When a hacker tries to infiltrate your network, they are doing so with a purpose in mind. Usually they are looking for specific information, like account credentials, personal information, or files that can be used to blackmail victims. Regardless, we’ll go over what a hacker can do with the information that they collect from you, and how you can best protect it from them.

At the end of the day, do you shut down your computer or do you put it into sleep mode? Depending on what you need from your device the next day, you might want to consider which option benefits you the most. Here are some of the pros and cons of both approaches so that you can pick which one best suits your situation.

Nobody ever wants to admit that their business has a problem with security. Unfortunately, as the one responsible for the future of your organization, you have to consider all possible outcomes of any potential data loss incident. Furthermore, many of these incidents are beyond your control. Thankfully, you can soothe the pain of a data loss disaster by thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

Especially with so many people claiming to be tech-savvy, asking a question about IT can be a bit nerve wracking. Because of this hesitation, there are a lot of people who don’t ask questions about technology because they feel like their questions might be stupid. For example, having an updated operating system is a term that is tossed around a lot by IT professionals, and even some not-so-professionals.

Does your business use Windows 10? If so, there are all sorts of hidden tips and tricks that can help you gain even more value from your workstations that are running Windows 10. Here are a few of these secrets and how they can help your staff save time.

Your IT is a central part of your organization’s operations, but its role has changed significantly as business processes have grown more streamlined. There are always shifts and changes in the way that businesses function which must be accounted for, especially in the modern office environment. How have these shifts affected your business’s IT management?

Data backup. It’s something that all businesses need, but not all businesses know how to approach the implementation of it. This is largely due to the tendency to underestimate how disastrous data loss scenarios can be for their business. You know how it goes; it’s impossible, until it happens. Thankfully, you can significantly reduce the damage done by data loss incidents with a little bit of preventative, proactive thought and a comprehensive backup system.

If you’re like most businesses, you almost certainly rely on email on a daily basis. However, if your email is hosted on an in-house server, you are becoming less like many businesses, as they are moving their solutions to the cloud. Here’s why you should follow suit and make the switch yourself.

Who would you rather hire--an employee who comes in late, after your systems have encountered an issue, and takes twice as long to fix them as he said, or an employee who was ahead of the game, and managed to avoid issues before they influenced your business? This scenario is precisely the same one that you encounter when you weigh a break/fix IT provider against a managed service provider.

Microsoft Word is more or less synonymous with word processing, but with the right tricks, you can do so much more. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over four neat and useful capabilities that Microsoft Word has.

If you hadn’t yet noticed, there’s been a change made to the Google search engine that will influence how search results are presented to users. Google’s ‘Instant’ feature, introduced in 2010, is no more.

Few organizations take business continuity planning as serious as financial organizations do. The Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as well as the organizations they oversee, depend heavily on technology for their daily operations. For these establishments, a severe data loss event or significant downtime has the potential to cripple the economy, depending on the severity. As such, they require all of the institutions that they have jurisdiction over to meet certain business continuity benchmarks.

It’s one of the most commonly-known computer issues: infection. There are plenty of threats out there that could potentially take hold of your PC. The question is, do you know how to proceed if one does? This blog will go into just that.

Security best practices demand that a workstation should never be left unlocked. However, it can be really tempting to leave it unlocked if you only plan on stepping away for a moment--but unfortunately, that moment can easily turn into many if you are distracted from your task. Fortunately, there is now a fix that relies on the one device most of us are never without: our phones.

Technology plays a pivotal role in the way modern businesses function, and as a result it carries some element of risk. An example of this is how companies store electronic records. While the implementation of measures that are designed to provide greater ease of use and organization for a business’ employees make business move faster, it also makes it that much easier for a hacker to locate and steal data. Small and medium-sized businesses, in particular, are vulnerable, as they may not have dedicated IT security.

All businesses have certain software solutions that they need to keep their operations going. Be it an email solution or a productivity suite that you lack, your business is held back from ideal operational efficiency. The traditional way of acquiring these pieces of software can be holding your organization back, so we’ve come to you with a solution: Software as a Service (SaaS).

Everyone has a right to privacy. However, with the popularity of social networks, the Internet is a very hard place to remain a private individual. Digital communication is everywhere. Cybercrime has become a fairly regular event. This week’s tip of the week takes a glance at three websites that you can use to help enforce your right to privacy.

Servers are a critical part of any business or organization’s IT infrastructure, as they are the backbone of data distribution. This could include access to applications such as your productivity suite, or even the storage of vital data that’s necessary for day-to-day operations. Unfortunately, this critical hardware must be continuously maintained. The question becomes: Is your business responsible for keeping your server infrastructure in proper working order?

Ransomware is a tricky piece of malware that locks down the precious files located on a victim’s computer, then (in theory) will return access to them when a ransom has been paid. Depending on the files stored on a victim’s computer, they might simply blow it off and not worry too much about losing access to a couple of pictures or videos--but what if this ransomware threatened to expose your web browsing history?

Technology maintenance and management is one of the major pain points of all businesses, but it comes more easily to large organizations that have large budgets. Unfortunately, small organizations are often left out, placing such an important aspect of managing their business on the back burner. How, then, can you take advantage of proactive IT maintenance without breaking your budget?

SMBs often have a lot of work on their plates due to having smaller workforces. Thus, something as important as IT gets put on hold in favor of the day to day responsibilities. The problem with that is if IT is not managed properly, it will result in downtime. One would think that adding a few heads to focus on technology management would be a solution, but adding salaries to your budget can be an expensive endeavor. Ultimately, there’s a better way.

Before you consider hiring technical staff, let’s have a conversation about managing your technology so you don’t need to put your focus on it. If you’ve been burned in the past by your regular computer repair person, we get it, which is why do things differently. Ordinarily, a business seeking computer support would suffer from what’s known as break-fix IT. This is a type of maintenance that your business seeks out when it’s suffering from broken technology.

When your technology doesn’t work properly, you will seek out assistance. The break-fix IT provider will then dispatch someone to resolve your problem. They will finish their work and you’ll pay any support fees that you’ve accrued (sometimes this includes travel time, an hourly budget, parts, service fees, etc.). This type of IT maintenance is more reactive than proactive, as it responds only when you are currently experiencing problems rather than preventing them in the first place.

At Telesys Voice and Data, we pride ourselves on proactive IT maintenance. This type of managed service can remotely monitor and resolve most issues that your organization encounters before they evolve into bigger, more expensive problems. An example of this is actively monitoring your network for signs of hardware failure, then proceeding to assist you with replacing the problematic hardware before you deal with downtime. It’s just one way that your business benefits from proactive IT maintenance.

Thus, as long as it’s covered in your service level agreement, managed IT expenses will continue to be much easier to budget than the costs associated with break-fix technology maintenance. Outsourced IT services from Telesys Voice and Data can be your first step toward optimizing your business’ operations and taking the strain of IT management off of your capital budget. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.