Cybersecurity for Small Business

  Passwords simply aren't secure enough! Passwords are a major part of our lives, and we all have far more of them than we care to think about. They are the keys to our “electronic” locks.  The trouble is, our keys are so easy to copy or guess, we might as well not have the locks!  U nfortunately, there isn't any continuity regarding criteria for passwords from one site to the next. Many require an uppercase character or a lowercase character or must have a number or must have a special character AND cannot be a password you have chosen in the past 45 years! As a result of having so many sites where we need passwords, we try to make it easy for us to remember them.  However, if it’s easy for us to remember, it’s easy for the bad guys to guess.  Did you know that the most common passwords are:  Password, Password123, admin, welcome, letmein, QWERTY, QWERTY1234, 123456 and 123123? Not smart! The trick is to come up with a way that is easy ...

As small business owners, we wear many hats in order to grow and protect our businesses.  In today’s Digital Age, we must wear one more; we are the Protector of our business from the threat of Cyber Intrusion, Data Theft, and Financial Embezzlement. But how can we protect our business when big businesses with deep pockets can barely protect themselves?  We read practically every week another well-known large corporation admit they were “hacked” and millions of customer records have become compromised.  Closer to home, we hear how thousands surrender to “digital pirates” via RANSOMware, where your PC and data are held at ransom by data encryption until you pay the bounty. Keep your head up!  There are things we can do to protect our businesses, and these proactive defenses won’t break the bank. First, EDUCATE yourself and your employees who have access to business computers.  Passwords should be at least fourteen characters long, never shared and never written do...

            During this crazy time, people have been looking for more ways to connect for various things like work, school, or just simply wanting to talk with a group of friends or family. Because of this, Zoom has quickly risen in popularity. As most people know, Zoom is a service that allows you to setup meetings and video conferences with larger groups of people. It is a very useful service, but recently, there have been some growing concerns.             The main concern that has been going around is hackers or strangers getting into other people’s zoom meetings and spamming various vulgar phrases and slang. This has caused many companies and schools to stop using the video meeting app regarding their security. This along with calls being routed through China only adds to the concerns that people have with the app. Zoom has recently stated that they are going to be wo...

Do you know your WIFI? By The Network Team of XLN SYSTEMS During the next few weeks as a huge number of us are working at home, we should know if our home networks can handle the capacity and the security we are accustomed to from our business offices.             To start, ask yourself if you are getting the true internet speeds that you are paying for. It is very common for households to find out that they are getting slower speeds than what they are initially paying for. How is this possible?   There are several technical reasons however, simply put, with more people working from home there is going to be more internet traffic. This fact alone is a big factor in how fast your speed will be during certain times of the day.   Finally, if you are getting 80% speed or higher this is considered ‘adequate/normal’. To check your actual speed, go to Speedtest.net      -  ...