The SMB Tech Report

Involve IT in Office Move Plans from the Start, Says Blogger Mathew Hegarty

When small and medium size companies move offices, the IT manager is too often one of the last people to know about the move. The lack of communication can create problems at the new location such as inadequate power and air conditioning for office servers. Plus, getting the phones connected and Internet access established can take weeks. To avoid turning a business relocation into a disaster, Mathew Hegarty says business owners and managers need to involve the IT manager early in the process and include IT and communications needs in the list of issues to investigate when choosing a site. Neglecting to addressing such issues until you have signed a new rental agreement can cause huge problems. more

Free Tip: Generating Safer and Better Passwords

You know that you should not use personal information to create passwords and that you should change passwords on a regular basis. Yeah! So easy to know, so hard to do with everything else you have to do. Well, how about this? Pick some kind of memory aid such as

• your birthday and birthdays of family and friends
• tax day
• major holidays

You get the idea. You only need a few of these, by the way. Monthly would be good, weekly is not necessary for most SMB owners.

Next, use a random password generator such as this one.

I used it and it created this code within seconds: s6Uqu9Ra.

Almost there. Now, change a letter and a number to make the password easier to remember. Your objective is to be able to remember the password without writing it down or keying it into your smart phone or PC.

So, if you picked your birthday at the memory trigger for making the change and your name is John and you were born on January 1, then your new password is j1Uqu9Ra. You can use this same password for all situations where you need a password online or you can use it as the basis to create several new ones (use other people's names and birthdays).

Repeat every time your memory trigger prompts you to do so.