How to keep your immune system (and productivity) high during this flu season

Tis the season to be sneezing — and the season for increased workplace absences.

One day you’re perfectly fine; the next, you’re achy all over and your head is throbbing. It’s the annual ick, or as your doctor calls it, influenza.

While it’s impossible to predict just how severe the flu season will be each year, an estimated 52,000 people in the United States have already tested positive for the flu since September 2014. Typically, flu season peaks at the end of December through mid-January.

Catching the flu isn’t just hard on you; it’s bad for business. Companies shell out more than $10 billion a year for illness-related hospitalizations and outpatient visits, and that’s in addition to the $87 billion the flu costs the economy annually.

Still, research shows a few simple precautions can keep you from getting — and spreading — the flu:

Get your flu shot. A yearly flu shot is the single best way to protect yourself from the flu. With up to 56 percent of companies offering flu shot clinics for employees and most major pharmacies offering discounted vaccinations, it’s easy to take preventive measures.

Wash your hands and devices. Here’s a sobering statistic: 39 percent of people don’t wash their hands after sneezing, coughing or blowing their noses. That means your chances of touching a contaminated area are high. Since cold and flu viruses can live up to 24 hours on hard surfaces (like desks, counters or your computer) you should give your space, your electronic devices and your hands a good cleaning at least once a day.

Go home — and stay there! No one wants to be the walking petri dish responsible for making the entire office sick. Flu viruses spread mainly by droplets made when people with the illness, cough, sneeze or talk. Furthermore, studies show that adults could be contagious one day before they experience symptoms and five to seven days after becoming sick.

Discover the ROI of relaxing. Have you ever worked through a cold only to find you’ve pushed yourself too far? One-third of people report feeling pressured to go into work when they’re sick, which in addition to spreading the virus wears you out. Take the time you need to recover and keep everyone else flu-free. You’ll find you’re more relaxed and productive if you let a little R&R support your company’s ROI.

 

 

*See Citrix Sharefile blog for the original article

Windows Server 2003 End of Life

On July 14, 2015, Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2003.

What does this mean for your business?
This means no more updates or patches from Microsoft, which can result a less secure and less stable infrastructure for your business.

• Maintenance Costs – running legacy servers is expensive. Intrusion detection systems, advanced firewalls and network segmentation are required to protect a now vulnerable Windows Server 2003 platform. You will also have increasing cost from maintaining aging hardware.

• No Updates – there will be no more updates to fix bugs, performance issues and security vulnerabilities. To put this into perspective, 2013 saw the release of 37 critical updates for Windows Server 2003/R2. Past the end of life date, these critical issues will remain unfixed leaving you open to cybersecurity dangers such as malicious attacks or electronic data loss.

• No Compliance – once support ends, your organization will almost certainly fail to meet industry wide compliance standards. Regulations such as HIPAA require regulated industries to run on supported platforms. The impact is twofold: Non-compliance could result in the loss of business, while high transaction fees and penalties from non-compliance could dramatically increase the cost of doing business.

• Compatibility Issues – new software and hardware devices will not be built to integrate with Windows Server 2003. Sticking with a legacy server means you will likely run into compatibility issues and may not be able to run new instances of software or communicate with the latest devices.

Visit Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 End of Support page for more information.

 

Contact a BizTech Solution Advisor at 419.539.6922 or via email to start your migration process to a more current server.

Make your smartphone battery last longer

We've all dealt with it... a smartphone battery that dies too soon. Here are some tips on how to conserve your smartphone battery. 

Dim the screen.
Screen lighting consumes a lot of battery power. Most phones have an automatic display brightness control, but you really should adjust brightness manually to save energy. Displays are often much brighter than necessary, and you can really add to the battery life by using only as much brightness as you need.

Turn off vibrate.
Unless you are waiting for a very important call, and you need your ringer on silent, there is no real need for it.

Turn off Bluetooth.
Only turn it on when you need to connect to other devices.

Only use 4G/LTE connections when you need to.
4G /LTE  uses quite a bit of power. If you can use a Wi-Fi hotspot, save energy (and maybe money) by turning your data connection off.

Limit use of GPS location services.
A lot of apps constantly checking your location can be a power drain.  You really only need it turned on for your Maps apps. Also, leaving your location services on is kind of a privacy issue...do your social media followers really need to know where you are?

Set your phone to manually refresh your email.
Instead of setting your email to refresh automatically every 15 minutes or whatever interval is normally set, check your email yourself.

Turn off apps running in background
It’s easy to end up with nearly every app you have running in the background. Not only do they consume power, but they can use enough memory to slow down your device. Turn them off when you are finished.

Need your smart devices integrated with your business?  

We can help! Call us at 419.539.6922.

Phishing and Vishing and Smishing ...oh my!

Phishing is the slang term for using email to get people to divulge their personal information so it can be used to steal their identity.  Con artists use phishing emails to literally 'fish' for information that they can use to illegally access bank accounts and open credit card accounts.  In the past this scam was conducted over the phone - that's where the "ph" in phishing comes from.  

Here are some questions to ask if you think you have received a phishing attack:

1. Do you know the sender of the email? If yes, still be cautious before clicking a link. If no, do not click any links.
2. Are there any attachments in the email? If so, is the attachment an executable (a file with the extension .exe, .bat, .com, .vbs, .reg, .msi, .pif, .pl, .php)? If so, do not click on the attachment. Even if the file does not contain one of the above mentioned extensions, be cautious about opening it. Contact the sender to verify its contents.
3. Does the email request personal information? If so, do not reply.
4. Does the email contain grammatical errors? If so, be suspicious.
5. If you have a relationship with the company, are they addressing you by name?
6. Have you checked the link? Mouse over the link and check the URL. Does it look legitimate or does it look like it will take you to a different Web site?

You can use these same questions if you receive a vishing or smishing attack....

Vishing scams work like this: You receive an email that appears to be from your bank and it informs you that you need to call a specific phone number to re-confirm your account information.  The number they provide is, of course, bogus and when you call them and give them your account information, they simply use it to access your accounts illegally and take your money.  So instead of using a fake website to 'fish for information' they are using a fake phone number to fish for your voice.  Thus:  vishing.

Smishing scams are when con artists once again try to contact you and try to trick you into giving them your personal information - but this time they initiate the contact using a text message on your phone. Originally text messages were know as 'Short Message Service' or SMS and it's from that that we get the sm in smishing. 

• In many cases, the smishing message will come from a '5000' number instead of displaying an actual phone number. This usually indicates the SMS message was sent via email to the cell phone, and not sent from another cell phone.  Do not respond to smishing messages.

Reduce Digital Eye-Strain with the 20-20-20 Rule

If you spend a good part of your day using the computer, the 20-20-20 rule could help reduce digital eye-strain.

What is digital eye-strain?

Well, often the computer screen is bright, and if you don’t blink your eyes as often as you should while working at the computer for long hours, you can have dry eyes sometimes even followed by redness.

To help you deal with this problem, the 20-20-20 rule suggests that after every 20 minutes, you should take a break for at least 20 seconds and look at objects that are 20 feet away.

Most of us are very busy at work, so we aren’t likely to remember to take a break every 20 minutes. Here are some options to remind you to take breaks!

Eye Defender - after a fixed interval, Eye Defender will auto-run a visual training for the eyes on the desktop screen. You are supposed to follow the pointer on the to help you relax your eyes.

WorkRave - reminds you to take breaks at regular intervals to prevent computer related stress (including eyestrain). This one offers two kinds of breaks – micro-breaks, which are short and meant to relax your eyes, and rest-breaks, which are a little longer and give you time to walk or stretch. Workrave also has a built-in wizard that demonstrates the various types of stretching exercises that you can do during these breaks. 

F.lux - reduces eye strain by adjusting your computer screen light to mimic the sun. By using your geographical location, the software will automatically adjust as the sun rises and sets, allowing your eyes to relax as well as reduce your exposure to blue light – a risk factor for the onset of age-related macular degeneration

Google chrome add-on - that reminds you to take a break every 20 minutes 

Eye gymnastics – If you don’t want to download an application, or your computer restrictions won’t allow it, check out protectyourvision.org to start a timer that will remind you to rest your eyes every 20 minutes, and even has an eye gymnastics function to relax and rest your tired eyes.

The best keyboard shortcut you probably aren't using

Have you ever scrolled and scrolled through, a word document, excel file, email inbox or a webpage looking for a particular word or entry? Nevermore!

Use the “Find” shortcut instead: CTRL+F. When you have a window open and want to find something, press CTRL+F and a “Find” window appears. Now, type part or all of a word or number that you are looking for, and press Enter. The window will automatically scroll to the keyword you entered. Even better- as you are typing, it will find the word and highlight it! 

*Note- if you do this in Outlook, CTRL+F will open a window to forward the email in your preview screen, not open a find window.

Get your Start menu back in Windows 8

Do you have a Windows 8 computer? Do you miss the ‘start’ menu? You can get it back!

1.  In the Windows 8 Desktop, launch Windows Explorer, click the View tab on the toolbar, and check the box next to "Hidden items." That will display folders and files that are normally hidden from view.

2.  Right-click the taskbar and select Toolbars, then click New Toolbar.

3.  From the screen that appears, navigate to Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu and select it. That will place a Start Menu toolbar on the far right of the taskbar. 

4.  You can now use the Start Menu by clicking the double-headed arrow. It works the same as previous versions of Windows.

Have you heard of the Heartbleed bug?

Heartbleed is the name of a major security vulnerability that may affect nearly two-thirds of websites online. It’s a severe situation potentially exposing your login information—your username and password—and other sensitive information about you.

What is Heartbleed?
It is important to understand that Heartbleed is not a virus, but rather a mistake written into OpenSSL—a security standard encrypting communications between you, the user, and the servers provided by a majority of online services. The mistake makes it possible for hackers to extract data from massive databases containing user names, passwords and other sensitive information.

What can you do?
Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about the bug itself. The only way to fix this problem is for the vulnerable sites to update OpenSSL and reissue their security certificates.

If possible, try to avoid connecting to vulnerable sites and services until they notify you of a fix. Do not change your passwords on your favorite sites until they notify you that they have fixed the bug. If and when you do get confirmation, update your passwords as usual, but make sure they are strong.

You can test the vulnerability of specific websites here: http://tif.mcafee.com/heartbleedtest.

Now is a really good time to make sure ALL of your passwords for all sites are strong, especially the ones for your financial institutions, or websites where you have accounts that maintain credit card information, client records, or proprietary or confidential intellectual property.

Read more about the Heartbleed Bug

Are you using strong passwords?

If you answered ‘No’ or ‘I’m not sure,’ check out this useful password generator tool we found. 

PASSWORD Boy is a free password generator. It allows you to create random passwords that are highly secure and extremely difficult to guess due to an optional combination of lower and upper case letters, numbers and symbols.  Their website allows you to download the utility to your desktop, or you can use the online version.  This password tool can produce all 3 types of “strong” passwords (Pass Phrase, Pronounceable/Phonetic, and Random/Strong).

http://www.passwordboy.com/password-generator.html

This is the end of Windows XP

Support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014.
If you have PCs running XP, you will no longer receive software updates from Windows Update. This ends all security updates, hotfixes, driver updates and support. Running Windows XP in your environment after the end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as viruses, spyware, and other malicious software which can steal your business information. 

April 8, 2014 has come and gone, and so has your support for XP. You have three options:
1. Replace your old XP machines with PCs with newer operating systems
2. Disconnect your XP computers from your business network and internet
3. Keep your XP machines connected and hope for the best

You may be thinking, “But, Windows XP works great for us and we have no hardware issues with our computers, so why should we switch?"

Think about this… On April 8, 2014, Microsoft released the last batch of XP patches and explanations of what they fix. A few days after that, virus writers have deconstructed these patches and discovered the underlying security holes. Then, they release their viruses, ransomware, adware, etc. The next day, thousands of computers are infected by the malware, and even if it is removed and all normal precautions are taken, this virus will infect the computers again and again while the Windows XP PC is being used to access the internet.

Organizations that continue to retain a Windows XP environment not only are leaving themselves exposed to security risks and support challenges but also are wasting budget dollars that would be better used in modernizing their IT investments. Many options exist for businesses considering moving to newer PC operating systems. To understand the best options for your organization, you need a Microsoft Partner who will assess your business needs. 

Contact BizTech for more information at 419.539.6922 or go to www.gobiztech.com.