Tag Archives: business

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Microsoft Teams: Complete Starter Guide for Business Owners

For organizations that are settled into Microsoft’s family of apps and services, the obvious collaboration platform is Microsoft Teams. And the killer feature is that Teams supports a robust API for add-ins.  The more far-flung your organization is, the more your people need software to help them communicate and collaborate.  … Teams integrates a collection of Microsoft 365 online services, making it possible for members of your organization to talk face to face, chat, hold virtual meetings, share files, and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and other projects in real time. The chat capabilities cover the same ground as those found in Slack, while the meeting and video conferencing features compare favorably with those available in Zoom and other video conferencing tools. And the killer feature for Microsoft Teams is that it supports a robust API for add-ins …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Why You Should Speed Up Your Digital Transformation During the Crisis

Before the crisis, if your company depended on a physical business location and in-person interactions with customers, vendors and employees, it might have made sense to cling primarily to legacy systems and paper processes. Adding digital components like a website, mobile app  or electronic payment processing didn’t necessarily mean you’d undergone a complete digital transformation.   The current health crisis has changed the business community with guidelines and mandates on remote work and social distancing. Even if you’re fortunate enough to continue operating, this radical change may mean it’s time to take a deep dive into a digital transformation, rather than just baby steps. …

Entrepreneur.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Home Router Alert!! All Have Known Flaws & Most Are Unpatched

There are no routers in the study from the Fraunhofer Institute without known security flaws.  Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Communication (FKIE) has carried out a study involving 127 home routers from seven brands to check for the presence of known security vulnerabilities in the latest firmware. The results are appalling. The FKIE study found that 46 routers hadn’t got a single security update within the past year and that many routers are affected by hundreds of known vulnerabilities. …

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A Private Satellite Wi-Fi network is cheaper and easier than ever

The ubiquity of cellular coverage is something that’s easy to take for granted. Even if you live in a relatively rural area, seeing zero bars on your smartphone is quite rare these days. But it still happens. Another problem is network saturation as a result of too many people trying to make use of the network at any one time.  Then there’s the issue of reliability during emergencies. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Has your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch been hacked? Here’s how to find out

Has your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch been hacked? Probably not, but there’s so much information on a smartphone — not to mention the fact that it can also be used to precisely pinpoint its owner — that more and more tools exist to help unscrupulous people get a foot in the door of your digital fortress. The good news is that tools exist to help you determine whether your device has been compromised. One such tool that I’ve been testing is Certo AntiSpy. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Phishing attacks: Sophisticated new group found operating undiscovered for a year

A newly uncovered phishing group is targeting big companies around the world. It’s thought to be the first major scam gang of its type operating out of Russia, indicating a potential shift in the cyber-threat landscape.  Business email compromise (BEC) scams can be highly lucrative for cyber criminals, with organisations losing hundreds of millions of dollars a month after being tricked into sending finances into accounts owned by criminals.  … Cosmic Lynx – the campaign has targeted individuals in 46 countries across six continents and combines in-depth research on target organisations and their executives…

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Adobe wants users to uninstall Flash Player by the end of the year

Adobe plans to prompt users and ask them to uninstall Flash Player from their computers by the end of the year when the software is scheduled to reach End-Of-Life (EOL), on December 31, 2020.  The move was announced in a new Flash Player EOL support page that Adobe published earlier this month, six months before the EOL date. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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5 habits of people who are especially productive working from home

Before many office workers transitioned to remote arrangements, the thought of working from home sounded like a dream. Who doesn’t love the idea of ditching the commute and staying in your sweats? But those of us who have been working from home for years know the reality, and it isn’t always as stress-free as it sounds.  Loneliness, isolation, distractions, and Zoom fatigue are real, and they are challenges to overcome…

FastCompany.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Ransomware attacks on the rise

Ransomware attacks against shipping companies have spiked in number and severity over the past year, according to security firms. Norwegian shipbuilder Vard, part of Italy’s Fincantieri, was hit last week but has declined to give details …

LlyodList click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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When More Information Leads to More Uncertainty

How can I figure out which news sources and leaders to trust?  Every day we are faced with a torrent of information from news articles, cable networks, social media, the White House, the Center for Disease Control – and yet, there are no clear answers.  As humans, we innately find uncertainty to be an aversive state and are motivated to reduce it, even at a cost. …

Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Cortana’s Promotion Is Tied To Microsoft 365

Today, if you click the Cortana button on a Windows 10 PC, you still get the “Ask Cortana” prompt, and you can click the microphone button to start talking. But saying “Hey Cortana” does nothing. All those third-party skills are no longer operative, and Cortana’s notebook has officially been tossed into the digital dumpster. … Cortana is “Your personal productivity assistant in Microsoft 365,” and the tasks are no longer about music and fitness and home automation. Instead, the skill set includes things like catching up with your email, coordinating meetings, and filing expense reports. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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The 4 Ps of Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide

The 4 Ps of marketing…  You’ve probably heard about them from a friend, a textbook, or even at school. I know it sounds like a boring topic that’s common sense, but there is more to it than meets the eye.  And no, it’s not just for large companies… the smaller you are, the more important for you it is to leverage the 4 Ps.  So before we dive into it, let’s first break down what they are they?  The 4 Ps of marketing is a famous concept that summarizes the 4 basic pillars of any marketing strategy: product, price, place, and promotion. …

neilpatel.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Cybersecurity: Four ways you can keep the hackers away

CIOs are under more pressure than ever before when it comes to cybersecurity concerns, especially now that many or even all of the staff in their organisation are working from home, perhaps using unfamiliar software and hardware as they try to do their jobs on lockdown.  The array of devices and applications that they have to take responsibility for has been rapidly expanded by the coronavirus crisis, and criminals have been keen to exploit any organisations thrown off-balance by the rapidly changing circumstances, which means taking a fresh look at what IT security really means. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Harvard Business Review: How To Deal with Collaborative Overload

Collaboration is taking over the workplace. As business becomes increasingly global and cross-functional, silos are breaking down, connectivity is increasing, and teamwork is seen as a key to organizational success. According to data we have collected over the past two decades, the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.  Certainly, we find much to applaud in these developments. However, when consumption of a valuable resource spikes that dramatically, it should also give us pause.  …

Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Hackers are targeting your smartphone as way into the company network

The number of phishing attacks targeting smartphones as the entry point for attempting to compromise enterprise networks has risen by more than a third over the course of just a few months.  Analysis by cybersecurity company Lookout found that there’s been a 37% increase in mobile phishing attacks worldwide between the last three months of 2019 and the first few months of 2020 alone.  Phishing emails have long been a problem for desktop and laptop users, but the increased use of mobile devices – especially as more people are working remotely …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

How are you protecting your business mobile phones?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Microsoft’s Firmware Scanner Takes Security to a Whole New Level

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Microsoft Defender ATP) is extending its protection capabilities to the firmware level with a new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) scanner.  Hardware and firmware-level attacks have continued to rise in recent years, as modern security solutions made persistence and detection evasion on the operating system more difficult. Attackers compromise the boot flow to achieve low-level malware behavior that’s hard to detect, posing a significant risk to an organization’s security posture.  Windows Defender System Guard helps defend against firmware attacks by providing guarantees for secure boot through hardware-backed security features…

Microsoft.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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5 habits of people who are especially productive working from home

Effective remote work involves these five habits, which prevent feelings of burnout and isolation. Before many office workers transitioned to remote arrangements, the thought of working from home sounded like a dream. Who doesn’t love the idea of ditching the commute and staying in your sweats? But those of us who have been working from home for years know the reality, and it isn’t always as stress-free as it sounds. Loneliness, isolation, distractions, and Zoom fatigue are real, and they are challenges to overcome…

FastCompany.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

What is the biggest hurdle you have to overcome in our new remote workplaces?
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Ripple20 vulnerabilities will haunt the IoT landscape for years to come

Cyber-security experts have revealed today 19 vulnerabilities in a small library designed in the 90s that has been widely used and integrated into countless of enterprise and consumer-grade products over the last 20+ years.  The number if impacted products is estimated at “hundreds of millions” and includes products such as smart home devices, power grid equipment, healthcare systems, industrial gear, transportation systems, printers, routers, mobile/satellite communications equipment, data center devices, commercial aircraft devices, various enterprise solutions, and many others.  Experts now fear that all products using this library will most likely remain unpatched due to complex or untracked software supply chains. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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New Trickbot malware update makes it even harder to detect

Trickbot malware has been updated with a new method of propagation that makes it even harder to detect.  Starting life as a banking trojan, Trickbot first emerged in 2016 but in the years since it has been repeatedly re-purposed for other means including being used as a fully-fledged information stealer, as well as providing backdoor access to infected machines, enabling cyber criminal groups to use it as gateway for delivering other malware onto already compromised networks. Trickbot can also operate as a botnet to help spread itself to additional victims, commonly using phishing email spam campaigns to distribute malicious attachments that execute it on a Windows machine if opened. Once executed on a machine, Trickbot can also exploit the EternalBlue vulnerability to move laterally around a network. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Forget sextortion scams, we’re more worried about deepfake ransomware

Appetite for deepfake scams is expanding among users of underground forums, leading to concerns the technology could be used as part of extortion-based ransomware attacks. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos and images that transplant the face of another individual – traditionally a celebrity or politician – into a scene in which they were not originally present. In recent years, deepfakes have been used primarily in the dissemination of fake news and the creation of hoax pornography – and have become increasingly convincing. Here’s why you shouldn’t watch ‘inappropriate content’ on remote working devices: Adult streaming site leaks info on millions of users, Stalkerware now poses a greater privacy risk than ever.  According to a report from security firm Trend Micro, deepfake technology could soon be used to blackmail members of the public or workforce into divulging sensitive information or paying significant ransom fees.

TechRadar click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Great Leaders Are Thoughtful and Deliberate, Not Impulsive and Reactive

You set aside the first hour of your day to work on a strategy document that you’ve been putting off for a week. You haven’t been disciplined about getting to it, but you’ve had one crisis after another to deal with in the past week. Now, finally, you’ve carved out 90 early morning minutes to work on it.  First, however, you take a quick peek at the email that has piled up in your inbox overnight. Before you know it, you’ve used up the whole 90 minutes responding to emails, even though none of them were truly urgent. By the time you walk into your next meeting, you’re feeling frustrated that you failed to stick by your plan. …

Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Microsoft Teams: Free version can now create video meetings

Users of the free version of Teams, the Microsoft 365 online collaboration platform, can now create video meetings.  The change, spotted by OnMSFT, means Teams free users can create a Teams meeting from their account, rather than only being able to join a meeting created by paying customers. … Microsoft Teams, which launched in 2017, has grown from 44 million daily active users in March, 2020 to 75 million in April, 2020. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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The PC is suddenly in fashion again, but there are tough times ahead

Remote working may have caused many people to value their laptop and desktops a lot more, but the PC industry is likely to struggle as companies and consumers cut back on spending. PCs may have been viewed as yesterday’s news thanks to the rise of smaller form factors like smartphones, tablets and wearables, but trusty laptops and desktops (and variations on them like Chromebooks and even Raspberry Pis) have proven their worth during lockdown for workers and kids doing home schooling.

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Chinese apps can pose security risks

So what are these security concerns? Let’s split these up into two distinct areas to see the strategic nature of these apps and investments;  pps such as UC Browser and TikTok, and investments Chinese companies are making in entertainment-based apps…

Businessline.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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How to Make Smarter Decisions in Chaos

How does a business leader strategize in chaos? It’s a question many of us are facing as we currently shelter-in-place and navigate a volatile world economy. … Moving forward, leaders need to both respect the moment and lean into the next business space. In an interview last year, marketing veteran Seth Godin said one’s next best move comes from asking one important question: Do more people trust you and pay attention to you today than six months ago…

Inc.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

Are more people growing to trust you or fewer?

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Dark Web selling access to corporate networks

The Dark Web is an underground marketplace where criminals trade in all sorts of illegal or malicious items. One valuable product up for sale consists of information that can help hackers break into corporate networks. Comprised of malware and services, this type of information has seen an increase in Dark Web postings over the past couple of years.

TechRepublic.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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That used or refurbished Android phone might be unsafe: 6 things to know

If your Android phone isn’t running the latest software, your security and privacy might be in jeopardy. Phones released years ago run outdated versions of Android. That may well mean that they don’t have critical security updates that can keep you — and your data — safe from prying eyes. If you’re concerned about security and privacy on your previously owned phone, here are some things you should consider.

CNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Microsoft Teams: Now free version lets you create video meetings

Users of the free version of Teams, the Microsoft 365 online collaboration platform, can now create video meetings.  … The move is likely to be another effort from Microsoft to go to battle with Zoom, the biggest winner in video calling and conferencing since the global coronavirus pandemic shoved the world toward teleworking. …

ZDNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Your insurance policy probably doesn’t cover ransomware payments

Long aware they’ve been in hackers’ crosshairs, law firms are currently under attack by a new breed of ransomware and attackers.  However, when law firms are hit with a ransomware attack, some are shocked to find out their insurance policies don’t include coverage for ransomware payments. Indeed, ransomware is a 21st century business threat that older insurance policies weren’t drafted for, observers say.

Law.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Zoom won’t add end-to-end encryption so it can aid the police

Zoom’s decision not to add end-to-end encryption to free users’ calls keeps the door open for law enforcement cooperation, CEO Eric Yuan told analysts in a Tuesday conference call, as previously reported by Bloomberg. “Free user, for sure, we don’t want to give that because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement…” Yuan said. End-to-end encryption, which the videoconferencing company is currently working on, secures connections all the way from each device to every other device on a call. It’ll only be enabled on paid accounts…

CNet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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