What is Ergonomics? While it may be a buzzword nowadays, ergonomics began as a philosophy to help your employees work more effectively. The basic idea was that a comfortably positioned employee was more capable of being productive than one who was uncomfortable, simply because the distraction that was to potentially be caused by their discomfort was no longer impacting them. While many might assume the opposite, this is potentially far easier in the workplace than it is elsewhere, like someone?s living space. Think about it?most offices are furnished with workstations, desk chairs, and technology meant to be used in a workplace. Each of these things are often designed with long-term use and productivity in mind. Unlike a vast majority of the items that your employees will have at home, these furnishings are therefore built in such a way that your team members will be encouraged to sit in what is referred to as a ?neutral position.? This position is meant to mitigate much of the pain and tension that can set in when someone is stationary for some time, as they likely are in the office. However, while the workplace has furniture meant to promote this kind of position, the home usually doesn?t. After all, the difference is easy to see when one looks at their workstation in the office and compares it to the chairs and tables found at their home. How many people have a recliner at their office desk, or a dining room table that can convert to a standing buffet? While maintaining the proper posture while working from home can be challenging, it isn?t impossible to do. Basic Ergonomic Best Practices To make sure that you are going home with the right idea of how you should be working, let?s revisit the neutral position for a moment. When seated at a workstation, a neutral posture should include: Your head held straight up and supported by the neck Your back well-supported by your chair Your shoulders relaxed Your wrists held straight Your limbs either held straight or bent at a 90-degree angle Your thighs resting parallel to the floor Your monitor at your eye level or just slightly below it. Now, while office equipment makes all of this relatively simple to achieve, your home furnishings may not? at least, not without a little bit of improvisation. Making It Work There are a few simple adjustments that your employees can make, especially with your support, in order to make use of the neutral position. For instance, if their monitor is too low, they could simply stack some books or boxes to raise it to the appropriate height. If they happen to have a laptop, making sure they have the peripherals to add to the onboard keyboard and mouse ensures that this fix is still practicable. Kitchen chairs can have their height and support levels adjusted with pillows, and if feet are left dangling, a small stool or another box can be used to stabilize them. It is important to remember that they themselves are an asset to their work, so it is just as important for them to take care of themselves as it is for them to take care of their workstations. This will help you optimize any work done remotely for your business. Meanwhile, White Mountain IT Services can […]
There’s a good chance that you?ve considered managed IT services before, but if you haven?t, and you are looking to control your costs while commerce is slowed, a managed services provider (MSP) can offer a lot of benefits. Let?s take you through some of the services an MSP offers that can help get your business through tough times. Leveraging the RMM There?s a good chance you use IT to run your business, but how do you keep your technology working effectively? Do you use a break/fix vendor? Do you have an internal IT administrator (or a whole department)? Whichever strategy you use, technology is bound to have problems. An MSP delivers value by having trained experts use cutting-edge remote monitoring and management technology to mitigate hardware and software malfunctions and support network health. With the RMM, technicians can provide superior uptime, which if leveraged correctly will result in more productivity. This RMM strategy is at the core of what we do. In fact, regardless of what strategy you have in place at this moment, using the RMM, an MSP can provide significant cost savings, while maintaining superior network and hardware performance and security. Fixing Your Hardware Regardless of how proactive you are, technology will break. So, while the RMM will unquestionably mitigate a fair share of potential problems, sometimes you will need your technology fixed. An MSP?s technicians do offer onsite support for broken technology; and, depending on your agreement, it can be much less than using a break/fix vendor. Additionally, most MSPs feature around-the-clock IT support through a help desk. It is a toll-free number that anyone in your company can call and get immediate support for common issues you and your team may encounter. We Can Get You the Technology You Need For the technology that needs to be replaced rather than repaired, an MSP?s consultants have years of experience with business technology, and have forged relationships with some of the very best vendors in the industry. This means that not only can you get products and services that can improve your business, you can do it at a fair price, and will get expert assistance getting the technology deployed in the manner that works best for your business. Patch Management Software is one of the most important parts of your IT infrastructure, and often the most vulnerable. The MSP will manage software security updates and patches to ensure that your software, your network, and your business aren?t exposed to vulnerabilities and threats from outside your network. Vendor Management You would be surprised just how much your vendors cost you. Most MSPs offer a vendor management solution that allows you to have a single contact for all of your company?s IT vendors. This will free you to focus on your business, and not the litany of vendor reps that would normally take up a lot of your time. White Mountain IT Services proudly offers a comprehensive managed IT service that can help you reduce costs, improve your business, and free you up to run your business the way you want. Call us at (603) 889-0800 for more information.
Why Do Good Password Habits Matter? You might think, ?Eh, it?s just my Facebook (or Netflix, or Google, or Amazon) account, what do I really have to lose?? As it turns out, there is a lot to lose, and it could affect your employer as well. Poor password habits are one of the leading causes of cybersecurity issues today. People are using the same passwords across multiple accounts, and often use passwords that can easily be guessed or brute-forced (a process where a hacker tries thousands of common passwords and combinations to gain access to an account). Using the same password across multiple sites is a huge problem, and responsible for many recent high-profile cyberattacks, such as the Disney+ attack we saw last November. If someone uses the same password on their Netflix account for their work email (or some other work account) then they are putting their company?s security in the hands of Netflix. If Netflix is involved in a data breach, that user?s business is compromised as well. There are No Shortcuts Unfortunately, there is no easy, secure way to check to see if a particular person?s password is unique. There is no network policy that will somehow know if the user is using the same password for their Hulu account or their personal email or their eBay account. We can force strong passwords all day long, but users will make it easier for themselves by using common shortcuts that will make it easier to remember passwords. That includes using common password terms and putting an exclamation mark at the end to satisfy the ?use a symbol? requirement. If many people do it, it doesn?t help security. Remember, hackers can see password trends when big data breaches happen. Password Rules Every Person NEEDS to Live By Rule #1 – Don?t Use the Same Password Twice Today, this is the most important rule. You might feel like a savant with a very complex password memorized, but if you use it across multiple platforms, you are putting yourself at risk. Data breaches happen all the time, and as soon as a company like Netflix, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, or literally any other online entity gets breached, hackers start to try all those accounts everywhere else. They might be trying your password on other services before you learn about the data breach. Rule #2 – Use Strong Passwords That Can?t Be Guessed If I know you reasonably well, would I be able to guess your password? If you are using your dog?s name and your birthday as a password (daisy032271) to lock down your bank account, you aren?t doing much to keep anyone out. On top of that, common phrases and words are often guessed pretty quickly when a hacker uses their tools to try to force their way into an account. Most sites require numbers in their passwords. Maybe your favorite baseball player is Mookie Betts, so you use his jersey number as a go-to for your passwords, or you use the number 42 because you are a big fan of The Hitchhiker?s Guide to the Galaxy. If someone knows you well enough, would they be able to guess that? All you are doing is leaving tiny chinks in your armor. Rule #3 – Use 2-Factor/Multi-Factor Authentication 2FA (also known as […]
The first thing that you need to know is that there are many examples of failed businesses due to a lack of continuity strategy. That alone should peak your interest, but there is more. Business continuity means just that, and sometimes there is something innocuous that knocks your business off schedule. Having a plan helps you avoid confusion, which in normal situations isn?t great, but when operations are down can be extremely bad. What Should Your Plan Include? To most people, a flood hitting their place of business isn?t the same as having an employee or co-worker accidentally delete an important file. How could they? They are two completely different situations, right? Not so fast. When concocting a continuity strategy for your business, these two completely unrelated situations are functionally the same. Any situation that threatens your business? operational integrity needs to be planned for, even if the downtime you experience is measured in minutes rather than hours or days. Here are some crucial elements your business continuity plan should include: Organizational lists – A list of names, addresses, and contact information of people who have access to the continuity plan. This includes making up primary and secondary contact lists for all affected areas of your business. Staff responsibilities – Each primary and secondary contact will have a set of responsibilities that they need to carry out. Any off-site recovery locations – You?ll need to include the address, equipment inventory, and any other relevant information. Your action plan – This is an in-depth process for returning every element of your business to satisfactory functionality. You need plans for the first hour, the first day, the first week, and for long-term disruption. Primary and alternate suppliers – This is a list of all your current and backup suppliers. Vendors typically play a big role in returning your business to normal. Customer data – You?ll need a process to inform clients that have personal, financial, or other sensitive information stored with you. This plan will go a long way toward helping you retain your clientele once continuity is restored. All relevant documentation and insurance policy information – Keeping accurate records will help the insurance process if a claim needs to be filed. Technology inventory – What technology requirements does your company need in order to retain continuity? Here you will want to create contingencies for remote work, failover, and more. Data redundancy – You will need to identify the details of your data backup system to ensure that all of your digital assets are backed up and can quickly be restored. While this is a basic list of what a company needs in their business continuity plan, larger businesses with more moving parts will have more in-depth continuity plans. You will want to consistently review and update information that you deem necessary for your plan. The good rule of thumb is that two times annually you will want to update your plan. Keeping on top of these updates will go a long way toward getting you back up and going after a breach in continuity. Moreover, you will want to test the parts of your BCP that you can test. Ensuring your backup system is working as intended, making sure you have a complete inventory of your hardware and software needs, and […]
Keep Solutions Up to Date One of the lesser-discussed benefits of the cloud is the fact that you can be sure that your team is working with all the advantages that fully updated software brings. Without relying on each user to install the needed updates on their own, or for your IT department to see to each device individually, your service provider will keep your solution up to date and ready to go. If you happen to be hosting your own cloud solution, you can push these updates at will and give your team the best tools available. Remote Access In the past, if a certain bit of data was kept on a spreadsheet in the second drawer of a filing cabinet, any user who needed access to that data would need to go and retrieve the spreadsheet to find it. This meant that people who were working from home for whatever reason were pretty much out of luck if they needed it. The cloud can remove that challenge, as well as make work in general easier to complete while out of the office. By hosting data, applications, or even entire virtualized environments in the cloud, your team can presumably access whatever they need from the comfort of their own bed (which, comfy as it is, is not recommended for productivity). Scalability Unfortunately, many businesses have found it necessary to scale back their operations, in many cases, considerably. While this is far from ideal, the cloud could also make this process simpler for the business looking for a bit of relief. With sliding services based on need, a business can reduce their investment into cloud solutions as their operations slow, with the ability to pick them back up again as necessary. This scalability can help prevent businesses from overinvesting at a time when each cent matters even more. If you feel that the cloud is your business? best option right now, don?t hesitate another moment and call (603) 889-0800 today to discuss implementing cloud solutions into your operations. White Mountain IT Services is here to help you.
