In recent research into malware trends, Websense identified the top three paths that lead to malware as: websites, poisoned search results, and malicious links, the latter typically spread by spam emails and phishing campaigns.

Attackers often target the web’s most popular destinations, rather than obscure locations, no doubt trying to compromise as many users as possible before the attack they’re using gets spotted and blocked.

Attackers often successfully link users with malware through the use of an “extensive network of partner sites that they are linked to,” according to Websense. For example, “62% of the sites that link to games also link to something objectionable or a security risk.” The same goes for about 25% of blogs. Don’t worry, Friendly Systems’ blog is safe. The sheer quantity of attack attempts makes it difficult for websites to stop and eliminate every one.

Links on Facebook are another risk. Websense said that roughly 40% of all Facebook status updates include a link, and that 10% of those links lead to spam or malicious code.

An interesting finding is that when it comes to risk levels, “popular beats porn,” said Websense, which found that “you have a higher chance of running into malicious content from a ‘breaking trends’ search such as a ‘World Cup 2010′ than you do from sexual content searches.” At one point, one-quarter of all World Cup 2010 search results were malicious.

Attackers are creative: they’re constantly varying their attacks, especially when it comes to search engine poisoning. “Cybercriminals are poisoning search results with malicious links for top trends at a startling rate,” according Websense. “For example, searches for trending news and buzz words increased from 14% in early 2010, to 22% a few months later.” Remember to Click Carefully when using the Web.

Do you have reports which take a long time to run? Are you letting users log into the server to run them, thereby creating a security risk?

One solution to both these problems is to deliver Crystal Reports via a web browser. Crystal Enterprise is available, but it is clunky to set up, finicky to maintain, and very expensive if you need more than a handful of users.

We recently found an alternative called Recrystallize. Recrystallize gives users access to server speed reporting via a web browser. With this tool, we (or someone in your company who has a basic understanding of Crystal and web pages) can take your Crystal Reports and quickly and easily create web pages that contain the report viewer. Just create one basic web page as a “table of contents”. The reports run on the server, so there is no delay for data traveling over the network. You can set user security rights per report as well.

Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 version 4.4 has added some features to the Inventory Physical Count functions that you may find useful during Quarter-End or Year-End Inventory Counting. You may want to review these new options before your next Inventory Physical Count to see which options are best for your situation.

On the Physical Count Worksheet screen:

Print existing balances on count-sheets option. Check the Print Quantity On Hand box in the Options section on the right side of the screen. The existing balances will print on the worksheets.

Pre-populate on-hand quantity into the count quantity to relieve tedious re-keying of amounts. This option appears just above the Selections area of the screen. Check the box entitled: Default Quantity Counted to Quantity On-Hand.

Note that the on-hand quantity displays during count entry to help the operator catch errors during entry, rather than waiting to find them on the variance report. If you don’t want the entry person to see the on-hand figures, you can move them to the bottom of the lower-grid.

Sage MAS Intelligence (SMI) is intended to replace Frx for Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 as Microsoft will no longer be supporting Frx as of 12/31/2012. It will also replace F9, which Sage will no longer sell as of October 2010. Sage will no longer support F9 when customer-support-plans are renewed after October 2010. New and current MAS 90 and MAS 200 customers will receive a free single-user license for 4.4 as a support-plan benefit.

SMI is built on an Excel platform and requires MicroSoft Excel 2007 or newer for the designer, 2003 or newer for the viewer. For people not already using Frx, Sage MAS Intelligence has “out the box” financial statements that are delivered with no user input required. SMI also includes sample reports from non-G/L data such as Customer Sales, Inventory Status and Vendor Purchases. That means that people analyzing data from non-G/L modules now have a new tool for creating sophisticated spreadsheets. Sage is also offering several free on-line learning courses on the product.

One FRx instructor said: most of the “functions” are actually Excel functions. The “drill down” capability does not go back to the MAS transactions, it brings up raw data. The trend analysis report looks like it bombed until you select a specific GL account. There is no reporting tree capability similar to Frx; you must “group” by chart segments unless you want to get it done in Excel. Many clients would not want to spend money to re-do most of their Frx reports in Excel. They can already send raw data to Excel and manipulate it much cheaper.

There is a learning curve involved in designing new reports and until there are some real improvements made to SMI, we wouldn’t encourage clients to “upgrade” from FRx to SMI. For people not using Frx or F9, Sage MAS Intelligence is a great new tool for generating spreadsheets from your MAS 90 and MAS 200 database, for both financial and non-financial reporting. For Sage’s details on Sage MAS Intelligence, see:

www.sagemas.com/lp/sagemas/SMI/solutions.html

Yet more time wasted talking to the wall: Got the assigned case mangler, Alexandra, on the phone, and she repeated the same corporate policy to not warranty the screens on the laptops, and while she admitted she had a boss readily enough, she also claimed she was not allowed to give out his name or phone number. She referred me to a “corporate” (ie not 800) number, where I was routed to the “executive customer service” department, where Danielle served up the same corporate double-speak (HP is redefining “warranty” like Clinton tried to redefine “sex”) and claimed that she could not override the decision of the “case managers”.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot – the person who answered the phone in the case manager department asked me what my “complaint number” was.

Don’t buy HP – they don’t stand behind their products.

Another lesson in How Not To Run a Business, this time courtesy of HP. Last November I purchase an HP laptop for my daughter’s birthday. A couple of days ago, she opened it up to a screen full of horizontal lines and what looked like a jagged marker scribble diagonally through the middle. We tried to call HP support, but after two hours on hold we gave up. The next morning I called Best Buy and asked if the Geek Squad handled HP warranty repairs. They said they did.

When we brought it in, they told us that HP classifies any screen problems as “accidental damage”, and will not warranty it. Back home, we called HP again, finally reaching a “customer service” rep who repeated the policy about not warrantying screens, admitted it was certainly possible for the screen to become damaged through no fault of the user, and pleading lack of authority passed the case on to a “case manager”, who would call back “within three business days”. This is after being told that my daughter is leaving for college in 14 (calendar) days. Oh, yeah, and the replacement of one part in a laptop that cost $460 (including tax) would be over $400!

Finally heard from the “case manager” at about 6 pm on the third business day, and all she offers is 25% off, which somehow still comes to over $400!

Obviously it does not make sense to do the repair. We continue to try to escalate the case and see if we can find someone at HP who actually comprehends what “warranty” means. If not, I guess I will be stuck with the bill for a replacement laptop, which will NOT be an HP!

Further update: I just called the “case manager” department and asked to speak to a supervisor. I was told by one person that their supervisor didn’t take phone calls. When pressed for a name to attach to said supervisor, I was hung up on. When I called back, a different person told me that they didn’t report to anyone, just some vague notion of “corporate”. Looks like Mark Hurd was the role model for integrity at HP.

The Sage Mas 90 and Mas 200 4.40.02 Product Update is scheduled for release in late July. Here’s a summary of the new features.

Accounts Payable
ACH Electronic Payments – define the format for each financial institution. This includes pre-note functionality, and the ability to allocate amounts between one or more accounts.
Paperless Office storage and retrieval of Accounts Payable checks, stubs and remittance advice documents puts documents in a pdf format for transmission and storage, and indexes them for easy retrieval.

Bank Reconciliation
Positive Pay Export creates a file of checks and amounts that have been authorized for payment to send to your bank for verification. The Positive Pay Export Wizard assists you in creating the export-file in the format specified by your bank. If your bank changes their format, you can use the Export Wizard to make changes to your export file format.
Auto Check Reconciliation Wizard Automatically reconcile checks with information downloaded from your financial institution. This new feature helps you configure the settings based on your bank’s format.
Tighter controls over adjusting entries – specify users who can make adjusting entries for each bank account.
Enter Checks, Deposits & Adjustments ‘On the Fly’ while you are still in the Reconcile Bank function.
Recalculate Outstanding Entries Totals Utility sets total of all ‘non cleared’ transactions.
Expanded comment-field in the Check, Deposit and Adjustment Entry now allows 2048 character comments.

Lots of improvements have been added to the Sage MAS90 and MAS 200 version 4.40 Inventory module. Here are some of them:
Dual Grid entry on Inventory Transactions Entry – you can now rearrange the field sequence to meet your needs and put unnecessary fields on the lower grid. You can also move entries up or down the screen to rearrange the sequence. Handy Find feature allows you to locate lines on multi-screen entries using lots of search criteria options.
Batch Entry and Update for Inventory Transactions allows users to enter and update their own batches, or to create batches for each entry-type (issues, receipts, adjustments, transfers) and update separately.
Crystal Reports format for all inventory reports. Crystal allows report modifications and much improved exporting of data to other formats, such as excel. New report-selection format allows you to save multiple default-settings, and make selections based on user-defined-fields.
Longer Inventory Item #’s. Previously the item-codes were up to 15 characters, now there’s an option to have 30-character Item codes. Inventory, Purchase Order and Sales Order forms and reports are fine but Non-graphical forms in the Job Cost and Work Order modules are no longer supported if you expand to 30 character item codes.
Ability to add User Defined Fields (per Custom Office) in ALL of inventory – including UDF’s for Lot/Serial #’s, Transaction Entries, Buyer-Planner codes.
Warehouse record now has: country, contact-name, e-mail, phone and fax fields.
Increased decimal precision – up to 4 decimal places for Qty field without losing places-to-left on other figures.
Lot/Serial Inquiry allows you to search by Lot or Serial # to find the item, cost, transaction # and warehouse information for a Lot/Serial #.
Standard Cost Adjustment Register/Update makes the GL entries for you.
New Quantity on Hand Report Business View – see the Inventory Explore menu.
Alias Item look-ups show on screens in Inventory, like Item Inquiry, Maintenance and Transaction Entry. Earlier versions allowed alias lookup in Sales Orders, Invoices and Purchase Orders only.
Right-click menu options within Inventory functions display tasks & reports related to your screen.

Physical Count worksheets – there is now an option to show existing balances on count-sheets and during count-entry so you don’t have to wait for the Variance Report to spot obvious mistakes.
Also, there’s a new option to pre-populate on-file quantities into the count quantity to relieve tedious re-keying of amounts that haven’t changed.
Standard Cost Valuation improvements – standard cost of zero (sample items) are accepted.

Standard Cost adjustment selection, entry and update. These new programs streamline the process by automatically calculating and posting the General Ledger Variances when you change the standard costs. See the new item utilities menu.
For all other valuation methods, use Automatic Cost and Price Change to change the cost.
Item Utilities is now a menu (it was previously an option on the setup menu, with 4 sub-options). The Cost/Price change function was pulled from the Main menu and put on Utilities menu.

It’s acronym soup out there with all the credit card compliance changes coming for July 1, so I thought an explanation of the difference between these two might be helpful.

PCI DSS standards apply to each merchant who accepts payment via credit cards. There are various rules regarding the securing of credit card information depending on whether you record it on paper, in a computer, or both, and physical security rules also apply if you have credit card terminals.

PA-DSS is the certification being required for commercial applications that process credit cards. This requirement is on the software developers, not the merchants.

Sage is currently in the process of getting certification for MAS 90 and MAS 200 version 4.3 (with update 18) and version 4.4 (with product update 1).
PCCharge is already certified. On the Accpac side, third party providers are getting their apps PA-DSS certified, and Sage is reportedly developing its own Accpac credit card processing module that will be certified when released.

Did you know you can automatically create leads from your corporate website? Using the Web To Lead feature you can save time and generate new leads instantly! Web To Lead can be found in the Administration -> Customization -> Lead screen.

Use the Recent button to quickly find a recently viewed company, person or case. The button is on the top left under the SageCRM logo. It displays a drop-down list of recent companies, leads, opportunities and people you have accessed for you to select from.

Use the backwards and forwards arrows to navigate SageCRM.com, using these buttons will return you to exactly where you were. They are under the SageCRM logo on the upper left.

Did you know that you can quickly upload contact details into SageCRM? For example, you can upload your entire mobile phone contact by uploading a CSV file in Administration -> Data Management -> Data Upload. A Quick Step Guide on updating your data to SageCRM.com can be found here.

Tired of writing similar emails? Why not create Email Templates? You will find these under Administration -> E-mail and Documents -> E-mail Templates.

The document drag-and-drop functionality provides a shortcut for linking documents, emails, or any type of file from another application to customer data.

Changing the default grid size in your Preferences will enable you to store more than 10 records in a list.

Configure your personal Dashboard as the first page you land on when you log in. This will enable you to easily and quickly view the information most relevant to you, such as your outstanding appointments, recently viewed leads, the companies you most often work with!

Right-clicking the mouse on any menu button will activate shortcut pop out lists.

You can use the wild card search on any field on the search screen. The wild card in SageCRM is the “%” symbol. The % wild card means ‘contains the value’. To search using a wild card select the Find menu button.
In the company or person context type, for example, %software in the Company Name field and select the Find action button. All companies containing the word “software” are returned from this search.

By the way, try the Search button on our blog to search for particular topics.