Directive Blogs
For the IT administrator and the small business owner, it can be a bewildering experience when your company comes under siege from employee-induced cyberthreats; especially if you, like many other companies, have started prioritizing security training. Even if the threat is thwarted early and the effect on the business is negligible, it is important that you trust the people who have access to your organization’s digital resources. Let’s look at some of the reasons some of your staff take cybersecurity initiatives worse than others.
Small businesses, like any other organization, need to protect various types of data to ensure the security and privacy of their operations. The specific data that needs protection may vary depending on the nature of the business, industry regulations, and the types of transactions or customer interactions. Today, we thought we would go through some common data types that small businesses typically need to protect.
Businesses will often go into the process of self-improvement with unrealistic expectations for how much they can significantly improve their functionality. This simply is not true, and sometimes business owners need to realize that real change—the kind that yields real results—takes time. Thankfully, there are some actionable steps you can take to ensure that your business is moving in the right direction.
A digital twin could arguably be seen as a somewhat niche technological innovation. Regardless, they are an invaluable resource to quite a few industries that help the businesses that use them optimize their processes. Let’s go over what a digital twin is, and how it helps a few different business types meet their needs.
Technology can bring a lot of value for businesses, but sometimes it can be difficult to nail down exactly what can make a business run optimally. There are a lot of options, but all that means is that there are a lot of things that can potentially go wrong. Let’s take a look at some of the technology that small businesses are using to support the new workplace and create better opportunities.
The entire point of modern technology is to make things easier. Businesses don’t invest in computers and software simply to throw away money—technology exists to streamline operations and help you get more done in less time.
Let’s look at some of the standard technologies your business should consider to gain more value out of your technology.
The strain on people’s bodies isn’t always taken seriously when someone works at a computer. Still, many official studies suggest that desk jobs can have a radical and rather negative effect on the health of individuals. One common ailment is what is called “tech neck.” Tech neck is a term that describes neck pain and damage stemming from looking down at computers or mobile devices for prolonged periods. To avoid tech neck, you can follow these helpful tips.
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.
The laptop is an excellent piece of office equipment due to its portability and its power to meet the needs of most of today’s workforce. When in the office, however, many prefer the much larger screens that are more typical of the traditional desktop. Let’s talk about how you can get the best of both worlds by plugging your laptop into a set of peripherals and using it while it's closed—effectively turning it into a PC’s tower.
A New Year can be about self-improvement. Most of us make lofty goals to spend more time at the gym, or to stop sneaking spoonfuls of uncooked Pillsbury Cookie Dough right out of the tube from the back of the fridge at four in the morning. Some of us accomplish our goals, and some of us have gotten really good at hiding that Pillsbury Cookie Dough wrapper in the bottom of the trash so nobody realizes it’s gone. All joking aside, it feels good to make accomplishments, and I truly hope that anything you set your mind to is able to happen for you.
If you are looking for an easy resolution that will help you sleep better at night and is extremely easy to maintain, I’d highly suggest that you prioritize your own personal cybersecurity in 2024.
It will take a little effort, but trust me, it will save you a lot of headache down the road.
It’s an unfortunate fact that all businesses will inherently face some threats during their operations. That’s inescapable. From cyberattacks to natural disasters to good, old-fashioned accidents, you’re liable to face no small risk. This risk makes a process known as risk mitigation so critical for all businesses to undergo with some regularity.
Let’s review a few aspects of creating and maintaining a dependable risk mitigation strategy.
Data Backup and Disaster Recovery are essential components of any modern business. As businesses become increasingly reliant on digital data, it's essential to have strategies in place to ensure that your data is safe and secure in the event of a disaster. Let’s cover the key components of an effective Disaster Recovery strategy to ensure the safety of your business' data backup. Read on to learn more about Disaster Recovery strategies and how to best protect your business data.
The constant fear of falling victim to scams has become a harsh reality and is far from ideal. However, the good news is that there is always time to acquire the skills needed to avoid such scams. Let's explore ways to enhance awareness regarding the challenges posed by scams, not only in a business context but also in everyday life.
There are rules for doing business that most people understand. That status quo has been around for a long, long time, but as technology advances, it does more than connect parts that weren’t connected before; it can break down some of the old notions about the ways businesses are run and give people who think outside the box a leg up going forward. Let’s look at three ways business leaders are innovating how they do business.
Collaboration is the key to many businesses' success and through the use of technology, your collaborative success could improve exponentially. The problem becomes how to determine what kind of collaboration tools work right for your situation. Today, we’ll go through two different types of software that can help improve your organizational collaboration.
As technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, businesses need to stay ahead of the curve. That’s where an IT consultant comes in. Whoever is currently managing your IT and providing technical support should have a pretty good idea of how your business works, and they should be able to help you plan and implement new technologies that will help you remain competitive in this always-changing landscape.
Maintaining data security is an important consideration, and most people try to do what they must to secure their personal data. They verify emails; they roll out antivirus and antimalware; they take vigilant steps to avoid the myriad of threats and active attacks we all deal with from one day to the next.
Business technology is known to be remarkably finicky, particularly if you do not have the requisite knowledge to manage and maintain it. After all, there is a reason why you hire an IT department or a managed service provider to handle this role. What happens if your technology fails, though? Do you have a plan in place? What does a plan like this even look like, anyway? Let’s dig into the details.
Information technology has become a ubiquitous tool employed by almost every organization. The ability to adapt and improve operations has become critical for maximizing productivity and creating an environment conducive to success. The pursuit of innovation, however, often considered essential, may actually hinder productivity. This month, we explore how blindly innovating might not always be the optimal path for steering your business toward success.
Businesses have a lot of stressful things going on at any given moment, especially when timelines and deadlines are considered. You have projects that you need to complete for your customers and employees who need to be paid on time, and you would be hard-pressed to find a situation for your organization that isn’t under some sort of time crunch. How can you use technology to make sure that these timelines are met? Let’s go over some solutions.
It’s always exciting when you can expand your business’ influence with a new location, but this excitement brings with it all kinds of complications. There’s always something, whether it’s the technology for the new location or the logistics surrounding the opening. Let’s look at how you can make sure that technology is not the thing that holds your business back from opening a new location.
In this blog, we do our best to give people the knowledge they need to protect themselves and their organizations while operating online. With all the digital tools that we all have come to rely on, it’s important to understand the result of a data breach on organizations and their customers. In today’s blog, we go through six of the most devastating data breaches that happened in 2023.
Search engine optimization can be a relatively simple concept while simultaneously being complex and nuanced. On the surface, Google advises us to focus on having a quality website and content to match, while behind the scenes, hundreds of secret metrics are weighed and balanced to deliver your ranking. Then there are the experts who have purportedly cracked the code or figured out the “one easy fix that brings instant success.”
In the relatively short time it has been around, social media has fully ingrained itself into our lives, personally, professionally, and socially. While there are considerable benefits to be had in all of these areas, it is also undeniable that social media can easily become overwhelming and negatively impact us. For this reason, occasionally taking a break from social media isn’t a bad idea. Let’s go over a few ways to make this break as successful and effective as possible.
One of the nice things about software platforms is how well the applications within them interact with one another. Take, for instance, the applications contained within Google Workspace.
Because of the interconnected nature of the Google Workspace platform, there’s a lot that the different programs can do in tandem. As an example, let’s consider how the word-processing application Google Docs can be used to generate events in the associated account’s Google Calendar.
As conditions within your business change, it’s likely that your plans might need to change before their end results come to fruition. The decisions you made last fiscal year, or even last quarter, might no longer be relevant due to the rapid pace of evolution that happens with business technology. Let’s go over how you can get the appropriate technology solutions for your business without falling behind.
Templates are a handy feature that popular word processing platforms, like Google Docs, offer to help users create specific types of documents. While there are plenty of prebuilt templates available, there’s always the possibility that you have a need that isn’t filled by one of them.
In these cases, you always have the option to build your own. Let’s go over how, and discuss some of the elements and options that your custom Google Docs templates can support.
With the blockchain growing more popular as a technology, we thought it would be good to discuss how it works and why you should be aware of it. The zeitgeist often portrays it as a nefarious tool used by cryptocurrency and scams, but at its core, it is far from this; in fact, the applications of such a decentralized and transparent technology make it ideal for certain tasks. Let’s explore them.
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.
Back in 2022, Microsoft coined the term “productivity paranoia,” referring to the fears that many managers have that remote workers aren’t working to their full productivity. However, as remote and hybrid work has continued for many companies, a different form has emerged: the feeling a worker has that they have to prove they are still productive while working from home.
Here are some tips to share with your team, so they can use them to avoid these feelings.
2023 was definitely the year that AI became a household name. We’ve barely seen what artificial intelligence is capable of, and while industries are still coming up with more ways to use the technology, we’ve already seen countless examples of how people want to take advantage of AI for less savory purposes. 2024 is already shaping up to be the year that businesses need to protect themselves from AI-generated cybersecurity threats. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know as a business owner.
Perhaps predictably, the word “insure” has roots that tie it closely to “ensure,” as it is meant to ensure a level of security after some form of loss. Nowadays, that loss often pertains to data, making cyber insurance an extremely valuable investment for the modern business to make.
However, in order to obtain this kind of insurance, businesses commonly need to meet some basic requirements. Let’s go over some of these requirements now.
If you are old enough to remember when antivirus (like most computer software) came in a great big textbook-sized box at the store, then you probably remember a time when that was the only protection you really needed.
Today, there are countless free versions of antivirus out there. Let’s talk about how much protection these actually bring, and when and where they might be a good fit.
Through cloud-based technology, your business can change the way it operates in countless different ways, all of which can benefit you in the long run. If you haven’t yet considered cloud-based solutions for infrastructure, then you could be missing out on some of the greatest innovations of the past decade. Here are some ways your business can start to leverage the cloud to its advantage.
Small businesses seemingly always need to take a long look at the way they do things because they need to be as efficient as possible to carve out a market share. This often means using technology to make everything work. There are many different types of technologies that can help any SMB build more efficient operations, but the two we will outline in today’s blog, are two technologies that are probably doing the most to help SMBs improve.
Businesses have embraced QR codes as a convenient means of sharing information with clients and customers. Unfortunately, this convenience is also enjoyed by cybercriminals who have decided to use QR codes for their own ends. QR code-based scams against businesses are on the rise, which is precisely why it is so important for organizations of all sizes to appreciate the risks that QR codes can present and know what they need to do to protect themselves.
This goes out to all the business owners, managers, department heads, and other leaders in the workplace who have to field user complaints and issues.
Being in this position can be hard, because you often have to say no. No, we can’t change the timeline or increase the budget for this project. No, we can’t do XYZ that way because it would break compliance. No, we can’t get new hardware/software in until we get it approved in the budget. Repeat ad nauseam.
Happy New Year! It’s officially that time when we all make resolutions meant to help improve ourselves, so why not include your business? Better yet, why not make business resolutions that you’re more likely to keep?
Let’s explore some of the ways that you can design your business’ resolutions to maximize the likelihood that you’ll keep them and benefit from them in the long term.
We’re hoping that you are actually reading this post to prepare yourself if your business were to face a ransomware attack, but if you are suffering from one right now, we encourage you to reach out to us immediately, whether you are a client or not. Ransomware spreads quickly, and once it has infected a system, there really isn’t much you can do to stop it. However, there are steps you need to take to come back from this gracefully.
A screenshot can be a remarkably handy thing to have on hand, for both your own purposes and especially for the purposes of technology support. While there are many tools out there that can help you take effective screenshots, there is a modern solution available for all users of Windows 11. Let’s look at how you can use it!
With the end of the year upon us, New York State’s health insurance markets and assorted health plans are open. Current enrollees received renewal reminders a few weeks ago, prompting them to act before their coverage lapses.
Unfortunately, as is often the case in such situations, this urgency has given scammers the opportunity to target New Yorkers trying to maintain their insurance coverage.
Imagine doing your job without the advanced communications tools that you have access to. It would make things much less efficient. Most organizations use all types of different solutions to be able to support their workforce and customers, but in today’s business, there are three solutions most organizations have come to depend on. Let’s take a look at these three today.
Having a professional perspective always helps, it’s just that in today’s world of inflated rates for everything, it’s hard to find experts that don’t charge an arm and a leg. IT consulting plays a crucial role in helping businesses gain a better perspective on their technology landscape. Here are several ways in which IT consulting can contribute to a more informed and strategic approach to technology within a business.
We’ve seen the conference rooms of a lot of businesses, from the modified break-room with stale coffee to immaculate lecture rooms with plush, comfy seats, and everything in between.
A good conference room can do a lot to impress potential clients and customers, encourage collaboration within your team, and leave a great impression on potential employees too. While we’re not going to pretend to be interior decorators, there are definitely some important steps that we can assist with to make sure your conference room is up to the task.
Do you remember a couple of years back when remote work went from being a privilege to the norm? It’s been a while since then, but many businesses have adopted hybrid or full remote operations, and as such, they are able to retain a semblance of normalcy even without the return of in-office work.
Some businesses have managed to get back to the state they were in prior to the pandemic, but there is a reason why a lot of businesses are not pushing the issue. Let’s go over some of them, and why forcing the issue with your employees is not necessarily a good idea.
Managing the large number of devices in a modern office requires effective tracking and monitoring. The challenge lies in keeping tabs on each device, identifying users, and monitoring usage patterns. If your technology isn't currently being tracked, it's important to start doing so. The implementation of an inventory management system offers a more efficient and streamlined approach to this task.
By now, you’ve probably started hearing a lot about AI and how it’s doing a lot of things to disrupt the world. It seems like every modern software application boasts AI capabilities, social media feeds are plastered with generative AI content, and techy people everywhere are providing their two cents on this new technology. The main star of artificial intelligence right now is ChatGPT, so we figured we’d shed some light on exactly what it does in plain English, and how you might be able to take advantage of it.
While most of us know that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, fewer know that he’s specifically built his big, rambling castle in the Laughing Valley. It is there that he and his workforce, the elves, sprites, pixies, and fairies that help him make his toys all live, all working hard to give the children of the world their presents each year.
Of course, as magical as Santa and his team may be, it isn’t unheard of for them to need a little help every once in a while.
We have the pleasure of working with many businesses, some of whom take more advantage of our remote services than others. We wanted to take a few moments to discuss one of our more discreet client organizations and a challenge we helped them resolve. Hopefully, sharing this won’t land us on the naughty list.
We write a lot about the cloud; for good reason. It is one of the most utilized and valuable technologies available to business. The cloud plays a pivotal role in elevating mobile productivity, offering diverse services and features that empower users to access, collaborate, and efficiently execute tasks. Here are three key ways in which the cloud contributes to mobile productivity.
It’s important to keep the software on your computer updated. If your operating system or web browser or some other important application is out of date, it could lead to things not working properly while also leaving you susceptible to threats. However, hackers are disguising malware to look like important web browser updates.
Chances are your business has a social media presence in at least some capacity, as it’s a good way to drive traffic to your business. However, hackers want to leverage this benefit against you. A new malware specifically targets Facebook business accounts to launch malicious advertisement campaigns using your own money against you.
Effectively managing the multitude of devices in a contemporary office is a big job. The challenge lies in meticulous oversight of each device, identifying users, and observing patterns of usage. If your technology assets are not currently being tracked, it is a good idea to implement some way of monitoring those systems. The adoption of an inventory management system presents a more efficient and streamlined approach to address this challenge.
Change is scary. Which is why, even though you know Password Managers help to manage complex passwords across several accounts, you still stick with the same, old passwords you’re comfortable with: using them over, and over, and over.
In this Micro Training, learn more about what Password Mangers have to offer, and see if this tool is a good match for your security goals.
Remote work offers numerous benefits for both your employees and your business, provided you can overcome the challenges associated with implementing it. One such challenge is productivity, something which employees might struggle with while working remotely. Here are four ways your average remote employee might be challenged by their remote work in terms of productivity.
As much as we try to structure our productivity throughout the day, there are always those moments that seem to slip by—both at work and in our personal lives. It can be tough to find time to commit to projects whether your goal is personal or professional.
So, let’s go over some tips that help make this time easier to find.
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.
Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest retail days of the year are some of the biggest days for scams, the entire holiday season seeing an increase in threats toward retailers and, as a result, the consumers that are just looking for that perfect gift for their loved ones. Let’s review some statistics and trends to see what insights we can glean.
The Internet is pretty great. You can watch videos of cats being weird, and then watch the London Philharmonic Orchestra perform Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Then you can go on Reddit and learn how to replace the drywall in your bathroom. Just another typical Sunday afternoon with the Internet, right?
Unfortunately, the Internet isn’t always perfect. It can be pretty dangerous, and we’d like to share some surprising terms that can lead to dangerous websites and malware if you search for them on Google.
Phishing has a fascinating historical and societal impact that is often overlooked. With Phishing401, this “senior level” course dives deeper into the subject matter, allowing you to advance in your phishing studies.
In this Micro Training, we will take a look at how phishing began, why it has been successful, and what causes psychology to play such an important role for both the scammer, and the victim.
Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has become a bona fide buzzword amongst businesses of all sizes, with 97% of respondents to a Forbes survey seeing a potential benefit in some way, shape, or form. However, with it being integrated everywhere in our modern lives, it is important that we remember that AI is still a human invention, as such, it is vulnerable to our own implicit biases.
Laptops have emerged as the predominant workstations in the business landscape. While laptops offer unparalleled convenience, their batteries seem to be on a perpetual decline in terms of performance. This phenomenon is influenced by various factors, and the extent of battery life problems can differ based on hardware or circumstances. Today, we take a look at some of the reasons why laptop batteries aren’t performing as well as users expect.
With ransomware becoming one of the single most dangerous threats out there for small businesses, it’s more important than ever to know how to protect your company from its influence. Thankfully, there are measures you can take, including some very powerful ones like zero-trust policies that can thwart attempted ransomware attacks.
There are significant benefits to be had by businesses that choose to seek out IT services and assistance from a managed service provider like us. We’re very aware that our word isn’t going to be super convincing on its own, of course, so let’s review what a managed service provider can do and how working with us can help your business.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when it comes to cybersecurity threats it’s kind of hard not to be. I used to look at it from two sides; one side is fascinated at the innovation and intensely brutal ways that high-end cyberattacks work, and the other side of me loses sleep at night worrying about these risks affecting our clients, prospects, and even my own business. This one particular classification of cyberattack, however, takes the cake for being especially frightening.
AI has unquestionably emerged as the standout technology of the year, and it was only a matter of time before Microsoft entered the arena with its own enterprise-ready AI platform. The introduction of Microsoft CoPilot has sparked a fair amount of confusion and left many questions unanswered, so today our aim is to shed light on what CoPilot is and explain the value you can expect to get out of the new Microsoft AI.
An insider threat is when an individual with authorized access for an organization, misuses their access in a way that harms the organization. As the name implies, these threats come from within.
In this micro training we’re looking at Intentional Insider Threats which are deliberate and often planned actions often carried out for personal gain or to right a perceived injustice.
Laptops have become the most utilized workstations in business. Laptops are great, but their batteries are seemingly getting worse all the time. This is influenced by several factors, and it can vary significantly depending on the specific model and usage patterns, but we thought we’d go through some of the reasons why laptops seem to die quickly.
You don’t need us to tell you that ransomware is a problem (or maybe you do–we mean, it’s a huge problem). It’s dangerous to both businesses and individuals, and it has become such a common threat that all organizations need to have a plan in place to address it with their staff. Today, we want to highlight a three-part strategy that you can use to approach ransomware in the most secure way possible.
While it’s true that technology has become essential for businesses, organizations still often grapple with various technology issues that can impact how they do business. Many times organizations get turned around and it can cause some aspect of their IT to be problematic for them. Today, we look at five common technology issues that businesses frequently face.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has become an indispensable tool for businesses, with over 30 percent of them adopting it as their primary means of communication. Beyond its telephony capabilities, VoIP plays a pivotal role in modern collaboration by seamlessly integrating with various communication and collaboration tools. Here are seven ways in which VoIP enhances collaboration.
An insider threat is when an individual with authorized access for an organization, misuses their access in a way that harms the organization. As the name implies, these threats come from within.
In this micro training we’ll look at Unintentional Insider Threats, which are actions that may harm an organization that are NOT planned or carried out with malicious intent. The individual at fault is often referred to as a pawn.
Whatever your industry, there are going to be processes that need to be followed, and this will require no small amount of organization to keep all the moving parts in tandem with each other. Fortunately, tools that can help with your project management needs are readily available, so long as you take advantage of their capabilities.
Take Google Sheets, for instance.
Every organization has a lot of things that could go wrong in the course of doing business. They can run into supply chain issues, employee turnover and poor performance, natural disasters interrupting your “business as usual”, but one of the most unassuming, yet worrisome threats to your business is the cyberattack. This month, we go into a few ways cyberattacks threaten your business and how they play out to give you an idea of how to prepare.
Your business’ backup and disaster recovery preparations are a critical part of your continued success as an organization, specifically, how they are measured by two key metrics: your recovery time objective (RTO) and your recovery point objective (RPO).
However, it’s important that you are able to determine what your organization can support in terms of your recovery time and recovery point objectives… but how does one do that?
Running a business may never be totally smooth sailing, but it doesn’t have to be a complete grind all the time either. Managing complexities with your business’ technology is a good way to ensure that things move ahead with some efficiency. Today, we look at four ways to effectively handle complexities in the realm of business technology.
Social media scams are fraudulent schemes or deceptive activities that take place on various social media platforms. Users of Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and dozens of others have been victims of these attacks. These scams can target users of all ages and backgrounds, and they aim to exploit people's trust, curiosity, or lack of awareness. Social media scams come in various forms, and here are some common ones.
Did you know that a lot of technology investments go over budget or don’t necessarily provide the return that was intended? With technology playing such an important role in business, getting the right technology to fit your business is critical to your efficiency efforts. It’s not always as easy as identifying features in a huge software profile or using the cloud for everything. In today’s blog, we offer five useful tips to help you make informed decisions about your business’ technology.
Love them or hate them, self-service checkout registers in brick-and-mortar stores are here to stay… especially considering that research has demonstrated that Gen Z has about twice the level of buy-in to the automated point-of-sale terminals as Gen X does, and that self-checkout is the predominant form of payment today. With this success, many have wondered how welcome biometric payment processing might be.
As it turns out, it would seem it isn’t.
A company’s IT strategy can define how it handles its entire operational strategy. That’s why it is so important to carefully consider your organizational approach to IT. Not only does it allow you to align your IT, and its support, to your business’ goals, but it also allows you to consider the circumstances that you operate under and find viable solutions to business problems. That’s not all. Let’s list some of the reasons that businesses should consider customizing their IT strategy to their business initiatives.
We’re at a weird point in the technology world (but honestly, when is it not at least a little convoluted?). Right now, modern technology has been slowly shifting between a few different technologies and consumers and businesses are stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do and how to future-proof their hardware investments.
An insider threat is when an individual with authorized access for an organization, misuses their access in a way that harms the organization. As the name implies, these threats come from within.
In this micro training, we review six simple tips for staff, management and IT to safeguard their organization from potential insider threats.
You know that a software has made its mark when its name becomes synonymous with the type of software it is. For instance: PowerPoint.
This element of Microsoft 365 is well-known enough to often be used as a catch-all phrase for any presentation software. Less well-known, however, are some of the cool features and functions that PowerPoint has to offer. Today, we’re sharing a few of these features with you.
Cybercriminals fight dirty, whether it’s attacking small businesses, large enterprises, or individuals who just want to watch Netflix. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do for the community; you’ll always be a target for hacking attacks. To save time and effort, hackers will use low-tech attacks and social engineering attacks to target individuals. Hackers aren’t developing new threats all the time; if anything, they largely use existing exploits, purchasable software, and social engineering to take advantage of people.