Tip of the Week: Simple Steps to Optimal IT

Tip of the Week: Simple Steps to Optimal IT

Running a business can be a fulfilling and rewarding endeavor, but on the same token, the technology that is needed for it to run can quickly become a stressful obstacle to struggle with.

Fortunately, there are some easy steps you can take that allow you to minimize these moments and prevent them from occurring. We’ll review a few basics for this week’s tip!

Prepare to Lose Power

The thing about business technology is that it needs power to run, so losing power suddenly can be a big problem for a few different reasons. First and foremost, data loss – if you ever experience a power outage in your business, here’s hoping that everyone working was saving their progress somewhat frequently. Otherwise, any progress on whatever tasks they were working on is probably gone.

Losing power (or alternatively, having it surge) suddenly can also be damaging to your infrastructure itself, shortening the lifespan of your components. In order to protect your investments and your business’ continuity, you need to ensure that you have safeguards in place against these kinds of factors.

Surge protectors should isolate all workstations from their power sources, and really crucial components (like servers and pieces of your network infrastructure) should be shielded from sudden power loss with solutions like uninterruptible power supplies. This gives you the chance to shut them down properly if there is a power outage.

No Man is an Island, and No Business Should Be

The Internet has become an absolutely crucial tool for effectively running a business, which means that many businesses would find themselves stranded if something were to happen to their Internet connection.

Worse still, if their downtime was caused by damage to the line itself, they are stuck waiting for their Internet provider to fix it. Therefore, many businesses have considered adding a second, backup Internet connection.

Assuming that any repairs done by the provider will take a minimum of four to six hours, calculate how much that length of downtime would cost your business and compare that to the cost of maintaining a backup connection. You may find it to be worth it.

Put Boundaries on Your Staff

Your staff should be your most trusted and valued resource, selected for their abilities and work ethic. This doesn’t mean, however, that even the best workers can’t make mistakes. For instance, many will take it upon themselves to seek out a solution that works for their work style and install it. These kinds of programs are referred to as shadow IT.

Shadow IT can easily put your network at risk, as it opens it up to malicious programs and threats – at the very least, it can bog down your network and eat up your memory. Make sure that you communicate that any and all software needs to be approved by the IT department, and remind your team periodically of the proper procedures.

Notice any patterns? Each of these tricks relies on proactive measures in order to be effective. That’s the secret to successful IT maintenance – not waiting around for a problem to strike, and preparing for it beforehand.

WheelHouse IT is here to help you make these preparations, augmenting your business operations in the process. Call (877) 771-2384 to learn more about the solutions we offer.

Tip of the Week: Handy Browsing Shortcuts

Tip of the Week: Handy Browsing Shortcuts

When so much of the day is spent working on the computer, it can be argued that efficiency is paramount to productivity. The faster you are able to do things, the more you could potentially get done. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over a few such shortcuts.

Restoring Closed Tabs

We’ve all been in the position where we’ve closed out of a browser tab to immediately realize that we still needed it. Fortunately, there’s a shortcut for just this situation. Next time you accidentally hit that little “x,” try pressing Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen the tab.

Close Window/Tab

However, once you are actually ready to close a tab, or your last browser window, there is a shortcut that allows you to do so quickly: Ctrl + W

Space Bar Scroll

Instead of tiring out your finger playing with the scroll wheel on your mouse, Windows offers another option that utilizes the space bar. Tapping Space as you hold Shift will have your screen jump down in full-screen chunks, rather than slowing crawling like the start of a Star Wars movie.

Mouse Wheel Functions

Speaking of the mouse’s scroll wheel, you can also use that to accomplish different things. For instance, it you want to quickly open a link in a new tab, clicking on it with the scroll wheel will do so in a single click, rather than the multi-click process you would otherwise go through.

What are some of your favorite tricks and shortcuts? Share them in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to our blog!

Security Tips for Computer Users

Security Tips for Computer Users

Within the procedural infrastructure of most businesses are unavoidable caveats. They come with the territory of owning and operating a business and any business owner, especially one which takes on employees, can testify to this.

Assessing and mitigating security threats found in computer hardware and software is a good place to start the process of securing a business from criminal harm. However, assessing and mitigating the side of security dealing with human error, dishonesty, and crime, is a whole other matter.

Like with most computer users, not excluding business owners, complacency in computer security has been found to be a primary doorway in which a business can be exploited by criminals, whether foul play comes from inside or outside a business. A minimum set of precautions should be taken.

The retaliatory actions of disgruntled employees who are subject to disciplinary action within a company or are outright fired for any given reason are a common problem in any business which hires employees.

There are security measures that can be taken to mitigate the threat of disgruntled employees who can go on the offensive. Two specific measures which should be elementary for any business which hires employees are implementing the security concepts of “least privilege“, and a strict policy (including procedures) for discharging or firing employees. 

The concept of “least privilege” is implemented by giving access to company resources and information only to the extent that is required for an employee to accomplish her job in the company.

As an example, if an employee’s primary job in a company is managing financial resources and dealing with payroll checks, then that employee should be given access only to the resources and information required to carry out those duties.

There’s no need to give her a duplicate key to the storage attic which contains nothing essential to carrying out her duties as a companies’ financial resources manager. This strategy can generally make it much simpler and easier for a company owner to manage employees. 

In the event that an employee must be fired or discharged from a company, there should be strict procedures in place to facilitate a secure transition for the exiting employee.

For example, any computer passwords known by the exiting employee should be changed immediately and any security clearances held by the exiting employee should be revoked.

Please contact us if there is concern regarding security policies for both current and discharged employees.  

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Cyber Security Tip Of The Day: Don’t Put Off That Update

Cyber Security Tip Of The Day: Don't Put Off That Update

It can feel like every program wants an update installed and wants it installed right now. The temptation is always there: Hit “Remind Me Later” and hope it goes away forever. However, software updates usually aren’t intended to annoy or stop work in progress. Many software updates are designed to patch security holes and prevent annoying bugs giving hackers access to your data.

For operating systems in particular, keeping patched is one of the easiest ways to protect your company’s hardware and users from malicious software and attacks. Hackers are at work every day trying to find a way into your operating system and sometimes even the patches need patches to keep systems running smoothly. 

Using an Apple system seems like an easy way around those annoying patch days, but MacOS can have catastrophic security bugs that need operating system-level fixes. Many exploits and hacks use previously discovered holes in software and even hacking dummies know how to look for them. 

Maybe you’re using a Linux or Unix system and think that’ll serve as protection. Unfortunately, Arch Linux just discovered malicious software in its repositories and before that, it was Ubuntu Linux. Every computer that touches the internet is vulnerable, no matter its operating system or the software it’s running.

Beyond that, many of your routers and other network devices may be vulnerable and may not notify you the way Windows will. Check your router manufacturer’s website weekly to see if there’s new firmware, then schedule some downtime to get it installed, tested, and running. It usually doesn’t cost anything and it’s one of the best ways to make sure your network stays secure.

Just remember to get your users to save everything before running any updates since lost work can be a big mess even if you had the best of intentions.

Tip of the Week: 3 Microsoft Office Programs Made for Collaboration

Tip of the Week: 3 Microsoft Office Programs Made for Collaboration

Microsoft is no stranger to improving collaboration with their solutions, as many of them were meant to do just that- improve collaboration.

Below, we’ll discuss three such solutions, and how you can optimize your use of them for collaboration purposes.

OneDrive for Business

While OneDrive for Business’ collaboration really shines when paired with Microsoft Teams, a user isn’t constrained to working within Teams exclusively. OneDrive also enables file sharing with someone external to the team in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. In the application, click Share, which can be found in the upper right-hand corner. You will be presented with a dialog box that gives you a few options. Either you can enter the person’s name or email to send it, or you can get a copy of the link to share with them through other means.

However, if you’re trying to share the document with someone outside of your organization,you will need to select the drop down at the top of the dialog box and say that Specific People can access your file.Once this has been done, these approved users can all edit the file at the same time, in real time, assuming that the link was sent with Allow Editing checked in the dialog box. Keep in mind, this is only for documents that are saved in OneDrive.

Outlook Email

I can already hear you: “Well, of course an email client will help with collaboration!” This is true, however, it is also true that Microsoft has augmented Outlook 2016 with Office 365’s Groups feature. As a result, Outlook has additional collaborative features, most notably, a shared space for a team to leverage for their collaboration. Essentially, Outlook Groups have access to a shared calendar, team inbox, and a document library. These tools allow groups to hold their own conversations, schedule meetings more efficiently, and generally communicate more effectively. Groups are also relatively easy to create, assuming that they have been enabled by your organization’s IT resource:

  • In the Navigation Ribbon, clickthe Home tab.
  • In the Groups section, click New Group.
  • Name your new group in the Choose a name field. The group will be given a suggested email address in the field immediately below, if it is available. Remember, your group name cannot be changed.
  • In the Description field, write a brief mission statement for your group, remembering that it will be shared in every welcome email sent to new group members.
  • Set your group’s Classification from the options provided by your organization.
  • Identify your group’s Privacy level. This defaults to private, where group content is only visible to approved group members, while there is a public option, where anyone in your organization can join and view content.
  • You also have the option to send all of the group’s conversations and any events to all members’ inboxes. They can later change this setting.
  • Once you click Create, you’re done!

Skype for Business

Again, yes, this is technically an application designed for communicating and collaborating, but it also integrates with Outlook to communicate a very useful detail: whether or not a person is available at a given time, depending on what a contact’s Outlook calendar dictates. Therefore, if you’re currently in a meeting, your Skype presence will reflect that you are unavailable. Of course, this feature also allows you to schedule a meeting, even allowing you to list out the topics that meeting will cover and the tasks that you plan to accomplish during a conversation.

Using these Microsoft solutions can help you improve collaboration and communication in your business. Tell us, do you use these tools already, or do you have a different set of favorites that allow you and your staff to collaborate?

Let us know what they are in the comments!