One of the best ways to accomplish this is with our mobile device management (MDM) service. Depending on your business? specific needs, you?ll need a different solution compared to others. To help you make the best decision, we?ve put together a list of features that can help you compare your needs with the various services available through mobile device management. What?s a Mobile Device Management Solution?A mobile device management solution is typically meant to help IT administrators and business management enforce policies on mobile devices, turning a time-wasting smartphone into more of a productivity tool than a meme machine. These policies are implemented with the intention of protecting the business? network and data from being targeted by threats. Through a mobile device management software, IT administrators can control and reinforce policies or add applications to devices that access company assets. Why Use Mobile Device Management?There are three big reasons why your organization might want to implement MDM software, and all of them are due to the relatively recent influx of mobile devices to the workplace. Since the early 2000s, security has grown more important for this very reason. Businesses simply want to control access to data, and you should too. Access: A major focus of mobile device management is allowing employees access to important work material without compromising your business? security. For example, MDM is only as useful as your applications are on a mobile phone, so you?ll want to take careful measure of how your employees can be successful with a MDM solution on their devices. The incredible access provided can be quite considerable for most organizations that find value in flexibility. Improved Visibility: Another big part of using a MDM is that you can compose and enforce compliance guidelines that your staff needs to abide by. This can include which devices have access to certain data. Your organization can then use this information to remain cognizant of the biggest threats to its data security. General Security Measures: Overall, the most important thing to remember about MDM solutions is that they are designed to protect your business? data and infrastructure from threats. To this end, there are several solutions baked into the service that keep threats out of your devices, including whitelisting and blacklisting apps and remote wiping for worst-case scenarios. Want to Know More?For more information about how your business can fully leverage a MDM solution to its benefit, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

At White Mountain IT Services, we deal in business-class technology every day, and the resulting knowledge allows our consultants to pinpoint when a technology solution is a good fit, and when it should be avoided altogether. After all, while every business needs technology that provides solid ROI, no business needs technology that they can?t properly utilize. Today, we look at two parts of your business? computing where you could make significant technology upgrades that would provide rapid ROI, and typically won?t ruin your annual technology budget. Communications We?ll start with communications, because it is a core aspect of the modern business that has seen some pretty stark shifts. For decades the telephone was the number one (and only) solution for company communications. You had a desk, you sat at the desk, and answered the phone when it rang. Obviously, today things are much, much different. They are so different that sometimes you?ll be standing on line in a store and you think someone is talking to you, but he/she is actually negotiating a sale with someone two time zones away via Bluetooth headset.  Today?s business communications solutions are considerably better, and often more cost effective than communications in the past. There are a lot more of them too. With the advent of the smartphone and the cloud, more can get done on the move than ever before. Here are two of the communications solutions that are available to the modern business: Voice over Internet Protocol: Every business needs a telephone system, and often business phone solutions from the telephone company can be exceedingly expensive. Today there is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that uses your organization?s Internet bandwidth to provide in-office and mobile options for businesses. Some VoIP solutions will come packaged with other services, but stand-alone fully-hosted VoIP solutions are a powerful and cost-effective option for any business because of the breadth of services that are available with a VoIP plan. Typically billed per user, per month, hosted VoIP can save you money and provide the mobility and options your business needs. Hosted Team Collaboration: Instant messaging and forums have been around as long as the Internet, but today there are full-featured team collaboration tools that combine the ease of use of IM with the comprehensive project collaboration found in today?s strongest email solutions. Options like Slack and Microsoft Teams can provide any business a heavily-integrated platform in which to communicate, collaborate, and cooperate, moving projects ahead faster than ever before; and, because it is hosted in the cloud, information can be accessed from any place that has an Internet connection on any allowed device. File Storage Any organization that relies on IT, has to store data. All the emails, documentation, presentations, marketing materials, databases, graphics, and media your organization has can chew up a huge chunk of storage space. That?s before you even take into account the amount of file storage space every application your organization utilizes. If you think about it, where and how you store your data is a major consideration. So what innovative options are open to you? Well, as with any technology, you will want to first consider your needs in both storage needed and where you want to store it. It?s true that some of the data you have should be stored onsite, but it?s also […]

The Smartphone Market The heavy hitters of the smartphone market have been the same for almost a decade. Samsung and Apple are, more or less, the biggest players in the smartphone market. There are others that have emerged, like HTC, Blackberry Limited, and LG, but it?s hard to argue that they have the same presence in the smartphone industry as Samsung and Apple. Similarly, there is now a competition for Chinese companies thanks to an increase in Asian smartphone demand. Manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi have grown considerably as a result. Besides the increase in popularity of smartphones in places with high populations, the smartphone market has typically relied on repeat customers who replace their phones when new models are released. Today?s smartphones are built with specifications that are designed to help manufacturer?s make back their money with high sales. The less people upgrade their devices, the more money these manufacturers have to pay in order to get ads in front of potential consumers. Therefore, if the biggest draw of the latest smartphone is taken out of the picture–the potential for upgrading–the entire basis of the market screeches to a halt. Even though Samsung and Apple have large numbers of repeat customers, the same can?t be said for their closest competitors. Even though the technology market?s stagnation is occurring at around the same time as the mobile device market?s, the ultimate cause seems to be demand for the devices. Locations where smartphones are increasing in popularity–namely India, Africa, and southeast Asia–don?t have the Internet accessibility needed to use devices to their full capacity. Even though the numbers are down, the smartphone market will still continue to innovate and push toward groundbreaking new technologies. Some of the hot topics are currently 5G wireless and augmented reality. It?s likely that these new innovations will keep the smartphone relevant in the coming years. 2018 Smartphone Technology Smartphone companies rely on the success of their most popular devices, and therefore, they need to take measures toward improving these devices. They have to improve pretty much everything about them in order to attract both new and returning consumers. This ranges all the way from the cameras and screens to the innards–the operating system, RAM, and other software included with it. The sad reality is that these new versions of flagship devices are simply not that much different from previous versions. This is true even in light of insane spending on innovation, research and development. Most flagship smartphones today provide the following features: 4G LTE availability Responsive operating system Large application ecosystem Usable screen size around six inches PPI over 400 OLED, AMOLED, or Super AMOLED display Carry weight of less than 7 oz At least a 12 Megapixel rear-facing camera Front-facing camera 4K video capture Optical Image Stabilization At least a 3.25 GHz processor At least quad-core At least 3 GB of RAM At least 64 GB of onboard storage At least 10 hours of constant usability on battery Rapid charging with USB Type-C (or proprietary charger) Water resistance Bluetooth Security features (including face lock or fingerprint scanner) Unfortunately, poor sales means higher prices to make up for these poor sales. This makes trouble for small businesses with limited budgets, as they could potentially be using devices several years old. While there?s nothing wrong with […]

Need Collaboration? Most projects that a business completes will require more than one person to work on them, assuming that this project needs to be done with any efficiency. This means that multiple people will need to be able to access not just the materials, but the organizational documents as well, to ensure that the project?s status is correctly maintained. If you also use Microsoft OneDrive, storing your project note there and sharing it out to those who need to access it will enable collaborative abilities for each of them. This can also be done through a sharable link, and sharing permissions can be removed with just a few clicks, if necessary. Tags for Organization In OneNote 2016, tags allow much quicker access to key pieces of information in notes, whether that information is a single set of numbers or an entire paragraph of text. These tags include items like Important, Question, and Remember for Later, and you can even remind yourself to Discuss with manager or to Send in email. Of course, if you need a tag that says something different, you can always add a new tag or modify one that you don?t need – for instance, Movie to see probably isn?t going to come up in a project very often, so it can probably be repurposed safely. These tags are also searchable, making it easy to find them later, and once you?re done with a particular piece of information, the tag can be removed so as to not add to any confusion later. Customizable Templates OneNote also comes with an assortment of templates that you can apply to a page before adding any information to it. While some may be well-suited to your project as-is, you can also create your own from scratch or by modifying one that?s already there. Whatever you choose, your process can then be standardized, saving time and energy later in future projects. How else have you utilized OneNote? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you subscribe to the White Mountain IT Services blog!

Certain threats out there are dangerous enough to cause major entities to warn against them. In particular, a recent malware by the name of VPNFilter has been deemed dangerous and prevalent enough that the FBI has addressed it. Since the malware targets routers (probably not your first guess in terms of possible vulnerabilities), it has considerable potential to become a nuisance for your organization. Understanding VPNFilter VPNFilter is a malware that hides in your router and remains even if you restart the device. VPNFilter is known for prioritizing devices in Ukraine, but you should never count on the trend to protect you from known threats. It?s thought that the VPNFilter malware has its roots in a group called Sofacy, and the malware operates in three basic steps. The first step for this malware is that it installs itself on the device and remains there even in the event that the router is rebooted or turned off. Second, the malware will install certain permissions on the router that allows it to change settings, manage files, and execute commands. The router can then proceed to brick itself, making it much more difficult for your organization to keep operations moving along. In its final stages, this malware lets a hacker see the data packets that are being sent to and from your organization?s device, meaning that they can then also issue commands and communicate with the device via a Tor web browser. This threat was specifically mentioned by the FBI because of its persistence. While resetting the device will disable the second and third steps, the first will remain, creating an endless cycle if you don?t do anything about it. Is Your Router Affected? Even though not all routers are affected, the number is still quite considerable. Here is a list of affected brands: Asus D-Link Huawei Linksys MikroTik Netgear TP-Link Ubiquiti Upvel ZTE If you would like a more comprehensive list of all affected devices, Symantec has a list on their website: https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/vpnfilter-iot-malware How You Fix It There is an easy fix to VPNFilter, and it?s to perform a factory reset on your router. This eliminates anything that?s currently installed from the first stage of VPNFilter?s attack. Of course, it?s also worth mentioning that the manufacturer of the router may have also administered a patch or security update resolving the vulnerability, so be sure to check for that as well so that it will never be an issue again. For more great updates and tech tips, be sure to subscribe to White Mountain IT Services?s blog.