Josh

After last night’s blackout, I have felt the need to inform you about ways you can protect sensitive electronic equipment from damage during blackouts and thunderstorms.

Ideally, the best way to protect your equipment is to disconnect it from the power point, isolating your equipment from potential damage. But this is not practical in many cases such as if you are away from home when the storm arrives or at workplaces and offices outside of business hours.

Surge Protectors

Surge protection can be an intricate art and for best results, you can hire a licensed electrician to install whole-house or whole-building surge protection at the switchboard. This will protect against most power surges but will not protect from lightning strikes.

The next best option to protect your sensitive equipment is plug-in surge protectors. These come in a variety of forms and a variety of qualities at every price point. These will protect your equipment from over-voltage conditions but will do nothing to protect it from Under-voltage conditions or blackouts.

If you are fine with equipment not operating during a blackout then a high-quality surge protector is a fine investment to protect it from all but extreme over-voltage conditions.

Uninterruptible Power Supplies

Uninterruptible Power Supplies or UPS for short are battery backup devices with built-in surge protection. Basic UPS units are called Line Interactive and take a few dozen milliseconds to swap from mains supply to backup while more expensive double conversion UPS units can instantly switch over to providing power.

UPS devices have two ratings, battery capacity and output capacity. Battery capacity determines how long it can provide power while output capacity determines how much power it can provide to connected devices. More expensive UPS units can provide more power or power for longer.

The biggest advantage of a UPS is the ability to safely shut down computer and server equipment after a power failure, minimizing the risk of data loss or corruption during an unexpected power loss. Most UPS units can communicate with desktop PCs, NAS units and servers which can be configured to shut down when the UPS reaches a certain level of remaining power.

UPS devices do have batteries that require replacing every few years to maintain capacity and while they also contain surge protection circuity, it’s advised that an external surge protection device be placed in front of the UPS to take most of the damage of a surge to prolong the life of the more expensive UPS.

Higher End soloutions

If you require long-term operations during a power outage or whole building backup power it is possible to combine a generator with a UPS. In such situations, you should seek the advice of a qualified electrician specializing in backup power solutions or power wall batteries.

Ultimately lighting is the one thing that is almost impossible to protect against. The energy levels are enough to blow through any surge protection device thrown in its way. The best way to protect against lightning damage is to disconnect your devices and make sure your insurance policy covers lightning strikes.

Just a quick warning that scammers are going around pretending to be from NBN and claiming that your computer has malware or is currently getting used by hackers. NBN will never contact an end user of a service, and if there is a legitimate issue, your ISP will contact you and ask you to reach out to them.

These scammers are relying on people who are unaware of the scam to grant them access to the recipient’s device via remote access screen sharing software. Once the scammer has access to the computer, they will use tools like command prompt, a website called hacker typer, and Window’s event log to try and convince the user that the machine is compromised.

The scammers rely on things that look scary to those who don’t understand the deep workings of a windows computer yet are ultimately benign and can even help an IT expert to solve problems for users.

After gaining the trust of the call’s recipient, the scammers will do one of several things. They will try to sell fake security software for an excessive amount of money, often $1000 per year or more, while reasonable antimalware solutions are usually $50-70 per year. Another thing they will often try to do is rifle through your files for things like password lists, bank account details, or digitized identity documents to use for identity theft.

If you get such a scam call pretending to be from someone like Microsoft, NBN, Google, or Telstra, the best thing you can do is to hang up. These criminals are professionals, and if you have fallen for them, there is no shame in it but, you will need to start taking steps to secure your personal information and bank accounts from further fraud.

The first thing to do is to determine what the scammers have accessed. Your computer stores a history of files and websites that the scammers have accessed and the times of access. Use this list to work out what passwords you need to change, starting with critical financial services like your bank or Paypal account using a clean device such as your smartphone, tablet, a second PC or a device belonging to a trusted relative or friend. The second step before using the device is to perform a deep clean using a special USB stick containing a bootable antimalware package that can cleanse known malware that can cloak itself from Windows.

A trusted IT expert is essential for your peace of mind and to help gather any evidence that a bank or financial institution may need to reverse transactions. If you are unsure how to access a device’s history, the IT expert will be able to do so and to help you change passwords.

Ultimately the best way to avoid being the victim of scammers is education, and the Australian government has a great website on how to identify the different types of scam and how to avoid them. Regular visits to https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/ will teach you the tricks these criminals use and how to avoid them.