Tip of the Week: Little-Known Windows Features
Windows 10 is a valuable asset for any business, but are you taking full advantage of it? We’ll discuss some of the lesser known tips and tricks that your organization can take advantage of to get more out of your business technology.
Show Your Desktop
Have you ever been in a situation where you have many different applications open, all at the same time, and they cover your entire screen? This keeps you from seeing your desktop, which can be a major inconvenience. There is a very easy way to check your desktop, even if it’s covered with applications, and you certainly don’t have to close or minimize all of your programs. All you have to do is locate the little button on the bottom-right corner of the taskbar. It’s a bit slim, so we don’t blame you for not seeing it. All the way on the right, past the time and date and the notifications section, you’ll see a sliver of a button–this is what you want to click on.
Rotate Your Screen
To rotate your screen, you can use the keyboard shortcut. Ctrl+Alt+D, as well as the direction button, will allow you to rotate your screen 90 degrees in whichever direction you indicate with your keystroke. Even if this doesn’t have any real practical use, you might be able to use it to rotate an image or document that isn’t already in the right position.
Right-Click the Start Menu Tiles and Taskbar
You can right-click the Start menu to customize any tiles located in it. You can do various things with them, like adjust their size, unpin the tiles from the Start menu, or turn off the live tiles that are out of place. You can also do various things with your taskbar by right-clicking it, such as adding shortcuts, activating Cortana, and more.
If Windows 10 tips and tricks are what you crave, look no further. To learn more about your business technology, subscribe to Catalyst Technology Group’s blog.
A VPN Allows Productivity Without Sacrificing Security
Security needs to be a priority for everyone involved with business. This has led to a rise in the use of solutions that will protect the security and privacy of the user and their systems. A very common, yet effective, means of securing your data is to use a virtual private network, or VPN.
A VPN is a network that masks your activity through encryption and routes your web traffic through servers located somewhere that you are not. These safeguards allow a user to worry less about having their data stolen in transit. This feature makes VPNs useful to businesses, especially to organizations that have employees that work remotely, on the road, or from multiple locations.
Using a VPN, a worker can remotely access their business’ network without fear of their data being harvested, allowing the worker to maintain their productivity, whether they’re sick and stuck at home or across the world on business. Some VPNs can even maintain a virtual desktop, allowing a worker to access their workstation remotely and use it just as though they were in the office.
In a world where everything seems to happen online, it is more important than ever to protect your business against cybercrime. Criminals have been quick to embrace technology and use it to their advantage.
Let’s consider a quick scenario: you’re on a business trip, staying the night in a chain hotel. At your free continental breakfast, you decide to get some work done on your laptop. You could potentially be at risk of cyberattack the moment you connect the device to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, and unlike other crimes, the cybercriminal doesn’t even have to be there to participate. They could be sitting in a diner down the street or at their 9-to-5 job on the other side of town, letting a planted device to their dirty work for them.
It is unnerving to think of how much someone can learn about you based on data they intercept. A journalist was able to take data from a completely ‘smart’ apartment in Bucharest and write a story about the resident of that apartment based off a week’s worth of data. The fictional story was almost completely accurate to the resident, even though the writer had never met him. Imagine the damage that a cyber criminal could do with that amount of comprehensive data.
For reasons like these, it is all the more important that you leverage a VPN for your business’ protection.
VPNs are also commonly used to sneak past geographic restrictions on certain websites, which has led to some countries banning them outright. China, for example, has made the use of VPNs illegal after they were used to undermine the Great Firewall, allowing citizens to view content that was censored by the government. Russia has followed a similar route, with Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Venezuela all considering following suit. These laws make it considerably more difficult for many businesses to ensure their security, as these countries may find out sooner or later.
As for your business, a VPN is a tool that you should implement to better ensure your data security. Catalyst Technology Group can help you get one set up, just give us a call at (317) 705-0333.
Why Your In-House Email Server Probably Isn’t Worth The Trouble
Most businesses rely on email in at least some capacity. Nowadays, organizations often choose to outsource the management of their email servers, including their hosting, to other organizations, most notably cloud providers for ease of use. Here are some of the benefits that you can gain from switching your in-house email management to a cloud-based email server.
It’s Less Expensive
If we asked you how old your exchange server is, would you be able to fit the number of years on one hand? There is a fair-enough chance that it’s an older piece of hardware, which means that it inevitably costs more to run and maintain. Older technology tends to break down more often, and it can quickly become an asset sink in the long run. Not only is it an expensive approach to email management, but it’s also an outdated practice. Why host your email server in-house when you have so many great cloud providers like Microsoft and Google that can accomplish the same task in a better way?
Control Is a Non-Issue
Having an in-house server comes with more control, but this is something that is constantly changing. Cloud-hosted solutions often come with many customization options. Additionally, you’re protected against the problems that could arise from having a physical server unit. Think about a power outage or a fire, for example. A cloud-based email server can continue running even when the conditions for an in-house server unit aren’t ideal.
A cloud email solution also comes with various protections against online threats, like viruses and malware. Since email is such an important part of any business venture, it must be isolated from other parts of your infrastructure so as not to jeopardize your network.
Less On-Premise Infrastructure
Your employees need constant access to data, including email. While each system is responsible for one particular goal, progress can come undone if even one of these systems fails to function properly. If your email server encounters trouble, it needs to be fixed, as communications could be halted. This could lead to miscommunications and work not being done properly, causing tasks to be repeated and time being wasted. Thanks to the cloud eliminating many of the components found in the traditional in-house infrastructure, you’ll be able to keep it as simple as possible. You won’t miss maintaining multiple hardware solutions on a day-to-day basis.
Does your business need a hand with email server management? To learn more, reach out to Catalyst Technology Group at (317) 705-0333.
How to Ensure Business Continuity, According to Financial Institutions
Your business could stand to learn quite a bit from the way that financial institutions handle business continuity. Technology is a central part of the way that Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) function, as well as the companies that these organizations oversee. Data loss and downtime are the arch nemeses of these organizations, so it makes sense that you look at what these organizations do to prevent it.
The FRB and SEC demand certain standards be met by any organizations that they are associated with. You can use these regulations to learn a bit about how best to protect your organization from data loss and downtime. Even if your organization isn’t legally required to meet these standards, it’s still a good way to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
Personnel
Human resources are one of the most important parts of running your business, as without workers, your organization doesn’t exist. It’s surprising how often they aren’t considered in a data backup plan. Therefore, you’ll want to ensure that you have identified key personnel and establish emergency contacts in the event that you need to make impossibly quick decisions. Also identify who is in charge of your business continuity plan, as they will be central to pulling it off in the long run.
Communication and Planning
Communication is also an integral part of any business continuity plan. You need to have a system set up to notify your team in the event of a disaster event, as well as have a hotline set up that allows employees to receive updates. Keep updated phone records and have backup communication plans in the event that you’re unable to use your primary one. Lastly, ensure that you have a way to contact your vendors and, most importantly, your customers, as they need to be aware of any issues that keep them from receiving any services rendered.
Technology Troubles
Technology plays an important role in the recovery process, just like it does during normal operations. You need to have a clear-cut process for recovering data, and you should be taking advantage of multiple locations for your data backup needs. More than anything, though, you should implement a priority list for your business technology solutions. This priority list should include the following critical assets: hardware (servers, network components, mainframe), software (applications, operating systems, etc), communications (network and telecommunications), data (files and records), operations processing equipment, and office equipment.
General Checklist
Here are a few more topics to consider that are often overlooked by businesses planning for disaster recovery:
- An official declaration of a disaster scenario
- An alternative location for operations to continue
- Automated systems that can run manually
- A maintenance plan
- A way to practice the execution of your disaster recovery plan
If your business implements a poor data backup and disaster recovery solution, you will feel it when it comes time to actually respond to a disaster. You’ll lose time and precious resources scrambling to get things back in working order. A proactive stance could be the only way to combat a disaster scenario. To learn more about how to protect your organization, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Would You Rather Trust Something That Repeatedly Breaks, Or Something That’s Managed?
When you are looking for help with your IT maintenance, would you rather experience downtime and frustration, or would you rather not? While the right answer to this question is clear, many organizations still rely on antiquated break-fix IT support that holds them back from achieving greatness. What are the differences between traditional break-fix IT support and a managed service provider?
Let’s take a focused look at a certain issue, as well as how both break-fix IT and managed IT services approach it.
Break-Fix IT
A break-fix IT strategy focused on being more reactive than proactive. Basically, you only maintain your systems when they are already experiencing problems. This generally includes a technician arriving on-site to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, this method of maintaining your business’s technology isn’t sustainable, and you’ll soon realize that the downtime suffered from such a practice could be crippling in the long run.
Technology helps your business move at incredibly high speeds. Without it, you’ll be forced to slog through the mud when even a single part of your hardware infrastructure breaks down. If the hardware is required by your employees to perform their duties, you could wind up with not just a single employee being incapable of working, but multiple workers, all of whom are wasting time and money.
You have to take into account numerous factors when determining the true cost of break-fix IT services. The travel time to the office, the time spent by the technician on-site, how many employees aren’t capable of working, and the expense of purchasing new hardware. Furthermore, if they aren’t able to make the repairs with the parts they have on-hand, you’ll have to wait until the parts are ordered and delivered, further increasing just about all aspects of break-fix IT. The end result is your organization being unable to perform as intended for at least some duration of time, which also decreased profit and cash flow. Simply put, the more economical choice is managed IT services.
Managed IT Services
Just like break-fix IT, there’s a certain history to managed IT services. This development came about as a result of the shortcomings of break-fix IT–rather than waiting for problems to occur so they could be resolved, someone out there thought it would be better to prevent the problems from happening in the first place, therefore eliminating the need for them to be resolved. At its most optimal, managed IT proactively monitors your network to resolve minor issues before they can cause operational problems.
This leads to a predictable monthly rate to cover any issues that crop up remotely, which keeps your business from suffering due to downtime. Since most problems can be resolved remotely, it’s likely that you won’t even notice the problems in the first place, since they can be detected and resolved so quickly. Compared to the sporadic and volatile price range for break-fix IT, a monthly payment that covers your service level agreement is a much more appealing (and manageable) investment.
To learn more about managed IT services, reach out to Catalyst Technology Group at (317) 705-0333.
3 Strategies and Trends That Are Changing the Role of Your IT Department
With technology being so important for modern business, these organizations have to be cognizant of industry and technology trends that could be used to improve their company’s productivity. How do the newest business technology trends affect your organization’s ability to sustain or build revenue streams?
Here are three extremely important business technology trends that are being talked about constantly, and for good reason: they produce or lead to substantial ROI.
Uptick in Mobility
This trend has been building for years, but for small businesses that may not have the resources of larger outfits, enhancing your mobility is an absolute must. Today, when speaking of technological mobility, many people assume that the use of smartphones as a workstation is what is being bantered around. But a whole mobility strategy just boils down to creating a plan to manage the systems and data flow of using this enhanced mobility.
Businesses that once only managed their internal network now have to find ways to properly leverage mobile device management software to ensure that they keep their data protected, no matter who needs access to it. Moreover, companies are beginning to put together comprehensive Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies to help them keep potentially harmful malware off of their network. Mobile device management allows for whitelisting apps that are useful and blacklisting apps that aren’t. The idea is to educate your employees on proper security practices, and reinforcing these practices with technology solutions to shore up any notable weaknesses.
Emphasis on Security
To say that security hasn’t been a major consideration for businesses in the past, would be largely presumptuous. The more that organizations depend on technology, however, has altered the threat landscape precipitously. Only a few years ago viruses and malware that slowed a system down or tracked certain information were annoying, but not completely devastating to a business’ efficiency. Today, however, the scene has changed.
Nowadays, there is the constant threat of high-level malware such as ransomware that can present major headaches for any company. These threats move fast and adapt even faster, creating new strains of malware that even commercial-grade antivirus programs can’t stop. Add to that the constant threat of hacking, social engineering, and constant phishing attack have made any businesses that leverages technology have to focus on the security solutions they outfit their network with.
A More Proactive Strategy
There was a time, not that long ago, that when a piece of technology failed, a business would just have it repaired or replace it, dealing with the downtime the problem created, as if there were not another way. The managed IT services way is to constantly monitor, manage, and maintain, and log all parts of your technology to ensure that uptime is optimized. By fixing issues before they become problems, an MSP can help the modern business greatly reduce downtime and technology troubles.
Technology is going to break, but if you can tell when, or what the chances are of something breaking, you can make a better effort to keep it from negatively affecting your business. This is one of the many benefits of outsourcing your company’s IT to a managed services provider like Catalyst Technology Group. We also manage your software licenses so that you don’t run into problems down the line. Staying proactive can keep your business agile and ready for anything that is sent its way.
We specialize in solutions designed to keep your organization running properly. For more information about IT trends for business or how industry best practices can really set your company up for success, call the IT professionals at Catalyst Technology Group today at (317) 705-0333.
Hackers Are Hunting for This Particular Information
While not always the case, hackers will generally act with a purpose. They might be looking to snatch some personally identifiable information from a database, or account credentials form unwary users. Regardless, hackers will go to any length to collect this information from unsuspecting users, and you need to do what you can to protect it.
What Do Hackers Look For?
Most businesses hold at least some type of sensitive information that hackers can use to their advantage. Believe it or not, sensitive information can be sold on the black market for considerable profit. Consider for a moment the information collected by a human resources department, or accounting. Information like employees’ birth records, Social Security numbers, contact information, credit card numbers, bank routing numbers, and so much more, all represent value to hackers and scammers.
When they aren’t trying to directly cause trouble for your business, they may try to covertly access your data infrastructure through the use of stolen credentials to make their hijinx look legitimate. They can then access your accounts and steal information without drawing attention to themselves, resulting in a major data breach that puts your business in a tight spot.
There are also incidents where hackers are just trying to make trouble for others, or planting the seeds of a future attack through the use of a trojan or backdoor. The end result is typically the same–your business’s operations are halted due to meddling from hackers, and it must be prevented.
What You Can Do
Your best chance to protect your organization from hacking attacks is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. A UTM combines four enterprise-level security solutions into one package: a firewall, antivirus, spam blocker, and content filter, all to provide both proactive and reactive strategies to protect your network. It’s the best way to secure your infrastructure from hacking attacks of all varieties.
Don’t keep placing network security on the backburner. To learn more about network security and what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Tip of the Week: Be Better At Microsoft Word With These Four Tricks
Microsoft Word is a great tool that your business may use for word processing, but it can do so much more. With the right tools, you’ll be able to take advantage of many different tricks that could change the way you see Microsoft Word. Here are four neat tips that you may not have thought of.
Create Quick Bullets
To add a bulleted list to your document, you can dodge the step of looking in the taskbar. To do so, just type in an asterisk (*) followed by a space. Place the text that you want bulleted next in this sequence. Word will automatically format this bulleted text for you. If you would rather have the text dashed, you could simply place a hyphen before the text, or do the same thing with numbers.
Randomly Generate Dummy Text
To ensure that your documents look the way you want them to, you can use simple dummy text as filler while you build a template. While the Internet is certainly a viable option for finding dummy text, you can generate it for yourself right in Microsoft Word. Just type in =rand(#) and replace the pound symbol with the number of paragraphs that you want. Once you’ve done this, press Enter and you should have all of the dummy text you could possibly want. This is particularly helpful when you want to test the formatting or fonts of your documents.
Quick Tables
If you need a table in your Word document, you could go through Excel to put one in it. If you don’t want to do this, you can just do it through Microsoft Word itself. Press “+” then “Tab”. Press another “+” and another “Tab”. Continue this until your table is the size that you want it to be and press “Enter” to form the table borders. If you’d like to increase the size of your table after pressing enter, you can simply click inside the very last box of the table and press tab until your table has reached the size you’d like it to be.
Select a Single Sentence
How accurate do you find the click-and-drag method for your mouse? If you want to try something different, you can use this shortcut to select a whole sentence in Microsoft Word. Simply press the Ctrl key and click a word in the sentence that you’re selecting. This lets you select the entire sentence, letting you delete it or move it as you like. You could even do something like click and drag it around before you release Ctrl to move it. If you want to make it a new paragraph, just click a word in that paragraph three times in a row.
There are almost countless Microsoft Word tips and tricks that you could be using to take better advantage of your business technology. Are you using them? To learn more about how you can use Microsoft Word and other software solutions for greater benefit, subscribe to Catalyst Technology Group’s blog.
How Easily Could A Freak Event Take Down Your Business?
Your business is much more vulnerable to dangerous entities than you’d care to admit. Think about it–all it takes is one unexpected event to cause untold amounts of chaos for your business. To make matters worse, these events are often outside of your control. Data loss incidents might be unpredictable, but they can be soothed thanks to a little bit of preventative management.
It’s one thing protecting yourself from cyber security threats (which you definitely need to be concerned with) but there are other types of unplanned disasters that can show up without warning. We’re talking about acts of nature and misfortune, which are certainly much more difficult to prevent than a hacking attack–there’s little you can do to stop the weather.
The only way to guarantee your business’s future is to think of your organization like you would an egg. An egg could crack at any time unless you take preventative measures to keep it safe. For example, you’d keep it in the carton in the refrigerator, safe from any external elements. This is the way that you want to preserve your business’s data–in a safe, controlled environment that is free of external troubles.
This type of data isolation is generally not possible with traditional tape backup solutions. Your organization would take one backup a day after your office has closed, and this backup would be stored on a tape, which is either stored off-site or in-house. This presents potential problems for your organization in the fact that the tapes could be lost, misplaced, stolen, or destroyed while being stored in-house. Furthermore, since they are only being taken once a day, you run the risk of a data loss incident derailing operations during the middle of the workday. You could potentially lose up to an entire day’s worth of progress that could make all the difference when finishing a crucial project and meeting a deadline.
Plus, nobody wants to think about the downtime that comes from restoring data to your infrastructure. With traditional tape backup, restoring data could take anywhere from several hours to days, depending on the amount of data that’s being restored. Furthermore, your operations will be halted during this process. When no work is being done, you’ll only get further and further behind.
Cloud-based backup allows for much more dynamic data preservation techniques that utilize the virtual environment of the cloud. You can take multiple backups as often as every fifteen minutes, allowing for minimal data loss. Furthermore, your data can be restored directly to the BDR device itself, allowing for near-instantaneous recovery and minimal downtime. It’s just one way that planning for the worst can help you avoid it.
Does your organization need comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery? We can equip your business with BDR so that you’ll never have to be concerned with data loss again. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
What It Means To Disinfect Your Computer
We have no problem going on the record as saying that there are more than enough strains of malware to go around. As such, it’s important that you know what to do if your workstation is struck by an infection.
Before we go into that, we need to clarify a few points. What is the difference between viruses and malware? In a word, categorization. A virus is just one type of malware among all the rest: spyware, adware, ransomware, et cetera. So, all viruses are malware, but not all malwares are viruses. However, almost all security solutions are described as ‘antivirus.’
Regardless of what they are called, you need to know the proper steps to removing threats like viruses or malware from your systems. Your very first step should be to call an MSP to observe, helping to ensure the process goes smoothly. Even better, the MSP could be handling the maintenance of your IT, proactively monitoring it for threats and resolving them before they manifest and cause troubles.
An MSP can remotely access the infected device in order to check for other pieces of malware. They might remove temporary files, which will let them scan the device faster and could even remove a piece of malware in and of itself. Once the scan is complete and any malware has been removed, there may be a need to repair or reinstall your operating system or web browser. This is why it is important to keep files on the network and safely backed up. This way, if you do need to reinstall the OS on one of your workstations, you will not lose any of your files.
To avoid these circumstances, it is best to keep your computer protected with the latest versions of your security software to ensure that they are able to defend against the latest iterations of malware. Your programs should be kept up-to-date for the same reason—many updates are devoted to security improvements, and if you have gone without updating, you are sacrificing your potential security.
It is also wise to change all of the passwords to your online accounts, as malware can have an unpleasant habit of recording them. You should also make sure your staff is aware of the warning signs of an infection.
Catalyst Technology Group can help you with any, or all, of these measures. Call (317) 705-0333 for more information.