Security and Relationships

May 23 started out like a quiet day, but one phone call created a two-day scramble to quell a crisis. The solution included working around an unresponsive bank, rapidly deploying technology tools, and cashing in the benefits of good working relationships. It was the stuff of a thriller novel.

It had been a couple of very tough weeks. Your special agent/tech guy (me) was at the carwash when the cell phone rang. A client reported $140,000 was missing. It had been wired out of an account that day, and they couldn’t get anyone from their bank to respond to their phone calls.

“Hmm,” the special agent/tech guy thought, “$140,000 can cover the detailing work for several fleets of Corvettes,” but reality took hold. He couldn’t wait for them to clean his car’s interior. He jumped behind the wheel and headed for his client’s office.

With $140,000 missing and nobody at the bank picking up the phone, we found the police already involved in the case. We quickly realized there would be no telephone solution to the problem, and it took us until the early evening to solve this problem. The good news is that we were able to reverse the wire transfer all on our own after trying for hours to get phone support.

Here are the facts – just the facts, ma’am.

Obviously, our client’s system was hacked. It was a complicated case because it involved the email of an employee in the finance department who had just left the company. That’s one reason why the police were involved. There was no criminal activity, but there was a lot of sloppiness.

The hackers got into the former employee’s email account and saw that one password opened up a lot of doors in the company’s financial system. They reset the account’s password, created a new account that they could use to “approve” new transactions, and used it for the $140,000 wire transfer.

However, they made one mistake: They forgot to turn off forwarding in the account they hacked, and that’s how they were discovered. Our client had done the right thing by having the ex-employee’s email forwarded, and they created a special rule so that all the emails went into a separate folder. Several people monitored that folder periodically, and as soon as one of them saw the emails, the alarm went off. In most cases, this kind of wire fraud isn’t discovered for days, and the money is lost.

Our client was able to freeze their account immediately online, but they still had outstanding checks on that account. That matter also needed immediate attention.

So, the special agent/tech guy took advantage of a good relationship with another bank, which is also a client, first thing the next morning. He jumped in his car. The interior was still dirty. He drove to the bank, where he was able to help his other client open a new account and get checks they could print immediately to replace those outstanding in the frozen account.

But his work wasn’t done. The victimized client had resisted instituting multifactor authentication for all financial transactions. So, the rest of the day was spent instituting a two-factor authentication system and training everyone in its use.

We like to think the goodwill we’d built up with both clients helped one client get out of a hole and another gain a new customer. But it all could have been prevented with better passwords and an authentication system. Don’t wait for a disaster to strike. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to discuss your online security and the steps we can take to improve it.

Sharing Your Photographic Memory

We love to share photos and videos of the cool places we visit and things we do, and it’s easier than ever to do it and preserve your images while you’re still traveling. Here are some things to focus on.

If we don’t use our phones as our primary travel camera, we use a digital camera that records our images on SD cards. If we want to post some of our pictures to social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, or put them in an email or text, we need to get that image from the camera to a device that can connect to the internet. There are lots of ways to do it, and for the most part, they’re pretty simple processes. But remember that not all cameras are created equal.

Experienced users of DSLRs (digital single-lens reflex cameras) know, for example, that major brands such as Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony have proprietary systems for how their lenses interface with their cameras’ electronics. The more automated point-and-shoot digital cameras, which work similarly to cellphone cameras, also have differences based on their manufacturers. Most differences come in how you transfer your photos from the camera to a device that can access the internet for social media sharing.

Apps to transfer photos from cameras to phones are manufacturer-specific. Canon has Camera Direct, Nikon has SnapBridge, Olympus has OM Image Share, and Sony has Imaging Edge Mobile. All work with Apple iOS and Android phones; just go to your friendly OS app store to download the app and follow the directions to pair your camera and phone.

The best thing about all these apps is that you can have them transfer photos to the phone almost as soon as you take them so you can share them immediately on social media. More important, transferring your photos from your camera will get them into the cloud so that you’ll have the images if something happens to your camera. The manufacturers all have their own storage sites, and if you shoot RAW files (a complete, uncompressed digital negative), you have the option to save them on those sites. You can also shoot and save RAW files on newer smartphones. The key is to make sure you specify in all transfer settings that you want to keep them as RAW files. The default is to save them as jpg files.

However you save your photo files, today’s smartphones have some basic editing functions to help you improve the exposure and crop the picture before you send it.

If you’re above the basic level of on-phone photo editing, you can add people to a photo, as one of our car club colleagues recently did. Two key people were unavailable for a group photo, so someone with a smartphone camera took a picture of those who were there. He then took separate pictures of the two others, positioning one at each side of where the group photo was taken. He used the software on his phone to copy and paste them into the group picture. For our purposes, it was the perfect solution.

If you want to go beyond photo sharing on social media, you still need to get your photo files onto a device with photo editing software. You can use USB cables to connect your camera to your computer or a card reader that connects through a USB port. If your camera and computer both have the ports, you can also use HDMI cables.

If your camera doesn’t have the capability to work with a transfer app, you can also get a card reader that can connect directly to your phone through a Lightning connector (iPhone, iPad) or USB-C (Android phone or tablet). Whatever solution you wind up using, the cost should be less than $50.

If you have any questions about configuring your equipment to transfer your photos to the cloud or another device, call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us, and we should be able to answer your questions or walk you through the process.

The 2FA Police

Microsoft is enforcing requirements for 2FA (two-factor authentication) for many of its apps. The good news is that it protects your data better. The bad news is that you must use authenticator codes and messages. It’s time to ensure everyone in your office (or family for home users) is up to speed on using authenticators and other 2FA measures.

Microsoft’s Authenticator App gets downloaded onto your iPhone or Android phone and helps to verify it’s you when you log in to an online account using two-step or two-factor verification. It uses a second step, such as a code sent to your phone, to make it harder for others to break into your account. Two-step verification helps you use your accounts more securely because passwords can be forgotten, stolen, or compromised.

One common way to use the Authenticator app is through 2FA, where one of the factors is your password. After you sign in using your username and password, you can either approve a notification or enter a provided verification code. Options include:

  • Signing in by phone with a version of two-factor verification that lets you sign in without requiring a password. It uses your username and your mobile device with your fingerprint, face, or PIN.
  • Using a code generator for any other accounts that support authenticator apps.
  • Using it with any account that uses 2FA and supports the time-based one-time password (TOTP) standards.

Any organization can require using the Authenticator app to sign in and access its data and documents. Even if your username appears in the app, the account isn’t set up as a verification method until you complete the registration. The entire process can be done more efficiently with a mobile phone that can scan a QR code on a computer screen.

Remember that most authenticator apps still require a password in commercial use, and every user must know their password or risk being locked out. The consequences can be time-consuming and costly – if not fatal. Everyone should write their passwords on a piece of paper and store them in a safe place.

We had a case with a client who used a customized database that was never upgraded for 20 years. A former IT company did the last work on it. Nobody had the password to get into the account housing the database. They suggested calling the programmer, but the programmer had died. Nobody admitted to changing the password at any time. We spent a few hours trying to access the database to no avail. Finally, we called the former IT company, and they had a password for one file.

That was the password that worked, and we were able to perform the necessary work. But we can’t stop thinking about all the time – and money – that was wasted because nobody had a password.

In today’s world of hacking and cybercrime, it will become more and more challenging to try multiple passwords without severe consequences. It’s up to you to ensure that you and key employees have all your necessary passwords and 2FA to protect your data – and to insist that your employees have 2FA set up for their corporate login info.

We can help you ensure you have all the correct authentication and management systems. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to discuss your needs and develop an action plan.

Don’t Speculate on Computer Specs

When one of our clients merged with another company, they adopted the other company’s desktop computer specifications. They differ from ours, but the conversation sparked a good discussion about guessing how much computing power you need. There are some rules of thumb, but it’s easy to avoid problems down the line when you understand what you’re buying with a computer.

We consider these to be the three key specifications: 1.) RAM (random access memory), 2.) the processor chipset, and 3.) hard drive capacity. Some people use the term memory for RAM and hard drive capacity interchangeably. Those of us in the computer business know they are separate, and you can order the right computer more effectively if you keep them separate, too.

RAM is – in a sense – temporary memory capacity. It’s the memory that’s used to perform functions, i.e., spreadsheet calculations, word processing, internet searches, etc. Once you save whatever you were working on, it goes to “permanent” storage, i.e., your hard drive or the cloud. The more RAM you have, the faster you can work because it can hold more data.

In our discussions during the merger, the other company specified 32 MB (megabytes) of RAM for desktop computers. We thought that was on the high side. But on the other hand, too many companies try to save money by requiring only 8 MB or 16 MB RAM. If you don’t have a lot of RAM, you’ll generally need more patience. The more complex your computing needs, the faster you’ll be able to work.

Yes, you can upgrade RAM in a desktop, but it’s not always possible in a laptop – or it’s limited. You may be caught short if you blindly speculate that less RAM will be sufficient. From our experience, 16 MB has worked well in almost all cases. Typically, extra RAM can cost $100 or $200 more in a new computer. That’s much less money than replacing a computer just to get more RAM.

The latest processing chips in our commercial-grade computers are Intel Core i7 chipsets. The latest generation is the 13th. Without going geek on anyone, the latest and greatest chipsets give you faster processing power. You can have a lot of RAM, but you won’t be able to take full advantage of it with old, slow chipsets.

Finally, there’s hard drive capacity. The merged organization’s specification is 512 GB (gigabytes). As SSD (solid state drive) hard drives have become commonplace, the industry has gone to smaller drives, typically 256 GB capacity, because the drives need less room to manipulate data as you work on files – and because more files and apps are stored in the cloud. You have more margin for error with a larger hard drive – 512 GB or even a terabyte or two – but you can easily work around the 256 GB spec with good hard drive management. Microsoft OneDrive, for example, allows you to free up space with a few keystrokes. Simply open File Explorer and your directory of top-level file folders, such as Documents. Right-click within your (Documents) directory and click “Free up space.” This will transfer files physically from your hard drive to the cloud.

We can help you develop specifications for the computers you need based on the work each computer will do. Some definitely need higher performance levels, but others can operate more cost-effectively when matched to their tasks. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to discuss your needs.