Blog & Updates

Twin State Technical Services team providing IT support and network solutions for businesses.

General Virus Prevention for Businesses

July 19, 2016

Hello Everyone, We’re sending this out to educate you about the risk of malware—malicious software—and virus prevention best practices. The best way to understand how to avoid malware is understanding how infections occur, what different types of infections do, and the most common virus prevention practices. General Ways Infections Occur: There are too many ways a machine can get infected to describe here, and new ways to infect machines are discovered every day, so we’ll just cover the most common. Accepting User Account Control prompts without reading them. Everyone has seen these annoying boxes that pop up every time you want to run certain files. They do, however, serve a very important purpose: to make sure you understand what is

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Maintaining Regular Backups

July 19, 2016

Properly maintaining backups can financially benefit your business. Sometimes, it could even save your business. Several weeks ago, a popular encryption based virus made its way around the Quad Cities . . . again. This particular virus, Cryptowall, tricks users into opening a malicious file which infects their computer. Cryptowall can then spread throughout your internal network and potentially infect every computer—locking everyone out of every file until you either pay a ransom fee that goes up over time or until the infection is cleared and you recover the files from your most recent backup. During the time that Cryptowall made its most recent appearance, two of our customers were affected by the virus. Both had proper backups in place,

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Press Release June 2016

June 30, 2016

Twin States Technical Services is proud to announce the addition of Chris Moore and the launch of Twin State Studios. Our most recent expansion will venture into full-scale video production, aerial cinematography, motion graphics, and live action. With a twenty-year career in film, television, and marketing campaigns around the globe, Chris brings a diverse set of skills to the TSTS team. His experience encompasses large-scale studio productions such as Apollo 13 and Waterworld, television projects including United Sharks of America (National Geographic Channel) and Kings of Crash (Discovery), and marketing & web-based productions for Oregon Football, Gold’s Gym, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Pala Casino, as well as many others. Chris is a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the

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phone scams

New Phone Scams on Businesses, Please Send Your Cancelled Check

June 6, 2016

  Ever since the invention of the telephone, there have been money wiring scams. Throughout the decades, these scams have taken many forms. There are times when the cons are more difficult to recognize. Regardless of how it has been dressed up, non-legitimate requests for  money have the potential to be devastating to your organization. The most recent incarnation follows a familiar structure: a phone call seeming to be from a trusted vendor, but they’re asking you for sensitive information.  They say you owe them money, and they ask for a cancelled check to prove you paid them.   We are now seeing our local clients and their businesses targeted by this particular scam. How it works Through social media sites,

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How Twitter Updates Could Help Your Social Media Presence

May 17, 2016

Twitter is known for its short, to-the-point approach to posts. Since its inception, the company has allotted 140-characters per tweet. This included photos and video links, which were automatically shortened to take up only 23-characters. This punchy, stream-of-consciousness style has helped to set Twitter apart from competing social media sites. It was recently announced that the site will soon stop counting photos and links as being part of the 140-character limit. This could open up discussions between companies and clients who use this site, as well as encourage users to add more media to their posts. While Twitter hasn’t formalized when this change will come into effect, it will likely provide more opportunity for companies and consumers to expand their

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High-quality IT support services by Twin State Technical Services, specializing in cybersecurity, data backup, and network management for businesses.

How to spot a suspicious email

March 24, 2016

We have been blogging about the Crypto Virus for some time now because of the serious nature of this threat. We want to make sure that your business and employees are armed with the knowledge of how to handle a suspicious email and attachments. In the example below, you will see a perfect example of how to handle a suspicious email. Steps followed by one of our clients employees: They identified that someone sent them an attachment that they weren’t expecting. The email subject line had nothing to do with the interior email context. They did not open the attachment They forwarded it to us to double check. The Help Desk is always happy to check for you. After we received

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Resurgence of a Crypto Locker Variant

March 15, 2016

We are informing all our clients that we have seen a resurgence of a very dangerous virus variant to the Crypto Locker, which destroys computer data, programs, and files quickly. Rebuilding and restoration from backup is often the only alternative once you are infected. Please inform your employees to be especially vigilant. The virus bypasses AV scans by enticing and tricking the recipient to click on the infected object, and then moves with devastating speed to do its business. The description below provides more detail in what to look for to avoid getting infected. Description: Essentially once this virus is on one of your computers it begins encrypting your personal files. We know for sure it encrypts Microsoft Office documents, Access

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online presence

2016 Online Presence Resolutions

January 7, 2016

It’s the New Year, making resolutions to get healthy, organize and learn to fly fish may be on your list. If you’re a business owner, giving your online presence a check up should be towards the top! Here are 5 simple resolutions you can make this year to connect to your customers online! 1. Help customers quickly find information about your business online Quick fix: Claim or review your local listings on Bing & Google Lasting Change: When you claim your listings, your current or soon-to-be customers will not only find your address, but your phone, hours and photos as well.  Without visiting your website, they can get the information they need to contact you immediately.  This will enhance your online

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Notice: Microsoft Botched Patch

December 11, 2015

Microsoft released a botched patch on patch Tuesday (second Tuesday every month).  Look out for KB3114409, it was meant to give administrators better control to stop Outlook 2010 from opening in safe mode.  However it did the exact opposite, causing Outlook 2010 to only open in safe mode.  You can tell if Outlook is in safe mode by looking at the top of Outlook, it will say, “Microsoft Outlook (Safe Mode).  To remove the update, go to Start->Control Panel->Programs and Features->View Installed updates.  Then search for KG3114409, right click and uninstall.  Microsoft has pulled the update as of Wednesday morning, so it won’t reinstall next time Windows update runs.

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