by Martin Danner | Jun 2, 2016 | Recommendations, Security
Summary Ransomware presents an emerging threat that can severely disrupt your business and cause significant unplanned costs. It’s a computer virus that turns all your data files into gibberish, then demands payment to fix the mess. It’s very important that you take steps to avoid becoming a ransomware victim. It’s equally important to also have the ability to recover quickly if an attack occurs. If you want to jump to quick lesson on how to defend your business against ransomware, click here. A Clear And Present Danger If you see a message like this one on your screen you’re in for a really bad day. It means you’ve been hit with a nightmarish computer virus called ransomware. The FBI warns that ransomware is on the rise, and anti-virus maker Trend Micro warns that ransomware is one of the biggest threats in 2016. A ransomware attack can be both costly and disruptive. Recently a hospital in California made national news by paying the equivalent of NZ $25,000 to data kidnappers. Recovery and eradication can take days, seriously disrupting your business. If you’re not prepared you might even lose precious data permanently. Here at Aerorock we’ve helped customers recover from ransomware attacks twice in the past 6 months. And we fully expect more cases to emerge. We’ve proactively taken steps to protect our customers from ransomware. We have both prevention and recovery plans in place. What is Ransomware? Ransomware is a computer virus that encrypts all the data files on your computer. In other words, it turns all your data into gibberish. Nothing works. You’re dead in the water. What’s worse,... by Martin Danner | Oct 12, 2015 | Office 365, Recommendations
Should you upgrade to Office 2016? This familiar suite of productivity apps is now available for all users with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription. This version has the same look and feel as Office 2013, but offers a number of new features that aligns it better with Microsoft’s Cloud First, Mobile First strategy. The primary theme behind this new release is real-time online collaboration. With Office 2016 multiple users can edit a Word or PowerPoint document simultaneously, but only if the document is stored in OneDrive. This capability has existed in the online versions of Word, Powerpoint and Excel for a while, but now you can do the same thing using the full-featured desktop apps. Sorry – but Excel 2016 (the desktop version) does NOT support simulatneous co-authoring. Outlook also sports a new collaboration feature call Groups that lets you easily navigate collaborative workspaces with rummaging through your inbox for invites. Office 2016 also include a preview of a lightweight project management tool called Planner, which can be used to manage small projects or track the progress of work in your office. Click here to see what else new and improved in Office 2016. Office 2016 is not a major upgrade of the productivity suite. In fact, if you’re already using Office 2013 then you’ll hardly notice any difference. What Office 2016 does offer for the first time is a common user experience across all the devices you might use – Windows computers, Macs, iPads, iPhones, as well as Android phones and tablets. Office 2016 delivers on the promise of working anytime, anywhere. Although Microsoft pitches that Office 2016 is the... by Jason Danner | Oct 9, 2015 | Apple Mac, Recommendations
Should you upgrade your Mac to OS X El Capitan? This latest version of the Mac operating system became available to download on Wednesday 30 September. El Cap is what you might call a maintenance release – offering mostly bug fixes. But it does than exciting new features. B Although El Capitan resolves many of the known issues with OS X Yosemite, it offer a few new bugs of its own. Most notably, we’ve been hearing reports that Microsoft Office repeatedly crashes. More info here. Our recommendation Before you upgrade to OS X El Capitan, check to make sure the apps you use are compatible with the new OS. The best way to do that is to search on the name of the app followed by el capitan. See example here. If you’re using Microsoft Office for Mac – especially Outlook – the you should wait to upgrade to OS X El Capitan until Microsoft fixes the constant crashing. They offer no timeline for releasing a fix, but we’ll let you know when we hear any... by Martin Danner | Oct 6, 2015 | Microsoft Windows, Recommendations
Microsoft Windows 10 was released on 29 July 2015. Since then it’s been installed on over 100 million computers worldwide. In general, those who’ve successfully installed Windows 10 like it – or at least don’t hate the way they did when Windows 8 first came out. Although Windows 10 offers many improvements, for the vast majority of business users its improvements aren’t compelling enough to go through the pain of upgrading. Nonetheless, Microsoft has put a lot of effort into encouraging all Windows 7 and Windows 8 users to upgrade to Windows 10. For instance, Microsoft quietly installed the Windows 10 downloader on all Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 computers, using the Windows Update process. This downloader regularly nags, er encourages, you to begin the upgrade process. We felt that these messages were intrusive and misleading, in that they don’t warn users of the potential problems that upgrading might cause. So we disabled it on all the computers under our support. Although many have been able to upgrade without major problems, a significant number of users have experienced major issues and frustrations. Here are a few: https://twitter.com/hashtag/windows10fail As a result, many have had to “uninstall” Windows 10 and revert back to their original operating system. This recovery process can cause additional problems. The chance of running into problems increases significantly on older computers, computers with insufficient memory or disk space, and computers running older software applications. Our recommendation If you’re using a computer that’s running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, and it’s working reasonably well, there is no compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft will continue support Windows 7 until 2020...
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