KarbonIT

Creating business technology solutions, enabling you to focus on your core business.

19/10/2026

Are the days of posting AI content without anyone knowing coming to an end?

Anthropic is adding an invisible watermark to text written by new Claude models.

You won't see the watermark. It is created through patterns in the words Claude chooses, so copying the answer into Word, an email or a website won't remove it. Some editing may leave the mark intact too.

Anthropic plans to provide tools that can estimate whether Claude helped write a piece of text.

Those tools cannot identify the person who used Claude, show what they asked or tell how much of the finished document was written by them.

A document may carry the watermark even if Claude was only used to rewrite part of it.

Businesses can keep using Claude for drafts and editing, but staff should know that its involvement may be detectable. Anything sent to a client or published under the company name still needs to be checked for accuracy.

If your team is already using AI at work and you're not sure what rules you need, let's have a chat.

14/10/2026

13 October 2026 is the end of support date for Office 2021.

After that date, Word, Excel and Outlook will continue to open, but Microsoft will stop providing security updates, bug fixes and technical support.

Because the software keeps working, it can remain on company computers for months or years after support ends.

Any new security problems found in Office 2021 may be left unfixed.

Not sure whether Office 2021 is still in use? Ask us to check, and we'll talk you through the replacement options.

09/10/2026

Some free VPNs make money by letting other people send traffic through your internet connection.

Google recently took down a large network that used devices running apps advertised as free VPNs.

While the VPN worked, the app also allowed other customers' internet traffic to pass through the device.

On a work laptop, that traffic would appear to come from your company's public IP address. Your IP could get blocked because of activity nobody in the business carried out.

Google also found that some of this software could expose other devices on the same network.

Check which VPNs and browser extensions are installed on company devices. Staff should use the VPN provided by the business, not one they found online because it was free.

Want to know whether unapproved VPNs or proxy software are installed on your company devices? Reach out and we can check for you.

04/10/2026

Don't trust hotel Wi-Fi. It can be compromised even when you've joined the correct network.

Microsoft has found attackers taking control of the systems used for Wi-Fi login pages at hotels and conference venues.

Once the login system has been compromised, guests can be redirected to a fake Microsoft 365 sign-in page or shown a fake browser update that installs malware.

The timing makes the request believable. You've just connected, the hotel page opens and it says an update is needed before you can continue.

Checking the network name with reception won't help because the hotel's real Wi-Fi is involved.

Use your phone's hotspot for work whenever possible. If you have to use hotel Wi-Fi, never enter your work password into the hotel registration page.

And if the page asks you to download an update, certificate or security tool, disconnect. Joining Wi-Fi shouldn't require you to install anything.

If your staff travel with work laptops, send us a message before their next trip. We'll make sure the devices are properly protected.

25/09/2026

If you want your team to work fast, don't skimp on their computers or your internet.

Everything moves quicker than it used to. Customers want fast replies, and the jobs often go to whoever gets back to them first. Your team can't be quick if their tools are slow.

A laptop that takes an age to load, internet that keeps dropping, cheap software that hangs, all of it means your people spend half the day waiting around and working out ways past the problem. It's frustrating, and good staff hate not being able to get on with the job because of the gear they've been given.

Spend a bit more here and you get it back. The work goes faster, and people are happier doing it.

You don't need top-of-the-range everything. You just need computers and a connection that are quick and reliable enough to stay out of your team's way.

20/09/2026

Soon, some of the calls coming into your business won't be from a real person.

Google has started giving people AI assistants that ring businesses for them. The assistant will call a shop to check if something's in stock, book an appointment, or ask about a price.

For now this is mostly a consumer thing, and it's early. But if a lot of your business comes in over the phone, it's worth knowing about.

Tell your team some callers will be AI, not people. And whatever they say on a call can be recorded, so it pays to be accurate about prices, opening hours and what you've got available.

There's a good side to this too. You can use the same kind of assistant for the dull calls you'd rather not make, like chasing a supplier or waiting on hold.

15/09/2026

By default, a Microsoft account will accept a login attempt from anywhere in the world.

Most attacks on Microsoft accounts come from overseas, from automated tools trying stolen passwords by the thousand. If your business only works in one or two countries, there's no reason to allow a login from anywhere else.

There's a setting in Microsoft 365 called Conditional Access that lets you block any login from outside the countries you operate in. Someone trying your password from the other side of the world is turned away, even if the password is right.

It won't stop everything, and a determined attacker can route through your country to get past it. But it blocks the flood of automated attempts from places you'll never deal with, and that's most of what you're up against.

You'll need the right Microsoft plan, and it's set up in the admin area, so ask your IT provider to turn it on and set the countries you work in.

10/09/2026

When you log into a new tool with your Google account instead of making a fresh password, you're tying that tool to your Google login. Do it enough times and one account controls all of them.

It's quick, so most people click it without thinking.

The trouble starts if someone gets into that Google account. They get your email, and every app you logged into with it, in one go.

Google itself is a risk here too. If it ever suspends or locks your account, you can lose all those apps at once, and getting a Google account back is famously hard.

So for anything your business relies on, give it its own login and password, with two-factor turned on.

And put strong security on the Google account itself, since so much now runs through it.

05/09/2026

Everyone's downloading AI tools at the moment, and scammers have caught on.

Say someone on your team wants to try a new AI app. They search for it, click the top result, and end up on a page that looks like the real company's site. They download the app. It's fake, and it steals every password saved on their computer.

The fake sites are hard to spot because they copy the real ones closely, and the link is often an ad shown above the real website in the results.

Security firms have reported a lot more of this over the past year.

Only download software by going to the company's real website yourself, not by clicking an ad or a search result. If a page asks you to install something and you're not sure it's real, don't. And it helps to agree as a team on which AI tools you use, so people aren't installing unknown ones to try them out.

25/08/2026

That slow old laptop your employee is putting up with is costing you more than a new one would.

It's easy to treat a computer as something you only replace when it dies. As long as it still switches on, a new one feels like money you don't need to spend.

Every slow start-up in the morning, every wait for a file to open, every frozen call someone has to drop and rejoin is a couple of minutes gone.

It happens over and over, all day, to everyone stuck on an old machine. Add it up across a year and it's well past the price of a new laptop.

And that's before the frustration, or the fact that old machines stop getting security updates, which makes a slow computer a risky one too.

You don't have to replace everything at once. Just look at how old your team's computers are.

Around the three or four year mark is usually where a machine starts costing you more in lost time than a replacement would.

Ask your staff which computers drive them mad and they'll tell you straight away.

Your IT provider can also point out which ones are near the end of their supported life, since those tend to be both the slowest and the least safe.

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