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Social Media for Business

I came across an interesting article this morning. I honestly think that business people should pay close attention to this one.

Remember a few years back when the term “cyber-sqautter” came into being? It related to people who registered domain names (like acme.com) even though they had no relationship to the company or person? And then they tried to sell the names to the actual company, or brand owner, at a hefty profit.

Well, it’s happening again, in an entirely new medium.

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Managing Updates, Fake Emails and Other Stories

The big theme from my clients for the past couple of weeks has been pretty consistent. I receive an email from a staff member at one of my clients, with a forwarded email message, and a question – “Is this legit?”. Without fail, the answer is no… the email is not legitimate. It’s another attempt by someone to do a Bad Thing to your computer. If you happen to click the link in the email, then BAM! you have a virus, or a Trojan horse, or some other piece of nastiness.

Too often though, these same staff members feel bad for asking, worrying that they’re “wasting my time”. Here’s why you should never wonder if you’re wasting your IT tech’s time.

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The Chaos of Games Traffic

Well, the Olympic games are just a few short months away now. In just 4 short months, the city will be teeming with athletes and visitors from around the world.

And love it or hate it, traffic will be horrendous. There are road closures coming, restrictions to driving on certain highways, special lanes, emergency and VIP vehicles, and heaven knows what else.

So how does a person get any work done, if they can’t even get to the office?

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Another Attack

Clients have been getting a lot of these messages in the past few days:

Dear user of the your_domain_name.com mailing service!

We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (you@your_domain_name) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:

(link removed for security)

Best regards, your_domain_name.com Technical Support.

The part that never ceases to amaze me is that these things actually work sometimes. Why is that?

Mostly, I believe it’s the FUD factor – fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There’s a lot of FUD out there about IT. And a lot of folks are also scared about breaking things. They rely on computers, but aren’t 100% sure about how they work sometimes.

Which isn’t always a bad thing. I know how to spend money, without understanding the intricacies of advanced finance and macro-economics. The key however is to have people you can trust. if you don’t feel that you can trust your tech support peoeple, you need different tech support. Trusting them because you have no choice is not an acceptable compromise.

Maybe it’s time for a long talk with your IT people. Figure out what you like or don’t like like, and see if you can gain a sense of trust back.

And as for these emails… just delete them. If you have any questions in the meantime, DO talk to your tech support folks, and keep your computers safe.

Got Security?

I came across a pretty good article this last week, which  bears expanding upon at least a little bit. It’s from the Globe And Mail, and goes into a study done this year on computer security, breaches, and their cost and effect on business.

The short version is that these types of breaches can cripple, or even kill, your business. So why do they keep happening?

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Cloud Computing for Business

Following up on last week’s post explaining Cloud Computing, I want to spend a few more minutes covering off some of the other business advantages, and why you may wish to consider this for more than just the cost savings. Yes, the cost savings can be significant, and so can the simplicity it brings to your environment. But there are 2 other main reasons to seriously consider cloud computing for your business life.

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