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Michael: Hey, welcome back to Biztalk TV here on Now Media TV. I’m going to get that right one time, I’m sure. I’m Michael Rager, your business guide. And I got my good friend Roland Parker from Impress Computers in the House. Roland, how are you today?
Roland Parker: Hey, Michael, Great to be back.
Michael: Oh, yeah, we are. But, man, I’m telling you, there’s been some important tech news in the tech news in the in the news, I guess recently, you know, we had Last Pass you know, they had this this this big breach. What happened there and how does it affect the small business owner?
Roland Parker: So, you know, LastPass has millions of people that are using them and they had a breach back in August. Then they had another breach. Somebody got into their system. So now it’s like, well, how does that affect you as a business owner? Well, it’s very important when something like this happens. Well all of your passwords are in one place to look at, okay, what could have been compromised? They’re saying that your password themselves should still be secure because of the way that it’s set up. But it’s very important to make sure that you go through and say, okay, let’s by default, make sure that we’ve got a two-factor authentication on everything that we do. So even though your password is changed, your change, your password, change your authentication, go ahead and make sure that you have like a biometric fingerprint or your eye or something like that that’s going to add that extra layer of security. So you’re not just relying on a password that could get compromised.
Michael: Yeah, I know business owners are lazy because I know I’m one of them because I was thinking about it today. I was trying to get in an app today. I had a car accident a while ago and I had to get in and check on what’s going on and I couldn’t remember the password. And thank God there was a fingerprint thing on there. You know how safe. And you as an expert on this, how safe is that biometric versus just putting in a bunch of random numbers and letters?
Roland Parker: Well, it’s certainly a lot more secure than just a regular password, especially if people put in passwords like password one. And you’d be surprised at how many people are still doing that. So what should happen is that you should still have a password that you can reset and then to be authenticated with a biometric password or a two factor authentication that goes to your cell phone. Now even that has been shown that it could still be compromised if you click on a link within within your text. So say, for example, if the bad guys get your information, they got your address, they got your cell phone number, they got your email address, What they’re going to do is that they’re going to send you a text to your cell phone. You click on the link and now you’ve exposed the breach where they can monitor that two factor authentication. But it’s that much more difficult if you add the biometrics to it, because unless they’re going to come and cut off your thumb, it’s a little bit more secure.
Michael: So it’s not a James Bond movie, right? You know, we’re going to get to one of those. So we’re coming in. You know, we’re coming into Christmas season here. And, you know, we keep hearing about these password protections. What are some things that we need to be worried about coming into this time of the year, end of the year, that, you know, where are these bad guys maybe ramping up their game a little bit.
Roland Parker: So a lot of people are going to be shipping from the online box stores and things like that. They’re going to be getting emails and text messages or pop ups on their computer, and they respond instantly because they think, Oh, I’m getting a packet from UPS, I’m getting something from Amazon, and they respond to that without thinking about it because they’re expecting that package. And that’s what the bad guys count on. They count on the fact that you’re going to have that knee jerk reaction. Yes, I am expecting a package or no, I didn’t order that. And they respond to that text. It’s so important. Don’t respond to the email. Don’t respond to the text. Don’t respond to the pop up. If you want to, make sure, log on to your account and then double check if it says it’s coming from UPS. Go to UPS and put in the tracking number. Don’t click on links that say they’re going to take you there because you don’t know what that link is going to be doing. And remember, it’s so important, whatever you log on to have your have your two factor authentication, especially financial transactions or anything like that, but even like your Amazon account, if somebody logs on to that, then they could be ordering on your behalf and shipping it anywhere. So do your two factor authentication, don’t click on links, don’t click on attachments. And you know, sometimes you can even go old school, make complicated passwords, but write them down in a book in your notebook that you carry around with you. Because guess what? It’s very difficult for the guys to hack into your notebook.
Michael: Yeah, I know. I want the guy to go hack into my account and do my Christmas shopping for me because ship it wherever, you know, because I haven’t even done any. I was like ten days out. I think I got one thing for my son right now, but, you know, I’ve seen it. I was out the other day and I got a text and it said my package and like, I’ve not ordered any packages, so I know. Do we just delete that thing? Do we block it? What do you recommend we do?
Roland Parker: Block the number, delete it, whatever. You don’t respond to it because sometimes people say, well, Amazon are shipping this package and we charging you $500 and you wait a minute, I want to dispute this transaction and it gives you a link to dispute it and then you click on it and guess what? You’ve just compromised your whole system.
Michael: You just gave them 500 bucks, right? So if we’re going to give, you know, let’s give something happy about this and let’s go off into the new year on some some good tech news, what’s something good we should be looking at as business owners that can really help us, you know, thrive and profit going into the next year with with technology.
Roland Parker: So the good thing is, is that we’re actually seeing prices being very competitive at the moment on video cards and processes and things like that. So if you’re wanting to upgrade your system, you want to improve your performance, now’s a really good time to do it. And you know, the new 12th and 13th generation processes that they’ve brought out are so amazingly quick compared to just a few years ago, the seventh and eighth generation. So if you want to improve your employees productivity and improve your performance, you know, add 2 or 3 monitors, add a faster processor, there’s so much more you can do once you get away from just using one screen. I know I’ve gone to six monitors now and I still sometimes run out of screen.
Michael: Dude, how could you do that? Got add like crazy. I have a heart and you can see my computer over here. I have a hard enough time managing one screen with like 20 tabs. I accidentally closed my my browser the other day where I had like 30 tabs open and stuff and I couldn’t remember and ought to get it back. Dude, how do you do six screens?
Roland Parker: So the thing is, is that you just have different things on each screen that you’re monitoring and you might have a couple of tabs and different things that you’re running on each screen. But the main thing is right there. So instead of having to go back to this screen or that back to that screen, you just have them on your screen and then you just say, okay, you’re just moving your mouse across the screen. So we found that we had a title company. Everybody used to have one screen. They cut down the time that each employee had to spend on documentation by going to two screens, then improve productivity by 30% when they went to three screens because they had to have three different sets of documents up. And if they did it on the three screens, they could do all the things without having to alt tab between the. And bring your other screen back. So now you can actually get at least 30% increase in productivity by having three screens versus one.
Michael: Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Well, that’s some things. You know, we were talking about before we started, you know, the types of business I work with and stuff like that, you know, those are the kind of things that I want to be able to go into, you know, because I work with a lot of white collar businesses, you know, lawyers, CPA firms, consultants and stuff like that. It’s a great thing to know that we can bring you in and say, hey, talk to my friend Roland, and let’s see if.
Roland Parker: You’re an accountant and you’ve got your banker icon up and one you’ve got a spreadsheet over there and you’re having a look at things and you verifying transactions, you’ve got a couple of screens. You can see them all at the same time and move between them. Perfect way to increase your productivity.
Michael: Oh, awesome. Well, that’s some great stuff, man. I appreciate it. It’s always great when you come in studio. I love doing the live things and it’s fun every time you come in here. We have a good time, so I hope you and your family have yourself a happy holiday. Merry Christmas and we’ll catch you here probably right after the end of the year.
Roland Parker: Sounds good. Thanks, Michael. All right.
Michael: All right. This is Michael Rager Business Guide. We’ll be back with now Media, TV and Biztalk TV right after this.