The website check to do before Q4
Your website does its hardest work in the last quarter of the year, and almost nobody looks at it first. Here is the hour-long check, in the order worth doing it.
Blog
Plain-English notes on security, backups and websites
Written in plain language, without scare tactics, with the same advice we’d give a friend. Every statistic here has a named source and a year. If we can’t attribute it, we don’t print it.
The account nobody closed
Onboarding always gets done, because nothing works until it does. Offboarding gets skipped, because nothing breaks when it doesn't. Here is the one-page fix.
We audited 24 East Bay business websites. 22 had no cookie consent.
Original research: we ran 24 local small-business websites through a 12-point technical audit. The results were worse than we expected, and remarkably consistent.
Hosting shouldn't be your job
You didn't start a business to renew SSL certificates. Here's what managed hosting should actually cover, and what to ask before you sign.
Three signs your website is quietly costing you business
Nobody emails to tell you your website lost them. They just leave. Here are the three failures that do the most damage.
Tax season is business email compromise season
April is when money moves, deadlines loom, and nobody wants to be the person who slowed things down. Attackers know the calendar too.
It's World Backup Day. Test your backup.
Everyone will tell you to back up your data today. Almost nobody will tell you to restore it, and restoring is the part that fails.
If your computer died today, what would you lose?
A real question. Most small businesses can't answer it, and that gap is the actual risk.
Passwords, MFA, and the myth of the disciplined employee
Password policies fail because they're designed for a person who doesn't exist. Here's what to do instead.
Going paperless without creating a bigger mess
Most paperless projects fail the same way: the paper disappears and is replaced by 40,000 unsearchable files nobody can find. Here's how to avoid that.
The holiday scams that target businesses, not shoppers
Everyone warns consumers about holiday scams. The ones aimed at small businesses are quieter, better targeted, and land in your inbox during your busiest week.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month: the four things that actually matter
Security advice for small businesses usually arrives as a list of twenty things. CISA's national campaign says there are four. Here they are, in plain English.