To this end, consider your employees to be ?customers.? You should aim to give them the tools they need while staying true to the customer service mindset. Methods of Data Collection In other words, we?re suggesting that you take a deep dive into your business? operations through a variety of mediums to best determine which processes can be improved through the implementation of technology. This involves a couple of different methods that you can use to collect data about your business? operations: Employee surveys: Administer anonymous surveys to discover ways certain teams might be able to be more effective at their jobs. Data analysis: Look to see which tasks are taking longer than usual and why. If it?s an internal issue that can be resolved through implementing a service or solution, then look into your options. Face-to-face discussions: Hold a meeting to discuss in-person what each department needs and how to help them get there. Ask Them What They Need Nobody knows your employees? jobs like your employees. If they say that they need something to do their jobs more effectively, you should do your due diligence and investigate what implementing the solution would mean for their effectiveness. Besides, opening up this direct line of communication with employees has a lot of benefits that might not seem clear in the moment. For one, it makes you accessible, meaning that they don?t have to see you as someone they have no hope of reaching. Another is that it shows you care about their work and making it better or more efficient, which can go a long way toward improving trust and transparency in-house. Respond Promptly, but Not Without Consideration Employees appreciate when their words are responded to promptly, but you should never react to what they ask for without first consulting your budget and organizational goals. It?s one thing to hear about issues regarding your workflows, but another entirely to actually act on them. Remember that every solution your business chooses to implement should be able to benefit your company?s bottom line. In other words, if it helps you either increase revenue or decrease operational costs, you can bet that it?s at least worth a shot–especially if it?s as easy to implement as a cloud-based application that can be utilized as a service. Remember, your job as a business owner is to listen to the issues that your employees are having and make it so that they can do their jobs in a more efficient manner. When they have all they need to be successful in their responsibilities, your organization benefits with higher quality of work completed or services rendered. To learn more about how your organization can take a more consumer-based mindset when dealing with your employees and technology, including ease-of-use and accessibility, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Today, we?ll go over a few of these business-friendly features so you can make the most of your Android device. Predictions to Help Boost Productivity With Android Pie, your phone will pay attention, in a way, to what you are doing and try to predict what you will want to do next based on past experience. These predictions will then appear at the top of your application drawer. You?ll find that these predictions can get pretty granular, too? It isn?t that Android will open the phone application, Android will suggest that you call a specific person – pretty handy, if you typically need to report in or call someone for a status update. You also have the option to take these predictions and drag them to your home screen for even more simplified, continuous access. These Predictions Aren?t Mandatory Of course, not everyone will find these predictions so helpful – especially if your phone detects patterns that aren?t really there. Fortunately, you can get rid of these suggestions. Press and hold the suggestion you want to get rid of until you are able to drag it around. Dragging it to the Don?t show text that appears at the top of the screen will prevent that particular suggestion from appearing again. You also have the option to disable any suggestions from showing up. Pressing an open area on your home screen, access Home settings and from there, Suggestions. Tapping Suggestions, find the toggle switch next to Apps and deactivate them. This will keep suggestions from showing up in your App Drawer and Overview screen. Leveraging Shortcuts Remember how we turned a prediction into a shortcut above? Well, you can make shortcuts out of other things as well. Many applications will have shortcuts baked in, accessible by long-pressing the application in the App Drawer. Doing so will cause a menu of options to appear. Not only can you quickly access your options from this menu, you can drag these menu items to your main screen to create a shortcut as well. Quickly Editing Screenshots With Android Pie, mobile screenshots are easy to take and, perhaps more crucially to your purposes, edit and mark up. Capturing a screenshot is as simple as holding down the power button and volume-down button simultaneously, or simply holding the power button and using the screenshot option in the menu that appears (unfortunately, this option isn?t present in Samsung phones). Once you?ve taken your screenshot, a notification will appear with an Edit option. This editor will let you crop, highlight, and annotate your screenshot, which you can then share with those who need to see it. Adaptive Brightness We each have a preferred brightness for our device?s screen – and chances are, the environment we?re in will cause that to vary. With Android Pie, your phone can actually ?learn? your screen brightness preferences in different light conditions and adjust its own settings to match. This can be activated in the Display section of your settings – just turn on ?Adaptive brightness?. Once you?ve done so, you?ll need to teach your phone how you like your brightness by manually adjusting it in different lighting conditions. What are some of your favorite Android tricks? Share them in the comments!

Before we go into detail about what network security tools your organization should be using, we should say that the whole point of doing all of this is to protect your organization?s investments. You?ve paid for the services, hardware, software, and the time that it has taken to create and store the data, so it only makes sense that you should make the effort necessary to protect it. By protecting your data, you are protecting your staff, your customers, your vendors, and your business. You wouldn?t just leave a bag of money in plain sight inside the front door of your business unless it was locked and you could ensure that no one was coming through it, would you? The same precautions should be taken for your digital assets that, make no mistake about it, are being targeted. Protecting Business Computing A business? computing infrastructure is larger and supports many more services than it ever has in the past. For this reason, we have to start outside the network itself. Cloud services are a big part of today?s business. When they are hosted outside of your network, they are managed by a third-party and one would think they have their own security team handling cybersecurity. Obviously, this can?t be guaranteed, but one would think that if a company is selling processing, applications, or storage over the Internet that their business model depends on their systems remaining secure. For the end-user to access these systems there is a dedicated access control program attached. Many times organizations will require users to set up two-factor authentication to get the most out of the access control system that accompanies the cloud solution. In the cloud, many different types of software, hardware, and other services are available. As we get into the outer layers of the network, the first place where a company has secure is called the perimeter of the network. The best way to do this is by deploying a firewall. A properly deployed and maintained firewall will go a long way toward keeping unwanted visitors off of your network. But in today?s state of things, having only a firewall in place isn?t going to cut it. Going the Extra Mile There is now security solutions called Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) or Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). While these solutions aren?t mutually exclusive, and IDS? job is to tell administrators that there has been a security breach, while an IPS is designed to keep these threats out by attempting to block suspicious activity. An IPS also logs all network traffic, an often substantial undertaking, to ensure that administrators can review, and try to isolate any potentially unwanted action or file that enters the network. Years ago, this would have been enough to keep most threats out. Today, it?s just the beginning. If you think of a computing network like an onion, every ?layer? of the network will get its own access control system and its own firewall. This way each part of a computing network, from the perimeter, to the applications, to the databases where all the data is held are all protected by a different source of encryption. By setting up a tiered access control system that requires authentication in multiple places, it makes it harder for unauthorized access. It also protects your […]

Most social media sites require that you create an account to represent your business, but in order to do this, Facebook and LinkedIn require you to have a personal account prior to creating a business page. To this end, we?ll be providing tips on how to keep your personal accounts safe from other users, thereby protecting your business. Facebook First, you?ll need to create a personal profile. Facebook doesn?t allow Pages to be created without having a personal profile. Once you have done this, you can use the blue bar at the top of the page to find the feature to Create a menu item. From these options, select Page. From here, select the Business or Brand option to fill in the requested information. You can hide the personal information on your profile page by accessing the Settings via the drop-down arrow at the top-right of the window. From here, you can navigate to the Privacy sub-menu. To lock down your account, set Who can see your future posts to Only me. You can also limit past posts. Furthermore, you should take these actions. Under the How People Find and Contact You area, you need to select Friends of Friends for Who can send you friend requests. Set Who can see your friends list to Only Me. It?s important that you set Who can look you up using the email address you provided to Friends and do the same for the option Who can look you up using the phone number you provided. Uncheck the box on Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile, too. Next, you?ll want to click on the Timeline and Tagging option on your left. Change the option for Who can post on your timeline to Only me. With all these settings configured in this way, only your Facebook friends will be able to see your account. LinkedIn LinkedIn also requires you to make an account before creating an official business page. Once you have an account set up, you can create a business page by clicking on Create a Company Page + under the nine-dot menu and following the prompts given. You can hide your LinkedIn profile by accessing Settings & Privacy. Under Privacy, you?ll see several options allowing you to customize the information that LinkedIn shares with others. While social media can lend a considerable amount of visibility to your business, it shouldn?t come at the cost of security. For more tips on how to be as secure as possible with your business, subscribe to our blog.

Wearable Technology Has Been a Successful Mixed Bag When you crunch the numbers, wearables have been an overwhelming success, and they are much appreciated by their consumers. The number of connected devices in the world was a modest 525 million in 2016, but it is expected to skyrocket to 1.1 billion by 2022. It?s estimated that 167 million smartwatches and wristbands will be shipped that same year. It?s clear that wearable technology is a commercial success, giving those who research and create it more than enough reason to pursue its continued manufacturing, but there are major concerns regarding security that need to be addressed. The Dangers of Data Wearables present security risks that all businesses need to address. One example of wearable devices accidentally leaking data comes from a heat mapping feature of the Strava fitness application, which accidentally revealed the locations of classified military bases. Wearable devices are also not updated as frequently as other devices, meaning that they could be more likely to contribute to a DDoS attack as part of a botnet or provide hackers with an unsecured network access point. It?s also important to consider that these devices tend to collect data. In many ways, the data collected by these devices can be considered disadvantageous to the user, so they will need to consider how the data could be used by any of their devices. The Regulations that Have Been Put in Place (and Which Matter) Any technology that makes a big enough splash is one that will eventually be subject to regulations. However, the governing bodies and organizations that would put these regulations in place might not be able to do so at any given time. Here are a few to consider: The FD&C Act The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act doesn?t have any power of wearables–even medical devices–because they are defined as a ?low-risk general wellness product.? Therefore, the manufacturer?s intended use of the device is what defines it as a medical device or not, meaning that devices that are put together by wearable manufacturers won?t be classified under this umbrella term according to the FD&C Act?s standards. HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects the individual?s right to their health information. HIPAA provides many protections, but it doesn?t specifically cover wearable technology. Wearable manufacturers also aren?t touched by the secondary use of health data, which is the use of personal health information beyond the direct delivery of healthcare. Considering how all data is produced by a consumer and not a covered entity, the secondary use of health data doesn?t apply. The FTC Act The Federal Trade Commission can go after companies that are carrying out deceptive practices, including a failure to comply with a privacy policy. This covers entities that are covered and not covered by HIPAA, and the FTC Act dictates how non-covered entities handle their health information-related security practices. The FTC can also bring on legal action against these organizations who are careless with consumer information, whether it?s violated privacy rights or a failure to keep proper security measures. The FTC has made its stance on wearables clear. In 2017, the FTC reported that few companies ever discuss their cross-device tracking practices in their privacy policies. Cross-device tracking can allow multiple devices to be associated with a single […]