Tech Tips From Cerebrotech

Welcome to the month of November from us here at Cerebro Technologies. Although coming a little bit late, we will like to arm you with a few tech tips going forward in the month.

• Keep software up to date 
  Installing software updates for your operating system and programs is critical. Always install the latest security updates for your devices: Turn on Automatic Updates for your operating system, Use web browsers such as Chrome or Firefox that receive frequent, automatic security updates and Make sure to keep browser plug-ins such as Flash, Java, etc. up to date.
• Avoid Phishing scams - beware of suspicious emails
  Phishing scams are a constant threat - using various social engineering ploys, cyber criminals will attempt to trick you into divulging personal information such as your login ID and password, etc.
• Practice good password management
  We all have too many passwords to manage - and it's easy to take short-cuts, like reuseing the same password. A password management program can help you to maintain strong unique passwords for all of your accounts. These programs such as KeePass can generate strong passwords for you, enter credentials automatically, and remind you to update your passwords periodically.
• Be careful what you click
  Avoid visiting unknown websites or downloading software from untrusted sources. These sites often host malware that will automatically, and often silently, compromise your computer.
• Back up your data
  Back up on a regular basis - if you are a victim of a security incident, the only guaranteed way to repair your computer is to erase and re-install the system.

We hope these tips will help keep you safe as you go along your business

Best regards
Cerebrotech Team

References

[1] UC Berkeley https://security.berkeley.edu/resources/best-practices-how-to-articles/top-10-secure-computing-tips

[2] KeePass https://keepass.info/

PHP, MySQL and PDF

After about a year of perfecting the invoicing process of Cerebro Technologies, we decided to automate it. Some people might ask, why not automate it from the onset? The answer is quite technical. When you have a bad process and you automate it, you invariably have a bad automated process and that can spell Disaster!

After getting the MySQL tables (entities) and their relationships, we wanted to export the report/invoice in PDF. There are about four PDF libraries that can work with PHP

1. FPDF
2. TCPDF
3. mPDF
4. DOMPDF

After reviewing these libraries, we opted for FPDF. Due to the fact that there were lots of tables relating with each other, we had to develop very complex MySQL queries to interact with the database and output the results in a neat format. The FPDF has a lot of useful functions that can help with this task. 

With patience and tenacity, the project was completed in 2 days!