If you see these malicious emails in your inbox, you might be tempted to give the attacker a piece of your mind (or simply mess with them). We?ve all been there. So, is it a good idea to antagonize a cybercriminal who was targeting you? In a word, no. There are plenty of professionals who have experimented with this very concept, for the academic purpose of finding out how a cybercriminal will react. One such researcher, Jerome Segura of Malwarebytes, played though a scam in its entirety. What he encountered was a mixture of apparent helpfulness in finding a cache of issues in his ?device? — actually a virtual machine rigged to record attacks — and a decidedly less helpful, unpleasant tone, A  ?technician? had Segura check his Microsoft Error reports, warning him that each and every error and warning he sees is a major problem that had already begun to corrupt his system. To reinforce the need for a ?solution,? Segura was told that his software warranty had expired and, once transferred to another ?representative,? that he needed to pay for a $299 renewal. Instead of paying, Segura supplied incorrect payment credentials, knowing they would be rejected. Once they were, his computer was suddenly seized. The ?technician? deleted all of his files as well as the Ethernet adapter driver, and calling Segura a rude word before disconnecting. This is a fairly tame account of what this sort of cybercriminal can do. A wildlife photographer named Jakob Dulisse received a call to his home in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada from ?Windows Technical Support? in Los Angeles, California. Quickly deducing that this was an attempt to scam him, Dulisse played along at first, before calling the voice on the other end of the line, ?a scammer, a thief, and a bad person.? The scammer/thief/bad person did not react well, stating that their group had people in Canada that would kill Dulisse, going so far as to describe himself as a killer and referencing that people in his region cut people into pieces and rid themselves of them in the river. Other professionals have simply found remote access software installed without their consent as they have ?played along? with scammers. However, these are professionals, whose job it is to identify and publicize the attacks that cybercriminals are resorting to. As for the business user, their best bet is to report the attempt to the local authorities, as well as your managed service provider. A managed service provider can help you ensure that you are both secured against, and well-versed, in the latest cyberattacks. Give White Mountain IT Services a call at (603) 889-0800 to get started.

Understanding SpamSimply put, spam is any message sent to cause harm to your business, either by wasting time and resources, or by doing much worse. Generally found as an email message, spam can also infect your systems through social media messaging platforms (despite the high levels of defense these platforms have). As mentioned before, spam can be dangerous, and is often annoying–often both at the same time. What Causes SpamUnfortunately, there isn?t much that can be done to avoid spam, other than trying to operate without email. Spam can infiltrate your email via inclusion into a database, a subscription to one piece of content that provides you with emails from other services. Whatever the method, you are likely struggling with a spam problem, or could be very soon. Other varieties of spam are delivered through a malicious link or downloaded attachment. These are especially likely to be a risk to your systems, as they are pushing for immediate action, often to download and install viruses and malware. Protecting Your Inbox From SpamFortunately, there are a few ways you can foil spam and keep it from infiltrating your inbox. First, make sure you unsubscribe from any email correspondence you no longer want. Most legitimate newsletters and similar pieces of content include a link that will allow you to unsubscribe, usually at the footer of their message to you. Secondly, make sure you have an enterprise-level spam blocking solution in place. If a message even looks like spam, the spam blocker will keep it out of your inbox. That way, you will have to worry about spam considerably less. To learn more about what our spam-blocking services can do, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Open a New TabSure, you could always use your mouse to add a new tab to your browser window, but using a keyboard shortcut is a lot more impressive. More importantly, it makes your browsing experience faster, incrementally boosting your productivity. To open a new tab with a keyboard shortcut, press Ctrl + T. Close a TabJust like opening a tab, there?s the easy way to close a tab–clicking the little ?x? next to the page title on the tab in question. However, you can also close out the tab by clicking on it with the middle button of your mouse. Admittedly, it isn?t much of a shortcut, but it is a great way to show off your computing chops at the office. Reopen a Closed TabWhoops–that wasn?t the tab you meant to close. Fortunately, you can press Ctrl+Shift+T to restore a closed tab. You can even go back more than one closed tab. So, if you need to find something that you closed a while ago, all you need to do is repeat the key command until you find what you need. Open a Link in a New TabThis comes in handy when you want to investigate something further, but you don?t want to leave the page you?re currently on. There are a few methods of accomplishing this. First, you can always right click on the link and select Open link in new tab, but there are also some shortcuts that let you accomplish this as well. Just like you can close tabs with the middle button of your mouse, you can also open links in new tabs by again clicking on them with the middle button. Finally, if you?re using Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can hold down Ctrl and click the link to have it open in a new tab. Switch Between Open TabsIf you need to quickly reference the contents of another tab, you can use your number keys as a quick shortcut. Pressing Ctrl with whichever number tab you want to view will let you jump to that tab. So, if you wanted to jump to the fourth tab, you?d press Ctrl+4. So how will you make use of these tab shortcuts and tips? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you subscribe to our blog.

What kind of service can I expect from my service level agreement?SLAs are not created equal from company to company. Some providers will fully cover issue A, but leave you high and dry where issues B and C are involved. Some may cover A through C, but may only provide the bare minimum of service. Some may fully cover all issues, but their response times may be so slow that they may as well not cover them at all. On the other hand, some companies will offer exceptional service, with reasonable response times between non-critical to emergency matters. Make sure that you know which kind of service you can expect from your solutions provider. How will my network be managed?This inquiry covers a few different concerns that you should make sure your provider addresses. First of all, you need to make sure that they are not going to charge you excessively for basic support and similar IT requirements. If your management costs are going to keep you from being able to improve in the future, it makes more sense to find a more reasonable provider. Speaking of future improvements, you need to make sure that your provider can handle changes that will happen over time. After all, the primary goal of most businesses is to grow and become more profitable. This will necessitate improvements to your IT infrastructure in order to support the increased workload and increased user needs. If your provider isn?t prepared to help you grow, they have become a liability instead of an asset. Your business is built around the abilities of your IT, so if it can?t grow, neither can your business. Is my business protected against possible disaster?In IT, ?disaster? covers a wide scope of events. First, there?s the risk of hardware failure that could derail productivity and facilitate data loss if not properly prepared for. Of course, there are other causes of disaster as well, that can have many of the same effects to your crucial business data or the ability for the business? employees to be productive. Without the means in place to enable the workforce to return to full productivity as quickly as possible, your business could easily suffer from ill effects as a result. Data theft is another serious issue that businesses need to consider as well. Has your IT resource put the proper defenses in place to protect your data both on your internal systems and when it is accessed on a mobile device? Have they considered what will need to happen if an employee leaves and should therefore no longer have access to your data, even if it was accessed on their personal device? These are just a few of the subjects your IT resource should have complete and reliable responses to. If you?d like to find out how we approach these matters, keep reading the White Mountain IT Services blog, and reach out to us directly at (603) 889-0800.

When your organization is implementing a new project, there are a lot of expectations and deadlines that are watched with a close eye. While it might be ideal to get the project finished as quickly as possible, doing so can put a lot of pressure and stress on it that can ultimately be its downfall. For example, if you don?t think out the planning phase carefully, the entire implementation process can suffer–particularly when working on new IT initiatives. CIO.com explains why oversight is absolutely critical for any IT project, and most importantly, the risk-prone discovery phase: ?Discovery is the crux of project risk. Although the discovery and architecture phases of a project may represent only 15 percent of the overall effort, an error or omission early on can cause cost overruns of 150 percent or more.? Have you had any problems concerning this topic with your own IT project implementation procedure? To keep your next IT project from crashing and burning, you need to invest considerable time and effort into the discovery and architecture phases for any new initiative. This helps you ensure that things are done right the first time and that they don?t create more trouble than they?re worth in the long run. Of course, the real question is how you can make sure this happens. This is where working with your vendors and a managed service provider comes into play. If you feel that they aren?t answering your questions with confidence, or that they are rushing to get something done, you need to bring it up before it?s too late to do anything about it. You want your vendors to explain their actions in clear terms and offer complete transparency with any new technology implementation, and the same can be said for your service providers. Next on the docket is to know what a project will look like if it?s being rushed. Busy business owners who have a lot on their plate in the first place might not know the warning signs of such a situation, but White Mountain IT Services does. Here are some of the warning signs that your vendors are cutting corners for any new IT implementation: Documents prepared for the project lack substance. In this case, they might be filled to the brim with industry jargon and sales propaganda, rather than actual information about your company?s needs. This can overwhelm a business owner with so many features and benefits that they don?t necessarily know what exactly they are getting and how it helps their business. Project requirements might be ignored, or they may not be treated with proper priority. This ultimately leads to poor step-by-step implementation of the project, and while they might not seem to have immediate consequences, running into troubles with your budget or deadline will be all the more painful when they arise. There may be information or requirements missing to fulfill important steps. Ideally, you want your implementation to be seamless. However, if there are gaps discovered in the implementation phase rather than the discovery phase, these issues could have drastic effects on the project?s timeline. In some instances, you might have to completely reevaluate the scope of the project. You may notice that your business?s needs change significantly during the implementation process, which causes the project to be insufficient to suit […]