The Hotkey: November 2026
November can make an already busy office feel even busier. This month, we’re looking at small moves that help: rearranging a Word draft, questioning an unusual request, and choosing a useful first automation. We also explain why a verification page should never ask you to run commands. Try the five-question quiz with your team and compare how you’d handle each situation.
By the numbers
- 22,000+ Confirmed data breaches analyzed (Verizon, 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report)
- 1,008,597 Complaints received by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report)
- 48% Breaches involving ransomware (Verizon, 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report)
Hotkey of the month
Alt + Shift + Up Arrow
Try this when you’re rearranging a draft in Word. With your cursor in a paragraph, press it to move the whole paragraph up without cutting and pasting.
When a draft has the right ideas in the wrong order, this shortcut saves you cutting and pasting. In Word for Windows, it moves the paragraph containing your cursor, so you don’t need to select every word.
- Open a Word draft and find a paragraph you want to move earlier.
- Click anywhere inside that paragraph.
- Press Alt + Shift + Up Arrow once, then repeat if needed.
- If nothing moves, use Undo if needed, then cut and paste the paragraph instead.
Stat of the month
62% of breaches involved the human element, such as a mistake or a person being tricked. Verify unusual requests through a known phone number.
Source: Verizon, 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report
Verizon’s 2026 report found the human element in 62% of breaches, including mistakes and people being tricked. That doesn’t mean 62% of employees did something wrong. It describes incidents, not individuals.
We can make the safer choice easier: verify unusual requests through a known number, make suspicious messages easy to report, and avoid blaming people who speak up. The categories below can overlap, so the bars aren’t parts of a single total.
Factors involved in breaches
| Human element | 62% |
| Ransomware | 48% |
| Third-party involvement | 48% |
Source: Verizon, 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report
Myth vs fact
Myth: A verification page is safe if it looks familiar.
Fact: Scammers copy familiar verification screens. A CAPTCHA should never ask you to open PowerShell or paste a command. Close the page and report it.
Myth: Our internal IT person and provider will naturally divide the work.
Fact: Shared responsibility needs a written split. Name who handles each task, who provides backup, and where requests go so work doesn’t fall between teams.
Tech tidbit
A CAPTCHA shouldn’t need commands. If a verification page tells you to open PowerShell or paste a command, stop. Close the page and let us know.
Quick wins
- Save trusted phone numbers for anyone who regularly sends payment or bank-detail requests.
- Tell your team where to report suspicious pages, including fake CAPTCHAs that ask them to run commands.
- List three recurring IT tasks and write one responsible person or team beside each.
- Try the workflow prompt with a nonconfidential process, then ask Copilot for a simpler version after answering its questions.
Prompt of the month
Paste a proposed workflow into Copilot, without confidential details.
Act as the teammate who must use this workflow on a busy Monday. Identify three likely failure points and ask me questions before suggesting fixes.
Answer its questions, then ask for a simpler version.
Quiz of the month
Choose the safest next step in each situation you might meet during a busy workday.
Play the 5-question quiz. 5 questions, about two minutes.
More from the blog
- Which Automation Comes First?: This post focuses on choosing which business problems deserve automation and deciding what comes first. For a small team, the useful starting question isn't simply what can be automated, but which work is worth prioritizing before the rest of the project follows.
- Body Charge Lab: Body Charge Lab uses a 3D figure to show movement and power in Taekwon-Do forms, yoga poses and cheer tumbling. For readers interested in visual demonstrations, the excerpt highlights a female figure, realistic joint limits and a catalog anyone can expand.
- Real CAPTCHAs Don't Need PowerShell: This post explains the ClickFix scam, its warning signs and what to do if you've already run a command. Its central message is useful for every office: a genuine CAPTCHA won't ask you to open PowerShell as part of verification.
- You Can't Protect Invisible Assets: The post opens with a client whose IT setup appears sound and whose two servers have endpoint detection and response protection. For business readers, that conversation raises a useful question: what are you pointing to when you describe your own security?
- Co-Managed IT Needs Clear Ownership: Co-managed IT brings an in-house IT person and an outside team together. This post emphasizes writing down the division of responsibility, a practical concern for businesses relying on both: the arrangement can quietly fail when nobody has documented who owns the work.
- Ten AI Tasks Worth Trying: This post introduces ten small tasks teams can try in Copilot or Claude, along with one rule to follow before starting. For a busy small business, it presents a manageable starting point rather than requiring a full AI strategy first.
In the news
- Body Charge Lab: We built Body Charge Lab, a 3D Taekwondo and yoga lab, in days. Read the story.
Our services
See where you fit on our menu of four services, each with three levels. We’re moving current clients onto this menu over the coming months, and your Client Success Specialist will walk you through it.
How this issue was built
Written with AI, approved by a person. AI drafts the sections, the quiz questions, the blog summaries and the banner picture. A person reads every issue, checks the numbers and approves it before anything is sent.
AI use, estimated. Drafting this issue took about 2,500 tokens of AI text. A token is roughly four characters, so this is an estimate worked out from the length of the issue, not a measured count.
Time saved, estimated. Putting an issue like this together by hand (banner, email, printable PDF, blog post and quiz) takes roughly 1.5 to 3 hours. The process does that work in minutes, and it is our estimate, not a stopwatch reading.
Reach. One approved issue becomes the email you are reading, a printable PDF, a blog post and a quiz page, for every user at every client.
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