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The world is evolving incredibly fast with the help of various technological advancements. Both our homes and our offices are becoming more efficient than ever before. Previously, screens of all shapes and sizes were dominating the marketplace, but now, we’re seeing voice start to take over with many companies building and/or enhancing their own voice interfaces.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the following:

• Google’s Assistant
• Microsoft’s Cortana
• Apple’s Siri

However, nothing’s been quite as dominant and groundbreaking as Amazon’s Alexa, an intelligent personal assistant built into the company’s hardware on tens of millions of devices. Alexa is rapidly growing in popularity – finding its way into the living rooms and kitchens of many users around the world. Why? Alexa is the most convenient way to stay organized.

Whether you’re looking to add an item to your to-do list, check the weather, set an alarm or listen to a podcast, the intelligent personal assistant can do it all with a simple voice command. Alexa can currently be found waiting to be voice activated for your convenience within these devices:

• Amazon Echo
• Amazon Tap
• Echo Dot
• Echo Show
• Fire TV
• Fire Tablets

Alexa has seen a ton of success in living rooms and kitchens. In fact, it’s seen enough success that they’re bringing it into the world of business! Imagine operating your office with simple voice commands – from starting your conference call to scheduling and booking the boardroom to turning off the lights in the office after hours – it’s all happening sooner than you’d think.

Alexa for Business: Giving You Back the Precious Time You Spend Handling Tedious Tasks During the Workday…

We all know how much time is spent handling tedious tasks at work. You’re bogged down with managing your calendar, ordering office supplies, dialing into various meetings, and searching for important information to get projects done. It all adds up quickly. Alexa has partnered with various companies to bring you the ultimate playbook for the workplace, including:

• Polycom
• WeWork
• Capital One
• Concur
• Splunk
• Cisco
• Salesforce
• And more

These partnerships make Alexa for Business possible. How does it work? Alexa for Business gathers information about the devices, user accounts, and employees within your company. When asked a question, this information is used to formulate the appropriate response or perform the requested action.

Alexa for Business is extremely innovative and helpful for anyone looking to streamline their workday while:

• Simplifying conference calls and/or meetings: You can rest assured knowing your conference calls and/or meetings will be smooth sailing! Alexa will get your meeting started, act as an audio conferencing device, or even control equipment for you.
• Staying focused on important tasks: You no longer have to worry about time-consuming day-to-day things like managing your schedule, creating to-do lists or setting reminders. Alexa handles all of this for you.
• Keeping the office running smoothly: You will be able to order new supplies, notify your IT department of issues, find an open meeting room, and more with a simple voice command. Alexa keeps your entire office operating at peak performance.
• Providing a more personalized experience for customers: You can provide a more personalized experience for your customers by allowing them to play music, ask questions about products, and even receive support as needed.
• Maintaining security through proper provisioning: You don’t need to worry about security threats as it’s simple to properly provision and manage devices. You can specify device locations, enabling skills that can be used, and more.

Alexa for Business makes it easy to manage enabled devices, enroll users, and assign skills whenever necessary. You can even use the skills kit and associated APIs to build your own custom voice skills for your company. For example, you can build a skill that lets users notify the right person when the printer stops working or ink needs to be restocked.

What Does Alexa for Business Cost?

The great news: Alexa for Business is available as a pay-as-you-go service with no up-front fees or long-term commitments! You pay based on the number of shared devices registered and the number of users enrolled in your account. What’s the difference? Shared devices are enabled devices within shared spaces, such as lobbies or conference rooms.

Users enrolled, on the other hand, refers to personal devices registered to user’s personal accounts. Both shared devices and users enrolled are quite affordable, too! You’ll pay $7 per month, per shared device and $3 per month, per user enrolled. If you’re ready to get started, all you need is an enabled device and an AWS account.

Already have an enabled device and an AWS account? Perfect! Sign into the console, go to “Alexa for Business” and click “Business Productivity” to get yourself and your device setup on the platform.

Alexa for Business is going to quickly change the way businesses around the world function – allowing for greater efficiency, streamlined workflow, and a ton of time saved throughout the day. Call {phone} or email us at {email} to find out more.

{company} is your trusted source for all things information technology related. We are the preferred IT support company in {city}.

LinkedIn is the most popular business and employment-focused social networking site around. Whether you’re happily employed at a fantastic company or you’re still searching for your dream job, it’s simply a must-join site for your professional future.

LinkedIn users not only have the ability to connect with people in an effort to grow their networks, but users can also connect with companies through the following feature. When you follow companies, you’re able to see:

• Status updates and important news
• People who work for the company
• Available positions waiting to be filled
• And much more

As you can imagine, this is handy if you’re looking to fill your sales pipeline or find a new job. Prior to connecting with companies, it’s important to consider that there are more than 300 million people worldwide using the social networking site, which means you need to put your best foot forward! If you’re starting a brand new profile, remember the first few lines are the most important – name, title, and most recent positions.

Those first few lines will show up in any search, so you want them to be accurate and informative while giving you a good first impression. Your photo will also show up in any search, so you want to make sure you’re using an updated, clear shot. Another great tip before you start connecting with companies: customize your URL! How do you do this? That’s simple:

1. Click the “me” icon at the top of your homepage
2. Click view profile
3. Click edit your public profile and URL on the right rail
4. Under edit, public profile URL in the right rail, click the edit icon

When you first join, you’ll have a very long, impersonal URL. This is the time to change it to something more personal and professional. Aim for http://linkedin.com/in/firstnamelastname. If that’s not available, include something like a middle initial or even something alluding to your industry or expertise. This is great for searchability.

Next, write your summary. LinkedIn’s summary section is fantastic for showing off your personality and skills. You can include high-resolution photos, videos, and infographics as needed. Or you can keep it simple with text only – just be sure to stand out. Think of the summary section as your elevator pitch and keep it interesting.

Once you’ve set up your profile, you’re ready to start connecting with companies! So what’s the best way to get started? If you know the niche you want to work or find leads in, look for companies using the search engine. You can either search for a company name directly or use keywords having to do with your niche. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, click “follow company” to connect.

You’ve Connected with a Few Companies… What Next?

First and foremost, connect with us! Our team is your trusted source for the latest information when it comes to business technology. We have extensive expertise and knowledge of the small to mid-size market; and we’re always sharing tons of great news, tips, and more. What’s next? Well, after you’ve connected with us and a few companies of your choice, follow these tips:

• Start interacting with recent posts: Make sure you’re liking and commenting on posts, especially if you have some good insight to share on the topic. Always ensure you’re using proper spelling and grammar, of course!
• Check out the leadership team: You should be able to find those who work for the company, including CEOs and Presidents, on the right side of the company page. Feel free to send invitations to connect.
• Keep on the lookout for positions: If you’re looking for a job, make sure you keep an eye out for opportunities. If you’re looking to provide services, positions available can give you an opening to offer your services instead of hiring a full-time person.

LinkedIn groups are also useful for finding companies. Just search for groups relevant to the industry you’re looking for a job or leads in. You’ll easily find members of groups that are working at relevant companies.

What About Connecting with the Competition?

If you’re connecting with companies for the purpose of building your sales pipeline, should you connect with the competition? This can be a great tactic to help you gain a better understanding of your target market. How so? Once you’re connected, you’re able to view who they’re connected with – from prospects to clients.

Aside from being able to keep an eye on their prospects and clients, you’re also able to get a great view of their marketing strategies, including:

• The content they’re sharing
• The webinars they’re hosting
• The events they’re holding
• And much more

Keep in mind that you’re giving your competitor’s access to all of the same information. For some, it’s worth the risk, especially if you’re able to form a partnership of sorts – trading leads back and forth when they’re not suited to you.

 

The recent announcement of the vulnerabilities found in the Intel, ARM, and AMD processors has sparked a new phishing campaign and not the good kind of fishing with bait and largemouth bass. Although, these hackers are using a particular kind of bait.

While Meltdown and Spectre require access to your system, hackers have various ways to gain access. Already hackers are using phishing emails to trick users into giving them access. They send out an email claiming to contain a patch for Meltdown or Spectre. Instead, the email installs malware on your system. This malware gives the hacker access to your system, allowing them to exploit the bugs and take the unprotected data.

Be wary of social engineering scams like phishing emails. Hackers are all too eager to take advantage of problems like this, and unfortunately, some people are so eager to fix the problem that they might not realize that the “patch” they just clicked on is now allowing a hacker to steal all their data.

WHAT IS PHISHING?

Phishing is a hacking technique that “fishes” for victims by sending them deceptive emails. The “ph” replaces the “f” in homage to the first hackers, the “phone phreaks” from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Virtually anyone on the internet has seen a phishing attack. Phishing attacks are mass emails that request confidential information or credentials under pretenses, link to malicious websites or include malware as an attachment.

Many phishing sites look just like the sites that they are impersonating. Often, the only difference in many spoofed sites is slight, and easily missed the difference in the URLs. Visitors can easily be manipulated into disclosing confidential information or credentials to the hacker if they can be induced to click the link. Even blacklisted phishing sites can often get by standard filters through the technique of time-bombing the URLs. Then the URL will lead to an innocent URL initially to get past the filters but then redirect to a malicious site.

Although malware is harder to get past filters, recently discovered and zero-day malware stands an excellent chance of getting through standard filters and being clicked on, especially if malware hides in a non-executable file such as a PDF or Office document. This is how many of the recent ransomware attacks were pulled off.

Now with Meltdown and Spectre looming over us, the average person is more susceptible to “quick fixes” and solutions to this issue.

Despite the lack of personalization, an astonishing 20% of recipients will click on basically anything that makes it to their inbox.

SPEAR PHISHING

Spear phishing is an enhanced version of phishing that aims at specific employees of the targeted organization. The goal is usually to gain unauthorized access to networks, data, and applications. In contrast to the mass emailing of a phishing attack, which might see hundreds of attack messages sent out to random recipients within the space of a couple of hours, spear phishing is methodical and focused on a single recipient. Often the initial email will contain no URL or attachment. Instead, it will simply try to invoke the recipient into thinking that the sender is who they say they are. Only later on will the hacker request confidential credentials or information, or send a booby-trapped URL or attachment.

The additional customization and targeting of a spear phishing email, along with the lack of easily recognized blacklisted URLs or malware customization results in click-rates more than 50%!

Potentially every Intel processor sold in the last 10 years could have a critical security vulnerability that puts users at severe risk.

It’s often these days that poor IT security comes down to something like human error, and lack of awareness on the users’ part. It’s less often that there’s a widespread design flaw discovered in the technology itself, which is exactly what happened with Intel this week.

The Register published an article this week detailing how every Intel processor produced over the course of the last decade is affected by a design flaw that would allow malicious programs to access and read what should otherwise be protected areas of a device’s kernel memory. Kernel memory is dedicated to essential core components of an operating system and how they interact with the hardware.

What does this mean for Intel users? This flaw could allow cybercriminals to access valuable and sensitive information like passwords. It’s possible that something as simple as JavaScript on a webpage, or cloud-hosted malware could penetrate the most interior levels of an Intel-based device.

Even worse, a foundational flaw like this can’t be patched with a simple, everyday update – the problem is in the hardware, which means it needs an OS-level overwrite for every single operating system (Windows, Linux, and macOS).

In a statement released January 3^rd, Intel claimed that this flaw isn’t necessarily unique to their processers.

“Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits.”

According to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Intel was informed about the security flaw by Google a few months ago. Although the extent of this flaw isn’t fully known to the public right now, it appears that developers are working hard to patch systems over the course of the next few weeks.

That said, the patching process won’t be easy, given that it will involve severing kernel memory from user processes. In a nutshell, that means users will face major performance lags, anywhere from 5 – 30%, depending on the specifics of the device.

The fix works by moving the kernel to a totally separate address space, making it nonexistent — and therefore, inaccessible — to a running process. Unfortunately, this separation process takes a lot of time to perform, as it forces the processor to dump cached data and reload from memory every time it switches between two separate addresses. The end result is an increase in the kernel’s overhead and a slower computer.

While it may not be noticeable for the average user on their home PC, this kind of lag will likely affect businesses using enterprise-grade cloud configurations the most. Be sure to keep an eye on this developing issue in order to ensure your Intel-based devices are properly patched.

As always, the best way to stay aware of threats like this, as well as protect against them, is to work with an expert partner. Our team of cybersecurity professionals will help you stay ahead of exposed vulnerabilities like these so that you can remain safe and focus on the work your business does.

We’ve all heard the words “net neutrality” bouncing around for the past few months. Many of us have no idea what this term means, even though we benefit from them every day. Here is what you need to know about this important topic.

When you go on the internet you are first brought to your home page of your chosen search engine. For some people this home page is Bing, for others, Yahoo, for still others it is Google. From this starting point, you can go anywhere. If you are looking for a particular site, all you must do is type the address in and away you go. If you are looking for certain information, but don’t know exactly where to find it, all you must do is type in what you want to know more about and your search engine will bring you all results about that topic. Your internet service provider can’t decide which results to give you, so you end up being able to see all results available on the web. With the ending of net neutrality, this internet as we know it may come to an end.

What is Net Neutrality?

The phrase “net neutrality” basically means that all websites on the internet are treated the same by your internet service provider. They can’t discriminate against sites based on popularity, type, or any other factor. Meaning if you have CenturyLink as a provider, they are not allowed to block any sites from you or allowed to slow down services to certain sites. All websites get the same treatment across the board, regardless of their content or popularity.

For example, my internet service provider loads YouTube at the same speed that it loads Netflix. It doesn’t discriminate against the site in any way.

How does this affect me?

This is important because if internet service providers can change the way their service is provided to different sites this could mean your monthly billing would be set up similarly to a cable TV package. Certain packages could charge more for certain sites based on popularity (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, YouTube).

Another possibility is packages could be set up based on the type of website. For example, one Internet service company in Portugal has packages for social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, messenger, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snap Chat, and Twitter), for video (YouTube, Netflix), for music (Pandora, Sound Cloud) for email and cloud services (Gmail, google drive, yahoo, Hotmail, drop box), and for messaging (skype, kik, video messaging, and other internet based texting services). Each of these packages costs €4.99 or about $5.91.

This means that if I, an average internet user, wanted to access all the websites that I typically do every month I would have to pay for each of these packages because I use websites from all of them on a regular basis.

Why is This Only Now Becoming an Issue?

The Federal Communications Commission are the ones responsible for pushing the vote, which is set for December 14^th of this year. Thus, the media is covering more and more of the story closer to the vote. It is very possible that the media would never have covered the story if it weren’t for the huge public outcry over the issue. A group of 28 senators headed by Senator Maggie Hanssen has written the FCC a letter asking for them to delay the vote until they can properly examine the document and gain a full understanding of the vote.

Who Benefits?

The short answer is internet service providers such as Comcast, Verizon, and CenturyLink stand to gain the most because under the new rules they would be permitted to charge their customers more for different internet packages.

What Other Countries Don’t Have Net Neutrality?

Many countries lack net neutrality. One example is Portugal. Their model could be like what would happen here in the U.S., with different packages and extra data costing more. If you want social media, it would cost a fee. If you want video streaming, that would cost another fee. This could happen with every type of application or website and end up costing quite a bit if you use multiple types of sites. Other countries without net neutrality include China, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Syria, Kazakhstan, Sudan, Egypt, Venezuela, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The degree of restriction varies from country to country. Some places, like China, have government blocks on many popular websites such as YouTube, Gmail, Instagram, Pinterest, and more. China also has a very extensive government presence on what websites are not blocked to monitor public opinion current events. There are also many more countries that have partial net neutrality, or very minor regulations on their internet, Such as India.

Conclusion

The internet is hands-down humanity’s best invention. What makes it great is that all content and information is treated equally. It is the only source in the world that allows you to access any information from anywhere at any time. The ending of net neutrality would end the open internet as we know it. To mar the best invention humanity has ever created with more regulation and pay-for-services would be a great detriment to society.