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Free Report: What Every Business Owner Must Know About Protecting and Preserving Their Critical Data!

If You Depend on Your Computer Network to Run Your Business, This is One Report You Don’t Want to Overlook!

This report will outline in plain, non-technical English common mistakes that many small business owners make with their computer network that cost them thousands in lost sales, productivity, and computer repair bills, as well as providing an easy, proven way to reduce or completely eliminate the financial expense and frustration of these oversights.

You’ll Discover:

• The single most expensive mistake most small business owners make when it comes to protecting their company data.

• The universal misconception business owners have about their computer networks, and how it can end up costing between $9,000 and $60,000 in damages.

• 6 Critical security measures every small business should have in place.

• How to greatly reduce – or even completely eliminate – frustrating crashes, slow performance, and other annoying computer problems.

Get Your Free Copy Now by e-mailing info@expertsmi.com.

 

Creating Guest Accounts for Visiting Relatives

The holidays are right upon us and there’s a good chance some of your relatives will want to use your computer while visiting. If you want to give them access but don’t want them viewing your personal files, then you’ll need to set up a guest account. This will give them access to your programs, but not to your personal files. Here’s how…

Click the “Start” button then “Control Panel.” Double-click “User Accounts,” then click the “Guest Account” button. On the next window, click “Turn on the Guest Account.” That’s it! The next time you log on, you’ll be given a choice of your regular accounts or the Guest Account. Just have the in-laws select the Guest Account and your files are safe from their prying eyes.

If they’re really nosy, put a password on your account. Simply go back to the “User Accounts” window and click “Change an Account.” Choose your account, then click “Create a Password.” Enter the password twice, and a hint if you like. Finish by clicking “Create a Password” and repeat the steps for the accounts you want protected.

How To Keep Hackers Away From Your Data

No one wants to have their network “hacked,” but what exactly can a hacker do? Plenty, and you are right to be afraid!

One common way for hackers to access your network is through spyware or viruses, which are malicious programs written to imbed themselves into your network to gather private information, steal financial data, access passwords, e-mail addresses, and spread themselves to other users.

But one of the most common ways for hackers to access your system is through e-mail, or spam e-mail to be more specific. Even if you have the latest anti-virus software installed, hackers are very clever at getting you to circumvent your anti-virus software through phishing e-mails.

Phishing is when a hacker sends you a legitimate looking e-mail from a trusted source — like PayPal, your bank, eBay, or any number of other legitimate business websites. These e-mails will tell you that your account is expired or will be closed if you don’t go to a designated website and update or verify your account information.

Although you may have seen these e-mails before, be very careful! Hackers are brilliant at making not only the e-mail seem legitimate, but also at making the website you go to look like the real thing.

If you fall prey to their scam, the site will gather your private information (usernames, passwords, accounts, etc.) and then use that to access your bank account or to charge your credit card.

To protect yourself, install a spam filter and NEVER open or respond to any e-mail requesting account verification. Instead, call the company. If it is a legitimate request, you can verify that with them over the phone.

How To Make Your Business Website Pop!

5 Simple Tips Explain How To Distinguish Your Business Online

Untangling the mystery of the World Wide Web can be a lot like walking into quicksand: The more you get into it, the harder it is to get where you want.

Credit the sheer number of sites that populate the Web, creating clutter that makes it hard for small businesses to distinguish themselves.

Ultimately, it’s the business owners who devote time to their websites that reap the greatest rewards online.

Business websites are a lot like a car: If you don’t put gas in it and get regular oil changes, it won’t perform for you. The same goes for the Web, where sites that aren’t useful or current do little good for their owners.

One way to maximize your Web investment is through a process known as “search engine optimization” or SEO. This combines design elements, text, and keywords to ensure that the site gets the best recognition from the major search engines.

To maximize their SEO strategies, companies should define their niche market, then decide how they want that customer base to find them on the Internet.

Since it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish yourself online, here are five tips to make a splash on the Web:

1: Wow them from the first page. First impressions mean everything on the Web, so your site’s front page must shine in order to be effective.

A company’s front page should forgo bandwidth-heavy graphics and instead feature a bulleted list of services and a simple, readily accessible way to contact the company for an estimate or more information.

Subsequent pages can showcase your portfolio, testimonials from satisfied customers, and links to free e-newsletters.

2: Make it user-friendly. It’s age-old advice, but companies still aren’t adhering. Ease of use equates to both a pleasant visiting experience and marketing effectiveness. Use clear language, useful links, and navigation bars to steer customers in the right direction.

3: Make them eager to return soon. Attracting visitors is important, but persuading them to return is even more important.

Create long-term online customers by incorporating relevant self-assessment tests, surveys, and other tools with related products and services your business provides. This ensures an educational, interactive experience for the client and is a great marketing tool for your company.

Start with a simple biweekly newsletter, a blog, or a chat forum on a topic of interest to your customers.

4: Get back to basics. Browse through a few sites and you’ll quickly discover that accessing basic information can be a challenge.

To make sure your visitors don’t get turned off by poor navigation, broken links, and irrelevant information, be sure to give them a clear explanation of your product or service, making sure to highlight exactly what makes your firm and its offerings unique.

5: Give them the royal treatment. When designing your site, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What do they want to see or know? What format most suitably presents this information? How can you keep them interested and make the experience fun?

Tracking Down “Bandwith Hogs” – Should You Monitor Employee Internet?

For many businesses, tracking employees use of software and the Internet is an absolute necessity for employers who are juggling productivity with employee privacy while trying to remain competitive in an increasingly fierce market.

Many computer professionals consider the problem to be crucial in today’s market.

What do you do if you’re an employer, and you want to retain your employees? You must keep salaries high, or they will go else-where. But you also can’t raise your prices, or you will be outpriced by competitors.

The answer is to increase productivity. You look around the office but don’t see people wandering the halls or talking at the water cooler. Everyone’s at their computers. The question is, what are they doing at their computers?

There is much anecdotal evidence that demonstrates the growth of personal use of computers during business hours, and there are many programs that track the URLs that employees visit, how much time they spend online, and the amount of bandwidth that Internet use is taking up.

They also allow employers to monitor which non-Internet programs employees use.

Programs like these gives employers a snapshot to show how much activity is spent on non-administrative activity.

Some critics see monitoring of employee Internet use as something of an invasion of privacy, but workplace security experts disagree. These programs can tell that an employee is spending four hours a day on eBay, but won’t disclose the actual activity on it.

It can tell if someone is consistently downloading unusually large files, but doesn’t disclose the contents of the individual’s e-mail.

Many monitoring programs also can tell if employees are spending large amounts of time playing Elf Bowling or Tetris instead of working, and whether more official programs that the company has purchased are being used. If they’re not, then further purchases may be a waste of money.

The primary purpose of the software is not to penalize employees for “unofficial” Internet use but rather to pinpoint problem areas in weak-performing employees and to locate “bandwidth hogs” whose overuse of the Internet slows down everyone’s work.

Tech Experts offers several solutions to filter, monitor and report on Internet use on a company’s network.

Call us today at (734) 457-5000 (toll free 888-457-5001) for more informataion.

Six More Super Effective Search Engine Optimization Tips

Here are six additional search engine optimization strategies you can start today to bring more traffic to your business website:

1. Include only the most important, meaningful keywords in your site’s title tag or the title that appears in the bar at the top of the web page.

2. Make sure your site includes as much information as possible, preferably 250 words on each page.

3. Spend the time necessary to know the keywords your prospective clients use to find your firm and its products/services.

4. Don’t try to trick the search engines by loading your site with irrelevant keywords that have nothing to do with your business.

5. Don’t allow your most important keywords to be contained in graphics. Try substituting formatted HTML text for graphics.

6. Citation mapping, the number of links that point to your Website, is critical to all search engines when assigning ranking.

Use as many relevant quality links as possible that point to your site, to guarantee top placement.

“Storm” Worm Makes Anti-Virus Programs Brain Dead

The ever-mutating, ever-stealthy Storm worm botnet is adding yet another trick to its vast repertoire: Instead of killing anti-virus products on systems, it’s now doing a modification to render them brain-dead.

The finding was made by Sophos and was mentioned by a security strategist for IBM Internet Security Systems. According to Sophos, the Storm botnet—Sophos calls it Dorf, and it’s also known as Ecard malware— makes programs that interact with Windows, tell the virus every time a new program is started.

The virus then checks the program that started to see if it was an anti-virus or anti-spyware program, and if it is, it will either stop the program from running, or modify the program so that it can’t detect the virus.

Then, when the anti-virus programs run, they simply tell the user everything is ok.

The strategy means that users won’t be alarmed by their anti-virus software not running.

The anti-virus is running but brain-dead, which is worse than shutting it off, since it then opens the door for all sorts of other virus and spyware programs to infect the system.

This new behavior the latest evidence of why Storm is the scariest and most substantial threat security researchers have ever seen. The Storm virus is patient, it’s resilient, it’s adaptive in that it can defeat anti-virus products in multiple ways. It changes its virus footprint automatically every 30 minutes.

It even has its own mythology: Composed of up to 50 million zombie PCs, it has as much power as a supercomputer, the stories go, with the brute strength to crack Department of Defense encryption schemes.

In reality, security researchers in the know peg the size of the peer-to-peer botnet at 6 million to 15 million PCs, and not on par with a supercomputer. And it can’t break encryption keys. Still, it is very dangerous.

Top Mistakes That Make You A Prime Target For Identity Theft

The numbers are staggering: according to the 2007 Identity Fraud Report, identity theft cost consumers and businesses a whopping $56.6 billion dollars.

Identity theft occurs when someone steals your name, Social Security number (SSN), bank account number, or credit card to open accounts, make purchases, or commit other fraudulent crimes.

The Methods They Use to Steal Your Identity
The methods identity thieves use include low tech strategies (like going through your trash can, also known as “dumpster diving”) to highly sophisticated phishing scams that include cloned PayPal or bank websites that trick you into giving your username, password, or account number.

Other ways include:

  • Stealing records from an employer or bribing an employee who has access to the records.
  • Hacking into the company’s employee records.
  • Stealing mail, such as bank account or credit card statements, tax documents, pre-approved credit cards, or new checks.
  • Abusing employer’s access to credit reports.

How Identity Theft Affects You
Once someone has stolen your identity, they can use your credit cards or bank account to purchase expensive consumer goods like computers and electronics that can easily be resold for cash.

They can also open and charge up new credit cards, which can be a real mess to straighten out with vendors and credit reporting agencies.

Other criminal activities include taking out auto loans in your name, opening a new phone or wireless service in your name, or writing counterfeit checks to drain your bank account. Some have even used it to file for bankruptcy to avoid paying debts they’ve incurred.

How to Protect Yourself and Your Employees
Never give your personal information, Social Security number, credit card number, or bank account numbers over the phone or online unless you know for certain you are dealing with a legitimate company.

Make sure your employees are given an AUP (acceptable use policy) that educates them on the dangers of phishing scams and spam e-mails designed to either trick you into giving your information or installing a virus that secretly steals the information stored on your PC without your knowledge.

You can recognize a secure website, as it has an https:// at the beginning of the web address (regular web sites only have http: and no “s”) at the top of the page on which you are submitting your information.

It also must have a picture of a lock in the bottom right corner of the page. If you don’t see both of these measures in place, do not submit your information.

And even if you DO see this, use a credit card instead of a debit card or pay by check option because you’ll get security protection from your card’s issuer.

Visa, MasterCard and American Express all have a zero liability policy. If you notify the bank of unauthorized trans-actions, you pay nothing.

Shred all medical bills, financial statements, credit card applications, tax statements, or any other mail that contains confidential information about you before you throw them into the trash.

Never open e-mails or attachments from e-mail addresses you are unfamiliar with, and NEVER respond to e-mails that ask you to verify your account information because your account is being closed, suspended, or charged.

If you want to verify this, call the bank or the company to see if it was a legitimate e-mail.

Signs That You’ve Fallen Victim to Identity Theft  
If you see any unexplained charges or withdrawals from your bank accounts, if you receive credit cards that you did not apply for, or if you start receiving bills or collection letters for items you have not purchased, someone may have stolen your identity.

Always follow up with the business or institution to find out exactly what is causing the situation as quickly as possible. The faster you act on identity theft, the easier it will be for you to clear your name.

Do You Make These Mistakes When Sending E-Mail?

In this day and age, it is amazing how many businesses and professionals still violate basic e-mail etiquette rules. Almost everyone uses e-mail to communicate with their clients and friends yet very few give any thought to the importance of those communications.

If you want to make sure you are not offending your clients and friends when sending e-mail, here are 6 basic rules to live by:

1. Never send e-mails to people who have not requested to receive them. This is also known as spamming and federal laws are getting much tougher in the rules and penalties for sending unwanted e-mail messages. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that they are free and clear to send e-mail promotions to their clients, even if the client has not specifically requested to get those promotions. When in doubt, it’s always smarter to err on the side of caution and NOT include them in your broadcast; doing so could cause you to lose favor with your clients, or worse yet, lose their business altogether.

2. Don’t attach files unless you’ve gotten permission to from the recipient. With the looming threat of viruses, it’s considered bad net-etiquette to send file attachments.

3. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS. Using all caps in an e-mail is the online equivalent of screaming at the top of your lungs. Unless that is what you intended to do, make sure you use lowercase letters.

4. When sending to a large list of people, use the BCC (blind carbon copy) feature. Otherwise, you are exposing every recipient’s e-mail address to everyone else on the list. Since most people like to keep their personal e-mail addresses private, exposing your entire list will cause you to lose quite a few brownie points.

Here’s another point to consider: I wish I had a nickel for every sales person that sent out a broadcast e-mail to all their clients and prospects and accidentally copied everyone on the list. This is an EASY way for your competition to get their hands on one of your most precious assets.

5. Never send information you wouldn’t want the entire world to know about. E-mails can quickly spread around the Internet. Never send confidential information, off-color jokes, political opinions, pictures, or gossip that you wouldn’t want made public. This goes double if you are using a business e-mail address. And if you are a business owner, you want to make sure your employees know that it is against company policy to send this type of information through your company e-mail. Even a well-meaning joke can land you in a lot of hot water if taken the wrong way. Always take a minute to think before you hit the “send” button.

6. Avoid fancy formatting, background graphics, and other “cute” pictures and fonts. What looks great on your monitor may be impossible to read on someone else’s; it also may annoy the reader who has to weed through the fluff to find the content.

FREE Report: 12 Surefire Signs Your Business Is Ready For A Server

Is your business limping along using outdated computers or a peer-to-peer network that is constantly giving you problems?

Are you planning on adding employees, opening  a remote location or adding an additional office?

Are you just sick and tired of dealing with conflicts, error messages, and expensive breakdowns and down time?

If so, you might consider upgrading your network to a file-server network for greater security, functionality, and file-sharing capabilities.

At one time, servers only made sense for larger organizations because of their high cost and complexity. But thanks to major advancements in technology, client-server networks are very affordable and easy-to-implement.

To learn more, call our office at 734-457-5000 and ask for Carol.

You can also send us an e-mail to request this report. Just send your request to serverreport@expertsmi.com.