Researchers Recently Discovered A New Mysterious Malware Strain

Researchers at the cybersecurity firm Anomali have discovered a completely new type of malware that’s disturbing on several levels.

Worse is the fact that the researchers aren’t quite sure what it does.

The new strain has been dubbed ‘IPStorm’ by its creators, who at this point, remain unknown.
Of interest is the fact that it is the first malware found in the wild that makes use of the IPFS P2P network for its command and control communication. By doing so, it can hide its network activity amid legitimate streams of P2P network traffic, making it virtually undetectable. IPFS is an open source P2P file sharing network used to store and share files. Among other things, it’s currently being used to host a version of Wikipedia that can be accessed in countries where access to the website proper is blocked.
The malware has been written in the Go programming language, but researchers haven’t been able to ascertain at this point how it begins its initial infection cycle. They have discovered that the malware package itself has been split into a number of parts, which is an indication that the group responsible for its initial development knows what they’re doing.

The researchers added: “By breaking functionality out into different Go packages, the codebase is easier to maintain. Also, the threat actor can break out things into modules to make it easier to swap out or reuse functionality.”

On top of that, IPStorm comes with a number of antivirus-evasion techniques built-in. When it copies itself onto a target system, it uses folder names that relate to Microsoft or Adobe systems, making it unlikely that even a savvy, observant user would notice it right away.

The researchers estimate that right now, the IPStorm botnet consists of some 3,000 machines, which is a surprisingly small number and a clear indication that the malware is in a very early stage of development. Keep this one on your radar. It’s not a big threat at the moment, but it certainly has the potential to be a major problem in the months ahead.

4 Simple Ways to Get more out of Office 365

You’ve probably purchased Office 365 to be more productive, but maybe-just maybe-things haven’t turned out as well as you had hoped. Don’t feel bad since it’s not too late to get back on track; here are a few tips to get started.

Get the staff aboard

To maximize your company’s productivity with Office 365, make sure that every employee with a computer uses it. While this may be easier said than done, you can easily promote the service by encouraging the officers of your company to use it first. When your executives, managers, and top employees use Office 365, others will be persuaded to do the same.

Train employees

If your employees don’t know how to use Office 365, they won’t be productive, and the cloud service becomes a wasted investment. This is why training is vital. Teach your staff the ins and outs of the platform so they can take full advantage of it.

One way to train your staff is to make or assemble short training videos. These are easy to digest and will be remembered by employees. They can be viewed over and over again and used anytime. This saves management the trouble of training people.

Utilize core tools

When you first used Office 365, what did you like about it? You were probably sold on the idea that it increases staff productivity since it allows employees to work and collaborate anywhere. If you’re not utilizing this service for that purpose, now is the perfect time to do so.

Some of the tools that increase productivity are OneDrive for Business (OD4B), SharePoint, and Skype for Business. OD4B and SharePoint allow employees to upload and save documents to a virtual drive, share that document with another group or user, and edit it at the same time. This gives everyone the ability to access that document and work wherever they want.

Because it is a flexible communication channel, Skype for Business also enhances productivity since employees, colleagues, and customers can communicate easily. From online meetings to conference calls, video calls to instant messaging, you have a wealth of options for instant communication.

Be more secure

Not only can a security breach cost you money, it can also destroy your business. While Office 365 already has built-in security with Azure Active Directory, it’s always wise to be cautious of the files you add and share on the service. If you upload files with sensitive company information to the platform, make sure you control them.

These four productivity tips can help your business grow. If you’d like to learn more, or need additional training on Office 365, give us a call. We are happy to help you!

3 Fantastic Benefits of a Virtual Office

It’s 2019, and although “Back to the Future II” got it wrong about us having flying cars by 2015, we do have some pretty amazing technological advances available to us. Chief among these (and wildly underestimated!) is the virtual office. If you work from home, you know what I’m talking about. “Remote” work has made dream jobs available to talented, motivated, self-disciplined individuals regardless of where they choose to make their home and it has also enabled entrepreneurs to start businesses from their dining rooms. No doubt about it, the virtual office is pretty convenient (and hello? Working in your pajamas once in awhile is kind of great!) Here are a few benefits to the virtual office you may not have considered.

Increased Employee Efficiency

Anyone who has ever worked in a traditional office setting knows that once you go virtual, your efficiency noticeably increases. Gone are the water-cooler and “hey, how ya doing?” chats with co-workers that can take up valuable work time. Co-worker connections over workplace chat apps like Slack can enable camaraderie with fellow employees while cutting down on extraneous non-work-related conversations. (Let’s be honest, no more being trapped in a convo with your office’s awkward Chatty Cathy is priceless!)

No Commute

Rush hour traffic gets a giant BYE, BYE from those who employ the virtual office. Not spending your morning in traffic also contributes to the aforementioned virtual office efficiency, and it cuts down on employee stress, resulting in a clearer mind and better focus. Sometimes it’s a help to still give yourself a psychological commute of sorts when you’re a virtual employee: mine is 25 minutes on the treadmill, which also results in a clearer head, especially since I didn’t have to get up ninety minutes earlier to fit it in before my traffic-laden commute. The bottom line is, being able to shower, eat breakfast and get RIGHT to work every morning an hour earlier than everyone else is a huge perk to business.

Big Time Cost Savings

Whether you’re a business owner or remote employee, the virtual office can save you big money. Running your business virtually means no high rent or lease payments on exclusive office space. Sure, you might have rent out a cozy conference room for meetings once in awhile, but that is way less expensive than a monthly office space payment. Not to mention, when you set your own dress code, you’re probably going to be spending a lot less on your work wardrobe. Keep a couple power suits handy, but save money on day-to-day business wear.

Set Your Virtual Office Up For Success

To really take advantage of all the benefits of a virtual office, you’ve got to have your technology in fantastic shape. The cost savings and efficiency of your work-anywhere space will fly out the window if you don’t have air-tight network security and your computers, routers, and printing and scanning devices in top-notch working order. At Net Activity, our mission is to get and keep your virtual office running in the most secure, efficient way possible. Contact us for an evaluation on your virtual office setup. We will provide the consistent quality support you need to keep serving your clients and customers with the excellence you strive for (even if you’re working in your pajama pants. No judgment!)

Want to know more?

Net Activity is here to help your business make intelligent decisions about technology; reach out to us anytime.

Apple iCloud App Now Available On Windows 10

Great news for inter-operability.  Apple has brought their new iCloud app to the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 devices. Even better, the app is designed such that it’s deeply integrated with Windows 10, even allowing you to access iCloud files from inside other Windows apps.

The version available on the Microsoft Store is identical to the desktop version available online, but it offers a new iCloud experience on Windows 10. It allows Apple users to store and access their files across both Microsoft and Apple devices seamlessly.

When you install the app, you’ll be asked what types of content you’d like to integrate with the Windows OS.  Configuration is a snap, and once you’ve got the app up and running, you can access its various features simply by clicking on the Taskbar icon which will bring up a menu of your available options.

Key features of the new iCloud app for Windows 10 include:

• The ability to share any file from File Explorer and collaborate with others with any and all edits being synced across all of your devices.
• Store all your files in the iCloud Drive and access from your Apple device or other iCloud apps
• Choose the files and folders you want to keep on your PC

Microsoft announced that the new iCloud Drive experience utilizes the same technology as OneDrive’s Files On-Demand feature, which means that iCloud users can temporarily download and use files from Apple’s online storage system.

If you work from a homogenous set of devices, this change won’t impact you in the least. If you have a constellation of devices that utilize both Apple and Windows technology, this is absolutely huge.  It represents a big leap forward and makes it orders of magnitude easier to manage your data across both platforms and devices.  Kudos to both Apple and Microsoft!

3 Tech Solutions Your Business Should Be Investing In Right Now

As small businesses have to do more with less, they’ve been increasingly looking to technology to fill the gaps. The problem is that many small businesses feel like the big tech companies don’t understand their needs. If you feel like the technology options you have at your disposal don’t necessarily fit your business’ needs, consider that these robust solutions have all the functionality that you need to manage your own business processes. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the enterprise technology SMBs are using to move their businesses forward and some of the considerations you may need to make to leverage a software solution that doesn’t seem like it fits.

The first thing that any business owner or small business decision maker has to understand is that people today are more connected than ever. This hyperconnectivity creates greater expectations. This fact has to be confronted by the SMB in one way or another. Typically, the small business wouldn’t choose to invest in big-ticket solutions that are designed to streamline operations and improve the customer’s interactions with the company, but with consumer demand what it is, biting the bullet and making large software investments can bring additional opportunities that wouldn’t be presented otherwise. Some solutions your SMB needs to have include:

Customer Relationship Management

Incorporating a CRM is basically a must for every business nowadays. There are literally hundreds of options to choose from, but some are clearly designed for the enterprise user and can be a bit much for a small business. More often than not there are industry-specific solutions that can be leveraged that provide integrated customer relationship management capabilities. These solutions provide all the benefits of a standalone CRM, but with options designed specifically for the vertical market in which they are used.

A CRM is basically mandatory for a small business as it provides significant automation of tasks that, at one time, were the responsibility of multiple employees. The small business has to function with reduced payroll compared to its larger competitors. As a result, any solution designed to automate whole portions of business-critical tasks has more value to a small business than one that relies on manpower to perform. A CRM does this by integrating customer relationships with scheduling, payroll, and more.

Supply Chain Management

For the modern small manufacturer, it is more crucial than ever to meet customer demands. In order to accomplish this, the supply chain, that is the procurement, manufacturing, fulfillment, and distribution of the product has to work in concert. To facilitate this coordination, technology is being used to manage the processes in one, easy-to-use, platform. Some Supply Chain Management options, like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), also provides the features found in a CRM, consolidating the amount of software users need to learn to keep business moving forward.

Marketing Automation

Today small businesses have to have something of a web presence. Some use social media, some have their own website created. No matter what you currently do, to improve your business’ revenue creation, strengthening your online footprint is an affordable and effective way of using technology to its advantage. Using advanced technology to manage and nurture leads with automated systems can cut organizational costs and help business move faster.

It works like this: you capture leads with a website and instead of having to wade through the information yourself, the marketing automation integrates all the captured information with your CRM. This can help a business improve its ability to close sales; or, at the very least have the conversations that result in more sales.

Every business should be thinking about how to limit their costs and get more done with technology. For more information about how to choose a CRM for your business, call the IT professionals at Net Activity at 216-503-5150 today.

2 Simple Ways to Improve Internal Collaboration in your Business

For any business to be successful, its inner workings need to be able to work together seamlessly, each with a defined role and purpose. While we usually stick to talking about how to make your IT more collaborative, we’re devoting this week’s tip to ensuring that your employees are also capable of effective collaboration while using these solutions.

To do so, we’ll discuss a few things that you have to make hard and fast policies for your employees to follow.

Establish Roles and Responsibilities
One of the most important features of successful collaborative efforts is the role that each person has in the greater process, and what they are responsible for as a result. While collaboration is a great way to help expedite the completion of tasks and projects, this is only the case so long as redundancy doesn’t enter into the mix.

In essence, you need to establish a firm order of operations within your collaborative efforts, especially if that collaboration crosses between different departments of your team. Any of the benefits of collaboration can be eliminated if someone does the wrong thing at the wrong time – and this confusion most often erupts when someone in the process is unsure of their role, and what responsibilities they have as a result.

Here’s a quick example to provide some hypothetical context: Let’s say someone in Department A begins a project. In their collaborative workspace, once that project is finished, it should be sent to a few resources in Department B to review and revise as needed before being enacted.

This scenario only works if each person in the process understands what their role is, and what responsibilities that role has within the greater process. Returning to our example, any benefits that the collaboration may have had are negated if someone acts out of turn. In this case, once the project has been reviewed by the resources in Department B, Department A shouldn’t touch it again unless specifically asked to by Department B, who should then repeat their actions. Otherwise, mistakes that the review process would have caught can go unnoticed, and negatively affect the success of the project as a whole.

Establish Firm, Yet Flexible, Goals
On a related note, your goals need to be designed to help outline these responsibilities in a clear fashion, leaving little room for assumptions to be made. By providing your employees with goals that are based on definite outcomes, you are removing the ambiguity that leads to the complications described above and enabling your processes to move forward more effectively.

However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t reexamine these processes and make adjustments to these goals to further improve them after you’ve seen how well (or not) they work. In fact, this is a crucial part of running a business successfully.

As far as solutions go to enable collaboration, Net Activity has you covered. Reach out to us at 216-503-5150 to find out how you can encourage clearer communications within your operations.

What’s Best for a Small Business Like Yours: Laptop or Desktop?

In today’s business world, computers are an essential investment. Considering the tight budgets of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB), one can’t afford to invest in the wrong hardware. Which is the smartest investment, especially for startups? Laptops or Desktops?

Portability

Laptops allow you to keep working when you don’t have an electrical outlet. However, this ability to take your work anywhere can be counterproductive by creating more stress on employees who think they must work all the time.

Memory/Speed

Desktop computers used to have more memory and faster processors than laptops. And although high-powered laptops have caught up, they are more expensive. If work is limited to word processing and emailing, affordable less-powerful laptops should be enough. Anything more will probably require a desktop machine.

Security

Data security is necessary not only against data leaks but as protection from litigation, reputation damage, and loss of business. With a network security system and IT staff, vulnerabilities are easier to address for desktop computers within office premises. They’re also less likely to be stolen.

For laptops, however, mobility makes them more vulnerable. Data loss is a real risk as laptops may be connected to unsecured networks and hotspots or be lost or stolen. Protecting your laptops require special safeguards, and consequently more time and money.

Price

Laptops and desktops come in varying prices according to preferences. On the cheaper end of the price range spectrum, there are notebook-style laptops that are limited to word processing and web browsing capabilities. Desktops have affordable equivalents as well. The deciding factor when it comes to price is your IT service provider or hardware supplier. With the right partner, you should be able to get a good bulk deal on powerful but affordable desktops or laptops.

Longevity

Laptop computers may provide the convenience of mobility, but it’s much harder to upgrade their components as they get older. Laptops are also easier to drop or damage and more expensive to replace or repair. Being in a fixed location, desktops are less prone to this. And unlike laptops, many desktops are not always pre-assembled. Many desktops can be custom built with parts that are easily removed, replaced, or upgraded.

Final Recommendation

A growing company really needs a combination of both types of computers. However, a desktop computer will be generally more reliable for the fledgling company owner. Laptops should be added as budget permits to provide that extra portability and convenience, especially for managers who work remotely.

If you have other questions regarding enterprise hardware, give us a call. We’d be happy to recommend the best solution according to your company’s business needs and objectives.

How to Manage Your Google Reviews

Google is shaking things up yet again. Reviews from sites like Facebook and Yelp will now be displayed in search results with well-placed keywords and link-worthy content. Here’s how you can efficiently manage your business’s reviews

How Google changed search results

Google now automatically aggregates and includes online reviews to display in the Knowledge Panel found on the right side of the search results. This useful panel displays information like address, hours, web address, and more.

Which review sites does Google include?

Relevant sites vary between industries, so if, for instance, you manage a restaurant, reviews from Yelp or Zagat will likely be displayed next to your online listings. If your business is a bit more niche, however, there are a few steps you can take to determine which review sites affect you.

To determine these sites, go to Google and type the following:
“[your company name] reviews” – to locate sites that already have reviews on your business
“[industry] reviews” – to determine industry reviews sites you should be listed on
“[industry + location] reviews” – to find review boards where you can boost your local presence

Then, list the review sites you found on the first page of each search query and categorize them based on their search ranking and your company’s current rating on them.

After creating the list, write down an objective for each review site. This can range from getting listed on the site to improving your rating.

To narrow down your choices, focus your review-generating efforts on the five most popular websites on your list, especially those that include negative reviews of your business.

Getting reviews

Regardless of your objectives for managing reviews, the most important thing is for people to write reviews about your products and services. With that in mind, here are a few strategies to encourage people to rave about your business.

Send follow-up emails
You could send a short message thanking them for purchasing your product or service, with a request for a review.

Simplify the review process
Many customers skip writing reviews due to the complex steps and instructions involved. You need to simplify this process by having a review site widget that customers can easily access, asking them to comment on your service before they leave your website.

Offer rewards for reviews
Another way to encourage people to rate your business is by presenting them with a chance to win free goods or services if they submit a review.

There are a lot of steps involved in managing your online reputation, but starting early is the key to enhancing your SEO, attracting new customers, and improving your bottom line.

Contact us today if you need more advice on climbing up Google’s search rankings or tips on social media management