ATECH MSP Blog

Know it or not, your business takes in and creates a lot of data. Most of this data, like most items and information, isn’t worth much. Some of it, however, is crucial to your business’ ability to operate. If a situation comes along where you are faced with the prospect of losing your data, it will be much better to have a backup plan in place than not.

I’m sure you’re familiar with those neat images that can look like multiple things at once - there’s the one with two faces that is somehow also a vase, the rabbit that is also a duck, and many other examples. Sometimes, our technology can seem to be the same way - take IT security and IT compliance. While these two considerations are definitely related, as they both contribute to risk mitigation, they are not the same thing.

A person’s smartphone is more than just a phone to most people. In fact, smartphone use is now so expected that companies are now trying to find a way to utilize their employees’ use of their devices rather than keeping them from using them. Today, we thought we would take a look at the current smartphone market. 

iMessage is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, and iPhone/iPad users get a nice, seamless integration across all their Apple products. With so many iPhone users using Microsoft Windows 10 PCs, we thought that there must be a way to send and receive iMessages in Windows 10. There are, but it comes with a lot of risks.

One of the most crucial resources in any business are its human ones - the employees that keep the wheels turning, day in and day out. However, like any of your business’ resources, you need to be careful when handling your employees. There is the very real possibility of an employee experiencing an unpleasant state known as burnout.

We spend a lot of time on this blog discussing cybersecurity. Understanding the effects of full-scale cybersecurity attacks is useful, but will only motivate a person or business to do things that will work to keep their network secure. The problem is that when it comes to public computing resources, there isn’t enough being done. 

The more successful your business is, the more files you have. These files need a storage facility. For decades, each file that needed to be kept would be printed off and stored in a file cabinet. Today, there are better solutions; and, since a lot of the work being done today is collaborative, file sharing has really moved to the digital age. Let’s help you do some things you need to do to maintain efficient file management systems.

Email is almost certainly the most well-known solution that your business uses, so most users probably feel as though they have a pretty good handle on it. However, many of them are probably making things more difficult for themselves - and taking more time than they need to on it. This week, we’ll go over some easy tips to make your use of email more efficient.

Today, keeping your network and computing infrastructure free from threats is the best way to control the security of your organization’s data. Any business that actively confronts their risks realizes early on that cybercrime has become a major problem that their business has to be kept insulated from. Unfortunately for many organizations, no matter how much your business spends on network security, all it takes is one misstep by someone who has access to your organization’s sensitive information to cause a major problem.

It feels like every week we learn about another big business or bank or municipality getting hacked, and the data of their customers getting stolen.

Big organizations are losing millions of dollars, forcing their hand to run damage control to millions of customers and deal with crushingly bad press. Beyond feeling a little numb to these cyberattacks (more on this in a moment), many small business owners might be feeling pretty lucky they don’t need to deal with these types of threats. Unfortunately, they are dead wrong.

Phishing has been gaining notoriety in cybersecurity circles, as it has been used quite successfully in a variety of business infiltrations and data breaches. Many of the more well-known cyberattacks of the last few years were enabled by phishing. In order to protect your business’ interests, you and your team need to be able to identify these social engineering attempts. We’ll go over a few ways to do so for this week’s tip.

It isn’t exactly news that businesses of all sizes need to be concerned about cyberthreats - especially since, as time passes, these threats have become more serious and insidious. Up until this point, there have been tried-and-true methods that businesses could leverage to stop these threats, but hackers are very clever when it comes to their attacks. What can a business do?

The way a business handles its network security typically defines what kind of problems come from their use of information systems. As a result, cybersecurity has become a major part of any forward-thinking organization’s IT strategy and has become a multi-hundred-billion dollar a year industry. Of course, it wasn’t always such a huge problem. The history of cybersecurity doesn’t go back very far, but since it has such a major impact, we thought it would be interesting to go back a couple decades and look at the brief history of the practice. 

How many times a day do you search for something on Google? Your answer likely contributes to the fact that Google Search is the most visited website on the internet. In fact, it is so popular that the company’s name is now a verb. Google it! 

In today's technology dependent world, smartphones play a critical role. How much do you really know about these devices? Sure, the devices haven’t changed a whole lot in the past decade, but what has changed? Today, we take a look at how smartphone batteries have evolved, and what we will see in the future. 

Not all that long ago, green technologies were known as such for two reasons: yes, they were beneficial to the environment, but they also came at great expense to the businesses leveraging them. This has recently changed. Now, businesses are seeing plenty of reasons to go green, from increased customer appreciation for conservation efforts and, yes, even cost savings.

Project management is key to the success of all businesses. Luckily, there are great software options that can do a lot for you, if used correctly. Today, we look at project management and share tips to help make sure you are using the software correctly, further organizing your business and success of projects. 

Payment cards are extremely popular to use nowadays - whether its a debit or credit card, the convenience that they offer simply cannot be denied. Unfortunately, this convenience also makes them a promising threat vector for a scammer to use, via a device called a skimmer.

As a business owner security should be of the utmost importance to you and your business. Adapting to the modern age means implementing different strategies to adapt to employee physical location, travelling employees, or even employees dealing with circumstantial dilemmas such as health problems or family matters. Whilst your business can experiment with different off-site methods, there should always be one constant: security.

Signatures are unique to the signatory. With the introduction and acceptance of electronic signatures, personalizing your signature has become more difficult. However, did you know introducing something as simple as a Gmail signature can give some credibility to your business communications?