by Felicien | Feb 4, 2019 | Education
Excel’s ready-made formatting styles bring life and color to your spreadsheet. It lets you give printed versions a polished, professional look. Color coding makes it easier for audiences to interpret your data. Use this neat feature to take your worksheets up a notch.
What is a Preset Excel Style?
A cell style puts together font size and style, number formatting, borders and shading into pre-fab-style packaging you can apply with the click of a button. The software comes with built-in options in a variety of palettes to suit almost any taste. Once you become more familiar with them, you can customize cell styles and make them available in all your workbooks.
Keep in mind that cell styles are affiliated with the theme of your document and applied to the whole workbook. If a document’s theme is changed, the cell styles change as well. Also, you can use the lock cells feature to prevent other users from modifying the styles used in your workbooks.
How Can You Apply Cell Styles?
It’s relatively easy to apply cell styles to jazz up workbooks and impress your internal and external clients. Just follow the steps below:
Select a range of cells to format.
On the Home tab, click on Cell Styles to view a gallery of style choices.
Click on the cell style that fits your spreadsheet or personal preferences.
How Can You Create Your Own Cell Styles?
You can also create customized styles that reflect your company or personal branding by taking the following actions:
Select a single cell in your worksheet.
Apply your favorite formatting options to the cell. A built-in style may be the easiest starting point. Then, you can tweak it to add your own flair.
Click the Home tab on the ribbon and choose Cell Styles to access the Cell Styles Gallery.
Now, choose the New Cell Styles option (It’s near the bottom.)
Enter the name for your new style in the Style name box.
Excel lists the formatting options applied to the selected cell for your reference.
How Can You Modify an Existing Cell Style?
To preserve the built-in styles, it’s safest to duplicate them and then make your modifications to a saved style. However, you can make changes to pre-set and custom styles, as follows:
On the Home tab, select the Cell Styles icon.
In the Cell Styles gallery, right-click on any cell style, then choose Modify to access the Style dialog box.
Click the Format button to reach the Format Cells dialog box.
Use the various tabs to apply your changes and click OK to get back to the Style dialog box.
In the Style dialog box, under Style Includes, clear the check boxes of formatting elements you no longer want.
Click OK to exit the dialog box.
This takes you back to your worksheet and the modified cell style should now reflect the changes.
by Felicien | Feb 4, 2019 | Education
In Australia, citizens fear a terrorist attack or another national emergency just as much as the next country. For this reason, Australia has what’s called the Early Warning Network or EWN for short. Recently, a hacker was able to breach this system and took it over. The result was terrible in that it caused widespread panic. But it was also catastrophic in that it lessened the confidence Australian citizens have in their Early Warning Network system.
A Breach of Australian National Security
The breach of the EWN occurred on January 5, a Saturday evening. Hackers had somehow breached the EWN system and sent out an unauthorized alert to thousands of Australian citizens. Today, experts at the EWN have confirmed that their system was hacked. They say that an unauthorized individual somehow obtained login credentials for the system. Some of the EWM’s customers received a spam notification. The notification went throughout the entire country of Australia.
The notification read:
“EWN has been hacked. Your personal data is not safe. Trying to fix the security issues.”
Also in the message was an email address. The email address was alongside a prompt that users could unsubscribe to the EWN service. In addition to being posted on the website, the message was also sent through landlines, via text, and over email. Throughout Australia, tens of thousands of individual citizens use this service to get information from the government. All levels of the Australian government use EWN.
Right away after the attack, EWN understood that there was a breach in their security. They sent out a message and posted it on their Facebook page. It read:
“At around 930pm [A]EDT 5th January, the EWN Alerting system was illegally accessed with a nuisance message sent to a part of EWN’s database. EWN staff at the time were able to quickly identify the attack and shut off the system limiting the number of messages sent out. Unfortunately, a small proportion of our database received this alert.”
Contrary to what the original message from the hacker said, no one’s personal information was compromised. Only white page information could have been accessed, such as basic address information. Representatives from EWN also stated that some local, state, and federal government agencies were affected by the hack, but not all clients who subscribe with EWN were affected.
EWN was able to regain control of their services directly after the attack and are investigating the issue to prevent further breaches.
The Importance of Fortified IT Security in an Age of Rampant Cyber Hacking
It is common knowledge that the majority of businesses — no matter whether they are private, publicly funded, government related, or otherwise — are at risk of being hacked. Furthermore, hackers from around the globe are improving their techniques for accessing your private data and information.
This often begins with breaching the system by obtaining login credentials from individuals who already work or subscribe to a specific company, business, organization, or government agency. Naturally, this information is not given up willingly. Instead, it is obtained in a conniving and sneaky way so that the person giving up the login information doesn’t realize what they’re doing. Email phishing and phone call phishing are the top two ways that hackers obtain login information.
Chances are, your business organization is not completely safe from cyber hacks like the one that happened to EWN. Consider hiring an outsourced IT service provider who can improve your company’s security and prevent breaches from occurring.
by Felicien | Feb 1, 2019 | Education
On January 22, 2019, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, issued an emergency directive. This emergency directive was put into place to address ongoing problems and issues associated with global Domain Name System, or DNS, infrastructure tampering. As a business owner or executive in charge of a business, you may have many questions about this and how it can affect your business. Here is what you need to know about DNS infrastructure tampering.
What is DNS Infrastructure Tampering?
DNS infrastructure tampering involves techniques that allows an attacker access to your DNS. They are able to compromise a users’ credentials, allowing them to make changes to DNS records. Once the records are changed and altered, it allows an attacker the ability to access and intercept many things related to the network, including but not limited to your web address, your mail traffic and web traffic. An attacker can take that information and redirect incoming traffic to an unsafe website that may contain viruses or may collect information about your customer or business. When the attacker accesses your DNS, they also have access to encryption certificates, which allows certain information to be decrypted. And unfortunately, since the certificate is valid, your users will receive no error warnings that the certificate is outdated, so they may feel safe putting in personal information.
How Can DNS Infrastructure Tampering Affect Your Business?
When an attacker tampers with your DNS infrastructure, they basically hi-jack your website. They can control incoming traffic, control where that traffic goes, and see personal information, such as names and credit card numbers. Unfortunately, if your page is hijacked, you have to tell your customers that their personal information may have been compromised, which reflects poorly on you. Your customers and clients expect you to keep your page safe for them, and if you fail to do so, it can be detrimental to your business.
How Can You Protect Your Business From DNS Infrastructure Tampering?
It can be difficult to determine if your DNS infrastructure has been tampered with unless you take the time to carefully review your DNS certificates. It is recommended that you take the time to audit your DNS records, change your DNS account passwords to more complex passwords and add multi-factor authentication to all of your DNS accounts. This should be done within 10 days, as the threat level for DNS infrastructure tampering is so high. This should also routinely be done in the future to ensure your DNS certificates have not been tampered with.
DNS infrastructure tampering can create a security threat to your business. It can negatively affect your business website, and any websites that those within your business frequently visit and interact with. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to help decrease the risk of DNS infrastructure tampering and protect your business. Having the right IT team in place and learning about security threats is imperative to keeping your business safe from threats at all times.
by Felicien | Jan 31, 2019 | Education
Adding a new name and email address to your list of Microsoft Outlook contacts is pretty simple. There are two different ways you can do it depending on whether you want to add the contact information from an email or just want to create a brand new contact.
How to Add a Contact From an Email
1. Right-click the name of the sender in the heading of the email from whom you want to add as a contact.
2. Select “Add to Outlook Contacts” from the drop-down menu.
3. After clicking, you will see a form which is partially filled in with information such as the person’s name, email address, phone number, job title, etc. Fill in any missing information or make any other changes you want.
4. When you are satisfied, click on “Save & Close” on the menu bar at the top of the screen.
How to Add a Completely New Contact
1. Find and select the person icon on the verticle menu bar on the left side of the window.
2. Click on the “New Contact” button on the top menu bar.
3. This will bring you to a completely blank form which will allow you to add the person’s name, email address, and other personal information including a photograph.
4. When you finish adding information, select “Save & Close” on the menu bar at the top of the screen.
That is it!
Now whenever you want to email the person you just added, you will only need to type in the first few letters and Microsoft Outlook will automatically suggest the contact. Remember that you can always change or add to the personal information for each of your contacts by selecting the person from your contact list.
by Felicien | Jan 31, 2019 | Education
What are the Proposed Changes to NC’s Data Breach Laws?
North Carolina’s lawmakers will consider legislation first introduced by the Attorney General Josh Stein and Representative Jason Saine. The proposed law would redefine the term “data breach” and give companies 30 days to report breaches to consumers.
For healthcare providers, this reduces the HIPAA timeframe, which states that breach notifications must go out within 60 days. According to the proposal, this gives consumers additional time to freeze their credit and take steps to prevent identity theft.
The law extends the definition of a breach to include ransomware attacks – a big change for healthcare providers, who have been targeted by recent hackers.
How Do the Proposed Changes Give Consumers Greater Control?
Consumers gain a number of protections, including the following.
Quicker notification. Receiving notification within 30 days, instead of 60, gives consumers a heads up so that they can take action to protect their credit and identity.
Credit freeze. Consumers can place a temporary freeze on their credit reports to prevent hackers and thieves from opening unauthorized credit cards in their name.
Credit monitoring. If a credit reporting company, such as Equifax, is breached, they have to provide four years of free credit reporting to impacted consumers. Other organizations that are breached have to provide two years of free credit reporting.
Clarifies penalties. Businesses that fail to report breaches within 30 days will be in violation of the Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
What Does This Mean for Consumers?
The bill expands consumers’ right to information about the breached data, as follows.
Consent. A company seeking access to a person’s credit information would need that person to express their permission. The reason for the request has to be provided in writing.
Right to request information. North Carolinians can ask the consumer reporting agency to give them a list of credit-related and non-credit information, its source, and the entity or person that received it.
Why is the State Considering the New Rules?
North Carolina hosts the headquarters of many credit card companies and financial institutions and the legislation follows a dramatic rise in breaches throughout the state. According to Health IT Security, 1.9 million North Carolina residents were compromised in 1,047 breaches in 2018. This was a 3.4 percent increase over 2017.
This is the second attempt to tighten privacy laws in the state. If this bill passes, North Carolina would join several other states that have passed similar laws to combat digital thieves. For example, Colorado passed legislation to shorten their breach notification to 30 days in 2017, and Iowa is proposing a 45-day deadline to notify consumers.
Is This Just Happening in North Carolina?
On the national front, lobbyists and some Congress members are also calling for more protection for consumers whose data has been compromised. For instance, the Information Technology and Innovation Fund has suggested scrapping the hodge-podge of privacy regulations, such as HIPAA, in favor of more unified federal privacy laws.
