Six Steps to Better Data Backup and Quicker Recovery

Think Quicker Recovery Time, Not Quicker Backups While incremental backups are much faster than executing a full-backup, they also prolong recovery time. In the event of data loss, a full restore will require loading the most recent full backup and then each incremental backup tape. Having too many incremental backup tapes not only adds time to this restoration process, but it also increases the probability of not recovering all of your data. A tape could be lost, unintentionally skipped over, or contain corrupted data. Be sure to focus on optimizing the restore time to ensure faster data recovery. A quicker recovery time should be the main objective, not the need for a quicker backup process. Maintain Sufficient Backup History Within the blink of an eye, current data files can become corrupted and inaccessible. This will necessitate the loading of an earlier data backup that is clean of corruption. Many smaller companies make the mistake of failing to keep a sufficient backup history. How long is recommended? Often it depends on the business and any legal requirements. While some businesses may be fine with a year of backups, others may need 7+ years for regulatory purposes. Be Sure to Backup Essential Data AND Applications Some businesses don’t feel the need to backup all data, but be sure essential databases, documents and records are backed up frequently. Don’t overlook applications that are critical to day-to-day business operations either. Many companies fail to backup applications, only to realize when it’s too late that they don’t have access to the original installation disks when they’re trying to recover from data loss or an outage. Have Off-Site or an Online Backup Some businesses backup data simply by moving essential files to tapes or external hard drives that are then stored somewhere onsite. But if they’re kept onsite, what happens if a fire, flood or other natural disaster takes out not just your server but your backup tapes and drives? Onsite backups can also be susceptible to theft. Having secure off-site, or even online backup, is simply the smart thing to do to ensure quick recovery when trouble comes to town. Fix Broken Access Controls on Your File Server Many businesses have folders with confidential data residing on a file server with overly permissive access controls. Why take the risk of having a disgruntled – even former – employee access and misuse this data when access can be limited to only those in the company who need it? Be Sure to Test Restores It happens time and time again. Business owners think they have a data backup plan in place. Tapes are changed diligently each day and everything appears to be backed up and good to go. However, it turns out the backups haven’t been working for months, sometimes even years, right at the very moment they’re needed. Either the backups had become corrupt and useless or large segments of data were not being backed up. This happens often. Don’t let it happen to you. Need help with your backups? Schedule a free network assessment or read more about our backup and disaster recovery service.

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Dealing with Scareware and Malware

Guides / Pennyrile Technologies

Scareware is a form of malware that generates browser pop-ups that resemble Windows or OS X system messages, claiming to be software such as antivirus, antispyware, registry cleaner, driver updater, etc. The system messages report fictitious problems such as infected files or missing driver updates intended to scare users into purchasing useless software or installing malicious software onto their devices. An example of a fictitious alert in the form of a browser pop up recommending known software from an unknown source such as Adobe Flash Player from newsoftready.uploadsoftstohavetoday.online shown below: Scareware can also present itself as an intense series of browser pop ups and alarms that scare you into thinking your device is infected. The pop up or system alert may give you a number to call suggesting the alert is from the FBI or Microsoft. The intent is to get you to call and get your permission to login to your computer. STOP RIGHT HERE! If you encounter a suspicious system alert or pop-up, close your browser by clicking CTRL+ALT+DELETE (Windows) or COMMAND+OPTION+ESC (Mac), then end the process, or turn OFF your device. In the event that you have called the number from the scareware, your phone number may have been compromised. If you give the fake technical support permission to login to your device, your device and data have been compromised. After receiving access to your device, the agent is able to further install malicious software and viruses, change your system setting to prevent internet access, and steal your data or lock you out of your own system. The next step the fake technical support agent will take is to scare you into paying them to clean your computer or unlock your data. If you have been victimized by scareware, your device and data may have been compromised. Please contact Pennyrile Technologies at 931.771.1149. If you have given any financial information, we recommend contacting your financial institution to alert them.

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Seven ‘Must Haves’ for Your Small Business Website

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Your website represents your business and so building and maintaining it need to be of primary concern to you as a business owner. We often find business owners struggling with their websites saying things like: “My website looks great, but I am not able to convert” or “I invested so much into creating my website, but I don’t get many hits.” These things are very common pains faced by businesses, especially small business. If you aren’t sure where to start your site improvement project, this post will get you rolling in the right direction with seven key areas you need to pay attention to when it comes to your website. Content –Make sure your site has a significant amount of content and that the content is relevant and meaningful. Having the right amount of good content adds value and appeals to your target audience. Don’t fill the site with jargon and keywords just for the sake of it, lack of relevant content won’t help you improve your conversion rate. Testimonials –Nothing has more impact on your prospects than them hearing about your product/service from their peers. So make sure your site showcases testimonials from your satisfied customers. Social Media Icons –Social Media, when done correctly, it is a great medium to enhance your brand presence online. Get on popular social media networks and invite your website visitors to join you there – that way they will hear more about you from your fans at the social network. Contact Information –Tell your web visitors how to get in touch with you. They shouldn’t have to search the entire site before knowing how to contact you. Provide your contact information/contact form very clearly for them to use. Tracking –Incorporate a web-site tracker that helps you track the leads that come in from your website. You can use services such as Google Analytics that are free and provide you basic details such as number of hits, location, time spent on pages, etc. Loading Time –Web visitors today have little patience and lots of choices. So, it is important that your site loads quickly, otherwise they move on to the next search result. SEO –Search engine optimization is a key factor in determining the ROI of your website. Make sure your site is optimized for search engines so that it shows up when your prospects search for you.

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Mitigate Costly New Technology Risks for Continued Stability and Profitability

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Partnering with a managed service provider (MSP) is one new approach being used by many companies like yours. Experienced MSPs have access to newer tools that reduce costs by automating many routine in-house labor intensive processes. Break-fix is labor intensive, and labor is one of the most expensive operating costs within your IT infrastructure. The new innovative tools that can be provided by MSPs generate real productivity increases and mitigate the risk of network failure, downtime and data loss from human error. MSP Services MSPs deliver a trusted foundation for your team and your customers. Some of the services and tasks offered include: Remote Desktop Management and Support Predictable Management of Critical Patches and Software Updates Fractional Resource Availability of Best-In-Class Expertise – scaled to your needs Implementing and Testing Backup and Disaster Recovery Processes Performance of Inventory and Audits of Computer/Network/Software Enforcement of Network/Security Policy Monitoring of Network/Operating System and Alerts Updating Anti-Virus Software and Detecting Spyware Erase any misconception that managed service providers are nothing more than “outsourced” tech help priced to displace your in-house IT technician or team. The new MSP has defined new methodologies and technology partnerships to offer valuable preventative services that proactively locate and eliminate threats before a bigger problem arises. MSPs today put considerable effort into understanding the operational and business needs of SMBs to develop and deliver a set of specific services that align technology with the SMB’s business objectives. This is the reason you hear managed services often referred to as “partners.” A present day MSP offers quantifiable economic value, greater ROI and decreased total cost of operation by streamlining costs and eliminating unnecessary lost productivity, revenue, and avoidable on-site IT consultant fees, in addition to eliminating the need for costly hardware/software repairs or replacement.

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Is your Business Safe from Virtual Threats?

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Did you know that 50% of small business owners think their businesses are too small to be targeted by the thieves of the virtual world? Contrary to popular belief, 72% of hacker attacks often happen to smaller firms – firms with less than 100 employees! So how prepared is your SMB? Here’s a checklist to help you find out how vulnerable you are to these attacks. 1. Do you have Antivirus protection? – An antivirus software program can protect you from threats that originate from emails such as phishing and virus attacks. However, the most striking fact is that 61% of small businesses don’t install any antivirus software! If you are one of them, then it’s time to change! 2. How sturdy is your Firewall? – A good firewall system protects your computers from the variety of threats that exist in the virtual world. Examples include harmful cookies, viruses, worms and other such malicious programs used by hackers. 3. Do you use a Spam filter? – Using a simple spam filter for your emails keeps junk out of your inbox. The bonus to having a good spam filter is that your employees save time, as they are not distracted by irrelevant emails, but the major perk here is that the potential virus and phishing threats are lessened as spam emails are unlikely to be opened. 4. Do you do backup your data regularly? – Agreed – backups don’t really protect your data, but they are the only way to recover it if data loss does happen. So, be sure you have a regular and reliable backup plan in place – and it is actually being deployed. Data loss can prove very costly—especially to SMBs, sometimes even resulting in them having to close down. Prevention is certainly better than a cure in such cases.

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Is That Email a Phishing Scheme?

Email / Pennyrile Technologies

Research has revealed that over half of all users end up opening fraudulent emails and often even fall for them. Phishing is done with the aim of gathering personal information about you, generally related to your finances. The most common reason for the large number of people falling for fraudulent emails is that the phishing attempts are often so well-disguised that they escape the eyes of a busy email reader. Here are a few tips that help you identify whether that email really came from your bank or is another attempt at defrauding you… They are Asking for Personal Information Remember, no bank or financial institution asks you to share your key personal information via email, or even phone. So, if you get an email where they ask for your ATM PIN or your e-banking password, something’s amiss. The Links Seem to be Fake Phishing emails always contain links that you are asked to click on. You should verify if the links are genuine. Here are a few things to look for when doing that: Spelling – Check for the misspellings in the URL. For example, if your bank’s web address is www.bankofamerica.com, a phishing scheme email could misspell it as www.bankofamarica.com or www.bankofamerica-verification.com Disguised URLs – Sometimes, URLs can be disguised…meaning, while they look genuine, they ultimately redirect you to some fraudulent site. You can recognize the actual URL upon a mouseover, or by right clicking on the URL, and selecting the ‘copy hyperlink’ option and pasting the hyperlink on a notepad file. But, NEVER ever, paste the hyperlink directly into your web browser. URLs with ‘@’ signs – If you find a URL that has an ‘@’ sign, steer clear of it even if it seems genuine. Browsers ignore URL information that precedes @ sign. That means, the URL www.bankofamerica.com@mysite.net will take you to mysite.net and not to any Bank of America page. Other Tell-Tale Signs Apart from identifying fake URLs, there are other tell-tale signs that help you identify fraudulent emails. Some of these include: Emails where the main message is in the form of an image, which, upon opening, takes you to the malicious URL. Another sign is an attachment. Never open attachments from unknown sources as they may contain viruses that can harm your computer and network. The message seems to urge you to do something immediately. Scammers often induce a sense of urgency in their emails and threaten you with consequences if you don’t respond. For example, threat of bank account closure if you don’t verify your ATM PIN or e-banking password. Finally, get a good anti virus/email protection program installed. It can help you by automatically directing spam and junk mail into spam folders and deactivating malicious attachments. See how our Managed Antivirus and Anti-Spam service can help you today!

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How Does IT Downtime Affect Your Business

How Much Does IT Downtime Really Cost Your Business?

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

We live in a digital world and if you don’t take the right steps, it can seriously impact your company. The importance of having a backup system in place cannot be stressed enough. When it comes to business networking there are many things you need to look after such as hardware, software and security. One thing that often gets overlooked is ensuring that you have adequate levels of redundancy in your business to prevent IT downtime. Many small business owners think IT downtime only costs them a few productive hours, but there’s a lot more at stake when your systems go down. Customer satisfaction and loss of brand integrity are just two of the key losses apart from the more evident costs such as lost productivity and a temporary dip in sales. Here’s a few other ways downtime can hurt your business: IT Downtime Causes Customer Loss If you own a business, then you know how important it is to keep your customers happy. However, sometimes, things go wrong. For example, you might have a power outage, and this could cause problems for both your employees and your clients. If you don’t take steps to prevent these kinds of situations from happening, then you’re likely to lose money and customers. Today’s buyer lacks patience. They are used to getting everything at the click of a mouse, at the tap of a finger. Suppose they are looking for the kind of products/services that you offer and your site doesn’t load or is unavailable, even if temporarily, you are likely to lose them to a competitor permanently. Damage to Brand Reputation Customers are now using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and blogs to vent their bad brand experiences. Imagine an irate customer who doesn’t know if their card was charged on your site, or not, due to a server error. If it’s your bad day, they will probably be using Facebook or Twitter to share their bad experience, and it could be viewed by hundreds of people, causing irreparable harm to your brand image. Customers who have bad experiences are two to three times more likely to leave a negative review than customers who had a positive experience and leave a review. This is all the more reason to make sure your systems have backups in in place to prevent IT downtime for your business. IT Downtime Causes Loss of Productivity When your systems don’t work, this can have a direct impact on your employees’ productivity. Consider a research firm of 200 employees where they primarily rely on internet connectivity to access the knowledge base. If the server hosting the knowledge base is down or the Internet goes down, there’s a total loss of at least 1600 work hours for just one business day. It’s important to have backup Internet and servers for your business to prevent this kind of downtime. With a backup or fail-over Internet line, you no longer have to worry about IT downtime if the primary Internet line goes down. Backup servers are equally important, ensuring your employees can continue to work if one goes down. Overtime, Repair and Recovery, Compensatory costs In the above case, imagine the overtime wages the business would have to incur if they were to make up for the work loss they faced owing to IT downtime. In addition, there’s always the cost of repair—the money the business would have to shell out to fix the issue that caused the downtime and get the server up and running again. In some cases, businesses would have to incur additional costs to make customers happy. These could include giving away the product for free or at a discount, or using priority shipping to make up for a delayed order. Possible Lawsuits Businesses could also be at the receiving end of lawsuits. For example, a downtime that has an impact on production, service level agreements with customers, or delivery and finances of the customer could invite litigation against your business. Marketing Efforts Rendered Useless Consider your business is running a pay-per-click advertisement that shows up for the right keywords on Google, or an extensive e-mail campaign that your business engages in. However, when the prospect clicks on the link, all they see is an error message that your website isn’t available. Isn’t that a waste of your marketing budget? Making sure your website is available for customers 24/7 is extremely important in this digital age. Website availability is just another example of IT downtime that could harm your business. The Bottom Line It only takes one natural disaster, one technical snag, or just one power outage to cripple or put you out of business, both virtually and in reality. It’s probably time to think about how you can mitigate the threat of IT downtime and whether your Managed Service Provider can act as an effective and efficient ally in this battle for you. See how Managed Services and IT Support can help you today.

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Has Your Website Been Optimized for Mobile Users?

Web Design / Pennyrile Technologies

Did you know that this year there will be more mobile web surfers than stationary ones? That means more prospects are accessing your business website more through their smart phones, tablets or other mobile devices than with a laptop or PC. If you thought you had time to make the switch this year, you may want to reconsider in light of new research. A recent study revealed that around 40% of prospects move on to a competitor if they have a poor mobile experience. How prepared is your business for this change? Well, if you are just starting out, the following checklist will help… 1. Make sure your mobile site is different from your regular website – While you must stick to your branding standards, your mobile website should be simpler than your web version. The reason being is that complicated designs that load well and look good on computers are often distorted when accessed through a mobile device. Plus, mobile surfers don’t really have the time to sift through a lot of content. Bottom line: your website’s mobile friendly version should be short, simple and sweet…offering your viewers the most important and basic sections of your website. 2. Option to access the actual website – That said, do provide your viewers with the option to access your regular website through their mobile device, as some viewers will prefer to stick with what is familiar. 3. Sitemap – Whether it’s your actual website or the mobile version, make sure you have a sitemap in place. A sitemap just makes it easier for your viewers to navigate through the site. 4. Get rid of flash – Most mobile devices don’t support flash. Keep this in mind when optimizing your website for the mobile surfer. Simple images that load fast are your best bet. 5. Testing – Make sure you test your mobile website thoroughly on different operating systems, browsers and devices. What looks good on one device might be totally distorted on another. You could also develop a mobile application instead of a website, but most SMBs find that option too expensive and complicated. So, for now, put the 5 tips mentioned above into use and get your mobile-friendly website into action…

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Five Ways Your Business Can Improve Its Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Optimization / Pennyrile Technologies

In an age where most business happens online, not showing up in Google search results can really hurt you. While there’s no real shortcut to showing up consistently on web searches, there are a few quick fixes to get your site to show up on your potential customer’s search results with search engine optimization (SEO). HTML Tags / Metadata Important HTML tags include the title tag, meta description and meta keywords. Make sure each page of your website has appropriate HTML tags. The title tag of each page should be unique and relevant to that particular page. Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. It is the most important metadata on your page. Description metadata is the description that a browser may use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display. It should be a concise and appealing description of what is contained on the page. A good meta description will typically contain two full sentences. Keyword metadata is rarely used to calculate search engine rankings. However, you should already know your keyword phrases, so it doesn’t hurt to add them into your keyword metadata. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 3-6 phrases with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words. Alternative Text Images Ensure that most of the images on your website have alternative text tags. Adding alternative text to photos is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be read an alt attribute to better understand an on-page image. Alt tags are basically descriptions for images. By adding relevant alternative tags to images, you are allowing search engines to recognize them, which will improve the likelihood of your page showing up in search results. Alt text will also be displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot be loaded File Hierarchy How simple is your HTML file hierarchy? Check to see if your website’s pages are logically situated and avoid too many unnecessary folders. For example: ‘NFL=>Teams=>PittsburghSteelers’ is a better folder structure than ‘NFL=>Teams=>NFCEast=>PittsburghSteelers’, because here ‘NFCEast’ is redundant and only serves to push the Steelers page deeper down the order. This complexity makes your site less likely to show up on search results for people searching for Steelers websites. Sitemap A sitemap acts as a navigational guide for your visitors as well as search engines. They help search engines find, crawl and index all of your website’s content and also tell search engines which pages on your site are the most important. Does your website have one? If not, then it’s time to put up a site map on your website. There are many SEO plugins that will help automate this process. Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and All in One SEO Pack are just a few. Using a plugin will help automate the process as well. Whenever a new page or post is added to your site, the plugin will automatically generate a new sitemap for your site. Publish Relevant Quality Content Read your website content to determine its quality. Is your content written for search engines or actual visitors? Is it stuffed with keywords? Does it truly add value to your audience, or is simply there to fill up the page? Answer these questions and make sure it has value for your audience. Value for your audience translates to better search engine rankings. Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content. Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases site traffic, which also improves your site’s authority and relevance.

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Five Things To Preserve Your Network and Systems

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Small & medium-sized businesses (SMBs) today are under attack from malware, ransomware, external threats and data breaches. But with the lack of sophistication around most SMBs security stance, the prospect of remaining unaffected by attacks is bleak. Here are five things SMBs can do to help preserve their networks and systems. While this list does not completely cover all aspects of protecting a network, these are great first steps. If you need assistance, a managed service provider (MSP) like Pennyrile Technologies can help. A managed service provider delivers services, such as network, application, infrastructure and security, via ongoing and regular support and active administration on customers’ premises, in their MSP’s data center (hosting), or in a third-party data center. Backup Files Every Day As catastrophic as data loss is, the number of businesses that still are not backing up the computers and servers on their network is unbelievable. According to the Symantec Small to Medium Size Businesses (SMB) data, only 23% of SMBs are backing up their data on a daily basis and fewer than 50% are backing up data weekly. Any number of events can result in data loss, so the importance of frequently backing up your network cannot be overstated. Losing any amount of data can compromise your personal identity, lead to downtime for your business and employees, and even bankrupt your entire company. Ensure Backup Procedures Are Checked Regularly Many times business owners think that they have a backup system in place only to find out after it’s too late that it hasn’t been working properly. It may seem like your files are being backed up daily, however, the backup could have become corrupt or it is not backing up huge chunks of critical data. Check your backup procedures regularly to ensure they are working properly in order to be sure that ALL of your data can be recovered. In the age of BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Devices) it is also important to frequently backup data on your employee’s personal laptops, iPads or Blackberrys, so make sure you have a procedure in place to check those backups as well. Make Sure Updated Virus Protection and Firewalls Are Always Enabled Far too many companies either have no virus protection, expired virus software licenses, or disabled virus programs that aren’t running at all. This makes their business technology vulnerable to virus attacks from emails, spam, data downloads, and un-reputable websites. Further, because of inadequate firewall protection about 40% of small to medium businesses will have their network accessed by a hacker. Chances are, when these businesses are attacked they will be entirely unaware it is happening. In order to protect your valuable data and assets, ensure your virus protection is adequate, up-to-date and functioning properly and that your firewall is intact. Finally, don’t forget to update security patches and change passwords when an employee leaves in order to deter hacking attempts. Monitor Server Drives Dangerously full server drives can bring their own set of problems – ranging from program and server crashes to sluggish email delivery. Proactive monitoring and maintenance of your servers can spare your business a lot of problems down the road. And don’t just monitor to see if the drives are full, but also monitor for hard drive failures, or predicted failures to help avoid data loss. Replacing drives with predicted failures can save your business time and money by avoiding extended downtime. Regularly Check Critical Built-In Logs Very few problems with technology emerge suddenly. These problems typically progress over time and evolve into more serious problems. Frequently review your critical built-in log files to help identify the problem before it has gotten out of control and wreaks havoc on your business infrastructure.

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Pennyrile Technologies

Six Steps to Better Data Backup and Quicker Recovery

Dealing with Scareware and Malware

Seven ‘Must Haves’ for Your Small Business Website

Mitigate Costly New Technology Risks for Continued Stability and Profitability

Is your Business Safe from Virtual Threats?

Is That Email a Phishing Scheme?

How Much Does IT Downtime Really Cost Your Business?

Has Your Website Been Optimized for Mobile Users?

Five Ways Your Business Can Improve Its Search Engine Rankings

Five Things To Preserve Your Network and Systems

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