New Article: IT Security Essentials

IT security is an important piece of the IT puzzle that many in church and ministry leadership don't understand. I wrote a brief article that covers some of the most important, easy-to-fix, and affordable-to-fix issues. The article has been released to the publisher, but you can access a free copy on my firm's website by clicking here!

How NOT to Do Tech Support

Today's call to support of an app is a perfect example. Because I've probably been just as guilty, the company name will not be mentioned.

• MBS: Since upgrading our Macs to MacOS Sierra, your app crashes a few times throughout the day with no identifiable pattern. Is it because of Sierra?
• App Support: Let's have you uninstall the app, delete a bunch of hidden files and folders in the system library, then restart and reinstall the app.
• MBS: Okay, we did all that. It still crashes.
• App Support: That's because the current release isn't compatible with MacOS Sierra. We'll be releasing an update in a few weeks.

Two thoughts:

1. Wouldn't it have been better to tell us of the incompatibility up front and encourage us to wait for the coming update? (Their website still doesn't warn of MacOS Sierra incompatibility...)
2. Three weeks? Really? Did the MacOS update catch them by surprise? Perhaps they're appropriately embarrassed and that's why they had us do a bunch of things most wouldn't do (deleting hidden files and folders in the system library). Or, at least, they should be.