November 20th – 26th is International Fraud Awareness Week. We decided to take advantage of this opportunity to provide you with a few simple tips to help you and your business avoid falling victim to a phishing scam. As these emails become more sophisticated, knowing how to spot them is critical.

Windows Ink is an exciting new program in the same family as Web Notes and Microsoft Edge, available through the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. It puts a digital pen in your hand and allows you the most hands-on interactive ability to write messages, memos, and documents in your own handwriting and send or store them electronically.

With the general availability of Windows Server 2016 (and its companion platform System Center 2016) as of September 26th, there are some key features your sysadmins or IT company should be talking to you about: features like container support, and the improved security and networking tools.

Security breaches are disruptive to my business. According to the Ponemon Institute’s Cost of Data Breach Study, the average cost of a security breach in 2015 was $4 million — up from $3.8 million in 2014 — so every business needs to take data security seriously.

The recent hacking and defrauding of Gazelles “The Scaling Up Guys” of $400,000 is yet another case that points up the need to have the maximum amount of cybersecurity (and cyber safety awareness) in relation to your computer networking vectors as possible.

There are many ways that technology innovations aid business transformation in 2016. Hardware and devices and the software they run have never been more task-friendly and interactive. Virtualization, mobile device apps, and networking tools enable collaborative virtual work environments that can create globally-connected work environments.

In June of this year a massive hacking incident occurred that involved over 32 million accounts. According to LeakedSource, the Dark Web came into possession of the information linked to those accounts and put it up for sale. If you haven’t switched to two-factor authentication (2FA, a.k.a. TFA, or multi-factor authentication, or MFA) for your login verification, you should know that 2FA gives you the security assurance that no one else will be able to log in to a certain account except you.

In a September 16 alert, the FBI warned of ransomware variants that are more frequently targeting highly-vulnerable business servers and how they are like a focused virus, looking for big servers without adequate security defenses. The law enforcement agency also noted that the number of compromised network servers and devices have drastically multiplied, via more target-specific attacks.

Whether or not you are concerned about making your website more secure, switching to an HTTPS security-encrypted web platform is still a good idea. Why, you ask? Because having that extra level of security for your browser and site visitors will increase your Google ranking.

Too many business entities are woefully deficient in their backup plans. Many think that one or two external drives and some cloud backup is enough. Others have less than that in backup, simply depending on server rebuilding or replication in the event of a “smoking crater” type of disaster.