Info + Tips

You may have heard about the IEDR’s plans to relax the rules in terms of what is required to register a dot ie domain. The change takes place in March 2018, so we want to make sure that you understand what is changing and how it might affect you.

Firstly, if you already have a .ie domain registered then there is no impact on your existing domain. You will need to renew as usual to ensure that it stays protected, but otherwise there is no reason to worry.

If you are going to register a .ie domain under the current rules, you need to prove 3 things: connection to the island of Ireland, your identity, and a claim to the name that you are trying to register.
In March, the first two requirements remain in place and unchanged, while the last one will be removed.

IEDR are making the change as this requirement created a barrier for new business who wanted to register the domain for their proposed business name to safeguard it before registering the company name. Protecting a business name can be important before you even decide whether to go ahead with the business, so this will now be possible under the changes.

They also want to make it possible for an Irish person to claim a domain name for their nickname or pen name.

All of this is to try to make the process of registering a .ie domain name quicker and easier, while still ensuring that .ie domain names can only be held by Irish people or businesses.

If this change goes against you and somebody registers a .ie domain using your name, there will be a process for dispute resolution.

If you have a domain in mind that you would like to register and protect, now is the time to do that to ensure that it is not available for somebody else to take after the rules change. If you are not sure about how to do that, we can help you with that.

For more info on the change, visit the IEDR website

WordPress security experts Wordfence reported recently that they’ve seen ransomware attacks on WordPress sites. One such variant of ransomware is being called “EV Ransomware”.

What does it do?

Ransomware is malicious software which is installed on your computer (or web server) by exploiting a weakness. The software then encrypts your files using strong unbreakable encryption. The attackers then ask for payment, usually via Bitcoin transfer as this is anonymous and therefore untraceable.

Ransomware has been around in various forms since 1989. It is growing fast, with 100 new variants released in 2017 along with a 36% increase in attacks compared with the previous year. The average demand increased by 266% to an average of $1077 per victim.

This year has seen the NHS in the UK affected by the WannaCry ransomware attack in May, followed by attacks on the Ukraine’s state power company, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Antonov aircraft, shipping company Maersk and food giant Modelez using Petya ransomware.

The FBI advises those attacked by Ransomware not to pay, as it encourages more attacks. However many do pay, as they don’t have the option to recover their data in any other way.

Ransomware v WordPress

Ransomware has usually been a Windows problem. There is currently, however, a version which targets websites.

Without getting overly technical, the ransomware allows the attacker to encrypt the files but does not provide a working decryption mechanism.

The attacker doesn’t need to prove that they can or will decrypt the site, only to convince the site owner that they should pay the ransom.

DO NOT pay the ransom, as it is highly unlikely that the attacker will or even can decrypt the site for you.

What should you do?

There are a few safeguards you can put in place to protect yourself and your website:
1. Install a firewall (like Wordfence) on your site to protect it.

2. Keep reliable backups – stored in a different location than your website, or they will be encrypted. With a good backup, you can simply restore a version of your website from before the attack to get back online without paying the ransom demands.

3. Make sure your website is updated and monitored on a regular basis to reduce the weak spots available to attackers.

Every one of our clients’ websites is protected and regularly backed up. Our subscription clients’ sites are also monitored, updated and maintained on an ongoing basis.

Stay safe and make sure crime doesn’t pay!

If you would like to read all the technical stuff on this ransomware attack, click here…

Photo by wuestenigel

You think your business needs to be online but you’re not that keen because you think it will take up a huge amount of time and money and you don’t have the expertise or the confidence to start.

You’re not alone. Only 23% of Irish businesses are trading online, that’s less than one in four. But you’re losing out BIG TIME.

Being online is shown to increase customer enquiries by 84% and sales by 21%! How much work would you, as a business owner have to do to increase your sales by 21%?! And 75% of the impact of digital is in traditional business. (Source: Local Enterprise Office)

Currently, Irish consumers spend €700,000 each HOUR, 24 hours a day online, with 70% of that going outside the country. 88% of consumers research products and services online before buying. And if you’re not found online, then you don’t get that business. In addition, many consumers research outside normal office hours on a variety of devices so you need to be giving them the best version of your online presence.

But now comes the fear for many businesses: it costs thousands, it will take up so much of my time! Yes, it could but with our new One Page Website deal, it won’t!

We created this option especially for those businesses who don’t have a huge amount of time and money to invest but understand the importance of being online and being visible to their customers. So we’re offering you a domain (unless you already have one), one web page, so you can include your most important information and imagery, a google map, so your customers can find you, a Call Us button, so they can contact you via mobile on the go, a business email address, all your social media links and your logo and colours to give one voice, one brand and one message across all media.

You don’t even have to meet with us (although we will if you want to!), you can buy and pay for it all on our website, upload the required information and you’re good to go in about a week.

The idea behind this was to make it easy, stress-free for businesses to get online quickly. This way you have a presence in the online world and if things improve and you’d like to scale up, you already have a web presence to build upon. But being online will help increase sales, increase customer enquiries, help reduce costs, give better marketing intelligence and increase visibility for your business by giving you an online presence 24/7.

So the question is not whether your business needs to be online, the question is what are you waiting for? Call Coppertops today or click to buy your One Page Website today!

We are delighted to launch the new website for Bedford Medical Centre in Navan. The centre did have a Vistaprint website previously but it was sadly out of date and not very responsive so the Practice decided to begin anew.

The key to this design was keeping it bright, clean and modern with just a nod to the world of medicine hence the colour scheme chosen. Important contact information was to be placed front and centre so patients could easily access it. Just enough information was included under the Services tab so that patients would consider the website as the first point of call rather than trawling the internet or ringing the practice directly.
The Prescriptions menu allows patients to email the practice with their required medicines or download a form so they can fill it out in advance. This way the practice can reduce the time it takes to refill prescriptions by making it easier for patients to take control.

In addition, we set up new G suite accounts to handle all their emails. We recommended the use of G suite over any web mail or emails provided by hosting companies because it is much more secure, reliable and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, which means the practice team are in constant contact.

We already know that hackers are continually finding new ways to attack websites. The latest method targets fresh installations of WordPress and where access is obtained provides the attacker with access to your hosting account and a method to run harmful code on your account. It is crucial that you are aware of, and protect yourself against, this attack to keep not just your website but your hosting account safe.

When you install WordPress, make sure you fully complete the configuration of the WordPress installation. We would recommend that you also implement security precautions on your website at this point, so that it is protected immediately against attacks. It is an assumption to think that attackers are looking for established sites or sites where money is involved. Attacks are often carried out on the basis that the attacker wants to wreak havoc, as much as to gain financially from the attack.

Click here to read more about this from Wordfence.

Well if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few days you’ll have heard about the WannaCry Ransomware that has been used to successfully attack many systems, including the NHS IT system in the UK.

Ransomware is a particularly obnoxious method which uses a virus to lock down a system, either a computer or an entire network. They then deny the owner access to both their system and, often more critically, the data on their system. A demand is then issued to the owner seeking a ransom in exchange for the return of access. The demand usually specifies that the ransom is paid in bitcoin, or similar, as these methods are harder to track.

So this ransomware is well named as at this point the owner and their IT team will… well, they’ll wanna cry!

As you’ll see by reading this article, a researcher accidentally discovered a kill switch in the software. He discovered a domain which was mentioned in the code but which hadn’t been registered. He registered the domain which killed the software. However, as of yesterday 2 additional strains had appeared. One was disabled in the same way as the first, the second is ineffective as a result of an error in the code. These variants are expected to continue to surface, so it is crucial that you protect yourself as best you can from attack.

What to do?

• If you work on a supported version of Windows, update religiously.
  If you work on an unsupported version of Windows you can update using the Update Catalog. You should update to a supported version of Windows if at all possible.
• Keep your antivirus software updated, they will be pushing out new updates to counteract new variants of the ransomware as they are pushed out. Keeping up to date gives you the best chance of staying safe.
• Be paranoid! Don’t open files, click links etc without double checking that they come from someone you know and are genuine.
• Back up EVERYTHING! Keep regular backups of all of your data. Keep it on eternal drives which are offline and as safe as possible from infection. This way if you do get infected you haven’t lost all of your data.

Could it affect my website?

Ransomware will only affect your website if you host your site on a system which is affected, either your computer/network or on a hosting server which is infected.

Either way, you should have regular backups of your site anyway which will allow you to get back up quickly if the worst happens. Backups are not just essential when there is a threat of attack, they should be an essential habit in the regular maintenace of your site. Most attacks don’t come with a warning and the reasons for a website to go down vary from hardware failure to incorrect configuration to hacker attacks.

How can we stop this?

Pass on information on this attack and how to defend against it. If people tighten up defences and close off this security vulnerability then it will become much more difficult for these criminals to successfully implement their ransomware in order to demand payments.

Keep an eye out for updates on the status of this attack and of the defence against it. Knowledge is power so keep informed on the best ways to stay safe.