One issue that has caused business owners and managers many headaches, and possible sleepless nights, is cybercrime. Businesses are always under threat of having data or money stolen, and need to be taking actions to stop this. Do you know what you need to protect your business?

A quick Google search for “cybercrime trends” yields over 78 million results, the majority of which are likely to affect large enterprises or governments. While it is beneficial for all businesses to be aware of the major trends, there are a number of threats that will affect small businesses more than others. Here are some current cybercrime trends that SMEs should be aware of.

Mobile Malware Smartphones are becoming ever more popular, and with this popularity has come an exploding number of apps. Malware developers have been picking up on this during the past few years and there have been an expanding number of apps dedicated to attacking your phone or mobile platform. The most common type of malware on mobile devices is spyware, followed by SMS Trojans. SMS Trojans run in the background of some applications, and make international calls or text messages from the developers’ services causing huge phone bills. The final form of malware targets online payment apps on the phone.

One of the main reasons this form of malware has become so popular is due to the openness of some markets, such as the Android Market. The owners of the app markets are working to track down and get rid of the guilty apps on their marketplaces, but you still need to remain vigilant. while installing apps. Look at the developer of the app - how many times has it been downloaded? Maybe double check the app’s integrity online before installing and double check the app on the internet.

Open-Source Malware Kits A common thing malware developers do is write code for malware and then sell it to interested buyers. But a rising trend is that developers are writing malware that is open-source—any person can download and change it. The worrying thing is, many developers of already powerful malware have been releasing open-source versions of their software. This means that there will be an increase in the number of malware attacks out there, as devious developers can easily come up with more elaborate hacks.

Banking Trojans Along with the open-source malware kits, there has been an increase in the number of banking trojans—aimed at stealing account information and passwords. While these trojans have been a threat ever since banks first started offering online banking, they have become popular again as people and businesses are starting to move their online banking onto mobile devices, and the trojan software is easily accessible. This makes mobile banking apps an easy target.

With cybercrime on the increase, now is a good time to review your security, ensure its up to date and remind employees of your mobile device policy. If you don’t have a policy in place, or feel that your security is inadequate, give us a call, we are happy to help you. Remember: with good security and knowledge, there is no reason you should fall victim to cyber theft.

In a little over four years, virtualization has gone from an idea that was practiced by few to a standard process in many organizations. It’s evident that there are cost savings, and a recent report has confirmed this. The report states that some organizations have enjoyed a return on investment of up to 269% from virtualization. Read on for more information.

What is Virtualization? Virtualization is the creation of a virtual computing environment, where one hardware system can run multiple virtual environments. Common types of virtualization include servers, storage devices, or networks. The benefits of virtualization include lower costs, improved IT management, and reduced energy consumption.

The Survey A report published by CDW-G focuses on government organizations in the United Sates. Many SME owners and managers like yourselves are probably asking, “How do study results involving the government help my business?” Well, if you look closer you can see that what the government organizations did can easily be replicated by SMEs, just on a smaller scale.

Results In recent years, many companies have had to tighten their belts due to economic difficulties. Government agencies are no exception. The results of the survey found that agencies and organizations realized investment returns as high as 134 to 269%. The survey found that if IT managers invest in Server Virtualization, Document Management, Storage Virtualization, and Cloud Computing in that order, the returns on Server Virtualization alone can help pay for, if not totally cover the cost of, the other three processes. CDW-G found that on average, the total cost of implementing all four separately is over USD 1.1million, but when implemented in order, the average cost was around USD 400,000.

While it is unlikely that SMEs will see a return on investments of this magnitude, it is highly likely that they will see increased returns if they follow this method of re-investing returns from Server Virtualization into the other three steps. In times of economic stress, this could be a huge boost to your bottom line.

Helpful Recommendations From the results, CDW-G offered some useful recommendations that all businesses can use:

• When budget cuts are needed, first look for ways to increase efficiency without service cuts.
• Review technologies and processes to identify inefficiencies.
• Consider savings and efficiency opportunities in all new solutions.
• Leverage available savings into new projects.

As with any new process, it’s equally important to ensure that you educate the users of the processes and stay on your toes to keep updated.

“Microsoft Excel” is a common buzzword known by all business owners and managers. This program has become a critical tool for business. It’s safe to say that we all know the basics of Excel and are comfortable with what Excel can do. However, one thing that makes people uncomfortable with Excel is the confusing error messages. Read on to learn more about them.

While most of us are comfortable with Excel, there are many times when we have had an error pop up that is more or less confusing. Let’s face it, when we see “!#%&” characters many of us are at a loss. Here are some of the most common errors you come across in Excel, what they mean, and how to fix them.

####### This is one of the most common errors, with the # sign filling the cell. This error means that you have entered data in the cell that is longer than the cell’s size. For example, 1234567890 will show up as ##### if that column is not wide enough to fit all those numbers. This error will also show up when you have formatted a negative number as a date.

To fix this error, simply re-size the column (A, B, C, etc.) by clicking the edge of the column and dragging to the right to make larger. Or check to see if you have a negative number that is formatted as a date, and if so format the cell as a negative number instead..

?Name# This error means you have have an error in the formula or range. For example, =counif(!6:B99, “Y”) In this case, “counif” should be “countif”. Also, the “!6” should be a column letter and 6 (i.e., B6).

To fix this error, click on the cell with the error, and look at the formula in the formula bar, usually located above the spreadsheet, and correct the formula like this: =COUNTIF(A6:B99, “Y”)

#REF! If you have a formula that refers to other cells in the spreadsheet, and then you change one of those cells to data that does not compute in your formula, you will get the #REF! error. For example, if your formula for C6 is: =SUM(A1:A5, B1:B5, C1:C5) and you delete B1, you will get #REF! in C6.

The easiest fix to this is to hit: CTRL+Z, or Undo under Edit. If you made the error a long time ago and Undo does not work, then make sure all cells referenced in the formal contain valid information.

Circular Reference You get this error when you have entered a formula that includes the cell where you have entered the formula. For example, the formula =SUM(A2:A5) is entered into A5. Excel is essentially telling you that it is chasing its own tail, and can’t catch it.

The easiest way to fix this error is to simply click on the original cell, and remove the reference to the cell that the formula is entered in.

The Little Green Triangle in the Cell If you see a little green triangle in the top left corner of a cell, Excel is telling you there is an error with the formula. This is useful if you aren’t sure about what the error means. If you click on the arrow, you will get an ! with Trace Error. Click this, and Excel will give you a drop-down menu with options.

What if I Can’t Find the Error? If you are having trouble locating the error, or do not want to spend time searching for the error in a long formula, click the Formula tab and the arrow beside Error Checking. You can click either Trace Error or Circular Reference and Excel will point out the error, or provide the cell name with the error. From there, select the cell and look at the formula or data entered to determine the problem.

Many businesses are aware that they can be targets for hackers, and take necessary precautions to protect themselves. However, there is a new hack out there that is targeting your business’s banking information through a devious method. Be prepared, this hack could pose a difficult one to eradicate.

The hack, a variation of the Man-in-the-browser (MITB) hack, is a form of Trojan horse that mainly infects a Web browser and has the ability to change a Web page, insert orders or transactions covertly. The user will not notice any change to the website. This particular hack infects user’s computers with a Shylock malware program, a new form of malware that focuses on bank accounts and financial transactions.

The user goes to a banking website, attempts to log in and is given an error message stating that security checks are being undertaken. After a few minutes a window pops up telling the user that a representative from the bank will be contacting them to go over their account details. A chat window will open up and the “representative”, who is really the hacker, will ask the user for their account information. While the user and hacker are talking, the hacker will log into the account and proceed to go to town, so to speak.

At this time, it seems like the hack is not widespread, but it is spreading, and it is one of the more sophisticated programs out there. To learn more about this or any other security threat that may have you worried, please contact us.

The thing about the social media boom is that so many people are thinking of ways to make it better and to put a unique twist on an otherwise used and reused concept. Pinterest is one of the few that have been successful at this – which means, like in any other social media platform, businesses stand to benefit provided they use it the right way.

What is Pinterest? In a nutshell, it's something like a social media scrapbook, album, and bulletin board combined. Each interest / theme has its own 'Pinboard' where you put photos, videos, or other media that interest you.

What makes Pinterest unique is its concept, which has been consistently growing in popularity, especially with female audiences. And while Facebook and Twitter are more open to overt advertising, Pinterest takes a more conservative stance. While advertising isn't exactly prohibited, the marketing should definitely be more subtle and more consistent with a personal Pinterest profile. Here are some basic tips that will help you utilize Pinterest to your advantage.

1. Understand your market. The first question you should ask yourself is if Pinterest is something worth your time investment. Since the majority of Pinterest users are female, ask yourself if your products and services appeal to them directly.

2. Invest time. As in many other social networking sites, you need to put a personal and human touch to your Pinterest profile and in the way you interact with your audience. Log in often, update regularly, and respond quickly to any kind of feedback. Let your audience know that you're there.

3. Use other social media to augment Pinterest. Since Pinterest is less known, use your other social media accounts to point people your way in Pinterest, such as Tweeting or updating your Facebook status with your most recent Pinterest profile update.

4. Talk about what you represent. As mentioned earlier, since Pinterest isn't big on overt advertising, you need to market yourself in a different way. Talk about what your brand is all about. What do you represent? What content can you provide that would inspire your audience to share on their own Pinboards? If you're a furniture company, for example, you can try giving some tips on basic interior design and picking the right furniture pieces for spaces, with pictures or videos. What's good about Pinterest is that it challenges you to be more creative, and thus, more appealing to potential clients.

If Pinterest interests you, give us a call so we can discuss how you can maximize this new social media platform for your business.

Disaster can strike at any time, and it can be as simple as a server or system crash, or as severe as the recent worldwide natural disasters. No matter what it is, the disaster will affect your company’s operations and potentially its bottom line, or worse — force you out of business. Are you prepared?

Most companies have at least basic protection from emergencies and disasters in place. The most common forms of protection are insurance, server and computer backup, and basic preparations as required by law. While these protective measures are considered adequate for most companies, there is still a chance a disaster will strike, leaving your company in the lurch.

In the recent months and years an increasing number of occurrences, such as the earthquake in Japan and flooding in Thailand, have caused widespread disruption to businesses. To counter this, two business initiatives have risen to the forefront: Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity Planning (BCP). In fact, these two terms have become common buzzwords, a quick internet search returns over 53 million hits on business continuity alone. The problem is that many professionals are unclear on what each really is. It’s important to be clear on each topic and the basic steps to take to be prepared for any disaster.

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? BCP, first seen during the Y2K scare of the late 90s, is a plan that covers the way an organization prepares for and maintains all critical business functions. BC planning is comprised of activities that ensure maintenance, stability, and recoverability of service before, during, and after a disaster. The plan is typically set up on a day-to-day basis, and covers the whole organization.

It’s important to have a BCP for your organization because if something happens and you can’t deliver to your customers, they will go to another company.

What is Disaster Recovery? Disaster Recovery is considered a part of the overall continuity plan that focuses on the technical side of the business, including components such as data backup and recovery. Think of BCP as an umbrella and DR is under the umbrella — if you don’t have a disaster recovery plan, the overall umbrella is more or less useless.

What Should be in Your DR and BCP Plans? These plans both share a number of similarities, generally following the same steps involving the same elements. Both plans should include:

1. An operational plan for a number of disasters that could happen in your geographical area. The plans should cover occurrences as small as computer hardware errors and as large as massive natural disasters.
2. A succession plan for you or your top management.
3. Training for substitute employees on important tasks.
4. Cross training of your employees on the basics of different roles so they will be able to take over if need be.
5. A communication plan focused on different crises, including ways of communicating if networks are down.
6. Off-site meeting places for staff and managers.
7. A focus on safety. Foster partnerships and communication with local and emergency response services: Fire, Police, National Guard, Search and Rescue. Ideally, all employees should at least know basic first aid. If you have employees who are volunteer members of local Emergency Response Services, ask them to be responsible for teams.
8. Daily plans to backup your Enterprise systems, along with training and testing of recovery of systems.
9. Training and testing of all employees to practice recovery activities in situations as realistic as possible.

It’s important that you conduct regular tests of your systems and processes, and make changes as needed. Be aware that your business is always changing and so should your Business Continuity and Disaster Recover Plans.

With a carefully prepared and practiced plan, your business should be ready to face a variety of disasters with minimal downtime. If you would like to know more about Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery please contact us.

There are all kinds of threats to electronic data nowadays – hackers and scammers, sudden system or hardware failure, and even natural disasters – all of them can threaten important business information. This is why it's necessary for you to have a data recovery plan.

The high cost of downtime Did you know that for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the average cost of downtime is about $12,500? And that's beside all the headaches you're bound to get from a steady loss of clients (as your downtime continues) as well as from the hefty fines and lawsuits that you will probably have to face.

All this is why, with most (if not all) businesses nowadays that depend on electronic data to support their day-to-day operations and transactions, an effective disaster recovery plan is a necessity.

For many, especially SMBs, outsourcing data recovery is the more efficient and cost-effective way to address disaster recovery. Of course, since we are talking about sensitive and important company data, it is also important to assess several factors that will affect your choice of vendor, such as the time it takes them to put you back online, and the regularity and frequency of backups.

Recovery in the cloud While there are still some organizations that rely on traditional disaster recovery methods, there is a growing demand for cloud-based disaster recovery, since it's less complicated to manage (especially for the organization itself) and much more affordable.

Cloud-based disaster recovery enables you to be free from a dependence on hardware, and also usually increases the frequency of backups to an offsite server, making data recovered in case of any incident very recent and much easier to work with. Cloud-based recovery has many more advantages, but the bottom line is that it allows you to be back to normal in a matter of hours, and sometimes even less than an hour – minimizing any negative impact on operations and productivity.

Don't make the mistake of being unprepared when disaster strikes – and it will, sooner or later, to a degree you can never predict. So it's best to make sure you take measures to ensure that your data will always be kept safe, secure, and recent. Contact us for a comprehensive and custom plan that will meet your specific needs.

Cybercriminals will stop at nothing to prey on the uninformed. Help your employees be ready for scammers who may call them on the phone posing as support personnel. With a little education, you could save your business a lot of trouble.

Unfortunately, there are people with bad intentions who want to cheat you of time and money. Phone scammers use fear to prey on unsuspecting people to steal information that they can use, by pretending that they can help you with imagined computer problems or offering some helpful-sounding enticement. Your employees are the targets of these scams, as well as your first line of defense.

Here are some tips for preparing your front line to deal with these types of phone support scams.

Never trust unsolicited calls

It may seem like common sense, but when an employee is busy or distracted, it can be easy for a phone scammer to sound convincing and trustworthy. Scammers can be very clever and sound legitimate by claiming that they represent a software company like Microsoft or Google, and they often use publicly available phone directories, so they might know names and other business information when they call. Make sure your employees know that an unsolicited tech support call should never be trusted… ever.

Don't be fooled by claims to "help"

Scammers often offer to help solve a computer problem or sell a software license. Once they have an employee talking, they might try to:

• Trick your employee into installing malicious software that could capture sensitive data, such as online banking user names and passwords.
• Take control of your employee's computer remotely and adjust settings to leave the computer vulnerable.
• Request credit card information so they can bill you for phony services.
• Direct your employee to fraudulent websites that ask for credit card or financial information.

Employees should be on guard to verify, take names, and hang up if there is any question.

Take precautions

If you use an MSP or other outsourced IT services company, make sure that your employees know who they are and the security procedures that they follow. Monitors that IT providers offer can help to improve your security system and avoid malware issues.

Security should be a key part of your IT plan. Let's talk about how we can help you prevent the unthinkable.

In late February 2012, Twitter hit 500 million users. This milestone has cemented Twitter as a major Social Media player. With this large user base, companies should be seriously considering integrating twitter with their marketing strategies. Benefits of integration include increased followers, brand awareness, and potentially a better bottom line. Here are some tips for increasing your followers.

Search for companies and people you know While it’s easy to use the search function in Twitter, it can be time consuming to search for people one by one. Instead:

1. Log into your Twitter account
2. Press the # Discover button at the top of the page
3. Press Find Friends
4. Log into the various accounts available
5. Add people as followers

This is a great way to rapidly increase your followers, and reconnect with customers and contacts you may have lost contact with.

Combine your Twitter and Facebook feeds You can combine your Twitter and Facebook feeds easily:

1. Log into your Twitter account
2. Select Profile Settings
3. Select Profile
4. Select Post your tweets to Facebook
5. Follow the instructions provided

Within minutes, your Tweets will show up in your Facebook status, enabling you to reach two platforms simultaneously. Be warned, this could spam your followers, causing them to stop following you - so it’s best to keep your Tweets or status updates to the most important information.

Join Twitter Ads for Small Business This recently announced service will be up and running soon, allowing small business owners to advertise on Twitter through Promoted Tweets. This service will be released in the near future, enabling businesses of all sizes to advertise.

If you are not on Twitter, would like to join, or know more please contact us.

For many businesses, it's hard to draw the line between what they can and cannot do when it comes to social media. And while social media use can help boost a business's growth, it can also impair growth when it's used the wrong way. Here are some important practices to remember when using social media for business.

Social media is booming. Since its introduction a few years ago, social media platforms have not only changed the way people connect on the internet, it's also changed the way business is done. When applied correctly, it's a cost-effective tool that helps businesses connect with a much larger audience and client base, as well as potential clients. That is, however, IF it's used properly.

One common mistake businesses make is the failure to draw the line between personal and professional. While showing a human aspect of your business isn't bad at all, doing it too much makes you less consistent as a business entity and makes followers or audiences lose touch of what you're really about.

Another common error is the failure to handle bad feedback correctly. More often than not, one negative comment can balloon into a full blown argument that will only give people an even more negative impression about you and your business. While you should acknowledge even bad feedback, more detailed discussion should be done privately and only between the parties concerned.

Social media is not a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. You need to constantly update and monitor your social media platforms so they don't become stagnant. People will be more encouraged to follow you on Twitter or visit your Facebook page if they have something new to look forward to every once in a while. Make sure, though, that you don't post too frequently – or worse, fall into the trap of making it too promotionally-driven, which comes across as self-serving and impersonal.

If you're interested in knowing more and drawing up a comprehensive and effective social media plan for your business, please don't hesitate to contact us so we can discuss things and better respond to any issues or questions you might have.