TECHS Talk Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Technology Solutions

Phishing, Social Engineering and Online Scams

Rule 1: Think before you Click

Phishing or social engineering attacks are increasingly being used by cyber criminals to trick internet users into revealing sensitive information – website login details, bank account or credit card details or personal data that forms part of your identity.

Phishing emails (note the ‘ph’) are designed to look official and may use an ‘urgent security alert’ or other reason for you to immediately visit a website to confirm your personal details.

Misspelt website addresses or URLs can be bought and set up to look similar to your bank website with copied logos and login forms the added touch that aims to convince you to enter your account login information.

Rule 2: Beware the friend in need

A friend’s hacked email address can now be used to send highly convincing – but fake – appeals for emergency help or direct you off to ‘interesting’ video or photo content, perhaps involving a celebrity sex scandal.

Click the link in the email though and you may end up on a website designed to infect your computer if you haven’t fully patched the operating system and all software on it, particularly Java and Adobe Flash.

Even social networks have been affected by spam or malware links added via rogue apps or compromised accounts.

How to avoid getting Phished

Learn about the various phishing species that try to hook you and reel you in
Be careful when you receive emails requesting urgent account verification
Don’t download and open unexpected attachments
Curiousity killed the cat – avoid clicking on video or photo links posted on your newsfeed
Don’t respond, download files or click on links to websites you’re suspicious of
Investigate any online offers carefully that appear to be too good to be true

To discuss how Tech Solutions can help your business call Nick on 0800 878 878 or email nick@techs.co.nz

SSD or HDD

Hardware, TECHS Talk, TECHS Tip

Solid State drives and why they are the biggest upgrade for your pc or laptop.

Are you the sort of user who finding simple things like starting your pc or laptop seemly tend to take too long? How about having outlook, internet explorer, excel or word and many other applications opening at that first boot in the morning?

You might as well go make a hot cup of coffee cause of the long wait. Most people tend to think when this happens it’s time to ask advice from that friend who’s in the IT Industry. Just upgrade the memory some tell you or just buy a new computer.

The fact is if your machine is from mid-2006 onwards it’s still cheaper to buy a new SSD drive and gain the performance like a new machine from this 1 simple upgrade.

We had a high usage client in the office recently. This user had high outlook usage which included large outlook files and multiple accounts loading. Before the upgrade it took from seeing the windows 7 boot logo to windows desktop and all start up applications being loaded and ready to use over 3 minutes. We replaced his normal spinning hard drive with a solid state drive.

Imaged his old drive to the new drive and started it for the first time. It took only 45 seconds to desktop. Just using the laptop became snappy the response was immediate. The laptop now seemed like a new machine. This is one example of the difference it makes in the real world.

SSD’s cost is per gigabyte is the only pit fall. An example currently you can buy a 500 GB HDD for only $80-$100. For a 256GB SSD it would cost you around $300 dollars. Now if you have a desktop adding a SSD in the pc and running 2nd HDD for storage in ideal you get the best of both worlds. However if you’re running a laptop you normally want to match GB for GB unless you have an external USB drive. If you’re a business user or home user you will notice upgrading from HDD to SSD more than any other upgrade you can do to your system. This makes for a snappy, faster experience.

Pros: Speed, Durability, Noise, No Fragmentation.

Cons: Cost per GB, Harder to recovery data in case of faulty drive.

Search Engine Optimisation

TECHS Talk, TECHS Tip, Web Design

WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is getting your website, not only into Search Engines, but at the top of results in Search Engines.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Having your business at the top of search results is really becoming an important part of business marketing for a number of reasons. Teenagers for example, no longer look to the Yellow Pages, or read the newspaper for business listings, but simply Google what they want. If another business is at the top of the ranking, that’s what they will likely choose.

GETTING STARTED

This might seem silly, but if you don’t submit your site address to Google, it won’t get indexed properly and your site simply won’t show up anywhere near the top.

Don’t know if you are?

Simply do a search in Google for SITE:YOURSITENAME.CO.NZ

SUBMITTING SITE TO GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS (GOOGLE)

Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?pli=1
Enter in your website URL into the text box then click on Submit Request.

SUBMITTING SITE TO BING

Go to http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
Enter in your website URL into the text box then click Submit.

5 BASIC TIPS

GREAT CONTENT!

Simple, original and real content will win over fake reading stuff nearly every time. Explain what you’re talking about in the best way you can.

PAGE TITLE AND PAGE NAMES

The <title> element inside of your pages is used as a suggestion for the title in Search Engine’s search results. Use it to describe the business and page in a concise informative phrase.

It’s also important to keep the names of the pages simple. If the user is searching for cheese and sees two options, one being blocksofcheese.html or prodid?435435 what do you think they would click?

META KEYWORDS AND META DESCRIPTION

While <meta name=”keywords”> and <meta name=”description”> do not raise your Google Pagerank (website’s “value” in rankings), they help the user click on your page with helpful descriptions from keyword searches.

Info: http://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description

HEADER TAGS

Wrapping headers in header tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h3>) to show their importance will tell Search Engines the important bits of your pages.

SITEMAPS

A sitemap tells Search Engines what pages are your main ones and shows how they are linked together. You could use a generator to make things simpler: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

So if you’re in need of some help with improving your search results, or even just some friendly advice, get in touch with us.

To discuss how Tech Solutions can help call us on 0800 878 878 or email office@techs.co.nz.

Facts for Figures

Software, TECHS Talk, TECHS Tip

Most businesses reach a point where their accounts need to be processed by a computer. Selecting an appropriate package can be bewildering and many businesses become ingrained with systems with disparate purposes – the software package only performs basic accounting and a smorgasbord of spread-sheets and manual forms drive the day to day business functions.

This can lead to inefficiencies and plenty of scope for human error. Expending some time on researching applications that reflect the needs of business (combined with accounting functions) will enhance the company’s operations and consequent service to its clientele. Some items to consider when selecting a suitable package:

Pricing versatility – ability to set pricing levels based on customer, quantity, group, discounts, etc. Easy to update and revise.
Point-of-Sale – fast sales processing with barcodes, integrated EFTPOS to ensure accuracy.
Job Costing – create quotes and estimates, easy entries of actuals and materials, comparison of quoted versus actual.
Job Scheduling – assign Jobs to calendars, schedule regular equipment maintenance.
Reporting – reports providing decision making information rather than static facts and figures.
Multiuser – good performance on all network sizes, undemanding of resources.
Most accountants will recommend a package that suits them – choose one that suits your business.

To discuss the specific needs of your business on what the most appropriate, economic and effective accounting package would be for you, please contact our expert, Ian Hannan

Making Best Use of Security Cameras

Cameras, Security, TECHS Talk

Security cameras are no longer the big old clunky things that you see pointing at you when you are getting some cash from the bank, who goes to the bank these days anyway? They are small, hi-def, clever and also affordable units.

Network (or IP) based cameras can be easily integrated into your existing home or office network, which removes a huge cost of having to install coax cable into a building where the cameras are needed.

Once you have a network camera getting access to it from anywhere via an internet connection is also easy, a smart phone can easily be connected and display what is happening. You can also link the camera into your website

Cameras are not just for companies wanting to protect their hordes of gold, you can keep an eye on your back yard if you are away for the weekend, or make sure the kids don’t try and feed the cat to the neighbour’s dog while you are inside the house

Cameras can be configured to alert you when certain conditions occur, eg. an certain amount of movement in the field of view. The can even email you snapshot of the image. And of course, they can record all the movement – this can be to a regular PC or even a service like Dropbox. Some cameras can even have pan and tilt controls so from afar you can change where the camera is looking. Pretty nifty.

KING STREET LIVE PROJECT

Recently we completed a project for King Street Live to provide cameras at their new music venue. These serve a number of purposes – primarily those working at the bar are able to keep an eye as to what is happening at the entrance and the garden bar with only having to turn their head. Security at the door are able to keep an eye as to what is happening inside and out the back via the smartphones

In addition these cameras record all motion so in the unlikely event of an issue camera footage is available to verify the events that happened.

And lastly, these are providing additional security measures when the venue is empty

Some things to consider…

Power – most cameras will support power-over-ethernet, which is great as it means all you need is one piece of cable to do everything, the cheaper cameras don’t support this so it means you will need power where you plan to locate the camera
Image quality – do you need high-def ? do you need night vision? Many low end cameras wont handle high-contrast very well, so for example a sunny day but with areas in shade. Remember there’s no point having a camera if the image quality doesn’t deliver what you need.
Bandwidth – the more cameras you have the more bandwidth you will use. This isn’t normally a problem unless you have lots of cameras, but something to be aware of if you are wanting to keep an eye on lots of cameras from a remote location.

Some Do’s and Don’ts

Do talk to experts like Tech Solutions to ensure you get the right advice before you start
Don’t make all your decisions based on cost – a poor quality image isn’t going to be any good
Do consider where & who will require to access the camera footage
Don’t get too complicated – have a clear objective in mind at the start
Do make sure the system is scalable – if or when you want to make changes you shouldn’t have to start again

So if you’re in need of security systems, or even just some friendly advice, get in touch with us.

To discuss how Tech Solutions can help your business call us on 0800 878 878

Business internet: are you on the best internet plan?

Services, TECHS Talk

I had an issue this week where a business client that normally had a good internet connection was experiencing really slow service and timeouts.

The router was saying it was connected, however tried another router just in case this was at fault, same issue. Potentially there could be a number of reasons for this problem so I applied the usual precautionary checks. However in this instance the issue was relatively simple;

The client was on a 5 gig plan. This issue here is that if the client used more than the allotted 5 GIG of data, their connection was “throttled” back to dial up speeds, frankly the connection was almost unworkable.

A phone call to the service provider confirmed this was the issue and the type of connection was changed over the phone with the clients ok. The end result was the internet plan was changed overnight resulting in things being back to normal the next day.

What to do?

If you have had an internet connection for some time it may pay to review what you are getting.
Check to see if you have a capped rate and check to see if you go over your capped rate what happens to your service?
Does it “throttle you down” or will it continue and you just pay for the extra data you might have?

It may save some heartache!

So if you’re in need of some help with getting the right internet plan, or even just some friendly advice, get in touch with us.

To discuss how Tech Solutions can help you call us on 0800 878 878.

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