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Profitable Types of Data It doesn?t matter if your business is a small mom-and-pop store or a huge enterprise; there will always be types of data that hold value to hackers. Answer this question: why are you in business? The answer is always the same. You started your business because you wanted to turn a profit while utilizing your skills, and any organization that collects money from people is bound to collect a ton of other important data, too. Your organization accrues all kinds of financial details, as well as contact information for leads, clients, and customers. All of this is important to hackers, and they will go out of their way to take advantage of information like this to steal funds, distribute malware, and make your life miserable. The Unpredictability Factor Of course, not all hackers are out there with a specific goal barring the collection of information. Some are just out there to stir up a little bit of chaos by hacking systems, distributing malware, and causing havoc for businesses just like yours. This unpredictability means that you can?t take any risks with your organization?s sensitive information and security systems, as any overlooked vulnerabilities could bring down operations or lead to data loss. The Impact of Security Negligence If your organization falls prey to a security threat, you can bet that it is going to impact operations, as well as lead to potential fines from regulatory bodies if compliance hasn?t been met. Furthermore, you could lose access to critical data that is necessary for the continued survival of your organization. The importance of protecting your business? data cannot be overstated, as your success literally depends on it. White Mountain IT Services can equip your business with the best security tools out there, including a remote monitoring and management service that works to keep hardware running efficiently while keeping threats out of your network. To learn more about what we can do for your network security, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

What Is Mobile Malware? Mobile malware works a lot like you?d expect it to. You downloaded a piece of code that is designed to be malignant in some way. Typically, people utilize their requisite app store to download applications, but occasionally users will download files from other sites, and they can carry mobile malware with them. The forms of mobile malware include: Drive-by downloads – Sometimes when you open an infected email or visit an infected website, you can be saddled with a drive-by download threat. These can deliver anything from spyware, adware, malware, or even a bot that can use your mobile device to perform their vicious bidding. Mobile phishing – Everyone is constantly exposed to phishing, but not always on mobile. Since more computing is done on mobile devices today than ever before, hackers? tactics have changed. To deliver mobile malware, scammers will use applications, which are disposable on mobile, to trick users into providing their account numbers, personal information, and passwords. Viruses and Trojan Horses – Sometimes you can download a rather innocuous file only to find out that you have downloaded a virus that will mine your device for passwords and financial information. Madware – Often seemingly useful programs may come with some type of spyware or adware on it. Madware, short for mobile adware, works like PC adware, collecting user information including location, passwords, contacts, and device usage. Mobile Browser Exploits – A device?s mobile browser isn?t a failsafe. Any behavior that could put you in harm?s way on a PC, can do the same on mobile. How to Avoid Mobile Malware Any nefariously designed software can present major problems for users and businesses, alike. The best bet to keep from being infected with mobile malware is to follow these suggestions: Install mobile security software – Just as your antivirus helps you avoid malware; mobile security software will accomplish this. Download apps from official stores – Most people don?t download apps from third-party sites, but if they do, they could find themselves inundated with malware. Don?t risk it. Keep all applications updated – The newest versions of mobile apps are typically protected with the newest threat definitions. Making sure your software is patched and up-to-date is important. Use a mobile firewall – Yes, there are mobile firewalls that you can download on your phones. By being cognizant of the proactive steps you need to take to avoid mobile malware, you will be less likely to deal with it. What To Do When Your Phone is Infected? There are a lot of solutions to help you get malware off your mobile device. We?ve found that some are better than others. Your best bet is to contact an IT professional, like the technicians at White Mountain IT Services to get the malware off of your phone. Call us today for any of your technology needs at (603) 889-0800.

When your business relies on onsite servers, you have to keep them humming along in order for your business computing to remain efficient. After all, when you applications are constantly accessible and data is flowing efficiently, workflows go uninterrupted, and your staff can be more productive. So, when your onsite hardware starts to get older, and you are beginning to see signs that a refresh is in your company?s immediate future, you will reasonably feel like you have to make some costly decisions. It?s not as if you have a spare server lying around for a rainy day. Fortunately, you may not be staring a monstrous bill in the face just yet. Using innovative new technology, White Mountain IT Services technicians will likely be able to provide a clear understanding of where your business is with its onsite technology, while at the same time, ensuring that it remains functional. With built-in automation, we are able to breathe new life into components that may fail without maintenance. This accomplishes two things: You don?t have to rush out and make hasty decisions that could affect the current and future health of your business. You don?t deal with the enormous downtime that companies dealing with failing hardware have to deal with. We are able to do this with the following offerings: Proactive Maintenance – With our state-of-the-art tools, we manage the health of your business by keeping your hardware and network working effectively. Issues that arise are dealt with by our team of remote technicians so that you have fair warning if your hardware needs to be replaced, promoting organizational uptime, and keeping revenue generating processes working as intended. Patch Management – We also support your organization by making certain that its software resources are patched and up to date, providing new features and reducing vulnerabilities. Backup and Disaster Recovery – We also promote a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategy. Using powerful backup processes and the power of the cloud, we promote data redundancy, ensuring that if something happens where you lose data, you can restore from a backup and keep going. Consulting and Procurement – We provide professional consulting that will position your company to interact with some of the best IT vendors on the market, providing the IT solutions your business needs when they need them. To learn more about how we can keep your seemingly failing IT up and running long enough to ensure that your business doesn?t suffer, call us today at (603) 889-0800.

What Your Employees Will Expect of You While you are providing your employees with a means of supporting themselves, your employees are providing you with the means to keep your doors open. As such, it is only fair that you live up to a few of their reasonable expectations of you. For instance: Efficient Processes In any business, there are certain tasks that need to be completed, often simultaneously and in conjunction to other, equally critical tasks. Are your employees provided the time and tools to meet their responsibilities? Are their processes filled with bottlenecks and inefficiencies? Do your employees find themselves revisiting the same tasks over and over? As an employer, it is only fair that you put forth your best efforts to streamline the processes that your employees are responsible for completing. One effective way to do so is to leverage automation wherever possible. Look at it this way: the less time your employees need to spend repeating work they?ve already done, or working on repetitive tasks that are frankly making poor use of their abilities, the more time they can spend on something more productive. Freeing your employees of a responsibility by automating it makes better use of their time, and keeps them more engaged in their work. Manageable Workloads Speaking of their work, your employees will only be able to accomplish so much in a given amount of time. If your employees are working for an eight-hour workday, expecting them to complete ten hours’ worth of responsibilities in that time won?t do any good for them, or your business. Frankly, you?ll only wind up disappointed, and your staff will be frustrated. Utilizing a resource management solution will help to prevent this unpleasant situation from cropping up. Ideally, it will also offer timesheet-generation capabilities, ensuring that the appropriate time is being spent on each task – and that time is being spent productively, as it should be. Reasonable Requirements and Deadlines Remember how we discussed your processes above? This consideration ties back to them in a very important way. You need to consider how these processes will influence the timeframe required to complete them. Referring back to keeping workloads manageable, again, you can?t provide an employee with eight hours to complete ten hours of tasks – this will only overwhelm them (especially if they?re racing to catch up with notifications alerting them to their next responsibility). Again, leveraging a reliable resource management solution will help you and your staff to more effectively budget the time available to spend. Furthermore, it will help you and your employees to more accurately track the actual time necessary to perform certain tasks, allowing you to make more appropriate estimates and deadlines for your staff to live up to in the future. Support from Management One of the most important expectations your staff should have is the expectation that you will be there to support them in their efforts. If one of your staff members isn?t performing as expected, assist them in accomplishing what you want them to. This will reinforce that they are capable of more – and if they aren?t going to meet a deadline, communicate with them. Allowing your employees some input into what a task will take will help to set accomplishable business goals – and shows that […]

What Are Biometrics? Biometrics are a form of authentication that, instead of using a password or key code, leverage some physical attribute or qualifier. These could include fingerprints, voice patterns, and even the rhythm that a person uses to type. Not only are they easier for a user to leverage, they can be compounded, enhancing security as well as supporting many other business practices. Let?s dive further into the kinds of biometrics that can be leveraged by a business (although not all of them are practical to do so as of yet). Biometric Types There are two primary types of identifiers that any biometrics rely on, physical identifiers and behavioral identifiers. Physical identifiers, as listed below, are far more commonly seen today: Signatures – Chances are, you?ve seen this variety of biometrics a great number of times in your personal and business life. This signature serves as a confirmation that the person fulfilling an action–be it a transaction or an agreement–is authorized to do so. From retail outlets to financial institutions, this biometric technology is very common in day-to-day life. Fingerprints and Physiological Attributes – This is another common form of authentication, as it is likely you use it to unlock your smartphone. Scanning someone?s fingerprint as a means of confirming their identity has been used for quite some time and has been adopted by many companies and individuals. Physiological recognition is also commonly used, as evidenced by palm scanners, retinal scanning, and facial recognition. Voice – Voice-based authentication is also increasingly common in all walks of life, personal users commanding their virtual assistants and businesses utilizing voice authentication to enable their automated answering systems. DNA – While the technology still has a ways to go, there is some promise of DNA sequencing transitioning from a cinematic feature to a practically-used solution. There are also behavioral identifiers that newer forms of biometric authentication are able to pick up on. These methods are largely still in development. Typing Patterns – Understandably, just like people write differently, they type differently as well. Therefore, by measuring how quickly a user types, the pressure they apply to the keys, and even the time it takes to move between keys, a user?s identity can be confirmed. Navigation and Engagement – Expanding on the basis of typing pattern analysis, our use of technology is distinctive enough from person to person that other behaviors are indicative of our identity. Therefore, everything from our mouse movements to how we actually hold and use a device can be used as a secondary authentication measure now, and potentially be a standalone security measure someday. Reliability (and Risks) of Biometrics As it currently stands, biometric authentication is a problematic technology, simply because the ?key?–the user–can be inconsistent. Voices can sound different for a variety of reasons, and fashion choices can easily change one?s appearance enough to frustrate a biometric system. Imagine not being able to access the office because you experimented with a new haircut or picked up a fashionable new pair of spectacles! However, this doesn?t mean that there aren?t ways to cheat these systems. Photos can be effective, as can recordings of one?s voice. This is why most experts suggest that, if biometric authentication is to be used, multiple factors are taken into account. Security is a Major Concern […]