AI (artificial intelligence) seems to jump out of the headlines daily, and we won’t attempt to proclaim we have the latest news. But we can tell you should start hardening your defenses all the way around.
Continue readingWork, Life and 2FA
We can’t urge anyone strongly enough to add 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) to any online login process. But we sometimes run into problems when that second step involves sending an email to a personal account and the phone we’re using to log in is a work phone.
Continue readingOwn Your Domain
It’s all too easy to let an expert set up your domain name, contract with a hosting company for your website and handle the routine of maintaining everything. But when one of those providers you trusted long ago is no longer in the picture, you can lose more than your identity
Continue readingThe Email Dilemma
It’s all so easy to save email messages. You don’t have to do a thing – except not delete them. That causes an email dilemma!
Continue readingPassword or PIN?
Do you know the difference between a password and a PIN? We sometimes don’t make use of that skill we learned back in the first grade – reading – and enter a PIN when a password is required or a password when a PIN is required.
Continue readingJust Because it’s Worked Forever…
Sometimes, we’re forced to use really old equipment because the applications we use for our businesses won’t run on anything else.
Continue readingManage Your Hard Drive Better
Not all hard drives are equal. Some of you still have mechanical hard drives and most of you now have solid-state hard drives (SSDs). The technologies are different, but you can manage your hard drive successfully if you have the right cloud-based backup and storage plan.
Continue readingManage Your Email for Better Security
When it comes to email security, this is a time of dread for most of us – and a time of great opportunity for cyber thieves who use email to do their dirty work. You need to manage your email to avoid getting caught in a trap.
Continue readingManage Your IT Details When You Move
It happens too many times just because stuff happens when you move your office. You need to manage your IT details when you move to a new space.
Continue readingInternet Outages Show No Favorites
The 10 largest internet outages of 2022 managed to hit a wide swath of the user community, ranging from music and messaging sites to gaming sites. While more business-related sites didn’t make the top 10, one of our client’s experiences showed the benefits of planning ahead and staying nimble.
Having a plan you can implement immediately is critical because you can get knocked off the internet in a nanosecond. It’s especially problematic for businesses such as our clients who can have up to 30 users. We’re not big enough to have multiple redundancies for our systems, nor are we big enough to deal directly with big providers. Our businesses likely pass through several hands before we reach the internet, and any of them can go down in a heartbeat.
Because of this uncertainty, one of our clients asked us to help them put together a process. They learned the consequences of being planless while working with another IT company. They knew they were going to have a planned outage because they were moving their physical location. They sell a product and take orders online.
Our solution was to have them take “paper” orders over the telephone as soon as the internet service was shut down to move their equipment. We had a process in place to get their tech system operational before lunchtime on moving day, and everything worked smoothly. As the system started to come online, they used a combination of paper and online orders and then switched to online only. The online system worked while the employees physically moved to their new location.
Their solution succeeded because our plan also included having the right infrastructure in place. We knew the internet connections and Wi-Fi network could handle the load once we put everything online.
Your solution will depend on your business’s needs. Everyone should prioritize telephone and email service because you can’t afford to go incommunicado. Who provides those services for you – and who provides them for your provider? You might not be able to get that latter provider, but it would be helpful. Is the phone service in the cloud? How is it set up? What electricity service options are available in your building?
We can help you develop or improve an outage emergency plan by looking at your equipment and configurations. We can recommend new equipment or configurations as needed and help you install better backup systems to help prevent data loss. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to talk about it.
Oh, and just what were the 10 biggest internet outages in 2022 based on outage reports? According to Downdetector, an internet tracking service of Ookla, which is best known for speed testing, they were:
- Spotify – 2.9 million
- WhatsApp – 2.9 million
- Discord – 1.1 million
- Roblox – 700,000
- Instagram – 600,00
- Twitter – 500,000
- Call of Duty – 350,000
- Reddit – 300,000
- Snapchat – 300,000
- TikTok – 300,000