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How to Build A Strong Online Presence For Your Business

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Statistics released by Google confirm that 97% of consumers now use online search to find local businesses. So what does this mean for your company?

If you want to reach potential customers, you absolutely must have an established online presence. This has two main benefits. The first involves outbound marketing. A functional website will reinforce your brand, explain your products and services, and communicate how you can solve your customer’s problems. Second, establishing a portal of high-quality online content, known as inbound marketing, will help you establish your brand as an authority and will attract new customers.

There are three simple steps involved in creating a functional and effective online presence.

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Go Phish: Keeping An Eye On Your Email

Brian Bronikowski is a field service technician for Tech Experts.
Email phishing scams are nothing new in the IT world. There are always new messages coming through that seem more and more realistic. When you add this to your messages from princes, lottery winners, and investment requests, your inbox can grow rapidly.

There are a few ideas that phishing scams use, but there are also ways to look out for them.

There are a few different types of phishing on the Internet. Some will focus specifically on an organization or group.

Others are more generic. Some will take an idea that could apply to those with a certain attribute of family or business life. There are even attempts that pinpoint the “higher ups” in certain organizations and businesses.

So what are ways to notice these scams? A largely common way to decipher what’s real and what is not is the sense of urgency that these messages will have.

They require important personal information as quick as possible. This urgency is used to put your caution aside so you don’t lose out on whatever they are threatening.

These will also be very broad so it seems you’re not the only one receiving this message – and of course, you aren’t.

Either way if someone states they are deleting your emails, suing for some unknown offense, or offering part in a larger grouping of people, it’s likely that you need to take a minute and think about what’s really going on.

Another easy method that cannot be stated enough is the amount of spelling and grammatical errors.

Professional emails are generally well-groomed and checked over by the sender. Phishing scams, however, seem to have a commonality in that they never seem to read properly. These will have easily noticeable spelling errors.

You can also notice that sentence structure is off and it is very broken in general. While people can make spelling mistakes and others may not be the best proofreaders, there is always a need to be on the lookout for errors. In the scenarios where a business or group is targeted, there may be a few other steps to take.

Emails may be sent that were not expected by the receiver. Perhaps it is an event you did not hear about beforehand. Other times, and commonly as of late, there will be a document that the receiver was allegedly “expecting.”

Other times, they will use the tactics mentioned previously such as the urgency or broadness. While none of these are good to open, it is especially dangerous to open any attachments that are in the spam messages.

These can lead to ransomware and cryptoware infections that cost a lot more than the annoyance of seeing the messages.

Luckily, for all of these issues, there are ways to prevent the messages as a whole. Most large email providers will have some level of protection.

The messages will instead be directed towards your junk folder in hopes you won’t accidentally click on them.

For those that use hosted services, providers are likely taking further steps to prevent these messages. Tech Experts is one of these providers; we are able to host email and protect against a large majority of these threats.

Regardless of what you use for email services, it is always important to keep in mind what’s real and what’s too good to be true.

Keeping that in mind can be the deciding factor between infections, data loss, or identity theft.

Is Your System’s Backup Plan Working?

Luke Gruden is a help desk technician for Tech Experts.
At any moment, anything can happen that can cause your computer to fail and lose months – if not, years – of company data. This is why it’s important to have some sort of system backup in place so that files can be retrieved in case anything ever does happen to your computer or network.

Without a backup, recovery often isn’t possible and when it is, it’s often more expensive than having a long-term backup solution in place.

Some believe that just because they have a backup solution, they’ve covered their bases. If a computer goes down, they’re still safe.

Well, what about a fire in the company building? What if both your backup device and your computer are gone? What if the cloud server goes down and your computer goes out around the same time? Seems unlikely, but it can happen.

Natural disasters like flooding or lightning storms, accidents such as fires or the destruction of physical property, human influence like a tampering ex-employee or a ransomware infection… these things typically don’t give you enough warning to move your files somewhere safe. No matter what single backup solution you might use, there is a situation where it can fail.

This is why redundancy of backups is important, such as the cloud or another device. With different backup plans utilizing different locations, you can make sure that no one natural disaster or ransomware infection can stop your business for long. If anything should happen, your data will be untouched somewhere.

It’s recommended that you have at least two different backup plans in different locations. However, the more, the better. Having three different backup plans in different locations like the cloud, an offsite backup, and onsite is optimal in making sure your data is safe.

If your company data is important (which it is), there should not be a second thought in backing it up.
Remember that the more redundancy you have with your backups, the chances of losing your data drop significantly. Also, check to make sure your backup services are working and up to date as often as possible.

That way, you will not have any surprises when you least expect it and when you most need your data. At Tech Experts, we offer backup solutions that include status notifications for every backup.

It seems like we talk about this issue a lot and it’s true. We bring it up so often because disasters do happen and there have been companies that have been crushed by not having a good backup plan. Don’t let your workplace be one of them.

Take a moment and really consider how much effort you would have to put in to bring your business back up to speed after a data disaster. As always, work with your IT department and figure out what plan is best for your company before committing to anything. Interested in learning which backup solutions would best suit your business? Contact Tech Experts at (734) 457-5000.

What’s The Best Way To Prolong Laptop Battery Life?

While experts’ advice sometimes conflict, with proper care, your laptop’s battery should last you a few years; without it, it may quickly begin losing charge or need to be charged more frequently.

The confusion on this arises from the different care required for older, nickel-based batteries that lasted longest when completely drained and then completely charged. While it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally use up all the charge or leave your laptop battery charging beyond reaching full capacity, there is a bit of finesse involved in getting the most out of your lithium battery.

First of all, don’t drain your battery level below 40 to 50% on a regular basis. A partial discharge is far less stressful on your battery, ultimately prolonging its life. This is for your regular charging activity. Once every month or so, however, you should use up every bit of battery life. Since most lithium batteries these days are “smart” ones, they are able to relay information about the remaining amount of charge. By completely draining the battery periodically, it recalibrates this system, making it more accurate in the long run.

Secondly, you should not regularly charge your laptop battery to full capacity. The longer your battery charges, the higher its temperature gets. This adversely affects your battery’s capacity to hold a charge.

Once that capacity is lost, it is gone forever. So, taking this all into account, the best way to prolong laptop battery life is to maintain a charge between 40 and 90% at all times, except for a complete drain monthly.

How An End User Might Accidentally Undermine Your Security

Michael Menor is Vice President of Support Services for Tech Experts.

If you’re like every other small business out there, you know that the more employees you hire, the more technology that you have to procure. However, when you have more end-users, you provide more avenues for threats to slip into your network infrastructure unnoticed.

When all it takes is one simple mistake from a single end-user, how can you minimize the chances of falling victim to an untimely hacking attack? We’ve put together a list of honest mistakes that any end-user can make – and how they can be prevented.

Clicking on malicious links
With so much information on the Internet, it’s easy for an employee to search through countless pages without any regard to the sites and links that they’re clicking on.

You need to emphasize the importance of safe browsing, including double-checking the destination of a link before clicking on it. You can do so by hovering over the link and looking in the bottom-left corner of your browser.

Using weak passwords
Employees frequently use passwords that aren’t strong enough to keep hackers out. Often times, they’ll simply use something of personal significance, like the name of their pet or a specific date.

This isn’t the right way to approach password security. Instead, users should attempt to put together passwords that are private, randomized strings of numbers, letters, and symbols.

Losing unencrypted devices
It’s not unheard of for an employee to use company devices in public places. If they accidentally leave their smartphone on the bus or their tablet on a park bench, there’s always the risk that it can be stolen.

Unless you practice proper encryption protocol, any information available on the device can be accessed by the person who finds it, be it a good Samaritan or a tech-savvy thief.

Implementing unapproved solutions
Some employees simply prefer to use solutions that aren’t provided by the company to get their work done. The problem here is that the employee is moving forward without consulting IT about it and that your data is being used in a solution that you can’t control.

Plus, if the employee is using free or open-source software, these often come bundled with unwanted malware that can put your data in even greater peril.

Personal email use
It’s one thing to check your personal email account while at work, but another entirely to use your personal email account to perform work purposes.

As the recent debacle with Hillary Clinton shows, people don’t take kindly to sensitive information being leaked via an unsecured email server that their organization has no control over.

Add in the fact that personal email accounts are often not as secure as those in a professional productivity suite and you have a recipe for disaster. You need to reinforce that your team should keep their work and personal email separate.

Leaving workstations unattended
Besides the fact that some tech-savvy employees are practical jokers, it’s a security risk to leave a workstation unlocked and unattended for long periods of time.

Imagine if someone from outside of your organization walked into your office and accessed confidential files without authorization; that’s on the employee who got up and left the device unattended.

Encourage your employees to always log off of their workstations, or at least lock them, before stepping away from it. User error is a primary cause for concern among businesses, but it can be mostly avoided by providing your staff with the proper training. For more information on IT best practices, give us a call at (734) 457-5000.

Technology Considerations When Moving To A New Office

Michael Menor is Vice President of Support Services for Tech Experts.

Moving your office is never an easy task. You have to move furniture, personal objects, and above all else, your technology infrastructure. There’s nothing simple about moving your office’s technology, but it’s still nothing to get worried about. That’s why we’re here to help – from suggesting the optimal network cabling, to the proper deployment of new and improved technology solutions.

For example, let’s take a look at your office. You have a certain number of workstations, one for each of your employees. These workstations need to be connected via cable to your business’s network. Otherwise, your team could go without required software, data, and other important resources. Your cabling infrastructure could quickly grow to be uncontrollable, especially if you don’t approach your cabling procedures correctly.

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Do You Have Internet Privacy At Work?

Luke Gruden is a help desk technician for Tech Experts.
Sometimes, when there’s a break or the work day is slow, it can be tempting to check on a couple different websites. In doing this, would anyone know what websites were visited? Other than the people around, who else would know what sites might have been visited? It may come at a surprise that there could be many different people later on – or even immediately – that find out about the websites that were visited.

It is common for workplaces to have a firewall that prevents certain websites from being visited. Along with blocking certain websites, firewalls usually keep track of all the different websites that have been visited and by who.

Any time a website is visited that has been blacklisted (blocked), this usually triggers an alert to the IT department or management, so they can look over who tried to connect to a blacklisted site. From there, if IT or management feel it is necessary, they could look over the entire history of websites that were visited by a user or a group of users.

Now, let’s say for some odd reason that the business does not have a firewall or other device that keeps records of websites visited – could websites that were visited still be discovered?

Well, the computer someone uses also keeps records of websites that they have been visiting, which can be accessed by IT.

Some clever users might be able to remove their footprints from their workstation computer, but they may not have access to something like that.

There is another way that websites visited from a workplace can be tracked without a firewall or looking into the computer files.

If the websites visited warrant any legal action or an investigation is happening at the company, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) can release any and all records of websites visited and exact information of what was done. There is no way to get around this as you need an ISP to use the internet.

There are even more ways to find out what websites are being visited than what was mentioned here. In short, if someone at the office is using the work Internet, it is more than possible that every website visited is being kept track of in one way or another.

If you follow the rules of your workplace and visit only the type of websites allowed by the work place, you shouldn’t have much to worry about. As a rule of thumb, you should only visit sites and do things that you don’t mind the public or workplace knowing about. If you ever see “NSFW” (Not Safe for Work), do not visit or have anything to do with it while on the work Internet.

Only surf the Internet when you are allowed to surf the internet. Don’t visit websites or open emails where the main site or email sender is unknown. With these tips in mind and a better awareness of how a person can be tracked on a business network, you can make better choices while on the company’s Internet.

Why Do I Keep Seeing The Same Ads On Multiple Websites?

This is the result of an online advertising approach known as site retargeting which tracks your online behavior to offer you targeted advertising. At first glance, this may seem like it is posing a security threat, but there are assurances that tracking is done anonymously.

Site retargeting is based on a pretty simple concept. Whenever you visit a website that may want to show you an advertisement, it puts a digital tag called a cookie on your browser. Then, when you visit another site with an area to display paid advertising, the information on that particular and other tags is used to choose an advertisement you would likely be amenable to click or watch. The hope is that, while you may have missed an opportunity to purchase an item once, you may be more inclined to complete a purchase at a later date.

If you don’t appreciate being such a target for advertisers, there are ways to block and delete cookies and to stop ads from reappearing. To delete existing cookies on your browser, choose the option to delete cookies under the settings. Also, if you see an icon that says AdChoices next to recurring advertisement, you can click that icon to stop the reappearance of that particular ad. Most browsers also have a Do Not Track option in their settings, which prevents your browser from being tagged in the first place, but that also means you can’t save passwords or use other tools that are also dependent on cookies. You could also surf the web in private browsing mode (accessible through your browser’s settings) or use an ad-blocking service like Ghostery or AdBlock Plus.

Windows 10 Goes Back On The Shelf

Brian Bronikowski is a field service technician for Tech Experts.
While it was broadcast everywhere during the launch of the newest operating system from Microsoft, users of Windows 7 and 8.1 are nearing the end of the free upgrade period. The infamous “Get Windows 10” app has been hounding users for quite some time now and most will be happy to hear that it will be gone nearing the end of July.

That, however, is only after Microsoft ups the ante attempting to reach their goal of one billion Windows 10 devices within 2-3 years of launch. The question many users should be asking themselves is simple: what does this mean for me?

First and foremost is price. After July 29th, there will be no opportunity to obtain a free upgrade. Instead, home users will need to purchase a license for the new system that would run them $119.00. Businesses and those in need of a professional Windows license would look at a price tag of $199.00.

Neither of these seem like friendly numbers to your average user or business owner. Those who have upgraded and switched back to their previous operating system are in luck, however. Once upgraded, you obtain the Windows 10 key indefinitely. In the future, a fresh install of Windows 10 will automatically activate and update as per usual.

Before we get there however, we have one last hang-up from the software giant. It would seem that Microsoft wants to get as many free upgrades in the world as possible.

This is quite a feat when just over half of Windows-based computers are still running Windows 7. How do they plan access that user base? Automatic upgrades seem to be their answer.

While many have claimed to have experienced Windows 10 upgrading by itself, it seems to be a reality in the very near future. The actual update for Windows 10 comes through as any other update you may be familiar with.

The catch with 10 is that it was previously an optional update, yet Microsoft will be putting it in the “Recommended Updates” category. As such, many users will install the update files without their knowledge. In the meantime, the pre-mentioned “Get Windows 10” app will schedule the upgrade for them in a suspicious window. It looks similar to the previous screen but instead of having a cancel button, they have replaced it only with “OK”.

But what does a single button really cause? For some fast-paced users, they may misunderstand and click the new button thinking that it’s putting off the update.

Little do they know that within a day or two, they’ll find themselves mid-upgrade. There is one way around this once the update is scheduled: a link will appear on the same screen that will allow you to stop the automatic upgrade.

Microsoft leaves it to you to navigate to the link and pages beyond to stop your free upgrade. Luckily, the IT guys at Tech Experts are able to get past this or downgrade those that have recently updated against their will.

The lesson here is a plain one. Users need to keep a look out and understand what is happening to their PC if they hope to retain any control over it. Microsoft’s newest operating system does have many benefits and features that make it very appealing.

However, it isn’t for everyone. If you’re accustomed to what you’re using, the upgrade isn’t a necessity. That said, you should keep in mind that Windows 7 will experience end of life in 2020.

Another Major Ransomware On The Loose: Locky

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Ransomware, a virus that essentially holds a computer user’s data hostage for a monetary reward, isn’t a new threat. It is in fact, becoming more prevalent with an estimated 35% increase of attacks in the past year alone.

One of the newest forms of this virus is known as Locky, which finds its way onto unsuspecting users’ devices through vulnerabilities in the Adobe Flash Player. This ransomware was detected by Trend Micro, and the type of operating system used seems to have little effect on risk. Locky has infiltrated systems through Windows, Mac, Chrome, and Linux.

Many of the Locky attacks, however, have affected Windows 10 users who are unknowingly using outdated versions of the Adobe Flash Player. Anyone running the 20.0.0.306 or earlier versions of Flash is at risk of Locky taking over data and holding it hostage for payment.

Therefore, the simplest way for people to protect themselves from this new ransomware is to ensure they are running the most recent version of Flash.

To do this, access Flash content within your browser and right click on it. Then, choose “About Adobe Flash Player” to view which version is being used. Alternatively, users can visit the Adobe website, which can automatically detect the installed version and also offer the option to upgrade to the most current one.

Locky ransomware isn’t just spread through Adobe Flash. It also can find its way onto systems through attachments in spam emails. In this case, the emails have most frequently been distributed through the same botnet responsible for sending out the online banking malware Dridex.

While actual numbers for how many people have fallen prey to Locky infections are not public, security companies have revealed that the majority of the ransomware attacks have taken place in the United States, Japan, and France.

The amount demanded to remove Locky from affected devices is usually around $100, but security experts suggest not giving in to such demands. Instead, victims are advised to create a backup of files and seek help from your IT provider.

The best defense against such attacks, however, is in prevention. Regularly update your operating system and frequently used programs, never open suspicious emails, and only log in as an administrator on your computer system when and as long as you absolutely must to prevent hackers from intercepting your login credentials.