ATECH MSP Blog

Remember the good old days of your office’s corded telephone solution that was ringing off the hook every minute of the day? Granted, you can only look back on the good old days when they are behind you. If you need to bring business communications into the 21st century, you should consider implementing a Voice over Internet Protocol solution.

We live in an era where the term “fake news” makes up a significant portion of the headlines. The Internet makes it very easy to misinform others and spread false rumors or news, as you can do so relatively anonymously with little fear of consequence. This has become a problem on social media sites like Facebook, which recently shut down a major “troll farm” in response to continued complaints.

Writing for a specific audience isn’t always the easiest thing for a business owner. You have to anticipate a certain reading level for your target audience. The readability of a document can have far-reaching consequences. For example, what if you write a business proposal, but the prospect grows impatient when they can’t understand what’s written in it? Thankfully, there are various tools at your disposal that can help you craft the perfect document for your purpose.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month! To prepare for this incredibly important month, you’ll want to focus your efforts on ensuring your business is protected against the myriad of online threats that can pose a danger for your business. Thankfully, you don’t have to do it alone. With our trusted IT professionals by your side, you’ll be able to take the fight to hackers and other entities that threaten your data.

Purchased by Facebook in 2014 for $22 billion dollars, WhatsApp is a cross-platform application that uses an Internet connection to unify business communications. It allows users to write messages, share files, set groups, as well as make voice and video calls without using SMS mobile data.

Email has been one of the primary correspondence methods for businesses for several years. In addition to communicating with your team, clients, and peers, emails also bring you the latest blog in a subscription, or sales and marketing messages from prospective vendors. With dozens of emails flowing in throughout your day, emails can become a distraction that results in a significant loss of productivity. These three tips can help you cut down on time that you waste when compulsively checking your emails.

An educated workforce provides the business world with intelligent prospective employees who want to leave companies better than they were when they arrived. Thankfully, technology has made it even easier to achieve a quality education with concepts such as online learning and live streaming taking the frontlines. How are today’s students utilizing modern technology in the classroom?

Too often, the desire to share an exciting travel destination with the world overrides any security or safety concerns one might have. Even people who are traveling for business will use social media to document their trip as a method of promoting their attendance at the event over social media. This includes photographing and sharing proprietary documents, like boarding passes and passports.

In November of 2014, the Federal Trade Commission announced that “two massive telemarketing operations” had been temporarily shut down after collecting over $120 million by “deceptively marketing computer software and tech support services.” It wasn’t long before these companies lost significant court judgements to the FTC, but by then, the money was gone.

Despite what some songs say, the best things in life aren’t always free. Take, for instance, your software. If you or one of your employees find and download a “free” version of some business-critical application instead of properly purchasing a license, you risk catching the eye of the BSA.

In case you haven’t heard, the credit bureau, Equifax, has suffered a data breach that may have exposed the records of 143 million Americans.

The modern business needs a reliable source of information technology support. Historically, this was provided through a method known as break/fix—if your business technology was to break, a technician would come in to fix it. While this approach works, there are many trade-offs to using it that a business shouldn’t have to accept. Now that there is the managed services model, businesses no longer do.

Have you found that your smartphone battery doesn’t last as long as it should? If you’re a business owner who uses your mobile device very frequently, you might notice a rather significant change in the quality of your device’s charge over time. How can you make sure that this decrease in power doesn’t create problems for your productivity?

When it comes to hacking and cybercrime, it can literally be a few seconds that will ruin your business. One single chink in your network’s armor is all it takes for your data to be compromised. Modern SMBs need to take every opportunity to ensure they’re using best practices to help keep their network safe and secure. Here’s a look at four network security bad habits that you and your team can fix today.

A corruption case in Pakistan has taken a new twist, thanks to an unexpected source: Calibri. The font is being examined as key evidence, as its presence in key documents has caused a few bumps in the case. This is because the font is used in documents that are dated a year before the font was released.

You may have noticed how social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter often share the location of any pictures you post, if they are set up to do so. Well, you’ve probably asked yourself if your device will share this information automatically, or if you have to enable this setting yourself.

We are never shy about insisting that certain standards are met when devising passwords, but many major companies are seemingly far less worried about password security than we are. A recent study conducted by the password manager developer Dashlane paints a troubling picture of the state of password security, providing anecdotal evidence in the form of some very well-known and trusted companies scoring at the low end of the password security spectrum.

We talk about network security a lot, and for good reason. The majority of today’s businesses rely heavily on their information systems and there is plenty of danger presented by Internet-based threats. However, some organizations spend so much time worrying about cyber threats that they forget that physical threats exist outside the technology plane. Your organization needs to take steps toward securing its on-site premise, as well as the digital space in which your business exists.

There’s a lot to be gained by utilizing a company letterhead on your correspondence and other printed materials, especially in terms of company recognition and professional impression. Utilizing Microsoft Word makes it easy to add this detail to your documents. For this week’s tip, we’ll show you how easy it is to create a letterhead in Word.

Cloud computing has helped many businesses over the past few years. The many benefits it provides have enabled a variety of businesses in many industries to improve their functionality. The retail sector is a prime example of one such industry. Here are a few benefits that the cloud has imparted to those in retail--benefits that your business could enjoy as well.