TechBytes

Don’t waste your money…

PremierePC was losing money on credit card fees every month. The client pays their invoice, credit card company takes a percentage for themselves, and PPC gets the rest.

We were faced with having to punish the client by raising costs or adding additional processing fees, or finding an alternative.

We found, with GoCardless, how to get easy-to-use, seamless ACH Direct Debit capabilities for our clients, at a MUCH lower fee per transaction. PremierePC is saving $1,200 in fees each month.

See our co-founder, Matthew Rydzfski, discuss the benefits to partnering with GoCardless.

GoCardless has saved us about $1,200 a month in fees, and that money can be reused to better support staff, our services, and our clients.

– Matthew Rydzfski

View full article here.

Hackers and cybercriminals launch attacks every 39 seconds, which is an average of 2,244 times per day.

More than 8 Billion records were confirmed to be compromised in the last year alone.

By now I’m sure you’ve read or heard about our Dark Web Monitoring solution, combining human and sophisticated Dark Web intelligence with search capabilities to identify, analyze and proactively monitor for an organization’s compromised or stolen employee and customer data. Well, Dark Web ID just got an upgrade!

With the new release, PII Data capabilities have been enhanced. Dark Web ID now displays non-sensitive PII (Personal Identifiable Information) values when they available.

What does this mean for you?

Not only can you know the type of information the bad guys know, you can know what the bad guys know.

For example, you would previously be alerted of the email address, and type of PII (such as First Name Last Name and Address.)

Now, you will be alerted of the email address and PII values (such as John Smith 345 Main Street, Greenville, SC.)

This feature update continues to differentiate this solution from other dark web monitoring providers. Interested in learning more? Click here or call PremierePC today.

Have you ever thought about the health of your computer?

If not, it may be time to start!

There are preventative measures you can take to prolong the life of your machine.

Here are a few of the highlights:

1. Stay up to date
   PremierePC handles this. Windows updates are pushed from us to make sure security updates are always current.
2. Scans/Anti-virus
   We also handle this. Webroot anti-virus is pushed to all service plan computers, running regular scans.
3. Clean computer physically
   This can be useful. Make sure that computers don’t sit in places that accumulate dust or dirt, as an abundance of dust inside a computer and prevent it from cooling itself effectively. Computers also have built in fail-safes to slow down if they get too hot so the machine doesn’t completely break.
4. Clean up files
   Saving files to the desktop is convenient and useful, but the operating system has to load additional resources when there are more files visible on the desktop. Additionally, files piling up in the recycling bin generally won’t have an adverse effect on computer speeds, but it doesn’t hurt to clean it out every once in a while.
5. Close out programs not in use
   This is two-fold. One, it allows other programs on the computer to use more resources, and generally, run faster. Two, without getting overly technical, when a program is open for a long time, resources in memory can get “lost.” Closing or restarting a program can help flush out the system.
6. Restart the computer
   It can be beneficial to turn off, and/or restart computers from time to time. Not necessarily every day, but once a week is a good time frame. This, similar to the previous tip, helps to clean things out that are stuck or wasting space in the background of the computers resources.

Want to learn more tips? Give us a call today.

What’s the deal with Edge?

Microsoft Edge is the internet browser that was created to replace Internet Explorer. Edge runs faster and has more features than Internet Explorer, and comes preinstalled on all Windows computers. This browser is also offers faster performance speeds than every other browser.

Edge is a Chromium browser, meaning it can run hundreds of extensions that were meant for Google Chrome users in addition to the extensions in the Microsoft Store.

Let’s talk features:

*click each heading below to learn more*

Single Sign On

This browser uses the OS default account to auto sign into the browser. This may not sound like a big deal, but with necessary security measures you may find yourself signing in to different many websites each day, multiple times a day, slowing you down.

This option saves you the trouble of reentering your credentials to access your work websites and increases productivity.

For the techies: Edge supports signing in with Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft accounts.

Syncing

This is one of my personal favorites – by signing into my Microsoft account in my Edge browser, I can sync all bookmarks, history, passwords, etc. across devices.

Collections

Multi-tasking more and more lately? Use collections to organize websites into different categories for later.

Vertical Tabs

If you’re someone who keeps many tabs open at once, this may be helpful. Vertical tabs allow you to easily find and manage many open tabs at once.

Smart Copy

This feature copies over the rich web format of selected text instead of reformatting the text from your browser into an ugly mess. Right click, choose “smart copy,” then paste – it’s that simple!

Tracking Prevention

Edge offers three options for tracking: basic, balanced, and strict. Depending on which is selected, Microsoft will adjust the types of third-party trackers blocked.

Password Monitor

This feature notifies you if any of the credentials you’ve saved in autofill have been detected on the dark web, then prompts you to take action.

InPrivate Mode

Edge’s private browsing will delete history, cookies, and site data upon closing the tab.

Increased security, increased productivity, and increased performance? Sounds like a good deal to me.