Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

With spring arriving, “winter is coming” as the new season of the critically-acclaimed television series Game of Thrones returns to millions of viewers worldwide. Ironically, there’s also a type of malware gaining traction in the online community that matches its bark with its bite, aptly dubbed Dyre Wolf. This threat has the potential to cost businesses as much as $1.5 million per hack, and takes advantage of the ever-common spear phishing tactic.

So you got yourself a shiny new laptop. That’s great, but what are you going to do with your old device? The right thing to do is to dispose of it with a company that handles e-waste properly. Otherwise, if you just chuck it in the trash, you’ll be contributing to an already serious environmental problem.

Sometimes you find yourself in a pinch and you really need a WiFi signal for your laptop in order to complete a task. If you’ve got your smartphone handy, then you can easily turn your device into a WiFi hotspot and give your laptop the wireless Internet signal it needs. Here’s how you can accomplish this from your Android device.

The cloud might be a revolutionary new way to approach business, but some professionals are wary of letting their IT infrastructure fly sky high. This is understandable, since the cloud is still a developing industry. However, you shouldn’t let your fears of cloud computing get in the way of growth and optimization.

No matter what kind of business you run, you’re likely to gain many friends and allies in the war of entrepreneurship. However, you’ll also gain a lot of enemies (i.e. your competitors) that you’ll need to one-up somehow. Of course, you could always just exploit what they are doing wrong, but what about what they are doing right?

Whether you’re purchasing electronics at the store and a salesperson is trying to upsell you on premium cables, or you’re shopping specifically for cables and you’re faced with having to choose between cables of different prices and quality, you’ve likely asked yourself the question: “Are premium cables worth the money?”

Identity theft is commonplace on the Internet, and if you’re not careful with how you approach your browsing, you could potentially leak sensitive information to hackers. Unfortunately, some people are so concerned with protecting their other information, like Social Security numbers or dates of birth, that they forget that their PIN number is just as vulnerable to hacking as ever.

IT can be a tricky concept to the business owner, and we all know how touchy technology can be at times. It can be working one minute, then completely incapacitated the next. This unpredictability is one reason why the concept of help desk support was created. It’s an important way to assist individuals when they need help most.

As the world’s most popular search engine, Google has been known as an innovator for a long time. Google’s worldwide popularity has even turned its name into a verb: “to google,” or to search for something using Google. Despite its rather prestigious reputation, the developers at Google still know how to have a good time, as evidenced by their wide array of hidden Easter eggs.

Have you ever been prompted to change your password, then forgotten what the new one was twenty seconds later? Changing passwords consistently is a good practice, but let’s face it; unless you have them put away somewhere, you are probably going to forget about them at least once (unless you use a post-it note on your monitor, which is never a good idea). Additionally, if passwords are short and easily guessable, you risk being targeted by a phishing attack or other hacking attack.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is one of the most widely used web browsers, despite the fact that it has a tendency to crash from time to time. In order to improve the product and prevent future bugs, glitches, and crashes, IE creates an error report after every crash. Most of these reports go unsent, or so Microsoft thought.

A quick scan of the past year’s headlines will show that a data-loss scenario resulting from a hack can unexpectedly hit any business, big or small. Your company needs to have a data backup solution in place, and it’s imperative that backups are taken regularly. Has it been awhile since you last backed up your data?

Your IT staff deals with your technology on a daily basis, and that same technology is necessary for your company’s survival. In a sense, your IT staff holds the future of your business in their hands. This tremendous responsibility demands a certain level of trust from the business owner, but sometimes they might have other ulterior motives in mind. How can you tell if you’re being fooled by your IT staff?

We all need a little magic in our lives now and again. For some, this means card tricks, or optical illusions that are designed to trick the eye into seeing something that isn’t there. For German magician Simon Pierro, dubbed the “Wizard of iOS,” it means taking a piece of consumer technology and turning it into a catalyst for his magic acts.

“What kind of computer have you got there?” For a novice computer user who knows very little about this sort of thing, being asked a basic question like this can be baffling. You don’t have to be embarrassed by your lack of technical prowess. Microsoft makes it easy to find out what you’ve “got under the hood.”

Regardless of how much interaction you get on your company’s social media pages, you want more. You want to be like one of those big corporations that get a ton of hits and likes. But did you know that not even major corporations get a lot of views?

When you hire a new employee, you make it clear what the job’s expectations are. You expect them to be productive, and you provide them with an environment that’s conducive to getting the job done. This leads us to ask a fundamental question about workplace productivity: How much responsibility do you have in aiding your employees’ productivity?

Wireless connections like WiFi can be tricky at times. Either they don’t work, the connection isn’t a very good one, or there are too many people using it for it to be effective. Whatever the reason, you can bet that there are people using your WiFi who shouldn’t be can be. This can lead to many problems including security concerns, slow browsing speeds, and more.

When a disaster strikes, you should be able to recover quickly and efficiently with minimal downtime. Unfortunately, for some businesses, things don’t work out quite so smoothly. If your backup doesn’t process correctly, you might be in a bind when it comes time to restore operations from your backed-up data. How does one go about troubleshooting a failed backup?

“It’s as if a thousand stores cried out in terror.” This was the case February when RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced plans to sell between 1,500 and 2,400 of its stores. For anybody with an affinity for technology, this announcement is sad news. Let’s honor the passing of an American institution by taking a look back at the Shack.