Creating Secure Passwords: How To Do It And Why It Matters

a person holding a credit card in front of a laptop

Start the new year off right by creating secure passwords. Make sure that your passwords are as secure as they can be. It’s the computer tip of the day. Everyone’s computers, all the time, are subject to people, both in the U.S. and overseas, attempting to break into their accounts by hacking the passwords.

Creating Secure Passwords for Your Business

Creating secure passwords

Partly it’s because people are not sensitive enough, even yet, to the need for truly secure passwords. The most common passwords in use, still, are the word “password” and consecutive numbers, like 123456. Phrases like “love” or “iloveyou” run close seconds. Words connected with the computer user, like their name or a birthday, are high up on the list as well.

If you are really using these, a hacker can find your personal, sensitive information in just a couple seconds.

So how do you create a secure password?

First, accept that you will not be able to remember your passwords. Write them down and keep them in a safe place. Many people use simple passwords because they don’t want to be bothered memorizing a bunch of passwords. You can’t memorize all that you need to keep them secure, so don’t even try.

You should have a different password for every account. Why? Simply because it compromises the security of your accounts if one password unlocks them all.

Second, you need passwords that are totally random words and phrases. If they’re random, the thinking goes, hackers won’t be able to guess or predict them.

One strategy is to open a dictionary at random. (Drop it on the floor, and wherever it opens, place your hand on a page and there’s your word.) Another is to use a software that generates random combinations of words and numbers, like Diceware. A third strategy is to think up a nonsense sentence, like “itsnowedbutwasn’tcoldat53degrees.” Would a hacker be able to predict this? No. And that’s what you’re going for.

The longer, more complex, and more random the password, the better.

Contact us for more information on computer security.

Hyperlinking: How To Do It And Why You Should

a laptop computer sitting on top of a wooden desk

Ever wonder how to hyperlink and not sure how to go about it? It’s very easy and can make your life much simpler. That’s why hyperlinking is our computer tip of the day.

Hyperlinking is the term that refers to linking a piece of text in a computer screen to a URL that will take a reader to the relevant online page. Say you are looking at your computer and see a line that reads “Fort Lauderdale’s weather is usually warm.” The link, indicated by color and underlining, indicates that, if you click on “weather,” you will be taken somewhere with information about weather. And you will be, to weather.com’s Fort Lauderdale weather page.

Hyperlinking is easy and effective

Hyperlinking

So if you are writing an online holiday newsletter, for example, and you want to say that your sister and her husband went to the Everglades and it’s a great vacation getaway, you could link to Everglades National Park. Ditto a family reunion held at a particular site: you could send everybody to the site to read about the location or make reservations.

So, ready to begin?

To hyperlink:

  1. Open the internet page you want to link to. You will need the URL (the address that usually begins with www).
  2. Highlight the text you want to link on. In the “Fort Lauderdale’s weather is usually warm,” “weather” is highlighted.
  3. Right click on your mouse. A menu will open.
  4. The second to last choice on the menu will say “hyperlink.” Click on it. Your documents file will open. The important part of this is an address box at the bottom.
  5. In the address box, cut and paste the URL address of the page you want to link to.
  6. Click on the Ok button.

Presto! You have hyperlinked successfully.

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Making Your Screen More Readable

a person using a laptop computer on a wooden table

Today’s computer tip of the day about making your screen more readable.

But it already is, you say? Sure. But there are several ways to really enhance the readability.

Making Your Screen More Readable

making your screen more readable

Readability Features

First, you might be seeing or hearing a lot more on your screen than just the text you’re trying to read. If you’re trying to read a news story, for example, you might see a video on another news story as part of the screen. Yes, you can mute the video. But some people find it distracting. Ads, whether banner notifications or videos, are also an issue for some people.

Enter readability. First, look at the right hand side of the bar where you enter URLs. Many pages will show a small icon that looks something like an open book.

Move your cursor over it. It will say “enter readability.”

Click on it.

It will immediately remove videos and banners from the page. The text will be the same, but the distracting elements will be gone. It looks more like, well, a book page.

Another method is to get a free app that will let you save anything you want to read. Instapaper and Read It Later are two apps that will let you do this and also have a readability function.

Size Text

Another issue with reading material on computer screens is the size of the font. If it’s too small and you’re reading a lot, it could cause eye strain.

Increasing the size of the online font is very simple. Just press the Control key and the + key at the same time. The font size will increase gradually every time the + key is depressed.

Contact us for all your computer needs.

Benefits of Outsourcing IT Support

a desk with a computer, keyboard and mouse on it

Outsourcing IT support is a step towards having a more organized business. Letting trained professionals handle your IT questions can make daily work easier and allow for more time for important projects, expansions, and other business-related tasks, as well as minimizing interruptions of daily activities. Here are 4 reasons to outsource your IT support to maximize your business’s productivity:

outsourcing IT support
  • Prevention, not intervention. In-office IT support is likely there after the problem has already occurred, restoring normal activity. Outsourcing makes it easier to spot problems before they put a halt to your productivity, and can make preventing latent problems easier.
  • Improved response times. Outsourced help centers can increase the speed of resolution. Turning a face-to-face encounter into a brief phone call for simple fixes. Instead of waiting for the IT professional to come by, employees or managers can call the support center and receive the same level of expertise in less time.
  • Saved money on staffing. Because IT support centers are most likely located out-of-state, and even out of the country, the cost of receiving help is less. Hiring full-time IT technicians with benefits and other costs can drain a business instead of aiding in its growth. The support is there when it is needed, and no more.
  • Higher levels of security. By outsourcing IT needs, security standards are greatly improved. If a team of IT professionals within a company has access to sensitive information, it may be misused. External assistance is brought in on a need-to-know basis, protecting the company from internal damage.

Contact us at Bluwater Technologies for more information.

Computer Tip of the Day: Avoid Data Obsolescence

many books are stacked on top of each other

Are your older files safe? We’re talking here not about viruses or disk failure, but just not having software that can read the data any more.

This can make you lose important information.

Sometimes this happens because the only application that opens the files won’t run under the latest operating system. If the company that created the application went out of business years ago or abandoned it, you could be stuck with no way to open the files.

In other cases, the latest version of an application doesn’t support old versions of the format any more. Microsoft Office is a prime example. The current release can’t open the oldest versions of the Word format. With some format versions that aren’t quite as old, its default is to refuse to open them, but you can change that setting. The reason it does this is that some old file versions have known security risks, and a spammer might trick you into downloading a file that exploits the issue.

To avoid file obsolescence, you should periodically look at files that are in old formats. If you still need them, you can open them and re-save them as the latest version.

Another safety measure is to “print” files as PDF. PDF is a well-known, stable format, and it’s not going to become obsolete for many years. Old versions are fully compatible with new ones. You can’t edit those files, but at least you’ll always be able to read them.

It’s difficult to keep track of all your files this way, but you should review files which contain critical information at least once every couple of years and check if they’re in danger of becoming unusable. If they are, you can migrate them to a newer format while it’s still possible.

Bluwater Technologies offers IT services to keep all your data under control. Please contact us for more information.