“SafeSync’s easy to use and has some great features such as music streaming” – Expert Reviews, 2012. 

Want to test SafeSync before putting your hand in your pocket? Get your 20GB 30 day trial here and see what all the fuss is about.

- The SafeSync team

By Tony Larks,  Vice President, Global Consumer Marketing, Trend Micro

With an estimated valuation of $100 billion and a loyal membership of nearly 900 million subscribers worldwide, Facebook has also been forced to grow up fast.

Back in 2004, when Zuckerberg was conjuring up the social network in his Harvard dorm room, the threat landscape was undergoing a rather unpleasant evolution. Spyware and phishing attacks were just beginning to make an impact as these attacks by organized cybercrime gangs were replacing the more innocent efforts of script kiddies as the biggest online threats.

Criminals brought a whole new level of ruthlessness

These botnet-driven, financially-motivated attacks took many by surprise as the criminals brought a whole new level of ruthlessness and intensity to the front line of information security. They exploited weaknesses in technology and users’ own willingness to trust online what they probably wouldn’t in the “real world.”  And exploiting people’s trust is still going on.

Malicious links are a common tactic used to trick people into visiting sites that could steal their data or lead to the downloading malicious software that takes control of their PCs. The unsolicited link may arrive from a “friend” on the site, or use some other kind of social engineering technique to persuade the user to click on it. It could claim to lead to a funny video or shocking piece of content. Making matters worst is that the link is often shortened to disguise the ultimate location.

As with any criminal endeavour, the bad guys are basically driven by the same economic forces as any legitimate business. They follow the money, looking for the highest return on investment for the least amount of effort.

Popular Targets

Not so long ago, Apple Mac users were relatively safe from harm as there were so few of them around globally, it just wasn’t worth the criminal’s effort to invest in attacking them. However, thanks to Microsoft upping the security of its own platforms and the Apple’s iOS platforms increasing popularity, criminals have begun to target its’ users too.

Similarly, Facebook has rightly realized that its single web-based platform with a huge captive user base of nearly 900 million represents a very attractive target for cybercriminals. The other key factor is that people love social networking because it is a way of sharing personal details and experiences with friends and family. Unfortunately, those details could be harvested by criminals if users aren’t vigilant. Fraudsters are also focused on exploiting Facebook members’ natural inclination to trust others on the site.

Great news

So it’s great news that Trend Micro has partnered with Facebook. With the world’s favorite social network using Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ cloud-based security, Facebook users are protected. Threats are stopped before they have a chance to reach your machines.

The Smart Protection Network is business-grade security that analyzes the content of each link in the cloud and blocks anything that looks suspicious or matches with known threats in our databases.

Trend Micro is also giving Facebook users a free six-month trial of our Titanium security product that’s powered by this same leading threat prevention technology.

Yes, things have changed a lot since 2004, but wherever there are large sums of money to be made, there will be criminals going after it. As leaders in web reputation and Internet security, we’re looking forward to helping protect you and other Facebook users from the bad stuff online.

Tony Larks works for Trend Micro and is guest blogging for the Fearless Web. The opinions expressed here are his own.

To get more tips and advice regarding Internet security, just “Like” Trend Micro Fearless Web Internet Security on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/fearlessweb.

How is it different from SafeSync? Well, Backup and Restore is a pure backup product that takes a secure copy of your files and holds them in the cloud just incase you lose, damage or upgrade your device. It’s a disaster recovery tool that helps you recover in the event of data loss or when you upgrade to a swanky new device! No sync, no access from the website or desktop, just good quality backup for your Android device– nice and simple.

You’ll probably have home insurance that covers your device should the worst happens, but money can bring back your precious data… Backup and Restore can!

It’s free to use, works on Android devices, supports English (more languages to come depending on popularity), and is probably the most important app you’ll ever download!

We’re currently offering this in live Beta – which means you can get your hands on it and protect your stuff for free right now.

It takes 4 mins to boil an egg. It takes 2 mins to download and install Backup and Restore. One tastes nice, the other might save you from mobile-Armageddon! It’s your choice… download here.

Details of the may release can be found in the SafeSync changelog.

Updates released 9^th of May

• New Web Console Language Support – Brazilian Portuguese
• Enhance the visibility and change location of the web console help links
• New style for registration and registration complete page, and GSG steps are clickable
• Show up “activate with key” link only when subscription has 3 months left only
• Remove ‘Quick Start Guide’ for new users (SafeSync consumer product first)
• Remove share action from teamfolder viewer in REST API

Mobile Apps v1.5

Will also release in May but not align with monthly release on the  9^th of May

• Support multiple files upload from mobile device to server.
• Add History page: provide download queue and downloaded file list
• Add Upload page: provide upload queue and upload progress status.
• Change refresh style to match iPhone/iPad user behavior: Pull-down refresh
• Provide Thumbnail view for photos and videos.
• Add Recycle Bin: provide delete/restore/empty files in recycle bin.
• Support Save Photo to album, user could save photo/video from MyFiles to local device.

As computing devices become ever-more ubiquitous and move closer to the heart of our daily lives, we need to pay more attention to what’s on them. Back in the days when there was one PC per household – if you were lucky – and all you could get was dial-up internet, back-up probably wasn’t much of a big deal unless you were using your PC for some serious number crunching or work-related assignment.

In those days a floppy disk or CD would have sufficed, kept under lock and key somewhere safe. As time wore on, external hard drives and USBs became the back-up location of choice, offering huge amounts more storage capacity and improved portability. The problem is, they never really overcame the main issue with back-up: you have to remember to do it frequently to make it worthwhile; you have to remember where you put your back-up device; and you have to take damn good care of it in case it breaks.

World Back-up Day is still an important event, but there are technologies out there that in reality should render it completely redundant. Why? Because of the advent of cloud computing.

Technologies like SafeSync automatically back-up your files securely and continuously to the cloud using real-time synchronisation technology. It’s quick, it’s simple, it’s safe and it’s mobile. Here are some of the benefits:

• As soon as you save a piece of content it is backed up to SafeSync’s secure datacentres
• Previous versions of files can be recovered because it allows you to view history of changes
• Content can be accessed from any of your internet-enabled devices – PC, tablet, smartphone, laptop etc
• If your device is stolen, the most important things on it will be safe, synced to another device or in the cloud
• You can share your favourite content with whomever you wish

Imagine traditional back-up as a plain old bog-standard flimsy plastic shopping bag. Eventually it’ll let you down by breaking at the most inopportune moment, or it’ll get lost or stolen, and ultimately end up on a rubbish heap.

The SafeSync way is a ‘bag for life’ – robust and ever-lasting. Multiple copies of each file are kept on separate drives in the Trend Micro datacenter and each drive is replaced frequently to make sure it doesn’t break.  In fact, users theoretically don’t even need to store their content in the cloud as each file could simply be synced between each of their smartphone, tablet, PC, or laptop, providing several handy back-ups automatically.

Back-up is not just for one day of the year, it should be going on in the background automatically all the time thanks to the new generation of synchronisation technologies.

Maybe right now would be a good time to check it out!?

For full notes on the latest April release please refer to the new SafeSync changelog.

Server

[API] Search API: Should provide search by “keyword” like the feature on

Web Console

[API] Recycle API: provide file list under Recycle-Bin and “empty”, “recover” function.

[Shareable link] Shareable link message message modification

[Shareable link] List up all shareable links by folder

[WebUI] Capable to customize Company HelpDesk info in Web console (SafeSync for Business)

[WebUI] Remove Blog link[blog.safesync.com] for SafeSync for Business

[WebUI] Add account activation link in web console

[WebUI] Create a separate client/mobile download page (SafeSync for Business)

[WebUI] Don’t show thumbnail if video is still rendering

Allow admin to customize “provisioning invitation” mail (SafeSync for Business)

Allow admin to customize “Team Folder invitation” mail  (SafeSync for Business)

Admin can delete sub-users without emptying their accounts, and all their files will become a team folder (SafeSync for Business)

[WebUI] Now supports Brazilian Portuguese

Client           

[Windows] Allow 3rd party to query status from registery

[Windows] Allow OEM to specify and pre-generate paired folder

Client support NTLM proxy authentication

Client now supports Brazilian Portuguese

The March update has finally arrived and with it comes a bag full of security and desktop software goodies for you to enjoy.

Next month will see the introduction of a changelog to the blog. This might not be bedtime reading for most of us but it will be a very helpful resource for our technical user base.

Single use link anyone?

How does this benefit you..? Well, we’re continuing to make your sharing experience more secure by introducing the ‘single use’ option for our shareable links. This will enable you to send out links to your personal files, safe in the knowledge that the link will be removed immediately after your friend accesses it! Very cool if you are a secret agent, and useful if you just want an added layer of security – (You can access the ‘single use’ option from the ‘share this’ popup menu).

Pump up the volume with our enhanced bandwidth controls!

Sick of the internet crawling when you have to sync huge files? If you’re not lucky enough to have broadband then you might be interested in our enhanced bandwidth control options. Now you can toggle the speed at which your files are uploaded/downloaded between your device and SafeSync.

Overview of major updates:

• Bandwidth control enhancements
  • Allow users to set the rate of upload and download speed

• Shareable link security option improvement (Align with server enhancement)
  • Show up all option in default
  • Enhance wording to be more user-friendly

• Ability to update client from within the client
  • Updated controls added to the ‘about’ tab within the client

Enjoy, and check in soon!

Have you been to our Facebook or Twitter pages yet? We’ve got loads of helpful, regular updates, a host of competitions, and your chance to talk directly with the team! If you haven’t ‘liked’ us yet then click here to be in with a chance of taking home some cool SafeSync prizes by joining in with the other 5,000+ SafeSync fans on our page already.

Fancy a change log?

Oh, and back to business… Just a quick note to let you know that our February SafeSync release is part of a much larger update planned for early Q2, 2012 and there will only be a release of minor updates this month.

For our more technically-minded users we are looking at introducing a changelog to the Blog. Interested? Let us know by adding your support on our Facebook page! The more the merrier!

Keep checking back for more of the good stuff!

SafeSync out…

These new features have just be added to SafeSync for Business in the January release:

• Ability to make other users admins.

Note: These additional admins can only create and delete users. They cannot buy more seats or renew the license.

• Priority sync is now back!

Syncing a lot of stuff and need to prioritise a file? Now you can!Just right click on the file or folder you are syncing and select ‘sync faster’

• Wondering how long is left until your sync finishes?

Sync time left has now been added. Just role over the SafeSync icon in your task bar to see how much time is left to sync

Just log into your SafeSync web console and download the latest client. New admin functionality is under the ‘Manage’ link.