John_Feltman_History_Zebec_Data_Systems from Zebec Center on Vimeo.

Microsoft, Apple, Verizon, AT&T and others are spending large advertising dollars to encourage their prospects to join the Cloud. Other data centers are looking at joining the Cloud. “We have been helping our clients virtualize and be in the Cloud since 1978. We know what it takes,” says Buddy Rhodes, the Chief Sales Officer of ZEBEC Data Systems.  We have several bundles for individual virtual desktops and corporate virtual offices to choose from, as you can read in our press release here;

• Virtual Communication & Desktop for individuals, starting at $59 per month
• Virtual Offices for small to medium organizations, starting at $500 per month
• Virtual Enterprise for medium to large enterprises, starting at $2500 per month

Contact us at (713) 782-3480 or sales@zebec.net

Please, read our Press Release:

Welcome to Zebec Center by Buddy Rhodes, Chief Sales Officer

Currently, the DataTrax database is well over a terabyte and is composed of a billion records.  By most standards, this is a large database.  To manage all of this information, we use Microsoft SQL Server.  So when you fill in a search form and press the Search button, DataTrax creates a database request.  These are called queries.  The queries are designed to bring back only that information that matches the criteria in your form.

Let’s say you are looking up a last name, ABCDEFGHIJKLMN.  Perhaps you only know the beginning and ending characters ABCD something KLMN.  As a matter of fact, you don’t even know how many characters are missing.

If you replace the missing characters with an asterisk ( * ), the SQL server will return every record whose last name begins with ABCD and ends KLMN (ABCD*KLMN).  It will find ABCDEFGHIJKLMN.  However, it will also find ABCDKLMN and ABCDEFGHIJOPQRKLMN.  The first name is much too short; the second is much too long.  The asterisk tells the SQL server to accept every possible combination of characters and number of characters.  The SQL server spends a lot of time returning matches that cannot possibly be correct.

To help the search run more efficiently and if we know the number of characters in the last name, we can replace each of the missing characters with an underline character ( _ ).  In the example above, if we search for ABCD_ _ _ _ _ _KLMN, only those records that have exactly six characters between the known characters will be considered.  The underline character tells the SQL server to accept every possible character in that position.

So where would you use the underline wildcard?  The obvious answer is the DMV plate search.  Let’s say you are running a plate.  You know the first three letters are ABC and the last two letters are 23.  But you don’t know the forth letter.  Searching for plate ABC_23 will return:

ABCA23, ABCB12, ABCC23…  all the way to …ABC723, ABC823, ABC923

There are 36 possible matches.  If you use two underline characters, there are 36 X 36 = 1,296 possible matches.  Adding just one more underline increases the number of possible matches to 46,656.  Obviously, it takes more time to process 46,656 matches than 36.  You always run the risk of timing out when using wildcard searches.  This is especially true of the asterisk wildcard.

Hint:  DataTrax often uses wild card searches.  This is especially true of addresses.  DataTrax automatically appends an asterisk to the end of each address.  Therefore you can have a more successful search by leaving off the street, road, drive, dr, st, …  Addresses are special and will be discussed in an upcomming blog entry.

See: http://goo.gl/76UPQ ||and|| http://goo.gl/pgbAY

According to Epsilon, the *only* information that was leaked was a list of names and email addresses. Possibly, the attackers also have a link between the name and a particular vendor for whom the people using these email addresses have chosen to do business with and (either knowingly or not) signed up to be added to email campaigns. This is useful information for someone seeking to try and trick people into divulging their account information through “phishing”. Phishing is a type of scam where someone sends an email masquerades as someone else and tries to trick the reader of the email to divulge information they didn’t already have, typically in the form of a credit card or a password or other sensitive and personal information. This information often enables the attacker to obtain a financial gain through direct (credit card numbers or passwords to bank accounts) or indirect (social security numbers allowing them to apply for credit cards) means.

In light of this leak by Epsilon, the attacker possibly has additional information allowing them to be more effective in their phishing attacks since they already have specific knowledge about the owners of these email addresses most likely being a customer of specific vendor(s). This additional information is often termed as “Spear Phishing” because the attacker is not making a bling guess about what vendor the user might use in the hopes of getting lucky. For example a phishing attack might send a mass amount of email claiming to be from “Bank of Pluto”, but only 1% of the email recipients actually use the “Bank of Pluto” and of those 1%, perhaps only 1% of those email receipients are tricked by the result. However, if the attacker KNOWS they have a list where 99% of the email recipients use a specific bank, their efficiency of success of going to be much higher.

What’s it all mean? Well besides company reputation, the biggest possibility for this information resulting in a financial loss to anyone is to the consumers whose email addresses were compromised comes from if they themselves are tricked by the subsequent phishing attacks. This is where being an informed computer user can nullify this attack in its entirety. Most corporate IT Security training programs should cover how to spot a phishing attack and not be victimized by it, but most of them boil down to these simple tips:

1. Avoid clicking on any link in an email you aren’t explicitly expecting. Especially if doing so prompts you to enter some type of password or personal information.

2. Be generally suspicious. If any email appears legitimate, especially if it comes from a banking institution, it doesn’t hurt to call customer service at a number you know belongs to the organization you think sent the email. Don’t use any contact information you get from the email itself.

3. Usually, threats to shut down an account if you don’t verify your information within the next 24 hours online is a sure sign that the email is a phishing attempt.

Question: The Epsilon breach, how concerned should you be?
Answer: You should be vigilant, but not concerned. The fact that Epsilon made this breach known fairly quickly is good corporate behavior on their part and allows its consumers to become informed about the potential risk before it’s too late.

This blog is composed of a collection of information and hints to get the most out of your DataTrax account.  I will do this by explaining some of the inner workings of the system.

General

DataTrax is composed of Texas public records only.  There are no Social Security Numbers or phone numbers in any of our tables.  These tables are updated weekly, monthly or semiannually.

Access to our service is on a monthly subscription basis.  During the month, a user can perform unlimited searches.  Users are charged on a “concurrent user” basis.  This means that a company with 100 users can access DataTrax with only 3 users at the same time, if the company has subscribed to only 3 “concurrent users” accounts.  To subscribe to DataTrax log onto www.zebec.net and register online by selecting the DataTrax tab or call Zebec Data Systems, 713-782-3480.

At this time DataTrax manages and allows users to search over one billion records.  All of this information is organized into tables.  The current available search tables are:

• -DMV – Department of Motor Vehicle Plates – Updated Weekly
• -DL – Texas State Driver’s License and ID cards– Updated Weekly
• -VR – Voter Registration – Updated Semiannually
• -STACT – State Sales Tax – Updated Monthly
• -OD – State Officers and Directors– Updated Monthly
• -FTACT – State Franchise Tax– Updated Monthly
• -HarrAN – Harris County Assumed Names– Updated Monthly
• -HarrML – Harris Count y Marriage Licenses– Updated Monthly
• -HarrPBT – Harris County Probate Court– Updated Monthly
• -HarrCCNT – Harris County County Court– Updated Monthly
• -MontAN – Montgomery County Assumed Names– Updated Monthly
• -MontML – Montgomery County Marriage Licenses– Updated Monthly
• -TXML – Texas Marriage Licenses – Updated Annually

In most cases, our databases include not only the most current information, but historical information as well.  This gives our users the ability to view the history of vehicles and their drivers.  In the case of DL, our records go back to the turn of the last century.

Thus the blog is launched.