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Do you look at your inbox and want to cry? If so, you’re not alone. According to widely cited Radicati Group research, the average person gets 120 business emails every day. If you don’t control your emails, you could end up losing the time you could be writing a proposal or meeting with a client.  People spend at least 14 percent of their workday on email alone. A recent Harris Poll found that only 45 percent of our workdays are spent on actual work. If you’re looking for the solution to your email woes, start with some of Silicon Valley greats. DELEGATE If you want to watch a corporate team start to sweat, see what happens when they get a “?” email from Jeff Bezos. Business Insider reports that the notoriously easy-to-contact Amazon CEO will forward customer complaints to his people and add only a question mark to the original query. Getting that dreaded mark is a little like getting the black spot from Blind Pew the pirate. You know that a day of reckoning is at hand. Follow ...

As hacking hit the headlines in the last few years — most recently “WannaCry” which targeted businesses both large and small — insurance policies protecting businesses against damages and lawsuits have become a very lucrative business indeed. Your company may already have cyber insurance, and that’s a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that the insurance will cover you no matter what. When you buy a car, you get the warranty. In order to keep that warranty valid, you have to perform regular maintenance at regularly scheduled times. If you neglect the car, and anything fails, the warranty won’t cover it. You didn’t do your job, and the warranty only covers cars that have been taken care of. Cyber insurance works the same way. If your company’s IT team isn’t keeping systems patched and up to date, practicing active measures to prevent ransomware and other cybercrime attacks, and backing everything up in duplicate, it’s a lot like neglecting to maintain that car. So, when something b...

How To Keep Your Employees From Leaking Confidential Information   Back in 2014, Code Spaces offered tools for source code management, but they didn’t have solid control over sensitive information — including their backups. One cyber-attack later, and Code Spaces was out of business. The attacker had used some standard techniques, but the most effective was getting an unwitting Code Space employee to help — likely via a phishing attack. When it comes to cyber crime that targets businesses, employees are the largest risks. Sure, your IT guys and gals are trained to recognize phishing attempts, odd websites, and other things that just don’t seem right. Can you say the same thing about the people in reception, or the folks over in sales? Sure, those employees might know that clicking on links or opening attachments in strange emails can cause issues. Though things have become pretty sophisticated; cyber criminals can make it look like someone in your office is sending the e...

Use This 9-Step Checklist To Ensure Your Data Is Safe, Secure And Recoverable   Summer is upon us, time for a stroll in the park, a game of softball, maybe even a few rounds of golf. Yet how could you possibly relax if some random bit of malware, software glitch or cyber-attack catches you off guard just as you’re walking out the door? A well-designed secure computer network gives you the confidence that “all systems are go,” whether you’re having fun in the sun, or just getting things done with your team. Here’s a quick nine-step checklist we use to ensure that a company’s computer network, and the data for that business, is safe and secure from disruption, if not absolute devastation: A written recovery plan. Simply thinking through what needs to happen when things go south, and documenting it all in advance, can go a long way toward getting your network back up and running quickly if it gets hacked, impacted by natural disaster or compromised by human error. ...

7 Ways To Dodge A Data Disaster You stride into the office early one morning and start checking e-mail… A note pops up that gets your attention: “Your files have been encrypted. Send $5,000 within five days or they will all be destroyed.” Your phone rings. It’s Bob from accounting, and he’s having the same problem. All files across your entire network have been encrypted. You contact the local police. They suggest you call the FBI. The FBI says they can’t help you. What do you do next? You pay the five grand, desperately hoping you’ll get your data back, or… You calmly call your IT pro, who says, “No problem, your backups are all current. No files were lost. Everything will be restored by noon, if not sooner.” If your answer is “b,” you sigh of relief and get back to work as your backup plan kicks in… Ransomware attacks are more common than ever, especially for smaller companies. That’s because small companies make easy targets for hackers. The average small...