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How Does The Cloud Support Your Business Continuity?

Having a business continuity plan ensures that you have constant access to your business’s data, even when a disaster strikes your locale. Understandably, your choice of backup storage media will be critical to the success of such a plan. In this blog, we’ll discuss why the cloud is the ideal place to keep your company’s data backups.

Improved uptime

Many business owners think it’s enough to store copies of their files either on an external hard drive or a separate computer housed within their office. Unfortunately, this tactic can go wrong in so many ways. First, it’s possible for bad actors to steal these devices and obtain the data they contain. Second, these devices are susceptible to damage caused by local disasters, cyberattacks, and errors committed by staff. If any of these were to happen, the business would lose access to its backups and might suffer downtime.

In contrast, cloud-hosted backups are always readily accessible with an internet-connected device. Cloud servers are located off-site, so they are not vulnerable to natural disasters in your immediate locale. What’s more, cloud service providers (CSPs) are obligated to keep their servers operational at all times. They make this possible by implementing top-grade cybersecurity measures and various redundancies, such as alternate servers and power supply systems.

Fast resource provisioning

During the backup creation process, spikes in user activity and resource usage can slow down websites and applications running in the background. A CSP can help you address this issue by monitoring user activities, enabling them to see spikes before or as they happen. The provider can then provision resources and virtual machines as needed to manage the influx of users.

Control over backup frequency

Since your employees could work on files and update information throughout the day, you must back up your files as frequently as necessary. Doing so ensures that you have the latest copies of your files even after a sudden outage.

With the cloud, you no longer have to worry about the frequency of your backups. CSPs offer round-the-clock and other fixed backup frequencies, as well as custom backup schedules tailored to your business’s unique requirements. Some services can even create backups as you perform changes on your files, ensuring up-to-date information at any time.

Support for flexible work setups

With flexible working arrangements becoming more and more popular, it’s now even more imperative for your business to invest in the cloud for backup storage. External hard disks, flash drives, and other offline storage media are accessible only to employees working in the office. During events that prevent workers from going to the office, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, depending on offline backups could result in your business ceasing operations altogether.

Cloud storage is accessible anywhere and anytime. This means that no matter where they choose to work, your staff will be able to access the files they need and remain productive as long as they have an internet connection.

Businesses around the world are leveraging the power of the cloud not just to ensure their continued operations but also to support their growth. If you’re looking for a managed cloud backup service to protect your business data, give Net Activity a call today to see how we can help.

Get More Work Done By Reducing Desktop Clutter

A cluttered computer desktop can hamper productivity. When various files, folders, and applications are fighting for space on your desktop, it can be difficult to look for the ones you actually need. This affects the way you work and slows you down. Follow these tips to get rid of the mess on your desktop.

Do a bit of recon

Before decluttering your desktop, sort out which files and folders you need to keep and which ones you can let go of. For instance, you can OR you may want to delete files and folders that haven’t been opened in a long time. You can easily find these by right-clicking on an empty area of your desktop, selecting View, and then clicking Auto arrange icons. This will organize your icons into a grid format that makes them easier to view. Then, right-click once again on the empty space on your desktop and go to Sort by > Date modified. This will arrange the icons by the date they were last opened, with the latest on top.

Create holding and app shortcut folders

People often use their desktop folder to store downloads, photos, screenshots, email attachments, and other files, which easily messes up the desktop screen. To prevent these files from cluttering up your desktop, you should create a folder for nonessential files and folders. To create a folder on your desktop, simply right-click on an empty space on your desktop and then click New > Folder.

Use this folder to store temporary items, including those you’re keeping in the short term. Then, delete the files inside the folder once you no longer need them. You can also create a folder for shortcuts to frequently used programs. This will allow you to quickly find the program you need and help you avoid cluttering up your desktop.

Be ruthless in decluttering

Once you have your folders set up, it’s time to get rid of the clutter. If you haven’t used a file or folder in the past two months or so, seriously consider getting rid of it. Uninstall programs you no longer use, delete images you no longer want or need, move unimportant files elsewhere, and place the rest in relevant folders.

Once you’re done, take a look at your browser to see where it stores downloaded files. If your browser downloads files to your desktop by default, go to Settings and change the target location to the Downloads folder.

Stick with your plan

Once you have decluttered your desktop, try to stick with the rules you’ve made. Whenever you download something, ask yourself whether it should go to the desktop or someplace else. Of course, sticking with these rules won’t always be easy, so aim to clean up your desktop at least once or twice a month.

Use the taskbar or Start menu for apps

Pinning apps to the Start menu and the taskbar is a great alternative to simply having program shortcuts on your desktop. To pin apps, go to the apps list via the Windows Start menu and right-click on the app you want to pin. Then, simply select Pin to Start or Pin to taskbar.

Strategically position your wallpaper

An interesting way to minimize clutter is to pick a wallpaper that you like, which could be your favorite picture or slogan. Frame the image so the focus is in the center of your desktop. Then, place your icons around the image in a way that allows you to still see the image. If you can no longer see the image, that means you have too many icons and it’s time to get rid of a few.

If you want to learn other ways to optimize your Windows PC, contact us today for more tips and tricks from office IT experts.

Microsoft Teams Gets Optimizations To Use Less Resources

Do you use Microsoft Teams and do you have an older PC that struggles with Teams video meetings?  If so there’s good news.  Microsoft has recently upgraded Teams and halved the power used by Teams video meetings to make life easier on people with older hardware.

Of course, even if you’ve got newer hardware this is still very good news because odds are excellent that the video meeting that you’re participating in isn’t the only thing you’re doing on your PC. Anything that Microsoft can do to make Teams less resource-intensive means you’ll have more resources for other uses.

Robert Aichner is a program manager at Microsoft Research.

Aichner had this to say about the recent improvements:

“We’re committed to ensuring great calling and meeting experiences for users on low-end hardware as well as those on high-end workstations and high-resolution monitors.

One of the factors we’ve addressed is the difference in power requirements for different customer profiles by ensuring Teams meetings are as energy-efficient as possible, regardless of setup.”

Video meetings rely on three power-intensive processes:  Capture, encoding and rendering.

Again, per Aichner:

“Isolating and optimizing each of these processes enabled us to reduce power consumption up to 50% for energy-intensive scenarios such as having over 10 users in a meeting when everyone has their video turned on.

A simple 3×3 video grid once required nine distinct rendering operations. By combining the streams and composing them into a single video, we have been able to consolidate operations in video rendering and significantly reduce the power requirements for each device used.”

The company made major improvements by redesigning how Teams handles grid videos with multiple participants.

Microsoft has stiff competition in the arena where Teams is operating, and there are several viable alternatives, which is why Microsoft is spending so much time and applying significant resources to the task of continually improving Teams.

So far it is working.  Microsoft Teams is a great productivity tool, and these changes just make it better!

Microsoft Rolls Out New Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center Capabilities

The pandemic has expedited cloud migration timelines, and IT administrators have had to accomplish gargantuan tasks in record time, such as moving workflows to the cloud, securing company devices, and ensuring 24/7 data access. As the cloud becomes an increasingly pivotal part of business operations, Microsoft continues to improve the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center by adding new features that will make data management easier.

OneDrive sync health

With the OneDrive sync health feature, maintaining data integrity is easier than ever. IT admins can now readily check for sync statuses or errors by going to the OneDrive sync health dashboard and generating reports for specific administrative purposes. From the dashboard, admins can generate insights ranging from executive summaries to specific sync statuses of given devices, enabling them to filter the information they need so they can take action immediately in case they find sync issues.

Intelligent insights

Intelligent insights include features like Apps Inventory, Add-In Inventory, and Security Currency that allow IT, administrators, to strategically find and mitigate any issues. With these tools, they can gain an in-depth understanding of the organization’s Microsoft 365 environment and be privy to information such as:

  • What devices are running Office apps and which versions they’re running;
  • What Office add-ins are installed or running; and
  • Which servicing channel each device belongs to.

Knowing all this information can help administrators identify and manage unsupported Office versions and add-ins to ensure security and compliance.

Servicing automation with controls

This feature streamlines and automates Microsoft 365 Apps servicing to eliminate manual deployment and accelerate the rollout of updates and security patches. With this new feature, IT admins only need to apply a specific servicing profile to a set of devices to automatically deliver monthly updates for users or groups.

Admins can also specify exclusion date periods, or when Office apps updates should not run, such as during holidays or company meetings. They can schedule these dates to happen only once or regularly, depending on their organization’s schedule.

Servicing profiles: Rollback to a previous version

For businesses that use a servicing profile, admins can now roll back devices to the previous version if users encounter issues with the most recent version of the Monthly Enterprise Channel. For instance, if there’s an issue in Outlook’s latest update that hampers employee productivity, your IT team can revert Outlook to the previous stable version.

IT administrators can also view, pause, and resume updates on a per-device basis. If a user experiences issues during rollout, for instance, administrators can pause that user’s update and restore their software to a previous version while an IT personnel troubleshoots the issue.

Microsoft 365 Apps health

Microsoft 365 Apps health calculates an organization’s overall app health based on three criteria: app reliability, app performance, and supported versions. It also gives pertinent information such as Office app session crash rates and who reported such crashes, making it easier to identify issues and see how well Microsoft 365 apps are running during and in between deployments.

With these new features, administrators can better manage Microsoft 365 apps, and users can count on better experiences and fewer downtimes. If you want to learn more about how technology can increase your business’s operational efficiency, call us. Our IT experts are always ready to help.

Companies Need to Keep Their Vendors’ Security In Mind

Data breaches have a tendency to destabilize relationships. With so many data-related problems befalling businesses nowadays, it is important that each side of every data-driven relationship understands its role in the protection of other organizations’ data. Today, we’ll take a look at the issue and how to determine if your partners are putting in the effort required to keep your data secure. 

Are Your Vendors Properly Protecting Your Information?

We’ve seen businesses have a litany of challenges protecting their sensitive data over the past several years, and as threats get more sophisticated it poses more problems. Additionally, many businesses outsource a fair amount of their operational and support efforts, which can negatively affect their security.

So, how do you know that your vendors are protecting your information?

You ask them, of course. 

Before you onboard any new vendor, you should come up with a questionnaire that asks the right questions about how they handle their own cybersecurity, and more specifically (and importantly) how they go about handling your information. 

At Net Activity, we do this for all of our clients to ensure that they are partnering with reliable companies that, at the very least, are attempting to do the right things to protect sensitive information. 

Questions You Should Ask Your Vendors

The first thing you should consider when making up some questions to ask your vendors about security is: do you understand the answers? If you don’t know what you are doing, you could just assume any thoughtfully answered response would be sufficient. This is far from true and is a liability, especially in trying to ascertain what risk your business is facing by doing business with a company. We can’t stress enough that if you don’t have someone that knows what they are doing, you need to find someone, as this will serve you much better in times like this.

Let’s go through a couple of important questions you should ask if you do have the competence available to sufficiently measure risk from the answers:

  • Do you collect, store, or transmit personally identifiable information (PII)?
  • If so, do you store your PII onsite or in the cloud?
  • How do you provide users access to the PII you store?
  • Can PII be accessed remotely?
  • Do you constantly monitor all services, systems, and networks?
  • What regulatory bodies does your business operate under? Do you have proof of compliance?
  • What kind of encryption do you use for data-at-rest? Data-in-transit?
  • Do you consistently patch your software? 
  • Do you have mobile device management and IoT management systems?
  • Do you utilize legacy systems that aren’t supported by manufacturers?
  • What cybersecurity tools do you use?
  • Do you have language in your agreements about vendor cybersecurity? 
  • How are your continuity systems?
  • How would you go about the situation in the event of a data breach?
  • What authentication procedures do you use? 
  • Do you train your employees on the best practices of cybersecurity?

 

There are many more questions you can ask, and you should ask them if you find them necessary. Vetting your vendors is a great way to know if they have your best interests in mind. 

If you would like to partner with a company that not only has your best interests in mind but also can help you ascertain if your other partners do as well, give Net Activity a call today.

How Do Hardware Shortages Affect Business Decisions?

How often over the past year or two have you gone to replace a device on your infrastructure, only to find that the price has increased or the device simply isn’t available? This is an issue with the current hardware shortage, particularly for business electronics. Since businesses depend on technology, it becomes critical that you understand how this shortage impacts your day-to-day operations.

 

As you are probably aware, there is a hardware shortage out there for computing devices due to a component shortage. This shortage stems from semiconductors, and it’s bleeding into every facet of device creation, from manufacturing to acquisition. Naturally, this creates issues for businesses that need to invest in new hardware for their employees. Here are just a few of the ways this shortage has impacted businesses like yours.

Price Point

As the costs of components increase, so do the costs of the devices they are a part of. This is an unfortunate side effect of the costs of manufacturing increasing, and the consumers ultimately pay more for devices. This can also impact the costs associated with services offered by providers, as they need to purchase and maintain equipment to manage these services.

Timeline for Acquisition

With hardware being in short supply, you can expect the acquisition of any new devices to take a bit longer than usual—particularly if you are looking for something very specific. We recommend that you build out a hardware acquisition timeline so that you know when and how often you need to perform hardware refreshes on your infrastructure.

It Makes Upkeep Even More Important

Finally, since devices are more expensive and harder to come by, you should understand that the upkeep of your current hardware infrastructure is even more important than before. If something critical fails within your infrastructure and you are unable to immediately replace it due to shortages, what happens? Be sure to take care of what you currently have so that you can get as much value out of it as possible before it kicks the bucket.

We recommend that you work with us, or another quality IT provider to ensure that your hardware needs are met within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We have the connections and working relationships with vendors and know the most reliable ways to get you the technology resources you need to succeed. Plus, it’s always better to have someone else do the legwork for you so you can avoid the frustrations that come from devices simply not being available when you need them most.

To get started, reach out to us at 216-503-5150.

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