The leaves are changing, the temperatures are dropping and the smell of pumpkin spice is filling the air. As the leaves begin to settle, a season of cool weather and changing leaves just around the corner. Before we celebrate the fall season with candy and fun, we’ve got a scary tale for everyone.

Imagine, it’s a dark and stormy night, your shutters are clattering in the wind, and all of a sudden, the WiFi stops working. That’s no good, the report you’ve been working on needs to be sent in soon, maybe you can print it and swing by the boss’s house. As you rush to print it, you can’t find the drivers. Maybe you can send it on your phone? Looks like that email password you wrote down isn’t right, and now you’ve locked yourself out of your account. It’s too late, the clock strikes midnight and…you wake up in a cold sweat. Pretty scary situation to be in right? But don’t worry we’ve got you covered. Here are a few IT tricks to make sure you can avoid any spooky happenings this fall.

Passwords

Forgetting a password can be pretty scary, but it’s a surprisingly common occurrence. A study done by HYPR found 57% of people had reset their work passwords in a 3-month period. Fortunately, we’ve got some pretty handy tips from our IT support desk to help you stay on top of your passwords & make sure that they’re as secure as possible.

The key to avoiding a scare, is preparation. Making sure you have a secure password goes a long way in granting you peace of mind so here are the keys to creating a secure environment to keep you connected:

• Aim to have your password stretch to 12 characters or more
• Stringing together four or five disassociated words
• If memorizing a list of random words seems too challenging, try using the first letter of each word in a line or two of your favorite song or quote.
• Keep your password impersonal
• Try not to repeat passwords

While it can be daunting to manage multiple complex passwords, there’s a way to stay on top of it with ease. This is where having a reliable password manager comes in. If you’re finding it difficult to keep up with multiple passwords a tool like 1Password or LastPass simplifies the process. These tools make your life easy, you’ll only need to remember one login, while having unique passwords for all of your different platforms.

Of course, the final piece of the password puzzle is one of the most powerful ways to keep yourself protected. Adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) to your accounts that support it elevates your security and puts you in a very strong position to prevent unauthorized access to your accounts. The best way to do this is using one of the trusted authenticator apps and enabling that MFA. Some recommendations from us include Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator and Duo.

Printers

Relentlessly clicking print and while your printer sits in silence may be an endlessly frustrating way to spend an afternoon, but you don’t have to feel like a helpless survivor in a horror movie. We’ve got the IT support tips that’ll have you emerge triumphantly, document in hand.

1. The first thing to check if you’re having issues with printing is simple, but often overlooked. Check your connection. Depending on how your printer is connected, this could be as simple as ensuring that your printer is plugged in properly, but it may also need you to check that it’s connected to the correct network, if the printer is wireless.
2. You’re going to want to make sure that you’ve got the latest drivers from your printer manufacturers website. Reinstalling the driver can solve a ton of issues and may be the quick fix you need to move on.
3. If you feel like your prints are coming out a bit too slow, make sure to check your settings. A lot of the time printing at the best quality means a slow print, so if the option is available, try lowering the print quality. Which is often good enough for most print jobs.

Performance

Why is it that it when we’re running in a dream it always feels like we’re running in molasses, going slower and slower until we get caught by nightmares? Sometimes our computers go through the same thing, only it’s up to us to wake them up from the issue. Here are some IT support tips to make sure that your computer keeps running smoothly and quickly.

The main thing to ensure good performance are making sure that you aren’t filling up your hard drive. If the drives are full or nearly full, you’ll see a lot of slowness and notice more issues cropping up. Making sure you delete unneeded files will help keep things speedy.

Another factor in keeping things moving is the amount of installed software you have. Check your installed programs and remove any you aren’t using; this helps everything roll smoothly, especially if you also limit the number of programs that run when your computer starts up.  

Lastly, one of the easiest ways to maintain your computer is to apply updates as they’re released. Often these updates fix nagging problems, so if it’s been a while since you’ve checked for one, and your computer is running slowly, go ahead run any lingering updates you have available for your computer.

That wraps up this list of tips we’ve put together for you. Hopefully these will take some of the scare out of spooky season the next time you’re having technical troubles. Have lovely fall from your friends at Technagy.