Identity Theft: CMIT Solutions of South Nassau Offers Advice During National Awareness Campaign

Don't let your business fall prey to phishers, scammers and credit card fraudsters

Merrick, NY (Grassroots Newswire) December 28, 2009 – Identity theft is a serious issue, no matter who the victim is, but the situation can be more complicated when somebody tries to impersonate someone's business, says Armando D'Accordo owner of CMIT Solutions of South Nassau. That is why CMIT Solutions of South Nassau is offering tips and advice to small business owners in the local community for Identity Theft Prevention and Awareness Month this month.

"Since businesses need to make themselves visible to prospective customers, they are compelled to share a lot of information with the public that individuals tend to keep private, such as their phone number and address," D'Accordo said. "Easy access to private contact information means heightened vulnerability to identity theft."

According to security firm Panda Security, a significant percentage of small businesses haven't taken very basic steps to secure their data assets. A recent survey showed that "97 percent of U.S. small businesses have installed anti-virus and 95 percent claim their security systems are up to date. Yet, 29 percent said they have no anti-spam in place, 22 percent are without anti-spyware technology and 16 percent do not have firewalls. In addition, 52 percent said they have no Web filtering solution in place. And, 39 percent of respondents said that they have yet to be trained about IT threats."

"All an identity thief has to do is open up a mailbox in your shared office building, create a fake letterhead, and obtain your business license number, which many businesses are required by law to display. Then the thief is well on his or her way to opening up credit card accounts in your name, filing purchase orders, and running up bills that will eventually come to you," D'Accordo added.

So, what can business professionals do to prevent identity theft? D'Accordo provides the following advice:

1. Check Credit Cards – Review your business credit report regularly.
2. Review Employee Charge Cards – Go over employee charge card billing statements thoroughly before they are paid, especially if you've issued multiple cards for a single account.
3. Educate Employees – They should be on the lookout for phishers, phone and email scammers. People who would never think to open a suspicious-looking email in their personal inbox might not hesitate to turn over your Federal Tax Identification Number and names of key executives to someone posing as a vendor or a government representative.
4. Beware of "Inside" Theft - Once an employee leaves the company, make sure you immediately cut off access to all your IT resources. Unfortunately, a lot of identity theft is still an "inside job".
5. Protect Company Data – Install a business-class firewall, encrypt your network, assign access privileges sparingly, and perform regular updates to your security software.

"There is no better time than now to make more business owners aware of the dangers of identity theft. We want to bring light to this issue that affects many of our customers and others in the local community," D'Accordo said.

CMIT Solutions of South Nassau offers anti-spam, antivirus, and anti-spyware protection as part of CMIT Marathon – the company's suite of monitoring and maintenance services that keep your IT systems up, running, and protected, 24/7.

For more information about CMIT Solutions of South Nassau please contact Armando D'Accordo at (516) 208-4161.

About CMIT Solutions

Armando brings more than 23 years of experience to the support industry. He has received extensive training in business management, customer service, sales and quality assurance from the University of Michigan, Disney, Citibank and the Help Desk Institute. As President of CMIT Solutions of South Nassau, Armando assists his small and medium size business clients with technology solutions focused on compliance, security, business continuity and disaster recovery. In 2001, Armando was named Support Director of the year. He continues to be an industry leader as well as an accomplished public speaker and in 2007, he was named CMIT Rookie of the Year. Armando is co-author of the book 'I Just Want My Computers to Work' published in 2009. Armando is active in his community and is a frequent volunteer and fundraiser.

CMIT Solutions started as a small computer support company in Austin, Texas in 1996. Over the past decade,
we have grown into a leading provider of managed services and other computer consulting services with over
120 franchise locations nationwide. We’re able to combine personalized local service with all the technical
resources of a large national company-- offering our small business clients the products, partnerships, and
round-the-clock technical support that standalone locals can’t always provide.

Five Easy Steps for a Safer, Happier Year in Technology

Get a good start on 2010 by embracing a few simple principles that can do wonders for your safety and productivity:

1. Run your backups. Everybody says they’ll back up their machines, but how many of us actually do it? And even if your workplace is running automated backups, you should still get in the habit of backing up your own work to an external hard drive or to the corporate server. That way you won’t have to bother your IT guy if you’ve been working for several days on an important project that suddenly vanishes from your machine.
2. Update your virus definitions. This is another task that people promise to do periodically, rarely actually get to, and are generally safe anyway because the service runs automatically. However, if you have your antivirus software set to update and scan during the day, it can slow your machine down to the point where you’re constantly suspending or cancelling the update just so that you can get some work done. That leaves you vulnerable to new virus attacks. So to be on the safe side, make sure your antivirus software updates regularly at night or during hours when you’re usually not working.
3. Clean your keyboard. Have you ever dismantled your keyboard and seen what’s floating around in there? Enough said.
4. Empty your temporary files. Temporary files are backup versions of open files created automatically by many programs. In the event that the program unexpectedly crashes or quits before a user has a chance to save their most recent changes, the temporary file will offer the most up-to-date version of the file. They’re handy for that reason, but over time, temp files can take up a lot of space on your hard disk. Look for the Temporary Files folder on your hard drive. Verify that you don’t need any of the files, and simply move them from the recycle bin.
5. Change your passwords. Even the most foolproof, uncrackable passwords should be rotated out once in a while. Just make sure you remember the new ones!

Proper Use of Tabs Versus Spaces

If you are working in Microsoft Word, chances are you will need to format your document. Anytime that you are not simply using the left margin to align paragraphs, you should use tabs to properly align your text and numbers.

The default tab stops are every 0.5 inches from the left margin. You can easily customize this by simply clicking on the ruler at the top of your page in Microsoft Word. Wherever you click, you will see a tab symbol as shown in the image below. If you'd like the tab to right align text, double-click your new tab symbol. In the menu under Alignment, select Right.

Every now and then you might get a Word document from somebody who uses multiple spaces instead of tabs to space out items or begin paragraphs. It's also pretty common with information downloaded from the Web -- when it's converted from HTML to text format, a whole bunch of spaces appear. Suddenly your lovely Web chart looks like a mess in Word.

First, how can you tell if the document uses spaces instead of tabs?

1. Click on the paragraph symbol in the Paragraph tools.
   
   
2. You will see dots for spaces and right arrows for tabs.
   

Next, how do you clean it up?

Easy! Just perform the following steps:`

1. Press Ctrl+H to pull up the Find and Replace box.
2. Click on the More button and check the Use Wildcards box.
3. In the Find field, enter a single space followed by a left brace, the number 2, a comma, and the right brace.
4. In the Replace field, type ^t. The Find and Replace box should now look like this:
   
   
5. Click on Replace All.

You're done! Now all your multiple spaces will be replaced with tabs, and you can adjust the tabs as needed.

Don't Fall for the Latest Phone-Based "Tech Support" Scam

We've heard news recently about a new form of scam that preys on people's fears about accidentally downloading computer viruses and spyware. Here's how it works: the scammer calls the victim and claims to be working for a computer monitoring firm, a security software provider, or "your Windows XP provider." They say that they have reason to believe the victim's computer has been compromised, and that they can investigate the problem if the victim gives them access to his or her computer using a popular (and legitimate) remote access program such as LogMeIn. If the victim complies, the scammer has the entire contents of the victim's computer at their fingertips -- including passwords, logins, and all kinds of information that are catnip to identity thieves.

Here's how to spot the scam:

1. They say they're from "your monitoring service" or "your provider" but they don't identify themselves by name. This is a huge red flag, particularly if you aren't signed up for a monitoring service!
2. They're contacting you by phone. If there's a real security problem, you're usually notified automatically when your security software runs.
3. They want a credit card number before they'll render their "services."

Naturally, we're concerned about this because we don't to see innocent computer users getting scammed -- particularly by people purporting to do the same kind of work that we do! Here's how we're different:

1. When we contact our clients, we identify ourselves as CMIT Solutions, not "your provider." And because we value our relationships, our clients know us personally and by name -- so there's no question that we are who we say we are when we call.
2. If it's a screaming emergency, we might contact you by phone -- but because you know us and can always call us back if you're in doubt about who's really calling you, you can feel safe knowing you're working with a trusted resource. Otherwise, we can take care of most security issues for our CMIT Marathon customers without them even noticing. (CMIT Marathon is our remote monitoring and maintenance service, which includes security updates.)
3. If you're a CMIT Marathon or Guardian customer, you're subscribed to an ongoing service and won't have to provide payment over the phone if you ever call us with a question. Depending on your individual plan, we might have to bill separately for a visit to your office -- but you'll get a proper invoice, not a pushy technician pressuring you for a credit card number on the phone.

For more information about the phone-based "tech support" scam, you can check out this helpful AARP Bulletin article: http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourmoney/scamalert/articles/scam_alert_helpful_hackers_.html. For more information on CMIT Marathon, click here: www.cmitsolutions.com/southnassau/marathon.php.

Smart Spending Helps Minimize Your Taxes

If you're a small business owner who turned a profit in 2009, congratulations! It's been a tough year, and any business that succeeded in a very challenging economic environment deserves a pat on the back.

The downside to making a profit, of course, is that it can be subject to taxes. In order to minimize the amount they'll have taxed at the corporate rate, many businesses look for ways to spend down their excess profit. Here are just a few purchasing options that might help minimize your tax liability while also enhancing your business:

Hardware. Need new PCs, external hard drives, servers, wireless routers, or other physical equipment? Get it before the year's out.
Software. It might be time to do that big OS upgrade you've been planning. Ditto that accounting software purchase you've been putting off: once you've mastered it, it will save you hours of bookkeeping every week. And that's an investment worth making any time of year.
Office Supplies. Think about what you'll need in the first quarter of next year and buy it now to maximize deductions for 2009. Stock up on paper, photocopier and printer cartridges, and other supplies you know you'll use.
Services. Many CMIT Solutions locations offer service hours in blocks that you can purchase in advance and use over the course of the year. Check with us for details.
One thing you'll want to consider with equipment purchases is whether you want an immediate write-off or whether you want to depreciate the item over several years. (You'll also need the
equipment in your office, in use by year's end.) Your accountant should be able to advise you on how to maximize your deductions and structure a plan that's best for your business.