Wellington Business Expo - Prize Draw Competition

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all over IT Limited are delighted to be part of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce Wellington Business Expo. The event is being run from 12th to 22nd October 2020 and if you leave your business card at our virtual stand, you will be in to one of the 10 following prizes.

The prize draw will be made on Monday 26th October with prize winners notified the same day. The list of prizewinners will also be published on our website.

Don’t forget to register with our stand.


Well done Team New Zealand

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What an interesting few months it was been, but haven’t we done remarkably well? Yes, there have been some sad stories and bad news in the mix, but overall we think New Zealand has done very well to minimise the effects of the global pandemic and resulting fallout. Thank goodness for being a small isolated nation at the bottom of the world!

 
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We are operating completely as normal again while still remaining vigilant about health and hygiene. Our technicians will come to you whenever it suits you and we have a large range of products that we can assist with for your onsite needs. Some hardware is still in short supply, however, we are doing our very best to come up with workable solutions for all our clients needs.

Call us for assistance on 0800 683 748.

April / May 2020

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New Zealanders have really got behind the effort to minimise the effects of the current pandemic. Congratulations one and all for your efforts in keeping us all safe.

As we move towards level 3 and beyond, the focus will still be on caution, and for our part, all over IT Limited will continue to act responsibly with staff and client health. We have continued to operate throughout this unprecedented event in modern times, and will maintain a safety-first attitude going forward.

Level 3 will allows us to help more clients face-to-face if required but we will continue to resolve your IT issues by remote services where possible. Please do not hesitate to call us on 0800 683 748 if you need advice or assistance.

Let’s get a truly local-based economy rocking in NZ. Stay safe everyone.

Bill & Annie Jackson

COVID-19 Information

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As we all try to deal with this unprecedented situation, we wish everyone good health and safe social interaction. It is very important that we all follow the government recommendations and requirements so that whatever is going to be the “new normal”, can occur as soon as possible.

Our priority is to keep our staff and their families safe, but to that extent all over IT Limited is currently still operating for onsite visits. We are deemed to be an essential service during the Level 4 alert so we are able to help. Where possible, we will deal with your IT issues via remote access to your computer. During these very stressful times, existing customer issues will be made the priority however that does not mean that new customers will not be helped. Where necessary, onsite visits can be made and we will be following all necessary protocols to ensure all parties remain safe.

Provided you have a working internet connection, we may be able to install our software application to allow remote assistance. We will be answering all phone calls, so please, if you need help, call us on 0800 683 748 and we will do our best.

Stay safe everyone ~ Bill & Annie Jackson

Beware of the latest scams

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Scammers are becoming very adept at tricking people. 

They entice you to click on links or buttons in genuine looking emails.  Clicking on these links will almost certainly cause problems. Even the best security software cannot protect you from this type of thing because these are just con tricks trying to get YOU to do something that under normal circumstances you would not do.

This first example shows the content of a recent email that has been received by several of our customers.  This is the actual email content although the recipient information has been amended for confidentiality.

This is a particularly distasteful form of extortion where the sender is demanding payment in Bitcoin (BTC) or they claim they will release private information.  The customer details are genuine and it appears that the scammers obtained the information by having the customer login to a fake site and provide a password.  They now have details that could lead them to further access to your personal information.

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We have seen several iterations of this email but the intention is basically the same - pay us money (in varying amounts of Bitcoin) or we will release personal information that we have access to on your computer.  Our investigations showed remote access software had been installed on some computers and the password was a valid one for the customer.

For further information on this and other Internet security issues, take a look at NetSafe. We recommend this site for advice on all types of online safety issues.

In terms of general Internet security, something to consider is to try and NOT use the same password for everything.  If you do get caught up on this type of scam and have a habit of using the same password, then you leave yourself open to having scammers getting access to critical information.  There are now applications that can help with creating and storing secure passwords and we would be happy to assist you with setting this up.

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The snippet above is an example of how scammers try to trick you to click on an email link.  An email arriving in your mailbox and may appear to be from Microsoft, Apple or Spark to name just a few.

These emails are made to look genuine and will often have a deadline to promote a quick response but if you look at the senders email details, this can be a quick way to check if the email is coming from a genuine source.

It is not a bad habit to look at the sender details for any email that is unsolicited or unexpected.  Clicking on a link in the message could well be leading you into a trap.

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Above is another example of how a bogus email can be made to look genuine, but if you check the sender information, you can see it has not come from who it should have. The sender's address is nothing to do with Office 365 or Microsoft.

To help relieve the stress and confusion of this type of thing, consider having more of your services provided by or administered by us.  Many of you already get your security software from us so we should be the only people you get emails from about this.  We can also provide Microsoft Office licensing, new and used computers and Internet connections. 

If you get all of these services from us then you can simply ignore most of the scam emails – because they didn’t come from all over IT!   Call 0800 683 748 for assistance.

So what would you do if disaster strikes?

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So what would you do if disaster strikes? If it all went away in a ball of flames.......If you lose your valuable data due to failure or disaster what would you do.....where is it backed up? We ask people all the time "what do you use for backups at the moment?" and here is the answer that often comes bouncing back -

"Oh I just use a USB stick.....I back up then put it in my bag each night.....that's safe right?"

Hmmm... safe, well here is our response to that.

First of all, is it safe to have all of your confidential documents on something that you could literally leave anywhere that you go, in something that you could drop on the street.....not a good idea. Articles like this highlight the risks of this type of portable media and as forgetful as I can be I'm going to lose it at some point, guaranteed.

Secondly the risk of data loss from failure is a real one...you can find ample discussion of the merits of USB drives online and when it comes to my data I would never trust one as the sole source of backup on any system I have.

Thirdly, this method of backup relies very heavily on the diligence of the person doing it......many employees and business owners alike just plain forget to to do the backup at the end of the day or week....and of course you know when the day comes (and it is coming, oh yes) that your computer fails, that will be the day that you were just too busy for the last few weeks to get around to it.....bummer!

So, what to do then? What is the best way to backup your data? The best option is to have a backup that has the following features:

  • Offsite. ( not on the same premises as the data being backed up)
  • Automated. (Take a large part of human error out of the loop)
  • Secure. (Secure at source and securely transmitted)
  • Monitored. (so if any part of the backup fails you are notified from the source)

If you make sure that you cover all of these bases you will be in a much better position to say that you have a truely secure back up solution....

Get it done people, because tomorrow is the day the worst could happen.

 

CRM Software

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After much research the first thing I'm going to say is.....there is no perfect solution, short of custom software that is...you will have to use some combination of apps or software for all of the features we discussed....especially there is no stand alone app for android that does not use some cloud based system that is worth looking at ......here is a list of the CRM's I've had a look at...

  • Salesforce 5-unknown/month
  • Base 15/month
  • Nutshell 15/month
  • Capsule 12 /month
  • Insightly 0-9 /month
  • Upvise 0-12 /month
  • Zoho 0-35 /month
  • Sage 39-unknown /month
  • Highrise/Basecamp 24-99 /month
  • Nimble 15 /month
  • Goldmine > 600/year
  • Sugar CRM 35-150 /month
  • Prophet 24-unknown /month

After looking at the options remaining and installing and testing many, I think the best of the bunch is Base.....it has most of the features you identified and will work offline as well as online.....it's syncs online when you establish a connection so it takes care of your backup needs as well....it doesn't have the price list feature you identified but I think that is a much smaller compromise than and of the other options...

The only way to test ask of this is of course to install and try it after all you will never know of it works for you if you don't give it a go...