Beauty Store Business

MAR 2013

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How Safe is Your Bank Account? How secure are the funds in your commercial bank account? Find out by taking this quiz. Score 10 points for every Òyes.Ó You are in good shape if your total score is between 80 and 100; vulnerable if between 60 and 70; and courting disaster if below 60. Are you . . . २ Using the latest operating system with an active firewall? २ Using a capable antivirus and malware program? २ Utilizing automatic updates for the operating system, antivirus and malware programs? २ Utilizing security programs offered to business accounts by your bank? २ Checking bank account transactions daily? २ Isolating the financial-transaction computer from other activities? २ Training your employees on handling email attachments? २ Restricting staff access to questionable websites offering gambling and pornography? २ Using strong passwords? २ Maintaining a quick-response plan with names and numbers of people to contact in the event of a fraudulent wire transfer? MARCH 2013 07 -1 COSMOPACK 0 08 - 1 COSMOPROF 1 BOLOGNA (ITALY) F A I R D I S T R I C T www.cosmoprof.com A NEW WORLD FOR BEAUTY BO LO G NA LAS V EG AS H ON G K ON G Organiser - SoGeCos s.p.a. - Milan - Italy ph. +39.02.796.420 - fax +39.02.795.036 sogecos@cosmoprof.it - company of 58 March 2013 | beautystorebusiness.com • Go offline. When finished with a computer for the day, shut it down completely rather than put it in sleep mode. "While a computer is in sleep mode, the encryption keys used for anything from Web sessions to hard disk encryption are likely to be resident in memory," cautions Sims. "An attacker can use special tools to dump the memory from a system that is not completely shut down and potentially steal this information to gain unauthorized access." CREATE STRONG PASSWORDS Security experts have long championed the virtues of strong passwords. A mix of letters and numbers is much safer than using an easily guessed word such as "qwerty" or even "password." Too often, though, employees don't get the message. They often complain about the difficulty of remembering complicated strings of characters. Help is at hand. It's not really necessary to commit passwords to memory. "There is a lot of good software to help you manage your passwords," says Michael Spadaro, president of Help with a Smile (helpwithasmile.com), a New York City-based technology support firm serving small businesses. "One of my favorites is LastPass (lastpass.com). But you could also use something as simple as keeping your passwords in a notebook locked in your desk." Be careful how you distribute passwords to employees, adds Sparado. Giving the same password to everyone carries a downside: Every time an employee leaves the company you have to change the password used by everyone who remains. "Many banks will allow multiple logins, so assign different passwords to different users," he suggests. "Then you can disable a departing person's password without disabling everyone's." VET YOUR BANK Businesses are not always to blame when cyberfraud hits. Sometimes banks drop the ball. There is some motivation for financial institutions to maintain a minimal level of security: Good internal practices are encouraged by government agencies charged with overseeing bank activities. "The bright side of enforcement is that financial institutions are having to architect and deploy solutions that hopefully increase the security of customer accounts," points out Sims.

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