Keep Up to Date by Outsourcing

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Updating your business software is one of your best protections against cyber-attack, but actually going through and running the updates is a task that often gets overlooked. I would go as far as saying that keeping your equipment and software up-to-date is as important as having an antivirus program on all of your machines.

Emergency updates are a killer

Just between us, most businesses update their software only when the repair techs come to fix a major breakage. The techs run the updates before they leave, then the systems sit there with ever-widening security gaps… until another breach happens and the techs are called back for another band-aid solution. Emergency only updates in a break/fix model are a great little earner for those techs, not so good for your uptime or budget.

Finding time for maintenance

To keep your business up and running securely, you need someone who lives and breathes updates. They’ll need to have top tech skills so they know when and how to apply all the patches, and how to make sure all your other tech is playing nice (and do it all after-hours). If you have an in-house IT specialist, you’re set – and they should already have an update plan. But if you don’t have a qualified IT team member, outsourcing to managed services is the perfect solution. You get highly skilled technicians remotely applying your network updates after hours.

For the DIY’er

Many businesses may not think they have the budget for outsourcing IT to another company. I would personally argue that it costs you more in the long run, but that’s me…If you really do want to keep up-to-date on your own, there is a program I can suggest to make your life easier. PatchMyPC Free Updater is a program that will automatically look for installed programs and install any necessary updates. It does not perform Windows updates, and it has to be run manually, but instead of downloading and running each program separately, this one can do it all in one click. Download it to the desktop and run it every week on each machine to make sure things stay current!

What else needs to be checked?

Beyond running security patches, it’s important to keep your business moving forward. Here are a few areas our techs look at as part of managed services:

Hardware health: The last thing you want is days of downtime after a piece of hardware dies a spectacular death, dragging other components down with it. By not staying on top of your hardware health, you’re opening yourself up to lost productivity, lost income and unknown delays. Remote monitoring software can immediately alert to failures in critical components like hard drives.

Operating system expiry: While it’s great that you have a preferred OS, keeping it after the manufacturer ceases support can leave your business wide open for attack. It’s simply not a good combination. If you are still using Windows XP or Vista in your business environment, we need to talk!

Legacy programs: Updates to your software have the potential to disrupt older programs, either resulting in errors, slow performance or even downtime. With technology advancing so fast, we often find additional requirements with an update, such as extra processing power, memory or graphics.

Get Back to Brand New with a Clean Computer

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Remember how well your computer ran when you first brought it home? It was booting so fast, files were whizzing around at light speed, and no matter how many tabs you had open, nothing was slowing that baby down. It was spotless, inside and out. Then one day you turned it on and realized that everything was so slooooow, taking forever to do anything – and that was only if you could even find your files in all the clutter. All that zip and speed you loved so much was gone. The good news is you probably DON’T need a new computer, you can have us clean it or it may simply need what we call a “format and reload” to:

Clear the clutter: Over time as you install applications you collect icons, files, and options everywhere. They’re not necessary, they’re not used, but they were installed automatically ‘just in case’. It’s a bit like when your overnight guest shows up with a massive suitcase and then claims a shelf in your bathroom. Those applications are making themselves at home in a big way! All that uninvited clutter is slowing your system down and making it hard for you to find the things you need. Simply put, it’s a mess.

Beat viral overload: Is the virus really gone? Sometimes a virus has multiple layers and can bury itself so deep even your anti-virus doesn’t see it. Despite getting the all-clear from your anti-virus, you might also be seeing the damage from the infection. Perhaps the virus made a mess of your internal file structure, left pieces of code all over the place, or deleted files essential for smooth running.

Assess incompatible software: Installing a new piece of software can sometimes produce unexpected results. While your system met the hardware and operating system requirements, maybe it’s simply not playing nice with your other applications. Maybe they’re fighting over the same resources, system files, or clashing with one of your hardware components. Clearly, something isn’t quite right, but you’re not sure what.

Archive older files: Some of your files are definite keepers, long term. Your photos, recipes, accounts etc, they’re all important to keep – but are they important to keep sitting on your desktop? They’re not just slowing your computer down, you’re at risk of losing them in a crash. It’s a good idea to periodically go through and clear out what you don’t need, simply let us know what you’d like to keep.

What exactly is a computer cleanup? It’s like a car tune-up, but more flexible. Rather than tick the boxes saying we’ve changed the oil & cleaned the filters etc, we treat each computer as a unique case. Sometimes we can tune it up in an hour, and that’s all it needed. Sometimes it’s worth starting over like day 1 with a format and reinstallation of Windows and important programs.

How to Stop Your Business Becoming a Victim of Social Engineering

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You can have top-notch security in place but there is still one danger: social engineering. It’s the old kid on the block, but most of us have never heard of it. Perhaps the more familiar term is ‘con’: the art of manipulating people to take certain actions or divulge private information. Social engineers are a special type of hacker who skip the hassle of writing code and go straight to the weakest link in your security defenses – your employees. This is one security threat that can not be fully mitigated through technology, only training! A phone call, a cheap disguise or casual email may be all it takes to gain access, despite having solid tech protections in place. Here are just a few examples of how social engineers work:

Email: Pretending to be a co-worker or customer who ‘just quickly’ needs a certain piece of information. It could be a shipping address, login, contact or personal detail that they pretend they already know, but simply don’t have in front of them. The email may even tell you where to get the data from. The hacker may also create a sense of urgency or indicate a fear that they’ll get in trouble without this information. Your employee is naturally inclined to help and quickly sends a reply.

A great current example of this is a fake email from the boss instructing an assistant to wire money to a certain account number. The assistant may be wary of bothering the boss or maybe just too busy to confirm the request, so they just do it.

Phone: Posing as IT support, government official or customer, the hacker quickly manipulates your employee into changing a password or giving out information. These attacks are harder to identify and the hacker can be very persuasive, even using background sound effects like a crying baby or call-center noise to trigger empathy or trust. To avoid this scam, you need to make sure that your employees stick to a protocol of authenticating the person on the other end of the line when giving out sensitive information no matter what!

Anecdotally, we recently were able to reset a customer’s AOL password simply because the customer on the other end of the line was very distressed sounding. The AOL rep got their manager on the line who overrode the requirements to verify identity first. We were doing this honestly, but an attacker could very well take advantage of this weakness to take over your AOL account!

In person: A delivery man uniform gets past most people without question, as does a repairman. The social engineer can quickly then move into sensitive areas of your business. Once inside, they essentially become invisible, free to install network listening devices, read a Post-it note with a password on it, or tamper with your business in other ways. I have seen this one first hand. I have been able to walk right past receptionists wearing my work uniform with no questions asked!

It’s impossible to predict when and where (or how) a social engineer will strike. The above attacks aren’t particularly sophisticated, but they are extremely effective. Your staff has been trained to be helpful, but this can also be a weakness. So what can you do to protect your business? First, recognize that not all of your employees have the same level of interaction with people, the front desk clerk taking calls all day would be at higher risk than the factory worker, for example. We recommend cyber-security training for each level of risk identified, focusing on responding to the types of scenarios they might find themselves in. Social engineering is too dangerous to take lightly, and far too common for comfort.

How to Search Google Safely

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We all love our Google, quickly finding everything we need on the Internet. It’s replaced dictionaries, encyclopedias, instruction manuals, newspapers and in many cases, even doctors. However, sometimes your search results aren’t the real thing and can be downright malicious. Here’s how to search safely:

Pay attention to the URL in Google

Below every result title, there’s a URL in green. No matter what the title says, this URL is where your click will take you. Unfortunately, cyber-criminals will often list their site with a familiar and trusted title but link you to their scam/malware pages.

For example, the title could be your bank name (eg, Example Bank), which seems legitimate, but the URL could be www.baabpjhg.com which is obviously not your bank. Sometimes they’ll attempt to trick you by putting the real site into the link too, eg www.baabpjhg.com/examplebank.com which makes it even more likely to catch you when skimming through results quickly. When you visit the page, it might look exactly like your bank’s site and ask for your login details, which are then harvested for an attack. While jibberish in the link is pretty easy to spot, sometimes they’ll take advantage of a small typo that you can easily miss. For example, www.exampebank.com (missing the letter L).

Scam Search Result Example

Here is an example of a result you may find if you searched for “MSN Support’…Notice how that blue text seems to be what you want and even gives a phone number! But, note that the green text is ‘microsofttechsupportphonenumber.com’…an address that is obviously NOT actually Microsoft. If you were to visit this site or call this phone number you would get a person claiming to be with Microsoft. They would ask to connect to your computer, then proceed to show you ‘problems’ that need to be fixed, and charge money to do so. It’s all a scam and you would be surprised how many people still fall victim to this on a weekly basis (we get 3-4 calls a week).

Notice Google search results vs paid ads

Google does a pretty good job at making sure the most relevant and legitimate sites are at the top of the list. However paid ads will usually appear above them. Most of the time, these paid ads are also legitimate (and you can quickly check the URL to verify), but occasionally cybercriminals are able to promote their malicious site to the top and catch thousands of victims before being removed.

Example of Ads in search results

Here is an example of a search for ‘MSN’ Support’ again, this time you can see that the first FOUR links are actually ads as denoted by the little ‘Ad’ icon at the left side. These links would lead to a scam as described above. The first real link to Microsoft is at the bottom!

Believe Google’s malicious site alerts

Sometimes Google knows when something is wrong with a site. It could be a legitimate site that was recently hacked, a security setting that’s malfunctioned, or the site was reported to them as compromised. When this happens, Google stops you clicking through with a message saying “this website may be harmful” or “this site may harm your computer”. Stop immediately, and trust that Google has detected something you don’t want in your house. We recommend that you use Google Chrome as your browser of choice because this function works even better then.

Malware warning example

This is an example of the malware warning when using Google Chrome. If you see this message, DO NOT TRY TO GET AROUND IT…it is there for a reason!

Turn on safe search

You can filter out explicit results by turning on Google Safe Search. While not strictly a cyber-security issue, it can still provide a safer Google experience. Safe Search is normally suggested as a way to protect browsing children, but it also helps adults who aren’t interested in having their search results cluttered with inappropriate links, many of which lead to high-risk sites. Switch Safe Search on/off by clicking Settings > Safe Search.

Menu for toggling SafeSearch in Google
This is what the menu to switch SafeSearch on and off looks like. I have SafeSearch on, so the option is to turn it off in my example, but if you have it off, the option will be to turn it on.

Most Businesses Won’t Survive a Disaster. Could Yours?

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With the crazy weather we’re seeing, natural disasters on the rise, and cyber terrorism echoing for years, it’s not a case of ‘if’ a disaster will strike your business, but ‘when’. Surprisingly, it’s not the scope and scale of the event that influences how deeply your business is impacted, it’s your business continuity plan.

Put simply, this is the all-important set of precautions and pre-planned responses to an event, laid out in bullet-proof detail and implemented with one driving focus: keeping your business running with little or no downtime. Think about what would happen if your business was hit by a natural disaster tomorrow. Would it survive? How much downtime would it take to push you into dangerous territory?

According to an IBM study of all companies that had a major loss of data, 43% never reopen, 51% close within two years and just 6% will survive long-term. For a fraction of those survivors, business even continued as usual thanks to their ‘failsafe’ business continuity plan. It’s more than disaster recovery, it’s full preparedness that bypasses the need for 2+ weeks of downtime, financial ruin, wasted salaries and reputation loss – but it does require a higher level of planning…in advance.

Recommendations to Put You in the Surviving 6%

Prioritize: You’ll need to plan exactly what you’ll recover first and know who’s in charge of making it happen. It goes beyond jotting down a checklist of things to do, it’s taking an analytical, process-based approach to recovery for each unique business perspective. But it’s also realistic: there’s no point dedicating precious time to reviving the email system if your customer data is leaking onto the internet, even if email did rank as your top communication priority!

Backup: Of course, the most critical part of your business continuity is having full backups in three places. Why three? One copy locally which you use each day, a backup on another (disconnected) device in the same location, and one in the cloud. That local backup is your life-saver for system crashes, cyber-attacks and the like; the cloud backup comes into play when your business has taken a major physical hit, perhaps from fire or flood. Some businesses can run entirely location-independent when using cloud systems like Office365, which can be enough to put them in that 6% of disaster survivors.

Test: Make sure all employees know what the plan is if something goes wrong, and their specific roles in these scenarios. You can test, prepare and rehearse your continuity plan under simulated disaster conditions, which will uncover new obstacles, priorities and additional threats.

As your IT environment becomes more complex, carrying more responsibility and risk, so does the importance of a robust business continuity plan. The best BC plans look beyond disaster recovery, taking into account scalability of your system and scope of your individual business, to create strong battle lines that will keep your business operational, both now and for the long term.

New ‘KRACK’ Wi-Fi Security Issue: This Affects All of Us

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The invention of Wi-Fi has been a science fiction dream come true. We can use our laptops anywhere in the house, our phones are using the home internet instead of sucking down our cellular data, and our gadgets are all communicating. It’s essentially the backbone of the smart tech boom for home and business alike. Most networks are password-protected with an encryption called “WPA2” and this has been safe and secure, until now.

Recently, a security flaw called KRACK was discovered that allows hackers to break into Wi-Fi networks – even the secured ones. Your laptop, mobile phone, gaming console and even your smart fridge are possibly vulnerable as a result.

How KRACK works: The Key Reinstallation AttaCK isn’t a problem with your device or how it was set up. It’s a problem with the Wi-Fi technology itself. The attack gets between your device and the access point (eg router) to reset the encryption key so hackers can view all network traffic in plain text. Since we rely on Wi-Fi so much, this might mean hackers have a front row seat to your credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos and more. In short, this attack effectively makes the security of your WPA2 encrypted network equivalent to an ‘old-fashioned’ open network with no password. 

NOTE: The hacker must be in physical range of your Wi-fi to exploit this flaw, it doesn’t work remotely like other attacks we’ve seen recently. Given most Wi-Fi ranges don’t extend too far past your own home or business, this is small comfort, but important to know.

How to protect yourself:

Run your updates: Software updates are being released which fix the flaw. Microsoft has already released one for Windows, Apple has one coming in a few weeks. Take a few minutes to make sure you’re up to date with all your patches on any device that uses Wi-Fi (your smartphones, laptops, tablets, PCs, game consoles, etc). Unfortunately, some devices may be slow to get an update, or if they’re older, may not get an update to fix this issue at all. If possible, consider using a cabled connection on those older devices or upgrade to one with support.

Be very careful with public Wi-Fi: While your local business center, library or school campus has expert IT professionals keeping guard over your security, it’s a very different matter at your local coffee shop. It’s unlikely small locations such as this will be on top of security patches. Besides, the access point isn’t what needs to be patched anyway. Some public wifi doesn’t even have a password, in which case this flaw is irrelevant.

Check your browser security: Before sending anything secure over the internet, check you’re using a HTTPS site. You’ll know these by the little padlock you see next to the URL, and the address specifically begins with HTTPS. Major sites like Facebook, Gmail and financial institutions already use HTTPS. Since HTTPS runs inside the now broken WPA2 stream encryption, it still protects you from snoopers. You can also implement a VPN connection that will secure ALL traffic coming from your device, not just HTTPS traffic.

How to Tell if Your Computer Has a Virus

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Sometimes computers do wacky things that ring alarm bells and make us dive for cover. Next thing you know, you’re running scans on repeat and demanding everyone come clean about their browsing habits. Fortunately, not all weird occurrences are caused by viruses – sometimes your computer is simply overloaded, overheating or in desperate need of a reboot. Here are the tell-tale signs of a malware attack:

Bizarre error messages

Look for messages popping up from nowhere that make no sense, are poorly worded or plain gibberish – especially if they’re about a program you don’t even have. Take note of anti-virus warnings too, check that the warning is from YOUR anti-virus software and looks like it should. If a message pops up that isn’t quite right, don’t click. Not even to clear or cancel the message. Close the browser or shut down the computer instead, then run a full scan, preferably with a DIFFERENT scanner than what you have installed. After all, if the bug got past what you have installed, it probably won’t be detected the second time around! A great free malware scanner that you can use is Malwarebytes Antimalware available for free at the link below:

Malwarebytes Antimalware Free

Suddenly deactivated anti-virus/malware protection

You know the best way to get past the guard? Send him for a coffee break! Certain viruses are programmed to take out the security systems first, leaving you open to infection. Most security software will warn you if your protection has stopped. If you reboot and your protections aren’t back on the job, you are more than likely under attack. Attempt to start the anti-virus manually through its control panel and you’ll know for sure.

Social media messages you didn’t send

Are your friends replying to messages you never wrote? Are you getting lots of ‘undeliverable’ messages in your inbox? Your login details might have been hacked and your account is sending out spam or scam messages. Your friends may now be tricked into giving up personal information or money. Change your email or social media password immediately, scan your computer for infections, and then advise your friends of the hack so they can steer clear!

Web browser acting up

Perhaps you’ve noticed your homepage has changed, it’s using an odd search engine or opening/redirecting unwanted sites. If your browser has gone rogue, it’s definitely a virus, usually one intended to serve you ads or steal your personal or financial details. Skip the online banking and email until your antivirus scans come up clear and everything is working normally again.

Sluggish performance

If your computer speed has dropped suddenly, boot up takes an eternity, or even moving the mouse has become a chore, it could be a sign that something is wrong. But, not necessarily a virus. Run your anti-virus scan and if that resolves it, great. If not, your computer likely needs a tune-up or repair. You may want to bring the computer in for a diagnostic.

Constant computer activity

You’re off the computer but the hard drive is going nuts, the fans are whirring, and the network lights are flashing like a disco? It’s almost like someone IS using the computer! Viruses and malware attacks use your computer resources, sometimes even more than you do. Take note of what’s normal when the computer is not infected so you can tell when something is out of the ordinary.

3 Tech Tips to Make You a Better Business Owner

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There’s no doubt about it, business can be tough! You’re juggling employees, customers, suppliers, stakeholders…the list is endless. You’re also operating in a competitive, high-tech economy that keeps trying to speed ahead without you. It’s no wonder you’re craving ways to get ahead of the competition, cut costs, boost productivity and dreaming of a vacation. Here are 3 tech tips that will make your life easier – and maybe get you closer to that ‘World’s Best Boss’ mug.

Consider a commuting policy

With better technology and faster internet connections, remote working isn’t just a possibility now, it’s an expectation. Clearly, not for every job (virtual burgers anyone?), but there are a lot of computer tasks in your business that could be done from home. Even if you offer a split week with 1-2 days at home and the remainder in the office, this can be a huge boost to your productivity.

From your perspective, remote employees can be more efficient without the distractions of yet another birthday sing-along, they have fewer absences and stay in the job longer. From the employee perspective, they don’t need to waste time commuting, get their work done faster, and generally feel happier and healthier.

But, how do you make sure your employees are getting their work done? Micromanagement is not the best way to handle an employee, but you still want to make sure they are using the time you are paying them for productive tasks. We recommend providing to them a company computer, and then installing a management agent on it to track what sites are visited. We can then run reports that you can analyze to determine whether or not your employee was doing what they said they were!

Don’t cheap out on technology

Unsurprisingly, a tech newsletter is advising you to invest in tech, but hear us out. Technology is rapidly becoming the backbone of most businesses, yet we still see people who try and get by with the bare minimum investment and maintenance. And by ‘see people’, we mean they’re our most frequent repair and data recovery clients.

When you take shortcuts with your tech you’ll always get higher failure rates, more downtime, and employees who can’t do their job even though you’re still paying them by the hour. When businesses keep old tech longer than they should, thinking of the immediate cost saving, they usually end up paying more in the long term.

At a minimum, we recommend investing in business grade equipment, using business grade management software, and employing a tech to keep watch over the systems to catch problems before they occur. You may be surprised at how inexpensive this actually is in the short term, and especially the long term!

Embrace the cloud

Many of your existing software packages have a cloud version, which would allow multiple people to access it at once and give added backup or synchronization benefits. Your remote workers, mobile staff, accountant or CFO can all view the same reports without anyone having the trouble of sending out separate copies. Also moving your software away from a on site server can have cost benefits be reducing equipment that has the be maintained and replaced.

Cloud technology is also perfect for notetaking and collaboration using software like Evernote, OneDrive, Exchange hosted email, or SharePoint. You and your employees can think of ideas while out and about, make a few notes on a mobile device, and have it all synced perfectly to your desktop when you need it. You can all share a constantly up-to-date mailbox, or collaborate on a shared calendar or project. You can even scan in paperwork and have your entire filing cabinet in your pocket. The disassociation of location with productivity can be a huge boon to productivity and profit!

Got a New Device? Here’s the Essential Tech Prep You Can’t Afford to Skip

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It’s tons of fun getting a new device. Whether it’s a new desktop, laptop or phone: the thrill of getting it home and opening the box is great. We know, we love tech too. It even has its own version of new car smell! Once you get it home though, there are a number of things that need to be done before it’s really usable – beyond snazzing it up with a new case or mousepad.

The sellers like to say it’s ready to use straight from the box – and it is at a base level – maybe not quite the way you need it to work. They’ll all turn on, look for wifi, and sure, you can type…but rather like when you buy a new fridge, simply turning it on isn’t enough – it’s still empty and you’re still hungry. A few minutes now to prep your new device will save you time, stress, and quite possibly money.

This is a long and detailed list, so keep it for future reference or forward it to your friends that may be in the market for a new machine!

Install all Security Updates and Fixes

From the factory to your hands, that device has been in the box for at least a month. In the world of security, that’s an eternity. During that time on the shelf, new viruses have come out and new software weaknesses have been discovered. Fortunately, new updates to combat these problems were also created, they just haven’t been downloaded to your device yet. The first thing you should do after turning the new device on is to use its update feature to get all updates installed. That way, you know your device is safe to go online.

Install a Security Suite

This may not be necessary for most mobile devices, but if you have a new Windows machine or even a Mac, we STRONGLY suggest investing in a high quality security package. Not all antivirus programs are created equal, and often times the one that may come ‘free’ on your machine is only there because it was cheap for the manufacturer or reseller to provide.        For consumer use, we recommend ESET Smart Security by NOD32 or Bitdefender. We even have a managed business grade antivirus based on Bitdefender that we can provide for a similar price than most residential grade products! Contact us if you are interested in being protected by the professionals at Little Dog Tech rather than a freebee.

Setting up Hardware

If your new device is a computer, you’ll need to hook it up to extra tech like a printer or webcam. These tasks that should be plug-and-play can sometimes send you loopy, especially when you’ve got a plug mismatch or incompatible drivers.  One hint is to not use the disks that came with the machine. Instead, go online to the manufacture’s website to download the newest version of drivers and software to ensure compatibility. Some common websites are:

https://support.hp.com/us-en

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/

https://www.brother-usa.com/support/

Be careful Googling a manufacturer’s support website, many scammers will put up ads and pretend to be support for a certain company but charge you astronomical amounts of money for something that may actually be free!

Setting up the Network

There are two types of networks in the residential world, wired and wireless. Wired connections are always best, so if your new computer is going to be located near your router or an active ethernet plug, use that. But, more and more people these days are using wireless connections. This is great, but it can be slower and less stable and the biggest problem we see is people don’t know what their wireless pass-key is! If you don’t have record of what your key was, you will either need to retrieve it from another connected machine, connect to the router with a wire to access it and extract the key, or reset your router to defaults and set it up again from scratch. These are more complicated tasks than what I can explain in a newsletter, so if you run into this issue we can help!

Backup, Backup, Backup

This is a great time to think about having a robust backup procedure in place. You would hate to get everything moved over to your new machine and find out that you have a dud and have lost everything! Or, why not set this all up now so when the device does inevitably fail, you know you can recover from that disaster. There are MANY different types of backups out there from online to local to a hybrid approach. Contact us to let us design the perfect backup plan for your devices.

Data Transfer From Old to New

Some people want to transfer everything from one device to another, others like to have a fresh start and keep the old device as a backup. You can either transfer your data in its entirety, or just copy the things you use. For mobile devices, the major manufacturers have built in tools for this, like iCloud backup on iPhones.

For computers, the process can be a little more manual. You can keep it simple by copying data to a flash drive on the old computer, then copying it to the new computer. Or, we can use some specialized software to move over files as well as some settings, configurations, and even your wallpaper! We can even turn your old hard drive into an external drive that you can plug into your new computer and grab files as required.

Setting up Email and Software

Email is one thing people commonly forget and then struggle with. If you use a web browser based e-mail solution like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail, there may not be anything to set up. Just visit the website and sign in (I hope you remember your password!) to get your mail. But, if you use an e-mail client such as outlook, Windows mail, or Thunderbird, they will need special configuration to connect properly. Also, the databases from the old machine may need to be migrated so you still have your old mail. The details vary depending on the existing configuration and program, but it is something we are very familiar with.

Any programs you will need to have on the new computer will need to be reinstalled. It is not feasible to move an installed program from one computer to another. There are programs that claim to do this, but the results are not guaranteed and often buggy. BEFORE you purchase your new machine, you should inventory what software you will need, and spend some time digging up the install disks and licenses. Some programs like Corel, Adobe, and AutoCAD can often cost more than the machine, so it is worth it to keep track of these licenses!

Lockdown Privacy and Permissions

Most newer devices have the ability to create separate accounts for different users. Whether it be a computer or a mobile device, there may be an advantage to setting up a different account for each person who is planning on using the device. The individual users can keep their files, settings, and programs separate from other users to reduce clutter and the chance that other users can ‘mess things up’.

With Windows machines, there is a distinct advantage to setting up the normal day-to-day users as ‘standard’ users without installation rights, and then have one ‘administrative’ user that is carefully used only when higher level functions are needed. This can be VERY helpful with avoiding virus infections because ~95% of virus CANNOT install through a standard user account!

Whether you have children and are looking to provide a safe online experience, files you’d prefer to keep private, or simply want to set up ‘profiles’ for each user to have their own login, we can quickly get your new device configured to meet your needs.

6 Simple Tips to Protect Your Customers Data

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As cyber-attacks continue to make headlines, hackers are exposing or selling customer data files in record numbers. But just like with any threat, there are actions you can take to minimize risk and ensure your business retains a positive reputation among customers.

  1. Stop using the same password on repeat. Set a mandate for all staff that passwords must be unique for each user and for your workplace. That means it can’t be remotely like the one on their home PC, tablet or online banking. Passwords are hacked more than ever, so when you’re prompted for a password change, dig deep and really think about what goes into a hacker-proof password. If remembering them is a problem, consider one of the latest password management tools like Lastpass.
  2. Go on a shredding spree. How much sensitive data is being dumped into the recycling bin? Valuable customer data is often taken from the bins of small businesses and quickly sold or published. It’s not just good practice to shred sensitive documents, it’s the law. Take 5 seconds to run documents through the shredder or book in the services of a secure shredding company.
  3. Ditch the accounting spreadsheets. Still using an Excel doc for all your number-crunching? Besides making your accountant’s job harder (and more expensive), you’re opening your business to a massive range of vulnerabilities. Even with password-protection, spreadsheets aren’t designed to safeguard your financials or those of your clients. Upgrade to a proper accounting solution with built-in customer data protections and security guarantees.
  4. Train staff explicitly. You can’t rely on common sense because what you think is a given might be news to someone else. It can be extremely beneficial to hold special data-safety training sessions once or twice a year as a reminder, as well as take the time to induct new staff into the way things are done.
  5. Limit access to data. Just like the bank manager who guards the keys to the vault, you can limit who accesses your data. Revoke employee access as soon as they leave your business for good, and set rules around who can access what – and when. Do they need access to sensitive information while working from home? Should they be able to change the files, or only view them?
  6. Keep your software updated. Possibly the most preventable hack, having outdated software can be an open invitation for cyber-criminals. They look for known weaknesses in business software and waltz right in. While the nagging pop-ups and reminders to update can feel like a selling ploy, they’re actually helping your business to stay in the safe zone. Updated software gives you protection against new viruses and hacking techniques, plus closes off those nasty weaknesses.

If you would like to make sure your business is secure from data breaches, give us a call at 515-422-1995.

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