Restarting Projects While your employees were doing DIY home improvement projects, your business? improvement projects have laid dormant. As the new normal will present situations that were not only rare a short time ago, they are not completely aimed at improving your business? situation in the same manner as the projects you had planned before this whole thing hit. If your strategy is like many other businesses, you will have to be cautious to not put your employees in harm’s way. With a projected second wave of COVID-19 still possible, it?s going to be important for project teams to forge ahead even if they are being forced to work from remote locations.  One of the best collaboration tools you have at this point is your video conferencing solution. Not only does it give your team the ability to meet with each other from remote locations, solutions today are built with the ability to integrate some of your most important software into the meetings. These integrations can go a long way toward giving your project team members the resources they need to efficiently and effectively complete difficult projects.  Collaboration Strategies Sad to say, solid collaboration isn?t just the act of people working together. True collaboration is measured in the successful delivery of professional goods and services. If your project teams need to work together to get your offerings out the door, and they are being forced to work remotely, invest in a video conferencing solution that provides both an option-rich interface with the ability to interact as a team or one-on-one. This is crucial because the more time you spend in meetings, the less time is spent being actually productive, even if the meetings contents are critical to the success of the project.  Once you have a reliable conferencing solution in place, you can use it to run point over operational difficulties, projects, and even whole staff meetings. Here are some suggestions on how to use your video conferencing solution to get the most out of your team.  Don?t be brief to save time – Many people will try to keep meetings as short as possible. That?s actually a good practice, but if your team needs communication on the specifics of a project or task, brevity may be counterproductive. Don?t send too many messages – Do you follow up using instant message, email and phone? This is completely overkill. With a video conferencing platform, you can quickly address all the issues present for that day at once, not over multiple forms of communication. If things do require a write up after the fact, assign one person to compose meeting minutes. Don?t just use the video conference for work – Part of working for a company is the camaraderie your staff shares. Things like birthday parties and staff meetings can be a respite from the continual flow of work-related information. Using video conferencing for collaboration means having a strategy that both keeps people connected while reducing the feeling of anxiety that comes from being overwhelmed with information. If you would like to talk about video conferencing solutions that can help your business get the most out of your remote staff, call the IT experts at White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800.  

Defining Cloud Deployments For our examination, businesses have the option to use three different cloud deployments: Private Cloud ? Space in a cloud infrastructure is owned and utilized by a single business. Public Cloud ? Space in a shared cloud infrastructure is utilized by multiple businesses and users. Hybrid Cloud ? Space is utilized in both a public cloud environment and in a business? privately-owned cloud space. Regardless of the type of cloud deployment used, it provides considerable utility to the businesses that embrace its capabilities. Let?s consider some of the ways that your business could make use of these utilities. The Cloud?s Service Models Using the cloud, a business can fulfill its technology needs and requirements through solutions provided ?as-a-Service.? Some of the ?aaS? solutions available to businesses include: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) By subscribing to IaaS, a business retains the responsibility to supply the software, while hosting it on the hardware that the cloud provider supplies. This means that the provider maintains the infrastructure that your business relies on to host its assorted needs?like its operating system, storage needs, and applications?in the cloud. This can be seen when your business leases space in a data center or cloud storage, or maintains a cloud-hosted backup and disaster recovery solution. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Alternatively, a business can also utilize the software solutions that a provider maintains on their infrastructure. This means that the provider not only takes on the task of keeping the cloud infrastructure maintained, but also ensuring that the software solutions themselves are managed and maintained. This is commonly seen in a Desktop-as-a-Service or Machine-Learning-as-a-Service, or in services like G Suite or Office 365. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) PaaS almost serves as a hybrid between IaaS and SaaS. Essentially, using Platform-as-a-Service enables a business to create its own proprietary application without any of the responsibility to create and manage the infrastructure that supports it. However your cloud deployment takes shape, White Mountain IT Services can help ensure that it is ultimately a success. Talk to us today by calling (603) 889-0800.

Password hygiene, as it is known, is the practice of securing your accounts with the use of passwords that are difficult to guess, even for a machine. If you have good password hygiene, you will avoid using authentication methods that could easily be compromised. Here is a list of commonly used strategies for passwords that would be considered unhygienic: Personal details, like your name or birthday Names of friends, family, or most infamously, your pets Commonly used words (like ?password? or a favorite sports team) Simple keyboard patterns (like ?12345? or ?qwerty?) Repeated login credentials (like username: David1973, password: David1973) Making their passwords as short as possible If this short list stops you in your tracks, don?t panic. We?re going to give you some strategies you can immediately use to improve your password hygiene and secure your accounts. The constant development of tools and strategies designed to crack passwords has changed the way password creation has been approached in recent years. Here are some examples of some password creation strategies that are no longer recommended:  Alphanumeric Switching: You know the practice. You switch some letters with numbers that look like them to create the appearance of security. It isn?t always a bad strategy, but users that adhere to this method of password creation tend to make the password something simple, making it ineffective against cutting-edge software designed to crack passwords.  Length Requirements: For years, accounts made it mandatory to have a certain amount of characters in your password. This practice is falling by the wayside because the longer a password is, the simpler users make it so that they can remember it. According to the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), this strategy is actually hurting your ability to keep your accounts secure. Banning Cut and Paste: Some password fields ban users from using the paste feature to enter a password. This all but eliminated the effectiveness of the password manager, an extremely useful tool for many people who couldn?t possibly remember all the account credentials they need daily.  Password Hints: Most of the accounts you set up, especially for your finances, have this option. They provide you with a set of predefined questions to ask if you, for some reason, lose your password. With so much of our information shared online, the practice isn?t as effective as it once was, when less of our personal information was available online. Frequent Password Changes: This directive, usually implemented by overzealous IT administrators, can have the opposite effect due to the fact that many users will forget their new password, or they will create an insecure password so that they CAN remember it. Obviously, a password reset is useful, but doing it frequently doesn?t help secure accounts at all. Password Hygiene Best Practices At White Mountain IT Services, we recommend that users use a passphrase made up of at least three words that don?t have anything to do with one another. We also believe that using replacement characters can have value in this method. For example, a passphrase of ?asamericanasapplepie? is not in itself secure, because it?s a common phrase, but a passphrase of ?asamericanaspanakopita? is better. Sprinkle in upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols like ?A$@m371c@n@$5p@n@k0p1t@? and your passphrase is something you can both remember and works well to secure your account. […]

Let?s go over what this will mean for your business? location and processes. 1.  Face Masks and Temperature Checks All Around Common knowledge and good sense have had many people wearing protective face masks for a few months now, with some states mandating it whenever someone makes any public appearance. Don?t expect this to change once you?re in the office, especially when you?re moving about your workplace or using the bathroom. It is possible that you may be able to remove it once at your desk, but only if the recommended social distancing measures can be maintained as you do so. It is also likely that temperature checks could become a prerequisite to enter the workplace, with anyone displaying a temperature of 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit sent home and advised to call their doctor. These actions will help to minimize the risk of someone potentially carrying the virus into your workplace and spreading it amongst your employees. 2. Staggered Shifts and Floor Plan Changes Speaking of your employees, it is recommended that you minimize the number of people in the office at any given time by implementing shifts. Rather than everyone working on-site from nine to five each weekday, perhaps you stretch the workweek out to seven days, but with only certain employees working on certain days. Perhaps you adopt, if your processes allow it, more remote operations, allowing your employees to still work from the safety of their own home. Those workplaces that tout modern innovations like the open floor plan will need to regress back to the cubicle for the time being, to help minimize the potential spread of COVID-19. 3. Adjusted Meetings and Canceled Events On a related note, meetings and company gatherings are guaranteed to shift. How often have you attended meetings held amongst a few people in a small room, crammed into close quarters? How many people have you chatted with at the office coffee pot? How many office parties or events have you attended? Moving forward, these kinds of activities will need to be placed under moratorium, at least until a workable resolution to the current health crisis is developed and distributed. Such events are the perfect antithesis to social distancing. Instead, you should shift your meetings from in-person gatherings to online collaborative sessions, and rather than acknowledging birthdays or anniversaries with break room cake, send your well-wishes in an email thread. For safety?s sake, the modern workplace will have to see significant changes if operations are to continue. White Mountain IT Services can help you make any adjustments to your technology that these changes may require. For more information about the way that we can help you sustain your operations, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Consider Your Employees? Position Think about how your team may react to the idea that they suddenly won?t have a stable source of income. Chances are, they will swiftly be open to the idea of alternative sources of income. Scam artists are very aware of this and will take full advantage of this opportunity. The Better Business Bureau has collected data within a study that revealed a clear increase in cons and attacks toward businesses and workers currently out of work. Specifically, these attacks have taken the form of a kind of phishing known as employment scams. Employment scams or job scams are just another way that cybercriminals gain access to your personal data. Basically, their hunting ground consists of the online job sites and gig opportunities that your employees may be tempted to peruse as their job prospects. By roping in your employees?potentially extracting their financial data as they do so?these scammers seek to profit for themselves. Scammers will post fraudulent job postings on job sites to rope in victims and require them to pay for training materials or special certifications that never come, or to cash a bad check before being ?hired.? Warning Signs to Watch Out For To help protect your employees from these impacts, make sure that they look out for the following warning signs: Interviews are conducted over messaging services. If a company reaches out to you over a casual messaging service, like Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts, it is highly unlikely that the offer is legitimate. This is only more the case if they request your personal information over these platforms. Most businesses will instead use their own messaging platform if they need to. Job descriptions and requirements are unclear. If an ad that you find is vague, it is almost certainly a trap. Businesses will be specific as possible to get the best candidates they can. Since scammers don?t have an actual job to fill, they aren?t nearly as particular in their job descriptions. Personal information is requested during or prior to an interview. A fake job ad will often ask for these kinds of details. Do not give them over. The time for that will come when the HR department is settling your paperwork once you?ve secured the job. Payment is required to apply, or they offer career counseling instead of a job. Desperation is a powerful motivation, so scammers have realized that they can leach money out of people who are job seeking or offer them career counseling services in exchange for a fee. Make sure that you do everything you can for your employees as they are trying to make ends meet, and if they are looking for some extra freelance work, encourage them to keep a few best practices in mind: look up the company you?re interviewing online, keep your information to yourself, and take everything with a grain of salt. White Mountain IT Services also can provide your business with the technology that allows your team to work remotely, sustaining your operations and keeping them employed. Learn more about how we can assist you by reaching out to us at (603) 889-0800.