Social media continues to increase in its popularity, but so does the workings of hackers. Hackers love finding their way into social media accounts. Hackers can have an impact on businesses because many businesses are actively using social media to connect with their customers and potential customers. When a business’s social media account is compromised, this could eventually lead to damage to a company’s brand and reputation.

Thankfully, there are various things your business can do to make sure you are armed with the best against a cyber criminal. What can you do to make sure your business is not at risk of having its social media account compromised?

Knowledge Is Power

One of the best ways to avoid someone gaining unwanted access to your business’s social media accounts, you should make sure your customers are educated on the dangers of cyber crimes. You can send an e-mail, create a handbook, or have a seminar. Whatever method you choose, you should make sure your employees are armed with enough information that can help you prevent your business social media accounts from being hacked.

Your Choice Of Passwords

We encourage you to use strong passwords that will be difficult for anyone else to figure out. Use capital letters, special characters, numbers, etc. When you decide on a password for one account, do not use that same password for every account you have because if someone does actually gain access to that one password, all of your accounts will be accessed. After using a certain password for a few months, we encourage you to change that password.

Interacting with your customers is critical to the overall success of your business. Unfortunately, sometimes those customers can have malicious intent when it comes to their comments. Avoid clicking links in the comment section or your inbox that seem suspicious. If one of those links is clicked by an employee, this can lead to personal information being hacked.

There are various things you can do to make sure your business is protected online and offline. What steps will you take this year to avoid being attacked by cybercriminals? Contact us today for more computer tips and advice.

If you like to keep current with internet trends, you may already know that the data from 2017 has uncovered some interesting developments in the data usage for users in the United States. According to Statistica, this isn’t just a U.S. trend. By the year 2021, global mobile data traffic is projected to go through the roof.

And those aren’t the only numbers on the way up. You have no doubt also heard rumblings about the rise of demand for the decentralized web. Since decentralization is on the rise, it’s more important than ever for everyday users to understand the decentralized web.

Definition of Decentralization 

The term ‘Decentralized Web’ is being used to refer to a series of technologies that replace or augment current communication protocols, networks, and services and distribute them in a way that is robust against single-actor control or censorship (David Lee King, quoting Jason Griffey).

In other words, the decentralized web breaks content hosting into smaller chunks and spreads them out. Rather than sinking everything into a few massive networks, the decentralized web parcels out data. In many circles, decentralization is seen as a a pushback against the status quo and a process by which Americans can preserve both free speech and Net Neutrality.

Rise of Decentralization

In order to understand the rise of decentralization, you must first recognize that the structure is a pushback against the consolidation of internet hosting by a few powerful companies.

The core idea of decentralisation is that the operation of a service is not blindly trusted to any single omnipotent company. Instead, responsibility for the service is shared: perhaps by running across multiple federated servers, or perhaps running across client side apps in an entirely “distributed” peer-to-peer model (TechCrunch).

The need for decentralization is obvious. Whether or not the average user recognizes that fact is less certain.

For more information check out Fergus O’Sullivan’s comprehensive piece on net neutrality here.

Whether you’re writing an email, a blog, or a message to customers, you want to make sure that the text is not just grammatically correct, but also readable. Below, we’ll explain how you can use a built-in Microsoft Word feature to check this for you.

What

Microsoft Word offers readability statistics for its users. With it, you can see what you score for the following metrics:

• Sentences per paragraph
• Words per sentence
• Characters per word
• Flesch Reading Ease
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
• % passive sentences
• Together, these metrics can give you insight into how readable your text is.

Why

While you don’t want to dumb down your content too much, marketers and sales representatives are usually encouraged to aim for relatively low scores in the metrics above. Basically, you want to make sure your content is accessible for all users, even those who don’t have the broadest of vocabularies.

By checking these metrics and making the necessary adjustments, you can make your text more down-to-earth and approachable. Your message will be easier to understand for all readers.

How

Although there are websites that also provide this feature, there’s no need to sign up for them if you already have Microsoft Word. Just open an existing file or copy and paste your content in a new one.

Then, go to the Review tab up top, and click Spelling & Grammar.

If the readability statistics don’t show, then click File, then Options, then Proofing, and check “Show readability statistics.” You’ll now have access to these metrics whenever you type something in Word.

Introducing Office 2019: Microsoft recently announced their intention to release a new version of their Office software package.  Dubbed “Office 2019”, it will be made available as soon as the middle of 2018.

This particular package aims at office users who want a powerful package of the latest and greatest office suite tools, but don’t necessarily care for the ever-updating subscription service system of Office 365, and/or don’t want their apps and services in the cloud.

The new version will include their standard app line of Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Word, along with server versions of SharePoint, Skype for Business and Microsoft Exchange.

The last time Microsoft came out with a new office suite of tools was back in late 2015 with their Office 2016 version, so companies should expect a significant amount of new features and enhancements.

New Security Features 

With the recent revelation from both Experian and Yahoo! of their serious data breaches, it comes as no surprise that security and data safety is always on the minds of both users and technology companies.  With this in mind, Microsoft promises their new Office 2019 will have server enhancements in the areas of security, IT manageability and usability.

Increased Collaboration

More and more, a variety of documents require increasing collaboration between team members.  In light of this, Microsoft added features to streamline these types of processes.  One such feature, inking, promises to make it easier for team members to highlight changes made by hand.  In addition, when performing such tasks on mobile devices, they should note more ease of use features like pressure sensitivity and tilt effects.

Microsoft also plans to add more formulas and charts to Excel, improving the ability to analyze data, and PowerPoint will be getting some new animation features.

Want to know more about Office 2019?  Contact us!