Some may remember my post in February of 2010, “Better DNS Servers for faster browsing” in which I briefly described what DNS is and how it may impact your surfing speed.  While I still recommend OpenDNS (See my posts:  OpenDNS: Better, Faster, Safer? and OpenDNS Protects Surfers from DNS Flaw) for many of my customers who are looking for a good method to keep the internet somewhat “family safe” with some malware filtering, I recently went on a quest to help those customers who needed a more robust malware filtering solution.

Several DNS solutions have cropped up since the OpenDNS opened its doors in July of 2006 with the mission of making the internet a safer place for families and business while increasing the reliability and speed at which that internet is delivered.

Some of the more popular newcomers to the DNS space include: Google Public DNS, Norton DNS,  DynDNS.com Internet Guide, DNS Advantage,  Comodo Secure DNS and ClearCloud DNS (currently in beta).  Each offers a varying level of user defined filtering and features (none of which are yet at the level of OpenDNS’).

After testing the feature set, speed and privacy policies of each, I am now recommending DynDNS.com Internet Guide to my customers who are looking for a higher level of security filtering with a good mixture of granularity and category control.  Internet Guide is powered by DynDNS.com world class DNS services and Barracuda Networks‘ web filtering appliance and BarracudaCentral.org security portal.  This combination has proven to provide the level of security that my customers want at an inexpensive price (FREE for basic).

Internet Guide offers:

• Advanced Phishing and Malware filtering
• Typo Correction
• Fast and Reliable Resolution
• Dynamic DNS Service (DDNS)

So, if you are in the market to add another layer of security to your home or small business network then DynDNS.com Internet Guide may fit the bill.  If you need more information or consultation on setting this up  for you, your family or business, we are always just a sales ticket away!

Backupify is offering one year free for the Pro 100 plan for those who simply ask (using pro code savegmail)!

The cloud based backup solution uses Amazon Web Services’ S3 service to backup you Google account Email, Docs, Calendar and other Googlified data. So, why the generosity? According to their blog post, it seems to be in direct response to this weekend’s Google Account reset for an estimated 150,000 accounts.

Hurry, this free year ends March 1st. So grab yours now!

Update: Google’s voice on the weekend’s issue: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/gmail-back-soon-for-everyone.html

Automattic has release what they call a “critical” update to their popular WordPress blogging platform to fix a security hole in the sanitation library, called KSES:

3.0.4 Important Security Update
Posted December 29, 2010 by Matt Mullenweg. Filed under Releases,Security.

Version 3.0.4 of WordPress, available immediately through the update page in your dashboard or for download here, is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon as possible because it fixes a core security bug in our HTML sanitation library, called KSES. I would rate this release as “critical.”

I realize an update during the holidays is no fun, but this one is worth putting down the eggnog for. In the spirit of the holidays, consider helping your friends as well.

If you are a security researcher, we’d appreciate you taking a look over this changeset as well to review our update. We’ve given it a lot of thought and review but since this is so core we want as many brains on it as possible. Thanks to Mauro Gentile and Jon Cave (duck_) who discovered and alerted us to these XSS vulnerabilities first.

via WordPress news.

Tour owners on the Verizon network have waited on the sidelines while their fellow Tour owners on Sprint and other networks enjoyed the new features of the latest Blackberry Operating System, 5.0. This last week those owners finally got the joy. However, that joy very quickly turned to sadness and anger as their beloved Tour began acting up like a spoiled 2 year old.

Dozens of Tour owners have reported many issues since upgrading. Those issues range from the minor annoyances like browser click unresponsiveness and other issues to the embarrassing (really embarrassing), to the utter destruction of their device.  Crackberry.com’s forums are full of owner complaints.

So, if you are a Tour owner on the “Big Red” network, check out this thread for known issues before taking the leap. Many, myself included, have downgraded to the last official release until these issues are addressed. My Berry is too important of a business and communications tool to take chances!

The Sans Institute is reporting yet another search engine poisoning surrounding a major event. This time, it is the recent earthquake in Chile. According to the Institute, unsuspecting searchers looking for information about the devastating 8.8 earthquake find malware laced sites rather than information.

“Search Google for “Chile Earthquake” and you will find a number of malware site or sites like “Qooglesearch.com” on the first page. As regular charities start to use these keywords, the poisoned results may be pushed back a bit and show up under other related keywords.” warns Sans.

As always, use caution when clicking on any link on the web…even those that appear to be from reputable sites.