Should You Consider Reducing Your Organization’s Printing Costs?

Cutting costs in the workplace doesn’t always mean eliminating services you don’t need or eliminating positions that aren’t necessary. One of the easiest ways to make it happen is by taking a closer look at printing costs. By carefully analyzing and controlling your printing resources, you can minimize the amount of assets you invest in printing and save a considerable amount of revenue.

It should be mentioned that the specifics of how to cut costs related to your organization’s printing will largely depend on your current costs in the workplace. Your business uses printers, paper and ink/toner (depending on the device used) and filing cabinets to store all of your documents. All of this doesn’t even include time and resources spent making sure that these devices are being managed and maintained properly.

We can help your organization overcome the many struggles that a business faces when suffering from printing costs.

Upgrade Your Printers
If you’re using outdated printing technology, your business could benefit from a hardware refresh. For example, some businesses that use old ink-jet printers can benefit from using a laser printer, as they are generally considered more efficient with their print jobs and the costs associated with printing over an extended period of time.

Manage Your Resources More Efficiently.
Cutting out printing as a whole might not be possible, so you should instead identify how you can better spend your resources. Your business can make more efficient use of resources by closely monitoring how much of what you use to cut down on waste. Sometimes all it takes is changing settings on computers and printers and storing the right surplus without risking running out of resources.

Go Paperless
Loose papers can make any office look messy and disorganized. Physical documents are simply too hard to keep track of in an office environment. A document management system can help your business better manage its files in a digital environment, which means no more digging through bulky filing cabinets or manually searching for files. You might be surprised by how much time you can save with this.

When it comes to printing costs, Net Activity can help you maximize your return on investment for your printing solutions. To learn more, reach out to us at 216-503-5150.

Windows 10 May Get Some New Useful Features

This spring, Windows 10 users will be treated to a raft of exciting new features.

Currently, the company’s massive test group of Windows Insiders is enjoying playing with them, but they’ll be available to everyone in the early part of next year.

Here are a few of the goodies you have to look forward to:

Windows Dark

Recent research has indicated that by using dark-colored themes on smartphones, you add up to 40 percent to your phone’s battery life.  This research has prompted Google to begin offering “dark” versions of a growing number of its apps.

Microsoft is borrowing that page of the company’s playbook, and will begin introducing dark theme support to its File Explorer. Currently, users can enable Dark Theme support for file explorer, but to do so, they have to enable the system-wide Dark theme setting.  The coming change will allow users to enable the dark File Explorer theme independently of that setting.

Changes To Task Manager

At present, the company is testing a new feature that will allow users to select one of the tabs as the default, choosing from between performance, app history, startup, users, details and services.  It’s a small change, but significant, and one that a large segment of the user base has been clamoring for for quite some time.

Changes to Cortana

Microsoft is constantly testing and tweaking their digital assistant, so this one comes as no surprise.  The company is currently exploring the idea of splitting Cortana and search. Therefore, these two features will appear as separate icons on the task bar. Another change under consideration is one where users will be allowed to swap out Cortana as their digital assistant for Alexa or some other offering, system-wide.  Imagine being able to talk to Alexa via your PC!

These, and many other changes are ahead for Windows 10 in the months ahead.  It will be interesting indeed to see how the OS’s massive user base responds to them, and which ones are

How to Know if You’ve Experienced a Data Breach

Your data needs to be protected–that’s something that we all can agree on. However, even if your data were to be targeted in a data breach, would you be able to see the attack coming? Here are three telltale signs that your data is in imminent danger.

The Identity Theft Resource Center, or ITRC, claims to have recorded 781 data breaches in 2018 alone, and that’s just for the United States. This is the second-highest number recorded since the ITRC began tracking data breach counts in 2005. In 2018, the ITRC saw that the business sector made up nearly 40 percent of all reports, with thieves targeting information like financial credentials or personal data. One can only assume the 2019 report will exceed this number.

Therefore, it’s crucial that businesses stay vigilant and understand that even if you’ve taken steps to avoid data breaches, chances are that you’ll still fall victim to one sometime in the future. You can’t just assume that you’ll never be targeted–rather, you should assume as such, and stay cautious. Here are some best practices that you can follow to keep data breaches from wreaking havoc on your systems.

Define “Normal”
To identify problems in your infrastructure, you first need to understand what operating as intended means. You should familiarize yourself with your IT infrastructure, including which employees have access to certain data and network traffic during specific times of day. Only then can you truly understand what to look for in terms of strange occurrences.

Keep an Eye Out for Unusual Activity
Data breaches are rarely things that go without signs or warnings. Look out for these subtle problems with your technology solutions, for they could mean that there’s a much bigger problem just beneath the surface.

• Unusual or unapproved programs: If random programs are suddenly showing up on your workstations, you may have a breach on your hands. In this particular case, you can ask for your employees’ cooperation. If they see something out of place on their workstation, ask them to report it to IT.
• Unexplained employee activity: Your network access logs should be able to show you specific times and dates that your team is accessing information. If these can’t be explained (like an employee accessing data at 4am from a country on the other side of the world), you’ll know that there’s something fishy going on.
• Other breach attempts: If you’ve had to stave off a rather obvious cyber attack in recent weeks, you might be dealing with something much more dangerous. Certain attacks, like DDoS, are used as distractions to allow other dangers to sneak into your infrastructure. Therefore, in order to ensure maximum security, you cannot assume that an attack is over when it seems to be over. The worst might still be yet to come.

Educate Your Employees
Arguably the most important part of data security is ensuring that your team understands the concept of network security. Your employees should know how to identify common threats and avoid them. After all, anyone who accesses sensitive information should know when it’s in danger of being stolen. For more ways to keep your data safe, give Net Activity a call at 216-503-5150.

Here are the Top 5 Reasons You Need To Use a VPN

Installing antivirus software and setting strong passwords are no longer considered the bare minimum in cybersecurity. With hackers, third parties, and ISPs constantly monitoring networks and your online habits, hopping onto a virtual private network (VPN) is crucial for keeping your surfing habits private. Here’s why.

What is a VPN?

The best way to describe a VPN is as a secure tunnel between your device and destinations you visit on the internet. Once you’ve established your PC’s connection to a VPN server, your computer acts as if it’s on the same local connection as the VPN making it seem you moved to a different location. As far as websites are concerned, you’re browsing from that server’s geographical location, not your computer’s actual location.

When you surf the web through a VPN, all the data transmitted and received is also encrypted, preventing anyone — from hackers to government agencies — from monitoring your online activities.

Why should you have one?

Of course, security and privacy are major reasons why you would want a VPN. For example, if you’re connected to a public Wi-Fi network — like the ones you typically encounter at local cafes and airports — using a VPN encrypts the information you’re sending or accessing online. This means your credit card details, login credentials, private conversations, or other sensitive documents can’t be intercepted by a third party.

VPNs are also useful for accessing geo-restricted websites. If you’re traveling abroad and certain US websites are blocked in that region, you can connect to a VPN located in the US to access the sites you need.

Which VPN should you choose?

Given the increasing demand for secure online privacy, VPNs are surging in popularity. The following considerations can help you find the right one.

1. Cost
   While free VPNs are available, we strongly suggest you avoid them as they could keep logs of your internet activity, and in some cases sell them to data brokers or worse, cybercriminals.

Maintaining a VPN service is also expensive, which means the free ones will likely plaster ads on your browser to make a quick buck.

Paid VPNs like SurfEasy and StrongVPN often come with more robust features and configurations that keep you secure. Prices differ depending on a VPN’s features and subscription length, and remember that how you pay is also important. Some VPNs offer anonymous payment systems like bitcoin while others allow you to use gift cards to avoid giving out your personal information.

2. Location
   The physical location of VPN servers is important if you want to access region-blocked websites. So if you’re planning on accessing a UK-based service, your VPN provider must at least have servers installed in London.
3. Capacity
   Read through a VPN provider’s terms of service to determine how much data you’re allowed to use. If possible, find out how many servers a VPN provider has. If they have plenty of servers online, you can rest assured that they have the capacity to support your internet browsing.5
4. Device compatibility
   Another important factor to consider is whether the VPN can be used across multiple devices. Nowadays, employees work on laptops, tablets, and smartphones, so you’ll want a VPN that’s compatible with all these.
5. IP leaking
   Beyond the fundamental nuts and bolts of the VPN protocol, there are other challenges like dealing with leaky tunnels, which means your IP address could be tracked. A great way to evaluate a VPN service is to sign up for their free trial service and visit https://ipleak.net. This will allow you to check whether your real IP address is actually being leaked. If it tracks your physical location, you should opt for a more reliable VPN service.

VPNs are now a vital component of cybersecurity, and if you need help selecting the right one for your business, consult with our security experts today. We also offer comprehensive cybersecurity services so no hacker or third party can get their hands on your data.

Make Google Chrome Faster with These Easy Steps

As one of the fastest browsers in the market, Google Chrome is the perfect match for quick-paced internet users of the 21st century. But like any technology that stores information, Chrome’s performance can slow down and frustrate its users. It can also affect their productivity and lower their motivation. If you’re using Chrome and finding it sluggish, don’t fret. Simply follow these troubleshooting methods to improve your browser’s speed again.

Clear your browsing data

Chrome stores a cached copy of a website you visit, so it can load the page faster when you visit it again. It also keeps a database of your browsing history and cookies for the same purpose. As you visit more and more websites, these pieces of data accumulate in Chrome and can slow the browser down.

Thankfully, the solution to this is easy: clear your cache. To do this, simply access your browsing history by entering chrome://history on your address bar. From the left panel, select Clear browsing data. Choose which data will be deleted by clicking on the checkboxes of all items you want to delete, like cached images or cookies. You can also select the time range that will be affected by the deletion. You can delete your history for the past hour, the last 24 hours, the last 7 days, the last 4 weeks, or from the beginning of time. Once you’ve selected the files you want to delete and their corresponding time range, click Clear data.

Disable extensions

Extensions are downloadable programs from the Chrome Web Store that you can add to your browser to give it more functionality and a personalized touch. For example, you can add an extension that blocks ads, one that shortens URLs, or one that shows you your most important tasks of the day. While these extensions are useful, they can slow Chrome down when there are too many installed at once.

Most extensions will show on Chrome’s address bar, and you can quickly uninstall them by right-clicking on their icons and selecting Remove from Chrome. You can also manage all extensions by typing chrome://extensions on your browser and hitting Enter. From there, you’ll find a list of all the extensions you have (even those you don’t remember installing). Simply scroll through the list and click Remove to delete the extensions you don’t need.

Remove ads and malware

Sometimes, Chrome slows down because of malware or adware extensions. Extra toolbars, recurring pop-up ads, and web pages redirecting to other addresses are clear indications of these. Google once had a downloadable app developed for Chrome that scans and removes unwanted programs called the Clean Up Tool. In 2018, Google discontinued that app and made malware scanning even easier. Just go to chrome://settings/cleanup on your browser, and click on Find to find and remove harmful software on your computer.

A top-performing web browser benefits your business in many ways, including upping employees’ productivity and speeding up communication processes. It’s therefore critical that yours is fast and reliable. If your web browser is performing poorly or takes forever to load a page, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us so we can identify and fix the problem right away.

Workplace Analytics: A Better Way to Assess Staff Productivity

For companies using Office 365, managers have a convenient tool available for them to assess their employees’ performance. It’s called Workplace Analytics, and it uses the data culled from Office 365. Microsoft’s previous productivity tool, MyAnalytics, only allowed employees to view their own productivity data. With Workplace Analytics, both employee and manager can view the former’s performance data.

How it works

A paid add-on to Office 365 enterprise plans, Workplace Analytics extracts behavioral insights from data gathered from Office 365 email, calendar, documents, and Skype. This means any data an employee types into their email and calendar — whether on the subject line or in the body itself — can be used to indicate their productivity status.

The program has an overview dashboard that provides specific information:

• Week in the Life provides an overall view of how the entire organization spends time and how members collaborate
• Meetings shows the amount of time spent in meetings
• Management and Coaching gauges one-on-one meetings between staff and manager
• Network and Collaboration takes a look at how employees connect to colleagues

What does it aim to do?

According to Microsoft, Workplace Analytics addresses businesses’ most common challenges: complexity, productivity, and engagement.

Using Workplace Analytics data, managers and human resources departments can form productivity strategies for the entire company. If most of your employees spend 60% of their time attending meetings and not enough time doing creative work, managers can come up with a strategy to reduce meeting times and focus more on productive tasks.

It also identifies how employees collaborate with internal and external parties. Suppose one of your sales staff frequently communicates with certain contacts. By using Workplace Analytics data, the employee’s manager would be able to determine whether this particular collaboration pattern is helping the employee hit sales targets or whether he or she is missing out on other more critical contacts. Based on this info, managers would also be able to determine which employees are most likely to meet or exceed their targets and set company-wide standards accordingly.

Workplace Analytics also allows managers to determine an employee’s level of engagement (i.e., whether the organization’s collaboration patterns are good for the company), and whether workloads are fairly distributed among workers and/or departments.

Is it useful for small businesses?

Large corporations have been using Workplace Analytics, but small businesses can also benefit from it. The data used to provide insights are what employees generate themselves — how much time they spend on meetings, whom they frequently communicate with, and how much time they spend on productive tasks.

Aside from letting managers examine their staff’s work behavior, Workplace Analytics also provides an overall look at an organizational level. If you want your organization to further harness the capabilities of Workplace Analytics and other Office 365 tools, give us a call today.

Productivity-boosting tips for PC users

We all want to become more productive. Business gurus always emphasize the importance of time management and taking breaks to avoid burnout. But aside from motivating yourself to work more efficiently, there are plenty of tools that increase your daily output. If you use a computer all day, check out these productivity-boosting tips.

Monitor productivity levels

Start by tracking how much work you complete on an average day. There are useful apps for this such as Google Chrome Extensions like RescueTime, which record your most frequently visited sites and track how much time you spend away from your computer. Running the app will provide you with a productivity rating and a detailed log of how you spend your time at work.

If you discover you’re wasting a huge portion of your time on social networking and other productivity killers, you’re more likely to make conscious adjustments on how you manage your time.

Get rid of clutter

You can also decrease distractions and increasing output by deleting old files, uninstalling unused programs, and organizing documents into appropriately labeled folders. This makes files easier to find and improves your computer’s performance.

As for the clutter in your email inbox, Gmail and Outlook both have features that filter out unimportant messages. Simply enable Priority Inbox on Gmail or Clutter on Outlook to get a clean, spam-free inbox.

Block time-wasting sites

Visiting non-work-related websites hinders productivity. A quick five-minute break to check your Facebook feed may not seem like much, but a few of those per day add up to a lot of time.

If you and your employees have trouble staying away from social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it’s a good idea to block access to them using URL filters.

Alternatively, you can use apps like StayFocusd or Strict Workflow. These allow you to set a limit on how long and how many times users can visit non-work-related sites.

Stay on track with to-do lists

To-do lists help you break down large projects into manageable, bite-sized tasks. Crossing things off the list is surprisingly satisfying since it gives you and your employees a sense of accomplishment and total visibility of your progress.

You can choose from a wide variety of digital to-do lists like Google Tasks or Trello. These platforms allow you to set deadlines for small tasks and write clear instructions for each. What’s more, they’re incredibly easy to use and are great for keeping track of your workflow.

Use keyboard shortcuts

Mastering keyboard shortcuts will make it easier to perform simple functions. There are more than a hundred useful shortcuts, but some that you should always keep in mind are:

• Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, Ctrl + X – to copy, paste, and cut selected items
• Ctrl + Z – to undo changes
• Ctrl + T – to open a new tab on your web browser
• Alt + Tab – to switch between open windows
• Alt + F4 – to close the program

For many more like these, take a look at this list of advanced shortcuts for Windows.

In this digital age of short attention spans, focus is key to achieving business success. Drop us a line today if you’d like to know more about how tech can induce focus and improve overall productivity.

Take a Look at Some Amazing Improvements in Office 365

If you’re an Office 365 subscriber, you’re in for some souped-up enhancements. Most involve artificial intelligence (AI) making sense of your data for you, so you spend less time and effort manually processing it. Here are a few of the latest enhancements that’ll give you more time for value-added tasks (and for coffee breaks and power naps, too).

Office

Write and draw with digital ink

Typing is easy on desktops and laptops, but when you’re on touch-enabled devices, keyboards are cumbersome to use, whether they are extra hardware or as space invaders on your screen. Now, the Draw tab is available on your favorite Office programs so you can use your finger, a stylus, or a mouse to doodle and write. You can automatically convert your handwriting to text in Word or OneNote by implementing the handwriting input function of your Windows 10 touch keyboard.

Chat with colleagues right inside the app

Now available exclusively to Office 365 subscribers, the chat function lets team members message one another within a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or Excel spreadsheet as they work on it together.

Word

Write with your voice

Ever wished you had a personal secretary who could type dictation for you? As an Office 365 subscriber, you won’t need one. Sign into your account, turn on your microphone, then go to Home > Dictate (in Outlook, go to Message > Dictate instead). Once the Dictate icon turns red, you can start writing your document just by speaking. It’s that easy! Now available in Word for Office 365, Outlook for Office 365, PowerPoint for Office 365, and OneNote for Windows 10.

Edit documents with natural gestures

With your handwriting and voice digitized into standard text, editing your document is easy, thanks to natural gestures. It’s like using a pen to insert or cross out words on printouts, but immediately seeing your edits afterward! Other magical things you can do include inserting spaces and paragraph breaks, stringing broken-up words together, and circling text to select it. Now available in Word for Office 365 and Word Mobile.

PowerPoint

Transform your scribbles

Sometimes you need to draw or write by hand to get stuff down quickly. Using digital ink can be the quickest way to communicate, but turning scribbles into editable text or easy-to-manipulate shapes for a slideshow presentation later on is time-consuming.

Or rather, that was the case, because now Ink to Text and Ink to Shape can convert your handwriting and hand drawings into standard text or shapes, respectively. Now available for PowerPoint for Office 365, PowerPoint for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPhone. Ink to Shape is also available exclusively to Office 365 subscribers on Excel for Office 365, Word for Office 365, Excel 2016, Word 2016, and Visio Online Plan 2.

Excel

“Ideas” literally let you work smarter

Pie charts, bar graphs, scatter diagrams — with so many ways to visualize data, it can become troublesome to implement the right graph. Thankfully, the upcoming Ideas will let AI come up with the most apt graphs for you. Just click on a cell in a data table, click the Ideas button on the Home tab, then voila! Excel comes up with charts for you to choose from. It can even set trend lines, recognize outliers, and create summaries for you — all without having to write an unwieldy formula! Coming soon to Excel for Office 365, Excel for Office 365 for Mac, and Excel Online.

A picture is worth a thousand data points

Since optical character recognition software is already a couple of decades old, it’s about time we’re able to extract data tables from pictures. Soon, the Insert data from picture function will let us encode ingredients lists from recipes and digitize printed receipts by taking their photos. Coming soon to Excel for Android tablets and Excel for Android phones.

One formula, many values

For so long, Excel users had to enter a formula and copy it to get multiple values (known as an array) from their data tables. With dynamic arrays, however, all you have to do is write a formula once, press Enter, and you’ll instantly get values for entire columns or tables instantly, which means faster processing with fewer errors. To illustrate, you can use a dynamic array to fill up entire multiplication tables, and when you change or add more factors, the array will recalculate and resize automatically. Coming soon to Excel for Office 365 and Excel for Office 365 for Mac.

Outlook

Quickly create tasks

Outlook now lets you create tasks and to-do lists the way you write emails. Just click Tasks > New Tasks, type the name of the task in the Subject box, and add task details in the body. You can also set its priority, start and due dates, and even a reminder for it.

Additionally, you can create tasks out of emails by dragging an email to Tasks on the navigation bar. This is way faster than copy-pasting email contents onto the body of a task, though keep in mind that email attachments aren’t carried over to the newly made task.

Make the most out of Office 365! If you’re already a subscriber or are currently looking into it, let Net Activity help you configure and implement it for maximum productivity. Call us at 216-503-5150.

Not sure if cloud computing, or Office 365, is the right fit for your organization? Download our eBook, “10 Myths About Moving Your Business to the Cloud” to learn more.

Why Your Google Account’s Security is So Important

These days, it seems that to have a computer is to have a Google account. If one isn’t used for professional purposes, it is used as a personalized solution – and no wonder. The convenience and accessibility of these accounts alone are compelling, even before one considers the versatility that this account brings with it. Unfortunately, these benefits can be quickly overshadowed by risk if a Google account’s security is overlooked, even if unintentionally.

Naturally, this scenario is one that we all wish to avoid. To do so, it may help to look at why a Google account (and for that matter, any online account) needs to be secured, and a few ways to get you started.

Why Your Security is On You (Including Your Google Account)
Considering the relatively short time it has been around, the Internet has undergone a major image shift as its purpose has grown more complicated.

Initially, the plan for the Internet was to create a means of sharing information. Even its name reflects that, combining inter (which means reciprocal, or shared) with a shortened version of network (defined as a system of connected things).

When MIT’s J.C.R. Licklider composed the memos that described, as he called it, the “Galactic Network” in 1962, this purpose of sharing was displayed in full force. Described as a system of computers that were all connected – despite stretching across the entire world – to provide access to data and helpful programs, the Galactic Network is a dead ringer for the Internet that we know today. Later on, Sir Tim Berners-Lee credits the concept of a decentralized and open environment as the framework upon which he developed the World Wide Web. As he put it:

“Had the technology been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not have taken off. You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it.”

The Modern Internet
Today, the Internet retains many of these qualities. Think about the popularity of social media today, and how much we rely on collaboration in our places of work. Having what is a largely unrestricted network available to us, enabling us to share and cooperate, has allowed us to expand and flourish. These qualities are what have inspired the development of safeguards like open-access information and net neutrality, adopted in most of the industrialized world. Having said this, an exclusively laissez-faire approach has since been rendered impractical, simply because of how the Internet is used.

There is a large discrepancy in how the Internet is used now, as compared to the dream of the Galactic Network’s purpose. Rather than spreading education, exclusively, the Internet has become a conduit that can be (and is) used to transmit data of all kinds. This is important to recognize, as the data that is now transmitted is precisely the kind that requires intense security to protect it – and this is precisely why businesses like Google have devoted time to sculpting services that meet this balance.

Growing from what was once a Stamford doctorate dissertation project known as BackRub, Google is now a household name. Many businesses rely on the solutions developed by Alphabet Inc., as do a large portion of the general population. One of Google’s most common offshoots is Gmail, with businesses and private users alike using it for everything…including as a means of opening other online accounts.

This is exactly why a Google account is so incredibly important to protect.

Assuming that you have one, consider your own use of your Gmail account – have you used it to create any other online accounts? How much of your inbox is private information?

Putting the Pieces Together
This is the crux of why having a Google account can work both ways. The positive outcome is that you have a very convenient and reasonably secure solution to your need of an email to set up accounts with, or a single account that many other online services accept as a method of sign-in. So far, the negative outcome is a little harder to see, until you factor in one more crucial element:

Linking an account to your Google account ties your Google account’s security to it directly.

Or in other words, if you link an account to your Google one and your Google one winds up breached, your other account has been too. This could prove to be pretty bad for you when all is said and done.

How to Assess the Damage
If you’re on a laptop or desktop computer right now, click here to access your Google account. In Security, you can find lists of all the devices your account has been on, any third-party applications that can access your account, as well as any websites that are using Google Smart Lock to store access credentials.

Two questions: are your lists longer than you expected them to be, and do any of them include, say, your bank?

If so, access to your Google account would be all that’s needed to lock you out of your own finances and potentially defraud you. If a hacker had somehow gotten your Google account’s information, they could make their way into your bank account from there, keep you out by resetting your password, and transferring your money over to their own at their leisure.

So, we find ourselves at a fork in the road: do we say no to using the convenient tools that Google has provided for the sake of our security, or do we risk watching our security crumble just so we can save a few moments as we log in?

As with most conflict resolution, the best option is a compromise down the middle.

As it turns out, there’s a third path that we can take, by simply ensuring that the Google account that provides us with this convenience is itself sufficiently secured for this responsibility. While this unfortunately isn’t one of Google’s provided settings, it is a simple enough process in and of itself.

Making Sure Your Google Account is Secure
Step one of this process is simple enough, but can be a challenge to put into practice. You first have to accept that account security isn’t something that can be done once and never thought about again. You have to return to it every so often to make sure that everything is still shipshape.

Keep in mind, not all breaches can happen on your end, so you should also watch out for breaches that happen within the organizations that you have accounts with as well, in case you need to revise your credentials then.

After you’ve squared that away, there are a few additional practices to put in place.

Password Dos and Don’ts
Yes, passwords. While you really shouldn’t have any accounts protected by weak passwords, you need to be especially careful about the one that protects your Google account. After all, it protects any of the others that you have saved to Google, making it a veritable treasure chest for the cybercriminal. This means that you need to use a password or passphrase that subscribes to best practices, and is only used for your Google account.

You also need to consider where your putting your password at all. Any publicly-accessible device is a no-no, as they are almost definitely infected somehow, quite possibly equipped with some means of sending any input (like your credentials) back to the cybercriminal. The same problems are often present in publicly-available Wi-Fi signals, so resort to a private connection that is properly secured.

2FA, or Two-Factor Authentication
The more an account needs to allow access, the better, which is what makes 2FA such a great option. With 2FA, your account won’t let anyone in without a secondary code – and not just another password to memorize. This code should be generated upon requested access, sending a fresh code to a mobile device in a text message, a direct call, or in an app like Google Authenticator. Unless the hacker somehow has access to your phone as well, they won’t have everything they need. Ideally, you should use the application, as it is the most secure of your authentication options.

If you are going to be in a situation where you cannot use your phone, you can still utilize the 2FA that Google offers with a printable list of one-use codes. This list can be carried with you with relative safety, as you can reset the codes at any time.

Log in to your Google account to set up these features.

So you can still use Google’s very convenient services, just so long as you proactively secure them appropriately. For more assistance with your security, or any other IT concern, reach out to Net Activity at 216-503-5150.

Beware: There’s A New Phishing Attacks That Looks Like Emails from Apple

There’s a new, widespread phishing campaign underway that you need to be aware of if you use the Apple App store at all.  At this time, no one knows who’s behind the campaign, but already, a surprising number of people have been taken in by it.

The campaign works like this:

You’ll receive an email that appears to be from Apple confirming your recent purchase of a $30 app.  The email contains a PDF that the sender claims is your receipt.  This is a lie, and once you click on the PDF to see what you supposedly spent money on, they have you.

Clicking on the PDF reveals what appears to be a receipt from Apple.  At the bottom of the PDF, there’s a helpful link with a note that informs users that if they did not authorize this transaction, they can click the link to get a full refund. Clicking on the link brings the user to an exact replica of the Apple Account management portal.

If the user enters their login credentials, they’ll get a message that their account has been locked for security reasons, and informed that they must unlock their account before signing in.  In the user’s mind, this underscores the notion that their account has been compromised, which will prompt them to try and remedy the situation by unlocking their account and changing their password. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the scammers are hoping for.

When a user clicks the “Unlock Account” button they’ll be asked to verify their account information, including their full name, their address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth, payment information, driver’s license and/or passport number, and security questions.

Once they give all this to the scammers, the user will be redirected to the actual Apple account management page. The brilliant (and disturbing) part of this elaborate scheme is that they do so in a way that causes the Apple page to load with a message stating “this session has timed out for your security,” which reinforces the story the user has been given to this point.

You log on normally and see no sign of the previously mentioned charge, so you assume all is well, and it is – except for the fact that you’ve inadvertently handed the scammers everything they need to steal your identity.

If you use the Apple App store even occasionally, be on the lookout for emails like this.  It could cost you more than you realize.