March 2019

630.850.9039 Continued pg.2 We love this stuff! We are committed to helping businesses use technology to run their organization successfully and profitably. Your Image Here What’s New This monthly publication provided courtesy of Catherine Wendt, President of Syscon Inc. March 2019 Daylight Savings Time is upon us, where we ‘Spring ahead’ one hour. This year it’s on Sunday, March 10th (don’t be late!). This month we’re looking forward to our mid-year State of the Company. This is where each department shares how they’re doing on this year’s goals so far, and what’s ahead. It’s amazing how much is going on! We’ve wrapped up our workstation and laptop upgrades/ replacements. All our machines are now on Windows 10. We’ll soon share the good, bad, and the ugly! - Catherine Wendt In the wake of unprecedented rates of digital crime, with the cost and frequency of data breaches constantly skyrocketing year after year, companies all over the world have been forced to scramble for solutions. There’s an arms race running behind the scenes of every piece of technology we use in business today, as cyber security companies shore up their clients’ defenses against increasingly sophisticated digital threats. Billions of dollars are now poured into batting away would-be intruders from the most precious assets on global networks: most of the money directed toward the software that keeps everything afloat, just out of reach of the bad guys. But even as each day brings a new technological apex for security solutions, data breaches continue. Despite the fact that the tools hackers use to make money are more or less the same as they were three years ago, nobody seems to question why companies are still being hacked at record levels. It’s easy to imagine a crack team of infamous hackers hammering away at a keyboard into the late hours of the night, feverishly computing the one piece of code that will break them into a system. This may be the process behind the high -profile breaches you read about in the news each week, but in reality, most cybercrime takes much less effort. The average hack succeeds not because of overt vulnerabilities in the structure of business networks, but because of a mistake made by you or your employees. According to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, more than two-thirds of breaches arise from what they call “inadvertent insiders,” folks who accidentally left the network vulnerable from one action or another without even realizing it. The #1 Mistake Your Employees Are Making Today That Lets Cybercriminals Into Your Network -- 1 of 4 - All Things Tech March 2019 (continued from page 1) Most of the human error that becomes the root cause of catastrophe can be traced back to phishing. A criminal spends some time researching your organization, maybe learning a bit about an employee or two, and decides to masquerade as someone worthy of trust either within your team or from a company you contract with, or just a stock person offering something pretty much everybody wants. They mock up a somewhat convincing e-mail and send it off to 10 people within your business. Somebody clicks the included link without thinking, and there you go – you’ve got ransomware. If you haven’t backed up your data, you’re looking at a hefty fee to get everything back, if they even give it back at all. In other cases, your team may actively duck around your previously implemented security measures or avoid the procedures you’ve put in place to keep the business safe. That can mean visiting unsavory websites, ignoring a vital security patch, or another minor transgression. But when every mistake spells a potentially massive vulnerability, you can’t afford people who aren’t conducting business to the highest standards in cyber security. Regardless of how it happens, most hacks occur because employees just don’t know better. Even in 2019, when cybercrime runs rampant and virtually everyone is constantly at risk on the Internet, most of us just aren’t well-versed in ways to protect ourselves, much less the companies we work for. The good news is that this problem is pretty easy to address through education. To keep everyone abreast of the latest threats to their livelihood, it takes a thorough set of rules, guidelines and general savvy to steer them through the troubled waters of modern cyberspace. Of course, this will take more than a 30-minute crash course in the break room one afternoon. It’ll take a concerted effort and dedicated resources. Luckily, we can help. With a trusted partner dedicated not only to keeping your organization protected from the latest digital threats, but to keeping your employees alert and ready to spot anything phishy, you drastically decrease the chances of your business becoming another statistic in the war on cybercrime. Let us help you secure the future of your business! Cathy and Larry Sightings Catherine and Chris attended a two -day seminar with Chris Voss and his son Brandon. It was an amazing deep dive into communication. Larry had a chance to visit a couple of clients last month, including our first Master Builder client who just renovated new office and warehouse space. ‘I’ve learned that if someone says something unkind about me, I must live so that no one will believe it.’ - Dan Clark 630.850.9039 Dr. Cloud starts this book with a neglected truth. To get more out of life, each of us needs to improve ourselves, our self-discipline, our commitments; but there’s more to the formula. Ask anyone who’s really ‘made it’ or been interviewed about their success, and there’s always someone who helped make it possible. Many people have all the same classes and self-help books, and don’t ‘make it’; what’s the key? In the next chapters, Dr. Cloud talks about the people in our lives and how we’re wired to ‘connect’ with others. They have a great deal of impact on our lives. He walks through specific and actionable steps we can take to choose how we respond to Others in our life, those that can help us grow and accomplish our dreams, and those that drain our energies. We can’t control other people. We can control our responses, and where we choose to put our time and talents. Thought provoking; I have lots of notes! Strongly recommended - CMW The Power of the Other by Dr. Henry Cloud “Somebody clicks the included link without thinking, and there you go — you’ve got ransomware.” -- 2 of 4 - Shiny New Gadget Of The Month: The cold may be winding down, but you’re still likely fatigued by the high heating bills you were forced to shell out extra money for over the last three months. Luckily, heating technology is improving all the time, reducing electricity costs while keeping your toes from freezing off. However, it’s important that you don’t get roped in by another “as seen on TV” product that overpromises and under delivers. Take, for example, the HeatBuddy: a portable, plug-and-play space heater that ostensibly offers revolutionary heating capabilities in a tiny, lowelectricity package. However, it’s another case of “too good to be true” — even a cursory glance at customer reviews reveals this to be a run-of-the -mill space heater, if only a little smaller. Unless you need a very small heater for some specific task, it’s best to skip the $29.99 and keep on researching other options to lower your power bill. HP Battery Recall—Possible Fire Hazard There are some HP Notebook and Mobile Workstation computers that may have issues with their batteries. This was announced in January 2018, and is now expanded as of January 2019. HP says that the affected batteries could overheat, ‘posing a fire or burn hazard’ to customers. They’re very clear that NOT ALL batteries in all HP ProBooks, Zbooks, Thin Clients, or Pavilions are affected by this recall, so it’s important to use their validation utility tool. They have a website where you can enter some info about your HP and see if the battery is under recall. It’s their HP Battery Validation Utility. Here’s the link address – https:// batteryprogram687.ext.hp.com/. On a side note, one of our laptops was affected by this recall. Ordering the battery was extremely easy. It arrived in a great deal of packaging, with a special container for the battery, and in a box that was absolutely huge! We called HP to let them know it arrived and they sent a tech out to replace the battery and take the ‘bad’ one back with them. It only took a few minutes and was very easy to arrange. Again, not all HP laptop batteries are part of this recall. Check out the HP Validation tool. Be safe! Intel Processor Shortage Some tough news from Intel, the manufacturer of computer processors. There is a shortage of Intel processors right now, and it’s creating a back log to get new laptops and workstations. The processor is the part of the computer that does all the computations, the heart of the computer. You may have heard techs talk about i3, i5, and i7 processors – that’s what Intel makes. The backlog is pretty frustrating, so I asked the techs about alternatives. They were very forceful in their response and had specific ‘thoughts’ for me, right away.  They do NOT recommend alternative processors; they strongly recommend that we be patient while Intel gets caught up.  Alternative processors have known issues with Microsoft SQL, a product that 90% of our clients use in some form.  They said that after Windows updates, bugs can show up, and these bugs are directly related to the alternative processors. The good news – Intel expects to have the shortage wrapped up by the start of Quarter 2. Some computers are available now, others are on back order, as far out as late March. So we’re asking you to be patient and flexible. Intel is still THE industry standard, and it’s worth the wait, even if that’s a little frustrating now – the alternative is several years of frustration with a computer that will have issues after Windows updates and with Microsoft SQL.— CMW All Things Tech March 2019 630.850.9039 Skip The “HeatBuddy” An Underperforming Heating Solution That Promises The World From the Techs Congratulations to Flooring Solutions in Oak Brook, IL! They were awarded ‘Vendor of the Year’ for the 9th year in a row by Arco. They were treated to a special outing at Top Golf—great job! -- 3 of 4 - All Things Tech March 2019 Construction Corner Sage 100 Contractor Updates In January, Sage released Update 1 for Sage 100 Contractor version 21. This release, 21.3.52, fixes the Workers Comp report problem; the wages on some employees were showing as double! It also has updated State Tax tables; here’s the list. Alabama Colorado Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi New Jersey Rhode Island Vermont Also fixed in this January release were some Service Invoice profitability reports (11-1 screen), and an ‘Index out of range’ error when running some Timecard reports (5-2-8 screen). Then, in February, Sage released Update 2, version 21.3.53. In this update, they’ve fixed a problem with the Sage API that connects some third party software with Sage 100 Contractor. This fix was specifically related to the Subcontracts module, for the ‘New Subcontract,’ ‘Remaining,’ and ‘Change amounts’ fields. So there you have it! If you aren’t on version 21, time to make that happen and you might as well go all the way to the February update, version 21.3.53. If you’re already on version 21 and have the latest State tax release, no need to upgrade again unless you have the issue with the Subcontracts. —CMW Growing Trend—NOT a Good Choice More and more construction companies are accommodating multiple states for Payroll and Certified Payroll reporting. To get around perceived ‘problems’ with the payroll, we’ve seen companies create two records for each employee—NOT a good choice. In S100C, you have to click past quite a few warnings to set this up. Then at the end of the year, people had serious problems creating W-2’s and had overstated costs, not to mention a lot of wasted time adjusting the ‘second’ payroll record each week. If this is you, give us a call. This is a training issue. Let’s get a real solution in place! Collecting Time From the Field Just Got Exciting! You won’t find a better, fully integrated, field time collection solution than ours because we wrote it to do what our clients told us they needed! Interested? Join us on Wednesday, March 20th at 11:30am Central Time. 630.850.9039 This month’s trivia question: After a gigabyte comes what, in increasing order? a) kilobyte b) byte c) terabyte d) megabyte Congratulations to last month’s Trivia Contest winner, Lisa Newbold with Leff Construction, CA! Lisa’s name was drawn from the fishbowl for last month’s correctly answered Question: At which university was the first computer mouse developed? a) Stanford Who Wants To Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card? To enter: Go to www.Syscon-inc.com/Trivia and type in your answer. All correct answers will be put into a fishbowl and we’ll randomly draw the winner. The Winner will be contacted shortly after the deadline and will be announced in next month’s newsletter. Deadline: March 20, 2019 -- 4 of 4 -