TechTidBit - Tips and advice for small business computing - Tech Experts™ - Monroe Michigan

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Improve Your Staff’s Productivity Using These Five Tips

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Increasing employee productivity is a positive approach for companies, regardless of the industry; however, the concept can be rather vague.

Productivity means more than just working to meet a given quality standard, therefore, it isn’t always immediately clear how to achieve optimum outcomes while maintaining standards and keeping your employees happy.

Here are a few concrete methods that can help your staff be more productive:

Block certain Internet sites
With the rise of social media, online gaming, video sites, gaming and contest portals, and entertainment websites, there are many potential distractions on the web. Even if an employee is well-intentioned, there are plenty of well-designed trappings to keep them there, wasting your company’s time and, ultimately, money. [Read more…] about Improve Your Staff’s Productivity Using These Five Tips

Does Your Backup Plan Stand Up To A Disaster?

Michael Menor is Vice President of Support Services for Tech Experts.
Technology, while a great asset that can be leveraged for your benefit, can also frighten businesses due to how unpredictable it can be at times. The constant threat of data loss, identity theft, and hardware failure can cripple your business’s ability to retain operations.

Specifically, businesses can learn about risk management by analyzing the processes used by an industry where risk management is absolutely critical: nuclear power plants.

In the wake of two of the most destructive and violent nuclear disasters, nuclear power plants have begun to crack down on how they approach risk management. The Chernobyl incident of 1986, as well as the tsunami-induced disaster at Fukushima in 2011, are the only nuclear disasters to reach the peak of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) at a rating of 7.

This means that they had an immense impact on the immediate vicinity, as well as the environment on a worldwide scale.

The meltdown at Chernobyl was the result of an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, ending in an enormous explosion that resulted in fire raining from the sky and radioactive core material being ejected into the vicinity. A closer inspection of the incident revealed that the explosion could have been prevented, had the plant practiced better safety measures and risk management, like having a containment system put in place for the worst-case scenario.

In comparison, the Fukushima plant was prepared to deal with a failure of operations.

The problem that led to a disaster was one which couldn’t possibly have been prevented: the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the resulting tsunami. The Fukushima plant had a contingency plan to shut down the plant in the event of a disaster, but tsunami prevented this from happening properly by flooding damaged power lines and backup generators, leading to heat decay, meltdowns, and major reactor damage.

Disasters like these lead to professionals searching for ways to prevent emergency situations in the future. For example, the Fukushima incident kickstarted conversations on how to prevent problems caused by the unexpected issues.

In response to emergency power generators being flooded or destroyed, off-site power generation will be implemented as soon as November 2016.

One other way that nuclear plants have chosen to approach these new risks is by outsourcing this responsibility to third-party investigators, whose sole responsibility is to manage the reliability of backup solutions. In a way, these investigators function similar to a business’s outsourced IT management, limiting risk and ensuring that all operations are functioning as smoothly as possible.

What we want to emphasize to you is that businesses in industries of all kinds expect the worst to happen to them, and your business can’t afford to be any different.

Taking a proactive stance on your technology maintenance is of critical importance. While your server that suffers from hardware failure might not explode and rain impending doom from the sky or expel dangerous particulates into the atmosphere, it will lead to significant downtime and increased costs.

In order to ensure that your business continues to function in the future, Tech Experts suggests that you utilize a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solution that minimizes downtime and data loss risk.

BDR is capable of taking several backups a day of your business’s data, and sending the backups to both the cloud and a secure off-site data center for easy access.

In the event of a hardware failure or other disaster, the BDR device can act as a temporary replacement for your server. This lets your business continue to function while you implement a suitable replacement.

Small Businesses Experience Increase In DDOS Attacks

Some readers may already be wondering, “What exactly is DDoS and why should I worry about it?” DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service – and a DDoS attack is when a person (or group) acts maliciously and uses a program which has a sole purpose of flooding a server with traffic.

Why would someone do this? There are many reasons one would execute this devastating attack. For instance, you run a news website. You publish an article that this person doesn’t agree with. They, in turn, run their malicious program. It sends thousands upon thousands of page requests (unique requests to open the website), which causes more traffic than your server can handle.

Your server crashes from the load and no one is able to view your site. Of course, this could be one reason among an infinite amount. For whatever evil agenda they have, it does not fare well for those on the affected side.

In 2015 alone, there were some 50,146 attacks that were detected – averaging 137 per day and 5 per hour (Newswire, 2016).

While these attacks may not make national news or headlines, the IT world is paying close attention. With more devices and easier programs to use, almost anyone could be on the bad side of the cyber war.

One of the more recent attacks that happened was on New Year’s Eve. A group calling themselves New World Hacking took down BBC’s global site and Donald Trump’s site. Another big attack was aimed at a big part of the Internet itself. Namely, the 13 DNS servers on the backbone of the Internet.

These servers are important because they translate the words we use (such as website addresses) into the numerical equivalent that the machines understand. There were two separate attempts, one being 160 minutes long and another lasting about an hour. It caused three of the DNS servers to go offline for a couple hours or so, which is enough to cause a lot of slowness issues or DNS errors on a lot of people’s screens.

What can be done to help mitigate this issue? There are a few things. You definitely should have an IT department or IT security group who is able to handle this. Bigger corporations especially should be keeping up with threat trends and keeping their firewalls and security prevention up to date and active.

Now, say you’re a small to medium size business and you have no security on your network. It would be a good idea to have an IT service provider such as Tech Experts to help with your IT and security needs. These days, especially in recent years, it’s not a good idea to just pay your cousin under the table to install a router and call it good.

If you can’t afford to have anything happen to your data or to be down for a day or more, hire a professional. We can set you up with a network designed with your needs and security in mind.

Easy Spring Cleaning Steps For Your Computer

Just as it’s a good idea to periodically clean out closets and other areas of your home as part of spring cleaning, your computer needs decluttering attention as well.

This not only makes it easier for you to find files when you need them, but can also speed up the computer performance.

Check for viruses
If you do not have an antivirus installed and set to regularly check your system, make it your first priority to install an antivirus.

Not all viruses put out obvious signals like the blue screen of death; some can lurk in the background, slowing down your computer’s operations or running malware without your knowledge.

Use a disk cleaner
Disk cleaners scour your system looking for files you don’t use, particularly useless temporary ones. Such files won’t impact how your programs work, and they just take up valuable space and can even make your computer run slower than it should.

Organize your files
If you have long lists of files, try grouping them into folders. This will save you a lot of time when looking for something in particular and also makes your storage more aesthetically pleasing.

Toss unnecessary programs
You’ve likely tested out programs and decided they weren’t for you or even grown tired of them. There’s no reason to keep them. Go into your Control Panel and select Programs to see everything that’s on your computer.

Uninstall the ones you can readily identify as ones you no longer want or need, and leave the ones you don’t recognize alone in case they are important. Check and uninstall any web toolbars, too.

Delete your web history and cookies
Over time, all the little data records of where you’ve been while surfing the web accrue, and can greatly slow the functioning of your computer.

Deleting your web history, including cookies, is something you should not be doing just during spring cleaning, but on a regular basis to keep your computer operating at optimum speed.

Severe Security Vulnerabilities Patched By Microsoft

Early last month, Microsoft released 13 security patches as part of Patch Tuesday.

While such security measures are usual, this one was particularly important because six of those patches were categorized as critical and require user attention to be put into place.

These six patches addressed programming flaws that had the potential to give cyber-attackers the means to gain full user rights in a wide array of Microsoft’s software programs. The remaining seven patches address the elevation of privileges, denial of service, and ways to bypass security features.

The programs that were at risk from these flaws included all supported versions of Microsoft Windows, the new Edge browser, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office (including Services and Web Apps), Microsoft Server Software, Adobe Flash Player, and Microsoft .NET Framework.

According to Microsoft, these flaws were detected before any actual security breaches stemming from these issues actually occurred.

If they had not been discovered, cybercriminals may have been able to gain user rights to Microsoft programs via specially crafted websites from remote locations.

Microsoft strongly urges Windows Vista and later operating system users to ensure the latest updates have been installed, especially if they do not have their systems set for Automatic Updates.

VoIP Is The Ultimate Solution For Small Biz Phone Woes

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

One major technology pain point small businesses have revolves around communications. If your clients and prospects can’t effectively reach your staff, customer support and productivity is weakened. Increasingly, small businesses need more out of their phone system, and VoIP solutions offer more features with less expenses.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is, essentially, phone calls in the cloud. Voice signals are converted to packets that are sent across the Internet and reassembled in the correct order when they reach their destination. VoIP services can be deployed over the Internet or private IP networks (LAN/WLAN).

Why should your business invest in a powerful VoIP solution? There are several reasons, but the most important one is that it’s a huge opportunity to save on your business’s operating expenses. VoIP services can save a small business hundreds of dollars per month on their phone service costs. [Read more…] about VoIP Is The Ultimate Solution For Small Biz Phone Woes

Should You Leave Your PC On Or Power It Down?

Michael Menor is Vice President of Support Services for Tech Experts.

At the end of the workday, you’ve got an important decision to make: power down your desktop or log off? Each option has its own set of pros and cons, but are you confident that you’re making the right decision? Here’s how to find out for sure.

First off, the answer to this question is dependent upon how frequently the machine is used. For the sake of this article, let’s address the computing needs of the average office worker who uses their PC for the Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 grind.

Secondly, we feel the need to address a common perception about turning a computer on and off: it does NOT cause physical harm to the equipment.

This was the case in the early days of the PC, back when the power surge from powering it on was actually bad for the components, but this issue has been resolved since 1993.

Another factor to consider is power consumption. If you’re the kind of person that likes to make sure every light is turned off before going home and you pride yourself in finding ways to lower your electricity bill, then you may want to power down your machine for the night.

Although, if you’re looking to leave it on in order to get a jump start on your workday, then put your PC in sleep mode (a.k.a Standby or Hibernate) before leaving the office, instead of turning it off.

Sleep mode is designed to use as little energy as possible, which equates to less than what’s used by a traditional light bulb.

Your geographical location should also factor into this decision.

For example, if you live in a place that’s prone to natural disasters and the power grid sporadically has blackouts, then you’re going to want to power off your machine at the end of the workday.

Unless your IT infrastructure is equipped to handle power inconsistencies with tools like an Uninterrupted Power Supply, a powered-on computer can be damaged by a sudden loss of power.

Also, as explained by Computer Hope, while turning off a PC can protect from a sudden loss of power, turning it off does nothing to prevent damage from a power surge: “A power surge destroys electrical devices regardless if it is on or off. Therefore, turning the computer off does not prevent this from occurring. The only way to prevent power surges is to unplug all power cables, phone cables, and network cables.”

Another factor that you’ll want to consider is your computer’s maintenance schedule. For example, it’s best practice to run a daily virus scan at night so that the scan doesn’t interfere with your work during the day.

Also, if you’re taking advantage of managed IT services like the services that Tech Experts provides, then you’ll want to leave your desktop powered on so that we can remote into it (or all of them) and run scans, perform routine maintenance, apply patches and updates, and more. If the machine is powered down, then we won’t be able to access it and do our job.

After considering all of these different factors, only you can know if it’s best to turn off your PC at the end of the day or keep it on.

Time To “Bite the Bullet” And Upgrade Your Software

From the largest of the large companies to the everyday home user, there comes time when you have to upgrade your software, either by force or necessity.

No one wants to spend money to upgrade their software when they feel it still works and functions for their needs, but truthfully, that old reliable software needs to go.

The most important thing to remember is that software companies don’t end support of their software out of malice. It’s simply a business decision.

For a company to continue to release updates and patch security exploits, it would require countless man hours from software engineers, support staff and help desk personnel.

At the same time, they would be continuing to support software that is outdated in functionality and design. No company can survive in today’s fast-paced world by sitting idle.

By not upgrading your software, you are – by your own means – opening yourself and your company up to cyber-attacks from hackers taking advantage of the security exploits that are no longer being patched. This is the single most important reason to upgrade your outdated, End of Life (EOL) software.

While software companies do release new versions of their software and EOL old versions of their own accord, there are times when they too are forced to make changes due to upgrades in an Operating System (OS).

Consider Windows 98, which was the typical OS for several years and boosted a huge selection of software titles ranging from games to business productivity applications.

But when the following Windows releases came along (like XP, 7, 8, and 10) and grew in popularity, any software company that wanted to continue to stay unburied had come up with new versions of their software that would be compatible with each of the new OS platforms.

This, in turn, would force people to upgrade if they wanted to continue to use their software.

Businesses that use programs like Microsoft Office could feel like they are forced into upgrades. This is understandable, but at the same time, you have to make sure your business stays productive and secure.

With hackers waiting for the opportunity to gain access to your business, it’s imperative to make sure you do everything you can to block the attacks. And, yes, this includes upgrading your operating system and software.

There is light at the end of tunnel, however. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe have redesigned the way they sell their software.

No longer will you be locked into one version, whether you purchase the software by the retail copy or by volume license.

They offer plans that allow you subscribe to use the software and during your subscription period you are entitled to receive free version upgrades if there any. They have released subscription plans for large companies, students, and everyday home users.

Remember: it’s better to “bite the bullet” than be struck by the bullet. For assistance with software upgrades or ask questions about the security of your business and software, contact us at (734) 457-5000, or email us at info@mytechexperts.com.

How To Create A Windows 10 Recovery Drive

Since most Windows 10 users obtained their version of the latest Microsoft operating system as an upgrade from a previous version, there isn’t a built-in recovery system if your PC or other device is disabled.

You would have to revert to that previous operating system and re-download Windows 10. Unfortunately, if that occurs past Windows 10’s first year on the market, that download won’t be free.

To potentially save some money down the line and a significant hassle, it is a good idea to create your own Windows 10 recovery drive to re-install the operating system in the case of a system disaster.

A simple way to do this if you upgraded via the media creation tool is to use that same tool to create a recovery drive on removable media, such as a disc or USB flash drive.

To do this, run the tool, click whether you have a 64-bit or 32-bit system, and choose ‘Create installation media for another PC’ from the available options. This directs you to a screen asking what language you prefer and which version of Windows 10 you currently use. Make the appropriate selections, and you will be walked step-by-step through the rest of the process.

Another method to create a Windows 10 recovery drive is to use the Recovery Options within the Control Panel.

With previous versions of Windows, this feature was a tad easier to locate, but it still lurks in the background for you to find. From the Start menu, you can open Settings and then type Recovery in the top right dialogue box to reveal an option to ‘Create a Recovery Drive’ before following the steps to complete the action. Alternatively, you can just type Recovery Drive into Cortana’s search field on the bottom left of your screen.

With either method, choose to back up your system files, and you will be directed to insert your media after a short wait for a systems check.

You will need at least 4GB of space on your disc or USB drive, and bear in mind that any other information already on it will be erased with the addition of the Windows 10 recovery drive.

This process will take a while, but you are able to continue working as your device copies everything onto your removable media.

Older Internet Explorer No Longer Supported

Microsoft recently made the announcement that it will no longer offer support for Internet Explorer versions prior to Explorer 11.

It is also only through Explorer 11 that users can receive updates for the following operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. While this does not prevent users from continuing to turn to Internet Explorer for their browsing needs, it does serve as a call to action for optimum usability and security while surfing the web.

Without up-to-date security patches, devices are at risk of malware and other forms of malicious attacks.

In addition to such security risks, users who continue to use unsupported versions of Explorer may lose Independent Software Vendor (ISV) support or encounter compliance issues.

The company also outlined how Explorer users can update to the latest version, at no extra charge. People who use Internet Explorer (IE) can be roughly divided into three categories: Enterprise users, small to medium businesses, and home PC users. Each groups has a slightly different means to upgrade to Explorer 11; however, their experience should be hassle free.

Albeit, some small-to-medium business owners have expressed concerns about their line-of-business (LOB) application having a dependency on a particular Explorer version. Microsoft has addressed this concern by integrating an Enterprise Mode into Explorer 11 that allows backward compatibility with web applications specifically designed for previous versions of Explorer.

Smaller businesses, whose software does not depend on previous IE versions, can upgrade through Automatic Updates or contact a Certified Microsoft Partner like Tech Experts for assistance.

Home PC users could see an automatic upgrade to Explorer 11 via Automatic Updates.

Still, if the home PC upgrades are set to ‘off’, updates to Explorer 11 will have to be done manually through the Control Panel and the Check for Updates button under the Windows Update tab.