TRI Newsletter – Mar 2021

Windows 10 AntiVirus Programs

We frequently get asked by our clients what we recommend for Antivirus software.  This is a field that is constantly shifting, with the programs that are most effective changing even as frequently as month to month.  In order to keep our clients safe, we do our best to stay on top of the various groups that regularly test and rate these programs.  The good news is that currently one of the top antivirus programs is built into every Windows 10 computer.  Windows Defender has very good ratings and uses very little of the resources on your computer.

If Windows Defender is not appropriate for you to use, for whatever reason, reach out to us, and we can provide some alternative options that might be a better fit in your specific case.

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TRI Newsletter – Oct 2020

Login Security

Most of us are concerned about our online and email security.  There are so many accounts that we use all the time that involve a username & password that need to be secure.  This is a rabbit hole that goes very deep, but we have some rules of thumb that can help.

Continue reading “TRI Newsletter – October 2020” →

TRI Newsletter – Aug 2020

COVID-19

Technical Reinforcements is among those who worked from home during the Shelter in place order and for the most part we still are.  The office is open now for contactless drop off and pick up and we are doing remote support.  As long as you have an internet connection we can do a remote. In some instances we can do phone support when your internet is not available.  We are not doing onsite visits to homes yet.

While on the subject of Covid-19

I have been alerted to a number of people getting phone calls and emails about being exposed to Covid-19 and that they should be tested right away.

They then proceed to ask for billing address &  credit card information so they can send you the test.

This is the next version of the support scammer calls.  Please be leary of anyone calling and asking you to verify your address and bank or credit card information.  Don’t talk to them.

Continue reading “TRI Newsletter – August 2020” →

TRI Newsletter – April 2020

COVID-19 and remote access.

With the spread of the Coronavirus and the Shelter at Home order for MN, many of us are working from home, and we at Technical Reinforcements are among that many.  We have closed the office and are doing remote support from our homes. While this is not ideal it is the best we can do in this unprecedented situation. As long as you have an internet connection we can do a remote. In some instances we can do phone support when your internet is not available.

If you are having to work from home, and need help getting things set up, or troubleshooting a problem with your existing remote setup, we are definitely here to help.  In the past few weeks we’ve helped countless individuals and businesses get people set up to work from home during this time, and are happy to continue to do so as things progress.

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To all of our clients and friends, new and old.

Continue reading “TRI Newsletter January 2020” →

Hello again!  We’re back with another quarterly newsletter today, with some new topics that we have been getting a lot of questions about lately.  We’ll be going over backups, end of support for Windows 7, and tips for choosing the right portable computing solution.

Backups

The best method to follow is the 3-2-1 Backup Rule. The 3-2-1 backup rule is an easy-to-remember acronym for a common approach to keeping your data safe in almost any failure scenario. The rule is: keep at least three (3) copies of your data, and store two (2) backup copies on different storage media (external hard drives, optical disks, or a cloud backup service,) with one (1) of them located offsite. To clarify, let’s take a look at each point of this rule.

Continue reading “TRI Newsletter August 2019” →

For about the last year, TRI has been moving customers to our virtualization solution. A big part of this move is due to the cryptovirus craze. TRI uses a technology that allows us to snapshot the virtual machines (or a network file share), and then rollback to a specific hour sometime within the previous 2 week period. We have on-boarded numerous new customers who had unfortunately fallen victim to crypto viruses, but recently, we had a customer on our solution get hit with a cryptovirus. This is their story.

Continue reading “Customer Hit with Crypto Virus” →

Hello everyone!  In this quarter’s newsletter we’re going to cover scareware, general maintenance tasks that can be done to keep your computer working well, and some discussion on what mesh wireless networks are, and how they work.  So, let’s dig in!

Scareware!

What is Scareware?  Scareware is a pop up that show up while on the internet telling you, you’re infected.  You are not infected, it is not until you take action with the popup that you get infected (by clicking or calling).

The first thing you should do is Shut Down your computer. Many of them tell you not to, but that is because the scareware is loaded into your RAM (temporary working space).  Once the computer shuts down that is cleared. The first thing I will ask when called is did you shut down your computer.

Continue reading “TRI Newsletter May 2019” →

What I’d like to touch on with this article is more for our regular users. You don’t need a degree in computer science to understand that user accounts all over the internet are getting breached. So what can a regular user do to help protect their accounts? The quick and easy response is to say, “Enable two-factor authentication.” But as we’ve found with the Reddit breach, not all forms of two-factor authentication are created equally.

Easily the most common form of two-factor authentication out there right now is the SMS text message-based. Let’s say you log into GMail, you put in your user name, your password, and then GMail sends you a text message with a code that you have to put into the website before your login is complete. That’s SMS based two-factor authentication. That’s widely considered to be better than no two-factor authentication at all.

I want to do is talk a little bit about other options that exist. Specifically with GMail, as a lot of our clients use GMail, both for personal accounts, and G Suite for business.

Continue reading “Two-Factor Authentication for Regular People” →