Tech Spot

A continuity plan would make this disaster have a better ending.   No one expects a fire, or a flood but they happen all the time. The most common saying I hear is "its not going to happen here" or "we don't have anything that critical" I will still ask what is your business continuity plan? Business continuity is an essential part of your daily operating procedure. You have some in place already, I hope.  What happens if your business burns down, or is robbed. The what if we need extra money this month, you have a line of credit right? But what if the phones don't work for a week, do you have a plan to be able to answer the phone. If the customer cannot call you who will they call? Your competition because they need what you have today, not when you get your phones working in a week. You have an alarm system, a fire extinguisher? What about a offsite backup of your critical financial files?  Recently I was tasked with attempting to find  a mispla...

Its that time of year again. There are many summer storms coming and with them come power outages. While this is an inconvenience it usually comes with very little consequences. You may have had a power outage and never had an issue with your computer following the outages. But power outage effects linger in computers long after you have forgotten about the storm. Here are 4 things about power outages you need to know. 1. They happen more often than you think While its hard to determine how often outages happen the electric companies are telling us they are happening more and more often. Power outages can happen during storms and due to other interruptions such as construction or auto accidents. The key is that there will be an outage in your area soon. 2. Turning the power back on is the problem Outages don't hurt computers or electronics. Its the turning back on that does. When the power comes back on it tends to "surge" and if it surges to much your computers in...

Last Friday the United States Justice Department released a statement telling everyone to restart their routers. This is quite alarming to many because most everyone thinks that viruses are common issues that are just like the cold for humans. However Malware and Viruses are usually launched for malicious things such as this attack to help a government attack or overthrow another government. While it seems like a spy show plot it happens more often than you think. Scary right?  So how does restarting your router stop the attack? Restarting your router doesn't stop the attack rather it disconnects the Malware that is on it and weakens the Bot net system that the Malware uses to function. (Botnet a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge, e.g., to send spam messages.) The more disruptions the better. The more likely the FBI will be able to find vulnerabilities and bring down the Malware. Resta...

GDPR, everyone is talking about it. If you are subscribed to any service you have gotten an email about it.  At a minimum I have received 50 emails regarding GDPR. What does GDPR stand for? "General Data Protection Regulation" What is it? The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU and EEA. 1. GDPR effects you if you live or do business in countries that are apart of the European Union. 2. Its a big deal because the internet is every where and it is very easy for everyone to do business in the European Union even if your company is not located there. 3. Essentially GDPR is a regulation that tells companies how they can collect your personal data, what they can do with it , and that they have to disclose this all to you. That is of course if you allow them to do...

Listen up content creators your content is making cyber-security harder. What is a content creator? These are marketing professionals that work for companies putting up facebook posts, or blog posts for that company. While this is a great idea, I am concerned for security of many people because of the knowledge of such creators. If you are a content creator, how do you know what you are writing about?  Many content creators are well versed in marketing, not whatever they are writing about. The creators of the content need to be experts to create real content. Why is it important to be an expert? Let's look at some scenarios. I googled just now "Roofing Companies Cleveland Ohio". I don't need a roofing company today but lets say I do. I'm gonna now click on the first roofing company website that is on the Google first page. When you are on the first page of Google this means you are relevant, lots of people go to this site and your site has lots of content. S...

I have worked in church IT since the beginning of my IT career. First it was because I was the young guy and I knew a thing or two and then it was my profession. There have been many instances of frustrations out of this type of support. I want to give church leaders a taste of how to alleviate issues in IT while not destroying the budget. 5 Key items for your churches IT 1. Cheap is not better Do you have an IT pro in your congregation? If so consult with them long before you buy anything. Many leaders will go to a big box store and get a new computer that is cheap and then talk to the IT pro. Generally the issue with the item you bought is that the item is not capable of what you need it to do. 2. You need to budget for IT I'm sorry it is not 2001 anymore. Computers are here for good and we need them for everything. When it comes to church work we need computers. Many churches now have dozens of computers running during the services. One break down, one failure during se...

There has been a lot of talk out there about Bit Coin recently. I have known about Bit Coin almost from the beginning. Honestly I have not given it much thought. And until last week it wasn't that relevant until I brought it with my financial adviser. He promptly told me that he would not engage in a conversation about Bit Coin. And really that is true most financial professionals will not talk about it because of its risky platform. It is exciting when technology creeps into our real world and show us how powerful it really can be. And technology really affects our everyday lives probably more than we realize. All our bank accounts are virtual and many of our transactions are digital. While I cannot find update statistics digital transaction are on pace and may have very likely surpassed cash transactions. So what about Bit Coin? I cannot tell you if it is something  you should get into. For our purposes today I will explain how it works and then you can discuss with your fina...

I write often about how to avoid scams, so I thought it would be interesting to share one the scam emails I have gotten over the years. Scammers even try to scam computer professionals. I figure it is because they fall for them. I usually engage with the scammers because... why not, here is one from a few years back. Hello Sir/Ma, I saw your advert on craigslist about your ability to repair laptops and computers.I want to know if you are capable of doing this in large quantities. I hope to hear from you soonest. Regards Benjamin Benjamin, Yes I can do laptop repair. How many do you have and where are you located? -Nate Nate, Thanks you for your response. I have been contracted to fix up some laptops but at the moment i am in Hawaii attending to some other jobs. In view of this i want you to handle the fixing of the laptops on agreed terms.If you are capable of handling this get back to me with the total cost for handling each unit based on a total cost of ten units for a s...

Tax season is here and if your like me you are probably under a lot of stress to get your documents in order before the April 15 deadline. Or perhaps you are filing an extension and will not worry about it until later this year. Regardless here are what I consider the two most common tax scams. And how to recognize them. Scammers are getting smarter and smarter every day "Be wary of anyone who asks for personal information or wants payment right now. " 1.Phishing This is a fancy word that has serious implications for you. This is usually done by sending you an email stating they are the IRS. STOP! IRS.gov states on their website that they will never initiate contact with you regarding a tax bill or refund via email. If you have not received mail or a phone call from the IRS you will not get an email. If you receive an email from what appears to be the IRS, reach out to your accountant or your IT Professional, or a trusted family member or friend. Be sure to ve...

For a decade Malwarebytes has been the chosen malware removal tool for IT professionals everywhere. Personally I recommended it to every customer and have used it to eradicate viruses from machines that no other program could. Everything has been great. Until last weekend January 27 2018. Malwarebytes put out a warning that their latest update was causing an issue on windows machines where it would basically use the majority of resources. In the early morning of Saturday, January 27, 2018, a faulty Web Protection update was released which caused a connection issue for many of our customers. As a side effect of the web protection blocks, the product also spiked memory usage and possibly caused a crash. We triaged the issue quickly and pushed a protection update on Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 10:48a PST. The affected products were Malwarebytes 3 Premium, Malwarebytes Management Console (MBMC), and Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection (aka Malwarebytes Cloud Console). Malwarebytes for M...

Identity theft is a popular buzz word that many use. But I do not feel is taken as seriously as it should be. The  2017 Identity Fraud Study , written by Javelin Strategy & Research, found that $16 billion was stolen from 15.4 million U.S. consumers in 2016.  If you do not think you are at risk think again. Identity theft is rising and it will continue to rise until we can learn how to protect ourselves.  Hear are four proactive ways to begin protecting yourself.  1. Monitor your credit  This is a fairly common buzz word. However its true. You can get your credit  report for free at annualcreditreport.com  . I recommend  a proactive approach by purchasing an identity theft insurance and monitoring product. It's simple and most banks and insurance companies carry this product. 2. Lock your phone and computers To often I see my friends and families phones without a pass-code  on their devices. I have even done some experimen...

Social media is the largest phenomenon of the modern era. never before have you been able to connect with your world in this way. You can look up anyone anytime these days like never before. You can stay in touch with your cousin in Tulsa or in Sidney. Social media has changed geography in people minds. No one is thousands of miles away they are yes a finger tap away. All this has been fantastic, however on May 18th 2012 something major changed in social media. For the first time Facebook the largest social media platform ever needed to make money. Because their were investors involved. And while its not true that Facebook did not make money prior to may 2012 it was not something they tried to do. Much of the work before 2012 was getting people on the platform. I joined in 2007, and many of the "younger" generation joined in the time before 2012. That was a different time for facebook. There were no paid ads or fancy algorithms like today. It was a very simple. Turn the cl...

Last years launch of the Iphone X and the Samsung S8, Note 8 ushered us into a new era of facial recognition software. Computers are smarter now, they can recognize our faces. Many of the advances in tech in recent years have been in the mobile phone market because of the portability of phones that is about to end. Phones have hit their peak. However the technologies in them are going to show up in many other places. And for many reasons the phones have just been an audition for the other machines. Facial recognition is about to completely change how we interact with the world. Do you go to the mall? Retailers will be working hard to get you back there soon. Even Amazon is investing in brick and mortar stores. How are they going to do it better or different than the old boring way? Facial recognition, walking into a store will be like shopping online in reality. Digital signs will change near you to advertise products that interest you. How do they know it's you? Small cameras w...

There is one thing you can do to head off most malware, ransomware, update your computer Updating your computer is the single most important thing you can do to keep your computer from being attacked! However this is not something that is often practiced. Common misconceptions about updates 1. Its inconvenient  Yes this is true when it decides to update in the middle of the report you are writing or just as you get into the office after the long holiday weekend. However thank you to Microsoft's development team, windows 10 software watches when you are working and will not update until you are not working. Furthermore you can actually set the time you would like the computer to update. 2. It won't help anyways I am not sure where this comes from, but it is not true! I cannot believe how often I see computers not updated. Its almost disgusting! Since the software is not perfect ever, there are continual needs that are addressed by updates. If you intend on keeping...

2018 marks a new season for me. I am no longer fixing phones. This was not a departure I wanted to do but rather one I felt I had no choice. Repairing smartphones is what defined me as a business owner, it is what I left my corporate job to do! Now I have left that behind. Now you are asking why? Let us review 2017 and the major blows to the phone repair industry. A Letter is sent to Lydia Brasch Nebraska state legislator from the CTIA. This letter states that a bill presented in Nebraska that would allow the release of documents to 3rd party repair centers, would in fact endanger consumers. The release of the Samsung S8 and note 8, which are both highly complicated and highly expensive phones to fix. Sourcing parts are very difficult and unreachable in price by the average consumer. The release of the Iphone 8, Iphone X and IOS 11. These devices and the upgrade to IOS 11 began an era where you had to use OEM parts or the software locked the device and did not allow it to work....