In today’s business, sharing files is easy and something many workers take for granted. Unfortunately, not all file-sharing methods are secure. When efficiency is prioritized over security, it can often lead to extremely troublesome situations. For this week’s tip, we thought we’d go through a half dozen practices you can take to ensure your files get to where you need them to get safely and securely.
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Modern mobile devices are a bit of a double-edged sword for today’s businesses: on the one hand, they are critical for the productivity that is required of today’s organizations, but on the other, they also come with the very real chance of security issues. The permissions you give (or don’t) to these applications can have an impact on this risk.
Passwords are just one part of a comprehensive security strategy, but they are a crucial one. You must make sure that you are investing adequate time and effort into making sure your passwords are secure. This is easier said than done, but by the end of today’s short blog article, you’ll have all the information you need to craft excellent passwords for your accounts.
Sticky Keys—the Windows accessibility feature that keeps modifier keys like Shift and Ctrl active after you’ve pressed them—have a legitimate and necessary purpose for some. However, those who don’t need Sticky Keys can find them immensely annoying. Let’s go over how to deactivate sticky keys if you don’t need them.
Everyone has a smartphone, but only a fraction of people use it productively. Instead of using your smartphone for wasting time, you could be using it to stay productive and get more done, reducing your stress levels and creating a better work life. Today, we’ll give you three useful tips on how to change the way you use your smartphone.
Updating your technology is one business task that needs to happen if you want to optimize your operations. Some companies, however, still rely on legacy systems that could be holding them back from peak performance. It’s difficult to update legacy systems without comprehensive IT knowledge and proficiency, which is why you have us!
Microsoft Excel is a great tool that can provide loads of value to power users, but oftentimes users just don’t have the know-how to make the most of it. Thankfully, you have power users like us to guide you through some of the more intricate processes in the spreadsheet software. Let’s look at one such process: removing duplicate values in columns.
When all is said and done, being a manager is a far different experience than being an employee. So, when you promote one of your team members to this position—or perhaps you’ve recently been promoted to management yourself—it is important that a few practices are incorporated into their new workflow. Let’s go over these practices, and how the right IT can help.
Despite hearing about a constant stream of cyberattacks over the past few years—most of which cause millions of dollars of damage to businesses—it might still be difficult for you to justify spending a lot of money on your business’ cybersecurity plans. There is a finite amount of capital to go around and many times CIOs and network administrators will be rebuffed by management when asking for money to spend on cybersecurity. Today, we thought we’d discuss three ways that you can spend on cybersecurity initiatives and not feel like you are throwing your money down the drain.
One of the fastest-growing services in healthcare is telehealth. If you aren’t familiar with this concept, it is basically a virtual meeting designed to provide faster and more direct healthcare consultations and stabilize the ever-rising costs of healthcare. With health information being one of the most attractive to hackers, it is important to be mindful to do everything you can to protect your data. Today, we will go through four tips to help you successfully navigate the risks inherent with telehealth.
Microsoft Office is a super useful collection of software that serves the purposes of just about any business, at least to some degree. Since it is so popular—taking up almost half of the office productivity software market in February 2022—we figured it would be helpful to share a few tips to help speed up some of the things you may be spending time on now.
Computers allow businesses to do so much, but eventually a time comes to purchase new hardware. Thankfully, you can stave off this need pretty well by simply taking care of your existing technology. Here are some tips you can implement to make sure that your computer lasts as long as possible before it kicks the bucket.
While protecting the credit card data you collect from your customers and clients is obviously important, you likely also have a line of credit for your business’ use that you need to think about as well. Let’s turn our focus to that card for a moment and discuss some tips and best practices to keep this company resource safe.
Typing on your keyboard is something that you do every day, but sometimes you just don’t want to do it. You can give your hands a break and use Microsoft Word’s dictation feature; this lets you use your voice to write in the software. Let’s go over how you might use the feature on a desktop, web browser, or mobile device.
Google Workspace is a great tool that allows you to get a lot done, but sometimes you might find yourself in a position where you need to download the files and take them with you or send them to someone. In these cases, you might not want to share the link. Instead, you can simply download them as whatever file format you might need!
With many businesses’ increased reliance on their information systems and other IT, they need to do everything they can to keep those systems up and running and secure. This not only includes rolling out security systems that support that goal, it also demands they take the action necessary to keep these systems secure. Let’s look at four things you need to do to keep your business’ IT as secure as possible.
Bookmarks are an essential part of being productive with your Internet browser, but what happens when you switch to a different one, like Google Chrome? Do you have to manually add all of your bookmarks back to the browser? Nope! Let’s go over how you can import your bookmarks directly to Google Chrome and save some time.
There is one key on the keyboard that might seem a little odd: PrtScn. It’s not immediately obvious what this key does or why you would want to use it, but we assure you that it is an extremely helpful keyboard shortcut once you understand how it works and why you might want to try it out. In reality, the PrtScn key (on some keyboards it might just be PrtSc) is important for taking screenshots on your Windows device.
The new year is underway, and many of us have undertaken the traditional resolutions as an effort to improve ourselves by kicking bad habits and adopting good ones. Why shouldn’t your business join in the fun? We’ve put together a few resolutions that could benefit your organization if your team were to adopt them.
If you’ve been mostly working from a laptop these last few months, you’re probably noticing that it’s a little harder to be as productive with only one screen, especially if you were used to having two at the office. If you’ve already looked into getting a second screen for your laptop, but your laptop doesn’t have a port, you aren’t actually out of luck!
A lot of people spend the modern workday with headphones on or earbuds in, listening to music as they work or communicating through a headset. That makes it inevitable that these devices will get dirty. Let’s go over how these devices can be safely cleaned to get rid of the grime that nobody wants to be wearing on their head.
Workplace burnout is a serious issue that can have far-reaching impacts in your business. Therefore, it is critical that you can identify when one of your team members is starting to feel it, and know what you can do to help reduce it. Let’s go over what can lead to burnout, as well as a few ways to remediate it.
Let me ask you something: how many people do you fundamentally trust? Well, in a zero trust network, that number is reduced to zero. The idea of such a network is that everyone, whether they’re operating inside of the network or out, needs to be verified… and as you might imagine, it has proven effective in preventing data breaches.
Have you ever booted up your computer at the start of the workday only to find it slow and sluggish? Sometimes this has to do with how many startup processes are occurring when your computer is just starting to wake up. You might be able to give it a little morning jumpstart by disabling certain startup processes or programs.
Most modern businesses rely on wireless internet connectivity in their day-to-day processes. Of course, this means that their potential productivity is tied to the quality of their internet and its capability to serve the entire workforce. As a business grows it becomes more important that its Wi-Fi setup can support it. Let’s go over the process of properly scaling your network to your needs.
We’ve all been in a place where the storage on our computer fills up a little too quickly for our liking. While you could delete or store unused files in the cloud, there is another method that you can use to quickly free up a little extra space that you might not have realized is there. If you can delete temporary files, you might find that you suddenly have a lot more storage space to play around with on your computer.
Google Chrome is a very popular browser nowadays. In June of this year, for example, about 65 percent of the overall browser market share was attributed to Chrome. Seeing as so many people utilize Chrome, we thought it would be helpful to share a few tips that can help make Chrome even more productive for the user.
“Hackers are a serious threat to modern businesses” isn’t exactly a novel statement, is it? However, if a hacker was to be lurking on your network, would you know the signs to help you catch them? Just in case, we wanted to share a few strategies that can help highlight these warnings so you can more effectively catch any threats present on your network—particularly when your workforce is accessing it remotely.
As a business owner, we are sure that you have your fair share of day-to-day stressors. Oftentimes, these stressors can lead to the development of bad habits. When this happens, you might get the urge to correct the bad behavior and replace it with good, productive habits. That said, it’s easier said than done to build good habits, especially when you have so much else on your plate.
While it isn’t officially a business solution, per se, the collaboration platform known as Discord has seen some popularity as a means of facilitating a business’ internal communications. Let’s go over some handy tips to improve your use of the platform, in case you are part of an organization that does so. Who knows… this might inspire you to give it a chance for yourself.
While spam filtering can be great for your business’ own defenses, the spam filtering that your contacts have in place could very well keep your messages from reaching them. This simply will not do. Let’s go over a few ways that you can help prevent your emails from being caught up in these filters before your contacts or prospects can read them.
While it really would be a nice thing to have, there is no magic bullet for your business’ cybersecurity—no single tool that allows you to avoid any and all issues. However, there is one way to help make most threats far less likely to be successful: building up your company’s internal security awareness amongst your employees and team members. Let’s go over eleven ways that you can help ensure your company is properly protected, simply by encouraging your employees to take a more active role in guarding it.
Most accounts these days require a password of some sort, and as such, the average user has countless of these codes that need to be kept both secure and top-of-mind. Some web browsers have built-in password management tools to help make them more user-friendly, but with so much convenience involved, one has to ask whether or not these built-in management tools are as secure as they should be.
Businesses use technology to varying degrees, but even small businesses have a lot of technology that must be tracked on a daily basis. With so many devices floating around the office, how are you making sure that you know who has which device, when it was issued, and how it’s being used? We suppose the question is not “how” you are keeping track of it all, but “if.” For this task, we recommend implementing an inventory tracking system for your business’ technological assets.
If you’ve lost or misplaced your smartphone (or tablet), it’s critical that you act quickly. Every second counts, especially if you suspect that your device was stolen. Here are the steps you need to follow immediately, even if you think you simply left it at a restaurant or in the backseat of a taxi.
Because of the protection it can offer your organization, data backup is a necessary tool for you to have—that is, provided it has the requisite security and reliability you’ll need should you ever have to lean on it. Let’s go over a few guidelines to help you be sure that your backup is trustworthy enough to stake your business’ future on.
Windows has no shortage of capabilities to offer its users, with many of these tools coming with an associated Windows shortcut. Since keeping track of all of them can be a challenge, we wanted to assemble a list of most of them for you. This blog will serve as that list, so make sure you add it to your browser’s favorites for quick reference!
With many—if not most—computers and especially laptops featuring integrated webcams at this point, it isn’t hard to imagine how disastrous it would be to be spied on through it. Let’s take a few moments and go over a few ways to be sure that your webcam isn’t being used without your consent by someone else.
Not everyone has a living situation that is conducive to working from home. That’s why many people have some problems as they are forced to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the problems with not having a dedicated space or the right type of situation to get work done from home is that your physical health starts to suffer. Today, we thought we would go through a couple of ergonomic suggestions that can help any remote worker feel better when working long hours from home.
If you are like many other people, your desktop computer just sits there, day after day, allowing you to run your business. Unfortunately, like any other machine, it will fail. One way to prolong the lifespan of your computer is to keep it clean. Today, we thought we’d give you some pointers on how to do so.
Considering what the past year has been like, the idea that workplace burnout has been a hot topic isn’t all that surprising—even though less time has been spent in many offices than almost any other time to date. Regardless, burnout simply isn’t an office issue, meaning that remote workers are still susceptible to its ill effects.
Every day, it seems like there’s a new threat to be concerned about. Obviously, there’s the big one that the whole world’s been dealing with, but there’s also the smaller things that we’re supposed to be worried about… like “blue light”, for example. What is that, and what can it really do?
As it turns out, blue light is more than just a marketing gimmick, and can potentially impact your health. Let’s go over a few tips to help you filter it out, and why you may want to do so.
All business owners understand that in order to stay competitive, their team must work as hard as they possibly can. Unfortunately, however, that’s not how human physiology works. Everyone needs a break now and again, and the office is no different. Remember elementary school, when you would curl up with a blanket and get some sleep during naptime? It turns out this might be a viable option in the office, too.
The laptop is one of the great productivity tools in modern business. Their portability gives them immense value. There are some cons to using a laptop, however. One is the trackpad. While they have improved over the years, they are still not ideal, which is why you see many people who use a laptop for productivity bring along a wireless mouse. One of the biggest problems people run into is that they have a hard time with the click-and-drag feature on the trackpad and this makes working in certain programs maddening. Today, we have a tip to make this process much simpler.
Like any email platform, Microsoft Outlook can easily become overwhelmed with messages and conversations—effectively making it counterproductive rather than an asset to you and your team. Let’s take a few moments to go over a simple way that you can use Outlook’s internal tools to make your messages easier to deal with.
Unfortunately, the more people lean on technology, the more data breaches there are. The correlation makes sense, but with so much innovation in data security and data systems, it’s a shame more can’t be done to keep businesses and individuals from losing data to opportunists and scammers. That’s why knowing how to circumvent these forces is essential to keep your data safe. Let’s take a look at how the people that are best at it keep their data secure.
While your attention is likely more dedicated to how you use your computer while it’s on, it is just as important to consider the different ways that you can turn your computer off, in a manner of speaking. The varied options present in the Start menu will each have their own effect, so it is important to be aware of what these differences are. Let’s review what each option does so that you’ll be able to use them more appropriately.
Your business’ security largely depends on how secure the passwords are that keep your resources from being accessed without authorization. Despite this, many users—perhaps even you—frequently sacrifice sufficient security measures in favor of the simple and convenient route, cutting corners when coming up with their passwords. Let’s try and remedy this by reviewing a few practices that can help make a password more effective.
Gmail has proven to be as secure as most other email platforms, but email is email and there are times when you send an email that isn’t opened promptly and you’d rather not have the information in that message get sent around or archived where you can’t control it. Now Gmail has added a feature that allows users to send messages that will delete themselves in a predetermined time frame, and work to keep the contents of those messages from being shared. Let’s take a look at them today.
In a recent post, we talked about the various image formats you should use when sharing images over email or online. The goal is to generate an image (or images) that are the smallest file size possible to make them easy to share and quick to download, without reducing the overall quality of the image.
Gmail is as secure as any comparable email platform, but there may be some messages you send that you’d rather not have hanging around in someone’s inbox. However, did you know that Gmail enables you to send messages that delete themselves after a set timeframe… while also preventing the contents from being forwarded, downloaded, copied, or printed?
Whether you are sharing them online, emailing them to a colleague, or putting them on your own website, it’s important to understand a few basics when it comes to image files and sizes. This guide will hopefully save you a lot of hassle when trying to email large images, update your website, and use social media, whether it be for your own personal use or for your business.
When looking to present an idea, the first two options people think of are often to use a video, or to use a slideshow (typically, citing Microsoft PowerPoint). Our question is, why pick? Let’s go over how simple it is to embed a YouTube video right into your next PowerPoint presentation whether you’re using PowerPoint 365 or PowerPoint 2016.
The productivity suite is one of the most utilized software combos going. Usually it comes with a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a note taking program, and a presentation creator. There are other pieces of software included in some of today’s most dynamic options, but for our purposes we are going to limit it to these.
Nobody intends to lose their smartphone. For some of us, our mobile device is glued to our hands for a good portion of the day—it’s hard to imagine simply leaving it somewhere, right?
Mistakes happen. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to set your smartphone up so you can track it down easily if you lose it.
If it is going to remain the most common Internet browser, Google Chrome always needs to have new features added to it to make it the preferable choice for most users. Recently, Chrome Actions was implemented, likely contributing greatly to that goal. Let’s look at what Chrome Actions are, and how they could prove useful.
With how business is conducted today, the capability of your workforce to stay connected while mobile is important. However, it can be equally important that this connectivity doesn’t come at the cost of their manners. Let’s go over a few ways to be more polite as you work remotely using a mobile device.
Microsoft Word has a lot of time-and-effort-saving capabilities baked in. For instance, did you know that you can paste the same text—down to the formatting—across numerous documents? This makes it simple to replicate text without having to fix it each time, and to make changes everywhere the text appears all at once. Let’s go over how to do so.
If you need a reason to upgrade to Android 11, it comes with a highly useful selection of options when you access the menu that appears when you hold down the power button on your device. However, you have the option to add much more value to this menu. To do this, you’ll need to make a small investment in an automation-driven third-party application known as Tasker.
The Android platform has various tools and applications available to assist users in keeping themselves organized and productive. One of these applications, Google Keep, offers particularly significant benefits. For this week’s tip, we’ll be going over some ways that you can use Google Keep to help “keep” track of the cornucopia of important information you need to process and retain.
While you probably aren’t super enthusiastic about loaning out your mobile device right now, you may not have ever been. After all, you’re effectively handing over a bunch of personal data bundled into a convenient package. However, Android has had a feature that makes it substantially more secure to share your device for some time now.
Email—it’s a business tool that we all use and rely on, but (if we’re being honest) it can be a pain to manage properly. Unfortunately, this can also depreciate the value of the solution to its users. To help prevent these problems, we wanted to share a few tips to assist you with your email management.
Google is the standard for online searches. It seems to be as simple as can be. Think of a question, type it in, get an answer. However, not many people likely know just how specific you can make these Google searches with just a few details. Let’s go over how to use Google most effectively as you search the Internet.
Screenshots can be one of the most effective ways to share information, as it gives the people you are communicating to first-hand knowledge of what you’re seeing. Of course, different platforms have different means of capturing a screenshot. Let’s go over these methods to ensure that you can do so efficiently and easily.
Every business should consider its security one of its top priorities, and with so much business now happening digitally, cybersecurity is a major part of that. Take, for instance, the heightened importance of email in the extended remote workforce. While email is a great business tool, it can also be an avenue that a cybercriminal uses to attack. So that you can better protect your business, we’re discussing some basic email security steps for this week’s tip.
Considering how much as we rely on our mobile devices each day, it comes as no surprise how stressful the “LOW BATTERY” notification can be. While you might assume that it only seems to appear earlier and earlier in the day, there are in fact a variety of conditions that cause your device to die much faster. That’s why we wanted to share a few tips to help you understand what is happening to your battery, and what you can do to manage its longevity a little better.
As your employees go about their workdays, it is important that they do so with the resources they’ll need to remain optimally productive… and that these resources are in the best condition for them to do so. While this is often an overlooked consideration, this means that their computer needs to be clean and fully functional. Let’s go over a few best practices to follow when it comes to keeping a workstation clean enough to work optimally.
Social media platforms—like Facebook and Instagram—are a great place to communicate with people, as many political campaigns are now taking advantage of. With an election on the horizon, political advertisements abound on these platforms. Of course, not everyone wants their feeds cluttered with these ads… especially if these ads don’t align to their own politics.
Chances are you’re still spending a lot of time at home, and a lot of that time is being spent on the Internet. With so many still working remotely, and many educational institutions continuing remote learning, the strength of a household’s Wi-Fi signal is going to be crucial. We wanted to offer you some tips to help you maximize the signal strength of your router.
If your business is like most, you and your team likely rely on a schedule to keep your processes moving along efficiently… while also ensuring that everyone has something to work on at any time. However, this is often easier said than done, which is why there are now cloud-based software options that make your scheduling efforts a little smarter.
When creating an office’s network, wireless functionality has become a necessary element to include. Of course, this is usually easier said than done, as wireless signals can be notoriously persnickety. That’s why we’re offering some tips to help you make the most of your business’ wireless network setup.
Everyone knows how to do a Google Search, right? Go to the site, type whatever it is you’re looking for into the search bar, and you’re off to the races. Fewer people are aware, however, of the ways that you can help Google narrow its search a bit. Let’s go over a few handy Google cheat codes that can make your search results more precise.
As a smartphone gets older, it’s battery will start to degrade. For years it was as simple as replacing the battery on the device, but over the past several years, no major smartphone manufacturer builds devices with removable batteries. Fortunately for users, the Android OS has made it a point to build power settings into the software that provides them the ability to manipulate how power is used on the phone. Today, we will take a look at some of the settings you can use to keep your device running longer.
Chances are, you not only have a smartphone, but that smartphone is also currently within arm’s reach. With these devices playing an increasingly important role in our personal and professional lives, these devices have proven to be a lucrative target for hackers to pursue. This week, our tip is meant to help you spot the warning signs that an application is hiding an attack.
If you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, eye strain can be a big problem. Staring at a screen for too long can be irritating, and some even experience headaches and exhaustion from it.
Fortunately, a lot of common applications have been deploying dark or night modes. Microsoft Word’s take on this has been, well, less than desirable. We’ll show you a way around it to help save your eyeballs a lot of strain.