Q: How long does it take?
A: How long does IT take? Information Technology is a fantastically dynamic discipline constantly evolving through the brilliant efforts of millions of people around the world. It is a journey of rewarding milestones rather than a finite destination. Keeping that in mind:
Q: What is Spoofing, SPF, DKIM and DMARC?
A: Spoofing is quite easy. You see, many systems allow one to change the way a name and email address displays on a sent email and the reply to address. This is used quite normally, for example, you may want to send an email out via your email address but as events or info@ and then ensure that it replies to a different address. If it can be used easily in normal business practice, then it can also be easily used in Cybercrime and using this method to misrepresent another entity online is called 'Spoofing'.
Q: What is the difference between POP, IMAP and Microsoft Exchange
A: All three are types of email services. Only Microsoft Exchange provides true synchronisation with your cloud-services and devices; including contacts, calendar items and emails. You may say that is what icloud is for but icloud.com is owned by Apple and it is not your domain.
Q: Can I just buy Office outright like I used to? Why keep paying a subscription?
A: Microsoft 365, previously Office 365 is an ongoing paid subscription because you are not just buying a license to use programs but renting storage space. The cloud is the digital equivalent of a townhouse complex and you are renting a place to store your information. With multi-factor authentication (MFA) active it is like a secure complex with a guard and with Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) active it is like a high security complex with patrol and guards.
Q: Other places offer free domains, why do you charge?
A: Nothing is free. Domain registrars charge irrespective of what you pay. We pay to secure domains directly and immediately and we add a nominal admin markup to registration costs and renewal costs that we incur. We forward the domain registrar cost to the client to confirm annual ownership renewal.
Cybercrime is not limited to offering free domains and websites so that the user or business stores their user information on their servers so they can sell them without legal juristic concners as it is hosted in a country that has no data laws. Extortion is not limited to someone selling your domain to you for many times its original value.
We contribute towards non-profit causes by sponsoring their domain registration and renewal costs during the term of sponsorship within reason.
Q: Do you guarantee service delivery?
A: @myfingertips domain hosting services come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee to all managed dedicated hosting clients. (~1 collective day per 3 years for maintenance)
A: Starting April 1 2021, Microsoft is said to have increased its service-level agreement (SLA) for Azure Active Directory to "four nines" of uptime -- or 99.99 percent -- each month. Previously, Azure AD uptime is guarantee was "three nines" (99.9 percent) per month. (~1 collective day per 27 years)
Q: Do you make backups?
A: Domains are backed up daily at about 1am as files and databases and kept for up to 2 weeks. This includes web files, private https stored files, and the user folder which contains any emails stored on our servers. Usually only in a worst-case scenario, files and databases can be restored together or separately to a state as of first thing that morning, up to 14 days back. Emails shouldn’t be stored on our servers using IMAP, that is fundamentally wrong, and we use Microsoft 365 Business cloud services to fix that archaic problem.
A: Websites on @myfingertips are backed up before and after we make each and every major change, prior to security updates and during active events.
Q: Can you login to my WordPress?
A: Yes and no. We are not designers and we don't work on public shared servers. We won’t login to make updates and content changes and do not have super user rights to edit or maintain WordPress itself. We can if we have to. For example, if you or your web designer locks yourself out of the only available super user account or doesn’t maintain security updates and no one can be reached, we may be forced to turn it off to keep the internet itself safe. (or even if they somehow manage to delete the entire website public_html folder for some unknown reason we can help).
We can express install WordPress and setup the initial MySQL database and Super User account specifically preventing our access thereafter and ensuring no shared or leaked FTP or access passwords. But we are not WordPress super users as we have our own preferred content management system.
Q: My domain name and business / sole prop trading name is the same or similar enough so that means my intellectual property is secure right?
A: No. If your registered name, or own personal name (juristic entity) is the same as your trading name, and this is reflected consistently in your brand portfolio and public relations. And you own enough of the ‘public domain’ to be able to prove unquestionably that you or your business is the owner of that intellectual property, then you may have secured an opportunity to trademark it and you are much less likely to be challenged in a domain or intellectual property dispute from around the world, depending on how and where you trade and have registered the legal entity name.
Q: Why my own domain, why not gmail, yahoo or outlook?
A: A solid domain, server and IP (Internet Protocol) reputation is the foundation of a successful business that intends to do any form of business online, including email.
Google owns the domain gmail.com, Yahoo owns the domain yahoo.com and Microsoft owns outlook.com and so on, and amongst many other free-service domains, are used by millions of people for many reasons; good, bad and ugly. Do you want your name and business associated with the bad and ugly? No.
Q: Why sign up with Microsoft via @myfingertips ?
Here are a few reasons:
- You pay the same price.
- Automatically adds @myfingertips as your Microsoft support partner.
- Includes First Technologies as an additional Microsoft support partner.
- You can still create support tickets to contact Microsoft support if necessary.
- Avoid having to provide credit card details.
- Avoid automatic debit orders and pay on invoice.
What are data laws and why do they affect everyone?
In many ways information is the currency of the 21st century. There is a massive global industry that profits greatly from the sale of information that fundamentally does not belong to them. In 2019, Facebook received a $5,000,000,000 fine for the misuse of information (approx. R70 billion) in the largest settlement of its kind. Here is an interesting article on more gigantic GDPR fines dished out over the last couple of years. It is not just the potential impact on a business to receive such a large fine, and it doesn't just damage their reputation including client and trader trust, but it can be completely detrimental and even potentially life-threatening to the person/s that have their sensitive personal or financial information stolen.