Macro Systems Blog

It would seem that the people responsible for the recent heist at the Louvre, which netted over $101 million in jewelry, may have utilized a more complicated plan than strictly necessary. According to a French publication, the famous museum has a long history of cybersecurity mistakes and faux pas… many of which, given the museum’s fame, are truly shocking.

Listed below is what we know about the Louvre’s protections over the years, and what they suggest about the current state of things. Hopefully you'll learn a thing or two by doing so.

An old fable says that a frog placed in a pot of boiling water will jump out immediately, but if the water is warmed to boiling with the frog already in it, the frog won’t notice until it is already too late. Many modern businesses act like that frog, overlooking minor tech problems that signal a growing issue until the damage is done.

Let’s see if we can identify some of these issues to help keep you out of hot water.

What was the scariest Halloween costume you saw last week? Chances are we know something scarier: the cyberthreats that want to take your business down. Listed below are some of the most common threats to your business’ future and what your business can do about them.

We’ve seen firsthand how the shift to remote work has revolutionized business operations. That being said, one area that still causes friction for many business owners is virtual meetings. A poorly executed remote meeting isn't just a time-waster, it can also drain productivity and disengage your team, damaging your company culture. Listed below are a few tips that show that with the right strategy and tools, your remote meetings can be even more effective and engaging than their in-person counterparts.

With AI entering the mainstream, more businesses are implementing these tools into their daily operations. Tasks like drafting emails, brainstorming for a new project, or debugging code have all been made easier. Here’s the secret to making the most out of AI: you get out what you put in. What do we mean by this? Let’s find out.

Happy Halloween! Tonight, ghosts and goblins will collect candy from door to door. This is to be expected; less expected are the cyberthreats and attacks that darken the doors of today's businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Listed below are things you need to do to keep your business safe, inside and out, every night of the year.

Think about all the online accounts you have, from social media to banking to email. With so many accounts, it's imperative to make sure they're secure. Creating a strong, unique password is one of the best and easiest ways to protect yourself from hackers. Listed below is how you can create passwords that are hard to crack and keep your digital life safe.

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic these days; most businesses are utilizing it for a multitude of things. With everyone all-aboard the AI train, it’s easy to confuse the computational power and speed AI offers to be infallible. Alas, AI can get things going sideways if you aren’t careful. When it does go wrong, the consequences can be more than just an inconvenience.

Listed below are some of the most important ways AI can go wrong:

While email attachments are a huge part of your digital life, they're also a favorite sneaky entry point for hackers, viruses, and scams. We've all been there, a quick click before we even think. That split second of laziness can turn into a massive headache for you and your whole job.

Before you tap that little paperclip and potentially wreck your day (or your company's network), you need to take a beat. Listed below is an essential checklist for safely opening files sent via email.

Pop culture has given us a vivid, if often frightening, impression of artificial intelligence. When we hear AI, many still picture calculated malice: a HAL 9000, a Skynet, or an Ultron.

The real potential of AI is far more productive; it's less about calculating world domination and more about becoming your organization's most helpful collaborator. Think of it as a JARVIS for your executive team or an R2-D2 for your operational staff: a powerful tool that assists your team in generating ideas, solving complex problems, and completing high-volume tasks. Critically, maximizing this potential doesn't require new hardware; it requires sharpening the very soft skills we already value in our top performers: curiosity, empathy, and resilience.

What goes through your head when you hear the words “IT audit?” Are you concerned about your business’ deepest and most shameful technology secrets being exposed, or are you excited about the opportunity to resolve issues that you might not even know exist? We hope you have the latter mentality, as it’s the appropriate one, especially if you want to build a business that stands the test of time.

It’s convenient for employees to reuse passwords just to make things easier for themselves; why use different passwords when you have a dozen accounts to remember passwords for? Alas, this habit will come back to bite you, especially if your business is ever involved in a data breach. These credentials could end up for sale on the dark web… and that’s just the beginning of your problems.

Starting a business requires a certain mindset, one that demands a certain disdain for failure. However, this entrepreneurial mindset might actually hold you back from seeing success with your business’ technology. This month, we want to explore how the same mindset that has allowed you to build your business to where it is today is actually getting in the way of effective technology implementation, as well as what you can do about it.

Business is already complicated enough without having to remember all of your passwords. Alas, logins and sign-ons are a necessary part of operations, and without them, work isn’t going to get anywhere. However, there is a solution to the problem of having too many accounts with too many unique credentials, and it all starts by asking a simple question.

If you run a business you know that downtime is a problem, not just an inconvenience. That's where failover comes in. If you've ever wondered how major websites and services seem to stay operational even when something goes wrong, failover is a key part of the answer.

The cut, copy, and paste commands are some of the most frequently utilized keyboard shortcuts in the modern office, but do you actually understand how they work? They make use of the clipboard, but not many people know what the clipboard is or how it functions. Listed below: the demystification of the clipboard and how you can make better use of it on your Windows device.

When was the last time you gave the time of day to your business’ phone system? The Internet has mostly made traditional telephone solutions obsolete, yet countless businesses still cling to them for dear life. However, dismissing the importance of the telephone as a way to connect with your customers would be foolish, so our focus today is how businesses like yours can implement phone solutions that leverage the good while eliminating the bad.

Imagine that a small business, maybe even one of your neighbors, just poured thousands of dollars into the latest and greatest security software and firewall system. You’re impressed… until a disgruntled employee walks in one night, nothing to stop them, and takes a hammer to the server they have behind an unlocked door.

Suddenly, there’s one less small business, and there was nothing that expensive security software could do about it.

While still imperative to get right, passwords aren’t nearly as secure as you would expect them to be. They can be guessed (especially if proper password practices haven’t been followed), stolen in data breaches, or phished from a well-meaning employee.

Passwords are essentially the lock built into the front door of a building. They’re enough to keep out honest people, but what about the people who are willing to go to the deep web and 3D print the master key to the type of lock you use?

Did you know that during World War II, Allied codebreakers didn't only crack the German Enigma code with pure math? They also used clever tricks, like baiting the Germans into sending predictable messages, to expose the machine's inner workings. History proves this approach worked then, and, unfortunately, continues to work now.

This art of manipulating a system to reveal its secrets has found a new, high-tech home in the world of artificial intelligence. It's called prompt hacking, and it's basically a form of digital social engineering aimed directly at the AI models businesses are starting to rely on.