Get Your IT Ready for Holiday Shopping

by

Holiday shopping will have a new look this year. Many retailers are closing their brick-and-mortar doors for Black Friday, and the big “doorbuster” sales are moving online. With the busiest shopping period of the year going virtual, there’s going to be greater load on the business IT.

If your business wants to be part of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, prepare for a sudden surge in traffic volume. If your technology can’t handle the traffic, you’re going to lose revenue. A crashed system could be catastrophic for your bottom line, plus, it’ll hurt brand reputation and customer satisfaction long term.

Consider these strategies to get ready for the online crush of shoppers.

  • Latency
  • Error rates
  • Number of time-outs
  • Length of response time
  • Availability

Performing OK may not be enough to match the need of holiday sales. Based on the Salesforce findings above, it’s safe to say you could be facing 15–35% increased traffic.

#3 Optimize Your Site and Services Beforehand

In e-commerce, every second, even millisecond, counts. There are several things you can do in advance to make sure you’re putting your best e-foot forward:

  • Make sure that every page of your site and all your images are rendering quickly.
  • Identify where you are seeing shopping cart abandonment, and do what you can now to stem that drop off.
  • Revise site navigation to ensure it is as simple as possible for shoppers.
  • Allow users to buy without registering and to use as many different payment options as possible.
  • Remove unnecessary forms, sidebars, headers, and footers.
  • Make your site as mobile friendly as you can.

You also want to be sure that your order and inventory systems are in sync. Promoting Black Friday items and then selling out will sour customer experience.

#4 Prepare Your Troops, Too

Along with readying your technology, prep your people, too. Need more hands-on deck to handle order fulfillment and customer service? Get on that hiring and training now. Having IT support on call can help respond to any unexpected issues.

Need IT support preparing for the e-commerce influx? Our technology experts can prepare your business for more traffic and transactions. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

Build Better Meetings

by

Business meetings can be a double-edged sword. Often they are as likely to rally staff and build momentum as they are to halt progress and kill productivity.

Productive meetings are key to keeping team members on track and everyone on the same page. A poor meeting is as harmful to the progress of a project as losing multiple members of staff.

Finding the balance is important for good business. There are tools and techniques to make sure that your meetings are not standing in the way of your business.

Streamlined Scheduling

One of the biggest hurdles to planning a meeting can be simply booking a space. Finding an available room, with the right equipment, in a time and place which everyone can agree on can be a logistical nightmare. Repeated emails back and forth to agree on the venue alone can consume hours out of the day.

There are technical tools available to help. Outlook’s scheduling assistant can be a great place to start. The office package is designed to help you find a time and place convenient for everyone.

The software is a key, but underused, component within Office 365. Simply adopting a scheduling assistant can cut down meeting planning from hours to minutes.

With everyone fully connected and on the same page, every meeting is improved from the first minute. The scheduling assistant can be found under New Items > Meeting in the Outlook home tab.

Bringing in Outside Help

Of course, not all meetings are internal affairs. Often, a successful meeting involves staff members from third-party organizations, clients, and consultants too.

This is a prime area for technology tools to help. Tools such as FindTime and Doodle.com both serve as scheduling assistants to arrange suitable times and locations to coordinate meetings with multiple parties.

The process is simple, each party selects available or desired times to meet. This process is done independently and based on priorities for each user. When everyone has added their input a mutually convenient slot can be found for everyone.

With modern technology there’s no reason to spend hours, or even many minutes, wrestling over when and where to meet. Using the tools as they are designed cuts out a huge amount of overhead cost from meeting planning.

Idea Capture

The most common complaint staff have about business meetings is the lack of available participation. Many show up, yet just feel like audience members.

When staff members feel their contribution or input to projects isn’t valued, it can lead to a dramatic drop in morale and much deeper issues within the firm.

Tools such as GoWall.com are changing meetings for the better and giving staff members a bigger voice. The site provides attendees with the resources they need to contribute to meetings without disrupting the flow.

The idea behind GoWall is very simple and highly effective. While concepts are communicated as part of a presentation or ongoing conversation, participants are free to contribute to an “idea wall” in real time. This shared wall contains ideas, contributions, and notes from all participants that add to the conversation.

Since ideas are shared between all participants, everyone can be inspired to contribute. This deceptively simple idea helps all members to feel they have a chance to have their voices heard and their contributions valued.

Worthwhile Meetings

Meetings can be a difficult topic in some workplaces. Some firms have had historic failures and huge losses in productivity as a result of too many meetings running far too long. In some environments, formal meetings have all but been banned already.

Using modern technology solutions, we can put the productivity back into meetings. Cut out the wasted time and get to the points that matter. With these simple yet highly effective tools, we can build meetings that create productivity instead of hampering it.

Trades Should Add Technology to Their Tool Belts

by

There are many hands-on trades that haven’t traditionally needed technology. Yet modern tech tools help the plumber, carpenter, welder, or other trade improve productivity and competitiveness.

There are certain common tasks tradespeople face daily:

  • scheduling appointments with clients, suppliers, or inspectors;
  • tracking project deadlines and budgets;
  • communicating with project managers, customers, trades, office administrators;
  • paying employee salaries;
  • invoicing and tracking payables, receivables.

These can all be done with pen and paper, sticky notes, and forms in triplicate, but technology cuts the time spent and lets you focus instead on increasing your bottom line.

The Difference Technology Tools Make

Most of us carry small, powerful computers around in our pockets every day, whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet. Internet-connected devices give tradespeople access to tools to enhance productivity.

Let’s start with scheduling apps, as tradespeople are often on the move throughout the day. Signing up for a scheduling tool (e.g. Doodle) makes it easier to set appointments, and you aren’t involved in the booking process. Customers simply go to your website or link to the app and choose an available time that works best for them. You can even set it up to ensure you have buffers between appointments or prevent someone from scheduling a new, big project to start at the end of your day.

Integrating the scheduling app with your website helps customers reach you. Also, connecting also to a shared cloud calendar can help your team work together better. Everyone invited into the calendar can see who is out on a call, and where.

You can make changes to a cloud-based calendar on any connected device. Others will see the alterations in real-time. This helps you avoid scheduling conflicts. You can set a follow-up meeting with an inspector while you’re out in the field. The office secretary sees your availability in real-time to set up a new customer visit.

Your Trade Office On the Move

With cloud-based office software also available online, you can get more done out of the office. You don’t have to make a trip back to the office to enter your invoice slips and make photocopies of receipts. Instead, take pictures on your phone or tablet, and attach them to the project file in the cloud, or invoice directly from a secure cloud-based processing site. You won’t have to worry about any paperwork getting lost in the back of a truck or bottom of a toolbox.

The Microsoft Office suite, Google Docs, and cloud storage are available from iOS and Android devices. This lets you monitor project timelines, view budgets, and track invoices and payments in the field. Cloud-based accounting packages let you see cashflow or outstanding balances, and pay contractors or suppliers on the spot.

Cloud-based software also gives every employee access to business tools in the office. With a virtual desktop, they can collaborate easily (out on a job or in the office) and make changes in real-time. For instance, a contractor could access software to edit a building plan, then actually see the new design in 3D modelling software.

The great news is that technology is ever more accessible and easy to use. Embracing modern digital tools can improve customer service and trade business efficiency.

Your skill set may not extend to technology, but that’s where we come in. We can help you find the right technology for your business needs. Contact us at (515)422-1995 today!

Does Mesh Wi-Fi Make Sense in Your Home?

by

Wi-Fi is a top contender for a technology most of us rely upon. After all, Wi-Fi often provides our wireless high-speed internet and network connections. Without Wi-Fi we’d be stuck watching another reality TV show on a cable-connected device. We couldn’t work from wherever we wanted in our homes. Gulp, the horror!

Well, just when you were becoming familiar with Wi-Fi, technology is adapting. Now, you might want to consider Mesh Wi-Fi for your home. If you live in a big house or an apartment with thick interior walls, or your living space is spread out over multiple stories, you may have experienced dead spots. They’re no fun, right?

Enter Mesh Wi-Fi. Traditional Wi-Fi relies on a single router. If you were having connectivity issues, you might have invested in a Wi-Fi booster or Wi-Fi extender, but now you can reach far areas with a Wi-Fi Mesh system.

Mesh networks aren’t new. They’re already in use in businesses and on military bases with their own isolated networks. But now you can also optimize home connectivity with Mesh Wi-Fi.

How Mesh Wi-Fi works

With Mesh Wi-Fi, you’ll place several smaller, connected devices around the house. Instead of having one central routing hub linking Wi-Fi signals via radio waves to the modem, you’ll have many access points (also known as satellites) capturing and rebroadcasting the routing signals you need for connectivity.

Benefits of Mesh Wi-Fi

Having ready access to a strong, reliable Wi-Fi signal wherever you are in your home is a good thing, but that’s not the only advantage of Mesh Wi-Fi. Other benefits include:

  • Greater speed. With all access points broadcasting the same signal, you can cut the lag from having multiple, simultaneous connectivity requests.
  • Better coverage. Typical Mesh Wi-Fi router devices claim to cover from 4,500 to 6,000 square feet.
  • Ease of use. The typical Mesh router system is automated and provides a mobile app for easy management, even remotely.
  • Integration with other Smart Home devices such as Alexa is often a feature.
  • Parental controls are available with certain brands of these router systems.

Securing your Mesh Wi-Fi

Just as with traditional Wi-Fi, the security of your Mesh Wi-Fi will depend on your keeping your router devices safe. This means:

  • changing the device’s administrative credentials and password from their default settings;
  • setting up devices to automatically check for and install security patch updates;
  • changing the network name to something unique, not something that immediately identifies the network as yours (e.g. if you live at 804 Water Wheel, don’t call your network 804 Water);
  • setting up a guest Wi-Fi network allowing visitors to log on instead of providing every guest to your home with your access credentials.

Mesh Wi-Fi is also known as whole-home Wi-Fi, but you may not need this expansive solution. Consider: How often do you have connectivity issues? How many Wi-Fi dead zones are you dealing with? What’s your budget? And do you really want several more devices strewn around your house? You might need only to set up your traditional router and modem more efficiently.

Want to learn more about dealing with slow connectivity or dead spots in your home? Give us a call at (515)422-1995. Our experts can help you decide on the best Wi-Fi connectivity option for your needs.

7 Things You Need to Know About Ransomware

by

Ransomware is a well-named type of cyberattack. Cybercriminals taking this approach kidnap your data. After accessing your network, they encrypt files and demand payment for the passcode. Here are the top seven things you need to know about this business threat.

#1 It Can Happen to You

Cybercriminals rely on your false confidence. Don’t think “it won’t happen to me.” Attacks on government, education, healthcare, or financial institutions get publicity. Yet organizations of all types and sizes are targeted.

#2 Ransomware Spreads Fast

Ransomware is malware, malicious software that can reach throughout a network. So, if Jane from accounting opens a ransomware file, every single computer on your business network could be infected. The virus can spread between businesses, too. Consider the debilitating WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017. Within four days of its first detection in Europe, the strain had spread to 116 countries.

#3 Ransomware Targets People

A common method to send out phishing emails in the hope of having people enter their access credentials. Targeted business communication emails work, too. The attacker gets to know your business first. Then they send an email impersonating a colleague, supplier, or customer asking you to take action or update contact details by clicking on the link or downloading a file.

#4 Ransomware is Costly

Once the ransomware is installed on your system, it locks down your files. To regain access to the files, you need the password or decryption key the attacker supplies when you pay up; that’s if they keep their end of the bargain once you pay the ransom. These are crooks you’re dealing with after all!

In Coveware’s analysis of Q3 2019, the average ransom payment increased by 13% to $41,198 as compared to $36,295 in Q2 of 2019. And that’s just the cost of the ransom. Indirect costs include the cost of downtime, lost revenue, and long-term brand damage. There’s also the expense of removing the ransomware, forensic analysis, and rebuilding systems.

The average ransomware attack in Q3 2019 resulted in 12.1 days of downtime. – Coveware

#5 Ransom Requires Cryptocurrency

Ransom payment is usually made by bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. Your business needs to buy cryptocurrency with actual cash, then transmit the ransom. They choose cryptocurrency because it’s very difficult to trace. It doesn’t help you that bitcoin is not something you can charge back like a credit card.

#6 A Recovery Plan Helps

Planning in advance can help you respond more reasonably. Document plans to disconnect infected computers from the network as soon as possible. Also, power down any machines that could be vulnerable to avoid spreading contagion.

You should also discuss in advance whether or not your business will pay a ransom. Weighing the costs and benefits without a deadline on the decision can help you react more strategically.

#7 You Can Take Action

You don’t have to sit around worrying and waiting for a ransomware attack. There are many things you can do to help prevent this type of attack:

  • Filter traffic, preventing it from coming into your network in the first place.
  • Scan inbound emails for known threats, and block certain attachment types.
  • Use antivirus and anti-spam solutions and regularly upgrade and patch vulnerable software.
  • Educate all users about social engineering.
  • Allow remote access to your network only from secure virtual private networks.
  • Back up your data to more than one location so that you can restore any impacted files from a known source.

Ransomware is a lucrative, relatively easy mode of attack for cybercriminals. They could target your business. Contact us today for help implementing the best protection practices to keep your data safe. Call us at (515)422-1995.

Don’t Get Hooked By a Whaling Attack

by

The executives of your company are the big fish in your sea. Yet cybercriminals think of them as whales. In fact, whaling is a new cybersecurity threat targeting the C-suite level.

You’ve likely heard of phishing attacks. Phishers use scam emails or spoofed websites to obtain user credentials or financial information. This might be an email that looks like it is from your bank asking you to log in and update your details, or a supposed tax alert needing immediate action.

A vishing attack is another fraudulent attempt to steal protected data, but the cybercriminals are going to use the phone to make contact. They might pretend to be a vendor needing to confirm account details for bill payment.

There’s also spear phishing. In these cases, the attackers do their homework first and target a specific company. They scour directories and employee social media to gather information to gain credibility.

Now, there are whaling attacks, too. The high-value target is a senior-level employee. The fraudster typically also impersonates one of the target’s C-suite counterparts.

What You Need to Know About Whaling

A whaling attack uses the same methods as phishing but focuses on top-level targets. The goal is to get “whales” to reveal sensitive information or transfer money to fraudsters’ accounts.

Whale attacks are intentional. Phishing can see attackers baiting hundreds of hooks to get nibbles. In whaling, information gathered in advance adds credibility to the social engineering. The target has higher value, so it’s worth their time to appear knowledgeable and make a request to and from someone important.

The sender’s email address will look convincing (e.g. from smithj@companyx.co instead of smithj@companyx.com). The messages will have corporate logos and legitimate links to the company site. Because humans want to help, the communications typically involve an urgent matter.

Whaling attacks are on the rise. In 2016, Snapchat admitted compromising employee data after receiving an email, seemingly from its CEO, asking for payroll information.

In another high-profile example, Mattel nearly transferred $3 million to a Chinese account. Company policy required two signatures, but the attackers (taking advantage of a recent shakeup) faked the new CEO’s signature. The second executive went ahead and added a signature. The only thing that saved the company was that it was a Chinese bank holiday.

Protecting Against Whale Attacks

As with phishing or vishing, the primary way to protect against whaling attacks is to question everything. Train your key staff members to guard what they share on social media. Encourage them to question any unsolicited request. If they weren’t expecting an attachment or link, they should follow up. If a request is unusual, they should trust their spidey-sense and proceed with caution.

It’s also a good idea to develop a policy for handling requests for money or personal information. By requiring that two people must always weigh in, you’re more likely to catch a scam before it’s too late.

Also, train all your employees to look carefully at email addresses and sender names. They should also know to hover over links (without clicking on them) to reveal the full URL.

Security awareness is crucial. It’s also a good idea to test your employees with mock phishing emails.

Need help training employees or testing social engineering? Contact our experts today, call us at (515)422-1995!

Time for What Matters: Essential Windows Shortcuts

by

The average person spends 90,000 hours at work. These hours can cost us sleep, affect our mood, and cause us to gain weight. Oh, and work can cause stress, too. We can’t give you a “get out of work free” card, but these essential Windows shortcuts will help you save time.

By gaining efficiency at your computer, you may find you have more time for what matters. At work, this may be devising new innovations or getting out in the field. At home, these shortcuts can free up time to play a board game with the kids or do some gardening with Grandma.

Ctrl + X to Cut

Think about X marking the spot in the text where you want to cut words, an image, or a URL. Drag your cursor over the selection to highlight the particular text/table/image/file (or a part of it). If you don’t want it at all, the cut function is another version of delete. If you want to move the selection, this is your first step.

Ctrl + V to Paste

With this simple shortcut you can place the information you just cut (or copied using Ctrl + C) anywhere you want. The important thing to remember is that the paste function only holds one selection in memory. So, if you cut a phrase from one place, don’t get distracted by an image you want to copy or other text to cut. You want to paste what you have first, then go back and copy or cut the next thing so as not to risk risking losing anything.

Ctrl + Z to Undo

If only this shortcut was available in real life. We could retract that thing we inadvertently said to Uncle Steve, or take out the salt we put in a recipe instead of sugar, or avoid leaving the house for the gym without our running shoes.

Still, Windows users are able to undo their most recent action with this key combination. Whichever Windows program you’re in, you can use Ctrl + Z to reverse your last action. To redo something, go with Ctrl + Y.

Alt then Tab to Switch Screens

There are many things you can do with Windows. Perhaps you’re multitasking: you have a PowerPoint open, as well as an Excel spreadsheet, and Internet Explorer, too. By pressing Alt and then the Tab key, you can switch between tabs or screens. If you hold down the Alt button while tapping Tab, you’ll scroll through all screens.

Ctrl + N to open a new window

Pressing Ctrl+N together opens up a new document file or browser window, depending on the program you’re in. It saves you a few drop-down menus and works in most Windows applications and Web browsers.

Ctrl + F to Find

This is another one we’d love to see in the real world. Using the find shortcut calls up a pop-up box where you can enter text or numbers. You can use this shortcut to find what you’re looking for on a Web page, in a PDF document, or in your rough draft of a speech. In fact, you’ll be able to see how many times your search text appears and toggle from one selection to the next.

Ctrl + Mouse to Zoom

Forget your reading glasses? Looking at a too-small infographic? Having a tough time locating the right tiny file on your desktop? You can zoom in with this shortcut. Using this shortcut on your desktop makes files and folders larger. In your browser, this function zooms in on the page.

Want to know more about Windows and technology to streamline processes? Our experts can help you find the right computer solutions for your home or office. Contact us at (515)422-1995 today!

Facebook is for Sharing, Not Storing

by

When was the last time you held an actual photo album or actual prints of photographs in your hands? Maybe you look back at older photographs only when Facebook’s TimeHop app reminds you of a pic from five years ago. If so, you may be risking your visual history.

Facebook is a great way to share photos with friends and family around the world. You get to enjoy their comments and the affirmation of their likes. But using Facebook as storage for your photos is not a good plan. Here’s why.

Some people treat Facebook as their photo album archive. They delete the originals from their devices or digital camera when they need more space. But Facebook compresses images for faster download. It satisfies impatient social media users, which means photo quality suffers. If you wanted to print those photos in the future, they wouldn’t look as good as the originals.

That’s not the only drawback. When you trust Facebook with all your photos, you’re letting a company control your visual archive. It’s hard to imagine, given Facebook’s reach today, but what happens to your photos if the company goes defunct? We don’t know. The people who were keeping their photos on Myspace in 2006 might have an idea.

The younger crowd is already moving onto other social platforms. Plus, Facebook’s growth rate in North America and Europe is slowing. Those daily active users are the primary source of revenue. So, you know Mark Zuckerberg is in some meetings about that.

Even if Facebook continues as the business behemoth it is today, we don’t know what policy changes it might make. It could change its terms of service whenever it wanted (if you even read those in the first place). Users have no guarantee for how long Facebook will store their images or any type of content.

Keep in mind also that many of the photos showing up in your timeline are actually taken by friends. Facebook provides an entire album of other people’s photos when they’ve tagged you, but if they decided to untag you or remove it, that photo would be gone.

Finally, there’s also the risk of your account getting shut down or hacked. You’ve probably had friends warn you not to accept any new friend requests from them because they’ve been compromised. You wouldn’t want a thief to steal all your photo albums. Similarly, you don’t want a cybercriminal to gain access to all your images.

Our Recommendation

Just as with data, we recommend you have a “3-2-1” backup system for your digital photographs. This means having three copies of the photos you care about. You don’t need to back up the blurry ones if you don’t want to.

You might keep one copy on the original device, but you’d have two other copies of the high-quality, uncompressed, original image as well. One might be kept on an external storage device such as a USB thumb drive, and the other you could upload to cloud storage.

The cloud backup gives you access to the photos from any device in any location. So, if a flood, hurricane, or fire devastates your home, and you lose your device and the USB thumb drive, you still have a backup. Your Facebook photos and videos are just there to be shared with friends and family.

Not sure where or how to safely store your photos and videos? We can help! Our experts may even become new Facebook friends. Then we can all like each other’s photos with the peace of mind that the original photos aren’t going anywhere.

Island Hopping: Not Always a Good Thing

by

The phrase “island hopping” conjures up positive images. You might think of cruising beautiful sandy beaches on a tour of tropical islands. Too bad cybercriminals have given the term a new, less pleasant spin.

Island hopping is an increasingly popular method of attacking businesses. In this approach, the cybercriminal targets a business indirectly. The bad actors first go after the target’s smaller strategic partners. So, vendors or affiliates, who might not have the same level of cybersecurity, become stepping stones to hop.

Attackers might hack into smaller businesses handling the target’s HR, payroll, accounting, healthcare, or marketing. Then, they take advantage of the pre-existing relationship to access the final destination.

Humans are trusting. Cybercriminals exploit that. With island hopping, attackers leverage the trust established between strategic partners.

It’s quite simple: attackers gain access to Company A and send a counterfeit business communication to Company B. Company B, knowing the sender, is less likely to question a download link or opening an attachment.

After all, it’s not coming from a stranger; it’s a message from perfectly pleasant Jenny at Company A. You may have in the past already shared logins to various sites/portals, or passwords to unlock zip files.

The Rise of Island Hopping

This is not a brand-new form of attack. In fact, it’s named after a military strategy which the United States used in World War II to establish a stronghold in the Pacific Islands.

Perhaps the best-known island-hopping cyberattack was seen in the United States in 2013. Retail giant Target was the aptly named target of a point-of-sale system breach. Hackers stole payment information from 40 million customers. The first “island” in the planned attack was Fazio Mechanical Services. The heating and refrigeration firm suffered a malware attack shortly before Target’s breach. Fazio’s hackers stole email credentials needed to access the retailer’s networks.

As enterprises continue to strengthen their cybersecurity, it’s predicted that island hopping will gain momentum. According to Accenture’s Technology Vision 2019 report, less than a third of businesses globally know how strategic partners secure their networks. A majority (56%) rely on trust that business partners would uphold security standards.

Preventing Island Hopping

You may be one of the islands to hop or the attackers’ final destination. It depends on your business size and industry. Either way, your business is vulnerable to malware attack, infected systems, or a data breach. Plus, if you’re the stepping stone, you’re likely to lose the target company’s business, too.

How do you prevent island hopping? First, secure your own networks and systems:

  • Follow best practices to detect and identify vulnerabilities and reduce risk.
  • Educate your employees about the dangers of business communication scams.
  • Raise awareness of phishing schemes and social engineering.
  • Require two-factor user authentication.
  • Change all default, generic, or predictable passwords.
  • Keep security up to date (patching and system upgrades are mandatory).
  • Control who can access your networks and servers.
  • Protect all endpoints (including employee devices in a Bring Your Own Device workplace).

When it comes to cyber island hopping, your business doesn’t want to be a layover or the final destination. Keep your cybersecurity borders tight to avoid unwanted visitors.

Want to make your business inhospitable to island hoppers? Work with a managed service provider. They can help assess cybersecurity, provide a plan to reduce risk, and upgrade technology. Let us support your efforts to fend off unwanted tourists.

Give us a call on (515)422-1995.

5 Common Computer Myths Debunked

by

Common urban myths would have us believe alligators live in sewers or people put razor blades in kids’ candy. Common misconceptions about computers are just as persistent. Here are several IT myths debunked for your benefit.

#1 A slow-running computer has a virus

A virus can be to blame. Spyware or other malware can also cause a computer to slow down. However, there are also many other reasons your computer might run slower:

  • You may have a lot of programs that start up when you boot up the computer. You could remove or disable programs that start every time.
  • The computer has gone into power save mode every night, but you haven’t rebooted the computer in a long time.
  • There are many programs running in the background. On a Windows PC, you can go into task manager and see what is running and the computer resources in use.
  • A security utility is running. If it’s an antivirus scanner, let the scan finish first, then see if your computer speed improves.
  • Temporary files or other junk are taking up too much hard drive space. Your computer needs at least 200–500MB of free space on the hard drive to be able to move and manage files.
  • Your computer doesn’t have enough RAM to run programs within memory. If your computer has to swap information on the hard drive to get enough memory to run programs, it’s going to work slower.
  • The computer is old. You may need to upgrade to a computer that can handle current software needs without slowing to a snail’s pace.

#2 Macs don’t get viruses

Many Apple owners believe their Macintosh computers are immune to viruses. If only. Macs do get viruses; they are simply targeted less than PCs. Why? There are many more computers running Windows, which means a bigger, easier target for cybercriminals.

As Apple’s market share rises, the threat to Macs is growing. Apple works to protect its users from malware, but you still need to use caution with downloads and when clicking on links from unknown sources.

#3 My Windows registry needs cleaning up

Registry cleaning companies will say that scanning your Windows registry can speed up the computer and avoid error messages. The cleaner finds unused registry keys and any malware remnants for removal.

But let’s consider the fact that Microsoft has not released its own registry cleaner. Why not? Because it’s really not necessary. Worse still, going in to clean your registry (when you don’t know what you’re doing) can actually do serious damage.

#4 My laptop battery needs to be dead before I recharge if I want it to last longer

This was once true. Nickel-cadmium batteries suffered from what was called a “memory effect.” If discharged and recharged to the same point several times, they would remember that point in the future and not go further.

Now, however, laptops typically come with lithium-ion (or Li-ion) batteries. They don’t suffer from this memory effect. In fact, they function better with partial discharge instead of letting the battery run down to zero.

#5 I don’t have anything hackers would want

Cybersecurity should be a priority for everyone, not only sprawling enterprises. Let’s put it this way:

  • Do you have any money?
  • Do you have an identity cybercriminals could use to access money or sell for money?
  • Do you work anywhere?

Hackers have all kinds of ways to profit from your data or from hijacking your computer’s processing power. They can turn your computer into part of a bot network or use your information as a bridge into a business target’s system.

Keep all your computers at top speed with the best security measures in place with the help of our experts. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

Click to see our BBB Report

FOLLOW US

VISIT US

Privacy Policy