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What Can I Do to Stop Scammy Robocallers? There?s some good news. All four major US carriers have free spam call blocking of some sort. On top of that, thanks to 2019?s Traced Act, law enforcement has been granted even more power to fight back against the entities that turn our phones against us. Google and Apple have gotten involved too, offering features to prevent unknown callers and to redirect spam calls. More features and tools are on the way, and the Traced Act hasn?t even been fully implemented across the board yet. In other words, there?s hope for the future, but it might take a while. First of all, let?s hit some of the basics that will help protect you, and hopefully slow down calls like these: Don?t answer calls from unknown or blocked numbers. If you don?t feed the trolls, they might go away. Keep your contacts updated. When someone changes their number, get in the habit of updating their contact. This way, you are less likely to need to pick up if you don?t recognize the number. These might not work for everybody?what if you use your cell phone to conduct business, and new prospects are calling you all the time? You should at least follow these tactics: Hang up immediately if you think the call is a robocall. The reason these calls keep happening is because they are successful to a certain degree. If we all strive to not get caught, there will be less incentive for robocalls to happen in the first place. Don?t respond, and definitely don?t answer any questions that could be answered with ?yes.? The caller might be recording you. They already know your phone number, and maybe more. If they can capture your voice, they could use it for nefarious purposes. Check with Your Carrier As mentioned, the four major carriers in the United States have free call blocking capabilities, as well as premium services. Frankly, we strongly feel that the consumer shouldn?t have to pay, and that it?s up to the carriers to solve this annoying problem, but a few dollars a month might be worth the peace of mind. Sprint – Sprint recently merged with T-Mobile, and because of this, Sprint?s Call Screener is free for Sprint customers. In time, Sprint customers will be able to use T-Mobile?s Scam Shield. It?s not often that huge mergers like this benefit the consumer, so if you are on either Sprint or T-Mobile, definitely check out some of the other perks you might have. Right now, however, Sprint offers Call Screener Pro for $3/month. It labels or blocks suspected spam calls, and lets you report spam calls to improve the system over time. We noticed Sprint?s page for their Call Screener app has moved since we last bookmarked it, so chances are you may need to search for it. T-Mobile – Mentioned above, T-Mobile?s offering is called Scam Shield. It?s free for all T-Mobile customers, and gives you full caller ID and can block some scams before your phone even rings, and it gives you a proxy number that you can use when you don?t want to share your private phone number. AT&T – AT&T offers their Call Protect app. There is a free version that will block known spam numbers, or […]

Defining ?Disaster? The ?disaster? could be any type of event where your business loses data. It doesn?t have to be a total ruiner like a fire or flood. It can be something as benign as someone deleting a file or it could be something as serious as a full-network ransomware attack. There are many different scenarios where you can lose data and if your business isn?t ready for one, it will be the one that will cause major issues when it happens. Let?s go through some of the considerations you will have to make when strategizing your data recovery platform and how recovery impacts businesses. SMBs and Data Loss Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the ones that are primarily hurt by data loss. Larger organizations usually have the capital to invest in a full-scale business continuity platform. If an SMB deals with data loss, it becomes extremely important that they can get that data back quickly and keep their business running effectively. 60 percent of SMBs that have a dramatic data loss incident shut their doors within six months, making it essential to have a strong strategy. Here are some tips to create yours: The 3-2-1 Rule The 3-2-1 rule is a policy that builds stable redundancy of a company?s data and computing assets. The organization effectively keeps three separate copies of data. Two of these copies are kept onsite with one copy stored offsite. We suggest using the cloud to store your offsite storage. Our backup and disaster recovery (BDR) service allows for companies like yours to follow the 3-2-1 rule and keep your data ready for recovery.  Rapid Recovery If you have a backup plan in place, but don?t have a strategy to recover it fast, it?s not doing your company any good. To maintain continuity, you will need your business? data. The BDR can help you manage your backup and recovery processes to ensure that you can get back up and running fast if you deal with some data loss.  Testing Backups The best way to ensure that your backups are working correctly is to consistently test them. No situation could be more frustrating than having a backup solution in place only to find out that it wasn?t working properly when you need it. Test your backups consistently.  Leave Recovery to the Experts With so much depending on your business? data, having a solid backup and recovery strategy in place is extremely important. For more information about our BDR service and how our professional technicians can help you come up with a plan to ensure your data is secure regardless of the situation, call us today at (603) 889-0800.

We discuss automation quite a bit, because it is the way business is going. More tasks can now be completed without the need for human interaction. This trend isn?t going away. In HR, where humans are a big part of it, automation is helping organizational HR directors avoid the litany of mundane tasks they were once responsible for, and now focus on the more pressing side of business relationships. This does have its detrimental effects, as well. Let?s unpack how technology is affecting the human resources department.  Recruiting Automation The Internet is a great tool for job seekers and recruiters, alike. New technologies are pushing the recruitment of talent off of the plate of human resources professionals by automating much of the process. Instead of having to coordinate with multiple periodicals, and sift through loads of paper applications, much of this process can be done online through third-party recruiters. Automating this process has freed up a lot of time for HR professionals; and, while it can be a hindrance if online forms are standardized for specific recruitment needs, it is wholly beneficial for businesses.  Communication HR?s core responsibility internally is to coordinate business initiatives. Today, there are communication tools used for collaboration that can keep employees in the know, while also saving the HR department?s time. Company-wide instant messaging, email, and other tools helps HR coordinate with employees better than ever. Employee Performance Reviews Another of HR?s mountain of responsibilities is to keep up with employee reviews. Analyzing employee performance was once a difficult task that required a lot of time and effort from HR professionals. Today, technology is in place that makes it easier for HR professionals to gather and process information to get an overall picture of performance.  Enhancing Security Formerly, the HR department would hold paper files on all employees, vendors, and other people that interact with the business. This was secure, but slow and expensive. Innovations in HR technology have pushed these records to digital storage, so tools need to be used to secure this information, as digitizing it and keeping it offline takes away the speed and effectiveness of digital systems.  Policy Creation Technology has changed the way that HR is able to disseminate information. So much so that many organizations rely on their HR department to put together policies and procedures that are available online. Working with IT, the HR department can assign and remove access and ensure that a business doesn?t have any loose ends that could potentially harm it.  Human resources is changing. Today, there are tools that can save a business? HR department a lot of time and grief, but also require HR professionals to be proficient with many types of technology. If you would like to talk about how to innovate your HR department through software or cloud-based HR-as-a-Service platforms, reach out to the IT experts at White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800.

Gmail Templates in a Nutshell Gmail templates are a built-in capability that enables a user to compose a boilerplate email to draw upon and edit as required, greatly reducing the time needed to prepare certain messages. As a result, your team members can be much more efficient in their use of Gmail. Using Gmail Templates The first step is to enable templates in the first place. Go to Settings > See All Settings > Advanced > Templates and make sure that it is set to Enable. Save Changes once you?ve done so, and you?ll be able to start building your own library of email boilerplate to use in all appropriate correspondence. Creating Gmail Templates, and Selecting Which to Use Once your templates are enabled, you?re ready to build some and put them to use: Start a new message and create your template as you want it. In the message, access the three-dot menu to find Templates. This option will open a sub-menu, where you?ll find the options to Save draft as a template, along with the templates you?ve already saved and the option to Delete template. From there, you can create a new template or revise the one you?ve already created. Hopefully, this will be useful to you moving forward. For more tips, keep checking back here!

Let?s consider why this may not be what you want for your business, and how to help your team members continue to socialize amongst themselves. What Happens When Your Employees Feel Isolated? Here?s the thing: when your employees buy into your business, it isn?t necessarily because of a mission you?ve established or a philosophy you subscribe to?much more likely, it?s because they?ve grown attached to working with each other. The community that a business forms can be a very powerful thing. So-called ?water-cooler chats” are what generally lead to more collaborative behaviors overall. Therefore, when your workforce is kept apart without the means or opportunity to have these casual interactions, the common theme is that they simply won?t have them. This has led to an interesting dissonance in office workers working outside the office. While remote work has largely been embraced as a concept, most workers want to see the office remain as a means of collaboration. The kind of interaction that a shared work environment can support leads to a litany of benefits in terms of teamwork?increased trust, improved performance, and maintained productivity. However, without that shared work environment to encourage such interactions, these relationships become difficult to sustain. How to Improve Remote Socialization Fortunately, this problem can potentially be minimized considerably by using the very collaboration solutions that enabled it. Encourage your team members to chat a little more idly throughout their day via their professional tools, or perhaps investigate some tools that have popped up in response to this very problem. Many teams have taken to tools like Discord?a platform designed to make online gaming more communicative and social?to enable a means of persistent communication throughout the day. Regardless of what is added to your business? toolkit, the culture shift also must be in place to ensure that your team utilizes the tools at their disposal. Without this buy-in, any efforts you make may not be accepted by your workers. While we?ll leave your company culture in your hands, White Mountain IT Services can help ensure that your team members have access to all of the tools they need to work productively, no matter if they?re in your office or cooped up at home. Find out more about what we can do to support them through our managed IT services by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800 today.