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Let?s discuss the situation that we all witnessed, and the lessons that all businesses can take away from it. The True Scope of the Outage Went Far Beyond Facebook Well, sort of. The reality is that ?Facebook? is/was far more than just the social network that goes by that name. Throughout its history, Facebook has also spent over $23 billion in acquiring other companies and assets, from the unlaunched web operating system Parakey back in 2007 to the CRM (customer relationship management) platform Kustomer in November of 2020. In no uncertain terms: Meta, the company that owns Facebook, also owns many other things? many of which also went down along with Facebook. The problem is that a lot of businesses rely on Facebook and its associated applications and services for a lot. It?s a known fact that WhatsApp, a VoIP and messaging application, is used by a lot of businesses. However, those businesses were without this tool for the entire time Facebook was experiencing their outage. The same went for any website that allowed its users to log in using Facebook Login? their users were locked out for the duration of the outage, and therefore couldn?t make any purchases. If there?s any takeaway that businesses should receive from this whole situation, it?s clearly not to put all of their eggs in one basket?Facebook?s or otherwise. However, this is sometimes unavoidable, particularly if they?re utilizing a unified workplace platform. So, what can be done? Your Company Needs a Backup Plan Let?s face facts for a moment: for all the businesses that were suddenly restricted when Facebook went down, the impact if Microsoft or Google went down would be far greater. Alternatively, you could very well be using a line of business application that is completely unaffiliated with either that could go down. Either way, the impact would be the same: your business would be stuck. We frequently talk about business continuity planning, and for good reason. However, we typically talk about it in terms of a disaster taking a direct impact on your place of business: power loss, fire, or equipment damage preventing you from accessing your business? resources and causing data loss. However, your business continuity could just as easily be affected by one of your providers suffering downtime as well. Is it incredibly likely? No? but that doesn?t mean you should ignore the risk. You need to have a strategy at the ready that addresses these kinds of complications and the means your team members have to adapt to them, regardless of whether they?re working in-house or remotely. There?s really no telling when these kinds of issues will rear up, and when your company will be amongst those impacted by them. We Can Help Your Company Prepare for Any Kind of Disaster There are just too many potential issues that could strike to risk your business and its data? or for that matter, its productivity. Our experienced team can put you in the position to avoid most of these issues or at least greatly reduce the influence they have on your operations. To find out more about what we can do, give White Mountain IT Services a call at (603) 889-0800.
Fewer Capital Expenses in the Long Term In business, you have two different kinds of expenses: capital expenses and operational expenses. The capital expenses are large, up-front costs that are generally not prepared for. They might include something like purchasing a new server unit when your previous one experiences hardware failure. This large cost might be just enough to break the bank of your business for several months, depending on the severity and size of the expenditure. What if you could transform that into an operational expense, where you proactively maintain your IT to minimize failures? That?s where managed services come in. Rather than spending a ton of money on things up-front, managed services give your business the ability to essentially pay an affordable monthly rate for services or goods rendered. Think of it like the Netflix of IT; you pay the managed service provider per your service agreement and you get the goods, so to speak. It?s a great way to make the large, up-front costs associated with doing business that much more affordable. And we all know that small businesses don?t have the same budget as a large enterprise, but you shouldn?t let that stop you from trying to leverage the same powerful tools and services they use. Scalable to Fit Your Business? Needs One of the best parts of working with a managed service provider is that the services rendered are all scalable to suit the needs of your business. We understand that one size does not necessarily fit all, especially where your budget and its needs are concerned. Furthermore, not all businesses need enterprise-grade email management or web hosting, and so on. We always strive to help your organization make the best technology decisions possible. White Mountain IT Services can provide your organization with top-notch managed services to help you make technology management as easy and stress-free as possible. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.
What Is Your IP Address? IP stands for Internet Protocol, and it is a numerical value assigned to your computer network on the Internet. You can think about it in this way; your IP address identifies the host and establishes your location on the Internet, while also creating a path between the two. So, long story short (and without overcomplicating things), your IP address is just your network?s location on the Internet, but it?s helpful to know what it is for the purposes of configuration and whatnot. Chances are you are not going to be the one doing the configuring, so leave this business to the IT professionals at your organization. Still, for those interested, figuring out your IP address can be pretty simple. Now, back to the task at hand: finding your printer?s IP address. Finding Your Printer?s IP Address If you have already installed the drivers for your printer, then you should be able to access the printer?s IP address through the Control Panel. You might need to configure or troubleshoot your printer, which is where your IP address comes into play. Of course, you can only use these steps if the computer on your network is already connected to the printer. If it?s a new printer that isn?t yet connected, you?ll need to consult the owner?s manual. Follow these steps to find your printer?s IP address: Open the Control Panel Navigate to Hardware and Sound Select View Devices and Printers Right-click on the printer you would like more information on Select Properties from the list of options Select the Web Services tab Under Troubleshooting information, you should see your printer?s IP address. And, that?s all there is to it! Now you know your printer?s IP address. What other tips do you hope to see in the future? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog.
Consider your average day-to-day operations. They might be going perfectly fine for a while, but then small hiccups start to occur. Files start to go missing or they are moved around somewhat. Even your network starts to slow down a little bit. Either way, these issues grow more and more noticeable over time, but you just attribute it to your own diminishing technology?something that is remarkably easy to do until something very concerning happens. By the time you make a move to investigate, you might notice that things are pretty bad. You find out that one user has been accessing your network to create these issues, but you don?t believe for one second that this particular person would do such a thing. You decide to confront the person about it, but they insist that it was not them. Still, the logs don?t lie? or do they? You decide to continue your investigation and discover that the source of these issues is an unknown IP address in a different country. Naturally, this can only mean one thing: you?ve been hacked. Your network is being accessed through a compromised account, and since you haven?t been actively monitoring for these issues, you had no idea until now. But how far does the issue go? These kinds of situations are more common than you might think, and they are a very real reason to keep a close eye on your network activity. If you don?t act on these inconsistencies, even if they are false positives, then how are you supposed to know when there is an actual problem that needs to be addressed? White Mountain IT Services can help your organization by offering comprehensive remote monitoring and network security solutions designed to detect anomalies and address them in an appropriate manner. We know that you don?t have time to do this all the time, which is why we make our services as accessible as possible to all. Through solutions like Unified Threat Management, multi-factor authentication, access controls, and password management, you can keep your organization as secure as possible. To learn more about how you can accomplish this, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.
A [Few Hundred] Applications for Every Need When it comes to the software that a business has to choose from (with almost no exceptions in any industry or any software?s purpose), a lack of choice isn?t really a problem. Quite the opposite, in fact. If an organization relies on too many different applications and platforms, its productivity can ultimately suffer. This is why you see so many business productivity suites in use? the basic tools for organizational productivity are bundled together and built to play nicely with one another. As a result, linear, more productive workflows are made possible. Another benefit of using a productivity suite is the fact that it helps to discourage the use of the ominously-named shadow IT, a cybersecurity term for software that is on your systems without the knowledge and approval of your IT department or resource. Basically, if an employee doesn?t have?or doesn?t know they have?the software needed to complete a certain task, they may go looking for a solution to this issue independently. Any software they find and download could potentially be a vehicle for threats, making shadow IT the threat it really is to businesses. Ensuring that your team members have the tools they?ll need from the start, and are comfortable using them, is much easier when these tools can all be found from the same source. Finally, we should mention that maintaining a bunch of individual software programs is sure to be an expensive endeavor, both in subscription costs and in the hours invested in the proper support for each. Consolidating your use into a unified platform like a productivity suite as much as you can is a great way to budget your available capital into a more manageable monthly cost. Productivity-Enhancing Tools Decreasing Productivity Let?s return to the ?too many tools for one job? issue for a moment. With too many disparate software titles in play, your team will likely need to switch between them to complete different aspects of their work. It just doesn?t matter how efficiently someone can complete their tasks if half of their time is spent moving data from one program to another so they can carry out these tasks at all. This is just another reason that choosing software that is bundled into a suite is generally the better option for a business. If time is considered money, you don?t want your tasks to take any more time than absolutely necessary. Oversight Becomes Impossible … or at least far more difficult than it should be. Part of effectively managing a team is to be able to observe certain key performance indicators (or KPIs) and identify trends that can be seen in them. For instance, if Tom, Dick, and Harry each take three hours to complete Task A every time, while Eileen can consistently complete it in two, there?s likely some valuable insight to be gleaned that would benefit your processes. KPIs like this are easier to obtain from unified software platforms, as all the data is found in one place. When all is said and done, your work processes are not the place that you want your team members to find themselves overwhelmed. Standardizing the software that should be used is a great way to help streamline these processes, and is something that we can […]
