So to finish this series on the holidays, lets look at a few of the checks you should perform before everyone gets back in:

• Is your cachepilot powered up?
• Are all your network switches powered up?
• Is your curriculum server fired up?
• Are your PCs getting an IP address from the server?
• Can you ping the server and the cachepilot from your PCs?
• Can you get on the Internet from both admin and curriculum PCs?

If in doubt, call the MEWAN Helpdesk on 234 7787 for help.

You see, for most of you, your Internet access works in tandem with the login you have to your curriculum server.  For everything to work your curriculum server must be up, and must be able to “ping” our cachepilot, which is normally 192.168.1.1 on your network.

The common problem in the holidays is that servers are switched off, rebuilt, or had user accounts change.  Make sure the curriculum server is powered up and can ping the Cachepilot, if it still isn’t working, ring the MEWAN Team on 234 7787.

I really should have written this entry, before the holidays, but now we’re all back, we’re experiencing the post holiday IT hiccups. It happens every holiday, but particularly after the six weeks, when typically computers are being rebuilt, things unplugged, moved around, and maybe even building work going on. The result is that inevitably, we come back to a slightly chaotic situation. With regards to your Internet access, there are a few things you can do, before the kids come back, and before a holiday to make sure the system will be good when you come back in.

The Cachepilot is a silver cube PC installed in your comms cabinet (or if you’re a high school a large black machine in your server rack). We’ll start with the cube, it has a power button on the front, and a blue light indicates power. There should be a minimum of two thin network cables in the back, and a of course a black power lead!

If you’re planning on having any work done that would involve pulling the power to the whole building, it is advised that you properly power down your computers, and that includes the Cachepilot. To shutdown your cachepilot, simply press the button on the front once. A tone should sound, followed by a few more tones half a minute later, and the blue light will go out. To fire it up again, just press the power once, the blue light will come on, and you will know it has succesfully booted after about a minute when you will hear three tones.

Things to check!

Is it just your PC or everyone’s?  If its just your PC, check the cable that goes into the back of your PC!  If it is just one or two PCs, you’ll need to ask whoever provides your local network support for assistance.  If on the otherhand the Internet is working nowhere in the school…..

First things to check are that the Cachepilot is on?  If there is no blue light, try pressing the power button once, and listen out for the tones.  If no blue light comes on, check the power lead at the back is in, and that the plug is in, and check that the two network leads are in too.  If that all is OK, something is fishy, so you should probably call the MEWAN helpdesk on 234 7787.

If you are being asked for a password when normally you wouldn’t give one on the other hand, read our other guide, part 2!

Instructions are provided on the web page on how to install this update. MEWAN does not provide support to your local network in school.  You should liase your network support to deploy this update.

NB: The AV software is only available to MEWAN subscribing schools. If you experence problems with accessing these, please contact the MEWAN Helpdesk on 234 7787 or support@mewan.net

We’re seeing problems on the LA Core Network that are affecting MEWAN. Apologies into any inconveniences we’re are looking into it, but are confident it will be being dealt with as a matter of highest priority.

Bypass sites are rife now, allowing Pupils to attempt to bypass the Internet security we have in place for their safety.  There are literally tens of thousands of such sites, with dozens of new sites appearing each day.  Blocking them becomes a non-trivial task.  MEWAN has written custom software that attempts to find and automatically block new sites in our global filters for our subscribing schools.  On top of that, your Cachepilot has special anti-bypass content filtering enabled.  However, a lot of new proxy sites use “https” – the secure protocol you use to login to sites like your bank, or paypal.  Your cachepilot can’t filter keywords in the content because the connection is completely encrypted.

So what to do?  What we advise is completely disable HTTPS connections for the pupils group entirely, whitelisting only any sites they may need that use that protocol.  When you think about it, there aren’t many sites where a student would legitimately need an encrypted connection.  This will block the path to all of these encrypted bypass sites, considerably enhancing safety.

We’ve produced this guide on how to setup such filtering.  Any questions?  Call the Helpdesk on 234 7787 or email support@mewan.net

Good Passwords

A good password will be at least 8 characters long, contain upper and lower case characters, and at least one number of symbol like $£% etc.  A good password does not use words found in the dictionary, as hackers can and do use “dictionary attacks” to crack accounts.

Password Do’s and Don’ts

• DON´T use common names, like the name of your spouse or pet, names of football teams, TV programs, Actors, Films etc.
• DON´T use short passwords, they are much easier for a hacker to break, a password should be at least 8 characters long.
• DON´T Use sequences like 12345678 and qwertyuiop

Remembering your Password

There are many different ways but here are a couple of suggestions.

Passwords can be tricky to remember, especially if they are made up of nonsense. Try this way of making passwords you can remember:

Use a phrase with a number in it! Start with a phrase you can easily remember, like “There are twelve eggs in a dozen” and then turn it into a password by using the first character of each word and the number like this

There Are Twelve(12) Eggs In A Dozen becomes:

ta12eiad

Now change a couple of letters to upper case, in this instance, to make it easy to remember, I’ll always make the first and last characters uppercase.

Ta12eiaD

Another approach is to mash a phrase together. For example “Just Another Manic Monday”, and use the first 3 characters from each, captialising the first letter of each word.

JusAnoManMon

For extra security, Add a few digits at the end like the year you were born, or a memorable date.

JusAnoManMon76

Change your password Today! If you’re password is weak, you have a data security incident just waiting to happen.  Your password can be changed in Squirrelmail using “Options -> Change Password”.

Squirrelmain password change guide (v1) – here’s a handy guide to the process.

• You have a bunch of open tabs in your web browser, an e-mail page, Facebook, your bank account and maybe a bunch of news sites.

• While you’re reading your email say, the attack is able to hone in on tabs that haven’t been used or aren’t in focus and replace the favicon (the icon in your tab bar) and the title of the tab.

• When you click on that tab, a fake page is loaded in its place, maybe it is loaded to look like a standard login page.

• Because you already had this tab open legitimately before, you don’t bother paying any attention to the URL in the address bar and you enter in your login information.

• You’ve just sent your info to a nefarious third party..

We’ll be watching closely to see if Microsoft and Firefox have some fix for stopping this behaviour, in the meantime, make sure to look at the address bar of your sites before logging in!