Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com With information security breaches a regular thing, hopefully you’ve done th basics to protect your business, Have you installed a powerful firewall to hold off web based attacks? Nice start. You’ve instituted a routine and mandatory email password reset system for employees? Excellent second step. Backed up, and encrypted your website? Smart. Your staff has been educated on common email phishing practices, including never opening attachments from external emails? Now your cooking. What about protecting your voicemail systems? Before you ask, voicemail hacking is a thing. Is there valuable information in your, or your employees, voicemail inboxes? Sure, but rarely is that what voicemail hackers are looking for. The real moneymaker is hijacking a voicemail account and tricking calling services into connecting collect calls running up a hefty tab on the hijacked business account. This is a real threat that could end up...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com So the holidays have come and gone and as expected your gifts were nothing too exciting. No big deal. It’s a new year, a blank slate with all kinds of possibilities. In fact, you’re so pumped maybe it’s time to buy yourself a gift. Maybe pool whatevers left of the gift money you didn’t spend, and get something you’ll actually use and cherish. Not a computer, too boring. Not a phone, too common. I got it, a really nice camera. You’ve always loved taking pictures and have been looking for a good excuse to get back into it. After a quick google search you can’t find any reason not select one of the top rated cameras of last year. A few thousand dollars seems reasonable if you’re gonna use it as much as you’re considering, also this thing might actually make you money if this passion turns into a side gig. With potential and adrenaline flooding your brain you’re ready to click proceed to purcha-WAIT! Are you really about to buy th...

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com Social media is the siren song for small businesses. It seems so egalitarian; put a post on any platform and all your followers see it (and if you’re lucky that post will recruit many new followers). Well the truth is every social platform has its advertising downfalls and as they all transition to publicly traded companies, their mission turns from connecting users to turning profits; i.e. businesses must pay for views. Case in point; Facebook just publicly announced it's plan to alter the master algorithm that populates users news feeds so they see more posts from their friends and fewer posts from pages or businesses. For years Facebook has had an algorithmic governor on page views. It didn’t matter if a person liked your business on the service, more likely than not your posts reached a mysteriously calculated few of your supporters. This new corporate shift away from page content seems great for friends and fami...