Welcome, Small Business Owners!
My name is Ruben Perry. I help entrepreneurs solve pressing business problems.
Read my guides to see how I can be of help, or fix those problems on your own if you've got plenty of time at your disposal. Contact me for more information.
Pressing small business problems:
Poor cash flow
Marketing and advertising
Time management
Administrative work
State and Government regulations
Featured Guides
How to prevent devices from tracking your activity
It is quite clear that our activities are tracked by more devices than ever before. Just think at the amount of information that your fitness tracker has collected about you, for example. But have you ever thought that your business laptop may be storing and sending confidential information about you and your company as well? Here's what you can do to put an end to that.
By default, most business computers utilize the Windows operating system. So, it is wise to read Microsoft's data privacy policy and understand the type of data that the software maker collects about you. Here's a link to their privacy policy. According to that document, Microsoft focuses on six key privacy principles: control, transparency, strong legal protection, security, no content-based targeting and user benefit.
Fortunately, Microsoft has made it quite easy to disable any unwanted tracking applications. To do that, open Windows' "Settings" menu, and then locate the "Privacy" entry...
How to protect your Wi-Fi network
Wireless networks are often one of the easiest targets for hackers. Why? Because they won't need to set foot inside your office to get access to your company's files/data. There are lots of ethical hacking tools that can be used for evil purposes out there. Also, many cybercriminals utilize wardriving, often installing the Kali Linux distribution on a regular laptop, and then either replacing its Wi-Fi module with one that has a bigger power, or adding a high gain external antenna to the existing wireless module through a standard SMA cable. This way, they are able to build a Wi-Fi hacking machine that costs less than $1,000 and can often detect/connect to Wi-Fi networks that are hundreds of feet away from their cars.
So, what can you do to keep your business-related data safe? Here are the most efficient methods that allow you to fight back.
First, be sure to use an inconspicuous name for your wireless network. I know that it is tempting to choose a "relevant", business-related SSID name, but please resist the urge to do that...
How to remove malware from your PC
Windows computer owners have been affected by lots of viruses for more than two decades now. And while Mac and Linux fans used to brag about their computers being much safer, things have changed for the worse during the last few years. Today we've even gotten viruses that have been built for several operating systems, and are intelligent enough to detect their victims' OS and install the malware package that is guaranteed to produce havoc.
Often, once that a computer gets infected, it starts to behave abnormally. Even simple operations, such as copying or saving a small file take ages to complete. Or, the user is bombarded with lots of unwanted pop-ups which show up even when his or her browser isn't open.
Sometimes things can get even worse, and some malware packages have been created with the sole purpose of destroying computer hardware. Viruses like these will constantly write dummy data to the hard drive, slowing down the computer to a crawl and making its disk overheat and get damaged, for example...
How to stay safe online
As a business owner, you can't keep your computers off-line. You need them to get access to email, various SaaS services, data backups, online CRMs, and much more. But did you know that cyber criminals have created almost 200 million different pieces of malware in 2017? You won't have to trust me on that; you can discover this stat (and many more) in a recent AV Test security report.
It is not a surprise that it's harder than ever to stay safe online. Here are a few tips that should help you avoid any troubles, though.
Begin by making it a company policy to use complex passwords. Huffington Post has published a list with the top 25 most common passwords, and "123456" sits proudly at the top of the list. So, be sure to protect all your computers using passwords that are created by mixing letters, numbers and symbols such as "*" and "&". It's going to be harder to remember them, I know, but fortunately you can use a service such as RoboForm, which has managed to keep all its users' data intact since its launch...
