If You Can, Shop on Sites You Trust I, for one, don?t love creating new accounts across the Internet. If I can find a product on an online store I trust and already use, I?m comfortable paying a little more for the peace of mind. For example, Amazon isn?t always the cheapest option, but they?ve had a good track record for getting me what I order on time. Look for the Lock When you are doing any kind of shopping online, you need to check to see if your connection to the website is secure. Most modern browsers will show a padlock in front of the page address if you are browsing securely.  This lock means you are surfing a site that is using an SSL certificate. This basically means your connection to the website is encrypted. It doesn?t mean that the whole website is 100 percent safe, but at least the initial connection is secure. Use PayPal, Apple, or Amazon Pay if Possible Sometimes, when making purchases online, the website will give you the ability to use a third-party payment system to make the transaction. For example, a site might let you choose to pay via PayPal or to type in your credit card information. The nice thing about using PayPal (or one of the other highly trusted payment systems) is that you aren?t plugging your financial information into a website you don?t trust. The transaction goes directly through PayPal and you are then redirected back to the online store.  Be Aware of Phishing and Scams The holiday season can be hectic, to the point where many people might let their guard down. Cybercriminals know this, and will try to game the system to steal your information. Be skeptical of emails that seem fishy or look too good to be true. If you receive an unexpected email from an online store about your account, don?t click any links in it. Instead, log back into the store and navigate to your account area. Most ecommerce sites use email to relay information about your purchase, but they expect users to interact with them on the website itself. The Internet can make holiday shopping much easier, but with its conveniences, you still need to be safe. Although we can?t really help you pick out the perfect gift for your in-laws, we can help protect your business from online threats. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more!

The software giant has begun to roll out warning signs in their Patch Tuesday patches, but it hasn?t been enough for people (and businesses) to upgrade away from Windows 7. Let?s take a look at more about this shift. January 14, 2020 We are now just a month away from Windows 7 End of Life event. Computers running the software after January 14th, will not be receiving technical assistance from Microsoft; and therefore will be in danger from a new wave of oncoming vulnerabilities.  Why Shouldn?t You Run Unsupported Software? The way it is written, software isn?t always secure. Developers need to make consistent changes to ensure that hackers don?t have access to vulnerabilities. Since a data breach can effectively wipe out your company, you need to ensure that all of your systems are up-to-date and patched thoroughly.  Not only that, a data breach can flatten any forward momentum a business has. That?s not even taking into account that the fact that today, with ransomware being a consideration, making sure all of the software you depend on is supported keeps your business secure.  Besides the security issues, there are other considerations to contend with, like a loss in functionality.  What are Your Options? Upgrade to Windows 10  To be honest, your options are shrinking by the day. You only have about a month before Microsoft pulls the plug on the software for good, and you need to upgrade away to keep threats from piling up. Windows 10 only requires at least a one GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 20 GB available on a hard drive, which may allow your business from facing huge upfront costs if its technology already meets those standards.  Extended Support With only a month left it may not give some organizations enough time to make the change. For businesses that qualify, Microsoft is offering a costly extended support package that will be available for all Windows 7 Pro and Windows 7 Enterprise customers with volume licensing through January 2023. For qualifying businesses, costs for Enterprise will be $25 per device from 2020-2021, $50 per device from 2021-2022, and $100 per device from 2022-2023. The cost of support for Pro versions will be double that.  Under these platforms, you will need to upgrade away by 2023. Microsoft 365 Another option for the business that needs to move away from Windows 7 quickly is to utilize the Microsoft 365 platform. Microsoft 365 is available in enterprise, business, and education budgets, and includes Windows 10, Microsoft Office 365, and much more. Paid by the user, per month, major hardware upgrades can be tabled or done incrementally, allowing a business to pay as they go until they get to where they want to be.  Call us at (603) 889-0800 if you are looking for help moving off of Windows 7.

To do so, we?ll be examining each of our contenders, Microsoft Outlook and Google?s Gmail, based on the same considerations. To start, let?s consider the actual interface that a user must navigate in each option. Interface Your preferences will come heavily into play as you weigh the two very different interfaces against each other, as each takes a very different approach. Gmail keeps it very simple, clearly and prominently labeling a user?s options to make it relatively easy to grow accustomed to. Different options will appear based on context – hidden until the user completes an action or accesses the in-message menu. Outlook, on the other hand, takes the opposite tack – giving users a plethora of options to make use of (to the point that a user could potentially review multiple email accounts simultaneously). However, as many could find all of the options Outlook offers to be intimidating, the Office 365 version of Outlook does offer a trimmed-down version of the option Ribbon that stretches across the top of the screen. All you have to do to switch between these options is to click on the downward caret in the far right of the Ribbon. Nevertheless, it offers its users so many options that Outlook presents its greatest weakness – its complexity. In addition to the Ribbon – stuffed with options as it is – there are three panes that make up the rest of the program. First, you have a comprehensive list of all email accounts you use Outlook to manage, second, a list of your messages that allows you to run inbox-specific searches and sort them based on assorted criteria, and third, a basic reading pane to view your messages, with the options to reply, reply all, or forward the message. That said, Outlook is what the majority of businesses have been using for decades, so chances are you are pretty familiar with it. Composing Messages This is a really important consideration to take into account when you are trying to determine the best email client, as you might assume. While Outlook may arguably have too many features displayed in its various menus and toolbars, this issue was not carried over into the message composer? although this is not to say that a user is exactly short on options when it comes to formatting their email message. Microsoft has also made it easy to share documents stored in OneDrive, a user?s PC, or items created in Outlook itself. The Ribbon, of course, offers a litany of other features to make creating, scheduling, and reviewing your emails much simpler. Comparatively, while Google offers a little less through Gmail, the apparent focus on simplicity gives a user a very usable solution with all the features that most will ever really need. Attaching media to an email can admittedly be a complicated process, namely due to the three separate ways to do so. There?s a button to insert files from the computer?s storage, a button for inserting photos from Google Photos, and a button to insert files from your Google Drive. Finally, as a very compelling feature, Gmail allows you to cancel a message that is being sent if you catch your mistake quickly enough. Email Management Finally, in order for you to actually be productive as you use your […]

Two-factor authentication (sometimes called multi-factor authentication) is the practice of expanding on the protection that is attained by using a password. After a person logs in with their password a two-factor authentication platform requires a separate code–typically generated by an authentication app or a text message or email to an assigned number/email address–to gain access to whatever is secured. 2FA is pretty standard on most online-based platforms nowadays. All things considered, it does help beef up security; but, can 2FA be more trouble than it?s worth? Let?s take a look.  With many software developers now incorporating two-factor authentication into their applications, it has become pretty commonplace to have the option regardless of the software you are using. Some of the best times to roll out two-factor authentication are when you have sensitive, personal, or proprietary information to secure. While there are cracks in the foundation of this method of access control, many businesses require that their staff sign into email or line of business apps using a 2FA system. Better safe than sorry, right? In the business setting, it makes sense to put this strategy to use. While it may be mildly irritating for your staff, the benefits, if only for organizational piece of mind, are worth the reward. Individuals, on the other hand, don?t typically need the end-to-end security that a business needs. Those that do employ some degree of additional security (beyond passwords) don?t always find it to be helpful. There is also the small matter to discuss that suggests a 2FA platform doesn?t even work. Wait, Two-Factor Authentication Doesn?t Work? Studies have shown, and have been corroborated by industry professionals, that two-factor authentication is just like any other currently-used, non-biometric security standard: about to be antiquated. Today, hackers are creating phishing websites that look just like the corresponding site on a web services website that states that their account information is about to go bad. The fooled party enters the information needed and now the hackers have the password, the one-off authentication code and complete access to the system.  This may be a troubling trend, but rest assured, it is typical of every security strategy that has come up. The predominance of hacking makes all efforts seem insecure. Think about what you?ve been told. Just a short time ago you had to have a near-random passphrase, before that you needed to use a password manager, before that you needed to have a complex password of at least 12 digits that included capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. That?s not to say that 2FA doesn?t work. It absolutely does. Just be mindful that relying too much on one part of your access control strategy will likely result in data breach, headache, and frustration.  2F-Awesome Situations to Use Two-Factor Authentication Two-factor authentication may not be the be-all, end-all to your security needs, but it is still better than nothing. Here are a few situations where you will absolutely want to institute 2FA: Remote access to corporate networks – With businesses using a more mobile workforce, securing remote endpoints makes a lot of sense.  Ecommerce – Anytime you require people to submit or view sensitive or financial information, using 2FA is a good practice.  Cloud services – Shared computing resources in the cloud should be secured to their max. […]

Real Quick, What?s the Cloud Again? It?s not a dumb question, because the term ?the cloud? is used synonymously for essentially any data stored on the Internet. It?s a very broad term with a lot of loose ends. Technically, Twitter and Facebook are ?the cloud? and your website host is also ?the cloud.? Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft 365? They would also fall into this category. If you store data on the Internet in one way or another, you are essentially in the cloud. If you want to split hairs, you can even look at having an online bank account as being in the cloud, because your personal information is stored on the bank?s online servers. If you send digital photos to get printed at Walmart, those photos are going to Walmart?s servers and stored in, you guessed it, their online cloud. When you attach a file to an email in Gmail, that file is stored on Google?s servers in the cloud. When you ask your Amazon Echo to remind you to wake up early next week to make it to your oil change, your voice is being transferred to the cloud, and your schedule gets processed and sent to your device. New Hampshire businesses use the cloud for storing company data, sharing documents, or even using cloud-based apps like Office 365 to edit files from any device. Often, line of business applications will have cloud options too, so the software itself and all the data is stored offsite. You Make It Sound Like Most of Our Data is Online? Is This Bad? Well, depending on how you store your data, this might be the case. Whether or not it is a good thing or a bad thing depends on what your data is and where you are storing it. Many businesses still have onsite servers where they store company data. This means the responsibility to keep those servers secure is on them. It?s no different than storing all of your vacation photos on your home computer – if something happens to your computer and the files aren?t backed up, you might be out of luck. This is why we all take precautions to secure our networks, install antivirus, set up firewalls and security devices for our businesses, backup data, etc. The cloud is just someone else?s computer. If we store data in the cloud, we are entrusting someone else to protect it. There are pros and cons to this. First of all, if someone is in the business of storing data online, ideally they are able to afford the best security to keep that data safe. This isn?t a guarantee, but chances are a massive company like Google or Microsoft has more capital to invest in protecting the data of their customers than a small business. The problem is that not all cloud solutions are created equal, and they aren?t all investing the massive amounts of money needed to protect the data that they store. Plus, these solutions are bigger targets for hackers. A massive data breach at Microsoft would be a huge score for a group of hackers. We?ve seen situations where these big cloud entities have been breached before in the past. Yahoo, Google+, Dropbox, and Apple iCloud, have all experienced different levels of security breaches, and major […]