MSPNetworks Blog

Can you tell the difference between your colleagues and a scammer with access to their email account? This is essentially what a business email compromise attack involves—a scammer initiates a phishing scheme using an internal mode of communication. These scams are also observed in schools, making them dangerous in the education sector.

Email is a great communication tool. However, certain things are just unsafe to communicate via email.

Let’s go through a list of such things. Better safe than sorry, after all.

All businesses use email to communicate, but too many organizations haven’t jumped on the encrypted email bandwagon yet. Encryption is incredibly helpful to keep networks and infrastructure secure, and it can do the same for your email solution. In fact, it is likely required to ensure the secure transfer of critical and sensitive information.

All it takes is one oversight to potentially undo any benefits your cybersecurity protections and other best practices may deliver. For instance, even if you have things like multifactor authentication in place, a phishing scam or even some malware varieties could potentially give an attacker access to your email… and all the data your messages contain, just sitting in your inbox.

We often advise people to steer clear of clicking on suspicious links, but distinguishing between a legitimate URL and a dubious one has become increasingly challenging. Not only have malicious tactics evolved to the point where everyone has to stay on top of their game to not be fooled, these threats are almost pervasive so they are coming at people from all types of directions. We thought we would focus on a single punctuation mark that can make all the difference in whether a link is legitimately safe or potentially dangerous.

Meet The Most Trusted Fictitious Online Retailer in the World

Imagine a fictional company that rises to become a global retail and multimedia giant, a household name—let's call it TallMart.

Our entirely fictional TallMart offers an extensive array of products and services. Users engage in buying and selling, managing payments, running ad campaigns, customizing personal profiles, watching exclusive movies from TallMart Studios, handling TallMart Web Hosting accounts, and now, accessing telehealthcare from licensed TallMart medical professionals.

Our motto is simple: TallMart: Why Go Anywhere Else?

Given TallMart's status as the world's most trusted online retailer, akin to giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google, it enjoys widespread trust. However, like other major platforms, TallMart's massive success attracts cybercriminals attempting to scam its users for money and sensitive information. With so many transactions, the opportunity to separate users from money is there; and hackers are nothing if not opportunists.

When Users Feel Secure, Cybercriminals Gain an Advantage

TallMart users receive numerous emails about products, account notifications, receipts, transactions, and offers. Cybercriminals can easily mimic these emails, adopting TallMart's branding and employing technical spoofing to make them appear legitimate. They may include links that seem to lead to TallMart but redirect users to similar-looking URLs under the cybercriminals' control.

Creating a deceptive webpage is inexpensive and quick, allowing cybercriminals to register domains like Talmart.com or TallMartcustomerservice.com. It's crucial for users to stay vigilant and recognize potential warning signs to avoid falling victim to scams.

How to Verify the Destination of a Link in Emails, Chats, or Correspondence

While methods may vary across applications, hovering your mouse over a link typically reveals its destination. Most email clients and web browsers display the link destination at the bottom of the page.

The Key: Punctuation in the URL

While checking for misspellings and unofficial URLs, an effective way to identify a suspicious link is by observing periods after the domain name. For example:

Safe: https://www.tallmart.com/gp/help/customer/account-issues
Safe: https://support.tallmart.com/
Suspicious: https://support.tallmart.com.ru

The truth is that some legitimate URLs may have periods toward the end of them, indicating file types like .html, .pdf, .doc, etc. are connected to the link or attachment. It’s best to remain cautious with direct links to files in every situation, as malware could be embedded and all it takes is a simple interaction to execute the malicious code. It’s best to avoid clicking on suspicious email attachments. Ultimately, exercising caution with clickable content is the most prudent practice to keep yourself from becoming a victim.

You should always hover over links to inspect their destination. If you find that there is a period in any abnormal place, be skeptical and either avoid it altogether, or verify that it is from a legitimate source. 

If an email urges urgent action, such as logging into your account, refrain from using the provided links without first making certain that any link or attachment is completely legitimate. You can do this in several different ways, but clicking through without considering the potential consequences could turn out to be a nightmare for you and for your organization.

Please share this with others because the more people know about how to stay safe online, the safer we all are. 

There are few technology solutions that have been as transformative and important for businesses as email. Unfortunately, however, it’s remarkably easy for a hacker to gain access to an email account to cause all kinds of chaos for a business. Let’s consider ways you can protect your business’ email accounts and, by extension, the rest of your organization’s infrastructure.

Use Strong Passwords

Your employees should always use strong passwords whenever possible, and they should consist of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. Furthermore, they should be on the longer side and updated regularly, avoiding commonly-guessed dates like birthdays, anniversaries, or other information that might be found on social media.

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication

You shouldn’t rely on even the most complex passwords on their own. Instead, you can add an additional layer of security through the use of multi-factor authentication methods. These consist of codes sent to mobile devices or emails, as well as biometric tools. They are great in the event a hacker has guessed a password, as MFA will keep them locked out without the second credential.

Train Your Team on Phishing Awareness

Even educated users can fall victim to phishing attacks, which makes it all the more important for those who aren’t educated to get with the program. Teach your employees what to look for when they suspect that there is something wrong, and encourage them to check senders, review message content for spelling and grammar errors, and avoid attachments or links when there is any doubt. In other words, teach them that skepticism is critical to ensuring that your business doesn’t fall victim to phishing attacks.

Utilize Email Encryption

Businesses need encryption to keep their email safe, particularly where sensitive information is concerned. Without encryption for messages and attachments, emails could be intercepted and read by unauthorized parties, leading to hefty compliance and regulatory fines.

Update and Patch Your Systems

Your email system needs to be patched and updated regularly to ensure that it is protected from the latest threats. In this way, it’s no different from any other application your business uses. Proactive maintenance should be applied to guarantee it operates smoothly.

These tasks are important to ensure that your business can withstand the myriad of attacks that will strike your email system. Be ready today by contacting MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.

Email groups are remarkably useful. Instead of sending a copy of an email to each individual recipient, you can effectively create a simple forum post that everyone can participate in—a feature that certainly helps when collaboration is a priority. Let’s go over how you can quickly and easily create a group in Gmail.

Step 1: Access Google Apps and Select Contacts

That’s right—this process isn’t even completed in Gmail. However, since you’re likely in the Gmail app, click into the App Launcher icon (colloquially, and arguably more correctly, known as the “waffle” icon) and access Google Contacts. A new window will open to the Google Contacts page.

In this new window, you’ll see the Google Contacts page, and if you click the three-bar menu, you’ll see a selection of tools and options.

Step 2: Create a Label

In these tools, you’ll see a Label option, and underneath that, the option to Create Label. Give it a name you will remember it by, and click Save. You now have a label, and it’s time to add some contacts to it.

Step 3: Add Some Contacts

You’ll see lists of your email contacts by selecting Frequently Contacted or Directory. Select whomever you want to include in a group, finally clicking the label icon at the top of the window. Confirm that the right label is selected, and select Apply. 

That’s it! Now, from Gmail, you can put the name you gave your label into the To field of any email you’re writing to send it to that group.

Hopefully, this will come in handy for you moving forward. Keep checking back for more handy IT tips, and if you want assistance in managing it all, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn a bit more about what we do.

The holidays are fast approaching and that means people are going to miss work for one reason or another. If you can get away from the office for a little bit, you’ll want to set up an out-of-office message to ensure that others know you will get back to them when you get back to the office. Here’s how you can set up an autoresponder for an out-of-office message in Microsoft Outlook.

How to Set Up Your Out-of-Office Message

Setting up an autoresponder in Outlook is simple. To get started, open up Outlook and select File.

Under the Info section—the one with the Home icon—make sure you have your account selected. You should see an option underneath it for Automatic Replies.

In the box that appears, you will see an option for Send Automatic Replies. You can configure your auto replies to send only during a specific timeframe using the drop-down boxes and date ranges. Once you have the dates determined, you can use the textbox beneath to enter your auto reply message. This will be sent to anyone who sends you an email while you have your autoreply active.

It’s also worth noting that you have a lot of control over the text that appears in this box. You can include links to resources, contact information for who they might want to contact while you are out of the office, and so on. We recommend that you don’t just leave your contacts with a simple “I’ll get back to you.” If you do leave the office for an extended period of time, be sure to give your contacts some direction, as it could make all the difference for a prospective client, annoyed customer, or other disgruntled auto reply recipient.

We hope you found this tip helpful! If you have any suggestions for future tip blogs, be sure to sound off in the comments below.

While we’re all for efficiency, there are some boundaries that should not be crossed for everyone’s benefit. Take, for instance, the email you use to subscribe to online services. While it may be tempting (or, for some people, automatic) to use your work email address when you sign up for, say, your Netflix account or an online merchant, we wanted to discuss why this is a bad habit to get into that could have lasting consequences.

The reason you shouldn’t use your work email for personal purposes is a simple one:

What Happens If You No Longer Work for the Company?

Seriously, we want to know: what’s your plan if your employment comes to a sudden end?

Let’s say that you were using your work email for an assortment of personal reasons—maybe you used it to subscribe to a few subscription services, or you used it to login to a favorite online retailer or two… maybe one named after a really big river in South America.

Potential for distraction aside (which is itself a whole other can of worms), tying your personal life too much to your work life can have some long-term issues. Let’s say you did choose to use a work email to sign up for a personal service, only to leave that job some time later.

Regardless of the reason you leave—whether you or your position was terminated, you found another job, whatever—one of the first things that any responsible company will do is to deactivate your accounts from their system. Neglecting to do so would be a cybersecurity failure on their part. Good luck trying to recover a forgotten password when the authentication is sent to an email you no longer have access to.

Businesses Should Actively Discourage Private Use of Professional Email Addresses

There are plenty of reasons that a business should want to keep their users from using their professional email accounts for their own personal purposes. We’ll quickly run through the list:

• Corporate accounts are readily available online in many cases, making them easy targets for phishing and spam.
• On a related note, it becomes a lot easier for a cybercriminal to find online accounts that are tied to a business email address and use what they find to craft more effective spear phishing messages—ones that are tailored specifically for a particular recipient.
• Many people still reuse passwords across many different websites and services, so if a website is breached that an employee’s work email was used to access, there’s a good chance that a work password could be stolen with it.

Cybersecurity Needs to Take Precedent Over Convenience

While convenience is an appealing motivator, it is important that your processes are shaped to prioritize your business’ security. Educating your team about password best practices and the actual importance of this kind of work/life balance will be key to shoring up this particular security issue.

We’re Here to Help Strike the Balance

Turn to us for help with keeping your team members from inappropriately merging their work lives and personal lives, as well as our assistance in optimizing the rest of your processes. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

The software you choose to use for your business largely defines the capabilities of it. When it comes to communications there are some very standard options that you probably already have and then there are some more innovative options that can have significant benefits for your staff. Let’s take a look at some of the standard communications options a business might use and how they can use technology to crank it up a bit.

Standard Communications Tools

Most businesses today give their employees multiple options on how to communicate with other members of the staff, prospects, and customers. Some are typical of every business, while others are a little more advanced and come with larger price tags. Some of the most utilized communications tools for business include:

• Email
• Telephone
• Instant messaging
• Documents

For most businesses, communications is split into two categories: Written and Verbal. Most businesses should have systems in place to cover both types of communication. As for written tools the most utilized, by far, is email. It presents you with an accepted and respected way to communicate with almost anyone that you would need to contact. 

Email

Today’s hosted email solutions tend to have a litany of great and useful features that can not only provide a construct to clearly get your message across, but also manage incoming and outgoing messages. Most modern business email platforms include the following features:

• Daily backup of emails
• Virus protection
• Encryption
• Spam filtering
• Synchronization
• Push mail
• Archival

These options typically provide users with everything they need to do business using email. Not only do modern email platforms have features to make the process of sending and managing email easier, many of them have started to integrate a fair amount of security features. A business’ email system is extremely important and a well-maintained and managed email system can go a long way toward giving an organization a great business tool.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is one of the more utilized written communications tools. Not every instant messaging application is created equal, that’s to be sure, but for the most part the convenience and speed of instant messaging can be a major benefit for any business looking to outfit themselves with one. Some hosted email platforms will come equipped with one, while other stand-alone IM platforms are also available. Recently, there has been a big shift in the development of collaboration tools that feature instant messaging as part of a larger platform designed to keep your people on the same page. 

Documentation

One often overlooked communication tool your business may have is the ability to provide employees and customers with written resources like pamphlets, white papers, and other documents. Most businesses today want their staff and customers to be as educated as possible and creating a repository of useful information, whether they are in the form of pamphlets, FAQs, or some other useful documents can save time and be very valuable. 

Telephone System

Probably the most important communications platform your company has is its telephone system. The traditional telephone system that you would get through a dedicated telephone provider has some functionality, but if you really want to make strides with your business’ communications platform, consider switching to a VoIP system. VoIP can be hosted onsite or in the cloud and can provide a lot of powerful features that the traditional telephone system simply cannot. 

One of the features you can buy through any VoIP provider is seamless video conferencing. For remote teams, or even extremely busy teams, a powerful video conferencing solution will give you access to a tool that will allow you to spin up meetings in seconds and provide you with integrated options in line with standalone video conferencing tools. This will help you save money and standardize the entire calling experience. Some other VoIP features you can take advantage of include:

• Automated attendant with advanced call management
• Caller ID
• Call queuing 
• Call following
• SMS and MMS integration
• Mobile device integration
• Analytics 

…And many more.

If your business needs help going over your communications options or if you simply need help getting the platforms you already have to function as you need them to, give the technicians at MSPNetworks a call today at (516) 403-9001. 

What do you do with your old email messages? Do they just sit around in your inbox and collect dust? If so, this is certainly a wasteful practice, as those emails can accrue over time and take up a sizable chunk of space. The question then becomes, what do you do with the emails to keep them from taking up so much space, especially when you might be paying for the space?

When it comes to your old email messages, you can do one of two things: archive your emails for later access or delete them from existence entirely.

The Benefits of Archiving

It’s easy to see the benefits of archiving emails, especially in the business environment where there are often messages that require attention months or even years down the road. There are several benefits to archiving emails, but they mostly boil down to convenience. You free up your inbox by storing your emails elsewhere, usually in a protected storage environment that can be accessed at a later date. Email archival systems generally have features that allow you to search the database for keywords, allowing you to fish out old messages whenever you think they will be needed.

Keep in mind, a single email doesn’t take up a lot of space. It’s when you eventually have hundreds of thousands of emails sitting in your inbox, that it starts to add up.

The downside here is that archiving does still take up space, and there is a chance that you are paying for that space whether you realize it or not. To free up that space, you will need to delete the mail.

The Benefits of Deleting

Let’s be real here for a moment; there are some messages that simply have no business being archived. For example, how many marketing emails do you receive for products that you have no interest in buying? What about newsletters that you don’t even open? When you delete an email, it is sent to your Trash folder, where it will remain for a set period of time until its eventual deletion. If it’s deleted, then it no longer takes up space, so take advantage of this when you can.

Remember, the last thing you want is to archive everything. 

UNLESS! If your industry requires you to keep records of everything, then you really shouldn’t be deleting emails unless you know it is okay to do so.

Where Do You Start?

We recommend that you begin with your inbox. Stop the flow of new messages entering your archival system by first addressing which emails get archived. We recommend that you only archive those that have some use in the future or those of importance, like business communications, receipts, account notifications, anything that might have ramifications later on if you fail to hold onto them.

What you don’t want to archive are messages that have little-to-no value. Messages about sales, newsletters, or regular communications from vendors trying to sell you products are prime candidates for email deletion, as they often do not hold their value. In essence, ask yourself, “Will this email still be important one year from now?” If the answer is no, delete it.

MSPNetworks can help your business manage its email management system and make the hard calls about which messages to archive and which to simply wipe from existence. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

What kinds of communication tools does your business utilize on a daily basis? Chances are that your communication infrastructure can benefit from some of the latest and greatest solutions on the market. Communication is one aspect of your business that you definitely do not want to skimp on, as failing to implement the proper tools can bleed into other aspects of your organization, including operations and, in return, your bottom line.

Here are three technology solutions that all small businesses should implement for their communication infrastructures.

Email & Instant Messaging

We know what you’re thinking—obviously a business needs email to communicate properly both internally with its team and externally with clients and vendors. However, we urge you to reconsider the way that your email solution is currently set up. Do you host it yourself on-premises? Is it properly secured? Can you access your work email on any approved device? Are you able to access it through the cloud? These are important questions to ask for the sake of productivity and efficiency. We at MSPNetworks recommend that you work with us to set up a cloud-hosted email solution so that your business can focus on maintaining operations rather than managing an email server.

Instant messaging is another great tool that modern businesses can leverage to great effect. It’s perfect for moments when you don’t want to wait for a response to an email or for more urgent matters. That said, you need to be careful with how you implement instant messaging, as improper setup and training can turn this great productivity tool into a distraction.

Intranet Solutions

Consider this scenario: have you ever been neck-deep in a project only to find that important documents detailing the process for a certain task simply cannot be accessed for some reason? Unfortunately, this is often the case; documents can get scattered all over, and some employees simply won’t know the needed workflows or how to access certain accounts. This is why an intranet solution is such a valuable tool. 

An intranet solution is a great place to house internal documents for helpful information such as workflows, portals to various services or tools you utilize on the regular, and more. Don’t discredit the value of having a single place you can go to locate just about everything your employees need to succeed in their day-to-day duties. Think about it as the “single point of contact” for any resources your employees need.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

Similar to email, all businesses have a phone solution that they use for both internal and external communications. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the landline is a tool of the past. Whenever you have to add a user to the network, you have to run new phone lines, hook up new hardware, assign extensions, and so much more. This makes for a solution that is not growth-friendly and can work against your business’ interests.

VoIP has the potential to change the way your organization handles telephony in the workplace. Essentially, it takes your entire phone infrastructure and shifts it to the cloud where it can be accessed on any device through a desktop or smartphone application. This allows you to use your work phone number to make calls on a personal device through the Internet. All of the features of traditional telephony solutions are present here (and completely scalable), including call forwarding, routing, conference calling, and even some features that might not be present in your ordinary landline, such as video conferencing, IMs, and more.

Not sure how to get started thinking about your own business communication infrastructure? MSPNetworks can work with your organization to implement the best tools for its specific needs. Don’t wait any longer; get started with a phone call to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.

Like any email platform, Microsoft Outlook can easily become overwhelmed with messages and conversations—effectively making it counterproductive rather than an asset to you and your team. Let’s take a few moments to go over a simple way that you can use Outlook’s internal tools to make your messages easier to deal with.

Examining the Email Issue

We’ve all been there: staring down an inbox filled to bursting with messages. Mixed with the important ones are promotional messages, internal messages that you don’t need to know about right now, and all the ones that you’ve kept for future reference. This can make it very difficult to keep track of where to find these messages and the like.

Fortunately, Outlook has a feature that enables a user to automatically highlight certain messages based on certain conditions. That way, when scanning your inbox messages, they’ll stand out and be easier to find.

How to Highlight Messages

So, you have a message that you need to pay attention to. For the sake of our example, we’ll say it’s from your direct manager, the person you regularly report to.

• In Outlook, locate the View menu at the top of the window. Doing so will give you access to your View Settings. Click into them.
  
  
• From there, click into the Conditional Formatting option. You’ll see a list of preloaded options included with Outlook, along with buttons that say Add, Delete…, Move Up, and Move Down. Click Add.
  
  
• You’ll see a new rule added to the list of options called Untitled. Rename it to whatever works for your purposes.
  
  For this example, we’ll call it Manager.
  
  
• Click the button that says Condition… to establish when this rule comes into play. This can be based on a variety of options: whether a word or phrase is included in specific parts of the message, who it is from, the time it was sent, and even whether the message was directed to you specifically or to a larger group of recipients. Some of these can be disabled by unchecking the appropriate box or leaving the field blank.
  
  Let’s stick to simply specifying that these messages are ones sent directly to you, from your manager.
  
  
• You’ll be brought back to your list of rules in Conditional Formatting. With your Manager rule still selected, click the Font button.
  
  
• There, you can adjust the way messages that meet your conditions will appear in your inbox. You can change the font, the font style, its size, add strikeout or underline effects, and even change its color. In this example, we’ll simply say that the messages should be highlighted in red.
  
  
• Click OK once you’re satisfied, continuing to do so until all the dialogue boxes are resolved.

You should then see your changes reflected in your inbox. In our case, any messages coming from your manager should appear red in your inbox list, making them much easier to see. Rinse and repeat for any other messages you want to be able to pick out quickly from the group, and your emails should be far more manageable.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog for a reminder whenever we’ve posted something new, and for any more assistance with your business’ IT, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001!

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 situation in March, creating a vaccine has been a major priority. True to form, hackers have begun targeting the very organizations responsible for the vaccine trials. There’s a lesson to be learned, today we’ll discuss it.

Cozy Bear

According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, a group with the moniker “APT29” (who is also known as “Cozy Bear” or as “the Dukes”) has started to relentlessly hack organizations tabbed with creating a vaccine for COVID-19. These claims have been corroborated by both US and Canadan authorities, and present a significant roadblock to the progress of COVID-19 vaccine production. 

In fact, the National Cyber Security Centre released a report that goes on to describe APT29’s use of several exploits in conjunction with spear phishing attacks to gain access to CSC’s network and infrastructure. Once network security is breached the organization gets busy deploying malware known as WellMess or WellMail.

CSC has been working with software vendors to patch vulnerabilities. Software that has been patched doesn’t provide the exploitable pathways that often lead to problems. 

Experts believe that this is not the first time APT29 has struck and that this threat should be taken very seriously. The organization is believed to be behind the 2016 hack that broke into the Democratic National Committee’s systems. The group has also been suspected of attacks against various healthcare, energy, government and other organizations.

Spear Phishing 

We relentlessly discuss phishing in our blog, because it is one of the biggest threats to maintaining network security. Most phishing attacks are messages sent randomly, but the spear phishing attack is one that is planned and executed deliberately to target one person. Hackers look for a weak link and try to take advantage of it. 

While your organization probably won’t be targeted by major hacking collectives, it is still important that you and your staff know how to identify a phishing attack and what to do if you suspect you are being attacked. Here are a few tips:

• Always check the details. Legitimate emails are sent from legitimate email addresses. Take a look at the email address of suspect emails and you’ll likely see a potential ruse. 
• Proofread the message. Most business correspondence is proofread before it is sent. If the spelling and grammar looks as suspect as the email is, it’s likely illegitimate.
• Reach out. If there is any question, reach out to the organization/person sending the message. The more you know, the less likely you will fall for a scam. 

Identifying phishing attacks has to be a major point of emphasis for your company. Call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001 for help with getting the resources you need to properly train your team. 

Phishing emails are a real problem for today’s businesses, which makes it critically important that you and your team can identify them as they come in. Let’s touch on a few reliable indicators that a message isn’t a legitimate one.

What Makes Phishing Attacks So Bad?

One of the largest threats inherent in a phishing scam is that there is a relatively low barrier for entry. There’s a tendency to romanticize hackers somewhat, picturing them in dark rooms lit only by an array of computer monitors as their fingers dance across their keyboard. While cinematic, this imagery is grossly inaccurate. In truth, hacking has trended more towards the psychological, focusing on user manipulation over fancy programming skills.

Which sounds easier to you, learning how to pick a lock, or asking someone for their keys?

Phishing attacks are not only easier on the cybercriminal, they’re also effective. It’s easy to be fooled by a legitimate-looking email or website, especially when you aren’t anticipating being scammed.

Let’s say someone poses as your bank. At first glance, there may be every indication that the email they send is legitimate. A quick look at the sender’s address may pass muster, the bank’s logo and contact information may be present, even any filters you have set up to organize your emails may work.

At a glance, all may be in order… which is exactly how many phishing emails will get you.

While phishing emails themselves aren’t usually dangerous, they contain links to risky and insecure websites or have nefarious files attached to them. Generally, these elements are where the danger lies.

Spotting a Phishing Attack

Let’s go through a step-by-step process to check any email that you may receive. The first sign of phishing can be found in its tone: if it has a too-good-to-be-true offer, is overly urgent, or is requesting information about one of your accounts unprompted, you’re right to be suspicious.

Check all links to confirm they direct to a legitimate URL. DON’T CLICK THEM. For example, if the email were from Amazon, links would most likely lead back to amazon-dot-com. However, anything added between “amazon” and “dot-com” is a sign of trouble. Furthermore, the dot-com should be immediately followed by a forward slash (/).

Let’s go through a few examples to demonstrate how important the little details of a URL can be, using PayPal as our subject.

• paypal.com - Safe
• paypal.com/activatecard - Safe
• business.paypal.com - Safe
• business.paypal.com/retail - Safe
• paypal.com.activatecard.net - Suspicious! (notice the dot immediately after PayPal’s domain name)
• paypal.com.activatecard.net/secure - Suspicious!
• paypal.com/activatecard/tinyurl.com/retail - Suspicious! Don’t trust dots after the domain!

Check how the email address appears in the header. If you ever receive an email from Google, the address isn’t going to be “gooogle@gmail-dot-com”. If you’re unsure, throw any email addresses into a quick search for legitimacy.

Be wary of any attachments. As we mentioned above, most email-borne threats are going to be transmitted as an infected attachment, or as a link to a malicious website. If an incoming email has either a link or an attachment, exercise caution.

Don’t take password alerts at face value. Some scammers will use phishing emails to steal your credentials. Stating that your password has been stolen or some similar breach has occurred, the email will prompt you to supply your password—springing the trap.

If all this sounds like we’re telling you to wonder if any of your emails are legitimate, it’s because we are, in a way. With a healthy sense of skepticism, email and email correspondence can be very useful business tools. Many phishing attempts can also be weeded through with a reliable spam-blocker as well.

Want us to assist you with your email security? Call up our team of professionals by dialing (516) 403-9001.

A strong email solution can bring a great deal of continuity to a business. If it is mismanaged, however, it can quickly become a major pain point. Today, we thought we would go over a couple of ways that you can use your email platform to boost productivity, rather than waste time with it.

Useful Tip #1: Don’t Spend So Much Time on It

Email can be a major time sink. People can lose hours going through their incoming messages even though most of the messages don’t really have any relevance to the job at hand. This is exacerbated if the user checks the email every 10 minutes. The fact is that if someone is sending you an email, there is a good chance that it wasn’t meant to be an urgent message. Most people would pick up the phone for that. Here are a few ways you can regulate your email usage:

• Schedule a time to check all your emails and deal with all of the incoming messages at once. This will ensure that your focus is on your incoming messages and that you are not wasting time checking and replying to messages as they come in. 
• Create a shortcut that will take you directly to your email composer, bypassing the distraction of the inbox.
  
  • For Gmail, use: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1.
  • For Outlook Online, use: https://outlook.office365.com/mail/deeplink/compose?version=2020042702.13&popoutv2=1&leanbootstrap=1

Useful Tip #2: Organize Your Inbox

If you let your incoming messages fester, you can end up with a pretty ugly and disorganized inbox. It can also inadvertently make you miss important information. That’s why it is important to keep your email organized. Adding in rules and features to whichever client you use can be advantageous. Try these things: 

• When there are a lot of emails to go through, it can be difficult and counterproductive to leave it for a long time, but it can also be a major problem for your productivity if you are spending a big chunk of your time being interrupted by more email to go through. What do you do to keep from doing that? Use a simple shift in your settings:
  
  
  
  • In Gmail, there is a feature called Auto Advance. When this feature is activated, the act of deleting, moving, or archiving a message will no longer send you back to your inbox, it will just take you to the next message. Gmail also provides the Send & Archive button, an option that gives you the option to do both in a single click.
    
    
  • In Outlook, you can change your settings quickly by calling up your Options (under the File menu option) and selecting Mail. On that page, you’ll find a section labelled Other, and the specification to complete an action “After moving or deleting an open item.” Select open the next item from the dropdown.
    
    
• In business, your email is typically the central hub of your workflow. That means you get a lot of messages referencing different projects, and it can be difficult to keep them straight. By sorting these messages automatically, you can save quite a bit of time and be more effective at having the resources you need when you need them. Here’s how:
  
  
  
  • In Gmail, you can create Labels, which can help you effectively manage different incoming messages that reference different topics. By creating Filters via the drop-down option in the Search bar, you can also set certain emails to have these labels applied based on preset criteria. These can even be used to sort through different email addresses you receive in the Gmail client.
    
    
  • Outlook also offers a similar function with its capability to create Folders and generate Rules to direct certain messages to them automatically, once again. When an existing inbox message is right-clicked, suggested rules will display, along with the opportunity to create one or to manage the ones you have already created.

#3: Prepare Ahead of Time

We all have emails that we need to send over and over. Either thanking someone for their efforts or alerting someone of a change to their service/project/account. By setting up some canned responses, over time, you can save dozens of hours dealing with repetitive messages. Here’s how to set it up:

• In Gmail, as the composer is open, click the triple-dot menu at the bottom and navigate to Templates. From there, you have the option to either insert a template you have already created or save what you have drafted as a new template to use later. If you no longer need a template, you can also delete it from this menu.
  
  
• In Outlook, you can create a new template from a message by navigating to File and Save As, then switching the file type to Outlook Template. To use them, select New Items as you are drafting your email and from there, More Items and then Choose Form. From there, select User Templates in File System in the Look In box. Find your template and select Open.

Email will continue to be a useful business tool. For more great email tips and tricks subscribe to our blog and return regularly.

Quick question for you: how many email accounts do you have? How many do you have to regularly check? How many different platforms do they utilize? If there’s too many, important communications are easy to miss in the ensuing mess of messages. Fortunately, there are a few ways that this can be avoided, which we’ll review for this week’s tip.

How Many Emails Do You Need?
Depending on your office’s organization style, there may be a fair chance that you have to juggle multiple email addresses. You may have one that you use internally, one that’s client-facing, and one to interact with your vendors. However, we do have to address how many messages this could wind up being. You and your team are responsible for more than just checking emails, after all, so you don’t have the time to log into each email account you have in order to do so.

Fortunately, your email platform of choice will have the capability to handle each of these emails from each provider. First, we need to set some terminology straight:

Understanding Email
When we refer to an email account, we’re talking about the individual address used. For instance, if your organization has a branded email address, “” and “” are two different accounts.

An email client, on the other hand, it the program that you choose to use to read your emails, like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail. If these clients are stored on a single server, you can use them more or less interchangeably, as all of your emails will appear in each client.

However, this doesn’t help you if you have too many accounts to keep track of… at least, not without exercising the capabilities of your chosen email client.

Utilizing Multiple Inboxes
Those responsible for developing these email clients understand that there are assorted reasons that a user isn’t going to be tied to a single email account or provider. As a result, email clients are now designed to support multiple inboxes. This means that, if properly configured, a user can access one email client and check multiple email accounts, dividing them into folders (or combined into one large group, if so desired).

Utilizing Multiple Personalities in a Central Inbox
Alternatively, if you don’t mind the idea of using a single inbox to hold all of your correspondence but still want to respond with multiple addresses, you can use a different method. This method will collect all of your messages into a single inbox, while allowing you to select which email address (sometimes known as a personality) your response comes from.

First, you will need to set up an email with an address that you never give out. This mailbox will be the central catch-all. Then, you need to set all of the accounts you have in use to forward to that mailbox (ask your internal IT resource for help). Pretty simple so far, right?

However, you still aren’t quite done. After all, you want to be able to respond to these emails with the address that they were originally sent to, right? This is where the personalities we mentioned above come into play. Basically, your email client allows you to change the address that appears in the From: box to whichever email address is appropriate for that correspondence.

Adding Inboxes and Personalities to Your Email Client
Of course, each email client has a somewhat different approach to adjusting these settings:

Gmail
To set up multiple accounts in Gmail, click on the gear to access your Settings, then select the Accounts and Import tab. To add inboxes to your Gmail, you should see a section labeled Check mail from other accounts. In that section, follow the prompts given after you click Add a mail account.

To add new personalities to your Gmail account, follow the same steps to the Accounts and Import tab. Under the Send Mail As section, follow the instructions provided when you click Add another email address. You can also select this email address as the default selection from here.

Outlook
Unfortunately, we don’t have the information required to provide a walk-through for setting up Microsoft Outlook, as there are too many versions to cover here. Make sure you check the documentation provided online for what Microsoft describes as “connected accounts.” Of course, we are always available to help, so feel free to give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

What other tips would you like to learn for your most-used solutions? Let us know in the comments, and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

Email is a core component to many businesses. With 124.5 billion business emails being sent and received each day, that doesn’t seem to be in danger of ending. Are the emails that are coming and going from your business secure? That may be another story, altogether. In order to keep your email security at a premium, we have outlined the following tips:

Using Filters
Filters make a lot of things easier to manage and easier to interact with, but since your employees have to stay on top of their company email, having some pretty easy-to-use solutions is important. Spam-blocking can go a long way toward reducing the amount of unimportant emails each employee sees, and a dedicated antivirus software can keep malware and other nefarious entities off of your network.

Be Smarter with Your Email
No spam filter or antivirus will do it all. In order to achieve the best results with securing your email, users have to be well-versed in the best practices of email management. The most important qualification any person can make when trying to secure their personal email from hackers is to ensure that they have the knowledge of what a phishing email might look like; and to make sure that the business’ network security is up to snuff.

Here are few tips to keep your email secure.

• Know what a legitimate email looks like. For every email sent from a vendor or partner, there are two sent that are there to trick end-users.
• If you aren’t going to take the time to encrypt your email, don’t put any potentially sensitive information within the email. This goes for heath, financial, or personal information.
• The less people who have your email address, the more secure your email is going to be. Teach your employees to not give out their email addresses if they can help it.
• The email solution needs to be secured behind solid passwords, and/or biometrics. Two-factor authentication can also be a good solution to secure an email against intrusion.

End Your Session
There are circumstances that people can’t control, so if you absolutely have to use a publicly-accessible device to access your email, you have to make certain that you log out of the email client and device you access your email on. After you log out, you’ll want to clear the cache. Many browsers and operating systems today want to save your password for user convenience. Better to use a password manager than allow the most public points of your workstation to save your credentials.

MSPNetworks can help you set up an email security policy that will work to ensure that your employees are trained, and you have the solutions you need to keep any sensitive emails away from prying eyes. Call us today at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.