It’s full steam ahead! Computers are getting even faster, software is getting even more clever and video games are getting even more challenging.
AMD is launching new Ryzen CPUs and new GPUs, with Intel expected to follow suit. LG and Samsung are launching awesome new monitors made for gaming. A host of new smartphones and cameras have been announced.
The one thing they have in common is the drive toward interconnectivity. They talk to each other. Fewer wires, more wireless.
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At the push of a button you can sync your laptop with your phone, sync with your camera, sync them with your TV, hook up an IP camera, connect to your smart home and control everything by voice over an Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple Siri or Microsoft Cortana.
More connectivity means being more social – by choice or not – which means you might hear from people you have never heard of before.
And it’s here that you have to start covering your bases. Internconnectivity is great but along with IoT (Internet of Things) comes concerns about privacy and security. Be careful that your smart device is too smart for your liking.
Privacy and Security
Hidden within a message, image or email might be a bit of code that could infiltrate your computer, your phone, your home and, eventually, your bank account.
Spam accounts for almost half of all emails sent around the world, thus 7 billion spam emails per day. Learn how to detect spam and phishing.
Protect your computer, phone and other electronic devices against viruses and ransomware.
Here are quick tips from Microsoft –
1. Keep your software up to date; the latest updates usually includes security patches.
2. Don’t attach unfamiliar removable drives such as external hard drives and flash drives.
3. Be wary of links and attachments. If it looks suspicious, it probably is. Don’t click on a link if you’re not sure about it. Don’t open an attachment if you do not recognize it.
4. Do not stream or download pirated content because it often contains malware. Download movies, music and apps only from official publisher website. (After all, nowadays movies, music and apps are cheap.)
5. Backup!
Backup
Here at Essential IT Solutions we all too often have to remove viruses from computers and do data recovery for everything from family photos to business data. And while we gladly do it we also are sad to see how often it needs to be done while a virus infection or data loss can so easily be prevented.
Firstly, as mentioned above, keep your software updated. That is, your operating system, your anti-virus program and all other software.
Then, please backup your content and data. It is so simple:
a. Set up auto backups to the service already on your computer or device: Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Apple iCloud or Samsung Cloud. Or consider DropBox. All these services off FREE basic plans.
b. Backup to an external hard drive or flash drive. They are so cheap nowadays!
While a 16GB flash drive might sound small by modern-day standards it actually can store 500 photos, 1000 songs, 40 minutes of video plus 4GB of office files. A 32GB flash drive will obviously store twice as much but if you need more, we also have 128GB flash drives. For even more storage, consider and external hard drive.
We suggest you use both the online cloud backups plus an external drive backup.
Please remember to store your external backups in a safe place!
And please remember to use strong passwords on all your devices and online accounts.
Backup for businesses
Essential IT Solutions offers a number of backup service plans for businesses, both onsite and legacy ultra-secure cloud backups.
All backup services at provided at utmost privacy.
Do it TODAY
We trust you will have an excellent year. No viruses, no ransomware, no data loss!
Need more info? Please call us on 021 853 4790 or 081 395 8776.
