If you look at any suburb this Halloween, you’ll see countless monsters roaming the streets. Vampires, creatures and ghouls all “wreaking havoc” (going to parties and trick-or-treating).

The real monsters, though, don’t look like this.

Every autumn, the medicine cabinet gets a little more crowded. There's cold medicine left over from last winter, vitamins bought in bulk, half-used bottles of cough syrup and a prescription that should have been thrown out months ago. There’s plenty of medicine there, but a full cabinet has never been a measure of anyone's health.

An employee receives an email that appears to be from the owner: “Can you send me the updated banking information before you leave?”

The name is right. The tone sounds familiar. And with everyone trying to wrap up the week, the easiest thing to do is simply respond.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and it's a good time to take stock of what you actually know vs. what you think you know when it comes to cybersecurity. Not all of the advice out there is accurate. Some has circulated for so long that it's taken on a life of its own and gets repeated until it sounds like fact, even when it's outdated or wrong.

Most people treat outdated technology like a favorite sock with a hole in it—clearly past its prime, but not bad enough to throw out yet.

You notice it here and there, like when it suddenly takes forever to send a simple email, or when you hit save and the screen freezes like it forgot what it was doing.

Taking a reactive approach to IT might not feel like a problem in the moment.

Most issues start small: a system slows down, a warning appears, or something feels slightly off but still works. Because nothing is actually broken, it gets pushed off in favor of more immediate priorities.

Every year around late June, we get the longest day of the year—more daylight, more usable hours, and at least in theory, more time to get things done.

But most business owners don’t experience it that way.

Even with extra daylight, the day tends to fill up just as quickly as any other.

School’s out, which means for many people the workday doesn’t look quite the same as it did a few weeks ago.

Maybe you’re starting earlier so you can wrap up sooner. Maybe you’re working from home more, with a little extra background noise—Brutus barking, Johnny Jr. crying—and fewer stretches of uninterrupted time.

It’s Monday morning.

You’ve got coffee. You’ve got a plan.

This is the week you’re finally going to get ahead.

You walk through the door.

Before you set your bag down:

“The printer’s not working again.

Remember blowing into Nintendo cartridges to make them work? That was our version of IT support.

Cartridge won’t load? Blow on it. Still won’t load? Blow harder.

If that failed, you smacked the console.

We thought we were pretty good at technology.