Atlas Business Solutions

10/07/2026

AI tools are everywhere: in your inbox, your browser, and maybe it’s already a part of your workflow.

Regardless of how you are using AI, one of the most important key learnings is to ensure teams think about it securely and know how to use it safely.

This week is about getting informed: what these tools can do for you, what they do with your data, and what it means to use them safely. Being AI-equipped starts with knowing what you’re working with.

10/06/2026

Welcome to Week 1 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
This week’s theme: Know Your Tools. AI tools are already part of how we work, in our
inboxes, browsers, and daily workflows. This week is about getting informed: what these
tools can do for us, what they do with our data, and what it means to use them safely.
Being AI-equipped starts with knowing what you’re working with.

10/05/2026

A survey of Canadian businesses found that 34% has experienced a cyberattack in the last 12 months. 55% has experienced more than one in the same period!

Split by business size, smaller businesses experienced the highest number of attacks!
This is reasonable since attackers know that small businesses often lag behind in cyber-training for employees and other risk prevention practices.
What Can We Do About It?

The most expensive part of running a security awareness program is the cost of employee time spent on off-task security training.

Fortunately Atlas Solutions has an excellent Cybersecurity training program to minimize this cost and maximize results. Within 90 days, our solution results in:
• 85% decrease in clicks on phishing emails;
• 99% increase is reporting awareness of what is a phishing attack;
• 11% increase in ignoring suspicious emails.

Training is most effective when employees are assigned training events at least 4 times a year.
Onboarding takes about 20 minutes to complete. Monthly refresher units take about 15 minutes to complete.

Our training program includes features such as:
• Canadian content (no more asking users to identify Citibank phishing simulations);
• Over 130 courses for every possible industrial sector: financial, health care, professional, trades, and public sector topics;
• Feedback to help users identify the emotional triggers that caused them to click on attack emails. Feedback helps drive the right behaviours going forward;
• Simulated phishing attacks that users are asked to report. This provides real-time analytics and engages users in the training.
• Positive feedback is provided for effective behaviour.

It shows in the results:
1. If users click on phishing simulations, the software will dynamically include more phishing simulations in their email feed.
2. Phishing click rates dropped 90% per user within a year of starting training.
3. Training helped users improve their cyber-etiquette in their personal emails and helped them become invested in encouraging colleagues and family to be more vigilant.

10/01/2026

This October, we’re taking part in Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CAM), a global
campaign focused on building stronger, safer habits at work and at home. This year, our
theme is AI Equipped: Smarter Tools, Sharper Instinct.
Why it matters: AI is now part of how we all work — and it’s also in the hands of people
trying to compromise us. Over the next four weeks, we’ll look at how to use AI well,
recognize when it’s being used against us, and build the instinct to tell the difference.
Security isn’t just IT’s job — it’s something we all share.
What to expect: The month is built around four weekly themes, each one building on the
last:
• Week 1 — Know Your Tools
• Week 2 — The Other Side of the Prompt
• Week 3 — Check Before You Trust
• Week 4 — Your Instinct Is the Last Line of Defense

09/16/2026

Unused computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other electronics can make a meaningful The Electronic Recycling Association (ERA) is a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to reducing electronic waste and helping bridge the digital divide. Since 2004, ERA has worked with businesses, organizations, and individuals to recover unwanted technology, securely manage retiring IT assets, and refurbish reusable equipment for donation to charities, schools, community organizations, and other groups in need.

ERA provides organizations with a responsible way to manage unwanted electronics while prioritizing reuse before recycling. Equipment suitable for reuse is refurbished and prepared for donation, helping extend the life of technology and increase access to essential digital tools. End-of-life electronics are responsibly recycled.

ERA’s commitment to quality, security, environmental responsibility, and workplace safety is supported by internationally recognized certifications, including ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for information security management, ISO 14001:2015 for environmental management, ISO 9001:2015 for quality management, and ISO 45001:2018 for occupational health and safety management.

By donating unwanted laptops, computers, smartphones, tablets, and other electronics to ERA, businesses and individuals can help reduce electronic waste while supporting communities across Canada.

Charities and non-profit organizations in need of technology can also apply to ERA’s technology donation program.

Give your technology a second life. Learn more, donate technology, or apply for a donation at https://zurl.co/6B7KW.

If you’re worried about handing over a computer that might still contain corporate data (and you should be), Atlas can wipe the physical drives on your computer to an industry standard such as Canadian CSEC ITSG-06 before handing it over the the ERA for reimaging and repurposing. The cost for wiping a computer is cheaper and more environmental than other ways of destroying the drive.

For more visit: https://zurl.co/KhPSK…ake-a-difference

ERA is a non-profit offering free electronics recycling, secure data destruction, and device donations across Canada. Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and more.

09/14/2026

Why You Shouldn’t Back Up Data to a USB Drive…

I meet lots of people who don’t believe in paying for backup services. The memory stick or USB drive they bought 3 (or more) years ago from BestBuy is good enough… Right?

First ask, “Could I run my business without any data?” In Business Continuity, we ask two questions:

Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How long could my business survive without its data? Hours? Days? Months?

Recovery Point Objective (RPO): How recent does my backed up data need to be for it to be useful? Yesterday? Last Friday? Last month?

Portable storage solutions fail. Drives get corrupted. Drive heads lose alignment. Magnetic fields can erase the drive data. Unless you’re restoring back from the backup every month you just don’t know if you have a good backup! I know a local business person who diligently made a backup every Friday afternoon. Four years later, her server crashed and she needed to recover the data only to find that the backup drive wouldn’t boot. She hired her teenage daughter to spend the entire summer copying all her paper records back into the new server. (Apparently they still do talk to each other).

If you overwrite your backup, say every Friday with a new backup, you might find the the recovery point you need is from 2 backups ago. How many drives will you keep in circulation? I know a business that didn’t realize until at least 4 months later that someone had deleted all its pricing sheets. It did not keep that many backup copies.

It can take days to recover data from a backup, especially if there is no spare computer to restore to. This has to be part of your RTO planning.

You have options!

If you’re using M365 or Google Workspace, Atlas Solutions can make backups 3 times a day (every 8 hours), and we can recover your Digital Workspace data from any past backup.

A rogue employee deleted all your files (and their emails) before walking out the door? No problem.

Someone accidentally overwrote a file and didn’t notice it until the client asked for a fresh copy of that proposal 3 months later? No problem.

But we can also backup your actual physical computer with all its programs, configurations, files, passwords and icons.

We can do this on-premise and in the cloud. A backup appliance at your worksite can make a backup of your server or other computers up to every 15 minutes. We can recover files within an hour. If your computer suffers a catastrophic failure, we can actually turn the appliance into a replacement computer until new hardware arrives. The appliance also copies its data to a Canadian cloud server because…

If your office burns down, or there’s police tape around your door tomorrow morning, we can “spin up” a copy of your computer in the cloud within about an hour and get you back to work until your office is safe to work in again.

Read more here: https://zurl.co/haIM9…ternal-usb-drive

09/10/2026

09/03/2026

Google Gemini, Google’s AI tool can make summary and action notes from your online meeting as well as full transcripts of everyone’s contribution.

This takes the responsibility off of you and allows you to focus on managing the discussion and participation. To manage settings for this feature, go to the Settings menu in Google Meet.

You can independently set “Take notes with Gemini” and “Transcribe the meeting” for the current or future meetings.