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Best Steps To Secure Your Wireless Network

Do you have a wireless router or wireless access point (WAP) set up in your home or business? If so, is it secured and locked down from hackers and snooping eyes?

There are three basic steps you can take to secure your wireless network.  I recommend performing all of them.

By default, most routers have no security set up right out of the box. This means that your neighbors or anyone close enough to pick up your wireless signal can connect to your wireless network without you knowing it.

They can freely browse the web and without the proper security in place, your router and any network device connected to it (computer, cell phone, etc.) becomes visible to anyone that can see your wireless signal.

From that point on, it is  easy for a hacker to connect to your computer and see your files or steal and delete your data. If you’re not comfortable making changes to your network, then have a trusted IT company such as Technology Experts to make those changes for you.

If you are computer savvy then follow these three basic steps to make your network more secure.

Change Your SSID
Your SSID (Service Set Identifier, which is simply the name of your wireless network) is what you connect to for Internet access.

You want to change the SSID from open security to “WPA2.” This is the most secure setting currently available on most routers. You’ll also need to assign a security key commonly called a pass phrase.

Do not use something common such as your name, child’s name, or any other name that is associated with you. Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and characters.

Don’t Broadcast Your SSID
Who needs to know the name of your wireless network? No one other than you. Not your neighbor next door or that guy driving down the road trying to connect to a non-secured network.

There is a setting in your router to disable the broadcast of your SSID.  Again, if you are unsure, then have a trusted IT company perform these changes.

Change Your Router’s Login Password
The last thing to do is  change your router’s management interface username and password.

All routers come with a default user name and password that is easily available on-line for anyone to find.

If you don’t change it, a hacker who gained access to your wireless network (or someone you allowed access), can simply log into your router and play havoc with your network. Be sure to change the password.

Following these three basic steps will make your wireless network much more secure from hackers and from intruders accessing your internet connection.

While a very skillful hacker can still get around even this security, they won’t bother trying.

There are too many unsecured networks out there, so hackers would not waste their time trying to break a network that is configured securely.

Remember, if you need assistance or would like a great IT company to perform these changes, give Tech Experts a call at (734) 457-5000.

Email Is Making You Stupid

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

“The research is overwhelming. Constant email interruptions make you less productive, less creative, and, if you’re emailing while you’re also doing something else, just plain dumb.”

That quote – and the headline – comes from an article by Joe Robinson in Information Week magazine. When it arrived in my inbox, I was compelled to read it.

The fact is, as business owners, our lives have gotten incredibly more complex as we become more and more connected. Smart phones keep our email in front of us 24 hours a day, seven days a week – which compels us to be available on the same schedule.

The study Robinson sites was conducted by the University of Minnesota. It found that managing “peripheral tasks” – those things we do while we’re also doing something else – triggered twice the number of errors, and increased levels of annoyance by anywhere from 31 to 106 percent.

Time Is Money
Given our constant state of “connectedness” to clients, employees and prospects, it’s easy to think that we have to respond instantly to a request. I get caught in that trap: Thinking I’m being efficient when I handle something immediately.

Interestingly, Intel conducted a study of employee productivity, and found that email overload cost the company almost $1 billion a year in lost productivity. Each day, a typical office employee checks email 50 times, and uses an instant messaging application 77 times.

Interruptions like this not only sidetrack employees from their jobs, but also lower overall attention spans and increase stress by measurable levels. Job satisfaction and creativity also suffer.

Myth Of Multitasking
Again, from Robinson’s article: “Human brains come equipped with two kinds of attention: Involuntary and voluntary. Involuntary attention, designed to be on the watch for threats to survival, is triggered by outside stimuli – what grabs you.

It’s automatically rattled by the workday cacophony of rings, pings and buzzes that are turning jobs into an electronic game of Whac-a-Mole. Voluntary attention is the ability to concentrate on a chosen task.”

As your attention span is bounced around by constant interruptions, your brain changes: Interruptions erode an area called effortful control, and with it the ability to regulate attention.

In other words, the more you check your messages, the more you feel the need to check them – an urge familiar to BlackBerry or iPhone users.

The cult of multitasking would have us believe that compulsive message-checking is the behavior of an always-on, hyper-productive worker. But it’s not. It’s the sign of a distracted employee who misguidedly believes he can do multiple tasks at one time. Science disagrees.

People may be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but they can’t do two or more thinking tasks simultaneously.

So, how do we crawl out of the attention void? Interruption management. Here’s some things I’m trying:

Turn off all of the alerts that let you know you’ve got mail.

Pick a few times per day – four maximum – to check your email. Outside of those designated times, keep Outlook closed.

Don’t let email be the default communication device. Communicating by phone or face-to-face saves time and builds relationships.

Respond immediately only to urgent issues. Just because a message can be delivered instantly does not mean you must reply instantly.

Severely restrict use of the reply-all function.

Put “no reply necessary” in the subject line when you can. No one knows when an e-conversation is over without an explicit signal.

Resist your reply reflex. Don’t send emails that say “Got it” or “Thanks.”

Use automatic out-of-office messages to carve out focused work time, such as: “I’m on deadline with a project and will be back online after 4 p.m.”

Please email me at tfox@expertsmi.com and tell me about your interruption management methods. I’ll let you know in the next few months how it goes.

Office 2010: Definitely Worth Upgrading Your System

Now that Office 2010 is available, companies should consider whether to invest in the latest version of the software. My answer is: It depends, with a strong leaning toward “yes!”

The “it depends” part considers the current state of your business’ hardware, what version of Office you are currently using, how your firm’s other software applications integrate with an upgrade and most importantly, your technology budget.

Office 2010: The Latest
According to Microsoft, the Office 2010 suite is designed to make work flows more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier.

When considering whether to upgrade to Office 2010, Outlook’s integration with Exchange Server 2010 may be a consideration or some firms.

Exchange Server 2010 is designed to reduce deployment costs; simplify high availability and disaster recovery, ease administration and provide greater mobility and flexible access.

Your Hardware and Operating Systems
For some, the decision about whether to upgrade to Office 2010 may depend on where your business is in its hardware life cycle. If you have older machines that might not support the increased hardware requirements of Office 2010, it is probably best to wait for the upgrade to coincide with your hardware refresh.

For businesses that still use Windows XP, upgrading to 2010 may not be an option, since the newest software program will probably not run efficiently on the older operating system.

Your Current Version of Office
Many companies are still using Office 2000 or Office 2003, so their choices may be between forging ahead with Office 2007 or jumping straight to Office 2010.

The learning curve is an issue to consider. Office 2007 and Office 2010 are strikingly different from the 2003 version, while Office 2010 has a more similar look and feel to Office 2007.

This is particularly true when it comes to the “ribbon,” the Office Fluent User Interface that replaced the traditional menu and toolbars in Office 2007.

Firms that are upgrading from Office 2007 to 2010 will have fewer training issues than those that are still using Office 2003 or Office 2000.

Integration Issues
Integration issues should always be a concern for any business considering new technologies.

Integration with your billing, document management, client relationship management, and calendaring software should all be considered. Often, third-party applications will require patches or updates in order to work seamlessly with Office 2010.

Communicate beforehand with your vendors to ensure that all applications will function without a hitch during and after the installation of Office 2010.

Proper planning is key, but so is testing. Testing should include both compatibility and usability.

The staff that will use the software should have an opportunity to examine it – they’ll be the best judge of how much additional training will be required.

Budgetary Issues
Now more than ever, small businesses need to get the biggest bang for their technology buck. It is not the time to roll out a new software program that may be buggy or have integration issues.

For firms with limited IT budgets, the more-proven Office 2007 could be the smarter choice, especially if the new version of Office is purchased with Microsoft Software Assurance, which gives you upgrade rights in the future to Office 2010.

Regardless of the decision your firm makes about upgrading to Office 2010, preparation is the key.

You’ll need to prepare your staff for any changes and plan for a reduction in productivity during the intial roll out.

Planning is extremely important, to ensure that the integration proceeds smoothly and the firm employees can reap all of the benefits they expect – and that they have paid for.

Many Factors Influence Video Speed And Quality

Over the years I’ve been asked by a wide variety of different computer users about video streaming and overall video quality on a computer system.

Websites like YouTube, Flickr, and MetaCafe have taken the online video revolution and turned it upside down the last few years with advances in audio/video technologies and the affordability and availability of high speed Internet connections.

So you are on the Internet watching one of your favorite videos on YouTube, but the video does not play smoothly, seems to skip frames, and sometimes even just sits there and does nothing; why you might ask.

I will go over a few tips and tricks that can either fix the problem, or move you in the right direction to resolving those frustrating video issues.

As you can imagine, there are a number of reasons why this could be happening, but let’s start with your system before exploring other possibilities.

A good quick test is to play a video from either a CD or DVD that you have in your possession or one you have already downloaded onto your system’s hard drive.

If the media plays from your local system with no issue, the problem probably exists outside of your system and other options should be explored, but what if it’s not?

Memory
Ensure your computer has enough memory. If you’re not sure how much you have or you should have, give us a call to have your machine checked over for upgrade options.

Virus/Malware
If your system is infected with a virus or some type of malicious software, it could be consuming valuable resources that your system needs to stream videos.

Try running a scan with your antivirus software and again if you’re not sure we’re here to help with the virus removal.

Internet Speed
If your Internet connection is on the slow side, this could also cause a problem.

Remember when you’re accessing videos from the Internet, the data is transferred across the Internet to your system where it is played, unlike putting a DVD/CD into your disc drive and playing it right from your system. The data is all there and does not need to transferred, compiled, and played.

Congestion
If the video that you are trying to play is out on the Net and there are several hundred thousand other people attempting to stream the same video as you, this can cause the video to be slow.

Although this one isn’t as typical as the others’ it still happens, and the only way to check against this would be to try the video at a later time in the day.

Buffering
Again this applies to the users who are accessing content via the Internet, try pausing the video, and letting the progress bar on the video build up before playing. This is called buffering, which can stop choppy videos from stopping and playing.

These are going to be the top five reasons I’ve come across when diagnosing video quality issues on a computer and via Internet websites.

Remember there are several factors that affect the performance and quality of your video, and many times a combination of factors. But if you keep an eye on these five, your video experience should be a lot less frustrating.

Is It Time To Explore Alternatives To Internet Explorer?

Internet Explorer, for most part is incorporated in our everyday lives, in one way or another.

Internet Explorer is a very solid web browser, but you may be tired of it and want to try something new or different out.

Some people say that they are frustrated with the constant updates, script errors, and the warnings over and over again. The frustration can end today!

Here is a brief overview of the three most common web browsers that are used other than Internet Explorer. All three work on most Windows based Operating Systems and are all free to download and use.

Google Chrome
This is Google’s gateway into the realm of Internet browsers. Chrome is a stripped-down web browser that is designed to run “lean and mean.” If you are using a slower computer or maybe you are concerned about resource usage on your system then this is the browser meant for you.

The layout of this browser is a little different than what most people are used to, it is sort of plain looking, but gets straight to the point.

I highly recommend giving this one a try for a few days and see if you like it or not. Download is available at google.com/chrome.

Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is currently the second most widely-used web browser in the world. Firefox programmers routinely fix security issues as well as develop many useful plug ins to enhance the entire operation and your web browsing experience.

I do not recommend downloading every plug in, but there are many that you will find useful. Download is available at Mozilla.com

Opera
The least known web browser of them all is Opera, made by Opera Software. Opera works on all Operating Systems.

It is one of the fastest browsers now available and it also has the added advantage of being optimized for use on mobile devices. It is also specially designed for users who have visual or motor impairments.

Opera has received tons of positive reviews and is winning industry awards for usability. Download is available at opera.com.

All of these web browsers have their strengths and weaknesses, but you don’t have to settle for the browser that came with your system.

If you’re not happy with Internet Explorer, then I would give all three of these a try. They’re all quick to install and use.

If you have trouble installing or using any of these web browsers give the Tech Experts support team a call at (734)-457-5000. Or, you can just bring your system in to us and we’ll work with you to get everything set up properly.

How Apple’s iPad Is Changing Business

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

In the first 80 days, Apple has sold over three million iPads.

I was one of the people who preordered, and picked mine up the day they were released. You might be thinking this is just the latest trend in gadgets, but hear me out.

I really believe that the iPad and other tablets on the horizon will forever change the way we conduct business. Are you prepared for the change?

The iPad is fun and extremely easy to use. Reports of vision impaired and young children using the tablet have steadily popped up on social media sites ever since the release of the iPad.

What Are People Using It For?
Everything! eBooks, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, note-taking, navigating the web, email and countless other tasks with applications that can be downloaded to the tablet. There are thousands of free applications, and thousands more that sell for just a few dollars.

 

How does this affect your business?
Connectivity! Three million of your current and potential clients may have this handy, allday battery powered system within their reach and they might use it to research your business. Make sure you can be found, and when you are, capture your audience’s attention.

You can do this by updating your blog, creating captivating Google ads, and creating a social community by responding to tweets and Facebook postings about your company, services and brand.

A ChadWick Martin Bailey study found consumers were up to 67% more likely to recommend or buy products from a company after following it on social networking sites.

What if your company owns an iPad?
Show your consumers that your company is on the cutting edge of today’s technology. Use it to demonstrate your product or show videos about your service. Download apps that make your iPad into a translator or inventory management system. Take notes on it. Update your calendar. The functionalities are endless and quite a deal starting at only $499.

Number One Security Risk For Small Business: Poor Patching

Symantec, one of the leading antivirus software companies, released their 2009 security review, and according to the report, the largest single threat to small business’ computer security is the failure to apply new security patches as they’re released by the manufacturers.

A “security patch” is simply a software fix to a security problem in a software application.

Once a security vulnerability is discovered, software companies rush to develop a security patch to prevent hackers from using the security breach to access PCs or servers, obtain confidential information, or erase files.

When the fix is released, cyber criminals often look at that as the best time to write a virus or trojan to exploit computer users who haven’t kept their systems up to date. That’s why regular server maintenance is so important.

With the national economy teetering on recession, more and more hackers are trying to take advantage of unsuspecting computer users. Economies of scale often come into play with cyber attacks – a well written trojan or virus can spread like wildfire in just a few hours.

Even if hackers are only successful in compromising a few hundred machines, that’s more than enough to obtain information that’s useful to steal someone’s identity or hold their electronic data hostage.

The real problem – most of the time, you can’t tell you’ve been hacked until it’s too late.

Since the majority of small business owners use their computers for everything from banking to client management, anything a hacker obtains will be useful.

PDF’s Can Be Dangerous
Adobe’s PDF application is the most hacked and exploited software program in use by small businesses. PDF-based security exploits rose to account for 49 percent of online attacks. Coming in second was Internet Explorer, accounting for 18 percent of webbased attacks.

Here’s an interesting fact: The Internet Explorer vulnerability that makes up the majority of the 18% is the Microsoft Internet Explorer ADODB> Stream Object File Installation Weakness that first came to the world’s attention in August 2003. Microsoft released a patch the following July.

Nearly six years later, this Internet Explorer exploit is still being used by hackers, which means an incredible amount of businesses simply aren’t patching their systems on a regular basis.

Regular Maintenance Is A Must
It seems strange to think of your computer this way, but it helps to think of your PC as an automobile. You know that to keep it in top running condition, you have to change the oil, rotate the tires, and flush the radiator once in a while.

Your computers and servers aren’t any different: To maintain optimal running condition, you have to perform regular, scheduled maintenance.

Downtime is expensive. When you consider the cost of lost employee productivity, the expense of the IT services to repair your network, and the amount of time it would take to recover your data by hand, the investment in regular maintenance seems a wise choice.

We perform regular, scheduled maintenance for the majority of our service contract clients – but if you’re not on one of our service plans, we should definitely talk about a comprehensive maintenance and update schedule for your business. If you’re not patching regularly, it’s only a matter of time before your system is compromised.

Web Conferencing Services Let You Collaborate With People Around The World Without Ever Leaving Your Desk

If you have a far flung work force – or clients all over the country – a web conferencing service will save you time and money.

Let’s take a look at a few of the most popular web based conferencing tools.

They’re all the best at what they can do for the price, and all are simple and easy to use.I’ve tested all of them – you can’t go wrong choosing any one of these services.

The interesting thing is, if you’ve ever taken online training, or had a support technician connect up to your computer, you’ve probably used one of these services without even knowing it!

WebEx – $49 month
WebEx is the most well known of the three here. WebEx was created by Cisco, who is known for their high end security solutions.

This application is the best that I have tested. You are able to share screens, files, schedule video conferences in Outlook, and you can even pass the (presenter) title from one person to the next so each participant can focus on the person making the presentation.

WebEx supports multiple video streams, so you can view up to six people in a single meeting. WebEx also has mobile capability so you can join the meeting while using your iPad or even on your smartphone.

GoToMeeting – $49 month
GoToMeeting is focused just on desktop sharing, and does not support video sharing via webcam.

The presenter has several presentation tools available, from the ability to draw on the screen to highlighting text. The presenter can only show his desktop, but has the ability to hand over control to their desktop to any of the guests in the conference.

This gives the guests the ability to highlight something they think is important to the others users in the room.

The best feature is the ability to record the conference and store it for a later use.

Adobe ConnectNow – Free
Basic version – enhanced version is $15 month

Adobe ConnectNow is a web based tool with document sharing. You can share your screen, share documents, convert documents to PDF files, and also create workspaces to share documents in.

ConnectNow supports the ability to have a private chat and also leave the chat open to the public.

Like all the other tools Adobe ConnectNow does have the ability to allow others to take over and share audio and video. This tool is the newest out of the three, but runs with the best of them.

These are only a few web conferencing solutions that are available. Each one will install with ease so even the novice user can get this software up and running quickly and easily.

Removing Unused Programs Will Speed Up Your Computer

If you’re wondering how you can make your computer run a little faster, removing old and unused programs might be the best place to start. It’s simple to do, low risk, free, and doesn’t involve much time.

When you have programs on your computer that you don’t use anymore, they are taking up your hard drive space and they could also be running in the background.

This consumes memory and resources. Removing the programs frees up resources and memory, making the PC run faster.

Before you start removing programs from your computer, make sure that you really don’t need them. Double checking everything before you start will prevent you having to reload something you thought you didn’t need.

You don’t want to remove a critical system program, or some other application, and find yourself in a bind.

Uninstalling programs is easy – but you want to make sure and use the system option in Windows to clear them out.

Deleting the programs directly, instead of using the Add/Remove Programs function, can damage your Windows installation and cause a lot of problems.

Windows XP
If you are running Windows XP, click on start, click on control panel, then click on the Add/Remove Programs icon and wait a brief second for the list to be generated.

If you have a large number of programs installed, it might take a few minutes – just be patient.

Now all that you have to do is to click on the program that you no longer need and select Change/Remove and follow through with the removal process.

Windows Vista
Windows Vista users will click on start, Control Panel and make sure that at the top of the window that you have “Classic View” selected.

Double click on to the Programs and Features button (wait a brief second for your list of programs to come up) and select the programs that you do not need anymore and select Uninstall to remove them from your computer.

Remember: Only remove applications that you’re absolutely certain you don’t need.

After you’ve removed all of the programs that you don’t need, it would be best to restart the computer. After the machine is restarted, you should notice an increase in speed. It probably won’t be dramatic – but it should be a marked and noticeable improvement.

If you’re still not satisfied with the speed of your computer, we offer a System Tune-Up service. We’ll go in an clean out any programs you don’t need, and fine-tune Windows to give you the best performance possible.

For a limited time, the system tune up is priced at just $69. Give our office a call at 734-457-5000 to schedule your appointment. Or, email support@expertsmi.com.

Reality Check: Tape Backup Units Are Dangerous!

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

Tape backup units are dangerous. We’ve seen far too many business owners put blind faith in their tape backup, only to discover the tapes were never changed by their staff or the drive failed months (or years) ago and no one noticed.

Frankly, tape backups are garbage, too. The technology is 50 years old. The process is nearly all manual and subject to human error. The drives’ innumerable moving parts make it prone to malfunction. And, the media – the tapes themselves – are fragile and unreliable.

So here’s the question: If you don’t store your music on a cassette tape any more, why are you trusting your invaluable business data to one?

The tornados that struck our community earlier this month really have me thinking about backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Having a data backup merely means that you have a copy of your company’s data stored somewhere; it doesn’t mean you have a way to instantly restore your network back to normal.

Tape Backup Risks
The principle behind tape backup is simple, and everyone understands it. When you backup your data, you’re making a copy of it onto removable media (most times, a tape) and putting the tape somewhere safe.

But, there are risks with tape backup. What if your staff doesn’t change the tape? Who is monitoring the backup software to make sure your backup runs successfully each night? How often do you do a test restore to make sure the data on the tapes is actually usable?

In general, before you can use the backup you have stored on tape, you first need to repair or replace your server, reload the operating system, reload your programs, and add in all of your users. This is several days of (expensive) work and (expensive) downtime.

Disaster Recovery
The goal of any disaster recovery solution is to mitigate the risks of the old tape backup solution, and ensure the continuity of your operations after some sort of disaster: Fire, flood, tornado, etc. Our Experts Total Backup solution eliminates human errors (forgetting to change tapes) by backing up automatically to a network based storage system. The backups are completed in real time, as your server runs, without interrupting your work.

We take “snapshots” every 15 minutes of any data that’s changed on your system, and then assemble those snapshots into a comprehensive image of your server that resides on the backup device.

Getting The Data Offsite
The next step in mitigating disaster risks is ensuring your data is stored offsite. Our backup solution encrypts your data and uses the Internet to send it to a secure data facility on the east coast. That data center’s contents are replicated in a data center in the central United States. The net effect: Your data is stored in three locations, automatically.

Notice I said earlier we take “snapshots” of your data to create an image of your server. This is an important distinction between a disaster recovery solution, and a tape backup. The image backup solution in essence takes a photocopy of your server – backing up the operating system, your programs, the data, user settings, and so on.

If you lose a single file (for example, someone deletes a spreadsheet you use every day), we can restore that file in a matter of minutes. If an entire folder is deleted or corrupted, its very simple to recover your files.

Making The Image Live
The real beauty of the image-based backup system is in its ability to “virtualize” your server. If your server failed for some reason – bad hard drives, failed motherboard, fried power supply – our technicians can use the Experts Total Backup device to run the last image.

This makes the backup device appear to your network and users as your server. It is an exact copy in every way, current as of the last snapshot. In a hardwarefailure scenario, we can have your business back up and running in a few hours.

If Disaster Strikes
Since your data images are stored in two secure, off-site data facilities, your data is always safe. If your office, server, and the backup device are all destroyed – again, by fire, flood, tornado or any other myriad of disasters – we have the image that is stored at the data center copied to a new backup device, and sent to us overnight. Your business is back up and running – even with a complete loss of equipment and onsite data storage – in 24 to 48 hours.

The entire solution is monitored and managed – you’ll never have to worry about whether or not a backup completed. If there are any issues with the backup or the backup unit, we’re automatically notified, and a ticket is generated for our technicians to review.

When you consider the risks and costs of data loss and downtime, a complete backup and disaster recovery solution becomes very affordable very quickly. Please give me a call if I can answer any questions, or if you’d like a demo of the Experts Total Backup solution.