Our nation’s critical infrastructure, including both private and public sector networks, are targeted by adversaries. American companies are targeted for trade secrets and other sensitive corporate data, and universities for their cutting-edge research and development. Citizens are targeted by fraudsters and identity thieves, and children are targeted by online predators. –FBI

What Is Ransomware?
The simple answer to defining ransomware is that it is a virus that takes hold of your computer and demands payment to a criminal organization to get the password that will release the virus. This affects personal and corporate computers, and it has become a big business for the criminal world. It is estimated that cyber-ransoms will become a billion dollar industry in 2016, and that only includes the paid ransoms. That figure does not include the costs for repairing the computers or recovering the information.
Once ransomware is downloaded, you will get a message telling you that your computer has been locked and you will be told that you need to take some kind of action to pay the ransom. The consequences of not paying include having all of your data erased, or permanently locking up your computer.
The more complicated description of ransomware is that it preys on your more vulnerable software applications and encrypts your computer. Normally, encryption is used to protect your data. But in this case, it locks you out of your computer and requires a password that only the criminal knows. When you pay the ransom, you hope to get the password that will open up your system. In some cases, the password is not provided after the ransom has been paid.

The FBI doesn’t support paying a ransom in response to a ransomware attack. Paying a ransom doesn’t guarantee an organization that it will get its data back—there have been cases where organizations never got a decryption key after having paid the ransom. Paying a ransom not only emboldens current cyber criminals to target more organizations, it also offers an incentive for other criminals to get involved in this type of illegal activity. And by paying a ransom, an organization might inadvertently be funding other illicit activity associated with criminals.-FBIHow do you get Ransomware?
In corporate settings, ransomware usually arrives in an employee’s email account as what looks like a safe and secure attachment. But when the attachment is open, the ransomware is loaded and it may start to move its way through the rest of the network.
In any setting, email is the most common way that ransomware gets loaded onto a computer. The second most common way is clicking on an infected website and having it loaded directly onto your computer. As frustrating as these can be, these delivery methods give us clues on how to combat these attacks.

Avoiding Ransomware
Always use a reputable  antivirus software vendor and can scan your received emails and warn you against websites that are infected. Never use a free AV. You should always have good antivirus operating on your computer, and you should keep your antivirus updated constantly. Corporate IT directors should keep their firewall software up to date, and have a policy in place that prohibits employees from opening email attachments.
Never open an email attachment from a sender you do not recognize. Many of these criminals try to disguise their emails as being from legitimate banks or communications providers, but you should never fall for it. One way to tell if an email is from your bank is to hover your mouse pointer over any link in the email and read the associated link at the bottom of the browser. If the link does not come from your bank, then the email is a phishing email that is looking for victims.

Make sure you look over the data in the email carefully. If you are not familiar with the vendor or the prospective client, call the phone number listed in the email. Here is an example of a fraudulent company that looks legitimate. If you look closely, you can see that there are (3) s’ in the email address dave@bluegrassscontracting.com. This is easy to miss.

Corporate and personal users should always have their computers backed-up to a resource that is not online. For example, personal users can get a large capacity USB drive and back their computers up to that drive every Friday. Corporate users can utilize offline back-up systems that are constantly updated with any changes to the network in case of an attack.

What To Do If You Have Been Attacked

If you open an attachment in your corporate email account and you get the ransomware warning page, then contact your manager immediately. If your manager is not available, then contact the IT manager directly and alert the trusted IT group to the problem.
If you get ransomware on your personal computer, then you should call a computer support professional immediately. Do not try to take care of the problem yourself because it could become worse.

Ransomware is just one of the growing threats that honest Internet users face every day. By practicing safe computer use habits, you can reduce your chances of getting attacked and have yourself covered in case you need to have your hard drive reloaded.

The post What You Need to Know About Ransomware appeared first on info.globalit.com.

How Customer Reviews Affect Your Organic Rankings

In addition to providing your business with valuable feedback, customer reviews will improve your ranking online. Businesses gain positive exposure online with consistent customer reviews while effectively boosting rankings through sites like Google+ and other online directories.

Google+
Reviews left on Google+ Local Pages help other potential customers in the area quickly refer to highly-rated businesses. With Google+, slow and steady is the key. Customer reviews that appear at a natural pace are less likely to be automatically removed and result in a higher organic ranking.

Third-party directories, like Yelp and TripAdvisor, are included in Google’s search for information about your business. Accumulating reviews in third-party directories will contribute to an increase in your organic ranking.

Top 5 Directories for Reviews
Among the vast number of directories available online, five, in particular, stand out as most beneficial when trying to improve your business’s organic ranking.

1. Google+
   Google+ is being used by more businesses than ever to connect with their audience and stay a part of industry conversation. With over 540 million monthly active users, businesses can count on their interactions with customers on Google+ to improve organic rankings for their site.
2. Yelp
   As one of the leading third-party review sites, Yelp reels in more than 47 million local reviews and 117 million unique visitors each quarter. Since it has become one of the leading review sites on the internet, businesses improve their chance of higher rankings when customer reviews are listed on Yelp.
3. YellowPages
   Although their big yellow books are no longer a popular resource, YellowPages.com remains alive and well as a source of information online. Including your business listing in the YellowPages will make your information available to over 3 million visitors monthly.
4. Superpages
   Averaging over 3.5 million page views per day, Superpages is another great listing option for businesses that want to improve organic search rankings. Since the website makes it easy for mobile users to peruse its pages, Superpages helps businesses reach more customers.
5. Yahoo
   As one of Google’s strongest competitors, Yahoo is an attractive option for businesses that want to improve their rankings. Each week, Yahoo earns over 2.2 million visitors, nearly half of which are search-related.

Valid Reviews are Essential
In order to improve your business’ organic rankings with integrity, valid reviews are essential. The use of fake reviews in an online forum or directory will only serve to hurt your business’ image. Fake reviews are:

• Easy to Spot
  Consumers these days are savvy. The increased amount of time spent online daily has increased general consumer awareness of red flags, allowing fake online content to be spotted easily. Some tell-tale signs of a fake review include a focus on only good qualities of a company or product, multiple raving reviews around a certain date, or a salesman-like tone to the review.

• On Their Way Out
  With major search engines like Google and Yahoo taking a decided stance against black hat SEO practices, fake reviews continue to be a source of frustration provoking an active attempt to eliminate them. There will soon be (if not already) strict consequences in search results for businesses that publish fake reviews.

• Caught By Directories
  As the computing world transforms to include better, more intuitive technology, it’s becoming easier for directories to effectively weed out fake reviews. Directories are better able to spot red flags, like reviews originating from the same IP address or an unnatural burst of reviews all at once, and respond accordingly. Businesses are at risk of everything from removed listings to complete bans from service.

• Harmful to the Trust-Building Process
  Improving your business’ organic rankings is an important part of growing your company and must be treated with integrity. Publishing fake reviews about your services or products is bound to get uncovered at some point. When it does, what you’ve truly lost is the ability to keep your customers’ trust.

Earn Customer Reviews the Right Way
Receiving a steady flow of customer reviews is your business’s reward for providing unrivaled service. Instead of soliciting reviews with incentives, be consistent with your business listings and make reviews easy for your customers.

• Make Reviews Easy
  It’s much easier to earn a customer’s review of your business when the process is simple, takes only a few seconds, and is outlined clearly. You’re more likely to gain a customer review if you send instructions in an email, list instructions on your website, or send a sample review that your customer can quickly edit and add to the listing of their choice.

When requesting a review, be sure to ask questions about your customer’s needs, how your business met their needs and their satisfaction level with your company.

• Be Consistent
  To improve your organic rankings, maintain a professional online presence, and reduce confusion about your company. It’s essential to be consistent. When entering information into business listings online, first develop a master copy with your company’s contact, website, and profile information.

Use this information on each one of your business listings to prevent changes in capitalization or punctuation. Before a listing goes live, re-check your draft to ensure there are no typos and your site’s link is working properly. Inconsistency can damage your credibility with search engines.

Local Marketing Prevails
As far as Google is concerned, local marketing is a large part of the future of search. In fact, Google’s push for an emphasis on local marketing is allowing businesses the opportunity to reach out to the customer base right in their backyard. Google’s ongoing changes to its search algorithm continually favor local search and local businesses.

Reports indicated that as many as half of all searches on Google are made with the intent to find something local. Naturally, this number increases significantly for mobile users who are in need of information on the go. As a result, local marketing strategies are becoming more defined as businesses try to tap into their local audience.

Tips, Insights, and Trends for Local Marketing
Long before Google began to put emphasis on local search, local SEOs knew that the importance of the local search for businesses would bloom. One of the top tips for businesses includes building a complete and accurate listings presence.

Seasoned online marketing professionals are predicting increased use of location-based marketing platforms, such as Google Places and Google+ Local, and will place further emphasis on the importance of building the presence of a listing.

Statistics report that approximately 91% of adult mobile phone users keep their phone within arm’s reach. With apps like Google Wallet and PayPal, virtual commerce is becoming seamless, allowing consumers to make instant purchase decisions from the convenience of their mobile device.

Improving your business’s organic search ranking through customer reviews is a great way to increase your visibility online while expanding your reach to new customers. In order to be effective, your business’ marketing campaign needs to include a plan to obtain customer reviews online while maintaining the presence of a consistent listing. If you need help improving your organic search rankings, contact GLOBAL IT for more information at (877) 822-5565.

The post Increase Your Ranking With Customer Reviews appeared first on info.globalit.com.

2. Navigate to this page, https://globalit.com/web-mail and enter the e-mail address provided to you by the Global IT support team

3. Now you will see a page with a log in box like the one bellow

• You will need to enter your username, this is the entire e-mail address provided to you by the Global IT support team

The post Global IT Webmail – User Access Instructions appeared first on info.globalit.com.

2.    Enter the IP KVM URL provided to you by the Global IT support team.

3.    Click on “Continue to this website …” Twice

4.    Click on “Continue” on “Security Warning” pop-up window

5.    Check box next to “I accept the risk …” and click on “Run”

6.    You will see the Client open.

*If there is already a profile for the connection, skip to step 11

7.    To create a new profile, click on “Connection” and then “New Profile”

8.    You will see the “Add Connection” pop-up window

9.    Enter the following information: Description: IPKVM (Or name of your choosing); IP Address: IP KVM Address provided by Global IT Support and click on “OK”

10.    You will now see the newly create profile

11.    Right click on the profile and click “New Connection”

12.    Enter the provided Username and Password in the “New Connection” Pop-up window and click “OK”

13.    You will now see a list of connections under the profile.

14.    Right click the device you wish to access and click on “New Connection”

15.    After the connection has been established, you will now see the display to the connected device and you will be able to interact with it using your keyboard and mouse.

16.    When you are finished accessing your device, DO NOT just close the window. This will keep the connection locked and you will not be able to access it again.

17.    To close out the connection properly, right click on the selected device and click “Disconnect”

18.    To terminate your session properly, right click on the profile and click “Disconnect”

19.    Now close out the application by clicking on “Connection” in the top left and click on “Exit”

20.    Click “Yes” on the “Confirm action” pop-up window

The post Global IT IP KVM – User Access Instructions appeared first on info.globalit.com.

This question is generally industry specific, so if you are in a corporate environment where you regularly wear professional attire, we suggest a business professional picture. If you decide to go with business casual, think flattering and wear colors that make you look healthy, shapes (opencollar, v-necks, business jackets) that cut a professional figure, and make sure everything is ironed.

Here are some suggestions to consider.

1. Always use a photo that can be used multiple times, for example LinkedIn profiles with a photo are seven times more likely to be viewed than ones without a photo.

2. Use a recent photo of yourself. If people are surprised when they meet you in person because you look nothing like your picture, they may wonder why you posted such a misleading photo.

3. You should be the only subject in the photo. It’s your professional profile picture, so it should focus on you. This means no inanimate objects, group shots, or photos of you with your significant other, child, or pets.

4. Your face should be in focus. The background can be slightly out of focus, but your features need to be sharp, not blurred. If there are darker shadows in the background, make sure they aren’t obscuring your face.

5. Wear appropriate professional or business casual attire. Appear as you usually would in a business situation, this may also mean that you are freshly shaven or wearing [business appropriate] makeup and jewelry. Never post a photo of yourself at the beach, in a night club, or even running a marathon.

6. Keep your head straight and upright. Women, in particular, tend to tilt their heads in photos, which makes them look less self-assured. Again, this is your professional photo, so you need to look confident and capable in it.

7. Use a pleasant facial expression. You need to look like someone others will want to work with. This means looking pleasant and confident and not having a “too serious” look on your face. Photos should express confidence, edgy and full of life and not sad, angry, or a vacant stare. Also, stick to color rather than black and white shots.”

8. Don’t use your company’s product or logo as a photo. People want to connect with you as an individual, so avoid displaying your company’s logo — unless it’s your company’s page.

The post Selecting The Right Business Profile Picture appeared first on info.globalit.com.

Modern businesses – of all sizes – are becoming increasingly vulnerable to security breaches even as they enable their workforces with state-of-the-art technologies.

• Cyber attacks are up 100% since 2010.

• Cyber attacks can be costly. The average time to resolve a cyber attack is 24 days at an average cost of $591,780, or nearly $25,000 per day.

• The most costly cyber-crimes are caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen or hijacked devices, and malevolent insiders.

Threat 1: Data Loss & Leakage

• Unintentional distribution
  of sensitive data:
  • financial
  • employee
  • customer data
  • intellectual property
• Due to:
  • loss or theft of laptops or mobile phones.
  • electronic transmissions, such as unencrypted emails, IM, webmail and file transfer tools, hacking, virus

   

Threat 2: Denial of Service Attacks

• DoS attacks flood a network with more traffic than it can handle, consuming bandwidth or server resources.
• Distributed DOS attacks use multiple systems to launch the offensive, making them difficult to shut down.
• DDOS attacks are growing in size – to more than 50GBps in 2012 ‒ and last more than 30 hours, according to data from Prolexic.

Threat 3: Malware

• Malicious software (aka malware) is unwanted software installed without consent.
• Examples include:
  • viruses
  • worms
  • Trojan horses
  • spyware
  • Botnets, Zombie

   

Threat 4: Phishing/Social Engineering

• Cyber criminals use phishing and “social engineering” schemes to trick people into sharing personal information, such as:
  • account information
  • credit card data
  • social security numbers
  • passwords
• Phishing  and social engineering are done typically with links to fill-in forms from:
  • e-mails
  • Websites
  • social media

Threat 5: Human Error/Malevolence

• More than 50% of security problems are due to employees or IT staff inadvertently:
  • failing to follow procedure
  • being careless
  • lacking expertise
• Insiders or former insiders, such as disgruntled or malicious employees or contractors can be dangerous attackers because they know the organization’s:
  • security codes  and measures
  • computers and applications
  • actions that will cause the most damage

   

Understanding Data-Centric Security

Before you even think about technology, you need to determine who will be responsible for security. The development and communication of your security strategy is critical.

• Understand present, potential and future risks

• • Employee vulnerabilities
  • Internet, cloud vulnerabilities
  • LAN vulnerabilities
  • Premises security

• Implement
  • Minimum security codes and measures
  • Define business and personal computer and applications use
  • Define consequences for violating company security policies
  • Educate users

The post Identifying IT Security Threats appeared first on info.globalit.com.

Most users will just use steps 1 through 5. Step 6 is for advanced configuration, should only be used by advanced users.

1. Type: https://yourdomainname.com:2083 into your preferred Internet browser.
2. Enter your Control Panel username into the Username field.
3. Enter your password into the Password field.
4. Click Log in.

To enable SpamAssassin:

• Simply click the Enable SpamAssassin button on the SpamAssassin home screen.

This function automatically deletes messages that meet or exceed the score limit. Activate this function by clicking the Auto-Delete Spam button under the Filters heading.

WARNING – Email tagged as spam will be deleted completely from the server.

When you click Configure SpamAssassin, you can add email addresses that should be filtered automatically by typing the address into the “blacklist_from” box. A whitelist can be created in the same way at the bottom of the page. It is also possible to specify scores that SpamAssassin should use for each particular test.

SpamAssassin examines every email message for spam characteristics, then assigns it an overall score. Enter the score required for a message to be considered spam.

5 is the default setting, this is not very aggressive.
1 is very aggressive and in most cases, this setting is never used.

We recommend, adjusting 1 point setting each day until you achieve the desired result.

This feature allows you to add emails and/or domains to blacklist (spam, blocked) or whitelist (clean, allowed through).

Note: You can always email support@globalit.com for assistance with black or white listing of emails and IP addresses.

Enter addresses whose email is often allowed past the spam filter, but from whom you do not wish to receive email.

You may use * as a wildcard for multiple characters, or ? as a single-character wildcard.

• user@example.com — Blacklists a single email address.
• *@example.com — Blacklists all the addresses at example.com.
• ?ser@example.com — For example, User@example.com would be blacklisted, but AUser@example.com would not be blacklisted.

By default, 5 text boxes appear, allowing you to add 5 addresses. To add more than 5 addresses:

1. Fill in the first 5 text boxes.
2. Click Save.

When you return to the page, more text boxes will appear.

Enter addresses whose email is often blocked, but from whom you wish to receive email.

You may use * as a wildcard for multiple characters, or ? as a single-character wildcard.

• user@example.com — Whitelists a single email address.
• *@example.com — Whitelists all the email addresses at example.com.
• ?ser@example.com — For example, User@example.com would be added to the whitelist while AUser@example.com would not be added.

By default, 5 text boxes appear, allowing you to add 5 addresses. To add more than 5 addresses:

1. Fill in the first 5 text boxes.
2. Click Save.

When you return to the page, more text boxes will appear.

Remember:

• Click Save to store the configuration changes.
• A whitelisted address is automatically allowed past the filter.
• A blacklisted address will automatically be filtered by SpamAssassin.

The post How to Configure Spam Settings appeared first on info.globalit.com.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Although responsive web design (RWD) is still in its early stages, Google already supports the technique as the best practice for developing a mobile website. An article by Ethan Marcotte spawned the concept of RWD as Marcotte toyed with the idea of transferring the idea of responsive architectural design to web design. Essentially, RWD is a system of building a site that responds to user behavior so that users enjoy a high quality experience no matter what device is used. There are three primary characteristics of responsive web design:

• A fluid grid
• Response to media queries
• Flexible images

With these three elements, a website is capable of shifting and adapting for a user based on the platform, screen size, and orientation. Fluid grids allow a website to quickly reconfigure itself to accommodate a new device with appropriate size, margins, and spacing. Different sections of a layout are assigned to different segments of the grid so that the layout can shift to promote the most relevant information.

By responding to CSS media queries, RWD is capable of using the appropriate configuration of the flexible grid. The smallest screens may only see one component of the grid at a time, while larger devices will trigger a more comprehensive view of the site. RWD uses the media queries to detect the type of device, so in addition to presenting the suitable grid the site can adjust its resolution and configure itself for a landscape or portrait view.

The final element of responsive web design is flexible images. Images are designed so that they also adjust to fit a device through a number of methods, such as:

• Hiding or revealing portions of the image
• Sliding composite images
• Scalable images

Thanks to these techniques, viewers will never again be frustrated by an image that is too large or refuses to properly load on a mobile device. RWD ensures that images as well as other media are appealing and manageable in a mobile format.

The Growth of Mobile

The need for such a revolutionary method of mobile web design is the direct result of the boom in mobile device usage in recent years. The statistics about the growth of mobile are staggering and are hard proof as to why it is essential for companies to expand their marketing campaign to target mobile devices. Consider the following statistics:

• 84% of people surveyed around the world say they couldn’t go a single day without using their cell phone.
• Global mobile data traffic grew by 70% in 2012, while smartphone usage increased by 81%.
• 45% of American adults own a smartphone and 31% of them have a tablet.
• In 2013, the number of mobile-connected devices is projected to overtake the number of the world’s population.

If your company is not targeting this massive audience, you are certainly losing opportunities to engage consumers and promote your brand.

A Versatile Viewing Experience

So why is RWD so great? One of the most popular benefits of RWD is that it eliminates the need for developing a unique site for every device that appears on the market. Theoretically, RWD prepares your site to handle any new gadget that will appear in the near future, however bizarre or revolutionary it may be. Streamlining your web development needs to one design reduces the time and money necessary for an effective website.

However, RWD is not simply beneficial for your company. It also offers a number of advantages to visitors to the site, primarily the all-important high quality viewing experience and complete versatility. Since consumers are beginning to buy more tablets, notebooks, and smartphones than computers, the quality of the viewing experience of your mobile site is just as important as your original site.

As RWD adapts to each type of device, your site can enable special features for touch screens, such as links and buttons that are thumb-friendly or the ability to swipe between different columns. With RWD, the website functions seamlessly through any device so that users can access all of the information on your site from any gadget with no decrease of site quality.

Optimizing For Search Engines

As mentioned above, Google is a strong supporter of responsive web design, largely due to the fact that RWD works well with search engines. Search engines appreciate RWD because it allows for clean, organized code that is easy to search and analyze.

In addition, RWD cuts out the risk of being penalized for creating duplicate content, since there is ultimately only one version of your site. If you were to set up a separate mobile site improperly, you would quickly incur a ranking penalty and therefore lose visitors and conversions. RWD lets your company maintain consistent information across the board.

Marketing Success With RWD

RWD is so effective that it directly increases the success of marketing efforts. For instance, sites that utilize RWD experience fewer abandoned checkouts because they are easier to use on mobile devices. Also, the time invested in your marketing campaign is more efficient because there is no need to continually update multiple sites. Furthermore, your analytics are immediately simplified since you only have one site to track.

In an increasingly mobile world, advancements like responsive web design can prove invaluable to your business. Although RWD may cost more initially to design and set up, the long-term benefits are invaluable. Responsive web design creates an innovative site so that your marketing endeavors can reach their full potential on every mobile device.

The post Why Moving Toward RWD (Responsive Web Design) Has a Direct Effect on Your Marketing appeared first on info.globalit.com.

Now you may be thinking: “Who would install such a program?” The answer is: “More than you would think.” These programs are typically installed without the knowledge of the user. They are usually packaged together with other ‘free software’ downloaded from the internet. Think of the phrase “nothing in life is free.” This holds true for computer software. If you got it for free, there is a big chance the creator is making money somehow. Often it’s by accepting payment from companies in return for adding these programs to their ‘free software’.

Here are some identifiers that may indicate your computer is infected:

• Your computer is slowing significantly
• You are redirected to a different website than the one you entered
• You get random informational or advertising pop-ups
• Your internet connection seems very slow or stops working

There are some things you can do to prevent the installation of these programs. Some software has the option of ‘Customized Installation’ which allows you to deselect the spyware or adware program from being installed. Another way is to read the ‘Agreement’ for any indication that these programs are included, granted they are being honest in disclosing that in addition to their program, other ‘alternate’ or ‘third party applications will be installed. However, these methods do not guarantee that you won’t have spyware or adware installed. Many programs may not disclose this or the program will not function without it. Sometimes these programs can be installed by visiting an unreliable website.

The only surefire way to avoid having spyware and/or adware being installed on your computer is to only install trusted software from trusted sources, and visit only trusted websites. Trusted companies like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and others do not include these programs in their installation packages. More and more methods are being developed to deploy these unwanted programs.

If you suspect your computer contains spyware or adware, use a special program to find and remove these unwanted programs. Some reliable programs that are highly recommended are Ad-aware and Spybot. Remember though, some spyware and adware programs might have already done some damage to your computer that may require a qualified technician to repair. Global IT, a leader in internet security, staffs certified technicians that can restore your computer back to a level of optimal performance.

The post Spyware and Adware appeared first on info.globalit.com.