ATECH MSP Blog

No technology lasts forever. Your business will need to replace server hardware or workstations eventually, no matter how well you take care of it. However, what do you do with the hard drive of any device that you have to replace? If you don’t take action to destroy your old hard drive (after moving any data off of it as needed), you could be in violation of various compliance guidelines issued by HIPAA.

If you think about it, password security is an interesting phenomenon. The odds are that a user knows the importance of using a strong password, as well as the potential consequences of using weak ones. Yet, time after time, people would rather go with passwords that are easy to type and remember, as opposed to adding a few simple security measures.

According to the homeland security adviser to the White House, Tom Bossert, international blame for the global WannaCry attack is being directed toward North Korea. Responsibility for the attack that spanned from May 12th to the 15th of 2017 has been firmly placed on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which Bossert says is in agreement with the conclusions of Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand.

Cortana is becoming more of a utility with every feature that is added to its capabilities. Fans of Google’s applications will be happy to hear that Cortana can now play nice with the likes of Gmail, Google Contact, and Google Calendar. We’ll take you through the steps to set up an integration between these programs and Cortana.

Business cards have long been part of business etiquette. In the late Renaissance period, visitors were announced with special cards that signified the arrival of the guest and reminding the recipient of their social obligations. The Industrial Revolution transformed these into trade cards, and the professional business card as we know it got its start. Today, the business card is a useful networking tool, even though transferring the information into a phone can be a hassle.

“The elephant in the room” has long been used as an analogy for a blatantly obvious problem that everyone is hesitant, if not unwilling, to acknowledge. Many companies find that they have elephants like these in their server rooms. Today, we’ll discuss some of these metaphorical elephants and how your company can get rid of them.

Mobility is a key to business today, as evidenced by essentially every business utilizing some sort of mobile device in their operations. However, one major consideration that has kept mobile devices from being truly mobile is the battery life of these devices, and the fact that the limited nature of battery life keeps these devices from ever migrating too far from their wired power source. This is an issue that many anticipate that wireless charging technology can resolve.

Downloading an app is a fairly straightforward process on an Android device. Access the Google Play store, find the app, and press install. However, when you first try to use the app, things can sometimes become more complicated as your phone starts asking you for vague permissions. For today’s tip, we’ll explore what these permission requests are actually asking for.

Uh oh. It’s the big day, and you’ve just realized that you’ve forgotten to purchase a gift for a special someone (or twelve). Thank goodness for online shopping, right? However, you still need to keep your digital security in mind as you try to save the holiday--cybercriminals aren’t the type to take a break during one of the most potentially lucrative times of year.

How does your business stay in touch with both in-house employees and clients? One of the ways a traditional business would do so is by using the wired handset telephone, but such a device can’t keep up with the demands of modern businesses. In fact, you can make leaps and bounds by making the jump to a digital voice solution called VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol.

Spreadsheets are excellent ways to communicate a lot of information in a concise format. However, the big problem is that a spreadsheet alone isn’t very visually appealing. To remedy this, you can add other visual elements, like charts, into your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. For today’s tip, we’ll go over some of your options.

How does your business handle its IT management? It’s inevitable that your organization will suffer from technology troubles at some point or another, and it might seem like you have little control over it at times. However, the way that you manage your business’s IT can have a considerable effect on how your organization functions on a grand scale. What’s the best way to handle something as important as technology maintenance for your organization?

In the realm of cyberattacks, a data breach is perceived as one of, if not the biggest threat that a business can face. They are seen as so dangerous, in fact, that threats like phishing attacks are largely disregarded. However, data from a recent study suggests that this is the opposite of what should happen in a decision maker’s mind.

It’s safe to say that most businesses today rely on the Internet, as do most of the humans who work at them. Therefore, when the cable suddenly goes out and their connection is lost, many employees may find themselves struggling with a downtime incident. There can be many causes to a lost Internet connection, with just as many ways to identify and resolve it.

How often have you started to read something you thought may be valuable to you, only to put it down a few moments later, completely lost because of the use of technical language and industry jargon? The IT industry can be especially guilty of this. However, since this is need-to-know information, we’ve decided to go over a few crucial security concepts by representing your business security with a locked door.

One in four Americans is a millennial, which puts their numbers at over 83 million. This means that the generation with the most people in the United States, all 83 million of them, are of the age where the time has come for them to work for a living. This in turn means that there are more workers from this generation than any other.

Allowing a workforce to operate remotely can provide a business with considerable benefits. However, there is also the risk of falling victim to a few shortcomings that can snag a business and ultimately hurt it. In order to make optimal use of a remote work strategy, there needs to be a conscious effort to minimize these shortcomings. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss how to do so.

With so many breaches showing up in the headlines and their impact being felt across the world, one would think that businesses of all sizes would do more to protect their data against cybersecurity threats. A recent study has shown that this is unfortunately not the case.

Did you know that a surprising number of data breaches are the result of insider threats? Insider threats are defined as data exposure, either malicious by nature or unintentional, that results from the actions of an employee in your workforce. With so many threats out there, it’s easy to forget that some of the most dangerous are right within your walls. How can you keep insider threats from becoming a major problem for your organization?

In order to activate Windows 10, a user will need a product key. In an ideal world, that would be the end of it, but in the actual world, there are situations that will require the most-likely-long-gone product key to be entered once again. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over a way to ensure you never lose your Windows 10 product key again. All it takes is a Microsoft account.