Arch Technologies

A short power cut can shut down your router, firewall, switches and local server.

An uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, provides temporary battery power to the equipment connected to it. It can keep your internet equipment and internet-based phones working during a short outage, or give a server time to shut down safely.

UPS batteries wear out. Ask your IT provider which equipment is connected to a UPS and when each battery was last tested or replaced.

If you don’t have an IT provider, or you want a second pair of eyes on your power protection, reach out. We’ll help you identify what needs a UPS, choose the right equipment and make sure the UPS is tested.

Open your work calendar and check what someone outside your company can see.

Meeting titles can reveal client names, projects, interviews and travel. Some calendar settings also expose the guest list and meeting description.

External users usually only need to see whether you are free or busy. Keep detailed titles and descriptions limited to people who need them.

Check shared calendars too. A team calendar created years ago may still be visible to former employees, contractors or anyone with the old link.

Want a second pair of eyes on your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace sharing settings? Reach out and we’ll review them with you.

RingCentral said a social engineering campaign led to the breach of its systems. The company has not explained exactly how the attackers gained access.

Have I Been Pwned, a service that tracks exposed data, reviewed the leaked files and found records for about 1.6 million accounts. Those records included names, email addresses, phone numbers and physical addresses.

Someone pretending to be RingCentral support may already know the victim’s name, phone number, address and email. Don’t approve a password reset, a change to multi-factor authentication or a remote access request from an unexpected call. End the call and contact the provider using the number on its official website.

Unsure whether a support call or email is legitimate? Send us the details before responding and we’ll help you verify it.

RingCentral data breach exposed info of 1.6 million accounts The ShinyHunters extortion group stole personal information from 1.6 million RingCentral accounts after hacking the company in July, according to the data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.

Your bin might be the easiest place to steal your customer data from.

Customer records, invoices, bank statements, employee files. If they go in the regular rubbish, anyone who goes through it can pull them straight back out, and no hacking required.

Set one rule: if a document has personal, financial, or customer information on it, it gets shredded, not binned. The ones people forget are the small things, like sticky notes with passwords on them, printed emails and meeting notes that mention clients or numbers, and delivery labels with names and addresses. Old archived files are worth extra care too, since a box of old paperwork is a rich target.

Use a cross-cut shredder rather than a strip-cut one, because strips can be pieced back together. For a big clear-out, a shredding service will handle it in bulk and give you a certificate.

And keep a clean-desk habit, so sensitive paper isn't left out overnight for anyone to read.

Most owners only look at their IT after something breaks, and by then it costs more to fix.

Almost none of it happens without warning. Backups can fail for weeks before anyone notices, and accounts belonging to people who left are often still switched on.

Verizon's 2026 report found that 31% of breaches started with software that hadn't been patched, so the fix already existed.

Discover the 30-minute monthly check here →

The 30-Minute IT Check Every Small Business Should Do Once a Month | Arch Technologies Summary: Most IT problems don’t appear out of nowhere. Backups quietly stop running, updates sit unfinished for weeks, and old staff accounts stay switched on for months. A short check once a month catches these while they’re still cheap to fix. This post covers the six things to look at. Most o...

When you log into a new tool with your Google account instead of making a fresh password, you're tying that tool to your Google login. Do it enough times and one account controls all of them.

It's quick, so most people click it without thinking. The trouble starts if someone gets into that Google account. They get your email, and every app you logged into with it, in one go.

Google itself is a risk here too. If it ever suspends or locks your account, you can lose all those apps at once, and getting a Google account back is famously hard.

So for anything your business relies on, give it its own login and password, with two factor turned on.

And put strong security on the Google account itself, since so much now runs through it.

One of the most expensive scams for small businesses looks completely routine: an email from a supplier saying their bank details have changed, and to send future payments to a new account.

You update the details, pay the next invoice, and the money goes straight to a criminal. The email might be a convincing fake, or it might genuinely come from your supplier's address because their email account was hacked.

Never change a supplier's bank details based on an email or a phone call alone. Before you change anything, call the supplier on a number you already have, not one from the email, and confirm the request with them directly.

Make it a standing policy for whoever handles your payments: any change to bank details gets verified by phone first, every time, including when it's urgent.

In June 2026, security researchers found a ransomware group called DragonForce hiding its activity inside normal Microsoft Teams traffic, and it stayed undetected for one to two months. Once inside a company's network, their malware disguised its connection to the attackers as ordinary Teams traffic, routing it through Microsoft's own Teams servers.

To anyone watching the network, it looked like the company was just using Teams normally. Attackers are good at blending in, so traffic that looks normal isn't proof you're safe. Basic antivirus, which looks for known bad files, misses this kind of thing entirely.

What catches it is security software that watches for unusual behavior rather than known viruses, often called EDR, or a managed service that monitors your systems around the clock. Ask your IT provider what you have, and whether it would catch an attacker who's already inside and staying quiet.

https://thehackernews.com/2026/06/dragonforce-hackers-abuse-microsoft.html

DragonForce Hackers Abuse Microsoft Teams Relays to Hide Backdoor.Turn C2 Traffic DragonForce-linked hackers used Backdoor.Turn to route C2 traffic through Microsoft Teams relay infrastructure during a U.S. firm attack.

When did anyone last look closely at your card terminals?

Skimmers get attached to them, and terminals get swapped for tampered ones. Both are quick to do while staff are busy, and neither is obvious unless someone's checking. Make it a habit to look at each terminal at the start of the day, and if one ever looks different, loose, or has an extra attachment, stop using it and call your provider.

The POS system itself needs the same attention. Keep the software and terminals updated, since old unsupported versions are a common way card data gets stolen.

Change any default passwords on both. Don't use the POS computer for browsing or email, and keep it on its own network, away from your office machines and guest wifi.

Then ask your payment provider one question: do we have point-to-point encryption? That protects card numbers from the moment they're entered, so there's nothing useful to steal in between.

You might have thought about what you'd do in a cyberattack, but have you ever practiced it?

That's what a tabletop exercise is for. You sit your key people down for an hour, pick a realistic scenario, and talk through exactly what everyone would do. You don't need computers, just the conversation.

Try it like this:
1. Pick a scenario. For example: "It's Monday morning, our files are encrypted, and there's a ransom note on every screen."

2. Walk through the first hour. Who do we call first? Who can authorize decisions? Where's the list of contacts, and can we reach it if email and systems are down?

3. Keep going. How do we keep serving customers? What do we tell them, and when? Do we know if we have backups we can restore from?

4. Write down every question nobody could answer. Those are your gaps.

5. Fix the gaps, and run it again in six months with a different scenario.