We?ve gone ahead and assembled some helpful workplace habits and policies that will be good for your employees? overall wellness. Healthy Foods in the Office There?s no denying that the presence of snacks in the office is seen as a major workplace benefit in the eyes of many employees. This is advantageous to you, the employer, as you can cultivate a positive feeling in the office just by having something available. However, by choosing one snack over the other, you can influence greater changes that you might not have considered connected before. For instance, it is a general fact that the snacks that are more readily made available aren?t exactly the healthiest ones out there, and the few healthier options that exist tend to be much pricier than the cheap and easy alternatives. However, consider the environment you cultivate in your office by doing so – and how much less frequently healthy people tend to be out of the office, using sick time. While there is no harm in offering a few ?convenience? snacks, try to also encourage your employees to make healthier choices. They?ll feel better, and will therefore be more productive. Promote Water Sipping Dehydration is a much more serious problem than most people realize, to the point that even a mild case (as in, dehydrated by one percent) of it has been recorded as decreasing productivity by a full 12 percent, causing reduced alertness and concentration. Once you reach three-or-four percent, productivity drops by 25 percent. What?s worse, many people are chronically dehydrated. This means that their bodies have just gotten used to it, so they don?t feel as thirsty as they should. Try to encourage that your employees drink plenty of water, however you can. Encourage Movement Whenever Possible While plenty of studies have shown it, did we ever really need scientific support to convince us that sitting on our backsides all day isn?t exactly great for us? Unfortunately, a lot of the work that goes on in the traditional office is done at a desk. However, this doesn?t mean that there aren?t solutions that can expand on those capabilities. Convertible sit-to-stand desks and desktop mounts have grown to be very popular, allowing users to alternate between sitting and standing throughout their workday. It may not seem like much, but it can add up to quite the difference in your user productivity. Try purchasing one to allow a few of your users a chance to try it before committing the expense of outfitting the whole office with them. Get Some Greenery Plants have long been a staple in office decoration, and often can have benefits that greatly outweigh the maintenance that they require. As a matter of fact, certain plants have been shown to have particular properties that make them ideal for offices that face certain limitations or would like to accomplish something greater with their greenery. For example, there are many varieties of the pothos hanging plant that can do quite well in an office environment (as attested to the fact that they are often considered the quintessential office plant). Not only do these plants do their best in the middling light conditions of many offices, they don?t need as much water as you?d imagine, and they have been shown to improve air quality levels. […]

Data backup works by backing up your data and providing the ability to restore your data. Using this solution, you can make any large issues, or even small annoyances, trivial at best. It doesn?t take an expert to notice how a computer shutting down before you can save an important document can derail operations for employees who need that file. In situations like this, an incremental backup will be able to resolve the issue in no time at all. Simply put, instead of worrying about how to get that document back, you can turn back time to a point where that file existed on your business? infrastructure. This gives you the option of reverting documents and files back to a point where they aren?t affected by whatever ails you. These small inconveniences can effectively be mitigated simply by restoring a previous version of your document, making it seem like the issue never happened at all. This might seem like a small benefit but think about it in the grand scale. You effectively make it so that you?ll never have to worry about employee mistakes killing productivity (to a certain degree, anyway). When employees don?t have to worry about mistakes eliminating all of their hard work, they can instead focus on getting as much work done as possible, improving productivity and reducing the margin of error. White Mountain IT Services can help your business put together a data backup plan that works for you. Our network-attached and cloud-based backup solutions can allow for incremental backups frequently throughout the workday, creating minimal data loss in any disaster event, no matter how small. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Google.com We should begin by saying that there are very few resources in the world as useful as google.com. In fact, the act of searching the Internet is now the verb ?google?. With that kind of success, it isn?t a surprise that people could get a little frustrated when they ?google? a query only to not get the results they were expecting. This scenario is exactly why you should learn that there are search commands that you can make inside of Google search to help you get the results you are looking for. Today, we will look at a few ways that you can get the search result you are after, not the one corporations pay a pretty penny to give you. Google Search Tip #1: Use the Tabs Depending on your search query, you may want to get an image, or a video, or some news. Google provides this functionality on every search results page. There are tabs for images, news, videos, maps, shopping, books, flights, and finance. By selecting these options, you will get results that are more in line with what you wanted your query to return. Google Search Tip #2: Use Quotes If you are searching for something specific, using quotes can help you minimize the amount of results returned that don?t exactly match your search query. Example: ?happy days? By putting your search parameters in quotes, it searches the term or phrase exactly as you typed it rather than using the keywords in any order. This can return more specific information. Google Search Tip #3: Use a Hyphen to Exclude Words Lots of words in English have multiple meanings. If you find yourself entering a search query that you know will return ambiguous results because the term has multiple meanings, try searching the term, add a space, and then subtract the meanings you don?t want to see. Example: scale -weight By removing the topic of one of the homonyms from the equation, you will get more targeted and accurate results. Google Search Tip #4: Use a Colon to Search Specific Sites If you know what you are looking for, but need to quickly find something on a specific website, using Google to find it is simple. All you have to do is type in the keywords you want to search followed by a space, the command ?site:?, and the website. Example: Virtualization site:azure.microsoft.com By adding the specific keyword you want to see and the site you want to search, Google will return some extremely specific search results. Google Search Tip #5: Search Locally Google knows way more than you think about you. One thing that Google typically understands is where you are, which means you can literally use Google to find any location in the world, or down the street. Example: Laundromats nearby. By searching for anything you need, you can get a list of local services, restaurants, and other locations; and, the directions to get there. Google Search Tip #6: Don?t Always Avoid the Ads We?ve all had it ingrained in our brains to avoid clicking ads on the Internet, but Google has a very complex vetting process when it delivers ads based on your search. Businesses pay for these ads and choose the destination, but Google?s bots are always checking to make sure […]

Take Off When going away on a business trip it is important that you research your destination beforehand. Now that there are Internet-based resources to look up your exact destination, its amenities, the businesses that surround your destination, the time and cost of getting to a destination, do it. You?ll also want to check the weather and the news to ensure that any hindrance you could have, you?ve prepared for. Being prepared is always much better than being surprised, especially when it comes to business travel. When packing your things, you?ll want to pack light. In fact, if you can get away with using only carry-on bags, you will be one step further in the game. If you are going for an extended period (more than five days), however, you will likely have to acquire a lot of your toiletries and other essential daily items at your destination rather than taking enough of it to last you the whole time. It may be a little more expensive, but the convenience of not packing it all is totally worth it; and, will help get you through security checkpoints easier. You?ll also want to charge all of your electronics you plan on bringing before you leave. There are also affordable battery packs and portable chargers that can really be a godsend when you are away from an outlet for stretches of time. You?ll also want to print all your information beforehand so that you have an idea of your itinerary and your confirmations in writing. Travel and Arrival At the airport, you?ll be tempted to use the Wi-Fi, but before connecting any device to it, consider how secure an airport Wi-Fi could possibly be. If data security is at all a priority for you, you will avoid the Wi-Fi and use your device?s data instead. Once you get to your destination, the first thing you are going to want to do is ensure that you have everything that you came with. Nothing is more frustrating than getting to your destination without your stuff. Sometimes the airlines will misplace your luggage, but typically having everything you left with is possible when you get there but will likely be more challenging when you are returning (more on that in a bit). When you get to your destination (typically a hotel), you?ll want to get to your place of lodging and survey the technology landscape. Chances are you are going to need Internet access. For this, you can choose to use your smartphone, but this can get expensive for an individual if they are forced to use their data for work purposes. Sure, there are unlimited plans that you can get from almost any carrier, but even they often have language written in the fine print that provides less-than-stellar Internet access when you?ve used a certain amount of data. If you don?t want to use your data, you will need to find a reliable Internet connection. In places where business is routinely done, you can expect that people will utilize the Internet access that is made available to them. The problem with this is that many seemingly secure and reliable connections, aren?t. For this reason, many businesses have begun to utilize virtual private network (VPN) technology to ensure that any data transmission completed on outside […]

Shadow IT Time is money, and people will go to great lengths to keep themselves productive throughout the workday, even if it?s not sanctioned by your business. While you might have certain preferences for solutions, your employees might have other ideas. This is called Shadow IT, where your employees will download and use a piece of software that hasn?t passed the test of your company?s IT department. Most of the time, the employee who downloads the off-brand software isn?t doing it out of spite for the organization–only for their own convenience. In fact, 80 percent of employees use software that hasn?t been selected, tested, and released by the IT administrator. These applications are more vulnerable than those that would be implemented by your business. Cryptojacking There are over 1,500 kinds of cryptocurrency out there, and cryptojacking was a popular method of cybercrime in 2018. Cryptojacking is when a malware will use a target?s computer resources to mine for cryptocurrency. Due to how resource-intensive cryptojacking is, it affects the computer?s effectiveness and longevity. Most studies that have been performed as of late show that cryptojacking will get much worse in 2019, as the value of cryptocurrency has fallen considerably over the past year. This means that more machines are needed to mine cryptocurrency, which means more attacks will be needed to create the same level of profit. You should take measures now to learn about these attacks and how to keep them from becoming a problem for your business. Ransomware Ransomware might be on the decrease since 2018, it?s still important to keep a lookout for it, primarily because it?s such a huge danger to network security. Ransomware is capable of encrypting all of the files located on a computing system. It then demands payment to unlock access to the files. Ransomware tends to target organizations that have a lot of sensitive files who are likely to pay up in the event of an infection. Others might have operational technology systems that are critical to maintain at all times, making restoration a priority–even if it means paying up. Unsecured Internet of Things Devices The IoT is only growing larger, and you know what that means: more devices that could potentially create a disaster scenario for your business. It becomes incredibly important to keep your network safe from any and all devices connected to it at any given time, whether it?s from employees or visitors. Even a simple unsecured IoT device with smartphone connectivity could become a major network vulnerability. To be fair, there have been improvements to IoT security, so you?ll have plenty of options over how to utilize IoT devices securely and effectively. Phishing All businesses see a phishing email at least once in a while. It?s estimated that an average of 156 million phishing emails are sent every day, making it a very common method of hacking. Basically, since most accounts are secure enough that they cannot be hacked through conventional means, the hacker will instead directly reach out to whoever owns the account to get the information they need to infiltrate it. One specific example of this is business email compromise, which targets specific members of an organization and can cause up to $12 billion in losses all over the world. Most phishing messages can be stopped with […]