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A recently released Australian study estimates that $300 million is lost each year to online fraud, up 16 per cent from $261 million in 2012. With the average value of illegal transactions totaling almost $200, these individuals aren’t losing a fortune. Still, losing any amount of money to online fraud is unpleasant and unnerving, leaving one to wonder where the breach occurred, and how the sensitive data was accessed.

While big box stores have gotten flack in the past year for not having adequate security measures in place, fraud experts suggest the biggest concern for consumers is not where they shop in person; rather, using online websites to shop leaves shoppers’ financial secrets vulnerable to cyber-thieves. 

Fortunately, there are simple ways for the average individual to guard their information. Kinetik I.T. President Josette van Stiphout shares some basics for keeping information safe. “When opening an account online,” she suggests, “the first thing to do is to choose a unique username and strong secure password—not the obvious ones.

Any device connected to the Internet is at risk for exposure to malware, viruses, and hackers. Keeping devices clean, as well as keeping current with updates—which often include security fixes—for software, applications, and operating systems will also help mitigate the risk of infection or intrusion.

Everyone loves posting to social networks, but keeping your personal life, well, more personal, is another way to safeguard information. Posting images of vacation while on vacation may seem innocuous, but it can be a clue to cyber thieves that you may not be paying close attention to your finances. Another threat is using unsecured Wi-Fi networks and public hotel computers. Ward Clapham, vice president of recovery services at Absolute Software in Vancouver, British Columbia is quoted as saying in an NBC article, "Because they're on vacation, they most often want to quickly check an email, or post a picture to Facebook, and blindly connect to a network not knowing or caring who runs it or its security setup."  Cyber thieves are setting up Wi-Fi networks for the sole purpose of getting a hold of your personal or financial data.

In addition to not using unsecured connections, Internet users should also ensure they’re using secure websites, the URL of which will begin with “https.” These sites are able to encrypt login details prior to sending it to the server, keeping it safe from prying eyes.

It’s possible remain cyber-theft free by being aware and using some foresight. Whether you or your business has been the victim of cyber-crime, Kinetik offers disaster recovery audit, planning and implementation services to get you back on your feet. Located in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona, Kinetik IT is a full-service information technology and Internet services provider.  To learn more about services and products, and to stay up to date with Kinetik IT, visit www.Kinetik-IT.com or follow Kinetik on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

We have all heard stories about what’s lost during natural disasters – homes, businesses; in cities waterlogged during southern hurricanes, California and Colorado wildfires that consume entire communities. While major events like these, which cause millions of dollars in damage, occur on a limited basis, a different kind of disaster catches businesses by surprise every day: data loss. Seemingly mundane in comparison and you may think that the chance of this occurring may be relatively small, yet this type of disaster can have a huge impact on your business, resulting in loss of time, loss of productivity, revenue and, potentially, clients.

Data loss can occur in any number of ways including human error, computer virus, hardware or system failure, software corruption, data or cyber theft, as well as natural disasters. The remedy is to have a Disaster Recovery and Implementation Plan in place, to ensure data is adequately protected and can be recovered in a timely manner after the system breach.

Your disaster recovery plan is an important part of your business and the consequences of not having one can easily be underestimated. When disaster hits, the question is: Will you be ready?

A How-To Guide

Human beings tend to act like the proverbial ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-sand when it comes to preparing for unpleasant events. But when disaster strikes, regardless of the cause, the feeling of being able to recover data will offer peace of mind and allow you and your team to confidently move forward. What are the first steps you should take? Where do you turn? This quick overview can help.

1. Choose responsible people. You cannot properly get your disaster recovery plan off the ground if you don’t have great people around you to help. As you build the actual plan, be sure you have responsible people in charge of the process.
2. Upgrade regularly. Over time, your company is going to change. As it does, your disaster recovery plan has to change too. Be sure it’s updated as often as is necessary to keep up with your company.
3. Get the right help. Planning for disaster recovery is not as simple as pulling a template off the internet. Instead, choose an IT consulting firm to help.

When you’re ready to get serious about disaster recovery planning, there is no better place to turn than Kinetik IT, where we’ll walk you through every step of disaster recovery planning.

To learn more about services and products – including implementing your tailored plan if and when it becomes necessary – visit www.Kinetik-IT.com or follow Kinetik on Facebook, LinkedInor Twitter.

It could be as big as a powerful weather event. It could be something as small as a car crashing into a power line just a few miles from your business. It could be as simple as an equipment failure. No matter what the cause, though, it all adds up to one thing for your company – disaster. Take a moment to imagine your company without power or access to your data for 12 hours. Multiply that. Imagine your business without access to any of that for 24 hours. 48 hours? It seems like just a day or two of downtime shouldn’t do that much damage to your company, but the simple reality is that it can and will.

Enter disaster recovery planning.

Every single business, no matter how small or large, has to have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan today. That problematic event is literally just around the corner. It doesn’t take much, and learning how to make certain your business will survive is an absolute must.  

Wondering how to get started when you’re already spending each day trying to stay afloat in a problematic economy? It’s an overwhelming prospect, but we can help.

The premiere IT consulting company in Phoenix, we can be here from start to finish. Take a moment to look at the services we offer.

• Planning: Easily the most important phase of disaster recovery, we know that you may not be familiar with how to match your needs with the technology that can help. We’ll help decide what your risks are and how to protect your company, as well as how to budget for those expenses.

• Documentation: You can plan forever, but if you don’t actually document what has to be done, you can’t respond to disaster as well as you’d like. We’ll help you get an inventory of your assets together as well as show what backup technologies are in use and the process that must occur should disaster finally hit.

• Implementation: It can be tough to know what to do once it hits, but we’ll work with your staff members to implement all of your solutions so that what should happen in the event of a disaster actually does happen.

• Testing: You want to make certain that you actually know what to do when disaster strikes, so we’ll help with this phase too. Once things are implemented, we can help you understand how well the backups work and exactly how the data is restored. We can even do this periodically to help test plan updates.

      You don’t want to be left in shambles when a disaster occurs, no matter how small your company or your IT budget may be. To learn more about our IT consulting and disaster recovery planning services contact us at www.kinetik-it.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.