SLK Blog

Did you know that worldwide businesses lose customers and reputation when their data is lost or compromised? 

On Nov. 1, 2018, the Government of Canada made it mandatory for all Canadian businesses to report data breaches. Twelve months on, the number of breaches has increased, and figures suggest that at least 28 million Canadians had been affected by these breaches by 2019. To put this into perspective, the current Canadian population is 37.59 million. More than half of the population is affected by this problem. In the news, we often hear of large corporations that experience data breaches. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has confirmed that there are also “…significant volumes coming from small- and medium-sized businesses” (Global News). Data backup and security is something that every company, no matter the sector, should take seriously.

Schools have started again, but we have never seen learning like this before. Our current education system is experiencing an unprecedented difficult task. Parents are thankful for the hard work teachers and administrators are putting in, but still feel very apprehensive about the coming months. The educational sector has gotten more tech-savvy through the years, but nothing has prepared it for the current COVID-19 reality. 

Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash

The Coronavirus crisis is far from over, yet many businesses are opening their doors again, after receiving appropriate directives from the government. There are pros and cons on either side of the opening/remaining closed argument. The pros of keeping businesses shut down are minimizing the risk of exposure and minimizing company liability. The major con is that staying closed hurts the business’ financial health and stability as well as the overall economy, as people need to be able to work to maintain their livelihood. Opening too soon and without the right measures in place could be catastrophic as there is still a lot to learn about this epidemic.

There is no right or wrong answer here, for employers and employees alike. If you fear the “new normal”, you are not alone. Read on, and inform yourself about your rights, and ways in which you can protect yourself both legally and health-wise. 

Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash

In recent weeks Google has seen more than 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19. 

 

Spam is annoying and dangerous. It’s also everywhere. With the current coronavirus crisis, cybercriminals are hard at work with securing domains and emails to take advantage of people’s fear and need for information. There has been a significant increase in both potentially malicious websites and scam emails being sent through the web. Emails like CDC-Covid19@cdc[.]gov. look like highly credible sources, but only lead to hackers taking advantage of your lack of knowledge. Hackers may even create content that you think is real, and while you are visiting their site, they have full access to your information. You may have seen the Coronavirus map below and might have thought of it as credible. Beware, because while you are viewing the map hackers are downloading malware onto your computer. 

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has taken the world by storm. Many of us are worried about the current climate and how to proceed in these uncertain times. Globally, businesses and individuals are doing their best to adapt to the changing situations, with many staying indoors for health and safety reasons. As many businesses shift from offices to remote work, employees at all levels attempt to adapt to the new reality.

For those that are able to work from home, it can sometimes be daunting changing a routine. Being used to commuting, changing space and environment, breathing different air, staying home can feel daunting. Moreover, office communication and transparency, agenda setting and collaboration are all key in bringing a company forward. As we all attempt to move forward together, Here are some tips and free tools for your business to use to make remote work and working from home a little easier.

Most of these tools are free to use, they may have different pricing packages and trials available, so as you get into a new routine, find what works best for you and your employees.

We have all had that time when your Windows computer just had a hiccup or has shown an error screen. Luckily there is a System restore option that can sometimes come to the rescue. The only down fall to this is it must be setup before it can be used. Continue reading to see how you can setup System Restore to recover from some catastrophic errors.

Letting your customers know what you’re really about can go a long way. When First Class approached SLK to revamp their logo and create a custom website, we knew people had to get a glimpse of the hard work and professionalism that goes on behind the scenes. We were able to do this by incorporating high quality photography into the website and letting the pictures speak for themselves. Visit our portfolio to read more on how SLK helped First Class Fleet Services / First Class Spring and Suspension stand apart.

  Visit Website  Visit Portfolio

Whether it’s for social media, work, shopping, or your own business, you have a password. Hopefully, more than one. But are those passwords really as secure as you think they are? Recently even Bill Burr, regarded as the father of the modern password, has said even he has regrets on the advice he gave on password strength.

So how do you improve your passwords to make sure they are as secure as they can be? Here are some simple tips:

1. Use multiple passwords

You’ve probably heard this before but are you actually putting it into practice? Creating a new password for every account you have may seem tedious at first but there is nothing worse than a hacker getting a hold of one of your accounts and now having access to all of them. A good tip for creating multiple passwords is to stick to a central theme to create passwords for certain sites. For example, all of your social media passwords may start with the letter “H”, or maybe all your work accounts have a fruit related word in them.

2. Keep it simple… sort of

When we say keep it simple we don’t mean name your passwords “Password!1”. Use difficult to guess yet easy to remember words or phrases rather than a short, complicated string of numbers, letters, and symbols. Speaking with CBS news, Burr said “It's probably better to do fairly long passwords that are phrases or something like that that you can remember than to try to get people to do lots of funny characters,".

The trick here is the length rather than the complexity. The longer the password the harder it is for a hacker to brute force their way into. That said, it doesn’t hurt to add a few numbers and symbols into your passwords, just try to put them in less predictable places.

3. Do not share your passwords!

Again, if this one seems obvious to you, that’s a good thing. You should never share your passwords with anyone, not even close friends. Sharing your passwords either online or in public increases the potential of someone learning your password that you didn’t intend.

If using a group or company account where there is no individual access password, be sure everyone in the group is aware that this information is confidential. Furthermore, be careful of where you log in with your passwords. If you are on a public computer or using public Wi-Fi, you may not be as secure as you think. Think twice before signing in with your precious information.

4. Consider a password manager

There are a variety of free programs and web services out there that allow you to generate powerful passwords for every site you go to but only require you to remember one master password.

These managers are great for work or home computers where you may be frequenting several sites on a regular basis and don’t want to constantly try to remember everyone of your passwords.

So, the next time you're asked to create a password, keep these tips in mind and remember a strong password is hard to guess but easy to remember.

For every busy social media marketer, there is an allure to scheduling the exact same social media messages across multiple platforms. It's easy and saves you a lot of time. But is it really the best way to reach your audience and increase your engagement?

Making slight changes/tweaks to your messages for each social network can help you engage your audience, and increase your reach and your engagement.

So how do you write social media content across multiple platforms? Here are tips to help:

Whenever you receive an email or letter parcel asking for information regarding your domain and you are unsure about it, don’t hesitate to contact us for clarification. These emails are created to scare you into providing personal information without investigating. They use words and phrases like ‘final’, ‘failure to pay’, ‘failure to reply’, ‘and immediate attention required’. These are all used to trigger the fear of the unknown. Always remember to take some extra steps to verify when your personal information is requested.