Your business is likely subject to certain compliance laws and regulations depending on the type of data you collect from your clients or customers. Today, we want to emphasize the importance of your business considering regulation and compliance when managing its data and IT resources, as without doing so, you run considerable risk.
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Your business’ data holds incredible potential for helping you improve operations, but only when it is leveraged properly. To this end, you have to identify specific metrics that you are working toward and establish how these metrics are helping you make strides forward. IT offers plenty of metrics to help you make better decisions about operational efficiency.
For competitive people, hearing the words “can’t win ‘em all” is infuriating. You want to win! These words, however, are completely true. Sometimes in business, you just lose. You may not be able to meet every deadline or win every sale, but there are things you can do to put your business in the best position to meet your goals. Today, we thought we would list a few things having the right technology strategy can do to help your business.
As a small business, we’re sure you want to improve your profit margin so that you can offer more exciting and innovative services or products. One way that many businesses bleed capital is through their IT expenses. While it might make sense on paper to address technology challenges only when they present themselves, the truth is the exact opposite.
A business telephone system has picked up some pretty costly requirements over the past several years. Not only does your business need to have a clear and concise calling system internally, it needs to incorporate video conferencing and remote communications. This can get pretty costly if you don’t have the right technology in place. That right technology is VoIP and it can save your business money and present options that allow your employees seamless communication capabilities.
It’s not hyperbole to suggest that many people in business these days prefer digital communication over the alternative. Smartphones have evolved over time and adapted to this need. That said, using a smartphone to communicate does still have its fair share of unwritten rules to follow. Let’s discuss some of the dos and don’ts of smartphones.
Mindset is important regardless of what someone is doing, but it plays an especially important part in the workplace. This only becomes more true when that workplace is distributed, and work is actually done in the worker’s home.
Let’s go into the kind of perspective you want to encourage in your team as they utilize remote work.
The cloud is a remarkable innovation that businesses of all industries and sizes can utilize to scale growth and operations. How you use the cloud, though, will change depending on your company's specific pain points and requirements. How can you invest in a cloud solution that ticks all your boxes? It starts with assessing whether you want to utilize a public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Cybersecurity is crucial for everyone to focus on, both in the professional environment and in their personal lives. That’s why I wanted to put together a list of cybersecurity practices you should encourage your team to follow when they aren’t in the office or working remotely, when their time is theirs.
A digital twin could arguably be seen as a somewhat niche technological innovation. Regardless, they are an invaluable resource to quite a few industries that help the businesses that use them optimize their processes. Let’s go over what a digital twin is, and how it helps a few different business types meet their needs.
All it takes is one oversight to potentially undo any benefits your cybersecurity protections and other best practices may deliver. For instance, even if you have things like multifactor authentication in place, a phishing scam or even some malware varieties could potentially give an attacker access to your email… and all the data your messages contain, just sitting in your inbox.
Nowadays, it is crucial that you make security a top priority. With the right approach, it not only saves you massive headaches, but also a considerable amount of capital—particularly if you leverage the appropriate solutions for SMBs. As a managed service provider, we can ensure that you implement the appropriate IT solutions to maximize the return on your security investment.
Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) are incredibly important elements of any successful business, as without them, you’re just one disaster away from a world-shattering wake-up call. We take a strategic approach to data backup and disaster recovery that considers your daily data backup needs while recognizing its long-term benefits. Let’s discuss how you can ensure that your business can use BDR to survive any potential threat the world throws at it.
IT is pivotal to the success of any business. Still, for small and medium-sized businesses, there might be limitations placed on the organization's potential resources to cover its needs. Outsourcing IT responsibilities to a managed service provider is a viable option for improving the odds of finding success with technology management for SMBs. Here’s what your business can stand to gain from working with an MSP.
Network security is complicated, and as such, you need to have considerable knowledge of it to ensure that your business is as secure as possible against the plethora of threats out there. Thankfully, you don’t have to do it alone. We want to give you some insight into the dos and don’ts of network security.
The password is the number one data protection strategy used in computing. It’s strange, however, how many times a weak password is the cause of data breaches and other situations that can hurt a business. In today’s blog, we go through some of the best password creation tips that will allow you to better secure your individual and business data.
The big game was this past Sunday, and if you are like millions of other people, you tuned in to see the spectacle of the game, the halftime show, and Taylor Swift. Behind the scenes, the National Football League has been utilizing emerging technologies to help them solve some of their biggest problems. Let’s go into three ways the NFL is using technology to improve their product.
Most businesses will find themselves holding on to spare technology, just in case they need it for any reason in the future. Storing this technology to ensure longevity, functionality, and safety is incredibly important. Today, we want to share some best practices to ensure that your stored tech will work as you need it to when it finally comes out of storage.
With business technology, your company can reap countless benefits, but at the same time, failing to implement the right tools—or worse, implementing the wrong tools altogether—can have devastating consequences. Today, we want to help you understand how you can make the best, most educated decisions regarding your business technology needs while avoiding investments in technology that won’t pay dividends.
Small and medium-sized businesses largely rely on their standing amongst their audience, which means their reputations are critically important to preserve. Unsurprisingly, one of the fastest ways to damage—if not eliminate—their reputation amongst the public is to suffer a cybersecurity event. Let’s examine some statistics, and consider what you need to do to keep your business from becoming one.
There are certain unspoken rules of doing business, one of which is that technology allows for innovation in various capacities to the point of making older, more traditional ways of doing business obsolete. If you properly use technology, you can improve your business' operations. Let’s look at three ways technology drives innovation in the business world.
When it comes to your business, you want to achieve at least some level of satisfaction. Still, you should always strive to improve certain parts of your operations, like customer service or the services you provide in general. That said, let’s consider when you might think, “Enough is enough,” and when complacency might turn sour.
AI, or artificial intelligence, has become a staple of application development in recent years. The result is that businesses have more opportunities to address inefficient processes and optimize for time and cost. We wanted to share some of the most exciting ways AI has changed the way businesses operate for the better.
If your business is still using its old, tired landline for communications, then you’re in luck; you haven’t yet tapped into the power of one of the most transformative technology solutions on the market today: VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. Today, we want to discuss the benefits of VoIP and why it’s such a high-value investment for businesses.
Technology and digital tools are a hot topic on our blog, but where there is technology, there is also data… and where there is data, there will be hackers trying to steal it. Data breaches are a common thread in all industries, and to prove this, we have put together six of the most notable data breaches from 2023. We hope you can learn a thing or two from them!
If you regularly use Google Docs, you may already be familiar with templates. They can be a quick and efficient way to create certain types of documents that you often use. With several prebuilt into Docs already, you might wonder if you can make your own, and it turns out you can!
Let’s discuss how you can use Google Docs templates and how to make your own. First, we’ll look at what types of elements you might need to implement for your templates, and then we’ll get into the details of how to do it!
In this blog, we continuously try to caution individuals against clicking on suspicious links, but distinguishing between a genuine URL and a questionable one has become increasingly challenging. Malicious tactics have evolved, making it imperative for everyone to remain vigilant. These threats are pervasive, coming from various directions. This discussion will focus on a single punctuation mark that can help determine whether a link is genuinely safe or potentially perilous.
Every year in January, the Consumer Electronics Show brings thousands of technology exhibitors to Las Vegas to showcase the up and coming innovations that will drive industries forward. It’s a fun time to be a tech nerd, because we get to see some pretty impressive stuff and how it might shape the future.
This year has some pretty exciting and interesting new technologies, and we wanted to share some of them with you!
Business can often be stressful with all the things that need to be considered. One of the most stressful situations workers face is when they face timelines. Projects need to meet the needs of customers, payroll has to be done, in fact there are very few situations a business faces where they don’t face some type of deadline or timeline. In this blog, we describe how technology can help businesses address timeline challenges:
Opening a new location is an exciting event for any business, but it's not without a litany of difficult decisions to make. One thing is certain, challenges always emerge. One thing you can do is plan your technology needs strategically to avoid headaches in that arena. Today, we take a look at how to best get your new location outfitted with the technology it needs to succeed.
It’s likely that the conference room holds significant importance for your business, serving as a reflection of the way your organization functions. It becomes crucial to ensure that your conference room creates the right impressions, especially if you tend to invite clients and prospects into your office. Let's explore ways to enhance your conference room and make it the best it can be.
Securing accounts is part of a comprehensive security strategy, and it all begins with practicing proper password hygiene. Are you using strong, complex passwords that are going to keep your accounts safe? While we always recommend using multiple measures to protect accounts, starting with your passwords can be a good way to build up to this. Let’s go over how to use better passwords for all of your online accounts and business needs.
A trained and engaged workforce is going to put you well ahead of the majority of your competition, and technology goes a long way toward making this goal a reality. With the right technology in place, your business and its employees can be productive and engaged even while working remotely. It all starts with increasing access to tools while building a company culture that can withstand the pressures of remote work.
Technology is one part of today’s business world that is known for its rapid rate of growth and innovation. In times when the future is uncertain, you can know with certainty that technology will continue to grow and address the pain points of tomorrow’s companies. That said, let’s take a look back to the past and see if we can make some educated guesses as to what the future holds.
Ensuring the security of your data is extremely important. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know that any unauthorized access to sensitive information can result in severe consequences for your business. The problem is that today’s cybercriminal tactics have become increasingly sophisticated, posing a constant challenge to organizational data security. Today, we look at six things you can do to keep your data secure.
We work with quite a few businesses, but one is a lot more remote than the rest of them. We wanted to share a story that one of our more discreet client organizations told us after we helped them resolve a particular challenge. Don’t worry, we asked, and sharing this won’t land us on the naughty list.
Businesses that struggle with managing technology have a lot to gain by working with a managed service provider, or MSP. These providers are able to help businesses just like yours maintain and improve operations through the use of technology management tools and services. Here are three of the greatest benefits that working with an MSP can provide for businesses just like yours.
Recently, artificial intelligence has become a widely discussed topic among businesses of all sizes. According to a Forbes survey, 97 percent of respondents see potential benefits in incorporating AI into their operations. Despite its pervasive integration into modern life, however, it's crucial to recognize that AI is a human creation and, as such, is susceptible to bias.
Planning anything is always a grind, and trying to plan the best strategy when you have only a partial understanding of the subject can lead to a lot of waste. Business technology is one of those subjects. Not only do you need to identify what tech will be cost-effective, you need to get a pretty rapid return on the investment you plan to make. That’s why getting a professional perspective is so important in cases like this.
Every organization needs to have a certain level of cybersecurity protection in place. That includes firewalls, antivirus, VPNs, encryption, and centrally managed security policies. Even so, many modern cybercriminals know that businesses have these protections in place, and they are working out ways around them.
The end of the year is always a great time to look back on the past and look forward to the future and what it might look like. One way you can do this is by looking to cut out some of the clutter within your organization’s network by examining how often your applications are used and which services you are subscribed to.
Technology is undeniably important for the future success of your business, but one thing that is continuously overlooked is if the technology that you bring is actually right for your business. Today, we will look at some of the technology that businesses use that can actually have a negative effect on your business’ effectiveness.
Email is complex, despite all appearances. It’s easy to overlook its complexities when you log into your account and it just works. However, you’ll need to ensure that your email is managed properly, as well as secured with protective measures for the underlying technology. Let’s go over some of the more effective methods you can use to keep your infrastructure secure from all types of threats, whether they are visible or hidden.
Selecting the right servers for your business is extremely important and can either promote optimal performance, reliability, and security of your business computing; or it can present nothing but problems. Today, we will go through six tips to help you make good decisions about servers for your business.
AI is, by a landslide, the technology of the year. It was just a matter of time before Microsoft introduced their own enterprise-ready AI platform, and just like the launch of most emerging technologies, there is a lot of confusion and unanswered questions, so let’s talk about what Copilot is, and go over some things you should know as a business owner.
The State of Maine in the United States has been the victim of a cyberattack.
That’s right, the whole state was hacked by a Russian hacking collective.
The state claims that over 1.3 million people’s personal information was compromised via an already known vulnerability in secure transfer service MOVEit Transfer. Unfortunately for the people of Maine, this vulnerability is known to be used by the Cl0p ransomware gang, based out of Russia.
Business Intelligence (BI) is a platform that uses the data that your business creates to help you make advanced business decisions. Starting to use data for business intelligence involves several key steps to effectively gather the data you want to sort through and successfully analyze it in a way that can allow you to understand your business better.
AI, or artificial intelligence, has made significant contributions to the world of business technology even at this stage of the game. AI can be used to streamline your business’ operations and processes, too. Let’s explore five ways that AI can help a business be more efficient and put forth their best efforts.
It’s very easy for printing to become a massive resource sink for your business, contributing to a considerable amount of waste. Businesses often take measures to lessen the amount of paper consumption in the workplace to help offset the cost of printing. Let’s look at some ways you can prevent printing from eating away at your profits.
All businesses depend on the Internet in at least some capacity, and it’s so commonplace and accessible these days that people often take it for granted. However, a lot of work goes into making sure that the infrastructure you know as the Internet remains accessible and operational. Let’s go over the hardware you’ll need to ensure you stay connected.
For reasons that we’re all too familiar with, the workplace changed drastically a few years ago when office workers everywhere suddenly found themselves thrust into remote work. As it turns out, a lot of them have liked being able to work remotely. That makes the efforts of a few outspoken companies to roll back remote work somewhat worrisome… but experts aren’t convinced these outliers represent the reality of the situation.
Nowadays, data security, especially on files that are attractive to hackers, has to be a priority. Many businesses have deployed a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to help them improve their data security. If you haven’t, understanding the myriad of benefits that businesses get from deploying a VPN will put in perspective just how useful the VPN can be.
The smartphone has become the go-to device for most people’s personal computing. With the aid of well-developed mobile applications, people are able to manage their digital lives, while also accessing resources that make managing all other aspects of their lives easier. Below are four tips to help you make the most of your smartphone.
In April 2023, Google made a statement claiming that the Android platform would be able to archive unused applications with the intention of preserving storage space on the device. This came with a caveat: it would only do so if the device was almost out of available space. This auto-archiving feature, however, was released to a pleasant little surprise; it is available to all users, regardless of how much storage space is left on the device.
Business continuity is a tricky beast, and one that is best fought with proactive and preventative measures. The reason for this is simple: any situation where your business’ data is put at risk could mean the end, and we are not catastrophizing when we say that. Let’s look at two issues that are only small problems at the surface level, but could snowball into serious problems.
Video gaming holds a special place in society, with its staggering annual revenue of over $260 billion making it a global entertainment powerhouse. Despite this, many consider it the ultimate time sink. Consequently, few regard video games and interactive media as having any practical application in the business world. Today, we aim to challenge this belief by outlining how video games can actually benefit your business.
Technology is constantly evolving, but over the past couple of years, if you thought of yourself as being technologically savvy, you would have a pretty good understanding of the technologies that are trending in society. Let’s take a brief look at five technologies that everyone should have a good grasp on.
Managing your business efficiently requires judicious allocation of limited resources, encompassing budget, time, and the capabilities of your workforce. It is paramount to ensure their effective management. Let's delve into fundamental practices that can help you optimize the resources at your business' disposal.
Microsoft developed their Teams platform to help people collaborate better. Remote collaboration has been on the uptick for several years, but the COVID-19 pandemic made it a regular feature in business processes. Recently, Microsoft has added a few improvements to the platform to help enhance its utility even further.
Technology is not only essential to the well being of your business, it is also an element of your business that you have complete control over. This is rare. To get the most out of your business’ technology, you will want to adhere to a proactive management strategy. In this blog, we will talk about why staying proactive on your technology management can save your business substantial money.
In recent years, educational institutions have widely adopted the regular use of laptops in the classroom, and with budgets being a pressing concern for many of these institutions, the cost-sensitive nature of Chromebooks make them an excellent option… at least, that would be the assumption. However, this is not the case in the slightest, as the software that powers these devices regularly reaches its end of life, despite the hardware being perfectly capable of more.
Technology has the power to hold businesses back when it’s not implemented correctly, but it also presents an opportunity to overcome challenges facing modern businesses. There are several interesting technologies that might seem strange at first for business purposes, but we suspect that they could bring significant value to the table for workers, customers, and your organization. Let’s look at these three technologies and how they might make significant contributions to your business’ continued success.
You might think that adding additional security measures can only benefit your business, and this is true in most circumstances, save one: security exhaustion. If you don’t make it easy for your employees to adhere to your security policies, then you could inadvertently be making them perform slower than usual and your solutions could be getting in the way of their work.
IT professionals have all but proclaimed the tape backup system, which dominated the data backup space for decades, to be all but dead. This declaration may have been premature however. Over the past several years, there has been a resurgence in companies that use tape backup. This week, we will go into why businesses are willingly utilizing what can only be described as an antiquated technology for their system redundancy.
Back in July, the White House secured commitments from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI to help manage the risks that artificial intelligence potentially poses. More recently, eight more companies—Adobe, Cohere, IBM, Nvidia, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, and Stability—also pledged to maintain “the development of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI,” as a White House brief reported.
Any business that utilizes technology is sure to accumulate wasted materials over time, whether it’s a drawer full of old chargers or a room full of old, outdated workstations. To make sure that they don’t land themselves in a landfill, you should make a conscious effort to recycle and reuse your old technology in some way. Here are some options to consider.
Let’s talk a little bit about deepfakes. If you aren’t aware of this technology, deepfakes are essentially synthetic media. Typically they come in the form of videos or images that use artificial intelligence (AI) to replace a person’s likeness with another’s. With deepfake technology, people can convince an audience that a person said something they didn’t say. This deliberate digital subterfuge can bring with it a whole lot of problems. This week we will outline a few of them.
It’s an unfortunate fact that cybercriminals are motivated to attack places that contain large volumes of sensitive data, but typically lack the budget or in-house skills to sufficiently protect it. It’s even more unfortunate that this description directly applies to many schools and school systems.
Let’s talk about what schools have to offer cybercriminals, and what they need to do as a result.
We know you don’t need to be reminded that the administrative part of your job is one of the more unpleasant bits, at least one of the more boring parts of your work. One task that is particularly dull is creating different folders for all your employees, projects, and organizational needs. Microsoft Excel, however, makes it much easier to handle this mundane task—and you’ll feel like a pro for using it in this way.
Despite its undeniable value, data is incredibly fragile. The loss of critical information can spell disaster for a company, making data backup a paramount concern. In this article, we'll explore why data backup is so important for businesses and why it should be at the forefront of every organization's IT strategy.
It’s borderline impossible to conduct any business online without seeing potential threats abound. It also doesn’t help that threats tend to disguise themselves to avoid being detected. Today, we want to share a social media threat that one of our employees discovered while going about their day, and we think even a cautious user could have been fooled by it.
The cloud is an amazing tool for just about any business, allowing for countless benefits that span endless possibilities. However, because it involves the Internet and hosting data in an online environment, there are security challenges that naturally come about as a result of utilizing it. Let’s consider some of the security mistakes that businesses can experience while using the cloud.
Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for organizing and analyzing data, and its ceiling for mastery is incredibly high. Thankfully, you don’t need to know every little thing about Excel to get value out of it, and thanks to built-in features like Auto Filter, you can still get plenty of value out of it even if you’re not a power user. Let’s go over how you can use Auto Filter to more effectively navigate spreadsheets filled with data.
In today’s interconnected world, an organization dedicated to fraud protection like the United States Federal Trade Commission is vital, especially when you consider how advanced digital technology has become and continues to grow. The FTC works to ensure consumer data stays protected by the businesses to which they entrust it. Let’s look at the Safeguards Rule and what your business should know about it.
Many individuals were skeptical about foldable phones when they were first introduced, all thanks to higher prices and stories about how fragile they are. That said, those who have stuck with the concept have contributed to the excitement and built it up to be a legitimate option that actually makes sense.
Windows 10 has been an integral part of many users' digital lives for several years. Microsoft has recently announced the end of support for Windows 10, however, which has raised concerns and questions among its many users. This week, we will delve into the details of Windows 10's end of support, its implications, and what steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition.
Whether we want to admit it or not, the future can be scary, and even the most powerful technology out there is not enough to keep today’s data preserved while it’s in storage. Decades from now, or perhaps even a century, are you confident that your data will be available and ready to use? We’re here today to discuss why you shouldn’t be extremely confident in your hard drives.
With the latest version of Windows, Windows 11, users can leverage all manner of great productivity-boosting features to take full advantage of the new technology at their fingertips. Let’s look at some of the features that users of Windows 11 can use to make better use of their time with the operating system.
For today’s business, there are very few threats that are as pervasive as cyberthreats. For this reason organizations that are willing to invest in their cybersecurity seem to have more control over their data and operations. With cyberthreats constantly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, it is crucial to equip ourselves with the right tools to protect our digital assets. In this week’s blog post, we will explore some of the most important cybersecurity tools that every individual and organization should consider implementing.
Google Docs has been a worthy competitor to the ubiquitous Microsoft Word since the search engine giant launched the service in 2006. Since then, it’s been used by personal accounts and businesses as a fantastic alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. Google was able to beat Microsoft to the punch with a nearly fully-featured, browser-based document editor that allowed incredibly easy collaboration and sharing capabilities. However, there’s one little hang-up that people often run into when using Google Docs, and we’re going to show you how to overcome it.
Have you ever wanted to put a YouTube video on repeat for an inordinately long amount of time, perhaps looping on a kiosk or on a conference room tv in the background? There are several ways to do this, including a feature built into YouTube itself and third-party websites. Let’s take a look at both options.
Viruses and malware are bad. Ransomware is crippling. Data breaches in some cases can more or less shut down a business. We talk about these threats all the time, but for most people, they are just scary-sounding buzzwords. Today, we want to talk about the more personalized threats that are much more cunning, and in some ways, much more dangerous.
The right collaboration tools can be game-changing for business, but only if they are appropriately configured and integrated with intention into your infrastructure. Today, we are bringing you four common mistakes that businesses make with their collaboration tool security that could hold you back from getting the most from our solutions.
I was thinking about a funny tech support issue I ran into many years ago, and thought it would be fun to share it with everyone. All names have been changed to protect the innocent. If you’ve ever had to spend hours chasing down the root of a problem, only to find that it was the dumbest thing possible, you’ll probably relate to this!
There are challenges that go with running any business. Some of the most common come from unhappy employees. If you understand some of the most common complaints that today’s worker may make, you can proactively ward against them and create a happier and more productive workplace. Let’s take a look at five of the most common employee complaints in today’s workplace and what you can do about them.