All it takes is one oversight to potentially undo any benefits your cybersecurity protections and other best practices may deliver. For instance, even if you have things like multifactor authentication in place, a phishing scam or even some malware varieties could potentially give an attacker access to your email… and all the data your messages contain, just sitting in your inbox.

We often advise people to steer clear of clicking on suspicious links, but distinguishing between a legitimate URL and a dubious one has become increasingly challenging. Not only have malicious tactics evolved to the point where everyone has to stay on top of their game to not be fooled, these threats are almost pervasive so they are coming at people from all types of directions. We thought we would focus on a single punctuation mark that can make all the difference in whether a link is legitimately safe or potentially dangerous.

There are few technology solutions that have been as transformative and important for businesses as email. Unfortunately, however, it’s remarkably easy for a hacker to gain access to an email account to cause all kinds of chaos for a business. Let’s consider ways you can protect your business’ email accounts and, by extension, the rest of your organization’s infrastructure.

In business, good communication is essential. If you do it right, you can streamline actions that can save your business a lot of money and build incredible efficiencies that can bring your vision to reality. Poor communication, on the other hand, can hinder a business’ ability to prosper. In order for your staff to be able to communicate effectively, they need the tools to do so. Here are three tools that most businesses should have in place to help drive business forward.

Email groups are remarkably useful. Instead of sending a copy of an email to each individual recipient, you can effectively create a simple forum post that everyone can participate in—a feature that certainly helps when collaboration is a priority. Let’s go over how you can quickly and easily create a group in Gmail.

Phishing has become one of the great problems for technology users in the 21st century. The ironic part of the whole thing is that it has taken a good old-fashioned social engineering scam to make today’s robust information systems less secure. Phishing is the predominant way that hackers and scammers gain access to the systems they target. Today, we’re going to spell out what to train your employees on to help them identify phishing attacks. 

The holidays are fast approaching and that means people are going to miss work for one reason or another. If you can get away from the office for a little bit, you’ll want to set up an out-of-office message to ensure that others know you will get back to them when you get back to the office. Here’s how you can set up an autoresponder for an out-of-office message in Microsoft Outlook.

How Ransomware Works

Imagine for a second the surprise you would have if you tried to log into your computer and you were presented with a message telling you that your files have been encrypted and that you need to pay in Bitcoin before the clock runs out or you will lose those files forever. Then you noticed the clock clicking down. Would you panic? You probably would. That is ransomware, a particularly ugly malware that could cost you everything. 

Make Your Inbox Do the Work for You

You’ve got better things to do than organizing and prioritizing your emails manually. Granted, you’ll still need to respond to important emails, but most email clients have everything you need to set up a system that automatically parses and sorts emails based on a whole slew of different factors. It will take a little time, and likely a few rounds of adjustments to get your inbox to work the way you want it to, but we’re going to show you the tools that will help get you there.

There are multiple add-ons and browser extensions available to help boost your email templates with more dynamic options, but today, we’ll be focusing on the baked-in capabilities that Gmail comes with.

Give Your Team Members Some Responsibilities

An in-person meeting and a meeting through a conferencing solution can admittedly have two very different feelings to the participants. The kind of participation that comes somewhat naturally in an in-person meeting can suddenly feel entirely foreign, the visual context cues that would normally drive the conversation stripped away using technology. As a result, awkward pauses and missed line items abound. This can easily lead to people increasingly talking out of turn, while others will remain silent. One way to help mitigate this is by distributing an agenda with assigned segments beforehand. That way, each team member will be responsible for some facet of the meeting, with the bonus of being able to prepare ahead of time to increase the meeting’s benefit.

The Cozy Bear Threat

According to the National Cyber Security Centre, a government security organization based in the United Kingdom, a hacking group known as “APT29” (also referred to as “the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear”) has actively targeted the research centers conducting research into developing a COVID-19 vaccine. These claims have been supported by both the United States’ National Security Agency and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment.

What is a CRM?

Short for Customer Relationship Management, your CRM is the tool that helps you track the relationships you have with the people you offer your services to, assisting you in developing these contacts into faithful clientele. As a bonus, these solutions generally come with integrations that give you access to even greater capabilities and resources.

#1: Interact with it less.

As we established from the very start, email can very rapidly shift from an asset to a considerable time commitment, often multiple times throughout the workday. If possible, avoid getting drawn in by reducing the total amount of time you spend in your mailbox. There are a few ways to accomplish this:

First, it will help to briefly review how each attack works.

How Ransomware Works

Imagine if you tried to log into your computer, only to be presented with a message that your entire computer had been encrypted, and that (unless money is transferred to the perpetrator, often through cryptocurrency, within a period of time) the contents of your device will be wiped. This is precisely the experience of someone victimized by a ransomware attack.

How Phishing Works

Remember those old scams, where the target would receive an email from some nobility or long-lost relative that asked for a sizable loan or investment (all to be paid back with interest, of course)? These are phishing scams, known as such because the scammer responsible simply distributes a message and waits for someone to take the bait. As time has passed, these schemes have become much more effective - and harder to spot.

These Attacks Can Easily Cooperate 

Cybercriminals have taken to pairing these attacks together to help them take advantage of as many targets as possible. Let’s run through a fairly typical scenario that someone using both may subject you to, and how you can spot these kinds of joint efforts.

Let’s say you open your business email to find a message that appears to come from the Microsoft Support team - which, unnoticed by you, actually reads “Micrrosoft Support” in one or two places. According to the email, there’s a hugely serious security issue affecting systems across the board, which is why Microsoft is supposedly sending out these emails, with the necessary fix bundled in as an attachment.

Trouble is, this isn’t actually a fix to an issue - it’s actually an executable file that installs ransomware when you try to apply the “security fix” and creates a huge problem.

This is exactly why these two distinct attacks combine so well… by incorporating phishing strategies into the distribution of their ransomware, a cybercriminal has the ability to boost how successfully their ransomware can infect the users that are targeted.

How to Spot Phishing to Avoid Ransomware

There are assorted warning signs that a message is a phishing attempt that you should always keep an eye out for in order to protect your business. For example:

• Details are off - In keeping with our above example, how likely do you think it is that “Micrrosoft” would send out an email in which they misspelled their own name? While this is admittedly happening less in phishing emails, the same goes for the small things that are easily overlooked. Was the email in question sent from “user at example.com”? Or, was it actually sent from “user at exarnple.com?” Tricks like this are common ways that cybercriminals will try to pull the wool over a user’s eyes.
• There’s excessive urgency - To keep users from paying too much attention to the minutiae of the email - like the “off” details we just discussed - many cybercriminals will write their phishing messages to instill a sense of urgent panic. If an email starts to make you panic, collect yourself and look at it more objectively.
• There’s a link or an attachment - As the preferred means of delivering a ransomware payload or other issue, attachments or links to websites present no small amount of risk, especially if they are received unexpectedly. If at all possible, avoid accessing these without reaching out to the sender to confirm their legitimacy through another method of communication.

There are many other steps you need to take to protect your business from these insidious threats - from keeping a comprehensive backup to user training to applying spam filtering to your email. Coleman Technologies can help you implement them - give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to get started.

Consolidate Your Email with the Clean Up Tool

Businesses will often use email to communicate between groups of people, which is a really useful practice for keeping people apprised and in-the-know of what’s going on. However, these messages can quickly become repetitive, incoherent messes--especially in chains made up of larger groups--as participants reply to them, duplicating the thread within itself. Outlook includes a utility known as the Clean Up tool to fix these problems in your email conversations, and even in entire email folders.

By finding the Clean Up icon in the ribbon at the top of your Outlook window, you can access a drop-down menu. This menu offers to Clean Up Conversation, Clean Up Folder, or Clean Up Folder & Subfolders. Once you’ve confirmed your choice, you can access Clean Up settings, which allow you more granular control over how the tool sorts through your existing conversations.

Schedule Out a Message with Future Delivery

Sometimes you’ll have an opportune moment to send an email, but it isn’t the right time for this email to be received. For instance, if you want to share something with your employees to keep in mind throughout the next day, it doesn’t make sense to distribute it at the end of the day before for it to be forgotten. Outlook allows you to use your opportunity to your full advantage with Future Delivery.

Once you’ve written an email, click on Options, and then Delay Delivery. This opens a Properties box for that specific message, including Delivery Options that include a checkbox labeled “Do not deliver before.” Selecting this option and specifying a time and date will prevent your recipient from receiving your message before that point. Once you’re satisfied, close the Properties box and send the message just like any other.

Taking Advantage of Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are used to simplify access to commonly-used functions in many computer programs and applications, and Outlook is no exception. For instance, Outlook features shortcuts for a wide range of its functionality - covering the basics (like composing a new message by pressing Ctrl+Shift+M), organizational tools (like moving a message with Ctrl+Shift+V) or annotating your messages (like adding flags to important ones with Ctrl+Shift+G).

This is really just the start of Outlook’s capabilities to help your operations. Subscribe to our blog to find out whenever we post other tips or IT blogs.

VoIP and Conferencing

Every business needs to have a telephone system, that much is understood. Traditional telephone companies haven’t invested in their infrastructure and it shows. While some telephone companies have started updating their systems, the functionality that the modern business needs necessitates interactive capabilities. This is where a VoIP solution comes in. For a fraction of the cost of a traditional telephone system, companies can use their existing Internet connection to run an enterprise-level telephone system that has all the features they need. 

A base Voice over Internet Protocol solution comes with some of the features you most expect out of a business phone system such as call forwarding, voicemail, call routing, and more; but, when you expand a VoIP solution, you can get very powerful tools such as conferencing, instant messaging, and even video chat solutions. Hosted in the cloud or on dedicated local hardware, VoIP is one of the strongest and most cost-effective communications tools you can get for the modern business. 

Email

Most businesses use an email system for business correspondence. Some even use commercially available solutions. This isn’t ideal as there is plenty of information exchanged in the course of business that would be sensitive in nature. That’s why we believe that it is important for a business to use business-grade email. There are quite a few different options to choose from as businesses can opt to host their own email, or select a cloud-hosted solution. 

If security is a concern--and it almost always should be--a locally-hosted server could be the way to go. Today’s cloud-based email platforms, especially those that come with high-end productivity suites, are created with advanced tools like built-in encryption and artificial intelligence. These tools go a long way toward making the cloud-hosted email a viable selection for the modern business. 

Messaging and Collaboration

No matter what communication solutions a business chooses, it has to be able to fuel increases in productivity. Today, there are cloud-based productivity suites on the market that provide people the ability to work together in real time. This collaborative growth is a main component of the development of new and exciting productivity software.

In fact, the need for organizations to maximize their resources on projects has pushed software developers to begin to create better collaborative software. New software with hundreds of third-party software integrations, real time instant messaging, and other great features are revolutionizing project management. 

With more people working together from different locations, and more businesses outsourcing key parts of their operations, communications are going to continue to be one of the most important aspects of the business landscape going forward. If you would like to talk to an IT professional about which new communications tool would be a good fit for your business--and, how these tools will save your company money--call the IT experts at Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428.

Here, we’ll review the basic experiences that this scam subjects a user to as it sets the trap… and, of course, what your business can do to avoid these threats.

How Users Can Be Scammed

Put yourself in the shoes of a targeted user for a moment: just like any other day, you access your Gmail account and discover what looks like a Google Calendar invite. The invite is apparently for some kind of company-wide meeting (probably to discuss the company’s trajectory, policy changes, or something like that) to take place at the end of the workday. The message includes a link to the complete agenda, which can be accessed once a user confirms their credentials. You do so… and in doing so, fall for a scam.

This scam can be pretty safely categorized as “brilliant in its simplicity,” much like other phishing attacks can be nowadays. By using Google’s own convenience-based features, a fraudulent calendar event can be automatically added to a user’s Google Calendar, notifying the user. Fraudulent links send the user to a faked Google login page, where the user’s credentials are stolen as they attempt to log in. Alternatively, the link just begins installing malware directly to the targeted system. This scam has also proved effective against private users - informing them of some fabulous cash prize they’ve “won” through these fake Calendar entries.

How the Scam Was Uncovered

As it turns out, the details of this scam were reported to Google by an IT security firm in 2017, but Google has not made any steps to resolve it until recently.

The firm stumbled upon this discovery when a coworker’s flight itinerary appeared in an employee’s Google Calendar. From there, the researcher realized the implications of this accidental discovery, and quickly determined that users just don’t anticipate phishing attacks to come in through their Calendar application.

Can This Scam Be Stopped?

Now that Google has acknowledged the issue, a fix is currently being developed as of this writing. Until the point that a successful fix is deployed, you need to make sure your users are protected against this vulnerability.

The first thing they need to do is ensure that no Gmail events are automatically added to their Google Calendar. Under Settings in the Google Calendar application, they need to access their Event settings. From there, they need to deselect the option to Automatically add events to my calendar from their Events from Gmail.

To disable invitations to events from automatically adding themselves to the Google Calendar, a user needs to go through the same process, this time switching the Automatically add invitations option to the much safer “No, only show invitations to which I have responded.”

With any luck, this - combined with a little vigilance from your users - will protect your business from a phishing attack via its schedule. To learn more about how to protect your business against a variety of threats, subscribe to our blog, and give Coleman Technologies a call at (604) 513-9428.

Video Conferencing

Video conferencing can help business owners accomplish a plethora of tasks in the workplace. For one, video conferencing gives you the power to directly communicate with other parties, like vendors, customers, regulators, etc., without being in the same physical location. You also have the option to share screens, documents, presentations, and more through a video conferencing setup.

Chat Platforms

A chat platform will give users the ability to communicate both in and out of the office, whether it’s providing assistance to your clients or acting as a communication infrastructure for your employees. Some organizations have even taken to automating chat platforms to provide a more effective service to their clients. In fact, these services are often more cost-effective, and they come with a high level of customizability to provide an alternative to having a traditional support line.

Voice over Internet Protocol

Voice over IP has been around for quite some time, and it’s so popular that even cable companies are providing it these days. The biggest component of a successful VoIP platform is ensuring that you’re not overpaying for bandwidth. Your business’ phone system will run over your organization’s Internet connection, so it’s crucial that you’re not buying more than needed. A VoIP solution, when implemented correctly, can save you time and resources better spent elsewhere. VoIP systems can integrate well with other services, as well.

Mobile Devices and BYOD

Everyone has a mobile device of some sort, so businesses are beginning to leverage this to their advantage through the use of Bring Your Own Device. Organizations that have employees who often travel for work will find it beneficial for them to bring their own devices into the workplace so as to offset the cost of purchasing work devices for them… as long as there are limits in place, of course.

Of course, securing these devices is also of the utmost importance, which is why solutions such as mobile device management exist. These solutions give administrators the chance to limit a device’s data access based on user privileges, limit the kinds of software installed on them, and more. Mobile device management might be hard to implement for certain businesses with outspoken employees, so address these issues accordingly.

Intranet

Intranet solutions consist of a data system that can be used for file sharing. A company intranet can be used in various ways; they can be hosted on-site, in a private cloud solution, or implemented in a hybrid solution. An intranet hosted on your local area network can give any computer that’s connected to the network the ability to access the intranet. Given the right permissions, an intranet can enable collaboration utilizing this single point of storage.

A cloud-based solution can be hosted on private hardware, but it will depend on the integration and whether or not you’ve set up access control and authorization. Cloud systems are generally hosted outside the confines of your physical network, yet they offer a considerable amount of flexibility with access to data and applications.

Cloud Services

There are countless cloud services out there that your organization can use to establish lines of communication, including email, instant messaging, collaboration software, and more.

Unified Communications

If you can unify your business’ communications, you will see quite a lot of benefits. Centralized software gives you the opportunity to host all of your applications in one location, like VoIP, Instant Messaging, Video Conferencing, etc., and it all reports back to one location where it can be tracked. Unified communications are a great way to monitor transparency and increase the value of your solution.

Coleman Technologies’s IT experts can present you with the best communications solutions for your organization. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Properly Managing Your Email Like a Professional

Let’s not split hairs here: checking your email throughout the day can be a major waste of time. In order to avoid sinking time you could otherwise spend productively on reading (and re-reading) emails, there are a few habits you could develop.

Impose Rules on Your Email Habits

As we’ve said, repeatedly checking your email throughout the day can very quickly become a waste of your time. To avoid this, schedule times throughout your day to commit to checking your email. Once your time is up, stop until your next scheduled time.

We’ve all also accumulated emails that we simply don’t need to read. As harsh as it may seem, archive these emails, or unsubscribe as they come in to keep your inbox clean based on the subject line or the sender.

Managing Important Emails

Admittedly, not every email that comes in will be a waste of time. However, an overstuffed inbox can make it easy to miss something important. To avoid this issue, utilize folders to file your emails so that your inbox doesn’t become overfilled.

If Time is Left, Return to Your Inbox

If you finish your other tasks, return to your inbox and review your messages in order of importance. If you happen to run out of time, stop your review until your next opportunity. As you review your emails, don’t be afraid to unsubscribe to emails that aren’t important to your tasks.

Don’t Be Afraid to Leverage Filters and Labels

Filters and labels can help you to keep your emails more automatically organized. Your filters/labels should be relevant to their content. One can contain messages from a certain sender or pertain to a certain topic. As a result, you will be able to more easily keep your emails organized.

Rules like these can also keep you from having to deal with automatic replies, like out-of-office autoresponders and similar replies that you don’t need to receive.

What other emails have gotten in the way of your productivity? Let us know… we might cover them in a future blog! For more information, subscribe to our blog!