IT Services Info & News | Ascensha

Having a hard time remembering the password to your favorite sites? You’re not alone. When email first became widely available, people only had one password to remember. Now that we bank, shop, and socialize online, password management has become a real challenge. Some people solve this problem by using the same password for everything—a bad idea, since hackers only have to discover one password to leave your computer network security in ruins. This article will briefly review current methods for remembering the dozens of passwords your daily online life requires.

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Does your company have a computer and internet use policy? Policy creation is often a long, tedious process, yet every organization must have rules in place to protect company computers from viruses, spamware, and other online nasties. Large companies have ample resources to develop and update computer use policies, but for the Small to Medium Size Business (SMB) owner, this task often detracts from far more pressing business issues. Fortunately, Joe Kennedy, author of The Small Business Owner’s Manual, has compiled the following basic set of rules for company computer use:

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Do your employees know how to avoid malvertising? This new form of malware has online publishers worried. Malvertising, a portmanteau of malware and advertising, has been popping up even on respected news sites, such as the New York Times Online.  Like all malware, malvertising installs programs designed to harm the host computer or its software. Hackers buy advertising from online publishers, and then post advertisements warning visitors that their anti-virus protection is out of date. Nieve web surfers will click on the warning, and voila, spyware or other forms of malware are installed on their machines.

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A recent Gartner Research survey of CIOs showed that, on average, companies are spending 5% of their budgets on IT security, down 1% from last year. Despite this slight dip in security spending, the number of security threats has not decreased. Therefore, it’s crucial for each firm to maximize its security assets. Here are a few methods for optimizing your firm’s security resources no matter how generous (or strapped) your budget might be.

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Cloud computing is the current IT buzz term. According to research from the World Economic Forum, potential users from around the world see multiple possible benefits from cloud technologies, including increased collaboration capabilities and reduced IT costs. With huge prospective changes in health care, education, and business, the impact of cloud data storage could exceed that of mobile technology. However, as the above hype cycle graph from Gartner Research shows, we are at the peak of inflated expectations for this new technology, and we’re beginning to tip into the “trough of disillusionment,” when users will recognize the drawbacks of switching to the cloud. CIO magazine’s survey of IT professionals shows that IT professionals are indeed more concerned about cloud computing hang-ups than they were just a year ago. Their main concerns include loss of control over data, vendor lock-in, and regulation and compliance confusion. Additionally, the WEF’s research found that 63% of IT providers are concerned about privacy requirements for cloud computing.

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