Choosing an Internet service

There are a number of factors to look at when choosing an Internet service for your small business. You need to make sure you can meet the requirements for up-time, speed, bandwidth and more.

So how do you find the Internet service that’s the perfect fit for your company and can handle not only your current needs but those in the future as your business grows? Let’s take a look.

Starting Out

When searching out an Internet service provider, consider the options.

A list of options once included dial-up. While there are still some customers using dial-up to access the Internet, it’s just not practical for businesses in 2015.

Below are common Internet access services that are out there:

• Cable and DSL — Cable is one of the most common Internet options, provided, as the name implies, from your cable company. DSL typically comes through a telecommunications company and has speed limitations, although it could be cheaper than cable.
• Satellite — Although sometimes the only high-speed option in rural areas, satellite service is slow compared to cable for business.
• Fixed Wireless — Wireless Internet can be fast, but you run the risk of interference from environmental/structural factors.
• Fiber Optic — While more costly, fiber optic service has benefits for businesses. Higher bandwidth is possible, giving you considerably faster download speeds. You wouldn’t lose your signal due to weather conditions, and the service is harder to hack.

Reviewing all the options, consider the cost of monthly service factors like speed/bandwidth.

Let’s say you have four employees whose job requires pretty much constant Internet use, nearly seven or eight hours each day.

Each employee makes $40,000 a year, which comes out to $20 per hour. Now let’s assume those employees each lose four hours a month due to loss productivity. At $80 lost productivity per employee, it means a loss for the business of $320 each month.

Marketing to Seniors - there is a difference!

  v  Advertising must relate to the experiential background of the mature market. A senior’s   lifetime of experiences is an important element in designing your offer. These experiences should be acknowledged if you hope to motivate the mature consumer to buy. Nostalgia and clichés can be utilized profitably. Instead of modern jargon and images, use language and references to fond memories with which seniors can identify.

  v  Personalize the selling/buying process as much as possible and build rapport. Be aware of the senior ideal, as opposed to the mass-market ideal. Seniors prefer to be regarded as individuals. Their buying history began at a time when merchants knew them personally. This is the last group of people in our society to enjoy personalized relationships with the people who provided them with goods and services. Unlike the generations that have followed, the mature market is not a product of an impersonal, mass-produced world.

  v Use examples instead of statistics. Seniors are unimpressed with numbers. 

  v  Resistance to change and dedication to tradition are important characteristics of the senior market. Avoid the suggestion of change and newness as much as possible. For example, market your products as simple to use, not disruptive to one’s lifestyle, something that makes life more comfortable and easy.

  v  Since their buying habits are conservative and they want to be in control of the buying decision process, the mature market is more likely to buy if you use powerful, specific “reasons why”. Help them make a decision do not hype or push the mature consumer into buying.

  v  Seniors like to receive mail. One of the major blunders direct mail marketers make is thinking that members of the mature market aren’t willing to read, or are unable to understand or comprehend. In fact, they are one of the most responsive groups to this marketing medium. They look forward to receiving mail and read it carefully. Seniors are willing to read longer letters, longer copy and they are the best mail-order buyers in terms of frequency, multiple purchases and higher dollar amounts. That’s why an informational approach can be so successful with seniors.

  v  Seniors respond positively to direct response television and radio. 

  

  v  The hot markets for the next 10 to 15 years for this segment of the population are service-oriented. They consist of travel, health and fitness, household services, family fun, convenience, information services, investment and financial services, safety and security. Grand parenting represents an enormous additional marketing opportunity.

  

  v  The mature, or senior, market is enormous and growing dramatically in size and affluence each year. In fact, today, baby boomers (who are quickly becoming seniors) are becoming “empty-nesters,” as their children leave home to start households of their own.

  

  vAs a result, there will be a 20% increase in the number of homes without children under 18 present, a jump from 35.8 million today to 45.7 million in the next 5 years. This represents a profound shift in needs, wants and preferences—as baby boomers continue to be the center of attention in the marketplace as empty-nesters, and as they cause the senior segment of the marketplace to swell even more.

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How can I find out what information exists about me online?

Current events may have you worrying about the NSA spying on you. But how about acquaintances or even non-governmental strangers on the Web? If you've been using the Internet for any length of time, there's probably lots of information floating around out there about you, from your and your friends' social networking accounts, messages boards, blogs and other sites you've registered for and then forgotten. In fact, even if you're some rare creature who has never even perused the Web (and if so, we're confused about how you're reading this article), there's likely still far more information about you online than you would have believed possible, and even the most alarmingly personal details can be had for free or for a price.

Privacy violation isn't just for people with public profiles on social sites or the fillers out of a gazillion online sweepstakes and surveys. We are all becoming increasingly aware that Web sites are tracking us with cookies so that they can target advertisements at us, among other things. But to a large extent, that information is anonymous and not searchable by Joe Blow, even though it might be connected over multiple affiliated sites that may know who you are. There are, however, companies that dredge up all sorts of information about you, under the guise of white pages or people finders or background checkers or market research services, and then make your information available online.

On these data collection sites, anyone can type in your name, e-mail, phone number or other identifying information (sometimes even your Social Security number) and find things like your date of birth, home address, previous residences, your home's valuation, the names of your relatives, your religion, your ethnicity, hobbies, places of employment, sites where you have accounts and a host of other scary details. Some provide links to things like your social networking profiles or your Amazon wish list. Many of these data brokers will display a good bit of information for free, and for a one-time, monthly or annual fee will provide lots of other information, including legal and criminal records.

Anyone -- including friends, enemies, prospective employers, law enforcement and lawyers investigating cases -- can find a host of information about you on these Web sites, some of it accurate and some not so accurate.

The simplest way to find out what's out there about you is to do searches for your name, e-mail addresses, and other identifying information. You can start with a search engine such as Google, but you are likely to get an overwhelming amount of information unconnected to you -- or people who share your name or screen name. A search engine can be useful to see the top hits that your contact information yields, just to check on your online reputation. But searching the data collection sites will likely prove far more fruitful -- and perhaps frightening.

What sorts of data collection sites are out there and why should I worry?

The World Wide Web is a very large place. Some information about you might be on what some refer to as the surface Web, made up of Web pages to which other sites link and that can, therefore, be found by search engines like Google. But unlike typical search engines, data brokers glean much of the information they collect from what some people call the deep Web. The deep Web consists of Web pages and searchable databases below the surface, many of which no one links to and are not indexed by search engines, but that actually make up the vast majority of Internet real estate. Some even make manual efforts to get official records on people. They can then aggregate your personal data into a detailed profile and display it online in one convenient location.

People-finder sites are often divided into two categories: primary and secondary. Primary sites gather your information from primary sources, such as public records from government entities, utilities and the like. Some sites that are considered primary include Intelius, LexisNexis, PeopleFinders, Spoke, WhitePages, BeenVerified, and DOBSearch. Secondary sites tend to get information from the primary sites and from other online locations, including other secondary sites and social networks. Some of these include Spokeo, Pipl, Radaris, Mylife, Wink, LookUp, PeekYou, Waatp, yasni.com, Yatedo and 123People. There is, of course, some overlap between these categories.

A couple of popular, user-friendly and sometimes eerily accurate people search sites are Spokeo and Pipl. Spokeo allows you to search by name, e-mail, phone, username or mailing address. Results will show up as blips on a map and you can drill down to your chosen person and get to a profile that displays tons of personal information, as well as a wide variety of social, blogging, shopping, photo, music and other sites at which the person has an account. Even though it can't get to anything you've marked private, it will let the searcher know that you have private accounts. And apparently once someone does a search, it will continue to search and aggregate any new information it finds associated with that information. Searching is free, but access to more detailed information is provided for a subscription fee.

Pipl allows you to search by name, e-mail, username, phone number and location, and is reportedly one of the more accurate of the people search sites. You can pick the person you are looking for out of the list of returned hits. It returns a few personal details along with links to other sites that contain possibly related information, including other people search sites, social networking profiles and photographs. Like Spokeo, it's very easy to use. Searches are free since they make revenue via ads and sponsored links.

These are only the tip of the iceberg, as there are hundreds of similar sites, with varying degrees of user-friendliness and accuracy, some affiliated with each other and some free agents.

The fact that entities are accumulating this type of data and making it readily available is obviously a big privacy concern. It makes things like stalking and identity theft easier. Plus, there's the issue of inaccurate data. There are many people with the same or similar names, or who have lived at the same addresses at different times. That and many other things can lead to the wrong information being connected to your profile on these sites. This may become a problem if you are interviewing for jobs or otherwise trying to make a good impression online. Many recruiters and hiring managers do online searches of people they are considering for jobs.

Most of the inaccurate information is probably innocuous, but it is not unknown for a site to do something like connecting a criminal record with the wrong person. Not to mention that these sites might make it easier for your professional associates to find that unflattering drunken vacation photo a friend posted of you. For reasons of online privacy, safety and reputation, you may want to stay abreast of what private information is out there and make an effort to clean house.

Are there any effective ways to remove this data?

There are a ton of these data aggregators; new ones pop up all the time and you can't expunge all your public records, so the short answer is maybe not entirely. But you might be able to put a nice dent in the amount that is easily available online.

The good news is that many of the data collectors have ways to opt out and have your data removed from their sites by making a request online, by fax or via physical mail. Some require things like your e-mail address for verification purposes or a copy of your driver's license or other state ID to prove your identity, although having to send them more personal information is disquieting. You can usually find opt-out instructions on their sites if they exist, but there are places that gather lists of data brokers and their opt-out methods, if available, including UnlistMy.Info and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

The bad news is some of the data might re-aggregate on the sites you had expunged, or pop up on other similar sites. Some people-finder sites may also have multiple listings for you due to name variations, misspellings, and other issues, so you may have to do multiple searches and put in multiple requests.

In the event that you've submitted an opt-out request to a data broker and it reposts or fails to remove your data, you can lodge a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). And you can contact other governmental or political groups to help lobby for policy changes, such as making some of the more egregious practices illegal.

If asking a large number of sites to remove your data seems like a Herculean task, and you don't want to wait for an act of Congress, there are growing numbers of sites that say they can delete your data from many of the data aggregators. Some of these providers include Reputation.com, Abine and MyID.com. Prices range from low monthly fees to hundreds of dollars, depending upon the company and level of service you require. Many of them have automated methods of finding and removing your data from the popular people search sites. Some will also undertake manual methods for requesting removal if they can't be achieved online, or advise you how to do it yourself, and alert you when your data pops up online again.

You might even find personal data on a regular Web site that isn't a data aggregator, and there likely won't be a formal removal process, but you may be able to contact the site owner and ask politely that your data be removed. Google itself has a form you can step through to request removal of content either from its search results or other Google properties, like Google Plus, YouTube or Picasa. There are no guarantees, but it never hurts to try.

www.tsiva.com

What Is the Difference: Viruses, Worms, Ransomware, Trojans, Bots, Malware, Spyware etc.?

If you’re a regular or even an occasional computer user, then you might’ve heard the terms like Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Bots, Malware, Spyware, etc. But honestly speaking, we consider all these to be a Virus, no matter, whatever be their type. Have you ever tried to acknowledge, what is the difference between these terms, although they are meant to harm your device, steal your data or spy on you, have you ever thought why they are named so differently. Basically, terms like Viruses, Trojans are all types of malicious software or simply ‘Malware’.

Now, the first and foremost question arises, where did these terms came from?

Clearly, they are not some out of the world aliens, in fact the real truth is that they were not even created with an intention to harm someone.

The history of malware attacks goes back to 1949, when John von Neumann, first developed the theoretical base for self-duplicating automation programs, but the technical implementation was not feasible at that time. The term ‘Computer Virus’ was first used by Professor Leonard M. Adleman in 1981, while in conversation with Fred Cohen.

The first computer virus named ‘Brain’ was coded by two brothers Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who were from Lahore, Pakistan. Brain was meant to infect storage media based on MS-DOS FAT file systems. It was originally designed to infect the IBM PC, it replaced the boot sector of its floppy disk with the virus. The virus program changed the disk label to ©Brain and the defected boot sectors displayed this message:

Welcome to the Dungeon (c) 1986 Basit & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today – Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these messages….$#@%$@!!

However, as you may presume, there was no evil intention behind this. Alvi brothers said in their interview with TIME magazine, they created the virus only to protect their medical software from piracy, aimed at copyright infringement acts.

Coming back to Malware, these are malicious software designed to harm a computer which may or may not be connected to a network. Malware only get in to action when there is a computer involved in the game otherwise the term Malware is of no use.

Malware are of the following types:

Worms: These programs have the ability to replicate themselves. Their sole objective is to increase their population and transfer themselves to another computers via the internet or through storage media, all the work is done like a top secret mission hiding their movement from the user. They don’t cause any harm to the computer, their replicating nature consumes hard drive space, thus slow down the machine. Some of the notable worms are, SQL Blaster which slowed the internet for a small period of time, Code Red took down almost 359,000 websites.

Viruses: They also have the ability to replicate themselves, but they do damage files on the computer they attack. Their main weakness lies in the fact, they can get into action only if they have the support of a host program, otherwise they’re just like a defeated warrior. They stick themselves to songs, videos, and executable files and travel all over the internet. W32.Sfc!mod, ABAP.Rivpas.A,Accept.3773 are some of the examples of Virus programs.

The Virus Gang:

File Viruses
Macro Viruses
Master Boot Record Viruses
Boot sector Viruses
Multi-Partite Viruses
Polymorphic Viruses
Stealth Viruses

Feel free to Google anyone of them if you like.

Trojans: Basically, Trojans are no Viruses, and are not meant to damage or delete files on your system. Their sole task is to provide to a backdoor gateway for malicious programs or malevolent users to enter your system and steal your valuable data without your knowledge and permission. JS.Debeski.Trojan is an example of Trojan.

They are named after the ‘Trojan Horse’ tale, in which Greeks entered the city of Troy with the help of a wooden horse which was meant to be a gift, but turned out to be a sweet poison, as depicted in the movie Troy.

The Trojan Gang:

Remote Access Trojans
Data Sending Trojans
Destructive Trojans
Proxy Trojans
FTP Trojans
Security Software Disabler Trojans
Denial-Of-Service Attack Trojans

Feel free to Google anyone of them if you like.

Adware: Adware are used to display advertisements in the programs. They generally come attached with software programs that are free to use as they are the only source of revenue for the developers of those software programs. Adware can’t be completely called as Malware as they have no intention to harm your machine, they only track what advertisements you’re more interested in, so as to display the relevant advertisements on your screens.

Spyware: These programs also come attached with other freeware software, track your browsing and other personal details and send it to a remote user. They can also facilitate installation of unwanted software from the internet. Unlike Adware, they work as a standalone program and do their operations silently.

Spam: You get very irritated when you receive unwanted emails from unknown senders, these are called Spams or junk mails. And the process of flooding the internet with the same message is called Spamming, is done for the purpose of commercial advertising. These junk mails may sometimes contain Viruses or Trojans that enter your system as soon as you open the mail.

Bots: Bots or Robots are automated processes that are designed to interact over the internet without the need of human interaction. They can be used for good and bad intentions. An evil minded person can create a malicious Bot that is capable of infecting the host on its own. After transmitting itself to the host device, a Bot creates a connection with central servers which act as the command centers for the infected hosts attached to that network, called Botnet.

Their skills include stealing passwords, logging keystrokes, analyzing network traffic, relay spam, launch DoS (Denial of Service) attacks and open back doors on infected hosts. These Bots can be seen as the advanced form of Worms, their infection rate and tactic is more effective than those of Worms. These malicious Bots are created after a lot of hard work done by their malignant creators.

Ransomware: These type of malware alter the normal operation of your machine, thus barring you to use it properly. Thereafter, these programs display warning messages asking for money to get your device back to normal working condition.

After reading all this, you might be thinking why people create Malware. Here are some reasons which may compel a coder to write malware codes:

§  Take control of a person’s computer for personal or professional reasons.

§  To get financial benefits.

§  To steel confidential data.

§  To prove their point regarding a security breach can be done on a system.

§  To take down an individual computer or a complete network.

and many more….

How can you protect your Computer :

§  Keep your system up to date.

§  Use genuine software.

§  Install an antivirus software and update it regularly.

§  Set-up a firewall, may it be custom as provided by antivirus software. Windows has an in-built firewall option in case you don’t want to use a custom firewall.

§  Never open unknown emails that generally reside in your Spam folder.

§  Never open unknown links, use online website safety checker tools if you’re not sure to open a website.

By taking these simple measures, you can effectively keep your machine free from Malware and other potential threats.

How to recover deleted files

Lost files can usually be recovered—if you discover the loss soon enough. But every time you write to the hard drive, you lower the likelihood of a successful recovery. So use that computer as little as possible until the files are recovered or you’ve given up hope.

Check the Recycle Bin

Windows stores “deleted” files here as a safety measure. You’ll find the icon in the upper-left corner of your screen. If you find the files there, select them, right-click them, and choose Restore.

Use your backup

If you back up your hard drive—or at least your libraries—on a regular basis, your files are probably preserved there. I don’t know which backup program you use, so I can’t tell you exactly how to search for and recover the files. It’s generally a pretty intuitive process.

Try file recovery software

Even a file that’s no longer in the Recycle Bin may still exist. Windows doesn’t overwrite the actual ones and zeros until another file needs the drive space. That’s why you should avoid using the PC as much as possible.

Hire a professional

In the business world data is critical. Although alternatives exist to recover your precious data, the best choice is to have a Managed Service Provider constantly monitoring your computers 24/7 to prevent loss to begin with. If your data has already been deleted, TSI can help with data recovery, call us today!

Don’t Let Bad Back-ups Bully Your Business When You’re Already Down

Like most business owners, I’m sure you know back-ups are an essential component of your network health. However, too many businesses don’t have all the facts about backup. Take a look at these back-up risks that we commonly find bullying local businesses. 

Back-ups are inconsistent.  Remember the 7th grade. You know, that awkward stage when everyone is discovering new developments with their bodies and bullying becomes more direct and hurtful. Come to think of it, everything seemed a bit inconsistent in Junior High. This type on inconsistency in your back-ups can be the difference between pushing through an attack or losing your gym shorts. Make sure your back-ups run every night to give you the most recent copies of your company data when you need them.

Your back-up is incomplete.  Back-ups should include all of the data for your business from applications to stored files. You can start by mapping out your business’s data. Work with a trusted IT professional to learn what information you have and where it is kept like on a server in your office or in a data center off-site. Inventory all of your data to make sure nothing is missed and make a clear map of the information you need to include in your regular back-ups.
Don’t forget things like your client profiles, personnel files for your employees, general company information and marketing materials.

Not enough data was stored.  Generally, there are specific pieces of data that companies are required to keep files on for a specific term like 3 years or 7 years. Most back-up systems are quite flexible regarding how much historical data they hold for recovery. Look at the point of recovery date and time for your business’s data.

Often times, off-site users are overlooked.  Think about every person in your office and outside your office that uses and stores company data. Your remote employees may need to have their laptops or tablets included in the back-up since they are always on the go. Do you have a strategy in place to capture these out of network files?

Servers were never put into the equation.  Your business is not just what is held on each computer, but all the data on your computers and servers. There is a plethora of data stored for your e-mail, applications, and even website or hosted data. All of this information must be backed up to be restored gracefully.

No one documented the recovery procedures.  Your business may suffer from an intrusion online, a break-in at the office or even a sabotage by an exemployee. Regardless of the disaster, your company will need copies of your business data to restore operations. Your back -ups are the only resource to get you up and running again, but what if no one knows how to do it? Make sure there is more than one contact in your business that knows just what to do when there is a breach.

It was setup and forgotten.  Test, test and test again. Make sure you don’t forget that your back-ups are running. Take time to test them each quarter to ensure all of your data is present and accounted for. It is not a question of IF your data will be compromised, but WHEN.

Our back-up is onsite.  Unfortunately, this is an elementary mistake. Back-ups that are onsite with the actual data they are backing up are just as vulnerable as the original data. For example, a fire, flood, power outage, equipment failure, or theft could leave you down with no recourse if your data and back-up are both in the same physical location. Shift your back-ups to an off-site location to avoid a total loss when disaster strikes. Losing data will always be a business risk. The question is, can you get your data back and how fast. Give us a call if you are interested in a custom solution for your business. We are here to help! 703 596-0022  www.tsiva.com

Cleaning up your Temporary Folder

As the name implies, the temp folder contains files that are only needed temporally. Unfortunately, these files don't always get deleted after their job is done, resulting in wasted drive space.

To open the temp folder, click Start or go to the Windows 8 Search charm, type %temp%, and select the folder that appears.

Once there, you can manually delete files and subfolders. But you probably can't delete all of them. Windows won't let you do away with those currently in use. That's fine. You don't want to delete those ones anyway.

In fact, you really don't want to delete any files created since the last time you booted your PC. So if you shut down Windows every night (and I mean shut it down, not sleep or hibernate), and boot clean every morning, you can safely delete any files in Temp not dated today.

Better yet, you can use an old-fashioned, DOS-style batch file to automatically clean out the folder every time you boot. Here's how:

Open Notepad, and type or paste these two lines:

rd %temp% /s /q
md %temp%

Save the file as %appdata%\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\startup\cleantemp.bat. This will create the batch file, cleantemp.bat, inside your Start menu's Startup submenu. Everything in that menu loads automatically when you boot.

Yes, Windows 8 doesn't have a Start menu. But it still has the folder. And the trick still works. Backward compatibility can be a wonderful thing.