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How To Show Brand Personality

Basic RGBSocial media channels are starting to replace traditional mediums such as radio, print and television when it comes to creating brand awareness.

One good method of showing brand personality on social media is to make such interactions more personal.

How your brand is perceived is greatly influenced by the way you engage with people on social media and making interactions personal will make them feel much more connected to your brand.

This means that you should respond to comments on Twitter and Facebook with dialogue that does not sound generic or scripted.

The more interactions that feel real and personal on social media, the more comfortable and connected people are going to feel with and to your brand.

Don’t hesitate to share personal, but relevant stories, comments and photos. But tie them into your brand to make them resonate with your intended client base.

Using humor can also be a good idea, but keep it simple and, of course, appropriate.

So long as the content is relevant to your industry and likely to resonate with the sense of humor of your target market, there is no good reason why humor should not be embraced on social media.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

Windows XP: High Risk For Your Business

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

Microsoft will end all support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. This means that everyone using XP beyond this date will no longer be able to receive security updates from Microsoft, which will turn Windows XP into a liability.

Despite the fact that Windows XP is a dozen years old and sunsets in under five months, it is still widely used by millions of users and claims a 21% market share. Rest assured, the hackers are gearing up for an all-out assault on XP users this spring.

Security reports from the Malicious Software Removal Tool and Microsoft’s free Security Essential program (which scans 400 million Outlook.com accounts and millions of Office 365 accounts), reveals that XP is by far the most infection-prone operating system.

Here are the latest infection rates (the number of infected computers for every 1,000 systems scanned) broken down by OS that contained malware.

Windows XP SP3:
9.1 per 1000 scanned.
Windows Vista SP2:
5.5 per 1000 scanned.
Windows 7 SP1:
4.9 per 1000 scanned.
Windows 8:
1.6 per 1000 scanned.

The data show that Windows XP is almost twice as likely to get an infection compared to Windows 7, and it is six times more likely to be hit with malware than Windows 8. Those figures should prompt even the most ardent XP user to start planning for an upgrade.

It is important to remember that malware is written to attack any system it encounters, and we can see that, by looking at the malware encounter rate from these same security reports, the percentages of computers having encounters with malware is fairly even across the different operating systems.Печать

Windows XP SP3: 16.3%
Windows Vista SP2: 16.5%
Windows 7 SP1: 19.1%
Windows 8 RIM: 12.4%

This report shows that using the latest operating system, such as Windows 7 or Windows 8, is the safest.

Researchers provide a technical explanation as to why newer Windows operating systems have better security: “Microsoft has steadily incorporated defensive technologies into Windows with each new version. The only major technology XP had was Data Execution Prevention (DEP), and even the implementation of that has improved greatly in subsequent versions.”

It is human nature to put off a large upgrade project, especially for a small business where budgets are tight.

Part of our service includes a comprehensive evaluation of your systems and network, with the goal of providing you a report showing which machines on your network are vulnerable, which can be upgraded, and which should be replaced.

We use automated tools for much of this process, so we’re able to offer this service to clients, and prospective clients, at a markedly reduced consulting fee. Please call the office at (734) 457-5000 to schedule your appointment.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

Online Banking: Safety And Security Precautions

Printby Jeremy Miller, Technician
There are many avenues of attack when banking online safely. Many people simply use a computer that is attached to the Internet with little to no precautions at all. Some bank online even if they know there are issues with their computer or virus infections on their computer.

I will cover three levels of precaution that you can take to ensure your online banking information stays secure: simple, advanced, and paranoid. As the level of precaution increases, it will be more time consuming and difficult but worth it if you want to keep your online banking experience safe and secure.

Simple Precautions
To keep your information secure you must make sure that your computer is fully up-to-date with all Windows Updates and other software patches. Software vendors like Microsoft release security patches regularly to close exposed security holes in their software. Without patching hackers can use known-vulnerabilities to attack your computer.

Next you must make sure that you have anti-virus software installed and it is up-to-date with the latest virus definitions. You must also have your anti-virus run scans regularly to make sure the computer is clean of any known infections.

You should always look in the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) bar to make sure the web address you are accessing is the correct one. Also make sure that the first five characters are HTTPS.

This will ensure that your traffic is encrypted, which will make your entire web traffic look like gibberish. If your first characters are only HTTP and not HTTPS then hackers would be able to read your password in plain text.

Lastly, you must only do online banking from trusted-networks like your home network or in some cases your work network. Anyone else attached to your network has the possibility to access your bank information if they have the know-how.

To be sure you are on a secure network, you should not use online banking from public or free networks that anyone can access. When you do this you ensure that only you and your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can view your online traffic.

This will also protect you from man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM).These attacks are when a hacker is in between you and your target destination usually a router. Hackers using MITM attacks will be able to see all unencrypted traffic.

Advanced Precautions
You must ensure you are implementing all simple precautions, including a few more steps you can take to up your protection level.

Run a full virus scan before accessing your online bank account each time. Your system will be clear of known infections, plus it gives you significantly less risk of an infection since your last scan. A full scan looks at every file on your computer and checks it against a known virus database.

You can also configure Windows Firewall to prompt you before allowing traffic in or out of the computer, or you can install a software-firewall to scan your active Internet traffic.

The firewall will prompt you with pop-ups to ask if specific connections are allowed. This will allow you to approve or deny all traffic on your computer. Usually firewalls have different settings to allow you to choose the level of security this firewall will provide.

Paranoid Precautions
This is the most secure of the three and implements the previous precautions. It would be best to boot to a new operating system every time you need to access your online bank account. You need to know how to change your computers boot order and how to create a bootable USB drive or disk.

There are a number of free operating systems that you can load onto a disk or USB drive. WinPE will allow you to boot into a portable version of Windows. This will be a clean installation with no additional software installed.

You can also use the more widely available bootable Linux distributions as a clean bootable operating system to access your bank information. Ensure you are getting your distribution from a reputable vendor.

Most Linux distributions are free. Downloading a reputable vendor will ensure that there isn’t malicious software pre-loaded into the operating system.

If you are interested in enjoying a safer browser experience you can contact us and we can answer any questions or concerns as well as help you implement any of these precautions.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

HIPAA Risk Analysis And Assessment

Risk Management - Arrows Hit in Target.by Michael Menor, Network Technician
The phrases “risk analysis” and “risk assessment” are becoming incredibly commonplace today. They’re littering the blogosphere, popping up in advertisements by newly-announced, so-called experts and being “webinar-ed” to death.

In reality, most people promoting these phrases don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know what they’re talking about, I’ve come to discover, because most people don’t understand what risk itself means.

Understand Risk To Conduct Analysis
In today’s increasingly more privacy- and security-minded world, and especially in healthcare, the state of risk management of information is a mess!

This problem comes about for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:

There is little agreement on standard terminology, approach and tools. Key risk-related terms such as assets, threats, vulnerabilities, controls, likelihood and impact are misused and sometimes used interchangeably. One does not find these terms in many other professions. All physicists know what velocity, acceleration, mass, energy, etc. mean. All accountants agree to definitions of basic terms such as debits, credits, balance sheets, assets, liabilities, etc.

Many so-called “experts,” some recently-minted and/or self-proclaimed as such, don’t understand basic risk fundamentals.

Most individuals do not understand that you simply can’t observe risk and that risk is a derived value.

You simply cannot begin to conduct a bona fide risk analysis if you don’t understand what risk is and what risk is not.

There is huge inefficiency and ineffectiveness in protecting the privacy and security of Protected Health Information (PHI) and electronic PHI (ePHI).
As of October 24, 2013 the PHI/ePHI of 26.9 million fellow Americans have been disclosed according to the HHS/OCR “Wall of Shame.” For example, laptops with unencrypted hard drives being stolen from Advocate Medical Group.

Actions To Take
First and foremost, organizations must understand some key, fundamental points about risk before they embark on completing a risk analysis. For example, I present you with five images and ask you to indicate the level of risk (high, medium, low, no risk) you observe in each image.

The images include a bald tire, the same bald tire turned into a tire swing in a backyard, a frayed rope tied to a beam, the tire swing in a tree perched over the edge of a cliff and, finally, a child swinging in the tire swing in a backyard.

What was the greatest amount of risk you observed? I would guess you “saw” high risk in more than one of the images! Some “saw” risk in all the images. 1) You cannot “see” risk; it must be evaluated; and, 2) In reality, there is no risk in any of these images.

Here’s what happens over and over again:

People make assumptions and make things up in risk analysis.

People don’t understand this fundamental truth about risk – you can’t have significant risk without the potential for significant loss or harm.

People tend to relate potential vulnerabilities (e.g., frayed rope, bald tire) with risk.

People forget that one must consider likelihood or probabilities of bad things happening and of impact or harm.

The most important actions organizations must take if they don’t understand risk are to “train up” and/or farm out the work to experts.

And they must remember these truths:

Risk can only possibly exist if three conditions are met: an asset like a laptop with ePHI, a threat to that asset (e.g., a thief may steal it) and a vulnerability (e.g., it is not encrypted) that may be exploited by that threat.

For any single asset (e.g., a laptop with PHI), there may be many different threats and many different vulnerabilities; therefore, there may be many risks to be identified, assigned a value and prioritized.

Controls may already have been implemented or may be implemented to mitigate the likelihood of a certain threat exploiting a certain vulnerability. Controls come in several forms, often categorized as administrative, physical or technical.

Risk has an impact or harm component.

When it comes to health information risk, the adverse impact or harm may come about if the confidentiality and/or the integrity and/or the availability of that information is compromised.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

How Much Power Are Your Devices Hogging?

c457441_mby David Stone, Technician
Do you find yourself looking high and low for an outlet, a cord or a charger for one of your many electronic devices?

Today’s world finds most people switching back and forth between a mobile device, car infotainment system, workplace computers, home computers and multimedia devices.

It would be wonderful if all of these electronics used the same power adapter and charge time. Unfortunately for you, the consumer, it does not work that way.

Most electronic manufacturers have their own proprietary cords, batteries and charger adapters. You can blame costly patents, industry rivalries, or just the desire to be different as the culprit behind all these seemingly trivial decisions.

Regardless of the reasons, knowing how much power each device draws or requires for charging quickly will empower you as well as save you some money on your electric bill.

Belkin has created the Conserve Insight to provide you with the data needed to monitor the watts you’re using, how your carbon footprint is affected and how much money you’re giving to the power company.

Setting up the Insight is pretty simple and straight forward. Simply plug the Insight into your outlet, then plug in your device and start to monitor your device power usage.

Hit the $ button, and it will switch back between how many watts your currently using as well as how much it will cost you on a monthly basis.

It will even keep track of the carbon dioxide produced in order to power that device.

Another cool feature is the averaging mode option that activates after 45 minutes and projects the carbon dioxide and dollar amount cost for the entire year.

This does not work in watt display mode that only shows you real time usage updates.

The five foot cord that connects the display unit to the outlet adapter is a great improvement over similar products, as you no longer have to crawl around under desks and tables in order to see the read-out.

A bit of form-factor goes the extra mile and makes the Insight look stylish and at home on your desk or workspace.

The best feature by far is the conserve option that allows you to set a time limit for how long the device will draw power.

There’s a switch on the side that allows you to choose from one of three time increments, 30 minutes, 3 hours or 6 hours are your only choices, but most devices today will never take more than six hours to charge.

The Insight will power itself off after the time has elapsed, saving you the hassle of unplugging each device after they’re fully charged.

Belkin has taken the steps to innovate a product that has plenty of market share, and will most likely win over consumers for its ease of use and reliability.

Using technology to better manage your high tech devices and power usage, plus you can use it to manage your Christmas lights!

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

One Last Time… How Important Are Small Business Backups?

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

Last month, I shared with you my personal experience with local search and how it impacted the surgery my dog Daisy needed. This month, I’m going to share with you my personal experience with the importance of offsite backups.

Earlier this month, we had a pretty bad fire at the house. Everyone got out ok, including Daisy and Bailey, but the damage is incredible. We’re living in a condo for the next six to nine months while the house is repaired.

The fire started in the center of the house, where all of my networking equipment is located, including my Fortinet router and my Western Digital network attached storage (NAS) device.

I use the NAS primarily to store old tax information, backups of my Quickbooks files, backups of my extremely important pictures from Michigan Football games, and other personal information.

The Fortinet, NAS and everything else that was in that room are completely destroyed – all that remains is a charred mess of plastic connected together by the thin copper wire that used to be Ethernet cable.

As is always the case, the fire was completely unexpected. And, it happened so fast that we had just enough time to get ourselves and the dogs out. There was no time to save network equipment, much less anything else.

Dec-2013-backupsAnd that’s the important thing to take from this. No matter how convinced we are that “it could never happen to me,” it’s our responsibility as business owners to be prepared for any eventuality.

Fortunately, all of my personal data is protected by the same industrial strength backup solution we use for our business clients – our Experts Total Backup service.

All of my files and documents were backed up to the Tech Experts cloud servers, and nothing was lost. Our Experts Total Backup service works quietly in the background, compressing and encrypting your files before sending a copy of them to the backup server in the cloud.

A few days after the fire, once things settled down, it took just a few hours to copy everything down from the cloud and onto a new NAS unit.

So, what’s the take away from all of this? Expect and prepare for the unexpected. If I didn’t have an offsite backup for my data, I would have lost a ton of information, but none of it mission critical (except, perhaps, my U of M football pictures).

A similar disaster at a small business would be catastrophic in the best instance, and deadly if the company didn’t have offsite backups.

And as I’ve written many times before, your business’s backup is only as good as the last time you tested it.

Whether your backup is onsite using tape or other removable media, or offsite using a service like Experts Total Backup, you must routinely test and verify your backups.

Thanks!
Everyone around me has pitched in to help, but a few folks have gone above and beyond.

Leski Insurance Agency and MEEMIC Insurance Company (734-242-6759) have been incredible.

The Frenchtown Fire Department was on-scene in minutes.

Annette Perna-Taormina from Gerweck Real Estate took literally one day to find us a temporary place to live. Call her for your real estate needs at (734) 243-4200.

Finally, friends Michele Paled, Marlene Messina, Tammi VanAken, Candie Mulligan, Kim Harper, and my mother Carol have been incredibly helpful and supportive.

Why Social Networking Is Important For Any Business

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
If you are not currently using social media for your business then chances are that you have fallen behind your competitors.

Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Google+ are great platforms to promote brand awareness, communicate with existing and potential customers, as well as attract new leads.

Up to a quarter of developed nation’s Internet traffic is used on social media and networks. It is free to sign up and use all of these social networks. Why wouldn’t you want to address this market?

Social media sites can help you establish your online presence. Statistics show that over 70% of people trust ads on social networks from friends, while only 10% of people trust advertisements from websites.

Social media is more than just getting your name out there; it establishes trust and lasting relationships with new and existing clients. You can keep in touch in a personal manner, update services that you offer, and offer discounts and coupons on your social sites.

Social networks work like word-of-mouth, but more reliably. Your friends and followers can easily share your content with as many people as they want without interrupting their daily lives.

This is important because if it is a hassle to view your advertising it could be considered a nuisance instead of a promotion.

Instead everyone will check their social sites and see a post from their friend to check out your business. They are already in the mood for reviewing messages, so this is not an inconvenience to read.

Now before you start making a profile on every social site, first consider what you want to get out of social networking. Most businesses could get a Twitter account to share basically anything instantly.

Twitter is great for marketing and reaching many people instantly. Since Twitter is available easily from any smart phone, it is basically like texting all of your followers at once. Your followers can then retweet or share anything that you post.

Facebook is also very popular. It is a publicly trusted location and it performs really well in Google’s search index. This means that if you are having trouble with getting your website to the top results in Google, Facebook can help. Your company’s Facebook page should not take too long to reach the top results if someone is searching for your business.

Each social network is different and attracts different crowds. This can be seen in the usage statistics for each network. This can help you determine which social networks would be best for you to reach your desired audience.

When starting out you want to start slowly. Do not join every social network you can find. It would be best to join Twitter and Facebook at first. Determine who is going to manage the social sites. Then once you have some followers post some polls or special offers to attract more followers.

Once your followers start posting to your page, read their posts and answer them. This will add a lot of value to your business.

You can begin posting articles related to your business to encourage people to spend more time reading your content. Some things to keep in mind would be to not post too often or you may be considered a spammer.

Once you have become familiar with social networks you can expand to other social networks such as Google+ or Pinterest. The most important rule of all is to be patient; you may not see results overnight. However, if you provide quality content, service, and interactions on your social sites you will be successful.

If you would like help determining where you should start or need any help with your existing social networks, give us a call.

Data Security: Why You Should Be Concerned

by Michael Menor, Network Technician
All businesses, big or small, have client data which is the life blood of their company. Losing this data can prove deadly; even worse having this data held hostage.

The purpose of this article is to explain the importance of data security with encryption and also viruses like CryptoLocker which purposely encrypts your data and requests that you pay a ransom to release this data. This nasty little virus is no joke, many companies have fallen prey to it and have paid the ransom which ranges anywhere from $300 and upwards to $2000.

Let’s talk about this CryptoLocker virus. “What is it?” you ask. This is a piece of ransomware that targets computers with the Windows operating system. This virus is spread as an email attachment and has been seen to pose itself as a voicemail message.

Once CryptoLocker is installed on your computer, it encrypts all documents on your local computer, as well as ones that are stored on network drives and external storage. The encryption used is strong, 2048-bit, cracking this level of encryption is impossible.

It would take approximately 6.4 quadrillion years to break. Even if you were using a super computer it would take a very long time to break.

Hard drive encryption should be the first step in ensuring data integrity. Microsoft has their own encryption technology called BitLocker, which is only available on Windows Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

TrueCrypt is a free alternative. The only problem with this is that once you authenticate the drive that is secured with either software, it is ready for use and allows the user to freely read and write to the drive. Which in turn lets other programs on the computer do the same.

In regards to TrueCrypt, it has no supporting management infrastructure, and no key recovery system. If you forget your password, or something goes wrong with the TrueCrypt file, there is no way to get your data back. You must therefore keep separate backups. Another alternative to hard drive encryption is backing up your important data to the Cloud. You don’t have to worry about maintaining a storage server or carrying around an external hard drive. Everything is available to you wherever you go as long as you have an Internet connection.

Talking about all this data security will not stop the standard user from opening email attachments without verifying the sender of this file. Having proper net etiquette training can be very useful, you want your employees to understand the risks of these attachments and the possible risks involved when they’re viewing their email or even browsing the Internet.

Before users open any email attachments they should ask themselves. Is the email address trusted? Were you expecting an email from them? Is the spelling and grammar consistent with what you’d expect from the sender?

Security Expert, Nick Shaw has created software that can prevent CryptoLocker. This software prevents CryptoLocker from ever executing and has been proven to work on Windows XP and Windows 7 workstations.

Contact us for more information on how to prevent viruses or if you have any questions regarding data security and backups.

Windows 7 System Information Gadgets

by David Stone, Technician
Microsoft pulled support for desktop gadgets for Windows 7 a while ago, but they are still available and quite handy for getting real time updates on system performance.

If you are an end user that likes to know up-to-the-minute system information, then these are just what you’ve been looking for.

Below is a list of 5 such gadgets that make accessing information fast and are visually appealing.

Margu Notebook Info 2
Margu Notebook Info 2 is used for laptop and notebook specific information and offers a simple to read layout.

This gadget will give you real-time updates for wireless local area network (WLAN) and local area network (LAN) interfaces, net usage, multicore usage, clock/calendar, central processing unit (CPU), battery, uptime, power management plans, RAM/CPU usage and hard disc drive usage.

The graphical user interface (GUI) allows for you to add/remove any of the information you want to display as well as rearrange the layout. This provides one of the best options for laptops.

Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor Gadget
Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor Gadget provides you with very detailed information about wireless connections within range.

It allows you to view the data rate, service set identifier (SSID), the channel, signal strength, IP addresses and even local connection layouts.

Clicking on a wireless network in the map will return a usage history report of the available networks.

You can even change the skin of the gadget and configure the brightness, although it can be a bit distracting with the constant sonar animation.

Drives Meter
Drives Meter offers up-to-date status of the health of your hard drives as well as set alarms for low disk space. The alarm will make a sound when remaining space left meets the threshold set by the user.

The display shows disk activity, used space, remaining space and total disk space.

This gadget definitely comes in handy when trying to troubleshoot hard drive issues or for keeping tabs on disk usage.

Network Meter Gadget
Network Meter Gadget is an excellent wireless traffic monitor, if not the best.

On one small display screen you can quickly see the wireless service set ID (SSID), internal and external IP addresses, firewall status, signal strength, upload/download speeds, speed test and connection security status.

If you select the fly-out features and see the name of the network, name of the adapter, the maximum speed, the MAC address, the subnet mask, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) lease details and much more.

System Information
System Information is an all-in-one gadget that allows you to view information on the operating system, CPU, uptime, memory, HDD, network drives, optical drives, battery and network.

You can select how much information you would like to display through the following modes: normal (shows all information), compact (shows headers only) or compressed (only one icon is shown).

Just because Microsoft has determined that support for gadgets will no longer be provided, doesn’t mean that you have to do without these tools.

If you’re looking for tools to hand out system information, you can’t go wrong with one of these gems.

 

How Important Are Websites And Search Engine Rankings For Local Businesses?

nov-2013-daisy

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

I recently had to find a new veterinarian for my dog Daisy. She had a fairly large sized tumor in a delicate spot, and it needed to come off. Her former doctor in Ohio sold his practice, so I was searching for a local vet who could take care of the surgery and ongoing care.

Daisy’s a healthy dog, but she’s getting up in years – she’ll be 15 on her next birthday – so I was really concerned about the effects of anesthesia and the success of the surgery.

Of course, I spoke to friends and family for their recommendations, but I also spent a lot of time looking on my own. And where did I search? Google, of course.

We have a large number of small business clients who serve the local market area – companies like florists, tanning salons, and even a marina – and aren’t interested in, or even need, the global exposure a web site gives their company.

A fresh and updated website doesn’t always figure into their marketing strategy. I think that’s a costly mistake. According to a report published by Google, 70% of consumers still reference the yellow pages. I was surprised by that statistic – I don’t even have a phone book at home anymore.

What’s interesting is that only 33% of those consumers use the yellow pages exclusively. That means that almost 70% of local shoppers are using search engines for at least part, if not all, of their buying research for local products and services.

Google has recognized the need for local, small business search results, and has for a number of years offered Google Places and Google Local for small businesses to showcase their companies. Places or Local results point back to a company’s website.

That’s the important part. While I was looking for a veterinarian, I found a dozen local offices. About half of those had websites. And all but two of those websites were old and out of date. One doctor’s page even had the wrong phone number on it.

Having an updated and user-friendly website is only part of doing well in local search.

The other part is optimizing your site to make it index well in Google, so when consumers search for the services you provide, your site shows up at the top of the listings.

We offer both website development services, as well as search engine optimization. Pricing for a modern, user friendly website (that you can edit yourself once it’s finished!) starts at just $299. If your website needs are more complex, we can handle that too – and at a very budget-friendly price point. If you have an interest in updating or modernizing your company’s website, I’d welcome the chance to talk with you about it.

Daisy is doing great, by the way. Her stitches came out a few weeks ago and she’s back to chasing cats in the yard and angling for cookies in the house.