July 2019

Tip of the Week: Valuing Managed IT

It’s difficult to put a value on your organization’s technology solutions. While you might be tempted to assign a monetary value based on how much it all saves you, you also need to examine how much it costs you in the long term. Can you optimize your network even more than it currently is? Can you even keep track of the countless moving parts of your IT infrastructure? Managed IT might be able to help.

Alert: Microsoft is Retiring Two Major Operating Systems

Windows is a great operating system, but unless you’re keeping track of which version you have, you’ll be in for a rude awakening when it comes time to upgrade. In just six short months, there will be two Windows End of Life events for major technology solutions: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You need to start thinking about upgrading now before it’s too late to do so.

Should You Be Holding Your Staff Accountable for Failed Phishing Tests?

It can be a real head-scratcher when one of your otherwise well-performing employees routinely falls for the simulated phishing attacks that you roll out as a part of your cybersecurity awareness strategy. For all intents and purposes, the person is a great employee, but when it comes to acting with caution, they fail. If you’ve made a point to prioritize your staff’s working knowledge of phishing attacks, do you replace this employee? We’ll take a look at it today.

Tip of the Week: Extremely Useful Tips

All Windows machines are capable of leveraging built-in shortcuts. While it might sound ludicrous, using keyboard shortcuts can eliminate the eight days that the average employee spends every year moving between the keyboard and mouse. Shocking, right? Keyboard shortcuts let you retake all of that lost time and use it to be more productive.

Automation Growth and Your Business

Automation has been a hot button term for some time. Whether it is in reference to robots that manufacturers use to make their assembly lines more effective, the integrated workflows that today’s customer relationship management software presents, or A.I. crawling through mounds of data to help an entrepreneur better understand his/her business, automation is helping businesses move faster and be more agile. Today, we will look at how organizations are using automation, and how, even if it isn’t a big part of your business strategy today, it will need to be in the future.

Too Many Accountants are Fielding Technology Queries

Accountants are asked a lot of questions. You’d expect as much as they manage a lot of organizational money, and can give small business owners and executives straight-forward advice about whether or not investments make sense for a company. With the recent increase in technology use for small businesses, accountants have been fielding more than financial queries, they’ve been directly asked about whether a business should implement technology. Today, we are going to explain why, regardless of the answer, your accountant is the wrong person to ask.

Tip of the Week: Here’s How to Calculate Your Projects ROI

As you company grows, you will need to invest a good deal of the revenue that you take in to keep operations from falling into complacency. In order to get a good idea what investments would be most advantageous, doing a proactive ROI analysis of project you plan to undertake can put your business in a position to be able to properly anticipate every aspect of a successful project. Let’s take a look at the variables of an ROI analysis.

Our Top 7 List of IT Myths and Wild Conspiracies

Being in IT, we’ve seen and heard it all. Between the campfire horror stories of technicians to the outlandish IT conspiracies and ‘home remedies’ that get passed around, we’ve decided to compile a list of some of our favorite IT and technology myths.

65 Bitcoin Ransom Paid by Florida City

65 of any currency doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but when you are dealing in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, it adds up quick. One city on Florida’s Atlantic coast is finding that out the hard way after getting hit with a ransomware that stymied the city of 35,000 government’s ability to function. Let’s take a look at the situation that made the city’s leaders agree to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to scammers.

Tip of the Week: Working Around Windows’ Restore Point Issue

One would think that a program called System Restore would be one that would be prioritized as one to get right. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case, as utilizing one of your restore points after performing a Windows Update can cause some serious issues. For our tip, we’ll go over how to avoid these issues with a workaround.