News and articles from Hyperlink

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April Newsletter

Hacker strikes 600 New Zealand web sites

You will have probably recall that a Turkish hacker hacked in and destroyed approximately 600 New Zealand web sites. It is a salutary reminder of the threats that exist on the Internet.

How could this have happened?

In this case the hacker was able to inflict extensive damage because the server was setup in such a way that there were no barriers between each web site. In other words, the sites were not sufficiently isolated from each other. So, once the hacker had been able to hack one site, it was a hop, skip and a jump to every other site on the server.

What Hyperlink does to minimise its vulnerability from attack:

• Sites are highly isolated from each other - if one site is compromised all other sites remain secure
• Servers are maintained and regularly updated
• Back-ups are done on a daily basis - and can be quickly restored if required

What you can do to minimise risk to your site

A site is only as secure as its user name and password. This means that site owners - those who are able to edit their sites - must use sensible and secure passwords that contain both alpha and numeric characters. Alpha and numeric characters in a password will make it more difficult to guess and gain access to your site.

Parliament passes anti-spam legislation

Recently the Government passed it’s anti-spam legislation (Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007) as a measure to crackdown on the flood of spam that arrives in our inbox each day. While the Government must be commended on this move it has to be realised that nearly all spam is generated overseas, and this law will do nothing to stem this flow in the short term.

Legislation such as this will only have an effect if countries around the world introduce similar laws and there is a common framework for fighting spam on a global scale. Unfortunately, this seems highly unlikely in the short to medium term.

Major provisions of the legislation:

Unsolicited commercial electronic messages must not be sent

• The onus of proof that a person has consented to receive a commercial electronic message lies with the sender
• Commercial electronic messages must contain a functional unsubscribe facility
• Messages must contain accurate sender information
• Address harvesting software must not be used to collect addresses
• You must not use harvested address lists to send commercial electronic messages

This act does into come into force until 5 September 2007.

This act is fairly comprehensive and covers more than just the sending of emails. If you would like further information on this act and how it may affect you, please contact us so we can undertake a review of your current practices and show you systems and procedures you need to follow in order to be compliant with this Act.

Spam is a real issue. Currently it is estimated that four out of every five emails (80%) is classed as spam. Industry pundits are now predicting that this figure will increase to 95% by year’s end.

Client referral scheme

Would you like others to gain the benefit of having a high quality and attractive web site developed by Hyperlink? If so, we would love to know - and for every referral that becomes a client we will reward you!

A three month hosting holiday! How does that sound? And for every further referral who also becomes a client, you get another month’s holiday! Of course, this can only apply if you are an already existing Hyperlink hosting client.

If you are not a Hyperlink hosting client, you still can benefit with every referral that becomes a client we will send you a $80 voucher to Café Istanbul .

New SMS release - v3.3.4

surveyMaker launched

Hyperlink’s new version of surveyMaker has just been launched. This version is a complete rebuild and incorporates many new and exciting features. Already there has been a great deal of interest in this version from many organisations who see it as a superior alternative to the products they are currently using.

Information is the currency of business. Without information from our customers, constituents or stakeholders our organisation can easily lose its direction and become irrelevant. With knowledge our decisions become informed timely, strategic and profitable. This is where surveys can provide us with relevant information.

surveyMaker offers many advantages over traditional paper based surveys:

• it offer significantly reduced costs
• is faster and easier for participants
• provides a higher response rate over paper based surveys
• the results are both immediate and accurate

If you would like more information about surveyMaker and the benefits it can deliver, please give contact us now and we will arrange a demonstration.

checkOut

checkOut is a simple web site shopping cart designed for situations where a full shopping cart solutions is unwarranted. It allows for up to five individual products to be sold without the complexity of adding categories and product options. checkOut provides a full solution for managing online sales of products and is designed to work with online credit card processing.

If you have been thinking about selling a few products online, but thought that a full shopping cart solution was unwarranted, contact us so we can arrange a demonstration.

New web site for Dairy InSight

Dairy InSight is the independent farmer-owned organisation responsible for making investments into dairy industry research, development, extension and education projects and activities. It funds and co-ordinates industry good activities to improve dairy farmer profitability and ensure the long-term success of that industry. You may have seen their ads on television.

We have had the pleasure to be involved in the development of a new web site for Dairy InSight . This site has taken a great amount of time to build and construct and involved Station Creative - who did the graphic design for the site. Our role was to take the design and develop the pages and integrate the features into the site that would enable Dairy InSight to manage their web presence.

The site enables Dairy InSight to manage the content of areas of the sight, including the addition of news releases. A significant part of the site is the Investment results section. This section enables Dairy InSight to publish an entire database of investment projects online, including reports for every project. A feature of this section allows site visitors to be notified and receive reports on any project as they are published.

Support rates

From 1 April 2007, all clients will be charged for support. Support is defined as any work performed by our Help Desk operator. Please note this does not apply to bug fixes, sales queries or requests for quotes.

Help desk support will be charged at a rate of $120 +GST per hour and be charged in 10 minute increments. This rate will apply to all support, unless a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is in place.

If you would like to inquire about a Service Level Agreement please contact us directly. We will be happy to outline the plans available.