Microsoft Says Office 365 Users Should Use Spam Filter

Microsoft recently updated their support page and offered additional guidance to network admins as it relates to Office 365’s built-in spam filters.  The gist of the update is that they strongly advise against turning the auto-filters off.

They provided some additional guidelines if you decide to bypass them for one reason or another.

Here are the most relevant portions of the recent update:

“If you have to set bypassing, you should do this carefully because Microsoft will honor your configuration request and potentially let harmful messages pass through.  Additionally, bypassing should be done only on a temporary basis.  This is because spam filters can evolve and verdicts could improve over time….”

If you decide you want or need to bypass anyway, the company offered the following additional suggestions:

• Never put domains that you own onto the Allow and Block lists
• Never put common domains, such as Microsoft.com and office.com onto the Allow and Block lists
• Do not keep domains on the lists permanently, unless you disagree with the verdict of Microsoft

You and your IT staff are likely already aware of this. If not, Microsoft maintains a living document on their support website where they keep a comprehensive list of security best practices for Office 365.  If you haven’t seen it before, or if it’s been a while since you reviewed it, it pays to take some time to look it over.

On a related note, the company recently sent out a bulletin advising all Office 365 customers and admins to report junk email messages for analysis using the Microsoft Junk Email Reporting add-on. This is in order to help reduce the number and effect of future junk email messages.  If you and your team aren’t already in the habit of doing this, now is an excellent time to start.

Tweak Your Mindset to Achieve Success in the Cloud

The cloud is not like some magic beans that’ll sprout sky-high stalks overnight and lead you to a castle full of riches. Don’t be misled by shiny words such as “increased productivity” and “collaboration” — your organization won’t realize these benefits unless everyone actually puts in the work to make the cloud work. If you want to use the cloud successfully, you might have to change your mind about a thing or two before you migrate to the cloud.

Consider cloud value over costs
When considering the cloud, too many entrepreneurs get hung up on costs. Instead, as a business owner, think about how the cloud impacts your business and saves you money. You must look at the cloud as no different than any other investment you made to grow your organization.

To help you make the proper shift in thinking, ask your IT leaders just how the cloud will benefit your business. They’ll mention how the cloud will provide you value, such as easier team collaboration and the ability for anyone in your organization to work anytime, anywhere.

Think “strategy” before migration
Once you’ve considered the value the cloud provides, you’ll likely come up with goals you’ll want it to accomplish for your business. If you haven’t, do it now, before signing up for the service.

Let’s say you want to gain the productivity benefits of letting your staff work remotely without sacrificing cybersecurity. Therefore, prior to rolling out the cloud in your company, have the specific goal of increasing the use of vetted mobile devices among employees.

Clearly define your cloud goals beforehand, then work with your IT staff to come up with the nuts and bolts of the plan for accomplishing that goal. By having a plan instead of just winging it, you’ll have a better idea of what you want to achieve, have the ability to recognize when you’re getting off-track, and be more prepared to make adjustments in case things don’t go as expected.

Learn to love the quickly evolving nature of the cloud
Compared to other IT tech, the cloud is still relatively new and subject to rapid change. New updates, features, and enhancements are rolled out regularly, so if you want to get the most out of your cloud, it’s best to keep up. Of course, this is a scary idea for many business owners and IT managers alike as fast-paced flux can feel like instability and chaos.

Some cloud services make it easier than ever to keep up with changes. Let’s take Office 365, for example. Adding users and implementing new changes can take mere minutes. Yes, adapting can be frightening, but just remember that Microsoft and your IT managers are in your corner. If you still have some bad memories of long and frustration-filled transition periods after updating your legacy technology, rest assured that updates to cloud-based services nowadays often only require a small learning curve. Most new features are intuitive by nature, making adjustment to these changes painless and problem-free.

One of the best ways to assure your cloud updates go as smoothly as possible is to have a cloud enthusiast who’ll be up to date on the newest features and enhancements and can quickly tell you whether or not an update will benefit your business.

Moving to the cloud is pretty much an all-or-nothing business decision. If you adopt it, the cloud will become an integral part of your business, and you and all of your staff will interact with it on a daily basis. So be prepared for a big transition and a big payoff of higher productivity and connectivity for your entire company.

Are you ready to embrace cloud solutions? Give us a call to learn more about how we can help you migrate to the cloud and realize its full potential for your business.

Apple Is Launching Their Own Credit Card Soon

Apple has partnered with Goldman Sachs and their long-awaited “Apple Card” begins rolling out in limited fashion. The card becomes available to all iPhone owners in the United States toward the end of August.

According to CEO Tim Cook, a random selection of people who signed up to be notified about the Apple Card are getting an early-access sneak peek.

However, the company has been tight-lipped about exactly how many people are being invited into the preview group.

If you’re one of the lucky winners, know that the sign-up process will involve upgrading to iOS 12.4 and entering your address, your birthday, income level and the last four digits of your Social Security number.  That information is sent on to Goldman Sachs, which will approve or deny your credit application in real time and in under a minute.

Note that part of the approval process also involves a TransUnion credit check, so if you have that information locked, you’ll need to unlock it (at least long enough to get approval).

Once you’ve been approved, your card will show up in your Apple Wallet immediately and be available for use.  If you want one, you can request a physical card from Apple for free during the setup and it will arrive in the mail in a few days.

The cool thing about the physical card is the fact that it has an NFC tag on it, so you can activate it simply by tapping the phone against it.

Also note that you’ll have three different credit card numbers associated with your Apple Card:

• The number assigned to your phone
• The number assigned to the physical card
• A virtual number you can access in the app for online purchases where the vendor doesn’t accept Apple Pay.

Also note that unlike the other credit cards in your wallet, this one has no expiration date or security code. You can lock the card at any time from the app, though.  Welcome to Apple’s Brave New World!

Safeguarding your Social Media from Hackers

Social media phishing is on the rise. Facebook is one of the most commonly impersonated brands in phishing attacks. Hackers now employ more sophisticated tactics, so you must strengthen your privacy settings to keep them away.

Lock screens exist for a reason

Lock all your computing devices as soon as you stop using them. This way, you are safe from the simplest hack of all: someone opening a browser on your computer that has your social media login saved.

Strong passwords are never out of fashion

Unlocking your phone may be limited to a six-digit passcode, but you’ll need something much more complicated for your account password. Create a password that you don’t use for any other account because with the regular occurrence of data breaches, hackers probably already have a long list of your favorite passwords from other websites and platforms.

It is best to use a password manager like an app or online service that allows you to generate and retrieve complex passwords.

You can also enable two-factor authentication, which requires a secondary verification step such as a code sent to your phone. Even if hackers have your password, they won’t be able to log in without your phone.

Make use of social media features

Facebook can help you keep tabs on who’s accessing your account and from where. Click on the down arrow located at the upper right corner of your Newsfeed and select Settings. Then click Security and Login to get more information. If you sense an imposter, click the right-hand icon so you can log out remotely or report the person.

From there, turn on Get alerts about unrecognized logins to get notifications via Facebook, Messenger, or email if someone is logged into your account from an unrecognized browser. Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t have the same option (which makes two-factor authentication extremely necessary).

Hackers can also barge into your Facebook and Twitter accounts through third-party services that you’ve given access to your profiles, so make sure to double-check what you have approved.

• Facebook: Go to Settings > Apps and Websites to view and manage outside service with access to your account
• Twitter: Go to Settings and Privacy > Apps to check and edit the list

Lastly, be sure to check the permissions Facebook and Twitter have on your smartphone or tablet.

• Android: Go to Settings > Apps > App permissions
• iOS: Go to Settings > Privacy to manage which service can access which parts of your phone

Less personal info, fewer problems

These steps are just the beginning of what you should be doing. You should also limit the personal data you input into your social media accounts. Avoid oversharing.

By following these tips, you can prevent Facebook and Twitter hacking.

Cybersecurity is a sprawling issue and social media privacy is such a small sliver of what you need to stay on top of. For 24/7 support, call our team of experts today.

5 Reasons Dashboards are Vital to your Business

People are visual creatures, which means we interpret visual data better than written words. That’s why most businesses turn to dashboards as an intelligence tool to present data in a way that’s easy to understand. Dashboards have become a critical part of the analytics process. Here are some common uses of dashboards across various business functions.

Marketing insights

An organization’s marketing department typically analyzes a significant amount of data from various channels. Whether the purpose is to forecast monthly sales, predict trends, or build marketing strategies, marketing officers use dashboards to compare, sort, and analyze raw data to churn out meaningful information presented in an easy-to-understand format. This allows key decision makers to easily call the shots using that information.

Tracking sales opportunities

Sales dashboards are perfect for tracking products and services. They help you identify sales opportunities by monitoring top-selling products and comparing the growth in revenue on a periodical basis. They sync to your raw data, so your charts are always up to date, thus eliminating the need to spend hours manually entering and preparing sales reports and charts.

Social media management

Social media management is more than just posting regularly on your business’s social media accounts. In most cases, your social media platform’s default dashboard doesn’t give you deep insight into your social media campaigns. What’s more, managing multiple social media accounts can quickly become a cumbersome process since you have to use several login credentials. Instead, you can manage your accounts all at once through a comprehensive social media dashboard, saving you valuable time and effort.

Financial reports

Presenting financial data is so complex that it often leads to misinterpretation and misunderstanding of critical data. Dashboards make creating financial reports much easier, and financial analysts can take advantage of dashboards to display sensitive data in a comprehensible graphical format — be it customer invoices, progress toward revenue goals, or business expenses.

Project collaboration

Businesses of all sizes require their employees to collaborate on projects, whether on-site or online. Project supervisors need to get their teams together to give them project requirements, deadlines, and responsibilities, and to get progress updates. With the help of project collaboration dashboards, members will see the complete workflow, allowing for a more efficient and collaborative working environment.

Dashboards eliminate the complications of presenting complex business data and make your team more efficient. If you’re looking to implement dashboards and other cutting-edge tools to make your job easier, contact Net Activity today.

Are You a Security Threat to your Business?

Just like you can form habits to be more productive, you can also form habits that expose your organization to risky situations, namely security problems. Your employees in particular are likely to have picked up a couple of nasty habits over time, so it’s up to you to address them and keep them from becoming an issue in the long term.

Habit 1: Password Security
This habit means that your employees create weak passwords, then continually reuse them for multiple accounts. We get it; nobody likes to remember multiple passwords–especially complex passwords–but they are way better for network security than your standard fare. You should by all means avoid using words like “password” or strings like “123456.”

It’s critical that you hold your staff to this higher standard, as failing to adhere to the bare minimum could expose sensitive information in the event of a data breach. Furthermore, you should update passwords regularly, as well as use a password manager to help your employees keep track of everything.

Habit 2: Sharing Passwords
It might seem like employees are being efficient by sharing passwords, but it’s more like cutting corners. Sure, it might save a second or two, but it will really stink when you whack your elbow on the wall. If they are company-owned accounts that are set up, like company social media accounts or shared resources, that’s another thing entirely, but these are generally managed by the company, not the individual.

Basically, you need to be cognizant of the dangers displayed by sharing passwords, as well as have the ability to react to these issues in a timely manner.

Habit 3: Using Personal Storage for Company Files
Cloud computing is a great way to increase the value and utility of technology services, but only when it’s used properly. Employees might use their own personal cloud storage solutions to store company files, which is a major red flag. While they might be doing it for convenience, you still need to address it. These files will be stored in a location that isn’t as secure as your company’s network, and while the employee might have good intentions, the repercussions could potentially be catastrophic.

Habit 4: Shadow IT
Any software or hardware that is installed or implemented on your business’ solutions without approval from IT is considered “shadow IT,” or IT that can’t really be controlled or regulated by your IT department. Often times employees will look for ways to get around the challenges that face their particular work role, and while they are doing it to make themselves more productive, the end result is a less secure overall network and less solid policies regarding the governance of these solutions.

Habit 5: Careless Use of Email
Email is frequently used for both correspondence and file sharing, but without proper discretion, this comes at the detriment of your organization. Consider how bad it could be for your business if you send the wrong attachment or the wrong information to someone who isn’t supposed to see it. With such a great solution available, you need to take proper precautions to make sure that data doesn’t leak to the wrong recipient.

Habit 6: Insufficient Training
This isn’t so much a habit of your employees; rather, it’s one for employers in general. Employees need to understand the security threats that they face on a day-to-day basis, and without you there to guide them, they likely won’t take action to keep your business safe. Security training is integral to the success of any business model, and it should play a significant role in the onboarding process. You should then supplement this training with frequent phishing tests, team discussions, and further training as needed.

This might sound overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Give Net Activity a call at 216-503-5150 and entrust your security to our professionals.

How Secure is your Office 365 environment?

Microsoft’s Office 365 is one of the most powerful business productivity tools today. This cloud-hosted suite lets users work anywhere and collaborate easily. Although it’s undoubtedly useful, Office 365 may present a few security challenges that businesses must address.

Vulnerabilities in SharePoint
Businesses typically use SharePoint Online and on-premises SharePoint sites to store sensitive data like personally identifiable data. Failing to secure SharePoint content against unauthorized users is one way to expose data and your business to malicious actors. And for companies that have to comply with regulatory authorities, there are serious consequences to data privacy non-compliance. To prevent this, limit administrator-level privileges and enable encryption. Set the necessary security restrictions per user for every application.

Unprotected communication channels
Launching phishing attacks and installing malware are two of the most common ways to hack into a system, but there are other paths of attack. Office 365 features like Skype for Business and Yammer, both of which connect to external networks, may serve as a medium for ransomware and other types of attacks.

Train your staff to identify potentially malicious files and URLs. Offer guidelines on how to handle and route sensitive files and communication to safe locations.

Security risks in dormant applications
Organizations using Office 365 won’t use all applications in it. You may use one or several programs like Word, Excel, and SharePoint but rarely use One Drive. Businesses and users that have not been utilizing specific programs should note that some dormant applications may be prone to attacks. This is why it’s crucial to identify the apps that aren’t being used, and have an administrator tweak user settings to restrict availability on such apps.

File synchronization
Like Google and other cloud services providers, Office 365 allows users to sync on-premises files to the cloud such as in One Drive. This useful feature is not without security risks, however. If a file stored in an on-premises One Drive is encrypted with malware, One Drive will view the file as “changed” and trigger a sync to the OneDrive cloud, with the infection going undetected.

Office 365 Cloud App Security, a subset of Microsoft Cloud App Security, is designed to enhance protections for Office 365 apps and provide great visibility into user activity to improve incident response efforts. Make sure your organization’s security administrators set it up on your systems so you can detect and mitigate dangers as soon as possible.

Cybercriminals will continue to sharpen their hacking techniques, and your organization must keep up to protect your systems, apps, and devices. Call Net Activity’s team of IT experts now if you want to strengthen your business IT security.

Microsoft Office 365 and Your Business: Boost Productivity with the Right Tech Tools

The workplace is becoming more and more digital every day. New tech tools are developed regularly, and most have the same goal—to make your life easier. While some new developments end up making life harder because they are hard to learn, cumbersome, or have glitches or bugs, most are specifically designed to be easy to understand and use. Getting things done faster and more efficiently is a huge driver for technology generally, but that is especially true today.

Defining the Modern Digital Workspace

The “Modern Digital Workspace” is a phrase used today that describes utilizing the technology that is most useful for your team. It helps your team by:

• Making collaboration easier
• Training and educating faster and more efficiently
• Compiling documents and information in an easy-to-use and access way
• Automating processes, to the extent possible, in a way that make sense for your industry and your team
• Improving digital processes not only internally, but also with partners, suppliers, and other third parties

Technology, when used properly, can make the entire workplace run in a much smoother, more efficient way. New tools allow your team to meet the needs of customers, and the business as a whole, better. When goals are easier to accomplish, productivity gets a huge boost.

The Obvious Connection: Technology and Productivity

In general, the new digital workplace focuses on improving three key areas of a company. These include the following:

• Employee Collaboration. When employees can team up and get work done easier, it makes projects faster and more efficient. Sometimes talking to one another is the best way to come up with new ideas and simply ensure that everyone is getting their job done effectively and promptly. Making sure that information and the ability to connect with one another is all on one platform is one of the best ways to encourage and foster this type of collaboration.
• Content Collaboration. Many teams work on the same content at similar times. Being able to share documents, files, and even external information at the same time can be a huge time saver within a company.
• Business Application. Administrative processes, such as workflow, forms, and rules, can often be automated in a way that cuts down significantly on processing time and time spent requesting or obtaining status updates. Even something as simple as creating digital versions of forms and allowing employees or third parties to input the information themselves can be a huge time saver in many industries.

Transparency regarding work product and processes is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your team is getting their work done and creating a final product that is the best version that you can provide.

Certain technologies often focus on a different area of these three overarching ideas. Some attempt to address all of them, while others target just one or two sections of particular concern. When all three can be addressed, you have a powerful system that encourages accountability, efficiency, and, in turn, productivity.

Office 365’s Role in the Modern Digital Workplace

Office 365 has been created with the Modern Digital Workplace in mind. It is specifically designed to address these three major concerns in an easy-to-use way.

While Office is commonly associated with their most popular programs, like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, they have a whole host of programs that can significantly boost your team’s productivity because they make collaboration and transparency ridiculously easy.

Outlook

Microsoft’s email program, Outlook, has been a staple for many businesses for years. Outlook is more than just email, however. Users can use the calendar to schedule meetings and create task lists. They can also create contact lists and share documents through OneDrive. Outlook’s key focus is employee collaboration.

Microsoft Teams

This relatively new feature allows employees and third parties to chat, share documents, work on documents at the same time, schedule meetings, have audio and visual video calls, create notes, and more. It is also integrated with several very popular apps and services, including OneDrive, SharePoint, Yammer, Dynamics 365, and Skype.

Delve

Microsoft Delve shows what your team is working on, popular documents, and provides insightful information to workers who might be interested in them. Employees develop profiles, and they can find and organize information based on interests. It also allows workers to search for documents that are connected through SharePoint and OneDrive.

Yammer

Yammer is similar to a social networking site, but it is limited to your employees and other workers. It is designed to encourage communication throughout your organization. Its focus is on ensuring that information is accessible and shared at virtually every level.

Microsoft Planner

This tool allows your team to create new plans, assign tasks, share files, and organize projects. You can easily see what people are working on and get updates on progress for various tasks. This type of open communication makes assigning projects and getting status updates easy and more efficient.

SharePoint and OneDrive

OneDrive is a straight-forward means to share files, both internally and externally. SharePoint uses sites and files, team news, lists, libraries, and more to encourage collaboration on documents and files. Both are based on sharing information in the cloud.

Microsoft Flow

This tool is focused on making internal processes easier and more efficient. It helps automate and exchange data. It has built-in alerts and notifications to help address organizational processes like approvals, multi-stage processes, and more.

Using Office 365 to Help Your Business

Every company is different. Office 365 has enough unique tools focused on making your company better that you are bound to find something that fits well for your needs. Encouraging collaboration and automated processing can lead to huge productivity boosts for your business.

New Phishing Scam Targets Your Amazon Account

McAfee researchers have discovered a new version of the 16Shop phishing kit in use by hackers around the world. According to the latest research, there are now more than 200 URLs currently being used by hackers to collect login information from Amazon customers. The methodology the hackers are using is simple. The hackers craft an email that appears to come from Amazon that indicates a problem with the user’s account.

Ironically, most of the emails claim that an unauthorized login was attempted on the user’s account and the email recommends that the user log in immediately to check and make sure nothing has been tampered with.

The email “helpfully” includes a link that appears to point to an Amazon login page, but of course, it’s actually one of the aforementioned hacker-controlled URLs.  If a user enters their login credentials, they’re simply handing those details to the hackers. They can then log into the user’s account at their leisure, make any changes they like, and order products or steal data at will.

16Shop is a sophisticated product that has been used in a variety of ways.  A previous variant was discovered in late 2018, which targeted Apple users via emails that contained a PDF attachment.  The PDF was poisoned, of course. If the links it contained were clicked on, they would direct the recipient of the email to a URL controlled by the hackers. That URL would ask for the recipient’s Apple account information, including payment card details.

These kinds of attacks are notoriously difficult to stop.  Vigilance and mindfulness are the keys to keep from being taken in.  A good policy to adopt is simply this:  Any time you get an email that appears to come from a company, don’t click the link.  Open a browser tab yourself and manually type the address in.

Get to Know Office Delve and How it can Work for your Business

More and more small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are relying on Microsoft’s Office 365 as their productivity suite of choice. When this software solution was released years ago, the developers mentioned that they see Office 365 as the ideal tool to help colleagues become more productive, collaborate more efficiently, and get work done. Bringing all these elements together is Microsoft’s Office Delve.

What is Office Delve?

Office Delve is a cloud-based data visualization tool that helps business users get the most out of their data related to Office 365. This nifty tool allows you to:

• Discover new information – Delve displays information from different sources in Office 365 that you may find useful for what you’re currently working on.
• Discover what you need – Documents you have seen before, or have recently worked on, are highlighted and made easier for you to find, regardless of where they are stored. This makes it less taxing to find work you have been doing in the past, and continue from where you left off.
• Discover new connections – Typing a name in Office 365 will allow you to see what a user is working on, their connections, and even connect with them to build relationships and share information.

How does it work?

Microsoft has powered Delve with a tool called Graph to provide users with information they’ll likely find useful. Graph maps the relationships between the various Office 365 users in your company, and the content/information related to them.

This “map” is then used by Delve to provide users with what they need, when they need it. Content and information is displayed on a card-based screen, which can be found under the Delve tab in the main Office 365 launch screen.

Aside from content such as profile information, links to documents, or information, users can also see: likes, views, comments, and tags, which brings a deeper social integration into Office 365.

Delve also orders content a number of different ways, including:

• What you’ve recently worked on – shows you content in card-form that you have recently opened or worked on
• Content that has been shared with you – shows the content your colleagues have shared with you
• Content that has been presented to you – shows content that colleagues have presented recently, or content that has been sent to you

While this idea works great on the desktop, many Office 365 users access their systems from their mobile devices. The good news is that Delve is also available to mobile users. On your device, you can browse cards with files, swipe left or right on each card to view files, and even search for colleagues and view files they have shared with you and their recent activity.

Is my data safe with Office Delve?

In Delve, only you can see your documents because there are no changes in permissions. Unauthorized third parties cannot view your activities, like what documents you opened, what emails you sent out and received, or what conversations you had on Skype for Business. Other people can see that you edited a document, but only if they have access to that same file.

If you are looking to learn more about Delve, contact Net Activity today.