INSIDE

CLEVER TECHTechnology Advice for Small Businesses | May 2014 | produced by Computer Troubleshooters of Anderson (864) 225-1888

Also In This Issue:15 Things You Didn’t Know

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Last month we saw not one but TWO security issues threaten everyone who uses the internet. First the “Heartbleed” bug affected hundreds of web services and their users, then a bug in Internet Explorer compromised everyone using Microsoft Windows until Microsoft issued an emergency patch.

The problem is, we do SO MUCH online nowadays: Banking, shopping, investments, school work, business deals, and the all-important sharing of cat photos. Keeping safe online is more important than ever.

The internet can be a safe place if you follow three simple rules:

1. Keep your computer updated, with all security patches and strong virus protection.

2. Don’t trust anyone. Just because

that email looks like it’s from your bank or your dear Aunt Sally, don’t open it if it seems suspicious.

3. Use a strong password, and change it often.

Easy enough, right? The tricky part for many of us is picking passwords that are strong enough to keep us safe, but easy to remember, so here are some tips to help you do just that.

Let’s start with some basic facts:

1. Longer passwords are tougher to crack than short ones - by an order of magnitude. An 8-letter password can generally be cracked in 1 day with the right tools, but a similar 10-digit password would take 3 years.

2. Using “dictionary words” in your

password makes it easy to crack. That means any real word you might find in the dictionary or any brand name - even if you try to disguise it with CAPital LeTtErs or M1xed Ch@racter$.

3. Using the same password for multiple sites is the most dangerous thing you can do. If a virus on your computer steals one password, or if an online service you trust is hacked, all your online data is at risk if they’re all protected by the same password.

So, how can you make long, non-dictionary passwords that are different for each site but still easy to remember?

Here’s one way to do it: First, pick a sentence you can easily memorize. For example, my motto is “All you can do is all you can do.”.

Next, take the first letters of each

The Secrets To a Strong

(and Easy) Password

Easy & Strong Passwords

...continues on page 3

Microsoft’s “Cloud Suite” is a LOT more than just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

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For more information, call us at 864-225-1888 or email us at support@ct-anderson.com.

Last year Microsoft made some big changes in how people buy Microsoft Office. You get a choice: buy the traditional Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook bundle for $200 per PC, or pay $15/month for Office 365 which works for up to 5 machines.

Option #2 is compelling - if you have a desktop and a laptop, or a home computer and a work computer, Office 365 makes financial sense just for the Microsoft Office programs.

SO... .a lot of people wind up with Office 365 accounts and don’t realize what else they can do with them. Especially for small businesses, Office 365 packs a ton of powerful features in a low-priced package.

Email, Calendar, Contacts, & File Sharing

Office 365 is, hands-down, the most powerful email & collaboration solution on the planet. With Office 365 you can share the same email folders, calendars, contact lists, and more, and access them all from your computer, phone, or iPad - or from the web.

Share Emails With Your Co-Worker

Working with someone else? You can choose to share your email with them, OR just share certain folders, such as key pro-ject or customer folders. It’s a great way to make sure everyone has easy access to the information they need.

Share Calendars

Sharing a calendar with coworkers or clients is a great way to stay in touch. You can choose to let them change your calendar or just view it, or just let them see when you’re free or busy (but no details about where you’ll be if you want to keep those private).

Chat With Colleagues

Microsoft Lync is a powerful tool for stay-ing in touch with colleagues down the hall or around the world. You can instant mes-sage each other from your PC, Mac, tablet, or phone, and know at a glance who is free and who is busy or in a meeting.

Video Calls & Web Meetings

Office 365 also lets you hold an instant video call or web meeting with any coworker or customer. Save money by dropping your webmeeting soft-ware and using the powerful tools built into your Office 365.

Co-Author Documents

Need to collaborate on a letter, spread-sheet, or presentation? Office 365 lets you edit a document from your phone or computer while a coworker edits the same document from theirs - you’ll see each other’s updates in real time!

Task List - Everywhere!

They say the most powerful productivity tool is a to-do list, and Office 365’s Task List keeps your to-dos automagically updated on your computer, phone, and tablet.

Delegate!

A powerful feature, formerly only available in large corporate settings, is the ability to delegate control of some or all of your email to an assis-tant. Let them respond to all the routine requests and file emails into appropriate folders, leaving you free to focus on the important ones.

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word in the sentence, so in my case “All You Can Do Is All You Can Do“ becomes “aycdiaycd”. That’s 9 letters, not too bad so far.

Now append (or prepend) a 3-character abbreviation of the service you’re using. So for my bank I might use “aycdiaycdwfb” for Wells Fargo Bank. Adding 3 characters that are unique for each service means you’ll always have a different password for each site or service you use.

Finally, because most sites require numbers, capital letters, or other characters in your password, choose to capitalize certain letters (say, the first four) and add one or more numbers and symbols to the beginning or end. So my bank password might become “12+AYCDiaycdwfb”, while my Gmail password becomes 12+AYCDiaycdgml”.

That gives me an incredibly strong 15 digit password that’s easy to remember AND different for every site!

:RUN�2IíOLQHSome people mistakenly think that a cloud-based office suite like Office 365 doesn’t work when you’re away from the internet - not true! You can work fine from your local copies, and all changes will sync back to your safe & secure cloud connection the next time you’re online.

Import Holiday & Sport Calendars

Instantly add holidays (for any country) or sports teams schedules into your Office 365 calendar.

Prioritize with Flags

Overwhelmed with Email? Flags and Categories are easy ways to identify the important emails from among the rest of the swarm. And if you’re REALLY overwhelmed, you can setup Rules to au-tomatically Flag or categorize emails, and Filters to hide the unimportant ones.

Versioning

Have you ever had a document you shared with colleagues, and discovered that someone had erased an important part of the file? Office 365 supports “Versioning”, so any of your shared files can be rolled back to a previous Ver-sion, before any unwanted changes were mde. Whew!

Another App Store

If you’ve ever bought Apps for your phone or tab-let, you’re familiar with having an App Store. Of-fice 365 also has an App Store (technically called the Office Store). Hundreds of Apps, many of them free, can be add-ed to your Office 365. You can add an app that lets you sign documents without printing them first, or adds calendars to Excel, or that groups your documents into a Project Management interfface.

Easy Intranet

Office 365 makes it easy to build your own In-tranet- a place where everyone you work with can share files, notes, calendars, and more, and access them all anytime, from anywhere, using their computer, phone, or tablet.

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