Veterans Day 2026: Three Things Every Wisconsin Business Owner Can Do This Week

Veterans Day 2026 lands on Wednesday, November 11 — smack in the middle of a work week, which is exactly where it belongs for those of us who run Wisconsin businesses. It’s a day with a specific origin: the armistice that ended the fighting of World War I took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Congress made it a federal holiday as Armistice Day, and in 1954, renamed it Veterans Day to honor everyone who has worn the uniform, in every era, living or gone.

Memorial Day is for the fallen. Veterans Day is for the living. That distinction matters, because the people we’re honoring this week are our neighbors, our customers, our employees, and — in many Wisconsin shops — the person running the second shift or the owner.

Here’s what we’d suggest a Wisconsin business owner actually do about it. Three things: honor, hire, and buy local.

Veterans Day 2026: First, a little perspective on Wisconsin veterans

The U.S. Census Bureau counts 288,078 veterans living in Wisconsin, based on its 2020–2024 estimates. The same source counts 3,867 veteran-owned employer firms in the state — businesses with payroll, not just sole proprietors. (Census QuickFacts, Wisconsin)

That’s about one in every sixteen adults, and in a lot of our rural counties, the share is considerably higher. If you employ twenty people in Wisconsin, odds are good you already have a veteran on the payroll. If you have fifty, you may have two or three. Many of them don’t talk about it. This week is a fine time to ask.

1. Honor: say it out loud, and say it specifically

Most of us mean well and do nothing. A generic “Happy Veterans Day” post on the company page is better than silence, but barely. Here’s the better version, and it takes about an hour:

– Ask your team who served. A simple note to the whole company works: “We’d like to recognize our veterans on Wednesday. If you served, and you’re comfortable being named, let us know.” Some will opt out. Respect that.

– Recognize them by name and branch, in a short all-hands, a company email, or a post on LinkedIn — with their permission. “Dave in shipping, U.S. Army, 1998–2004” says more than a stock photo of a flag ever will.

– Give them the mid-week nod. Veterans Day isn’t a paid holiday at most small companies, and that’s fine. A paid half-day, a catered lunch, or simply letting a veteran employee leave early to attend a local ceremony costs very little and is remembered for years.

– Show up locally. Nearly every Wisconsin community has a Veterans Day observance — American Legion and VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) posts, school assemblies, county courthouse ceremonies. The Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs (WDVA) maintains a statewide calendar at (dva.wi.gov).

The point is specificity. Honoring “veterans” in the abstract is easy. Honoring Maria in quality control, who was a Navy corpsman, is what people notice.

2. Hire: the Wisconsin veteran is the worker you’ve been looking for

Every manufacturer, contractor, and shop owner I talk to in southeastern Wisconsin has the same complaint: they can’t find people who show up on time, follow a process, and don’t need to be told twice. That is a near-perfect description of someone who has spent four years in the military.

Veterans come out of service with habits that map directly onto a plant floor or a job site: safety discipline, respect for a checklist, comfort with shift work, and experience operating and maintaining equipment that costs more than most of our buildings. Many hold technical certifications — in electronics, logistics, diesel mechanics, IT (information technology), and heavy equipment — that are directly transferable, or close to it.

Wisconsin makes it easy to find them:

– Job Center of Wisconsin (jobcenterofwisconsin.com) is the state’s free job board, run by the Department of Workforce Development (DWD). Post there and your opening is visible to veterans who search specifically for veteran-friendly employers.

– Local Veterans Employment Representatives (LVERs) are DWD staff whose entire job is matching veterans with Wisconsin employers. They’re free to use, and they know the candidates.

– The Vets Ready Employer Initiative is DWD’s annual recognition for employers who hire, retain, and support veterans. It’s free to apply. The 2026 application window ran April 30 through July 31, and winners are announced each fall around Veterans Day; 2025’s class recognized 25 employers, eight of them first-timers. Put the 2027 cycle on your calendar now. (DWD Vets Ready)

– DoD SkillBridge lets active-duty service members spend their last months of service working for a civilian employer — at no salary cost to the employer. If you’ve got a role that takes training, this is a way to try before you hire. (skillbridge.osd.mil)

One more point worth making to a veteran candidate: Wisconsin exempts military retirement pay from state income tax. For a retiree choosing where to settle after twenty years of service, that’s a real reason to pick Wisconsin — and your opening — over a job across the border.

3. Buy local: put veteran-owned Wisconsin businesses in your supply chain

Those 3,867 veteran-owned employer firms are machine shops, trucking companies, electrical contractors, IT providers, and marketing shops. Most are small. Many are excellent. Few get asked.

If you buy anything — raw materials, freight, building maintenance, software, uniforms — you have a supply chain, and you have some say in who’s in it. The easiest Veterans Day commitment a business owner can make is to look at that list and ask: is there a veteran-owned Wisconsin company that could do this?

Where to look:

– The Wisconsin Veterans Chamber of Commerce (wiveteranschamber.org) maintains a member directory and runs networking events statewide.

– The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) certifies Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (VOSBs) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). If you sell to government or large primes, those certifications matter to your customers too. (sba.gov)

– Ask. Your current vendors know who else is in the trade. “Do you know any veteran-owned shops that do X?” is a question that gets answered.

Buying local from a veteran-owned firm isn’t charity. It’s a conversation with someone who understands deadlines, accountability, and what it means to have your name on the work.

Beyond the week

Veterans Day 2026 is one Wednesday. The habits are what count: knowing who on your team served, posting your openings where veterans will see them, and giving a veteran-owned supplier a fair shot at the next quote.

Please contact us with suggestions and questions.  Best to call, email, or visit our site for the best response.  We do invite you to engage with us on social media (just not for immediate needs).  As always, if you like, you will find us on the following social media sites, among others:

Facebook
LinkedIn
X

This post first appeared at WisX.com, serving Wisconsin businesses with plain-English guidance on technology, security, marketing, and growth.  

The post Veterans Day 2026: Three Things Every Wisconsin Business Owner Can Do This Week appeared first on Great Lakes Tech Services.

from Great Lakes Tech Services https://ift.tt/vAKuBh1

Phishing Emails Are Getting Smarter – Here’s How to Train Your Team to Spot Them

If there’s one thing I tell every client, it’s this: phishing is still the number one way hackers get into businesses.  Not clever zero-day exploits.  Not brute-force attacks on your firewall.  It’s someone in your office clicking a link in an email that looks legitimate.  And in 2026, these phishing emails are more convincing than ever – because the attackers are now using AI to write them.

The days of obvious phishing emails full of typos and broken English are mostly behind us.  Today’s phishing messages are grammatically correct, professionally formatted, and often tailored to your specific industry or even your company.  They might reference a real vendor you work with, a real invoice number, or a real project.  That’s what makes them so dangerous.

Red Flags That Still Give Phishing Emails Away

Even with better writing, phishing emails still have telltale signs.  Here are the ones I coach my clients’ teams to watch for:

The sender’s address doesn’t match the company.  The display name might say “Microsoft Support,” but if you look at the actual email address, it’s something like support@msft-alerts-update.com.  Always check the full email address, not just the display name.

There’s artificial urgency.  Phishing emails love to create panic: “Your account will be suspended in 24 hours,” “Immediate action required,” “Unauthorized login detected.”  Legitimate companies rarely demand instant action via email.  When you feel rushed, slow down.

The link doesn’t go where it says it goes.  Before clicking any link, hover your mouse over it (don’t click!) and look at the URL that appears.  If the email says it’s from your bank but the link goes to a random domain, that’s a phishing attempt.  On a phone, press and hold the link to preview the URL.

It asks for credentials or sensitive information.  No legitimate service will email you asking for your password, Social Security number, or banking details.  If an email asks you to “verify your account” by entering your login credentials, don’t do it.  Go directly to the website by typing the address into your browser instead.

It has an unexpected attachment.  Be especially cautious of attachments you weren’t expecting, even from people you know.  If your vendor sends an invoice you weren’t anticipating, pick up the phone and verify before opening it. Do not email and ask if it’s legitimate. Sometimes a scammer will have access to the mailbox and simply reply “yes, it’s legit”. A quick call can save you a lot of headaches.

Watch out for Docusign.  Attackers like to use Docusign to make their scams appear legitimate. When you open a Docusign document, there may be a link to “View Document”. When you click it, the link takes you to a site that tries to steal your login and password. Again, if the email is unexpected, CALL the sender to verify.

Technology Helps, but Training Is Essential

We deploy spam filtering and security tools for our clients that catch the vast majority of phishing attempts before they ever reach an inbox.  Our spam filtering service is a critical first line of defense, and tools like Huntress EDR and ITDR provide additional layers of protection if something does get through.  But no technology catches 100% of threats.  The last line of defense is always your people.

That’s why employee training matters so much.  Studies consistently show that companies without cybersecurity training for their staff are dramatically more vulnerable.  It doesn’t need to be complicated—even a 15-minute quarterly refresher on what to look for can make a real difference.  We help our managed services clients set up exactly this kind of awareness training.

What to Do If Someone Clicks

Even with the best training, mistakes happen.  Here’s the most important thing: create a culture where people feel safe reporting it immediately.  If an employee is afraid they’ll get in trouble for clicking a bad link, they’ll stay quiet—and that delay gives the attacker more time to do damage.  The faster we know about it, the faster we can contain it.

If someone on your team thinks they’ve clicked a phishing link or entered credentials on a suspicious site, call us right away at 262.720.3668.  We can take immediate steps to lock down the affected account, check for unauthorized access, and make sure the threat doesn’t spread.

Let’s Strengthen Your Defenses

Phishing isn’t going away.  If anything, it’s getting more sophisticated every year.  But with the right combination of technology and training, your business doesn’t have to be an easy target.  Whether you need spam filtering, endpoint protection, or help setting up employee awareness training, we’re here to help.

We offer a free technology review for businesses in Southeastern Wisconsin.  Let’s take a look at your current security posture and talk about what we can do to make your team safer.

See also:

Spam Filtering Service

Free Technology Review 

Please contact us with questions.  Best to call, email, or visit our site for the best response.  We do invite you to engage with us on social media (just not for immediate needs).

As always, if you like, you will find us on the following social media sites, among others:

Facebook

LinkedIn

X

The post Phishing Emails Are Getting Smarter – Here’s How to Train Your Team to Spot Them appeared first on Great Lakes Tech Services.

from Great Lakes Tech Services https://ift.tt/qZbMtJo

Labor Day 2026: Celebrating the People Who Power Wisconsin Business

Labor Day 2026 arrives on Monday, September 7, and it offers Wisconsin business owners something more valuable than a long weekend: a genuine opportunity to reflect on the people who make everything work.  From the shop floors of our manufacturers to the front desks of our professional service firms, from construction sites to clinics, Wisconsin runs on the skill and dedication of its workforce.  This Labor Day, let’s take a moment to consider what the holiday really means — and how your business can honor it in ways that matter.

A Holiday Rooted in Respect for Work

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, born of the American labor movement’s push to recognize workers’ contributions to the nation’s strength and prosperity. More than 130 years later, the spirit of the holiday remains the same: work matters, and the people who do it deserve recognition.

That message resonates deeply in Wisconsin.  Ours is a state built on making things — paper, machinery, food and beverages, precision components — and on the trades, services, and care professions that support our communities.  Whether your team assembles products, manages projects, serves clients, or keeps the books balanced, Labor Day 2026 is their day.

Why Labor Day Matters for Your Business

It’s easy to treat Labor Day as simply the unofficial end of summer — the last cookout, the final trip up north, the signal that fall is coming.  But for business owners, the holiday carries practical significance worth pausing over.

Your people are your competitive advantage.  Equipment can be purchased.  Software can be licensed.  But an experienced team that knows your customers, your processes, and your standards?  That takes years to build and is nearly impossible to replace.  Labor Day is a natural moment to acknowledge that reality.

Recognition builds retention.  In a labor market where skilled workers have options, the businesses that thrive are the ones where people feel valued. A sincere thank-you costs nothing, yet it’s one of the most effective retention tools available.  Labor Day 2026 gives you a built-in occasion to express appreciation without it feeling forced.

Your community is watching.  Wisconsin customers notice how businesses treat their employees.  When you publicly celebrate your team — on your website, in your newsletter, on social media — you’re not just boosting morale internally.  You’re telling your community what kind of company you are.

Meaningful Ways to Mark Labor Day 2026

You don’t need a big budget or an elaborate plan to honor the holiday well.  Here are practical ideas that fit businesses of every size:

Thank Your Team Directly

A handwritten note, a personal conversation, or a short message from ownership carries more weight than any generic announcement.  Be specific.  Mention the project someone carried across the finish line, the customer problem someone solved, the extra effort someone gave during a busy stretch.  Specific gratitude is memorable gratitude.

Share Your People’s Stories

Consider a blog post or social media feature spotlighting long-tenured employees or teams behind a recent success.  Manufacturers, contractors, and service firms alike have employees with remarkable stories — decades of service, mastery of a difficult craft, mentorship of the next generation.  These stories humanize your brand and honor the individuals behind it.

Close if You Can — and Mean It

If your business can close for the holiday, do it, and encourage your team to truly unplug. If your operations require holiday coverage, make sure those working are recognized and, where possible, rewarded.  Nothing undermines a Labor Day message faster than treating it as just another Monday for the people keeping things running.

Reflect on How Work Gets Done

Labor Day 2026 is also a fitting time for leadership to step back and ask honest questions.  Are workloads sustainable?  Do employees have the tools they need?  Are new technologies — including AI — being introduced in ways that support your people rather than simply squeeze more from them?  The best companies use technology to remove drudgery, so their teams can focus on the skilled, satisfying work that machines can’t do.

Labor Day 2026 and the Season Ahead

For many Wisconsin businesses, Labor Day marks a turning point in the year.  Summer projects wrap up.  School schedules resume.  The fourth quarter comes into view.  That makes the holiday a natural checkpoint for planning.

As you look toward fall, consider building employee appreciation into your ongoing rhythm rather than saving it for holidays.  Regular recognition, clear communication, and investment in training pay dividends all year.  Businesses that treat every week a little more like Labor Day—with genuine respect for the work being done—tend to keep their best people and attract more like them.

A Word of Thanks

At its heart, Labor Day 2026 is simple: it’s a day to say thank you.  Thank you to the machinists and the marketers, the nurses and the estimators, the drivers and the developers, and everyone whose daily effort keeps Wisconsin’s economy strong.

So this September 7, fire up the grill, enjoy the last stretch of summer, and take a genuine moment to appreciate the people around you — at home and at work.  Their labor is the reason we celebrate.  Happy Labor Day 2026!

The blog post above was written with AI help for text and images, on behalf of our friends and vendors, Mark and Keith from Great Lakes Tech Services and OnYourMark.com, respectively.  We share it with you and invite you to use it yourself, with these lines of attribution, including a link to this original at https://www.WISX.com/labor-day-2026-wisconsin-businesses

Please contact us anytime. Best to call 262.720.3668, email, or visit GreatLakesTS.com for the fastest response.

As always, you can find us on social media (just not for immediate technical needs):

Facebook
LinkedIn
X (formerly Twitter)

The post Labor Day 2026: Celebrating the People Who Power Wisconsin Business appeared first on Great Lakes Tech Services.

from Great Lakes Tech Services https://ift.tt/i4XHgjN

Employee Offboarding Security: What Every SE Wisconsin SMB Should Do Before Someone Walks Out

I came across a news story recently that made me put down my coffee. Two IT contractors got let go, and within minutes — while they were reportedly still tied to the company’s systems — one of them started deleting databases. By the time the dust settled, around 96 of them were gone. What struck me wasn’t how clever it was. It was how avoidable it was. That, in a nutshell, is what employee offboarding security is all about — and it’s a lesson that matters every bit as much for a 15-person shop here in Waukesha as it does for a federal contractor.

The News Story That Should Make Every Owner Pause

A few weeks back, federal prosecutors won a conviction in a case that reads like a cautionary tale written specifically for business owners. Two brothers working for a Washington, D.C.–area government contractor were fired during a remote meeting. Within minutes, one began deleting databases, and by the end of the hour roughly 96 were gone — including records the company managed for federal agencies (Ars Technica; U.S. Department of Justice).

I’m not sharing that to scare you with a worst-case headline. I’m sharing it because of one detail the coverage kept coming back to: the company hadn’t cut off the employees’ access before the termination conversation, and some of the damage reportedly happened while the meeting was still underway (DataBreaches.net). The Justice Department put it plainly — getting fired is not an invitation to retaliate — but the harder truth for owners is simpler: the door was left wide open. That’s a failure of employee offboarding security, not a failure of fancy cybersecurity software.

Why Employee Offboarding Security Is an SMB Problem, Not Just a Big-Company Problem

When most small and mid-size business owners read a story like that, the natural reaction is, “Well, that’s the government. We’re a 20-person company in Pewaukee — nobody’s going to torch our systems on the way out.” I get it. But in 16-plus years serving businesses across Waukesha, Milwaukee, and Jefferson counties, I can tell you the risk is often higher for smaller companies, not lower. Here’s why:

• You probably don’t have a dedicated IT person. Offboarding lands on the owner or the office manager, who already has a hundred things to do that day.
• Passwords get shared. The shop floor logs into one account. The bookkeeper knows the bank login. That “temporary” admin password from three years ago still works.
• Access quietly piles up. The file server, the VPN, the line-of-business app, the Microsoft 365 tenant, vendor portals, the alarm code — and nobody’s keeping a master list.

The data backs this up. In one Beyond Identity study of more than 1,100 workers, 83% admitted they still had access to a former employer’s accounts after leaving — and 56% of those said they’d used that access to harm the company (Beyond Identity). Usually it isn’t malice — it’s just that nobody got around to switching the access off. But “usually” is not a security plan.

Your IT Offboarding Checklist: What Should Happen, and When

So what does solid employee offboarding security actually look like? It comes down to having an IT offboarding checklist that’s ready to go before you ever need it — and knowing exactly who is going to run it. Here’s the short version of what we put in place for our clients:

1. Decide the timing first. For a planned, friendly departure you have some breathing room. For an involuntary termination, access should be cut at the same moment the conversation happens — not an hour later, not “by end of day.”
2. Disable, don’t delete (yet). Turn the accounts off immediately, but don’t erase them. A disabled account preserves email, files, and the audit trail you may need later.
3. Close the obvious doors and the hidden ones. Email, VPN, remote desktop, Microsoft 365, the file server — plus the cloud apps, vendor portals, and shared logins people forget about.
4. Reset shared passwords. If a departing employee knew a shared or admin password, it needs to change. Today.
5. Reclaim hardware and data. Laptops, phones, security keys, building fobs. Forward the email, reassign the files, and make sure nothing important leaves on a personal cloud account.
6. Confirm and document. Walk the list again a day or two later to be sure nothing reactivated and nothing slipped through.

None of this is exotic. But notice how much of it depends on already knowing where everything lives — every account, every login, every system. That’s exactly the part most SMBs can’t pull off on short notice on their own.

This Is Really a Story About Trust

Here’s where I’ll be straight with you. A checklist is only as good as the relationship behind it. The reason offboarding-gone-wrong stories keep happening isn’t that nobody knew the steps — it’s that no one truly owned the process, and no one could execute it fast enough when it counted.

That’s the real case for having a managed IT services partner you genuinely trust — not a vendor you call after something breaks, but a partner who already knows your network as well as you know your business. With that relationship in place, employee offboarding security stops being a scramble. You make one call — sometimes before the termination meeting even starts — and access gets handled quietly, completely, and on time. We’ve done exactly that for clients, where the offboarding was already underway while the employee was still in the room.

It works because trust runs both ways. You’re handing us the keys to everything that keeps your business running, and we don’t take that lightly. As we tell every client: your network gets treated as if it were our own. That’s not a slogan — it’s the standard that turns a tense, time-sensitive moment like a termination into something that goes smoothly instead of sideways.

Let’s Build Your Offboarding Plan Before You Need It

The worst time to figure out your employee offboarding security is the morning you have to let someone go. The best time is right now, while things are calm and nothing’s on fire. If you’re not sure who has access to what — or whether a long-gone employee still has a way in — let’s talk. We’ll review your current setup, build an IT offboarding checklist tailored to your business, and make sure you’ve got a plan you can trust when the moment comes.

Give us a call at 262.720.3668 or schedule a free technology review. It’s a whole lot easier to close the doors before someone walks out than to chase them down afterward.

Sources

• Ars Technica — DROP DATABASE: what not to do after losing an IT job — https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/drop-database-what-not-to-do-after-losing-an-it-job/
• U.S. Department of Justice — Federal Jury Convicts Virginia Man (database deletion case) — https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-jury-convicts-virgina-man-charges-relating-deletion-us-government-databases
• DataBreaches.net — reporting on the contractor’s offboarding failures — https://databreaches.net/2026/05/10/a-government-contractor-hired-twin-brothers-who-were-convicted-felons-a-year-later-they-regretted-it/
• The Register — Former US contractor convicted in federal database wipe case — https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/05/08/former-us-contractor-convicted-in-federal-database-wipe-case/
• Beyond Identity — study: 83% of former employees retain access to a previous employer’s accounts (1,100+ respondents, US/UK/Ireland) — https://www.beyondidentity.com/announcements/beyond-identity-study-shows-former-employees-are-likely-to-continue-accessing-old-employer-information

Please contact us with questions.  Best to call, email or visit our site for the best response.  We do invite you to engage with us on social media (just not for immediate needs).  As always, if you like, you will find us on the following social media sites, among many others:

Facebook
LinkedIn
X

The post Employee Offboarding Security: What Every SE Wisconsin SMB Should Do Before Someone Walks Out appeared first on Great Lakes Tech Services.

from Great Lakes Tech Services https://ift.tt/RQOSMrv