On January 3, 2018, two hardware flaws were announced that affect nearly every computer sold within the last 20 years. Every virtualization service available relies on vulnerable computers, but you needn’t worry -- almost every vendor has already protected your virtual machines.

What are the risks of an unpatched computer?

Regardless of whether you are using a computer with all its hardware sitting on your desk, or you’re connected to a virtual computer drawing most of its computing resources coming from a cloud server, you’ll be using something called a central processing unit (CPU).

As unbelievably efficient pieces of technology, CPUs have been programed to recognize patterns. When a CPU recognizes a pattern, it stores everything it needs to complete that task in a temporary place. If the pattern changes, the information is thrown out. Spectre and Meltdown allow hackers to not only view trashed patterns, but also to trick a CPU into thinking a specific pattern has changed and should be dumped into this vulnerable storage.

In worst case scenarios, this could affect credit card information, passwords, and personally identifiable information. And even though a virtual desktop or server is created with software that partitions hardware resources on a large computer into several smaller, standalone computers -- Spectre and Meltdown flaws are still present.

How are they fixed?

Because these are hardware-level vulnerabilities, the only way to truly fix them is by replacing the CPUs. But because there aren’t any processors currently available without the Spectre and Meltdown flaws, software patches are the only option.

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google have all installed updates that essentially tell CPUs to stop recognizing patterns to store data ahead of time. However, predictive functions significantly increased the computing speeds of modern computers, meaning turning them off will slow down computer performance.

Virtualization is more cost effective than ever

This all sounds terrible, but it’s actually a huge selling point for virtual desktops and servers. First, it proves that big-name cloud platforms can push out urgent security updates to thousands upon thousands of clients in a relatively quick fashion. Those using “traditional” computers (remember, the ones with all the hardware sitting on your desk), need to apply these patches one-by-one, on-site.

Second, most virtualization platforms charge on a pay-for-what-you-use model. So, you’re not paying for hardware and its flaws, you’re paying for the actual work that is finished on your web-accessible computer.

Spectre and Meltdown will continue to affect the computing world for several months to come. However, businesses that use virtualization technology will not be hit nearly as hard. There’s no better time to make the switch than now -- give us a call today.

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What will we do without Google? Sure, there are other search engines out there; but let’s face it, Google has left its competitors in the dust, thanks to its speed and ease of use. What’s more, the search engine is packed with advanced search features that make life a lot easier.

Include and exclude keywords
Google will understand most of the search terms you type into it. However, at times the search engine will match only some of the words you typed, showing limited results. To avoid this, just point out which keywords are the most important by adding a plus symbol (+) in front of words you would like Google to include in the search results.

And if the results you’re looking for get pushed off the page by similar yet irrelevant articles, adding a minus symbol (-) in front of keywords you don’t want to see will avoid them popping up in the first place. For example, “+cloud services -hybrid cloud” will provide search results about different cloud services while excluding results related to hybrid cloud.

Additionally, searching a phrase within double quotation marks guarantees to retrieve results that include only the exact phrase that matches your query.

Do a website search
Ever need to look for information from a specific website? Instead of visiting that website and sifting through different pages, Google makes it a breeze by allowing you to add “site:url” to the end of your search query.

For example, if you want to find what Forbes has written about security, simply head to Google’s homepage and type “security site:www.forbes.com.” This makes sure Google includes only pages from Forbes that are about security in your search results.

You can also limit search results to university and government websites by adding “site:.edu” or “site:.gov” to your search query. Combining this with the keyword manipulation trick above will narrow your search even more.

Search by time period
Google has been indexing the web for decades in order to add web pages into its database. Because of that, it could be quite time-consuming sifting through countless search results to find an old website or page, or even recent stories, too. Time period search minimizes this headache by allowing you to specify a date range so you can find recent stories or archived news faster.

Just run a search like you normally would. Then click on Tools under the search box and hit the Any time drop-down menu. From there, you can choose the time period parameter, such as past month or past week, or fill in an exact time period.

Use Google to locate files
While Google mainly focuses on indexing web pages, it also indexes publicly available files like PDFs and spreadsheets. To look for them, just type in “filetype:” after your search query. For example, typing “report filetype:pdf” will provide PDFs with “report” in the title.

Advance your search
Advanced Search can be accessed by clicking Settings from the toolbar located under the search box. This gives you more ways to refine your searches, such as by region or language. By default, search results are prioritized based on your location, so you should adjust that according to the topics you’re searching for.

While these tips might not be the most exciting thing from the tech giant, they sure help businesses save time and work smarter instead of harder. And in today’s fast-paced business environment, little things like these make a huge difference. If you have questions about how to use Google products to streamline your daily routine and increase productivity, just give us a call.

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