Phishing emails, ransomware, passwords, and the habits that keep a small business out of trouble — real questions our clients ask, in plain language.
Late on Friday afternoon, an email arrives from “the owner” — out at a meeting, can’t talk, needs a vendor payment sent today before the account gets suspended. The tone is right. The signature is right. The request is urgent but not unreasonable; e-transfers happen often enough. The bookkeeper has the bank portal open before … Read more
A renewal notice comes with a new line item: cyber liability coverage. A few hundred dollars a year, easy to discount — the same instinct you’d use on an extended warranty upsell at checkout. A fee that mostly pays for someone else’s peace of mind, not yours. Good instinct. But wrong. Before writing off the … Read more
Picture a Tuesday morning in a well-run office. The inbox is full, the phone is ringing, and somewhere in that pile of email is a message that looks like it’s from a supplier the business uses — same logo, familiar name, invoice attached. The person who opens it isn’t careless. She’s busy. She processes forty … Read more
Here’s a question we ask at every new client engagement: how does your team handle passwords? The most common answer is some version of “everyone does their own thing,” or “they have to be x characters long.” Which usually means: the same password reused across multiple accounts, maybe with a capital letter and a number … Read more
Ransomware used to be something that happened to hospitals and big corporations. Companies with data worth millions. Targets big enough to make the news. That’s not the world we’re in anymore. In 2026, ransomware still disproportionately hits the smallest businesses — Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found ransomware was a factor in 88% of … Read more
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is the single most effective step a small business can take to prevent account takeovers when a password has been stolen. This guide covers the four types of second factor ranked by security strength — SMS codes (weakest), authenticator apps (Microsoft, Google, or Apple’s built-in option), passkeys (strongest for most users), and hardware keys — which accounts to protect first, and how to enforce 2FA across a Microsoft 365 organization.
Modern phishing emails arrive as convincing invoices from vendors you use, fake Microsoft 365 login pages, and urgent messages appearing to come from your own boss. This post covers the five types of phishing hitting Calgary businesses in 2026, five habits that catch most attempts, and an exact five-step response protocol for when someone on your team clicks something they should not have.
Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025, meaning Microsoft stopped releasing security patches. Attackers are already targeting businesses running Windows 10 knowing unpatched systems cannot defend against the latest phishing and malware techniques. Calgary small businesses still running Windows 10 face compounding risk from an ageing operating system and increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns.