“It never hurts to ask.”

We often hear that said. But is it true? Recently someone asked me for a favor. The request came in an impersonal form e-mail. I had some business dealings with this person many years ago. Since then, I had heard from them only once when they asked another favor.

On July 14, 2015, Microsoft is officially retiring Windows Server 2003 and will no longer be offering support, updates or security patches.  That means any server with this operating system installed will be completely exposed to serious hacker attacks aimed at taking control of your network, stealing data, crashing your system and inflicting a host of other business-crippling problems you do NOT want to have to deal with.

In the book Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs revealed the single most effective way cybercrime rings gain access to your bank account, credit cards and identity.  Ready for it?   E-mail.

Whether it’s opening an attachment infected by a virus, or a phishing scam where you unknowingly give up your login to a critical web site, e-mail still remains the most popular and reliable way digital thieves can rob you blind, steal your identity and wreak havoc on your network.

There’s nothing quite as devastating as losing a key employee, especially if they give you no warning or notice.  Often they’ll give you subtle signs such as a lackadaisical approach to work, arriving and leaving on time, not a minute sooner or later, long lunches or suddenly having several appointments at the beginning or the end of the workday.

Your Team Needs To Learn Together

Rarely do teams learn together. Too often, increases in skill are confined to individuals. Sometimes that can become a barrier to teamwork: because there are dramatically different knowledge and skill levels, some team members aren’t able to keep up.

Are you using any cloud applications to store data?  Then listen up! There are a few “gotchas” you need to know about 3rd-party cloud apps that most sales reps will NEVER tell you.

They aren’t responsible for keeping a backup of your data. If you read the small print of your contract, you’ll see that in every way possible, your cloud provider is NOT responsible for data loss or backups – even if it’s their fault.

There’s an old joke about two men hiking in the woods when they come across a big, grumpy black bear. Scared silly, one of the guys starts to run but notices his buddy stopped, bent-over, changing his shoes.  He shouts to him, “Dude! What are you doing?!?!  Why aren’t you running?” to which his friend replies, “I’m changing my shoes because I don’t need to outrun the bear – I only need to outrun YOU.”

This is a perfect analogy for what’s going on in small businesses: the “slow,” easy targets are getting nailed by fast-growing cybercrime rings that are getting more sophisticated and aggressive in attacking small businesses.

The recent decision by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to stop telecommuting has cast a negative light on this practice. After checking the company’s VPN log to see how many remote employees were logging in, she didn’t like what she saw. Effective June 2015, telecommuting is no longer an acceptable practice at Yahoo.

Automatic Clearing House Fraud or ACH Fraud is becoming an increasingly popular way for hackers to siphon money out of the bank accounts of unsuspecting victims. And criminals only need two pieces of information to pull it off. That is your checking account number and a bank routing number.