Jangle sighed. His to-do list for the day was growing by the moment. Despite it only being 10:23 in the morning, he already had far more tasks on his agenda than he could possibly accomplish by deadline. He took another sip of cocoa and set the mug back down on his desk, staring at the screen in front of him. Santa?s Workshop was bustling around him, with elves scurrying around the floor in a mad dash to get everything made, packaged, and processed before the Big Man?s departure time. Clicking into his Glee-mail, Jangle saw three new messages, all marked urgent. With another sigh, the elf opened them up and reviewed their contents. ?URGENT ISSUE NEEDS YOUR ATTENTION? ?re: re: re: cookies for wrap party? ?santa sleigh engine troubles? Jangle shook his head, the bell on his hat tinkling. The ?URGENT ISSUE? was sent out to the entire staff, despite it only pertaining to the Coal Department?far out of his purview as a Toy Assembly Manager. He had responded to the cookie email days ago with his input, but the conversation had continued and fractured off into whether skim milk or two percent should be served along with them and whether roasted chestnut milk would be on the menu. Out of the three, only one of the messages really had anything to do with him. The Mechanical Department was requesting to borrow himself and one of his elves from Toy Assembly for another look at the sleigh?s magic induction system. Fortunately, Jangle?s team was well-prepared this year, and many of his elves were ahead of schedule enough that he could spare them. ?Ginger!? Ginger jumped up from her seat and bounded over to Jangle?s desk. ?Yes, sir?? ?How are you with magical engineering?? ?Pretty good, sir. I interned there for a while before being assigned to Toy Assembly.? ?Excellent. Come with me, they need a few extra sets of eyes in the garage.? ?Okay!? Jangle and Ginger set off for the North Pole?s garage, where the Big Man kept his famous sleigh and Mrs. Claus kept her less-well-known motorcycle. As they walked over, Jangle couldn?t help but sigh once again. Ginger glanced at him, concerned. ?Everything okay, boss?? Jangle replied, ?Yeah, it?s okay. There?s just a lot piling up on my day that it really doesn?t seem like I should be involved in. I mean, I shouldn?t be venting to you about this, but some of the technology we use just seems to get in the way.? Ginger nodded. ?I know what you mean. I couldn?t figure out why my workstation was running so slowly this morning. Garland had to come over and help me fix it? and I?m not even sure that it helped all that much.? They continued walking in silence. Almost hesitantly, Ginger spoke up again. ?You know, I have a cousin who works in a shoe factory, and he says that IT isn?t really a problem for them.? Jangle snorted. ?Yeah, maybe after they?ve invested half of their annual magic into it.? ?That?s just the thing,? Ginger persisted. ?They don?t have to. They work with this company called White Mountain IT Services, they?re something called a managed service provider.? ?A managed service provider? What?s that?? ?Well, you know how we usually handle technology issues? We all kind of try […]

Security Software It?s pretty evident that the best thing you can do is invest on solutions designed specifically to help keep your business safe. It?s understood that having all the proper firewalls, antivirus, and encryption services in place, and ensuring that they are properly updated, can keep a majority of the threats off your network. By protecting your data at its source, you gain the peace of mind of knowing your data has some defenses around it. Backup Your Data Every business should have some type of data backup strategy in place. There is information that your business has that, if it were lost, could make running your business impossible. The resulting downtime can be extraordinarily expensive, but that is really the best you could ask for without data backup. Today, it?s not enough to simply back up your data to a hard drive or NAS device. You need to also keep copies of your data online. With a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR), your business gets just that. Not only can you back up your data in increments up to every 15 minutes, it happens while you work. The data is stored on the BDR device and simultaneously sends a copy to the cloud, stored in an offsite data center. Your business? most important data is secure and ready for retrieval. Have a Plan There are plenty of security options for the modern business, but in security, it?s easy to have redundant costs. Here are a few ways to invest in your business? security, without wasting capital. Physical Security Unfortunately, threats come from every direction. You need to have a plan for your business? security. Not only do you need to prioritize cybersecurity, you need to consider physical security. Today, there are inexpensive digital security options that could be highly effective for protecting the physical security of your investments and your staff. In fact, a compelling case could be made for the small business to combine their IT and physical security initiatives. Some options businesses could employ include: Security Cameras ? Affordable security camera systems are all over the place, nowadays. They improve rapidly too, so you get what you pay for. Access Control Systems ? To keep unauthorized people out of your workspace is to protect your physical assets, and your digital ones. IoT ? Smart tools can be great for security both as a deterrent, but also as integration that can make it simpler to do the right things. Whatever combination of tools you decide to deploy, you will want to ensure that they do the job they are being deployed for and aren?t going to be difficult to configure with other solutions. Solution overlap could open vulnerabilities, not close them. Train Everybody Small businesses need to prioritize comprehensive training for their entire staff. This includes a subsequent testing strategy to ensure that the people that tend to be problematic can be trained properly. Here are a few subjects that your employees need to know about, and how to resolve them without issue. Phishing ? Many of today?s most successful threats are the result of successful phishing messages. Staff members will have to know how to identify a phishing message and understand what to do when one is detected. Password Hygiene ? Improper password security causes millions […]

What Are Chrome Actions? With Chrome Actions, the Chrome browser has a bit more utility crammed into its address bar (also known as the ?omnibar?). In addition to helping users navigate to a webpage or network location, or facilitating a Google search, the omnibar can now accept and carry out a select few basic commands. For example, if a user types ?incognito? into the omnibar, pressing Enter will open a new window in Incognito mode. Right now, Google has implemented just a few Chrome Actions into their browser: Clear Browsing Data – type ?delete history?, ?clear cache ? or ?wipe cookies? Manage Payment Methods – type ?edit credit card? or ?update card info? Open Incognito Window – type ?launch incognito mode? or ?incognito? Manage Passwords – type ?edit passwords? or ?update credentials? Update Chrome – type ?update browser? or ?update google chrome? Translate Page – type ? translate this? or ? translate this page? With this starting list came the promise of more Chrome Actions coming with future updates to the browser. Will You Use Chrome Actions? Tell us why?or why not?in the comments, and don?t forget to subscribe. For more assistance with anything relating to your business? IT, make sure your first call is to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.

To keep your IT out of danger due to inexperience or negligence, we want to share with you a way that you can keep your technology up-to-date and functional, without putting it at risk. It?s called managed IT services, and you?d be surprised what they can do for you. We?ll discuss some of the many benefits that your business can stand to take advantage of by forsaking break/fix IT in favor of managed IT. Additionally, since you?re taking proactive measures to ensure that your organization?s technology is maintained, you?ll be less likely to experience crippling hardware failure. Break/fix IT providers basically depend on your technology not working properly for them to make money, so they have no real incentive to ensure that your technology is working properly. Managed IT providers, on the other hand, want to build a relationship with the client and prevent problems from happening in the first place, saving your organization money and boosting rapport in the process. Less Wasted Time Small businesses have a tough time acquiring an internal IT department due to budget restraints, but if you do have one, it?s probably swamped with work. This means that the work is either not getting done, or it?s being done poorly due to time constraints. You can?t cut corners in IT, as it could lead to dangerous downtime or missing important updates, putting your data at risk. In fact, one of the most important skipped maintenance procedures is the administration of patches and security updates. This shouldn?t happen. Ever. Managed IT services, regardless of whether or not you have an internal IT department, can provide value in the fact that they provide your organization with more experts for more work. Whether you want to catch up on missed work, implement new solutions, or stay up to date, managed IT providers give your business the flexibility to accomplish your technology-related goals in a time-efficient manner. Peace of Mind Let?s face it, user error is almost impossible to completely prevent, so it?s reasonable to suggest that only those trained in the proper best practices should be managing technology solutions. This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of managed IT services; you don?t have to have untrained users maintaining your technology solutions.  How does your business manage its technology? To learn more about our brand of comprehensive IT services, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Comment Sections Have Devolved into Garbage Whether you?re considering an online article, news story, or video, the comments section probably isn?t someplace you look for insight and civil discussion as it was intended to be. Instead, there?s an assortment of hate, lewdness, and spammy ?advertisements? filled with malware and/or empty promises. Naturally, the platforms and organizations that support and provide this content aren?t all too pleased with this situation, so they have taken various steps to try and eliminate these comments?some going so far as to eliminate their comment sections entirely. Others have taken a more progressive approach by leveraging advanced technologies?the aforementioned artificial intelligence playing a critical role in their strategies. AI and Automation, Now Involved in Comment Moderation Let?s start with Google, which has a dedicated AI conversation platform called Perspective API. Joining with OpenWeb to conduct a study, Google implemented Perspective API in some news platforms? comment sections to test the real-time feedback functionality. How Well Did AI Moderation Work? This study examined comments that violated community standards on these websites and provided the user with a request to edit their comment??Let?s keep the conversation civil. Please remove any inappropriate language from your comment? or ?Some members of the community may find your comment inappropriate. Try again?? As a control, some commenters saw no intervention message. According to the study, about a third of commenters went back and edited the comment. Of those, half took the advice to heart and made their message more acceptable by eliminating the problematic language. However, a quarter of these users doubled down, simply editing their comment to still make their message clear by evading the filter. For instance, rather than saying ?booger,? the user would edit it to read ?b o o g e r,? or would adopt a new word to stand in for an offensive one. The rest of the responses were those that revised the wrong part of their submitted comment, misunderstanding the issue, or those that instead directed their comment to the AI feature, rather than the media they were commenting on, complaining about censorship. These results were pretty much in line with those that came from a similar study that Google conducted with Coral, which showed toxic language being edited out in 36 percent of cases. Having said that, another experiment that The Southeast Missourian conducted showed a 96 percent reduction in ?very toxic? comments after this feedback was provided. Ultimately, the number of people who persisted in posting their comment unedited or simply chose not to post anything after all show that these gentle reminders are only effective to a degree, with people who legitimately don?t mean any offense. Fortunately, there is also some indication that the number of so-called Internet trolls is overestimated, and that most inflammatory comments come from people feeling some strong emotion. This interpretation was boosted by the findings of another study conducted with Wikipedia. Most offensive content was reactive and isolated. Besides, compared to the scale of the Internet, the 400,000 comments sampled by OpenWeb and Google are far from statistically significant. YouTube?one of Google?s most prominent possessions?has especially been active when it comes to comment moderation. Its comment sections are notorious for exactly the kind of problematic dialogue that these enhancements are looking to correct.  This kind of approach […]