Category Archives: The Work Place

cyber crime insurance for business

What You Don’t Know About Cyber Crime Could Hurt Your Business

Keep Your Business Safe From Cyber Crime And Data Breaches

The large-scale breaches, we hear about—Target, Sony Pictures, Yahoo. But hacking is a constant occurrence anymore. Most of us are operating under the belief that we’re flying under the radar, but, really, the odds are turning less in our favor by the day. We’re not sitting ducks, though. Cyber crime insurance is designed, in part, to cover the cost of restoring lost or corrupted data, which could mean the difference in your business surviving such an attack.

No one is immune from cyber crime. Allow us to explain why.

“My business is too small to bother with”

Small to midsize companies comprise 85 percent of reported breaches. And more than 60 percent of them never recover.

“There’s nothing to be gained from stealing my data”

Everything from Social Security numbers to health records to seemingly innocuous contact information can be monetized in the wrong hands.

“My third-party vendor has up-to-date security”

If a corporation the likes of Target can be let down by a third-party vendor’s cyber security, the same can happen to your business. With technology evolving as rapidly as it is, it’s impossible to say with total assurance that any protection is guaranteed.

If you’re thinking that supplementing your current policy with cyber crime insurance is beyond your means, you could be jeopardizing everything you own. Crisis response and legal fees alone can run more than half a million dollars in a typical case. In less than a minute, literally, your world could be turned upside down. Being covered means your company will live to see another day.

How To Take Your New Start-Up Business Concept To Success

Many entrepreneurs are thinking outside of the proverbial box when it comes to launching new businesses. They see just how the cards are stacked against them, and they don’t want to invest all of their capital without a definitive proof of concept. After the recent recession, entrepreneurs are even more hesitant to launch full-scale operations in such an uncertain economy. While this creates many challenges, it has also created an environment of possibility From pop-up storefronts to mobile trucks, new businesses are redefining the concept of a start-up, and enriching our communities through their efforts.

What sets these creative start-ups apart are their innovative approaches to traditional business models. They focus on small-scale quality, brand building, and individuality. Likewise, they utilize the latest technologies, like social media marketing and mobile phone credit card processing. For example, rather than immediately risking opening a restaurant, many chefs look to food trucks in order to build both a following and financial stability. Likewise, crafters open web-based businesses instead of taking the chance on a retail storefront. At AVPS, we believe that these micro start-ups deserve the best tools that will set them up for success, including our secure mobile credit card processing services.

Whether you are working from home, out of your garage, or you’ve upgraded to a local presence in your community, we have the solutions you need for effortless payment processing.

AVPS believes that it’s those innovative visionaries that drive our economic growth. We well know that today’s most lauded and successful corporations started with a single individual who had both an idea and a belief. We also know that the advent of mobile processing opens even more doors for savvy entrepreneurs. We want to help you grow your great idea from conception to brilliantly successful reality. Contact a representative today to find out more about how AVPS helps creative start-ups go from dreams to thriving businesses.

What Does Workers Compensation Insurance Cover

Have you ever fallen ill at work and needed to take time off as a result? Have you ever suffered an injury while you were working? Many have and don’t realize that they’re entitled to workers compensation. It’s important to know your rights when something goes wrong. Let’s take a look at the basics of workers compensation insurance, what it is and who is covered.

What Exactly is Workers Compensation Insurance?

Workers comp is a type of insurance payment, which is issued to employees who become ill due to their work or get injured while they are on the job. Different payment terms may be stipulated in different circumstances. Some of these include:

  • Regular payments (weekly or monthly) to cover your loss of income while you are unable to work.
  • One, lump-sum payment in cases where the employee was left with a personal disability.
  • The costs of medical care.
  • Rehabilitation expenses to allow the individual to get back to work.

What Does Workers Compensation Insurance Cover?

This type of insurance is known as “no-fault cover,” which means that the cover applies no matter which party is at fault. Workers comp aims to cover both the employer and the employee should an injury occur on the job. If this happens, then the employer is legally required to pay out compensation to the employee. The workers compensation insurance also provides protection for the employer against costly claims for compensation.

These insurance policies are designed in such a way that they don’t just cover the one who is entitled to the work comp claim but also the legal fees and damages which are awarded to the injured or sick employee.

Who is covered?

All of the employees at the company are covered, regardless of whether they are full-time, part-time or casual workers. Contractors and sub-contractors are also covered, as are task workers and any workers on commission.

About the author:  If something has happened to you at work and you think you are entitled to a claim, get in touch with Peter Green Insurance today. Our experienced team will be able to tell you what your next step should be.

Good Air Filters Are MERVelous At Keeping You and Your Employees Healthy

It’s easy to overlook certain things in our lives that we should pay more attention to… Remember those air filters you meant to have replaced back in the fall? We thought so. No doubt about it, it’s easy to forget that the filters in our HVAC systems need to be changed every three months. Think of it this way, have them changed with the seasons.

Air filters are made of different types of media, including fiberglass, pleated cotton, pleated paper, or polyester allowing some to work more efficiently than others. An air filter’s efficiency is measured in units called MERVs (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Values) which is a scale created by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers. A particular filter’s MERV rating is based primarily on the filter material being used and ranges from 1-20. The higher the MERV, the more effective the filter is at cleaning the air entering the HVAC system and emerging at the registers.

This is an important fact to consider because while almost all air filters are designed to trap dust & lint, only more efficient filters will also trap allergens, mold, pollen, and dander. Certain filters even have the ability to trap bacteria and viruses in an effort to improve the overall indoor air quality of your business.

When used in conjunction with professional green cleaning services, such as those offered by Eagle Building Maintenance and Janitorial Services (Eagle BMJ), it’s easy to see how your entire business can be cleaner & greener for everyone!

About Author: Eagle BMJ offers a wide range of professional cleaning services performed by trained professionals who will properly clean and care for your facility. Making the decision about who cleans your business doesn’t have to be difficult, and we’ll gladly prove it to you. Contact Eagle BMJ in NJ today at (888) 730-1123 to arrange for a FREE, no obligation, on-site consultation and allow us to do what we do best so you can do what you do best!

How Does Credit Card Security Translate Into Marketing Potential?

Broaden Your Marketing Efforts With An Emphasis On Safety And Security

With so many businesses competing for your customers, how can you capture their interest and attention? Modern marketing takes many avenues in order to spark the interest of potential customers, including traditional media sources, social media, and guerilla marketing. While every option offers its own merits, you may be missing out on an underlying yet important way to tip the scales in your favor. With hacking, information leaks, and fraud on the rise, secure payment processing may be more important to your customers than you expect.  With so many highly-publicized financial information breaches in recent history, the average consumer is even more informed and invested in their credit card transaction security.

How Does Security Translate Into Marketing Potential?

The global marketplace has changed drastically in the past three decades. We’ve seen our economy transition from heavily cash-based to almost exclusively credit/debit transactions. We also know just how prevalent online shopping and web-based commerce has become. With those changes, we’ve also experienced the adaptations that savvy criminals invented to keep up with the market. Your customers well know that their financial information is constantly under siege, and many of them have experienced identity theft or card cloning—even those that haven’t see the extensive news reports of hacking at several national retailers.

How should this reality translate into your marketing? The answer is simple and straightforward; the security-minded customer wants to spend his or her money with confidence. When you openly demonstrate your commitment to the best practices of secure payment processing, you give consumers the confidence they need to go from shoppers to buyers. With all options being relatively equal, your level of security could be the deciding factor for potential customers. From your homepage to your checkout, or within your physical storefront, security is not just a best practice, but it’s also an effortless marketing point that enhances your business.

About Author: AVPS can help transform your business into the most safe and secure operation possible. To learn how you can benefit from the latest credit card processing risk management solutions, contact us today, and let us help you capture those customers and grow your business.

Get Those Operating Costs Under Control with the Right Merchant Account Provider

Is your small business struggling under the weight of operating costs? Even those owners with a history of business experience and acumen can find that the tools they need eat too much into their profit margins. Payment processing, for example, seems like a system of fees you grudgingly must pay in order to provide your customers the convenience of debit and credit payments. In the modern market, you can’t forgo digital payment processing, either, but you can ensure that your retail merchant account is providing you the best and most affordable card processing solutions. Our AVPS team will help you determine if you can reduce those operating costs by giving your current payment processing a serious check-up. By taking a second look, you may find out that you are eligible for better rates.

Card Processing is Not “One Size Fits All”

Card processing set-ups that work for some businesses may not necessarily be right for yours. From mobile processing to retail storefronts, we specifically connect with our clients to understand their needs. When you partner with us, we’ll look at any factors to ensure we are giving you exactly the solutions you need:

  • Business type—Are you a wireless merchant/e-commerce business or do you have a physical brick and mortar location? (Or both?)
  • Customer volume—Will you need multiple payment terminals to accommodate your customers in a timely manner? If you have a website, how is your check-out process set up?
  • Physical location requirements—How your physical operations work may make some card processing equipment too large or restrictive. Mobile processing may be better for you.
  • Financial goals—Do you anticipate needing a merchant cash advance? We can help you better understand how your merchant account fits into your financial future and growth.

About Author: AVPS believes that, when you accept credit cards, your business should not feel like you are overburdened with hidden fees. Let us show you why businesses across the nation trust us with their retail merchant account needs. To learn more, contact a representative today!

Why Cyber Liability Insurance Is A Must Have For Your Online Business

Cyber liability insurance is one of the most under-utilized types of insurance around. Critical as it is, it’s still a mostly unknown entity to those who should be employing it, namely online-based business owners. The following is a basic primer that covers what it is and who needs it.

Who should have cyber insurance?

It’s widely held that anyone who does business online should have cyber insurance. Even the smallest of operations are vulnerable. Anyone who maintains a website that processes data from its customers runs a risk every day.

Some assume—wrongly—that they don’t have to be worried about compromised data because they have a third-party vendor that handles credit card information, but that doesn’t make them any less liable for damages in the event of a breach. In fact, you could be legally liable for anything passed along during an Internet connection.

What is covered by cyber liability insurance?

Cyber liability insurance is much like other types of liability insurance. If sales are really down because of an interruption to the business, cyber liability insurance can truly help out. If there is a data breach and notices must be sent to customers, cyber liability insurance covers that cost as well.

It’s a common misconception among those who have liability insurance for a small business that their policy will protect them from virtually everything and anything. But the reality is that it doesn’t shield you from online issues.

In so many ways, the Internet is the modern-day Wild West. New challenges seem to crop up by the hour, and there’s not nearly enough regulation or oversight to guard against even the majority of it. Do you really want to take the chance of leaving yourself exposed in that kind of environment?

Author: Peter Green Insurance LLC: We are an “independent” insurance agency on Orange County CA which means we are not locked in or bound to a specific insurance company allowing us to search many large and specialty insurance carriers on your behalf.

In Your Server Room It’s Always the Dog Days of Summer

Summer at its hottest and most humid is still better than the most forgiving winter day. Still, it’s downright oppressive out there. Seeing the heat rise up from streets and parking lots, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’re being cooked. Welcome to life as a server.

It’s easy to sit there at our comfortable desks and on our even more-comfortable sofas marveling at the wonders of technology—all of that horsepower, all of that storage space. Meanwhile, there’s a server working at full-gas to make sure that your project, in all of its beautiful intricacy, isn’t slowed down by shifting constantly between a half-dozen, memory-devouring applications.

For servers, it’s always the dog days of summer. Which is why it’s critical to house them in network cabinets that maximize their airflow.

The Enterprise cabinets, the strongest among our inventory of server enclosures, constructed with a fully welded steel frame and capable of housing a 2,500-pound load, may look uncompromising, but look a little closer and you’ll see fan tops and perforated front and rear doors. (Split, perforated rear doors are also available.) Together, they’re meant to carry out the hot air that’s being expelled by the servers within. Think how much cooler your house feels when a breeze pushes through the windows in the front and out the ones in the back. That cross-ventilation is the difference between refreshing and suffocating.

Size makes little difference here. It’s not just the large networks that run warm-blooded. That’s why even our small, freestanding server cabinets are designed with perforated walls and front and rear doors.

If it’s getting a little too hot in the shade around your server room or office, think about upgrading your network storage before you reach for the thermostat. A little ventilation goes a long way, which is something we can all appreciate right about now.

About Author: TechRack Systems, founded in 1997, has become a leading internet based supplier of quality computer cabinets, server racks, LAN work centers, printer stands, data cabinets, computer workstations, wire racks and KVM switches to IT centers

Why Your Home Business Need Business Owners Insurance

A Homeowner’s Policy Falls Short For Home-based Businesses

Business Insurance is necessary for all types of businesses, including home businesses. Many home business owners don’t realize that their homeowner’s policy may not cover incidents that occur in the normal course of running a home business.

For instance, if there is a fire in the house and the equipment in the home office is destroyed, the homeowner’s policy may not provide coverage for that damage. If your home is the base for your small business insurance it is an absolute must to make sure that you’re fully protected. A home business rider to your home owner’s insurance may or may not provide all the protection you need.

An in-home business policy provides even more protection than a home insurance rider add-on. In-home business polices cover contingencies such as employee theft or the loss of important documents. It can also provide liability if employees are coming in and out of the home as well as coverage for business equipment.

A business owner’s policy (BOP) is probably the best bet to make sure that all the bases of a home business are covered. If a delivery person brings a business package to your door and falls on the steps, the homeowner’s insurance will not cover the injury. Small business liability insurance is part of the coverage of most business owner policies and help provide the peace of mind you need for your home-based business.

Because a business owner’s policy offers a higher amount of protection than an in-home policy or a homeowner’s policy rider, it provides greater protection against possible lawsuits in addition to better coverage for other business aspects.  If your product causes any injury to a customer, a BOP may offer protection against any resultant lawsuit.

Another important aspect of insuring your home-based business is the liability of your product. If you produce a food product for a product that has packaging that could cause injury—like a glass bottle, for instance—you may need a special policy in addition to the basic BOP.

About Author: When Peter established Peter Green Insurance Agency LLC in Orange County CA his goal was to build an insurance agency that would approach insurance coverage from the policy owners point of view. Understanding your concerns and risks to find the right insurance protection is primary to protecting your assets.

How Can Benchmarking Improve My IT Contractors Business

It’s a curious problem: You worked your way through the corporate maze, amassing experience, expertise and praise to the point that one day, the confidence swelled inside you and you realized, I could do this better on my own. So you ventured out into the world as an IT contractor, a scary proposition, the lack of a safety net and all. But you found your first clients quickly. Rather, they somehow found you. And your instinct was right; you could do this better on your own. Some of those very satisfied customers referred you to friends’ companies and opened up inside tracks to a few open contracts. The pieces are falling into place so easily, much easier than you ever had a right to expect. Yet, you have no idea just how well you’re doing. Your attention was honed on building your business, so much so that you never paused to consider what you were building it toward

Because of the nature of the work, IT consultants and contractors are especially prone to isolation from their industry, much like a Michelin-star chef. Gastros and peers may be in awe of her ability, reservations a logjam for the foreseeable future, but her world, for all practical purposes, is contained to that kitchen. Success, to her, is measured by perfect execution and a depleted inventory at the end of the night. Not to imply that they’re insignificant, because they by no means are, but they are shortsighted. By not knowing her audience or her peers (friendly and otherwise), she’s missing opportunities to capitalize. And, worse, she could also be blindsided by inevitable shifts in taste.

What Is Benchmarking?

All of this is to say, it’s critical to know where you stand. It was a blind spot that we began noticing soon after our start, over 25 years ago, as we nurtured a client base largely comprised of small businesses, a large share of which became IT contractors and consultants as tech took over our lives. In response, we developed a process we call Benchmarking. Basically, we take a snapshot of a your particular segment of the industry to establish revenue and expense baselines. From there, we can tell you where you fall and even if this surge in business is a result of your practices or a budding need in the region. In other words, is it sustainable?

Where accounting advice can feel like a one-size-fits-all template, as accountants for IT contractors, we’ve learned to anticipate your particular needs and craft relevant, nuanced strategies for filling them, because the trickiest part about knowing where you stand is that the ground’s always shifting.

Author: CA4IT has  30 years of experience supporting IT professionals, independent professionals and project managers