Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

There are situations that happen every day that can be extraordinarily stressful for people. Some people are better under duress, while some people fold like origami, but no matter what type of person you are, the workplace is one of the biggest stressors for human beings. Today, we’ll review some sources of stress and how people react to it.

The word “computer” actually originated in the 1600s, when it was used to describe a person who carries out calculations and the requisite processes. Today, those processes are carried out mechanically. Let’s examine the piece of the computer that allows it to do so, the CPU.

Money is what makes the world go around, or so they say. Everyone is in business to make money, but the degree to which the organization deals with it might vary. For example, some companies, like banks, are designed to make money by helping others manage theirs. Banks and marketplace lenders take advantage of what is called financial technology, or FinTech, to more effectively provide services to individuals or organizations that want to manage, borrow, pay, see, or use their money in more efficient ways.

There are few applications that have come along that are as attractive as VoIP is to a small business owner or administrator. The promise of eliminating the recurring expense of a commercial phone bill, while using the bandwidth that’s already on the books seems like a complete no-brainer for a business, but there are some pitfalls that have to be sidestepped to get the most out of a VoIP solution. Today, we will look at all the pros and cons of implementing a dedicated VoIP solution, and whether the promise of the technology matches up to the reality of deploying it.

As great as technology can be for a business, there is typically a lot more going on behind the scenes. Therefore, it becomes evident after just a few minutes of looking into it, that cabling is a much bigger deal than you’ve ever considered. Having an effective strategy in place to manage your cabling initiatives will go a long way toward ensuring your organization’s technology cabling is squared away.

Innovation has always been a major part of building better solutions, but some of the most recent trends have been in regard to enhancing security. Adapting to the threat environment is one of the most important parts of running a business, so innovation has been geared toward giving users and organizations alike the security they need. That being said, a lot can change in a short period of time. Let’s take a look at some predictions for how security will change in the near future.

Google is well-known in the technology industry for providing great tools not only for the average computer user, but professional organizations all around the world. One of the largest is Gmail, Google’s signature email solution. If you pair it with the right extensions, Gmail’s usefulness far exceeds what it can achieve on its own. Today’s blog will help you optimize your efficiency using Google Chrome extensions for Gmail.

If you know more about your organization and its customers, you’ll be able to make better decisions about the future of your business. Thanks to an increased focus on business intelligence, even small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of these analytical tools to improve operations and customer relations. What is business intelligence? How does it work, and why does your business need it?

When you were a kid, you may have disregarded your parents telling you to turn off the lights when they aren’t in use. Perhaps you didn’t understand just how much money it saved in the long run, but now that you run your own business, every little bit counts--especially when it comes to lowering your monthly power bill. A new method of energy control could drastically improve your business’ bottom line.

The Internet is its own little world. Actually, it’s a massive world that presents a seemingly endless array of options. According to a study done by MIT, the average American spends 24 hours a week online. That’s an average. Some people are locked into the Internet every waking minute of their day. Despite its sheer size (currently over 644 million websites), people typically spend their time online on a very small number of sites. Today, we take a look at four of the most visited websites in the west and what makes them so popular.

It’s not unheard of for the Windows Recycling Bin to disappear following a major update or upgrade to Windows 10. In fact, this can happen for not just Windows 10, but updates to Windows 7 or 8.1 as well. How can you make sure that your Recycle Bin doesn’t mysteriously disappear, and how can you make it come back? Read on to find out.

While it may not be fun to consider the worst-case scenario, it is important that you have a plan to ensure that your business will be able to survive when the chips are down. This plan to ensure that your business will continue is called (appropriately enough) a business continuity plan, and needs to address a few things that we will go over here.

The one truth about technology is that it will always break--usually at the most inopportune time. When it does finally kick the bucket, how are you getting rid of it? It’s not as though you can just toss an old server or printer in the bin. Recycling your technology is the most responsible thing to do, but you have to be cognizant of the company you are trusting to dispose of your Compaq Presario from 1997, because they may not be doing what they are claiming to do; or worse yet, they may be trying to syphon data off your old hardware.

It’s not really news that Microsoft Word is one of the best pieces of software for productivity, but it will still surprise you from time-to-time. Since it can cost an arm and a leg to purchase the professional version of Adobe Acrobat for a singular purpose, people had to find a way to edit the .pdf files they received. Not surprisingly, Microsoft Word is a great solution to this problem. Today, we will show you how to edit a PDF in the newest version of Microsoft Word.

There has been a recent trend in the style of office management to give employees more influence over their environment, providing them with extra comforts to encourage productivity. However, persistent technology shortcomings have continued to undermine these efforts. In response, the concept of the smart office has developed.

Normal. Usual. Typical. When your business is going well, it all feels “normal”. When you are faced with a major technology problem, however, it can trigger a series of catastrophic issues that interrupt, or in some cases destroy, the equilibrium reached when things are going as they should. This peace of mind is the main reason many businesses owners like you have chosen to sign a service level agreement (SLA) with an outsourced IT provider. Keeping everything “normal” can keep profit rolling in. Today we look behind the SLA to show you how it works to protect your business’ normal.

We often take for granted that people know what we are talking about when we talk about popular connectors, but really how do these systems work? For this week’s tech term, we are going to take a look at something we all have used and probably are actively using: the Universal Serial Bus (USB). We will take a look at the origins of this technology, the development of it, and how it is being used today.

Zero-day threats are all over the news when they are discovered, but what are they exactly? In short, zero-day threats are vulnerabilities found in software that are currently being exploited in the wild without the developers having found a fix for them. In other words, the developer has zero days to prepare for such an exploit. One of the latest vulnerabilities of this nature utilizes Internet Explorer, and thankfully, there is now a patch for it.

Let’s face it--you waste countless hours on the phone dealing with vendors for all of your business needs. Whether it’s a new software solution or hardware component, you’ll have to go through someone to get it, whether it’s a big retailer like Amazon or your local Mom and Pop computer store but working with your vendors has several unforeseen costs that you might not even know exist.

Email is a modern classic as far as business solutions are concerned, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an office that didn’t use it in some capacity or another. However, because email is so popular, it has become a favorite attack vector of malicious users. Fortunately, there are some basic practices that will help keep your email account secure and your communications private.

Follow Password Guidelines
As you might imagine, one of the most important, basic ways that you can lock down your email account is to ensure that your password is sufficiently strong. Too often, breach statistics (and similar data sets) reveal that passwords are still overwhelmingly insecure. Pet names, birthdays and anniversaries, and favorite sports teams are used as passwords far more than they should be, as are common keyboard patterns, like qwerty, asdf, and the like. Some minimal social engineering could very easily provide someone with access to an email account they have no business being in.

To counter this, avoid the temptation to resort to formulaic, easy-to-guess password systems - like, for instance, smushing your alma mater’s mascot together with the number of your childhood home. Again, these password conventions are the first things that a cybercriminal will try if they want to get into your email account. Instead, do your best to rely on an as-random-as-possible string of numbers and letters - creating a different one for each of your accounts. This will ensure that your passwords are as strong as possible with the added benefit of protecting the rest of your accounts if one of your passwords is discovered.

Of course, for the sake of pragmatism, is it totally realistic to remember a completely random string of alphanumeric characters for everything that requires a password? For many, it isn’t. That’s why many resort to using, rather than a password, a passphrase. A passphrase takes a sentence memorable to the individual and turns it into a mnemonic device. So, a fan of films by Rob Reiner could take a line from one of his works and create a password from it, like “uRdBS” or “HFSTC” from The Princess Bride, or “UCHTT” from A Few Good Men.

Avoid the Unknown
Once you’ve accessed your email, there are a few ways that you can avoid putting yourself at risk. One very important way is to avoid the links in email unless you have verified that they do, in fact, go to (and come from) where they appear to.

First, where will the included link direct you? Links can be tricky things, which makes them a favorite of cybercriminals to use in emails. If the link is attached to text, you should hover over it and peek at the status bar that pops up before clicking on it. While the text might say that it brings you to the sender’s official webpage, the link could very well actually direct you to a domain that uploads a virus into your system. If the status bar says that you will be directed to someplace that doesn’t look quite right, skip the link.

You also shouldn’t blindly open an email that hasn’t come from a known or verified source, and even that can now be dangerous. There is a tactic that can be used to great effect as a way to snare even the most cybersecurity-mindful targets called email spoofing. As its name suggests, email spoofing is the act of forging an email’s header so that it appears to have come from someone else, likely someone trusted enough that the email will be opened, read, and interacted with.

As a result, it is best to verify the email with the cited sender whenever possible, through a different means of communication. Whether that means a quick phone call or instant message before you open the email, it is better to be safe than it is to be sorry.

What are some other ways that you keep your email from becoming a security risk? Share them in the comments, and make sure you take a moment and subscribe to this blog!