We’ve all had some experience in Microsoft Word, perhaps the most popular program in the Office Suite (many would argue). But many still don’t realize that there are quite a few hidden features in Word that, when learned, will help make you into a master of the globally-instituted document composition platform. Here are 10 key ways to master your use of Microsoft Word and make your working life that much more enjoyable. Enjoy the use of more of Word’s symbols as you type. Normally, when you are typing in a Word doc you see a lot of empty space between the words and lines, but there is a lot more going on than what is visible. If you want to see what you’re missing in terms of helpful formatting symbols, Go to File, Options, then Display, then Always Show These Formatting Marks on the Screen. Under that heading, you will see a list of options that will allow things like paragraph signs and dots marking the amount of space between words to become visible: How many ways can you format a paragraph? The answer is: There are many ways to format paragraphs, and you can easily master this and take your Word authorship to a new level. By allowing the paragraph symbol to be shown (as in step 1), this will allow you to copy over the formatting along with the text to wherever you want to next paste that text. Know Thy Word sections. Learn to organize your Word docs better by utilizing the different breaks found in the use of sections. Access the Breaks portion on the Page Layout menu, and see your document as Microsoft Office sees it. By setting up your Word doc in sections, you can independently format each section and attain a level of mastery over your document not otherwise found. Master the use of Styles. You can create style templates in Word which can be used again and again for future documents. For example, if you write a lot of memos, you can create a style template for memos, and so on. You can go to Design >> Themes for some good style ideas. Format your document prior to writing. Formatting your doc prior to beginning the writing of it is a good idea, so you can get a well-formed idea of the format before commencing the actual writing part. Many of us have experienced the frustration of wording a document only to have to format and perhaps reformat it in a different setting because we didn’t establish (and save) the formatting from the get-go. Customize your paste options. You can control how MS Office pastes your text by clicking on the Office logo (the button at the top left of the screen), going to Word Options, then to Advanced. You should then see a Cut, Copy, and Paste option that lets you configure customized options. This will do things like disable hyperlinking when pasting, along with other handy things to make your use of Word more enjoyable. Use fully justified formatting. This is perhaps one of the better-known Word formatting options – fully justified formatting will give you equally-aligned margins without the ragged edge on the right side that’s so commonplace in writing. It appeals to those who want a tidy, clean, and perhaps more professional look to their text, though “there’s no arguing taste” but with the beholder (or writer) in this case. Nevertheless, if you want to access this option, click the Office logo >> Word Options >> Advanced, then expand the Layout Options and set fully justified formatting there. Hide the Ribbon. This is another common option used by Word aficionados. For those who get a bit too distracted by the visual busy-ness of their ribbon toolbar, there is a shortcut to hiding it: Click CTRL+F1. Do it again to make it reappear. Clear all formatting. Here’s one many may not know of: The Clear All Formatting option, which does exactly what it says. This will give you a chance to clear the formatting slate and start over again. Select however much text you want to clear, and click the button that looks like the letter A holding an eraser right beneath References on the main ribbon interface. Spike your copy and pasting. Here’s a special way to copy and paste that allows you to copy from different places in a document and then paste them all together elsewhere. The CTRL+F3 command will allow you to cherry-pick the various places in your doc and put them all together in another area, or new document. The spike-pasted text will also display where the original cuts were, for comprehensive editing purposes. Talk to a Software and Office Specialist If you need further help with Microsoft Office programs like Word, you can speak to a specialist at {company}, which is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and software support in {city}. Contact us at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with all your questions or needs.  

It used to be that you could safely backup data by taking copies of all of it at regular intervals and putting it on a local backup server, which would then write the data to tape replication which could then be couriered offsite. Or, you could send that backup copy of all your data out on the Internet to a service provider for safekeeping. A local copy of your entire data network assures fast recovery in any event that doesn’t involve a site outage. Accidentally deleted files don’t require hauling information backups across the Internet, and there’s always the bonus of having the ability to clone out copies of your data backup for development and testing – free of negatively impacting workloads. Ransomware Changed Everything Ransomware has changed the entire data recovery and backup game, and it’s done it in a number of different ways. And, ransomware variants appear to be getting more and more able to corrupt wider swaths of networks and at a faster rate, too. Most ransomware variants corrupt not only the data on a single PC or server, they can compromise backup servers as well. There are three main reasons this can happen: The backup servers have their shares available The ransomware jumped from the primary infection point to infecting the backup server The ransomware is exploiting a vulnerability in the OS or data protection software, allowing it to corrupt backups directly Data Protection Insights As mentioned above, ransomware can expropriate a whole network’s cache of data quite rapidly. It can spread like a virus, traveling from system to system and increasing the speed with which it can infect, as well as the number of files per second it can corrupt. Thus, data protection systems get overwhelmed, with even Continuous Data Protection, or CDP types of data protection systems simply failing at the outset of an attack. Ransomware variants can be so subtle as to slip right under the radar of PC users, morphing for days or weeks within a given database and altering files before alerting the recipient of the attack to its presence. This is all to the advantage of the creators of ransomware, who benefit by having that payload leaving behind no single uncorrupted file, making data protection a non-issue and forcing the target to pay the ransom. The Nature of Malware Top-end malware programs can parse the backup server configuration, identifying where it’s sending disaster recovery copies. It can then go infect those servers, and destroy all data caches, which wipes out the entire organization. Here’s an IT insider tip: Never browse the Web as the domain administrator for any reason whatsoever. Public cloud computing, for one, is becoming more vulnerable to malware infection by the day, due to cleverer variants that can follow and mimic administrators’ credentials, or quickly discern them, then use scripts to delete primary data and backups. The Lesson of Data Bilocation To quote a “full-time nerd” writing in Virtualization Review, “If your data doesn’t exist in two places, then it simply doesn’t exist!” Following this line of thinking, and where cloud computing is concerned, you’ll want to make a backup copy of your data and copy it to an entirely different account with separate credentials within the same public cloud services provider, or take the more preferable path of copying it somewhere entirely removed from the primary data source. That can be a separate cloud services company, or a more traditional hosting provider, or to an on-premise storage device. The more backup copies the better, and the more locations the better. Get Expert Advice on Ransomware Protection Ultimately, ransomware can’t beat being knowledgeable and proactive. If you need further advice about ransomware prevention, data protection, and security, {company} is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and cybersecurity in {city}. Contact a friendly, knowledgeable expert at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with any of your questions or needs.

If the hack of Yahoo corporate and compromise of hundreds of millions of account users’ data wasn’t enough of a reason to delete your Yahoo account and never look back, how about the fact that former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer gave a thumbs-up to the U.S. Government’s request to be able to search each and every email in her company’s database? Not that anyone worth their salt uses Yahoo for anything but an occasional news feed, or getting information from Yahoo Answers, but if you’re still naively or archaically using Yahoo to send and receive emails that have any kind of personally-identifiable or sensitive information in them at all, this post is for you. The plain fact of the matter is that if you are still using Yahoo to regularly send and receive emails, you are engaging in a platform that has opted-in to NSA spying in the biggest way (literally). To illustrate how badly compromised, spied-on, and hacked-into Yahoo.com is, Alex Stamos, the new head of security at fellow spy tool Facebook resigned in protest at the blasé disregard of his former CEO for her colleagues’ input on green-lighting NSA spying throughout her company’s platform. To wit, Facebook can now look at Yahoo and say, “Wow, they are a government spy’s dream come true.” How to Permanently Delete Your Yahoo Account Ironically, the top-rated answer on Google for “how to delete yahoo account” lands you on a Yahoo Answers page! To close your Yahoo account permanently, go to this link: https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user, where you will be asked to sign in. If it’s been a while since you’ve logged into your account (since the hacking occurred) you will be asked to change your password. After doing this, you will be taken to a page that explains the implications of deleting your account, will be prompted to re-enter your new password – plus a captcha – and then you can click on a button that says “close my account,” or something to that effect. It will then tell you that “Your account is scheduled for deletion in 90 days. This is to ensure that no illegal third-party activity occurs using it.” Yeah, like the NSA yard sale Marissa Mayer had with her users’ email account data? And, the subsequent hacking of hundreds of millions of accounts – all of which didn’t put a dent in the ex-Yahoo CEO’s nearly half a billion-dollar net worth? You mean that kind of illegal third-party activity, Yahoo? Thanks for your conscientiousness. Cyber Safety and Security from IT Experts If you need further help with cyber safety awareness and security, {company} is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and cybersecurity in {city}. Contact one of our expert IT staff at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with all of your cyber safety, defense, and security questions or needs.

A new discovery by a Brazilian Infosec research group called Morphus Labs should (once again) make you think twice about clicking on any unsolicited links. Dubbed “Mamba,” the new ransomware strain, like the snake it was named after, strikes with a paralyzing strength, able to lock down full disks instead of just individual files. Using an open source tool called DiskCryptor, it’s able to do great damage by deeply encrypting all the data found on the target machine’s hard drive. Mamba is very similar to fellow ransomware variant Petya, both of which use a disk-level encryption system, which seems to be a growing trend in the rapid spread of ransomware. “You Are Hacked,” says the message left by Mamba, along with a number victims are expected, via a unique ID, to call to find out where to pay the bitcoin worth of ransom (worth around $600) and get the private decryption key. Actually, the full message goes something like, “You are Hacked ! H.D.D Encrypted, Contact Us For Decryption Key (w889901665@yandex.com) YOURID: 123152” (as seen in the image below): This latest ransomware strain blocks the machine’s OS from even booting up and overwrites the boot disk master boot record, or MBR replacing it with a custom MBR that displays the ransom note asking for the decryption password. As soon as the malware variant is introduced on the targeted machine, it will reboot, but before the reboot, Mamba installs itself as a fake defragmentation service via Windows, which looks like the image at left. Renato Marinho of Morphus Labs and his team have been working around the clock to counteract the insidious lock-down proposed by Mamba. He remarks, in a post on LinkedIn Pulse: “We found Mamba last September 7, during an incident response procedure for a multinational company that had some servers compromised by this malware in Brazil, USA and India subsidiaries.” Marinho goes on to say that the decryption password may be the same for all victims of Mamba, also known as HDDCryptor, or that it may be something related to the victim’s environment, such as a hostname, or something similar. The Morphus Labs team has not yet located the infection vector, but they are still at it. We will try to update you on Marinho’s team’s progress. In the meantime, as is the case with all of our messages on ransomware, we advise never paying the ransom, but instead letting an expert in malware infection lead a step-by-step analysis and countermeasures implementation to bypass and ultimately discard the ransomware from your computer. Also, don’t click on any unsolicited links, and have only the best antivirus software running on your network and all devices. Let the Cybersecurity Experts Handle It If you need further advice about cybersecurity and ransomware, {company} is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and cybersecurity in {city}. Contact one of our expert IT staff at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with all of your cyber safety, defense, and security questions or needs.

Just last month FBI Director James Comey advised that anyone using a webcam put tape over it to block out webcam spies, comparing it to locking your door. It was already revealed in recent years that hackers using spyware can both watch you and hear and record your conversations through the webcam’s microphone, so is the FBI director going far enough in his counsel? What he should be saying is, “Tape over your webcam camera and microphone.” Or, better yet, unplug it from its USB port completely when not in use. And, if that’s too inconvenient for you because you use your webcam all the time, then get something rigged up that blocks the camera and microphone between webcam sessions, for Pete’s sake! Back in June, Mark Zuckerberg was seen in a video with his own web camera taped up. In April, Comey said that he was taping up his own webcam, so why the months-long wait to make an official statement on the matter? Probably because Comey has been busy being grilled by congressman Trey Gowdy over his bumbling “investigation” into the emailing (and other) crimes and cover-ups of Hillary Clinton. One wonders if he remembered to tape up his webcam before he went to Capitol Hill under subpoena. “You go into any government office and we all have the little camera things that sit on top of the screen. They all have a little lid that closes down on them. You do that so that people who don’t have [the] authority [to] don’t look at you. I think that’s a good thing,” said Comey in a recent statement. The most telling thing here may be that James Comey referred to webcams as “camera things”. The title of this post might just as well be, “Tape Over Those Camera Things That Sit on Your Screens,” but digress we must, due to this widespread affliction of untaped-up camera thingies. Seriously, a little tape might not be enough to thwart determined webcam spies. As this writer does, you may want to go ahead and just unplug your webcam from its USB port and stick it in a drawer between Skype sessions and webinar meetings, for that added assurance that hackers with nothing better to do want to listen in on your private (and important business) conversations. Free Webcam Spy-Detection Tool for Mac Ex-NSA hacker and Mac security expert Patrick Wardle has just recently released a free tool for Mac users that monitors your computer and alerts you to when any application, such as Skype or FaceTime (or even a questionable app) is accessing your webcam and microphone in an “untoward” way. Wardle argues that a piece of tape can only get you a certain amount of security, though. He points out that spyware piggybacks on FaceTime and Skype sessions, blending in undetected. “These are the kind of things that as an attacker you would want to record anyways, because otherwise I’m just sitting at my desk petting my dog,” Wardle said jokingly. He returned to a note of seriousness, though, saying, “I want to know who and what is using my webcam.” Don’t we all? Have Questions About Webcam Security? If you need further advice about preventing webcam spies from listening-in on you, {company} is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and cybersecurity in {city}. Contact one of our expert IT staff at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with all of your spyware and webcam spy prevention questions or needs.

When B&B Welding Company required comprehensive IT strategies, Hammett Technologies provided them with a customized plan and implemented effective solutions. Hammett Technologies significantly reduced unnecessary downtime, generating greater efficiency for B&B Welding Company.  B&B Welding Company is an enterprise level steel fabricator who rely on Information Technology for every aspect of their business. The steel columns and beams they manufacture are processed with automated computer systems. B&B need their IT hardware and software to interface flawlessly with their manufacturing equipment. B&B’s Dennis McCartney states “We do everything in a 3D model first. All the design specs and details come out of that model and are then sent to the server and through the estimation software. We also use production control software and have accounting software to keep track of expenses.” B&B was lacking a technical resource to help them achieve new ways to complete business with technology. In terms of company growth, B&B required an IT company they could trust to stand by them and help them achieve their goals. B&B was experiencing lots of downtime, due to bugs and viruses that constantly needed to be fixed by their previous provider. While their IT issues were being resolved onsite, employees couldn’t work. B&B was dissatisfied with the service they were receiving and began searching for a better option. B&B met with Hammett Technologies and was won over by their package descriptions. Hammett Technologies offered them a deluxe program that included replacement of all their equipment every three years and remote fixes which lessened the need for onsite visits. B&B needed a comprehensive IT partner that provided them with security solutions and would protect B&B as a business. Hammett Technologies suited them perfectly. The Situation: A need for effective technical resources and security solutions  Hammett Technologies worked closely with B&B to develop a tailored three-year plan. They evaluated B&B’s technology needs and presented new solutions to help them save money and work efficiently. Hammett Technologies assisted B&B with the deployment, management and support of these solutions. McCartney says “Hammett Technologies did some auditing of our firewall security and found that we were quite vulnerable to risk. We use barcode scanners in our shop, so we need strong, secure Wi-Fi.” Hammett connected with B&B’s barcoding partner, integrated their system and worked with them to update the Wi-Fi capabilities. As a result of the new services Hammett Technologies implemented, downtime created by previous security issues and continual onsite visits was drastically reduced. Most importantly, Hammett Technologies provided their standard security best practices to keep B&B’s network safe from cyber attack. The Solution: Teaming with Hammett Technologies for comprehensive and dedicated IT support and strategies Hammett Technologies and B&B maintain a fantastic working relationship. Hammett Technologies cares about B&B’s success and has effectively become a member of their team. B&B calls on Hammett Technologies for leadership around technology and support in all aspects of their business. They have become friends not just business partners. Hammett Technologies is committed to providing B&B with a complete IT department for a fraction of the cost of hiring in house. Hammett Technologies supplies B&B with the following for a flat monthly rate: State of the art hardware – including servers, workstations, switches, firewalls and WAPs. Hammett Technologies updates this equipment every three years, keeping B&B’s equipment current and competitive. Software services – including Antivirus, security services, Backup, Office products, Email, CIO and CISO Proactive managed services – including unlimited remote and onsite support, preventative maintenance and monitoring and data backup and business continuity solutions  B&B recommends Hammett Technologies for their responsive support, impressive outreach, description of services and cutting edge technology solutions. McCartney reveals “They keep us on the ball with upcoming strategies, software and hardware that may suit our needs.” He continues “We will always recommend Hammett Technologies to friends and other businesses alike. They keep us up and running day to day, they rarely ever have to come in. Hammett Technologies has the connections and the expertise, which they use to support our specific business needs and goals.” Hammett Technologies is a trusted IT services company who take their clients’ needs seriously. Hammett Technologies works alongside their clients to develop a technology plan that works for their business goals, without the high cost associated with hiring a full-time IT person. Call us on (443) 216-9999 or send us an email at info@hammett-tech.com to see how we can make your business even better.  

You may have already heard about the massive data breach suffered by Yahoo – and hundreds of millions of their users – but only now are Yahoo spokespeople coming forward to finally officially confirm that yes, great damage has been done due to the hacking of the Yahoo corporate database. It seems a hacker with the unlikely moniker of “Peace” is the one responsible for the badly-timed (or strategically-timed?) hack of the free email host and search engine. Reports have been up to 500 million affected users, but as of this week the number is down to 200 million user accounts whose information was subsequently sold to the Web data black market a.k.a. Dark Web. Apparently, the cost of 200 million Yahoo users’ personal data fetched “Peace” a mere $1,800. Wow, is that a cheap slap in the face to Yahoo aficionados! The data apparently includes user names, decrypted passwords, and personal information like birthdates and other email addresses. The “official” announcement of the Yahoo hack  has been timed to coincide with news regarding the purchase of Yahoo by Verizon for $4.8 billion USD. Could the suddenly tamped-down numbers on user data be an perceptual easement for the Verizon shareholders, who are worried about an adjustment in the sale-price offering because of the hack? Quite likely. No doubt part of the terms of the Yahoo acquisition will deal with users’ online security, and precisely the reason for the wait to make official announcements bundling the data hack info with the news of the Verizon purchase. Yahoo declined for months that the hack actually occurred, saying it was “aware of the claim” being made about it in recent months. They waited those many months to tell their users to reset their passwords immediately – something they have finally now done, though it will likely be a “too little, too late” situation for them as people (the ones left, anyway) jump to more secure email hosts and platforms. The colossal Yahoo hack-and-dump is yet another black mark on the record of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec on whose watch numerous other corporate foibles have occurred in recent years. Her failure to build Yahoo into a viable competitor to search engine giants Google and Bing partly led to the sale of her company to Verizon. Let this be a cautionary tale, then, to executives and users alike – make security your number one priority, and (to users only) don’t ever share anything exploitable on obviously open and undefended sites like Yahoo that are, lets’ face it, already kind of a long-standing joke amongst serious, Web-savvy people who probably wouldn’t be caught dead sending a Yahoo email. And now, that “joke” has been confirmed as also being a personally-identifiable data trap. Need Cyber Safety and Security Tips? If you need advice on cyber defense and security, {company} is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and management in {city}. Contact one of our expert IT staff at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with all of your needs.

  The rate of cyber attacks and other cyber security incidents is continuing to rise. Experts have been speculating on which trends will continue to be problematic, and what new threats might lie ahead. Users and developers alike keep making the same mistakes over and over, creating vulnerabilities in the tech world that are tough to overcome. Most of these speculations cover the world of technology as a whole, but we’re going to focus on the issues that have the potential to impact your business. Fully Automated Digital Extortion The number of ransomware attacks leveled at businesses has been increasing since 2013. This specific type of malware works by encrypting user data and demanding a ransom fee in exchange for the decryption key. Another nasty type of malicious attack that has been increasing in popularity is doxing, which involves getting a hold of private or sensitive information and broadcasting it over social media or other digital platforms. Doxing typically targets an individual with the goal of humiliating or discrediting them. As cybercriminals become more adept at using these tactics, there is a very real chance that they could be combined to blackmail or extort individuals to gain access to accounts and data related to their place of employment. And much like traditional forms of blackmail, there is nothing to stop a hacker from repeatedly coming back to make new demands over and over again. Because something like a ransomware infection can be triggered at random using typical phishing tactics, anyone could become a victim of this kind of extortion. Compromised Smart Home Devices A growing number of household appliances or other devices are becoming digitally enhanced, allowing users to monitor or activate parts of their home remotely, or having the items themselves interact with or respond to users and the environment. Just about every major manufacturer is getting in on the smart home market, with everything from stoves to light switches available with smart options. But it’s far from a perfect system. Most options are either too expensive or too complicated for typical users, and the bulk of the options available aren’t designed to communicate with devices from other manufacturers. From a workplace standpoint, options like smart lights or smart thermostats can be picked up from commercial retailers and installed without much hassle. But eagerness from manufactures to make a splash in the marketplace is outweighing smart security decisions, leaving consumers vulnerable to hackers. A breach of your office’s smart thermostat could lead to data theft, high utility costs due to remote tampering with heat or A/C settings, or even damage to hardware caused by extreme temperatures. Overall Failure of Companies to Perform Adequately in Regards to Security Poor planning and failure to take the necessary security precautions is an ongoing theme in the world of technological innovations. The number one cause of data breaches and compromised security is the seeming inability of companies and manufacturers to learn from past mistakes and do better. Most, if not all, major security breaches could be prevented with common sense solutions, and thorough stress-testing of security measures. Some of the most common security screw ups are: Failure to stay current with product updates and patches Failure to secure websites against SQL or other injection attacks Failure to encrypt stored user data Failure to separate OS files from data storage files on storage devices Leaving default configurations, setting, or account credentials in place These are all standard security concepts that have been well established, but continue to be underutilized to the detriment of users. Part of the reason this continues to happen is the simple fact that tech enthusiasts are willing to act as beta testers for the chance to get first crack at a new program or device, instead of demanding that suppliers cover their bases and work out all the bugs before allowing a product to go to market. Compromising Companies Through Employee-Focused Social Engineering Attacks Business are getting smarter about their IT security, taking the right steps to protect against cyber attacks and being proactive about their security needs. But too often, businesses are still overlooking their biggest security weakness; their staff. Compromised employee credentials are an effective tool for hackers to infiltrate your business’ network, using the foothold provided to work their way deeper into your organization. As IT infrastructure security continues to become more effective and comprehensive, hackers and scammers are turning their focus more directly towards employees. Your employees are only human, and that makes them susceptible to a whole host of social engineering attacks, like phishing scams, social network hoaxes, false security programs, or even blackmail. It’s much easier to fool a person than a sophisticated security system. Testing the Security of the Cloud Cloud computing is essentially just remote virtualization. A cloud provider sets up software, operating systems, or networking solutions that allows you business’ data to be stored on and accessed from servers that the provider maintains on their own premises. The cloud is an amazing tool that has done wonders for the technology landscape, and gives businesses the freedom to do things with their technology that are changing the business world for the better. But relying on the cloud is not without its risks. Because your data is being stored somewhere outside of the carefully constructed security systems and protocols that protect your onsite infrastructure, you’re forced to rely on the cloud provider to have the same level of security for their own infrastructure. These providers take the safety of your data very seriously, but the sheer volume of data they’re responsible for -and the businesses and entities that data represents – makes cloud providers a tempting target for hackers. If a breach were to happen to one of these providers, the resulting security compromise would affect dozens, if not hundreds of clients is a very public way. It’s a possibility your business needs to be aware of, as it could directly result in your own clients being compromised. Technology has been evolving

James Everingham is the head engineer for Instagram, and he refers to team management as being like Schroedinger’s cat in a box theory.  Basically, the physics theorem proposed by Schroedinger held that unknowns in a given experiment – such as the cat and a vial of radioactivity next to it – can exist in “superposition,” or simultaneously alive and dead (if you’re the cat) if the experimenter doesn’t peek in and ascertain the truth. Everingham contends a similar position when working with his development teams – whether it’s at Netscape, or now at Instagram – saying that managing his teams is like the experimenter looking in and having to decide if the cat (the team) is dead or alive. But, the self-named “quantum management” style Everingham brings to the table goes far beyond theories of the well-being of a hypothetical cat in a box. What the real connection to Schroedinger’s cat and superposition is really about is that it’s a thought experiment involving multiple states of reality existing simultaneously, and the possibilities involved therein. It appears to have worked brilliantly so far, as the (mostly) left-alone cat in the box of innovation has helped elevate Instagram to being one of the most popular social media sites on the Web, behind only Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study. What Everingham’s management approach is able to say is, “Whether or not the cat is alive or dead, the brainstorming, developing, and innovations go on.” It actually touches upon the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or related Observer Effect perhaps more so than Schroedinger’s cat, in that, as Everingham says in an article in Fast Company, “The observer effect is real in the workplace, and you can affect the outcome of any project as a manager simply by inserting yourself. Often, a manager will take their team into a room and say, ‘Here’s what we need to do,’ or ‘Here’s what I’ve been thinking,’ or ‘Here’s one way we can think about this…’ as they start sketching on a whiteboard. They’re trying to add value. We always want to add value. But if you’re in any position of authority and you do this, you’ve just limited the number of outcomes and your path to success pretty dramatically.” Syndicated Quantum Management So, can Everingham’s quantum management style be used or adopted by other team managers or department heads? And, if so, how? The rhetorical answer is probably, “Gradually, or on purpose from the get-go,” depending on how gung-ho said team managers or department heads and their underlings are in getting results based on multiple states as opposed to singular outcomes or decisions. This truly is an apropos management guide for “thinking out of the box” as we’ve all heard it for years. The only difference here may be that James Everingham’s box already contains all outcomes and solutions – he just lets them stay in that state rather than single-out only one answer or state of being over all others, but scales their individual applications accordingly. This could be a very good thing for managed units or departments – freeing, unifying, and more innovating as the effect may be. It has to be better than the inflexible, imperious position taken of, “This is the only set of outcomes or answers we will tolerate”. Quantum IT Management Solutions If you’re in search of a company that can embrace many outcomes that optimize your IT performance, {company} is the leader in providing IT consulting in {city}. Contact one of our expert IT staff at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we will help you with any of your needs, via our own quantum management principles and applications.

Rather than hide away in shame, you should report your ransomware incident to the FBI, so the law enforcement agency urges. They are also discouraging victims from paying any ransom to cybercriminals (echoing the sentiments of most IT experts), as some strains of this file-encrypting malware will take your money and still destroy your files. This is all part of an effort on the FBI’s part to get a better sense of the problem and (one can only hope) start getting some leads and cracking down on relentless, ransomware-wielding hackers. The FBI warning and incident-reporting urging comes on the heels of a forum convened by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) during which FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez remarked, “The spate of ransomware incidents are escalating at an alarming rate,” and also cited a Department of Justice estimate that ransomware incidents have gone up 300% in the past year. And, with new Department of Human Services regulations involving stricter HIPAA guidelines for healthcare facilities, the need to get a hold on the numbers of ransomware incidents and where they are coming from becomes even more urgent. Although a report by Enigma Software shows that overall ransomware attacks actually decreased by 47.3 percent during the first half of 2016 over 2015, there are still estimates of as many as 100,000 malware and ransomware-infected computers daily in the U.S. alone. Head of Enigma Software Ryan Gerding said that while ransomware is accounting for a relatively small percentage of cyberattacks overall, they are growing at an astonishing rate. “If you looked at the percentage of infections made up by ransomware in 2016, you would see a 119 percent spike from 2015. To us, this means malware makers may be shifting their attention to less common, but much more costly infections like ransomware,” said Gerding. Enigma also broke down the number of ransomware incidents by location, citing the most ransomware-infected cities, with Tampa, St. Louis, Orlando, and Denver at the top of the list, in declining order. The cities with the fewest incidents of ransomware attacks (also in descending order) are Los Angeles, Riverside, CA, Albuquerque, and Wichita, Kansas. Network World recently provided a list of ways you can thwart malware variants, which include: Enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), or Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Audit your Login History and Use Tracking Code to Find Unauthorized Access Attempts Install Anti-Malware Software Implement All Recommended Security Updates Perform Offline Backups Need More Help Fighting Ransomware? If you have questions regarding preventing ransomware, {company} is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and cybersecurity in {city}. Contact one of our expert IT staff at {phone} or send us an email at {email} today, and we can help you with any of your cyber defense and security needs.