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If your company is not fully compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards, you could be at risk of a serious tangle with fines and lawsuits.  Technically, PCI guidelines are not a hard-and-fast set of laws.  However, merchants can still face hefty liabilities for not meeting them.

In a December 2014 survey by the National Small Business Association, 61% of small businesses reported being victims of cybercrime within the past 12 months.  The average cost to recover from a cyber-attack skyrocketed from $8,699 per attack in 2013 to $20,752 per attack in 2014. And 68% of the businesses targeted, said they’d been hacked more than once.

You regularly back up your computers (or at least you should), but do you do the same with your smartphone? Given the massive amounts of contact information, photos, videos and other data we all carry around on smartphones, it’s critical to back them up or risk losing all that data forever.

It’s probably true that most people who work with us will never care as deeply as we do about building our business. If they did, they’d probably be working for themselves! Yet there’s a great deal we can do to raise the commitment level and inspire them to peak performance.

In 2002, McDonald’s decided to implement a system to provide their corporate executives with a bird’s-eye view of their 30,000 stores, to track, measure and monitor everything from profitability to cooking-oil quality. The project, named “Innovate,” was a massive five-year project with a billion-dollar budget.

Confusion. Dizziness. Fatigue. Muscle cramps. These are some of the first signs of heat exhaustion in humans. But did you know that your SERVER can also suffer from heat exhaustion and “meltdown,” causing slowness, blue screens, random reboots and complete meltdowns? If you keep your server in a closed closet or other small, confined space, here are three things you need to address during hot summer months to avoid premature loss of your equipment and data.

Should I Take Advantage of the Free Upgrade Now?

Microsoft has announced that it will provide a free upgrade to Windows 10 for all currently licensed Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers. This free upgrade offer will be available for 12 months following the initial release on July 29, 2015.

Should I upgrade right away? Generally, no.

‘Tis the season when you and your team will be taking a little time off to head to the beach or your favorite vacation spot, and while we know we should completely disconnect from work, most of us will still check e-mail and do a little work while away — and that could end up causing some issues if you’re not careful while working remote.

“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.