Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

While remote work has been possible and somewhat popular for some time now, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made it indispensable for many businesses to survive. Nevertheless, as it has spread, it has become apparent that remote work isn’t likely to go away as our immediate need for it does. Let’s look at how remote operations are influencing businesses to see why.

When it comes to their necessary hardware, there are some things that most businesses generally have in common, differences in scale notwithstanding. As such, businesses of all sizes should consider the same things while putting together their IT infrastructure. For this week’s tip, we’re going over these considerations to benefit your hardware planning and implementation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that a lot of businesses are approaching cybersecurity. In normal times, businesses will periodically try to make improvements to their organizational security and pounce all over events that could put their network and data at risk. While this strategy has worked, the new normal brought on by COVID-19 has IT administrators and business decision makers focused on maintaining resilience regardless of the financial and operational stressors they encounter. In today’s article we will look to identify the major shifts businesses have had to make, and how a consistent approach to cybersecurity is giving some companies an advantage.

One of the most prevalent problems that businesses now face are scams known as phishing attacks. When it comes to defending against these attacks, the capability to identify phishing as such is perhaps your greatest asset. Let’s go over a few signs that a message you receive might be a phishing attack.

Is your Android device’s battery becoming a problem? Does it seem like you only get a few hours of use on a full charge? Does it shut off well before it should? These are common problems that happen when a device gets older (not-so-curiously around the time that you pay off the device). If your device’s battery is running slower, there are some steps you can take to ensure that you can get through your day without having to constantly worry about your device shutting down.

In a recent security update, most Android and iOS phones received a new opt-in setting related to the COVID-19 Exposure Notification system. What is this? Is your phone being tracked? Let’s take a deeper look at what is going on.

Microsoft has been a driving force in personal and business productivity for over 40 years. Over that time one of their most popular offerings has been Microsoft Office. For the past several years the software giant has been bundling their Office platform with OneDrive and calling it Office 365. Millions of individuals and businesses utilize the tools in the platform, which is now being rebranded to Microsoft 365, and that has started to confuse some people. Today, we’ll clarify what this means for businesses and individuals.

Be honest: you don’t think, “I need to search for this online.” You think, “I need to Google this.” Google is the standard in online search, but so few of us use it to its fullest abilities. Here, we’re sharing a few tips and tricks to make your use of Google Search much more effective.

More than ever, data fuels business decision making. To get the best use out of the data your business collects, automated tools can be used. This eliminates the (often impossible) task of manually getting the data together and then analyzing it. Today, we’ll talk about data automation and how rethinking how you look at your data can really help your business improve its operations.

Your business’ data is its lifeblood, which means that one of your internal priorities should be protecting it. While we often discuss the importance of your cybersecurity to defend against data theft and similar issues, it is also important to consider what would happen if the data loss was caused due to damage to the infrastructure it was stored on.

Keyboard shortcuts are inherently useful, from the classic cut (ctrl+X), copy (ctrl+C), and paste (ctrl-V) to the ones that fewer people know about. For this week’s tip, we’re shining the spotlight on some of these other (perhaps lesser known) keyboard shortcuts.

Small business owners have to confront a lot of issues, with more every day. As your business grows, however, there are too many for you to manage on your own. If your business is too big to control, you will need to expand on your strategies. Today, we will take a look at how decision-making shifts when your business grows. 

While it is very, very hard to say that much good has come from the COVID-19 pandemic, much less to make light of it, it is an important exercise for all of us to take. That’s why we wanted to take a few moments to reflect on the advancements—including an objectively silly one—that this time has helped foster.

Your business’ productivity is incredibly important to its processes. Considering this, it is critically important that you enable your team to work as productively as possible. To help you accomplish this, we’re sharing a tip with you: how to add your G Suite documents to your bookmarks bar.

Remote collaboration has now become a necessity for the workforce to continue their productivity, so many businesses have adopted the modern pinnacle: video conferencing. With this widespread adoption, widespread eccentricities have also arisen. Let’s take a deep dive into one of the most noticed eccentricities that have come about: waving goodbye at the end of a video conference.

Your business’ wireless is an important factor to consider in your operations, which means that your choice of router is crucial for your overall success. Here, we’re going into a few considerations that you should keep in mind as you select your router.

Do you use Twitter to keep in touch with your clients? If you don’t, you should consider it, as it provides a simple way for you to reach the people you want to have as clients. While the brief-message format that Twitter is based on may seem to be an obstacle, Twitter has provided an elegant way to overcome this potential issue. This week, our tip will cover how to create a Twitter thread.

It’s a common myth that Apple computers don’t get viruses. It’s not uncommon for a Mac user to chime in and say, “you should have gotten a Mac,” when a PC user mentions getting a virus or malware. 

Let’s unpack this myth, and talk a little about how, no matter what technology you have, you need to protect it.

There are many security buzzwords that come into play when the technology available to help secure a business is discussed. The problem is that many of these buzzwords sound great but are actually very poor fits to the real needs of most small and medium-sized businesses. Let’s consider how these buzzwords play into the concept of “security theater” and how this can impact businesses negatively.

Notifications are one of the Android mobile platform’s most-often-used functions, but they can perhaps also detract from workplace focus the most. To help limit these interruptions, we’re dedicating this week’s tip to better managing these notifications for your productivity.