Broadcasting your password on national television may be the easiest way to invite hackers, but common password mistakes make it almost as easy for your data security to be compromised.

Password safety may not be one of the most interesting topics in the realm of cybersecurity, but having a strong password is one of the easiest ways to protect your business’ data integrity. The importance of a robust password has been emphasized by many experts, yet often users who think that they are utilizing a secure password are actually opening themselves up to attacks. You may not be broadcasting your password on national television, but if your password falls into one of the following categories, you could be just as vulnerable to hackers.

Short and Simple

Short, simple passwords may be easy to remember, but they are also easy to guess. In general, the longer a password is, the harder it is for hackers to break it. Each additional character that you add to your password increases the possible combination of letters, numbers and symbols exponentially. Remember that hackers tend to go after low-hanging fruit, so any steps that you take to make your password harder to crack increases the likelihood that someone trying to break in will move on to the next target instead.

Lacking in Numbers or Symbols

Letters-only passwords may be more intuitive for you–but they are for hackers as well. Just as adding additional characters to your password exponentially increases the number of the possible combinations, so does using numbers and symbols in addition to letters. Just think about it: using letters, symbols and numbers means that each character in your password has almost twice as many options as if you only use letters.

Based on Personal Information

As highlighted in the clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live, using personal information such as a pet’s name or a birthday is incredibly common. Including personal details in your password, however, makes you very vulnerable to hacking. You may think that “Fido111379” is secure and difficult to guess, but blog posts discussing your dog or Facebook comments wishing you a happy birthday can broadcast your personal details to anyone who cares enough to look for them.

Simplistic Patterns

Being able to remember your password is, of course, necessary and utilizing a pattern might seem to be an easy solution to commit it to memory. Complex patterns that use letters, numbers and symbols within a long password are not a security risk. However, most people who use patterns in their password rely on overly simplistic ones, and this makes you vulnerable to hackers, particularly if your password is short. One particular type of pattern that you must avoid is keyboard-based patterns, such as “123qwe” or “1qaz2wsx.”

Worried that your business’ data might be vulnerable to hackers? The experts at {city}’s QualityIP can help you evaluate your security procedures to see if you have any glaring holes. Contact us today at (330) 931-4141 or info@qualityip.com to learn more.

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Outlook for Mac now works with beloved apps like Google Calendar and Contacts: Take a look at the details!

Outlook for Mac began with a simple goal: Provide Outlook services for Mac users with a new app. Many users are familiar with Outlook or prefer using Outlook services for business along with other Microsoft apps, while also preferring to use a MacOS or iOS platform. Outlook for Mac allows people to have it both ways.

However, in the past, OfM has lacked in-depth integration, which may have kept you from considering it. Fortunately, in the latest updates Microsoft has pushed new functionality to the email client: Now it’s more useful for companies than ever before, especially to those who already depend on Google apps for their communication. Here’s what has changed.

Outlook and Gmail

If you have used Outlook for Mac in past years, you may know that it is designed to link to your Gmail account: This is particularly useful for Mac-based companies and sole proprietors who tend to rely on Gmail for their communication before adopting Outlook for Mac. This way, Gmail emails are synced to the Outlook account, and users don’t have to go around telling all their clients about a new email or changing their logins for every site that requires an email. It’s an effective solution, but for a long time it stopped with basic email syncing.

Now, Microsoft is adding new, deeper connections to Gmail services. This way, you don’t have to bounce between Outlook and Gmail tools when trying to organize events or plan out your schedule, significantly increasing the usability of OfM for most Mac users that are still accustomed to Gmail.

Create and Edit Google Calendar Events

One of the biggest features coming to Outlook for Mac is the ability to connect to Google Calendar as well as traditional email. That means that your Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar will be synced. Any events that you have in your Google Calendar will be automatically transferred to Outlook, and vice-versa.

The syncing is adept enough carry changes across programs no matter where you decide to make edits. If you prefer to add events in Outlook, they will carry over to Google. If you want to open up Google Calendar quickly and make an edit to an event, that edit will carry to Outlook as well. Because Calendar can essentially function as a separate app, you don’t even need to be heavily invested in Gmail to take advantage of this feature – just have a Google account and make use of Calendar. This adds a lot of usability for people who were not interested in the original Gmail syncing.

Add and Manage Google Contacts

Really, it’s a little surprising that it took this long for Google Contacts to sync with Outlook. But now that the two programs share information readily, Contacts will now port over to your Outlook list. This change also works both ways, so no matter where contacts are added or modified, they will be synced. This can be especially helpful if you have a sales rep or marketing employee who loves to use Google Contacts, while you are trying to get everyone to use Outlook. They can continue to use the Google version, while Outlook will still be updated with their latest contacts.

Sync with Mobile Devices

Yes, the new version of Outlook for Mac will sync on both iOS and Android devices. If you pull out a mobile device and update a contact or calendar event during a conversation, it will carry over for both Google and Outlook. Since most of our common on-the-fly calendar and contact adjustments tend to occur on the go when our mobile devices are easy to reach for, this feature guarantees that such updates will transfer without trouble.

Gmail Now Benefits from Traditional Outlook Features

Outlook for Mac has several features that tied its emails to other functions. Those features now work with Gmail emails as well. For example, if you talked about an even and its time in an email, Outlook would add that to your events. Now Outlook will look into Gmail emails for the same information and automatic event posting. This also applies to package delivery details, travel reservations, and other relevant information found in emails.

Note on Downloading

The new OfM features are already available if you already have an older version software. Just update your current Outlook for Mac app, and you should now be linked to Calendar and Contacts. If you do not currently have Outlook for Mac, it’s an easy online download and you still have a couple months to download it for free before June 30, 2017, after which Microsoft will put a price tag on the software. It’s in your best interest to act quickly on this one to save money!

For more information on the apps and services that can make your {city} business more efficient (and a lot easier to handle), contact QualityIP at (330) 931-4141 or info@qualityip.com and let us know how we can help!

A recent study by Deloitte found that most HR departments are significantly behind the curve in adopting and adapting to new technology, but these challenges present opportunities for HR departments to improve their effectiveness in the digital age.  

As companies of all types and sizes continue on the path of their digital transformation journey, many will find that individual departments seem better suited to adapting to and integrating new technology than others. In their most recent annual Global Human Capital Trends report, professional services firm Deloitte found that human resources departments, in particular, have difficulty keeping up with the rapid pace of technological change. Executives across industries rated their HR departments as significantly below average in adopting and utilizing new technology, while only 17 percent of business leaders felt that their companies were ready to oversee an “augmented” workforce that includes people and AI working together. Despite these challenges–or perhaps because of them–HR departments have some of the strongest opportunities for any practice area to significantly improve their functionality, increase their effectiveness and boost the overall results of their entire company by taking strides toward technological integration.

A large reason that HR departments have difficulty responding to new technology is that the potentially transformative effect of these innovations is often much greater for HR than it is for other departments. Like Deloitte, competing for professional services firm Accenture believes that digital technology has the potential to completely disrupt the role of HR departments–and that this could result in a total shift in the function of HR.

For example, talent management has long been seen as a function that resides solely in the purview of the HR department, but shifts in technology stand to disperse this role throughout a business. Digitization and an increasing utilization of cloud-based tools will move the talent management process toward becoming an everyday activity for managers and employees themselves rather than a centralized function overseen and run by HR departments.

This radical change in function doesn’t eliminate the need for HR departments, however. Instead, HR professionals have the opportunity to take on a more expansive and strategic role within their organizations. For example, Accenture foresees HR departments will play a much more significant role in evaluating external technologies as well as creating more effective interfaces between external tools and their organization’s internal systems and data. About employees, HR will still play a major role, but the opportunity is now to act more as a marketing department for talent. Analyzing employee data and using this information to create a strong company brand and custom talent offerings will be the functions of the HR departments that fully embrace the digital transformation.

What does all of this mean for small businesses and their HR professionals? As many small business owners know, their size doesn’t mean that they can ignore new technology; indeed, adapting to innovations and staying nimble in the face of change is often more important for small businesses than for large corporations. The HR departments of small businesses have a potentially transformative role to play for their entire company. By relying more on technology to replace rote tasks and integrating more closely with other departments as part of the digital transformation process, HR departments can add significant value to a business by acting more like a strategic partner and engaging with current employees, potential employees and outside vendors on a higher level.

Are you curious if your HR department is staying on target with adopting new technological solutions? At {city}’s QualityIP, our digital transformation experts can help you identify your business’ problem areas and the solutions that can address these issues. Please contact us today at (330) 931-4141 or info@qualityip.com to learn more.

As the new FCC Chairman rapidly reverses the commission’s stance on privacy protection and cyber security, small businesses are faced with the need to tighten their own security protocols to protect their sensitive data.  

Many business owners assume that the Federal Communications Commission has a set of stringent rules designed to regulate the actions of internet service providers and help protect the security of sensitive business data transmitted over the web. However, recent steps were taken by the newly appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai clearly demonstrate that this is not the case. According to Pai, the FCC has no role to play in communications cyber security, and this change in approach by the FCC leaves internet service providers free to sell their customer’s sensitive data without oversight. For businesses across industries, this shift in the FCC’s stance on their role in privacy protection and cyber security signals a need for stronger cybersecurity protocols at the corporate level.

Before this policy shift, the FCC was working on new and robust privacy rules that would have placed greater constraints on what internet service providers could do with private customer information. In general, service providers would have been required to let their customers know that their data was being collected and gain affirmative opt-in consent before utilizing the data or sharing it with any third-parties. Given that internet service providers have access to a wide range of sensitive data including financial information, internet history, email content, Social Security numbers and more, these rules would have served to protect small businesses from having their sensitive data exploited.

New FCC Chairman Pai, however, had suspended these new regulations before they even had a chance to go into effect. Moreover, under Pai’s direction, the FCC has also reversed course on plans to enact federal regulations that would require Internet service providers to let their customers know when a data security breach has occurred, deferring to state laws instead. This change in policy means that businesses may not even find out when hackers have gained access to sensitive and critical data through an attack aimed at their internet service provider. What is the reasoning for these changes on the FCC’s part? The new FCC Chairman is responding to two key groups: Internet service providers who disliked the cost of the regulations and the industry trade groups that benefit from purchasing sensitive information from Internet service providers.

In the face of this shift in rules and regulations at the FCC, what should business owners do? To a great extent, many small businesses should take these policy changes as an important reminder of the need to maintain strong cybersecurity in general. Treating any data that is shared over the internet as potentially vulnerable is a good practice, and enacting robust protocols to encrypt and protect the sensitive business or customer data is a smart move in any climate.

Concerned that your business’ sensitive data might be at risk? The cyber security experts at QualityIP can evaluate your security protocols and check for weak spots that could leave your firm vulnerable. Contact us today at (330) 931-4141 or info@qualityip.com to learn more.