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Archives for November 2017

Latest iOS Version May Have Bug That Changes Your Letters

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If you’re using an Apple device running iOS 11.0.3 or 11.1, you may have noticed some oddities when sending text messages. For reasons that aren’t quite clear, the letter “I” is being replaced by the characters “A[?].” It’s not a game-breaking bug, but it is annoying, and if you’re not paying attention, it can make for some rather mystifying text messages.

Fortunately, Apple is on the case, and the company has announced that they’ll have a fix for the issue in their next release. If you’d rather not wait, there are several things you can do in the meantime to work around the issue. In no particular order, these are:

• Simply disable Apple’s predictive text auto-correct feature. If you rely on it frequently, this may slow you down some, but is probably the most straightforward approach to take at the moment.

• Install a third-party keyboard app because these use their own predictive text features.

• Or, take Apple’s recommendation and set up a text replacement rule (essentially replacing “I” with “I”).

If you opt for this last approach, you’ll want to go into your phone’s settings, look under the general tab, then keyboard, and choose “Text Replacement.”

Tap the plus sign (+), then, for “phrase,” type in an upper case “I”. For a shortcut, type a lower-case “I.”

Save that change, and you should be all set.

To reiterate, this isn’t a huge deal, and it’s hard to see how this could cause anything but a bit of annoyance and perhaps a few scattered miscommunications. Even so, if you send more than a handful of text messages during the course of a typical business day, it’s probably worth spending a few minutes implementing one of these simple workarounds until Apple can ride to the rescue with a permanent fix.

Are Your Employees Wasting 3 Hours of Productivity?

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Are Your Employees Wasting 3 Hours of Productivity?

Time is Money

In the age of the Internet, instant information, social media, smart phones, tablets and much more, the business world has seen great leaps and strides in the ability to reach an audience, clients and customers, but at what cost? Well, it turns out that cost may come in the form of productivity in the work place, as recent research has shown that a majority of employees with access to the Internet are wasting between 1-3  hours surfing the web or checking their social media. Along with the crunch this can bring to your bottom line, it also has an effect that reaches beyond that. When employees are wasting valuable work hours on the Internet, they are hindering their progress on their own work, slowing the completion of any collaborative efforts on projects and eating up bandwidth and slowing Internet speeds for work related needs.

In order to reduce and eliminate the time wasting temptation of the Internet, businesses should take these suggested steps:

Lock and Key Rules

The first step is implementing software that will help to manage who has access to what websites. This is key in today’s age as many businesses use social media and job posting sites for their own needs. In order to ensure that these sites are being used in a productive manner, you need to ensure the right administrators have access. This means setting up secure access to social media strictly for your internal marketing team, and reserving access to job posting sites for your human resources department. It boils down to a simple rule, “If you don’t belong, move along.”

Check the Numbers

In order to address and correct the problem of unnecessary Internet usage, you need to first know the source of the problem and the extent of the lost time. This requires the installation and monitoring of an Internet activity reporting system. This will allow you to observe what employees are doing while accessing the internet and measure how much of the work day is being lost to useless Internet surfing. The simple implementation of this ability should greatly reduce lost productivity as employees know they are being monitored.

Put Up a Filter and Block

For both productivity, security and legal purposes, be sure to install a filtering system in your company’s network. This is often as simple as the installation of a piece of hardware to filter out and block any specific websites, key words or categories. The keeps employees from accessing websites and content that could contain unprofessional materials and also downloading apps or software that could contain damaging viruses or malware. This proactive process will improve employee efficiency, while also saving your business from costly recovery costs if a virus or malware program gains access to your network.

9 Steps to an Effective Cyber Security Plan

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9 Steps to an Effective Cyber Security Plan

There is not a day that goes by that you do not read in the paper or hear on television that some company has been the victim of Cyber Crime. The alarming thing is that for every incident that you hear about there are probably six more that have happened that you don’t hear about. There are many reasons why people don’t report about breaches. Probably the biggest of which is the damage to their reputation and the cost of properly handling the situation. Ponemon Institute recently reported that each record lost cost the company $201.

Here are 9 Steps to an Effective Cyber Security Plan.

1. End User Education and Awareness. IBM did a recent study that showed that 95% of all data breaches were caused by human error. A company must produce user security policies covering acceptable and secure use of the organization systems. It must also establish a staff training program and maintain user awareness of cyber risk.

2. Develop a Home and Mobile Work Policy. In today’s work from anywhere environment more and more people are communicating and working from home, coffee shops, hotel rooms and anywhere else they have an Internet connection. The company must develop a mobile work policy and train staff to adhere to this policy. The policy must include a baseline for what access a mobile user has to protected data. It must also have security measures and encryption put on devices that have access to protected and sensitive data.

3. Systems Security Patching and Inventory of Assets. Knowing what type of devices are being used is critical in the overall Cyber Security planning. The company must also know what types of software are on all of these devices as well as provide Security Patching for all of this software. Some companies are aware and do the Microsoft portion of this but often fail in the other applications such as Chrome, Java, Flash, Adobe and many other applications that are common on almost every system.

4. Removable Media and Cloud Data Controls. Tens of thousands of records could be copied onto a USB Drive or uploaded into an employee’s personal Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Companies must have a means by which they can secure their sensitive data from being copied onto USB removable media and onto the many Cloud Sync services that are available.

5. Manage and Monitor User Privileges. Establishing the account management processes and limiting the number of privileged accounts is vital in securing the network. Also setting up alerting for when new user accounts are created or permission levels have been changed is essential.

6. Incident Management. Knowing who to contact in the event of a data breach is essential to a timely Data Loss Prevention Policy. Every company must establish an incident response and disaster recovery plan and keep it updated. This plan must be tested quarterly to ensure its viability in the event that it is needed. There also should be special attention given to the changing laws that may or may not affect the policy.

7. Network Monitoring. You can’t manage what you can’t see. The combination between the number of systems in an environment, the incredible fast pace of today’s business world and the multitude of hats that the average business owner wears, makes it impossible to stay on top of changes that are happening in the network. A good Cyber Security monitoring plan would ensure that all of the security patches are being applied to all software, the notification of new software being installed on existing software or being  uninstalled, that the desktop Malware Protection is functioning properly and is up-to-date, as well as monitoring a successful backup and disaster recovery program.

8. Layered Security Plan. Often I meet with clients and their only line of defense is their Desktop Antivirus. In today’s environment that would be like an intruder having breached the gate on the drive, the guard dogs missed them, they then knocked in the front door and are now ramming the bedroom door. And effective policy must have multiple layers such as, Spam Email Filtering, Next Generation Firewall, DNS Security and finally an approved Desktop Security Suite with Antivirus and Malware protection.

9. Yearly Breach Audit by a Professional. Security is one of the fastest changing parts of technology today. In a recent article from Trend Micro they stated that 2016 is going to be the year of extortion. A company must be vigilant in their defense and part of that vigilance is having a professional security expert do a yearly Cyber Security Audit. This will keep Data Loss and Breach in the forefront as well as mitigate liability for the company.

Developing, defining and communicating your Information Risk Management Regime is central to your organization’s overall cyber security strategy. Today’s business environment requires every business to be vigilant in protecting not only their own data but also the data of their clients.

Cloud Computing – How Will it Affect You?

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using-cloud-computingWhat is cloud computing?

Cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer’s hard drive.  With an online connection, cloud computing can be done anywhere and anytime.

We are always on the watch for the ‘next best thing’ when it comes to technology and the Internet. Certainly no one can doubt that the next generation of the Internet (known as Web 2.0) has had a dramatic affect on how people interact and connect with each other – both from an individual standpoint and a business one.

Another emerging concept that has the power to change how we perform tasks is taking place before us as well, and it is called ‘cloud computing.’ Simply put, it is the ability to use resources and tools via the Internet without actually owning or being near them. The only requirement is to be able to access them.

The term ‘cloud’ is used to indicate the whole of computing services accessible via the Internet. It is an all-encompassing description of the complex internet-connected networks that exist in data centers all over the world that power services and applications behind the scenes.

The concept of utilizing resources in these networks is being adopted by businesses both large and small. These resources are categorized to describe their function, and include:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Web 2.0

In the most general terms, Infrastructure as a Service means that companies may no longer need to own and house their own back-end servers and other network computing infrastructure besides an internet-connected PC or laptop in order to maintain business functionality. This capability can be purchased on a subscription basis from entities that market these services in a ‘virtual’ manner. This allows businesses to keep their costs low by not having to purchase, maintain and recycle their own equipment for this purpose, and also mitigates the possibility of business interruption due to the highly available nature of these solutions. This equates to increased uptime and profitability for Infrastructure as a Service customers.

Platform as a Service is also known as ‘cloudware’, and refers to the availability of development tools in creating web applications and services to the end user. Like IaaS, you never ‘see’ the inner-workings of this environment unless you are a computer programmer or IT resource, but it exists nonetheless and again affords those who use these tools the ability to reduce costs while running their businesses.

Sofware as a Service is defined as software applications that are subscribed to and accessed only through the Internet, and not installed on local PCs or laptops. Applications built by and accessed via Google fall into this category, as well as the many photo sites to which you can upload your pictures and videos, edit and share them with others. These solutions are gaining tremendous popularity, because end users do not need to install, update and maintain software locally – only connect to it and use it when the need arises.

Web 2.0 describes the whole of the social networking movement on the Internet, and includes but is not limited to destinations such as Facebook, MySpace, eHarmony, LinkedIn and Twitter. These sites offer the ability for people all over the world to share common interests, stay connected and learn more about each other – and these sites aren’t just for the young. Statistics show that the over 50 generation is logging onto these sites in greater numbers than ever before. In fact, in one month alone, Facebook adds over 17,000 new members.

The next time you are on the Internet and upload a photograph and use the online tools to modify that picture, you are participating in ‘cloud computing.’ The picture is probably loaded to a site that uses IaaS for their servers, PaaS in order to provide the visual interface in which you modify the photograph, and SaaS applications you’ll use to access your email program and social networking sites in order to send it to or post it for those with whom you would like to share the picture.

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Phone: (252) 565-1235