Everything from shortcuts keys, data validation, search and replace tips and many more tips to help with Microsoft Excel.

This page focuses on way to use Find and Replace with ease and hopefully save you time.

Click here to visit this great Excel Tips and Tricks resource.

Let us know what you think about this great Microsoft Excel Tip and Tricks resource.

Everything from shortcuts keys, data validation, search and replace tips and many more tips to help with Microsoft Excel.

This page focuses on way to use Find and Replace with ease and hopefully save you time.

Click here to visit this great Excel Tips and Tricks resource.

Let us know what you think about this great Microsoft Excel Tip and Tricks resource.

A few weeks ago, I was surprised to get a call from Microsoft offering to help “fix my window”.  This was surprising because:

1. My window wasn’t broken and having worked at Microsoft for a while, I’m pretty sure we don’t do home repairs.
2. Microsoft doesn’t call people out of the blue to offer technical support (I knew what he was really talking about).

When I replied that I didn’t realize that Microsoft had anything to do with the windows on my house and there wasn’t anything wrong with them, the caller quickly set me straight.  This was about my computer and he was going to help me, all I had to do was give him some information and then install a program on my PC.

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Here is a great website for anti-fraud in Canada.

Here is a great information graphic produced by Microsoft.

Federal agencies that have adopted cloud computing have already saved approximately $5.5 billion, according a federal IT consortium that McKendrick quoted in his article. The real question here is where will those savings go? Will they be distributed evenly among programs like Medicare and Social Security, or will they go to pay for things like education and struggling state governments? Obviously, we’ll just have to wait and see. Still, the federal government’s decision to embrace cloud computing will set the tone for the entire country.

According to a report issued in February 2011 by the federal government’s chief information officer Vivek Kundra, “cloud computing has the potential to play a major part in addressing inefficiencies and improving government service delivery. The cloud computing model can significantly help agencies grappling with the need to provide highly reliable, innovative services quickly, despite resource constraints. For the Federal Government, cloud computing holds tremendous potential to deliver public value by increasing operational efficiency and responding faster to constituent needs.”

As with any organization, the federal government also worries about security. Government agencies have fallen victim to hackers in the past and probably will again in the future. For this reason, it’s important that the U.S. government follow the same advice that many MSPs give to their own clients: Be careful what you put in the cloud. Although government agencies make use of safety features such as complicated passwords and encryption, they still would be wise to avoid putting classified information in the cloud. There’s no such thing as a fail-proof safety measure.

In many ways, storing documents in the cloud can be safer than locking paper documents away in a file cabinet. For one thing, paper documents can easily get misplaced or misappropriated if they’re left lying around. When they’re in the cloud, something as simple as a password prevents unauthorized individuals from accessing important documents. Encryption, of course, makes transferring those documents between departments or organizations faster, safer and less expensive than using FedEx or a personal courier.

According to McKendrick, who quoted statistics from a survey of 108 federal IT managers, 48% said their agencies were moving collaboration tools to the cloud, 47% said that they were moving email to the cloud, administrative applications (43%), conferencing software (28%) and “mission applications (25%) rounded out the top five cloud-based applications that federal agencies and organizations are currently implementing.

Many in the U.S. would say that it’s about time the federal government started taking serious strides to cut spending. Others might worry that adopting cloud computing is a bad move. Honestly, it’s an inevitable move. How can the United States ever hope to remain competitive either in business or politics if its led by a government that clings antediluvian ideals.

It’s unclear how New Jersey authorities intend to enforce this new law, but if someone is caught texting while walking, he could be cited for jaywalking and fined as much as $85. This may sound silly, especially to those who regularly commit this offense, but it really isn’t.

If it hasn’t happened already, it’s only a matter of time before someone carelessly steps out into traffic and gets hit by a car, truck or bus or causes an accident. Watching people walk into walls and stumble into water fountains because they’re more focused on looking at their cell phone screens than looking where they’re going is amusing. So is seeing people walking down the street and bumping into trash cans and lamp posts. What wouldn’t be funny is to see someone disappear into an open man hole or fall down a flight of stairs. But these things can and probably do happen, whether we get to see them on YouTube or not.

So far, texting while walking hasn’t caused as much pain and suffering as texting while driving has. Still, it can’t hurt to stop, step aside, send your message and then continue walking. There really are times when multi-tasking isn’t a good idea.

Search Security defines spear phishing as “an email spoofing fraud attempt that targets a specific organization, seeking unauthorized access to confidential data.” Spear phishing emails can look like résumés from job applicants, invoices from vendors or invitations to conferences. The hacker’s goal is to get the recipient to share confidential information such as usernames and passwords, click on links to malicious websites, open tainted documents or get involved in some kind of underhanded activity.

In her article for Entrepreneur.com, Riva Richmond warns that spear phishing emails are crafty. Hackers will address the emails to specific employees and even go so far as to mine LinkedIn for enough information to lend the emails greater credibility. Both large and small companies have fallen victim to frighteningly plausible spear phishing emails, which resulted in the loss of intellectual property, among other things.

Because it’s so difficult to discern a spear phishing email from a legitimate one, Carnegie Mellon University associate computer science professor and founder of Wombat Security Technologies Jason Hong created a phishing filter. Hong also provides free email training demos to help you and your employees to become more adept at recognizing nefarious email messages.

Nobody wants to fall victim to a spear phishing email. There are ways to recognize them such as receiving a résumé when your small business isn’t hiring. Trying Hong’s phishing filter could certainly be helpful, but it’s still a good idea to teach your employees how recognize and report dubious emails. Because even a phishing filter can make mistakes.

Search Security defines spear phishing as “an email spoofing fraud attempt that targets a specific organization, seeking unauthorized access to confidential data.” Spear phishing emails can look like résumés from job applicants, invoices from vendors or invitations to conferences. The hacker’s goal is to get the recipient to share confidential information such as usernames and passwords, click on links to malicious websites, open tainted documents or get involved in some kind of underhanded activity.

In her article for Entrepreneur.com, Riva Richmond warns that spear phishing emails are crafty. Hackers will address the emails to specific employees and even go so far as to mine LinkedIn for enough information to lend the emails greater credibility. Both large and small companies have fallen victim to frighteningly plausible spear phishing emails, which resulted in the loss of intellectual property, among other things.

Because it’s so difficult to discern a spear phishing email from a legitimate one, Carnegie Mellon University associate computer science professor and founder of Wombat Security Technologies Jason Hong created a phishing filter. Hong also provides free email training demos to help you and your employees to become more adept at recognizing nefarious email messages.

Nobody wants to fall victim to a spear phishing email. There are ways to recognize them such as receiving a résumé when your small business isn’t hiring. Trying Hong’s phishing filter could certainly be helpful, but it’s still a good idea to teach your employees how recognize and report dubious emails. Because even a phishing filter can make mistakes.

Just in the last week, two new Ransomware scams were found in the wild. One scam accuses the end-user of copyright violation, as content was found on the victim’s PC and has been moved to an encrypted directory. To release the encrypted data, and to prevent violating the law any further, the user must pay US$80 with the PaySafeCard, which is a card system specialized in prepaid payments. This particular scam is focused on the U.S. and Europe.

The second ransomware scam locks the PC and asks the user to pay a fine for allegedly violating several laws as their IP address was involved in illegal online activity. It’s called the “Police Trojan” because it scared the user with rogue messages that are supposedly from law enforcement agencies. This bit of malware focuses on the U.S. and Canada, and the victim is asked to pay a US$100 fine through Paysafecard. The message shows the logos of supermarkets and chain stores where Paysafecard vouchers can be bought.

Trend Micro researchers said: “What is becoming crystal clear is that the same Eastern European criminal gangs who were behind the fake antivirus boom are now turning to the Police Trojan strategy. We believe this is a malware landscape change and not a single gang attacking in a novel way.”

The following tips, offered by Jason Fell for The Daily Dose could help you know what to do and where to start.

1. What needs to be protected? In my opinion, everything you store on a computer or mobile device needs to be protected. Your clients’ and employees’ personal information should absolutely be protected by encryption, passwords, firewalls and anything else you can think of.
2. Speaking of passwords, make them complicated. Part of making passwords complicated is either making them as impersonal as possible and/or complicated. Include numbers, symbols and a mix of capital and lower case letters. Long words or phrases increase the difficulty level. Change passwords periodically and if you have to write them down, don’t keep them taped to the underside of your computer monitor or desk drawer. That’s like hiding your house key under a flower pot on your porch. It’s the first place a thief would look.
3. Of course, you need to have a backup plan. If disaster strikes, regardless of its form, you need to have an established, well-rehearsed backup recovery plan. Don’t wait until you need lost files to find out whether or not they were indeed properly backed up and that you can actually recover and use them.
4. Use encryption. If you allow employees to store important company files on portable devices like laptops, tablets and smart phones, then make sure those files are encrypted as well as password protected. That way, if a device should get lost or stolen, your important business files will most likely remain safely hidden from prying eyes. Even if important files never get transferred to mobile devices, encrypt them, just in case someone finds a way to infiltrate your network.
5. Security software is your friend. Protect all company devices with security software, even smart phones. Viruses and malware can infect smart phones just as easily as they infect computers. Use firewall protection as well. Avoid using public Wi-Fi connections whenever possible.
6. Upgrade regularly. Anytime your security software needs to be upgraded, do so. Some software programs have automatic updating options so that you always have the latest protection against the latest threats.
7. Training, training, training. If you don’t teach your employees how to recognize phishing scams and get them in the habit of using passwords, encryption and security software, then they’re not going to know what to do.

No matter how large or small your business may be, you need to protect it from hackers. But keep in mind, that more businesses have their important data compromised unwittingly by ignorant employees. Don’t let this happen to your business. The time and money you spend on establishing stronger cyber security measures will payoff in the long run.

As Apple explains it, “An issue existed in the handling of network account logins. The login process recorded sensitive information in the system log where other users of the system could read it.”

In other words remote administrators and anyone with physical access to your computer could see your login password because the debugging feature causes passwords to be saved as plain text. Obviously, that’s not a good thing. Because the compromised information could remain on your computer in its compromised plain text state even after you’ve installed the 10.7.4 update, Apple also provides instructions for safely removing it here.

Apple has also listed here a host of other vulnerabilities that the OS X Lion 10.7.4 update should eliminate.

When it comes to security updates for your computer, especially the kind that fix security gaps like the one in FileVault, it’s a good idea to install them as soon as they’re available. You should also be proactive and if your computer has one – and you haven’t done so already — enable the automatic update feature. This ensures that you always have to latest technology available. And, at least in the case of Microsoft customers, when something goes wrong and a patch has to be issued, those whose computers update automatically get those patches installed sometimes, before the customers even know a problem existed.