How Secure Are Your Passwords?

You want your staff to watch this video because their weak passwords put your business at risk.

3 in 4 people use passwords so weak, they are very easily hacked. We’re talking:

  • 123456
  • Pet names, children’ names, spouse’s names
  • Football teams, favourite player, etc

We’re iceConnect, local data security experts. And almost every day we see the consequences of local businesses being hacked, due to weak passwords.

We’ve got a brand new educational video on password security. You can watch it right now.

An Excel Trick So Clever You Could Marry It

Excel. A critical app. But also one that can make you fall asleep. Especially when you’re using it to try to present data to other people.

Did you know there’s a way to share data in a more dynamic way?

It’s called Microsoft 3D Maps, and it’s so beautiful you could marry it.

We’ve created a brand new video to tell you all the benefits of 3D Maps, and where to find it in Excel.

How We Help Dental Practices Thrive

In our 16 years of operating, we have been helping dentists and their many practices to grow.

We have been fortunate enough to gain the support of the dental community over the years and trusted as the leading provider of phone systems for dentists. This has all been done through word of mouth and recommendations amongst peers, of our team and our service.

To help you (hopefully you’re a dentist reading this!) better understand why practice principles choose iceConnect, this blog post will break down what these phone systems exactly do and why it can enhance a practice’s marketing strategy.

Phone Systems

What are they?

Whether you own/run one or multiple sites, your practices can operate under a single telephone system that connects all locations and every single individual employee’s line.

Features include;

  • Silently listening into phone calls
  • Listening back on recorded phone calls
  • Taking office calls from any location with the use of an app
  • Creating on-hold menu options
  • Easily adding/removing new lines for employees
  • Transferring calls in and out of office easily

How can the phones boost productivity in my practice?

The phones run on a system that constantly records and monitors all activity, which is then compiled into statistical and analytical reports.

Available on a monthly, weekly or daily basis – as often as you choose, these reports offer crucial insights into how your interaction with your patients is impacting on business progression. They can provide answers to questions that could help advance areas of your business you didn’t know needed improvement.

KPIs We Provide For Dentists

  1. Number of abandoned calls
  2. Number of new patient vs. existing patient calls
  3. Average time to answer a call
  4. Average time spent talking to patients
  5. Daily list of abandoned calls so they can be called back
  6. Individual extension statistics comparing receptionist activity.

With all this information, you can begin to see where you could improve and any changes you can start making today e.g. making sure staff answer every single call.

Based on the information you find, the marketing methods you use can be tailored easier to your existing patients or new patients because now you know their behaviours and habits.

How To Make A Super Secure Password

Passwords are the only thing standing between hackers and all your personal or business files, documents, photos and deepest, darkest secrets.

Is isn’t difficult for accounts to be hacked and passwords to be changed or attained when your passwords are weak.

There is software floating about that super techy guys know how to work, which decodes passwords in seconds and gives access to anything from an Instagram account to a CEO’s personal email. It works a bit like cracking a safe – in theory it’s a good, ‘secure’ idea but it’s actually really easy to break into.

This means you have to up your password game to stay protected. A measly name or street road, password followed by a number won’t cut it anymore.

TIPS TO SECURE YOUR ACCOUNTS:

1. Make sure you don’t have the same password for all your accounts.


2. Select a standard of 8 characters, 1 capital letter and 1 special character.


3. No common words or things associated to you personally (date of birth, pets name, street name)


4. Download a password manager and two-factor authentication app such as Last Pass. This way if a hacker does gain access to your password they won’t be able to log in without a one-time generated code.


5. DON’T MAKE YOUR PASSWORD, ‘password’!

DANGER! Sending Payment Instructions Via Email

While emails can be an easy and efficient way of following up on chats had at meetings or business deals, it isn’t always as safe as you might assume.

Hackers have developed ways of spying on communication and infiltrating emails within businesses. It is now possible for them to hack into email accounts, without arousing suspicion to the owner or the company that their account has been accessed.

This allows them to read correspondence with colleagues and familiarise themselves with their victims professional relationships, making it easy to know who to target for funds.

If you receive an email from a colleague asking for money for a project – whether you know of it or not, make sure you adhere to this check list;

Am I familiar with the transaction?

Is the email from a plausible source?

Have I checked with them in person (walk over to their desk), or on the phone after the email was sent?

If you aren’t able to get in contact with the sender to verify, investigate yourself. Compare whether the bank details you’re being asked to make a transfer to, match the details you’ve made previous payments to. Scammers can convince you of authenticity by replicating exact email addresses, even senders.

Only once you have checked all of this, is it safe to go ahead with the payment.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a fraudulent online method of coaxing sensitive information such as; usernames, passwords, credit card details, medical history, etc. through the use of emails, phone or text.

These emails are designed to seem legitimate and are sent by scammers posing as real people or companies that that person does business with.

In actual fact, they are from attackers looking to infiltrate your system or attain a payment or your credentials. It could include a prompt in the form of a link to a website or a simple request of payment details.

TIPS TO AVOID SCAMS:

1. If the email is from a sender you don’t recognise – DO NOT OPEN IT.

2. If the email is from a sender you DO recognise, but the subject line and message are regarding an issue unknown to you or asking for a payment, always call the person to CONFIRM the details.

3. Double check the sender’s email address – often scammers will misspell or add numbers to a familiar email to make it believable. E.g. if the real email is ‘[email protected]’, the scammer might use ‘[email protected]’

4. If the email isn’t addressed to anyone – be suspicious. If payments are being requested, it should at least greet your personally (Hi John). If the email goes right into requesting funds without any niceties or conversation topics familiar to you and that person, it could be a sign of phishing.

5. Some blackmail hackers will use scare tactics to get you to make a payment. This could be threats such as; ‘We will release your search history to your colleagues’ or ‘We will delete your database’, etc. followed by, ‘unless you make a payment to this account’. Don’t believe it and make your IT department aware.

6. Change your password regularly [See our post about how to create a secure password].

Could A Puppy Get Your Business Hacked?

How lovely. Lisa in accounts has a brand new puppy.

It’s taking over her life. There are photos on her desk. It’s all she seems to talk about. Hey – she even changed her password to include his name.

And suddenly that puppy has become a security risk to your business.

Hackers are clever. They look at social media feeds, and build profiles of people based on what they share. You’d be surprised many people base their passwords on their pets or children’s names.

We’ve created a new video about this very subject. You need to watch it now.

What Type of IT Support is Best for Your Business?

In-House IT VS. Managed Service Providers

There are many factors to consider when making the choice between hiring an in-house tech team or a managed serviced provider (MSP). A managed service provider is a company that manages client’s IT infrastructure and end-user systems, remotely.  Businesses usually hire MSPs to provide them with a recurring, subscription-type service with different support features based on their company needs.

By ‘support’, we mean the dedicated team in charge of your staff’s tech. This is everything from physically installing hardware to email set-up, software installation and virus damage control.

For small companies, MSPs might be more cost effective rather than an in-house tech team. If you have few computers and your relationship or primary mode of communication with your clients isn’t dependant on the smooth running of your tech, it might be futile to fork out large salaries to technicians who are hardly needed.

By choosing remote support you can select a plan that works for you. This could be pay-as-you-go, monthly or yearly support with on-call assistance – the flexibility of the conditions of your tech support are negotiable between yourself and the company you choose.

An in-house technician might only have general knowledge and not always know the best method to care of your staff’s tech needs. If you have a large company however, with 50+ staff that require a tech guy on hand to deal with minor issues e.g. email set-up, internet connectivity, it would be cheaper to add a technician to the permanent team. MSPs have high hourly rates and can charge more for call-outs. When you’re paying these rates for small problems that happen frequently, you’ll begin to see which option is most cost-efficient.

Managed service providers (which is what we are), house a full team of technicians with a broad spectrum of specialist knowledge and skills. Where one technician might still be learning a topic, another might thrive in it. An MSP team is constantly learning about new software, systems, devices and completing training courses in order to stay up-to-date with evolving technologies, to deliver a comprehensive service to the large range of clients they cater to.  

If it sounds like your company would be better off with an MSP – we are one!

Our CEO is extremely accessible and loves talking to new clients – seeing how we can best tailor our plethora of services to come up with a plan that works best for you.

Give us a call or send an email and you’ll hear from him directly.

Handy Keyboard Shortcuts

From the tech team at iceConnect, to anyone sat at a desk, struggling to find the document they minimised ten minutes ago, here are a few handy keyboard shortcuts we deemed the most necessary to know.

Ctrl + ‘S’ = Save document

Ctrl + ‘C’ = Copy text

Ctrl + ‘V’ = Paste text

Ctrl + ‘X’ = Cut text

Ctrl + ‘Z’ = Undo action

Ctrl + ‘Y’ = Redo action

Ctrl + ‘B’ = Make text bold

Ctrl + ‘I’ = Italics

Ctrl + ‘U’ = Underline text

Ctrl + F = Find word

Shift + Arrow keys = Highlight text

Windows key + ‘L’ = Lock computer

Windows key + comma = Peek at desktop

Windows key + ‘T’ = Look through apps on task bar

Windows key + arrow keys = Change window size

Windows key + ‘D’ = Minimises everything to show desktop and again to bring everything back up

Windows key + Shift + ‘S’ = Screenshot part of screen

Shift + Windows key + Left & Right arrows = Move window to another monitor (multiple screens)

Shift + Windows key + Up & Down arrows = Minimise and close window

Alt + Tab = Quickly switch between windows – helpful to find pop up windows