BUSINESS PHONE NEWS

Google vs. Bing: Which Business Search Engine Delivers More Infected Websites to Your Employees?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

While most business owners advise employees against downloading suspicious file attachments to avoid computer virus infection, do employers now need to mandate that their employees use one search engine instead of another to minimize infection?

The following overview of a detailed AV-TEST study reprinted here with permission recently revealed that although search engine operators such as Google and Bing make a lot of effort to avoid doing so, they sometimes deliver websites infected with Trojans and similar malware among their top search results. Other search engines do an even worse job.

It took the AV-TEST Institute from the German city of Magdeburg a total of 18 months to carry out a study that would confirm its initial suspicion, namely that the best-known search engines Google and Bing are being used to include websites containing malware among the top search results delivered to users. This exploitation of search engines is causing their operators to be tripped up by their very own systems.

Behind the scenes, the operators are therefore working to solve the problem and are already filtering out a multitude of infected websites. Nevertheless, if Internet users choose to surf the web without good protection software, they are sure to be hit by such infections themselves at some point in time.

The study carried out by AV-TEST between August 2011 and February 2013 did indeed confirm this suspicion. During its study, the institute investigated over 40 million websites delivered as search engine results.

Very Complicated – Very Effective

Malware developers are now putting more and more effort into their work, for example in order to distribute their spyware programs or Trojans. They therefore exploit search engines for their own purposes and sneak infected websites into the top results delivered to users.

The trick used by these criminals is actually very simple: they first create a multitude of small websites and blogs before selecting the most frequently used search terms from top news stories and using backlinks to optimise these terms for search engines. This process of optimising websites for search engines, known as SEO (search engine optimisation) for short, is used by all major website operators to ensure that their sites are easier to find. The way to ensure that a website is the quickest to be found is to achieve a place in the top ten search results delivered by Bing or Google.+

The study revealed that it was precisely those search results concerning the latest news that particularly frequently contained malicious links. Users are the least suspicious in such cases and therefore quickly click on the links provided. This extremely perfidious system works well, meaning that PCs with less reliable protection software soon become infected. In 2012, the test institute from Magdeburg constantly tested almost all of the security programs available on the market. The average detection rate of these programs throughout the year was 92.5 percent, which indicates that 7.5 percent of users are potential targets for malware attackers.

If a user relies on a good security program, the detection rate can be as high as 100 percent. You can find out which Windows products provide such impressive detection rates for free by visiting www.avtest.org/tests/home-user. 

Google Is Better than Bing

The study carried out by AV-TEST evaluated close to 40 million websites over a period of 18 months. A good 20 million of these websites were provided by Google and Bing in equal parts. The other websites examined in the test were accessed via the globally used search engines Yandex, Blekko, Faroo, Teoma and Baidu. The heavyweight of the search engines tested was the Russian system Yandex, which provided over 13 million of the websites investigated. Google achieved the best results in the study, followed by Bing.

Attention must, however, be drawn to the fact that Bing delivered five times as many websites containing malware as Google during the study. The Russian search engine Yandex even delivered 10 times as many infected websites in comparison with Google. All of the websites tested revealed a total of 5000 potential pieces of malware.

When fed into calculations, this result only leads to a small overall percentage of infected websites. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Google alone deals with a phenomenal total of 2 to 3 billion search requests worldwide every day. If this total is factored into the calculations, the total number of websites containing malware found by the search engine is enough to make your head spin!

 

Up-to-Date Systems Are More Secure

The infected websites mostly use malware that exploits existing security vulnerabilities in users’ software. These vulnerabilities normally involve outdated browsers, old add-ons or extensions and out-of-date versions of PDF readers. Users can drastically reduce the likelihood of infection by keeping the software on their systems up to date. They can also guarantee that they have the best possible protection by additionally using high-quality security software that is constantly updated.

 

What Should You Do to Protect Your Firm? Call Us!

As telecom & technology solution providers we have a rich history of consulting with our business customers large and small about what reasonable protections they need to avail themselves of and at what price points.

We'll be happy to meet with you and match you up with a network security solution that meets you budget and your unique requirements. To learn more about the study in this article please contact: 

Magdeburg, Germany, 6th April 2013
Author: Markus Selinger
Please contact the team at AV-TEST GmbH if you have any questions.
E-mail: presse@av-test.de,  Tel.: +49 (0)391 6075460, website: www.av-test.org

Feeling Lucky Installing a Do-it-Yourself Phone System? How about one that requires no installation (or luck)?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Just because Leprechaun season is fast approaching doesn't mean tiny men with golden promises should be put in charge of choosing your next business phone system.

But I know it's tempting...

If you check out the video below you might be left with the impression that the most difficult part of installing a business phone system is getting the phone system's key service unit out of all the bubble wrap it's shipped in.

While bubble wrap can certainly be a problem, the bigger problem for small business owners is thinking that their next phone system is not more complicated to choose then their last phone system was to choose.

 

Does Your Current Cell Phone Look Like the One You Owned Five Years Ago?

The cell phone you owned five years ago made phone calls and had all your contacts on speed dial. The "smart phone" in your pocket now has all your business contact phone numbers AND access to all your business software applications that you can't possibly live without.

If you couldn't conduct business with the cell phone you had five years ago, why do you think you can do business with the same office phone system technology that you purchased for your office ten years ago?  You can't. You'd be better off only doing business with your smart phone then trying to conduct any sort of office business on an "old-school" phone system.

 

How Do You Find an Office Phone System That Works as Well as Your Smart Phone?

Step one is to seriously consider an office phone system that has all it's "smarts" in the cloud - just like your smart phone.

The small business phone system in the video below is "old-school" because it requires a key service unit or KSU be mounted somewhere on your business property and then connected to all your desk phones and dial-tone. The only problem for this design is that all your employees are now required to be in your office for this to work

What if you have more than one office?  What if your employees are always on the move? What if, like your smart phone, you need your office phone to interact with other business applications like GPS or voice recognition?  

 

You Can Afford a "Smart" Phone System IF The "Smarts" are IN THE CLOUD

You don't own the GPS technology in your smart phone that helps navigate your from one business appointment to another - you just rent it on a monthly basis as part of your cell phone bill.  It's a good thing that you don't own it because you likely couldn't afford it and you don't have the room for the computer that makes it work.

It's OK to rent the "business smarts" that your company needs to stay connected.

In today's ever evolving business environment it's difficult to be able to predict how many employees you'll need in one office or another or if the people you'll need will even be working out of an office.

 

Call Us to Explore the Modern Hosted Cloud Phone System Solutions

Just as do-it-yourself old-fashioned "box" phone systems come in hundreds of sizes and styles, so do the more modern "cloud hosted" phone systems. 

Some are based on proprietary Broadsoft technology and others are based on Metaswitch. Still others are designed on "open" Asterisk software and are reported to be cheaper but less secure to hacking. Which is a safe option for your business?

Call us and let us know what's important about the way your business will be doing business over the next couple years. As independent business technology sales partners we're experts at matching you with the vendor or combination of vendors best suited to your business vision AND your budget.

 

This Might Be the Best Business Phone System Solution For You if ...

In all fairness to the fellow in this video, this is a perfectly reasonable business phone system solution for single location businesses that have just a few employees and the way they "do business" is very old-school (and they do not expect that to ever change).

 

 

Here's Your 5-Point 2013 Office Communications Technology Checklist (to Not Get Fired)

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Sure, the economy seems to be picking up a bit but 2013 would still be a rotten year to get fired by your boss (or your customers).  

To help you keep your job (or make more money), following is a short, 5-point checklist of what you need to be looking at in the area of "office communications technology".

Please run through this checklist as soon as you can because "unified communications" is getting cheaper and sticking with outdated technology is getting more expensive.

1. Connect Your Offices Better - The same connections that connect your computers together in your office are now inexpensively available to connect your offices together in a secure environment.

Ethernet & MPLS are two technologies that allow any business owner to use to connect the local area network (LAN) of each separate office over a single wide area network (WAN) to eliminate the perceived communications barrier of distance.

 

2. Bond Better Bandwidth - If the contracts for the bandwidth you're using to connect your offices together or to connect to the internet are more than twelve months old then you're either paying too much or you're missing out on needed diversity.

Most MPLS WANs that have been around for a while are creeping along at T-1 speeds of 1.54 megs at very high prices. If you're got a T-1 based MPLS, make sure you're getting the best price and check out how cheaply you can "bond" more and better bandwidth to or around your current WAN connections.

What constitutes "better"? Cheaper and faster. While an MPLS network is still viewed by many as the most secure way to communicate critical data between locations, not all of your business traffic needs to traverse over a gold-plated WAN. Take all your business "junk" data traffic off your MPLS and route it over low-cost data connections like cable, DSL or satellite using either equipment or software that shapes and prioritizes your business data traffic.

 

3. Unify Your Phone System in the Cloud - Seriously, why is your phone system still in your broom closet, server room or basement? While a reasonable argument can still be made that owning a phone system might be cheaper in the long run than "renting" one via many current "hosted VoIP" or "unified communications" business phone system solutions, even businesses that own their own phone systems are moving them to "the cloud".

If you're a business owner with multiple locations you already know how important it is to have your multiple locations all function as one. Just as you can connect your multiple local area network computers over a single wide area network you can now connect the desk and mobile phones of all your offices and remote employees over a single phone system.

If you own more than one phone system or callers to your main phone number can't be routed to any employee or any office then 2013 should be the year that you change that. The technology to accomplish this has been real world tested for over a decade and it's finally affordable.

 

4. Become Indestructible - How many single points of failure do you have engineered into your multi-location business critical voice and date systems? What happens if your basement floods? What happens if your main telecom carrier goes down? What happens if your employees can not physically be present in one or more of your offices for a week?

If you've already implemented the first three points on this list then you're already half-prepared to become an indestructible, fully-redundant, self-healing business. To become a fully indestructible business simply go through your wide area network diagram and start "breaking connections" and blowing up servers.

If one communication path is blocked, where's the re-route? If one application or data set is destroyed, where is the backup and how quickly is it moved from secondary to primary? You'll soon see that having multiple network service connections from multiple vendors that can also provide "managed services" like remote data backup and remote hosted applications can easily make you completely indestructible without your having to buy more in-house equipment or software.

 

5. Eliminate all Desk Chairs - By completing the first four items on this list you'll have prepared all your non-human business assets for increased profitability. To properly prepare your employees to take advantage of your office communication technology upgrades, eliminate all desk chairs.

Think about it. Can your employees shake hands with new prospects or current customers while sitting at their desk? Why are they sitting at their desks anyway? Probably because there's a chair there.

If your best employees insist that there are profit increasing activities that they can only engage in while parked at their desk, make a list of all those activities so you can find, migrate or create an office software application that can allow that activity to be completed using a smartphone or tablet computer while your best employees are visiting with customers or prospects or traveling between costumers and prospects.

 

Who Can Help You With These Checklist Items? Call Us!

Office communications technology is blurring the lines between phones, computers and "the cloud". It's also getting cheaper and more complicated every day.

To help you decide whether the business communication technology advances of 2012 mandate that you spend or move money around differently in 2013 talk to a business communication technology expert. Click here to find one near you.

 

Keywords: office communication technology, application, redundant, self-healing, business phone system, cloud, hosted voip, unified communications, MPLS, wan, cable, dsl, satellite, t-1, bandwidth, ethernet, lan, local area network, wide area network, checklist. Image: iStock

The Two Biggest Business Communication Technology Stories from 2012

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Trying to get your best people out of their desks and in front of your customers and prospects?

If so, 2012's top two business communication technology stories helped make that easier.

1. Microsoft Rolls Out Their New Operating System - This is a big deal for business owners that are still running their shops on an older Microsoft operating system like XP or older thinking that they'll upgrade after they get a chance to look at Microsoft's new OS.  

Well it's time to look and decide whether you want to keep the old OS another year or whether the time is finally right to get into "unified communications & collaboration" or simply "UCC".

Microsoft has designed Windows 8 to pull all their shared computing and communications solutions together including Windows Phone, Lync and Office 365. If your business runs on Microsoft software, 2012 is the year that Microsoft removed all your "we're-not-ready-for-unified-communications" excuses.

If you want to know the "presence" of all your employees all the time and then be able to instantly communicate with them via instant message (IM), voice, video or conference using almost any end-point (phone, tablet, PC, etc.) then Microsoft has a solution for you that works.

 

2. Microsoft, Google and Apple All Target Your Tablet - While Apple re-invented the tablet by bringing out the iPad a couple years ago, most business owners could be forgiven for not buying one for each employee. In 2012 though business owners started wondering if tablet-powered employees might be the secret to increased productivity. Thoughts like these tend to proliferate when you see the three biggest tech companies all battling it out in the 2012 "tablet wars".

While business owners and their IT managers used to be devising ways to keep employees blocked out of time-wasting tablet apps, now they're thinking how do we migrate our own critical business applications onto these tablet devices and then get our employees in front of more customers?

 

How Do You Capitalize on Business Communication Technology Advances? Call Us!

Unified communications is blurring the lines between phones, computers and "the cloud". To help you decide whether the business communication technology advances of 2012 mandate that you spend or move money around differently in 2013 talk to a business communication technology expert. Click here to find one near you.

 

Keywords: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Tablet, business communication, technology, windows 8, lync, 360, presence, instantly communicate, instant message, IM, voice, video conference

Which Smartphone Operating System Should Your Business Use in 2013?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

With Microsoft's recent roll-out of both Windows 8 (the updated operating system for 80% the desktop computers in the world) and Windows Phone 8 (the updated operating system for Windows phones - used by only 2% of worldwide smartphone users), business owners and IT managers should ask themselves, "Is it a good idea to match the operating system software between my desktop computers and my smartphones?"

In a word, "Yes". But which one?

Click here to read a recent CNN article that provides a reasonably decent comparison of three different smartphone operating systems; Windows Phone 8, Android 4.2 and iPhone iOS 6.

 

Small Businesses with Android, Enterprise Businesses with Window Phone, ??? with iPhone?

In the realm of smartphone operating systems I'll be the first to admit that I don't know as much today as I will next year, but as a small business owner I do know that profit suffers when employees can't be as productive on their smartphones or tablets as they can be on their desktop computers.

Price Alert: No More Free Smartphone Upgrades From the Big 3; Is it Time for Wi-Fi First of Wi-Fi Only Cell Phones?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

Verizon Wireless recently reported that they were following the lead of both AT&T and Sprint by charging their customers an extra fee to upgrade their mobile phones where in the past many mobile customers got a "free phone upgrade" every two years or so.

Following is the widely distributed Verizon statement: 

“On April 22, Verizon Wireless is implementing a $30 upgrade fee for existing customers purchasing new mobile equipment at a discounted price with a two-year contract.  This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect which includes Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide advice and guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.  While the upgrade fee is not unique to Verizon Wireless, most devices can be traded in with our green friendly trade-in program at www.verizonwireless.com/tradein as a way to save money or potentially offset the fee completely.”

It's reported that Sprint and AT&T both are charging a similar $36 fee.

 

Time for "Wi-Fi First" or "Wi-Fi Only" Employee Cell Phones?

Now I'm no revolutionary. I understand that the CEO, the Chairman of the Board and your top salespeople (and your spouse) can have any damned expensive phone and usage plan they want and, as the company owner, you're (mostly) happy to pay for it.  

But what about all those other W-2 folks hanging around your office who claim they need "smartphone mobility" to remain a critical business asset of yours?  Do they all need an exensive monthly cellular data plan and the newest phones when they spend 90% of their waking hours inside a Wi-Fi network?

Probably not. (Time to get out the savings calculator and sharpen your pencils!)

 

What's a "Wi-Fi First" or "Wi-Fi Only" Cell Phone and Where Can You Get Them?

Well just as the name would imply, "Wi-Fi first" cell phones or smart phones use "free" Wi-Fi connectivity first over "expensive" 3G/4G cellular connectivity when trying to make a phone call or data app connection. "Wi-Fi only" phones only work for cell calls or data connections when connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Where do you get them? Let's just say that phone equipment makers are not exactly falling all over themselves to bring them to market. T-Mobile actually had a solution like this called HotSpot@Home that made smartphone calls over Wi-Fi but they discontinued the service back in 2010.

Gadget Review: "Call Mynah" Easily Records Cell Phone Calls via Bluetooth, No Expensive Phone Apps Needed!

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

If recording business phone calls is not a normal part of your day then the whole thought of recording your cell phone calls probably creeps you out. If that's the case for you just stop reading now.

If, on the other hand, recording your phone calls is actually an important part of your job description (maybe you're a journalist, lawyer, stock broker, court reporter, secret agent, etc.) then you'll be overjoyed to learn about "Call Mynah".

 

Skip the Wires, Extra Numbers or the High Cost Phone Apps

The Call Mynah device overcomes the problems inherent to other cell and smartphone call recording techniques that require a complicated advanced setup, extra cell phone numbers, expensive per minute third party phone apps or connecting extra wires that degrade audio quality. For more information about these other methods check out these links: RecordiaPro, online phone call recording app store or RadioShack.

Because Call Mynah is a Bluetooth cell phone call recorder, users maintain maximum control over the call recordings they make. Once the user records a cell phone call, the recording of the phone call only resides on the Call Mynah device until the user transfers the recording to another device using a USB connection.

Until the user chooses, the recorded phone call is never stored on the Internet or on a third-party vendor's phone call recording server where call recording "distribution accidents" can happen.

Check out the video below to see Call Mynah in action:

 

Other Office Options to Consider and How to Choose...

The Call Mynah device is produced by Intelligent Recording Limited (Philip Hill, CEO) and distributed out of the U.K. and California.  Check out their website for a long list of every conceivable type of office phone recording solution for single phones and home offices all the way up to VoIP phone servers and IP call centers.

What's right for your business call recording solutions? Give us a call.

Call recording is one of the most popular options that businesses are after when switching from their old phone system to a modern VoIP business phone system. But if all you're really after is call recording, dumping your old phone system for a new VoIP phone system might be your most expensive option.

Let us spend a bit of quality time sharing with you what all your call recording options look like and which ones our other customers have tried to failure or success! 

Is Your Customer Service "Out to Lunch"? Unified Communications' "Presence" Feature Solves This Problem

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

 As the economy finally starts to pick back up for many American businesses, owners and managers are happy to see that their incoming phone lines are starting to ring again but sad to know that they still have not staffed their business back up to answer and properly address the increase in prospective customer phone calls.

How can a business owner get greater efficiency out the the reduced number of employees they have reporting to work each day?

Take a look at the "presence" feature offered by many newer "unified communications" (AKA "UC") business phone systems and services.

Below is a video that simply shows how the unified communications "presence" feature works on the NEC Univerge SV8100 phone system.

While the NEC phone system solution featured is produced by a "premise based" phone system (one where you make a major capital purchase and the phone system sits in your phone closet or a "private cloud") there are many similar enterprise grade "hosted VoIP" phone service solutions offered by companies like Smoothstone, Alteva, Telesphere, MegaPath, Broadview, Vocal IP and others.  

Subscribing to an enterprise grade unified communications solution from a hosted VoIP or "cloud" business phone service provider means a business owner can access "presence"-type features without having to commit their entire capital improvements budget for the year.

 

What's "Presence"?

When I first started selling business office phone systems 30 years ago, the phone on your desk helped you make and receive phone calls and not much more.

If We Had a Video Explaining Our Services it Would Look Like This One... (Honest Solutions & No Smoozing)

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

As many small and medium-sized business owners are aware, highly polished corporate marketing with a perfectly worded message is pretty hard to come by - and pretty expensive when it's done just right.

That's why we don't have a lot of it on our own website just yet promoting the benefits of why you should work with an independent telecom agent to help you choose your voice and data solutions.

I recently came across a short web video, though, from a cloud services provider that is just about perfect - FOR MY BUSINESS!

So I'm thinking, instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars for my own corporate "here's-what-we-do-for-you" video, I figure I'll just

Michael Burns Announces the Upgrade of Start-video, Desktop Video Conferencing Service

By Michael Burns, President
A+ Conferencing                                   

As President of A+ Conferencing, I'm proud to announce the upgrade of our desktop video conferencing service, Start-Video, software release version four. 

Start-Video features HD quality video, VOIP audio and all of the web conferencing tools, all rolled up into one recordable service in the cloud.  Anyone from anywhere in the world can access this service via the Internet.  All you need is a webcam and a good Internet connection.

Start-video is a multi-party video conferencing service, which will allow up to sixteen simultaneous, full motion videos operating at any time.  Now you can see the facial expressions of your conferees on your conference calls.

The full range of web conferencing services include PowerPoint presentations, desktop sharing, annotation tools and web touring. The service also comes in