Printers are often overlooked, but for many organizations they are a critical piece of the daily workflow. For many Rapid City businesses, this became a reality as much of the office workforce switched to working remotely.
Whether your team is in the office or dialing in remotely, managing documents and securing your printers is important, and controlling the use of your printers is often a great way to reduce unnecessary spending.
As people have increasingly shifted to working remotely, the importance of accessible support for their devices has risen substantially. This has led many businesses to use managed IT service providers, or MSPs, like us to provide this kind of support. To do so, we’ve invested in a series of tools collectively called remote monitoring and management software (RMM). Let’s share some of the reasons that you want an IT support provider that uses RMM to their advantage.
If your business uses as much technology as the average business, you will need to ensure that it is properly documented. Today, we’ll go through what a managed service provider includes in their documentation practices.
If you’re fortunate enough, you may be one of the South Dakota businesses in an industry that is capable of having your staff work from home. Fortunately, law firms tend to fall under this designation. While this allows you to remain productive, according to South Dakota’s data protection law, your business still has a responsibility to secure your clients’ data, even if your team is not in the office. Is your remote team up to the task?
It’s not uncommon where a situation arises and you will find yourself working from home. To make this work, it is important that you keep a few additional issues in mind so that you can make the most of it. We have put together a few simple best practices that you should keep in mind as you operate remotely.
There are many reasons that your team may want (or need) to work from home, and there are many reasons to allow them to do so. A 2019 survey by OwlLabs indicated that 71 percent of remote workers are happy with their job (as compared to 55 percent of on-site workers); remote workers responded that they are 13 percent more likely than onsite workers to stay in their current job for five more years than onsite workers will; and when respondents claimed to be working longer than 40 hours per week, onsite workers were doing so out of necessity, while remote workers did so out of desire and enjoyment.
While perhaps a little different than other entities, non-profits are still a business. This is a significant misunderstanding that frequently afflicts organizations and businesses that don’t operate in order to generate profits. Why should a non-profit be any different than any other kind of business, otherwise?
Of all the reasons that a business may have to postpone a migration to the cloud, there is one that probably ranks as the worst. This one reason effectively boils down to a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” mentality. Despite whatever history of success a business may have, statistics tell us that, eventually, any business will experience data loss, period.
As we have often said, the greatest vulnerability in securing your system will be due to human error. Not due to maliciousness or incompetence, just mistakes that we all have made. Phishing is one of the most common methods of compromising your security, its goal to capture sensitive information. Since phishing often disguises itself as a friendly entity, it can be extremely difficult to recognize until it’s too late.
While cloud computing is becoming more mainstream, we find there is still some pushback from IT departments and ‘C’ level executives who don’t understand what the cloud offers and IT professionals may be worried more about maintaining their control than realizing it’s time to let go.
The latest malware threat that attacks IoT devices is called the VPNFilter. VPNFilter is malware which infects routers or NAS (network storage devices). These devices are primarily older consumer and SOHO (small office home office) grade level devices. When first discovered last May, VPNFilter had already hijacked half a million devices from a handful of vendors. However, as time has progressed, the malware had increased its reach, commandeering six new vendors and increasing the number of models it could infect.
As part of the nation’s focus on jobs for the future, most elementary and high schools have been emphasizing STEM, (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) as a means to provide students with the skills needed to compete in a brave new world. As technology-based employment is destined to become even more dominant than ever, communities in the know are preparing their students for the jobs of tomorrow.
When was the last time you saw a room full of color-coded files in your health provider’s office? If it was recently, then your provider is part of the approximately 10% of providers who still update and maintain their patients’ (your) records by hand and on paper. Today, nearly 90% of office-based health providers are using some form of electronic health record (EMR/EHRs) system.
The Internet of Things is everywhere, from the devices in our pockets, to the computers on our desk and even the stoves we cook on. Connectivity is the trend and smart devices are providing all manner of devices with unheard of functionality. We are becoming more and more connected to our technology, as they become more connected to each other. However, the more our devices speak to each other, often without our knowledge, the greater the risk of exposure. Quite frankly, as our devices become smarter, so do the cybercriminals and with our ‘always on’ connectivity, the hackers have ample time to find the vulnerabilities in our networks.
Despite cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, becoming more and more part of the mainstream, there is still some confusion as to what exactly cryptocurrency is. While many of us know of the concept of cryptocurrency, many of us don’t truly understand what steps are needed to acquire and to use them.
As more small and medium-sized businesses realize the value in working with a managed IT provider, there is now an increasing number of computer repair shops who are hopping on the IT bandwagon; claiming to offer fully-proactive managed IT services. While a computer repair shop may be great at recovering a broken hard drive or solving a quick issue, managed IT is much more than fixing broken stuff.
When it comes to securing your network, are you treating security and protection like a 9-to-5 job? That is, do you assume that once you close your office for the day, hackers stop attacking your servers and go home to eat dinner? That it’s like, “Honey, Star Trek is on, stop your DDoS and make some popcorn?”
Over the past couple of decades, we have been quickly reducing the barriers between average people and technology. There was a time not so long ago when much of the technology we use these days was considered out of reach financially for most people.
For technology to become accessible, it must first become affordable and when it becomes affordable; it becomes disposable. In the early days of technology, the products were expensive, which meant that people invested the time to keep them running. If they broke, you got it fixed; if it couldn’t be fixed, you tried to save whatever parts you could salvage, because you may need them for something else. It wasn’t uncommon to go into garages and basements and find pieces and pieces of other technology being saved for other uses.
You know that sound.
The Click….Click….Click, as your hard drive searches for data it most likely will never find again. The sound of the drive heads hitting the internal head stop. You did back up your data, didn’t you? If so, what did you back it up to?
