business would collapse overnight!

As I said at the beginning, this is not a definitive list but contains all the most relevent and basic things to know about putting your information online. It’s a lawless society which is slowly dominating our lives and should be treated with care!