Internal auditing to help identify potential cyber threats.
“You’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine? I invented ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’ Nobody tells me it’s them not me; if it’s anybody, it’s me.”
Internal auditing to help identify potential cyber threats.
“You’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ routine? I invented ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’ Nobody tells me it’s them not me; if it’s anybody, it’s me.”
You’re not imagining it. Scam emails are getting harder to spot.
Phishing attacks are becoming more convincing, more targeted, and more frequent.
Let’s rewind a moment… Phishing is when criminals pretend to be a company you trust and try to trick you into clicking a link, opening an attachment, or logging in to a fake website.
Their goal is usually to steal passwords, money, or access to your systems.
The reason it works so well is simple: It relies on familiarity and distraction.
Last year, the company most often impersonated by scammers was Microsoft.
That’s not because Microsoft has done anything wrong, but because so many businesses rely on its email, files, and cloud services. One stolen Microsoft login can open the door to email accounts, documents, and even financial data.
Close behind were Facebook and Roblox, with other familiar names like Amazon, Google, and PayPal also commonly abused.
Security researchers noticed a big spike in phishing toward the end of last year. That makes sense. People are busy, inboxes are full, and there’s a lot going on with shopping, renewals, year-end tasks, and even job hunting in January.
Scammers know this and time their attacks carefully.
What makes things more worrying is how realistic these messages have become. Criminals now use AI to create fake login pages and “security alerts” that look almost identical to the real thing.
Some attacks don’t just steal your password but also grab the extra security codes you use to log in, allowing attackers straight through the front door.
So how do you stay safe?
The most important habit is to slow down. Any email or text that claims there’s an urgent problem with an account should immediately raise suspicion.
Instead of clicking, open your browser and go directly to the company’s website yourself to check. If something feels off, it probably is.
Extra protection also matters. Using multi-factor authentication, which is a second check like a code sent to your phone, can stop criminals even if they get your password.
Keeping devices protected with up-to-date security software and making sure your team knows what phishing looks like can make a huge difference.
Phishing isn’t going away. But with the right awareness and a few sensible safeguards, it doesn’t have to catch you out!
What's happening at RCT this month?
March has been a busy (and exciting!) month for us at Rivercity Tech as we officially settled into our new office space. We’re still in Innovation Place, now known as Innovation Saskatchewan, but you can now find us at our new address: 102-15 Innovation Blvd. Along with the move, our team has been keeping things running smoothly for clients, tackling everyday tech wins, and doing a bit of spring cleaning behind the scenes. No big announcements this month, just solid progress, fresh surroundings, and the same friendly support you know and trust.
Business gadget of the month
CZUR ET24 Pro Professional Book Scanner
Still work with a lot of paper? Sometimes it’s unavoidable, so you may find the CZUR ET24 Pro is useful.
It’s a dedicated book scanner designed to quickly turn physical pages into clean, readable digital files. Even when those pages are curved, bound, or awkward to lay flat (which is something phone apps and flatbed scanners struggle with). That makes it ideal for scanning training manuals, contracts, reference books, archived documents, or signed paperwork that can’t be taken apart without damage.
When you need accurate digital records, searchable documents, or a simple way to preserve important paper materials, it’s a practical time-saver that does one job very well.
Windows 11 will get faster, friendlier, and smarter
Microsoft is working on a big upgrade to Windows 11. It will make new laptops faster, more efficient, and better at using AI, with longer battery life too.
They’re also improving everyday features, like a cleaner dark mode and a taskbar calendar that shows your upcoming meetings.
And in Microsoft Teams, new updates will make hybrid working easier by automatically recognizing when you’re in the office.
Tech facts
There’s a Microsoft Excel World Championship. Every year, Excel power-users from around the world compete to solve fiendishly tricky spreadsheet challenges as fast as possible. Last year, one competitor beat 23 others in the final to take home a $5,000 cash prize… and a gloriously, ridiculously oversized championship belt.
A notorious cybercrime group made headlines recently by claiming they’d broken into a cyber security company… only to discover they’d walked straight into a digital trap called a “honeypot”, filled with fake data designed to catch attackers. Their activity was logged, their identities were partially uncovered, and law enforcement was alerted. The hunters quickly became the hunted.
Scientists have built robots smaller than a grain of salt. These microscopic robots can move through liquids, sense changes around them, and make simple decisions, all powered by light. They don’t have motors or tiny legs. Instead, they use electrical forces to glide through fluid. Because they’re so small and cheap to produce, they could one day help with medical research, diagnostics, or building tiny devices at a scale that was previously impossible.
Inspirational quote of the month
“A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader; a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States.
A New Month, A New Tech Quiz
Who released their first antivirus product called VirusScan in 1987?
Which computer software company developed and published the graphics editor Photoshop?
What word means to switch a computer off and on again?
What name is given to the maximum rate of data transfer across a given path?
What term was coined by American John McCarthy in 1956?
The answers are below.
McAfee (John McAfee)
Adobe
Reboot
Bandwidth
Artificial Intelligence
New to Microsoft 365
Agent Mode makes Excel easier to use
Microsoft has added a powerful new feature to Excel called Agent Mode. It changes how Copilot works with your spreadsheets. Instead of answering questions like a chatbot, Agent Mode can carry out multi-step tasks for you inside Excel itself.
That means it can analyze large sets of data, fix broken formulas, create new ones, and even build charts that automatically update as your data changes.
You can see and check each step it takes, so nothing happens behind the scenes without you knowing.
Agent Mode is available now in Microsoft Excel on the web for businesses using Microsoft 365 Copilot, with Windows and Mac versions coming soon
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