Celebrating Flag Day with Merrick Kiwanis

Armando D'Accordo of CMIT Solutions of South Nassau celebrated Flag Day with the Merrick Kiwanis Club by handing out American Flag pins at the Merrick train station!



Flag Day celebrates the adoption of the American Flag of the United States. A symbol of our freedom and love for our country. Armando proudly passed around these pins with the members of his Kiwanis Club.

Leave for Vacation & Come Back to a Happy Computer: Learn How!

During the summer, you have a few unique things to worry about:

traveling with a computer; making sure that computers don’t suffer from heat or lack of ventilation; and ensuring that a big storm or hurricane doesn’t knock out your systems while you’re away.

If you’re traveling with a computer, you’ll want to make sure you don’t accidentally leave it at the airport – that’s an obvious first step in a successful journey! After that, your primary worry until you get to an electrical outlet will be making sure you have enough battery power to last.

1. Run a full backup before you leave. Save copies of important documents on your corporate file server, and password-protect and encrypt the files on your hard drive.
2. Invest in a biometric USB flash drive that requires an authenticated fingerprint to access files.
3. Keep an eye on your computer at all times at the airport -- a recent study showed that people most frequently lose their laptops at security checkpoints and at departure gates.
4. While traveling, preserve the life of your battery by dimming your screen; turning off autosave; minimizing the number of programs you’re running; and disconnecting external devices like mice and USB drives.

Keeping your computer cool during a heat wave can be a big challenge. A few common-sense precautions can help.
1. Give your computer access to plenty of air. Clear those stacks of paper off your CPU, pull it out of the corner, and make sure your fan can operate properly.
2. Speaking of fans – take the cover off your CPU and make sure your fan is clean. If it’s gunked up with dust and pet hair, it won’t be able to run efficiently.
3. Move your computer to a place where it doesn’t have to work so hard to cool itself. If it’s sitting in bright sunlight or if it’s right near an appliance that generates a lot of heat (like a projector, for example), it’s already at a disadvantage.

Let’s say you’re shutting down the office, leaving your computers behind, and getting out of Dodge for a week or two. How can you make sure a storm, flood, or hurricane doesn’t put a damper on your return?
1. Get expensive equipment up off the floor. Even mild flooding can cause major damage to thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment.

2. Run a full backup and test it to make sure you could restore your system in the event of a major data loss. We’ve spoken with countless business owners who run backups but never test them, and then they’re shocked to find out their “business-critical” backups are corrupted or incomplete.

3. If you have an onsite backup system, great. If you have an offsite backup as well, that’s even better. And if your offsite backup is far away in a secure location that’s not prone to major weather events, that’s best.

4. Write down all your software product keys, license numbers, passwords, configuration notes, and encryption codes and put them in a locked safe -- preferably both on premises and off.

5. Have a plan in place so that if a major disaster occurs while you’re away, other people in the office know how to contact each other and what procedures to follow in order to get your business systems running again. This includes writing down the sequence in which applications, servers, and databases need to be brought back online in order for data to properly repopulate.

How to Spot PDF-based Malware

In the world of cybercrime it is vast and varied, but hackers will always gravitate toward popular sites and programs in the hopes of maximizing the reward for their efforts. Most software with a wide user base has its share of security threats.

Adobe Reader is a common PDF (portable document format) software that allows you to read documents but not edit them. As PDFs grow in popularity, they are increasingly made the vehicle of cyberattacks. Adobe Reader has been repeatedly exploited by hackers. Many versions of PDF-based malware are triggered by the user opening an infected PDF file, which then gives hackers access to the computer.

One of the newer versions of Adobe malware sends out an update prompt that looks convincingly legitimate. It overwrites the real auto-updater function and opens up the computer to be controlled by a botnet. (Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software agents, or robots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term is most commonly associated with malicious software, but it can also refer to a network of computers using distributed computing software. - Wikipedia)

If you want to protect yourself against PDF-based malware, you can do a number of things:
1. First and most importantly, don’t open PDFs from people you don’t know.

2. You can disable JavaScript in Acrobat and Reader. (Most attacks are executed via JavaScript.)

3. Use good antivirus software and keep it up to date.

4. Remember that individual software will occasionally require security updates, so you do need to keep an eye out for legitimate update prompts.

5. Closely examine automatic update prompts to make sure they’re the “real thing.” If it’s misspelled, if the language is odd, or if logos or icons look like they’ve been altered, the prompt could be a fake.

6. If you’re directed to a site to download an update, take a good look at the address bar.

Legitimate updates to Flash and Acrobat will come from Adobe.com. Fraudulent ones will have a different address.

Protect Your PC -- Keep it Locked!

People are concerned about protecting their computers from malware, spyware, and hackers that they often overlook one of the easiest intrusion methods of all.You need to “lock” your computer, or else it’s open for anybody to access the second you step away from your desk.

There are a couple of ways to lock your computer:

1. Hit the Windows key and the letter L at the same time. (Applies to Windows XP and later versions.)
2. Alternately, hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE. You’ll be presented with a menu of options. On a Vista machine, the options are: Lock this computer, Switch user, Log off, Change a password, or Start Task Manager. Select Lock this computer and you’re done.
3. On a Vista machine in Non-Classic mode, you can also click the lock icon on the start menu.

No matter which method you use to lock your computer, you can unlock it by hitting CTRL+ALT+DELETE and entering your password.

If you don’t want to have to bother with manually locking your computer, you can set it up to automatically lock when it wakes up from screen saver mode. Here’s how to do it:

Windows 7:

This feature is automatically enabled.

Windows Vista:

Go to Control Panel and then Appearance and Personalization. Click on Change Screen Saver. Check the button that says, “On resume, display logon screen.” Click OK.

Earlier versions of Windows:

Right-click the desktop and select Properties. In the Display Properties window, select the Screen Saver tab. Select a screen saver file from the drop-down list. In the "Wait:" field, set the amount of time you want the screen saver to wait before it turns on. Then check the box that turns on password protection. Depending on your version of Windows, it might say “On resume, password protect” or “Password protected.” Click OK.

Many people refrain from locking their computers because it’s a hassle to enter in their password or they don’t feel like there’s any danger in leaving their machine open and unattended. But most of those people lock their homes and cars at night, even if they live in safe neighborhoods. The same reasoning applies here: while you might be fine without it, there’s no harm in using the safety features that are available to you. And if you travel frequently, you absolutely need this protection on your laptop – your office might be safe, but plenty of other places aren’t!

eFile Cabinet!

No matter the industry, eFileCabinet products and services help businesses gain a competitive advantage by working more efficiently and collaboratively.

eFileCabinet delivers feature-rich, yet affordable electronic document management solutions that make it easy to scan paper documents, archive email and manage business-critical files in a secure database repository.

Reducing the amount of paper within an organization translates to immediate bottom line improvements when implementing an electronic document management system.

Complete the simple calculator below and learn how much money you can save by going paperless!

Efile Cabinet - ROI Calculator

FREE WEBINARS -- Click the Links Below!

Electronic Document Management: What's in it for You?
Wednesday June 16, 2010 @ 2:00 - 2:30
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/305359507

5 Reasons Why You Should Go Paperless!

1. Decrease Clutter.

An orgranized business increases your efficiency. By eliminating the clutter it saves you time when searching for documents.

2. Gain Security.

Paperless solutions make it easier to back up your data. You may save it to your computer, external hard drive, cd or dvds. This way if a disaster strikes you have a better chance of recovering your data.

3. Save Money.

You will decrease your costs by spending less on paper and office supplies.

4. Save Space.

You wont need several filing cabinets that take up your office space.

5. Ease-Of-Doing-Business.

Majority of clients expect digital communications. When documents are electronic, it is quicker and easier to communicate when running your business.

Memorial Day Parade! -- Walking with Merrick Kiwanis

Armando D'Accordo proudly participates as a member of the Merrick Kiwanis Club and joined in the Memorial Day parade over the weekend.

They walked in honor of the veterans and soldiers who have fought and still fight to protect our freedom. We cannot thank them enough.

'Quirk' in Microsoft Word -- Deleting Page Breaks

Microsoft Word is full of “quirks” like any other program may have, and among the more irritating is the occasional inability to delete a page break.

It often happens when you’re editing a document. You’re zipping along, deleting here and inserting there, when you realize you have an extra page break in the middle. You highlight it and you try to delete it, but it won’t budge. What’s the deal?

You probably have the Track Changes feature enabled. Track Changes is a feature of Word that is extremely handy when you want others to review a document because it allows you to see what edits they have made. The tools for track changes are found on the Review tab of the Ribbon. Once you disable Track Changes, you should be able to delete that page break.

Take the following steps to disable Track Changes and get to work deleting extra page breaks:
In Word 2007, go to the Review tab. Find the Track Changes button within the Tracking section. If the button is orange, that means Track Changes has been enabled. Just click it again to disable it.

In Word 2003, go to Tools and select Track Changes. In either version, you can just hit CTRL + SHIFT + E to turn Track Changes on and off.

One last word of advice: make sure you’re in the Normal or Print view when you’re attempting to delete that break. It’s also helpful to hit the ¶ button, which will automatically display all your paragraph marks and other formatting symbols. That will make it easier to find the extra page break in the first place.

Photos from the HIA Event!

Thank you for joining us at the 22nd Annual Business Trade Show & Conference presented by the HIA!