What kind of service can I expect from my service level agreement?SLAs are not created equal from company to company. Some providers will fully cover issue A, but leave you high and dry where issues B and C are involved. Some may cover A through C, but may only provide the bare minimum of service. Some may fully cover all issues, but their response times may be so slow that they may as well not cover them at all. On the other hand, some companies will offer exceptional service, with reasonable response times between non-critical to emergency matters. Make sure that you know which kind of service you can expect from your solutions provider. How will my network be managed?This inquiry covers a few different concerns that you should make sure your provider addresses. First of all, you need to make sure that they are not going to charge you excessively for basic support and similar IT requirements. If your management costs are going to keep you from being able to improve in the future, it makes more sense to find a more reasonable provider. Speaking of future improvements, you need to make sure that your provider can handle changes that will happen over time. After all, the primary goal of most businesses is to grow and become more profitable. This will necessitate improvements to your IT infrastructure in order to support the increased workload and increased user needs. If your provider isn?t prepared to help you grow, they have become a liability instead of an asset. Your business is built around the abilities of your IT, so if it can?t grow, neither can your business. Is my business protected against possible disaster?In IT, ?disaster? covers a wide scope of events. First, there?s the risk of hardware failure that could derail productivity and facilitate data loss if not properly prepared for. Of course, there are other causes of disaster as well, that can have many of the same effects to your crucial business data or the ability for the business? employees to be productive. Without the means in place to enable the workforce to return to full productivity as quickly as possible, your business could easily suffer from ill effects as a result. Data theft is another serious issue that businesses need to consider as well. Has your IT resource put the proper defenses in place to protect your data both on your internal systems and when it is accessed on a mobile device? Have they considered what will need to happen if an employee leaves and should therefore no longer have access to your data, even if it was accessed on their personal device? These are just a few of the subjects your IT resource should have complete and reliable responses to. If you?d like to find out how we approach these matters, keep reading the White Mountain IT Services blog, and reach out to us directly at (603) 889-0800.

When your organization is implementing a new project, there are a lot of expectations and deadlines that are watched with a close eye. While it might be ideal to get the project finished as quickly as possible, doing so can put a lot of pressure and stress on it that can ultimately be its downfall. For example, if you don?t think out the planning phase carefully, the entire implementation process can suffer–particularly when working on new IT initiatives. CIO.com explains why oversight is absolutely critical for any IT project, and most importantly, the risk-prone discovery phase: ?Discovery is the crux of project risk. Although the discovery and architecture phases of a project may represent only 15 percent of the overall effort, an error or omission early on can cause cost overruns of 150 percent or more.? Have you had any problems concerning this topic with your own IT project implementation procedure? To keep your next IT project from crashing and burning, you need to invest considerable time and effort into the discovery and architecture phases for any new initiative. This helps you ensure that things are done right the first time and that they don?t create more trouble than they?re worth in the long run. Of course, the real question is how you can make sure this happens. This is where working with your vendors and a managed service provider comes into play. If you feel that they aren?t answering your questions with confidence, or that they are rushing to get something done, you need to bring it up before it?s too late to do anything about it. You want your vendors to explain their actions in clear terms and offer complete transparency with any new technology implementation, and the same can be said for your service providers. Next on the docket is to know what a project will look like if it?s being rushed. Busy business owners who have a lot on their plate in the first place might not know the warning signs of such a situation, but White Mountain IT Services does. Here are some of the warning signs that your vendors are cutting corners for any new IT implementation: Documents prepared for the project lack substance. In this case, they might be filled to the brim with industry jargon and sales propaganda, rather than actual information about your company?s needs. This can overwhelm a business owner with so many features and benefits that they don?t necessarily know what exactly they are getting and how it helps their business. Project requirements might be ignored, or they may not be treated with proper priority. This ultimately leads to poor step-by-step implementation of the project, and while they might not seem to have immediate consequences, running into troubles with your budget or deadline will be all the more painful when they arise. There may be information or requirements missing to fulfill important steps. Ideally, you want your implementation to be seamless. However, if there are gaps discovered in the implementation phase rather than the discovery phase, these issues could have drastic effects on the project?s timeline. In some instances, you might have to completely reevaluate the scope of the project. You may notice that your business?s needs change significantly during the implementation process, which causes the project to be insufficient to suit […]

Just keep in mind that we are only talking about Google Drive as a backup solution for the average PC user. If your business wants to keep downtime to a minimum and maximize data recovery, you should implement an enterprise-level backup and disaster recovery solution. Call us today and ask about we can provide comprehensive data backup and fast recovery options for your organization. Backup and Sync is the latest version of Google Drive. It allows your users to back up files or folders on their desktops by sending them to Google Drive. This is great for users that want a free way to keep backups of their photos, videos, and media. Google even tells its users that this is only intended for consumers, as well as encourages its G-Suite customers to wait for their upcoming Drive File Stream services. Backup and Sync is available for users of Google Drive for PC and Mac. Just keep in mind that using your Backup and Sync application to take backups of your videos and photos will probably end with you exceeding your free Drive space provided by Google. One last thing to think about for any business owner, however, is that you should discourage employees from storing company data locally on their workstations. Files should be stored on your company network whenever possible, especially if they need to be accessed by multiple employees. Plus, there’s always a chance that an employee on bad terms may set up Google Drive Backup to snag all of the data located on their workstation. White Mountain IT Services wants to help your business implement only the best and brightest solutions for your business technology infrastructure. To learn more about how we can help you take full advantage of data backup and disaster recovery, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Have you ever gotten Facebook requests from strange people who you don?t know? While it might be tempting to give them the benefit of the doubt–after all, maybe they know a friend of yours–it?s best to keep strangers off of your page when you can. In order to give your page, the flexibility to accept friend requests from people you may know, and protect it from strangers, you can implement a ?follow? feature, and limit who can send you friend requests. Sharing this information with your employees is also a great way to protect them from accidentally accepting friend requests from strangers who may actually be hackers in disguise. Scam artists can create new accounts and use them to send out mass friend requests for potential attacks on user credentials or sensitive information, so it?s best to stay safe and avoid these in any way possible. First, you need to log into your Facebook account. If you?re doing this from your desktop, click on the little down-arrow in the top-right corner of Facebook. Click on Settings, which will be down toward the bottom. This opens up the General Account Settings page. In the left column, you?ll see several sub-categories for Facebook?s settings. Click on Privacy first. Under the Privacy Settings and Tools page, you?ll see various sections dedicated to who can see what you post on Facebook. The option you are looking for is under the Who can contact me? Section. Here, you?ll want to click Edit and change the setting to Friends of friends. This means that only people who are friends with someone on your current friends list will be able to send you a request. You should still be able to extend the invitation to others, though. Now, let?s say that you want to give people another option to see what you post, even if they aren?t currently friends of yours. Maybe you have articles about your industry that you?d like to share, but you don?t want to make everything that you post available for all to see. In a situation like this, you can scroll down to Public Posts in the left column. This opens up the Public Post Filters and Tools page. Under the section Who Can Follow Me, select Public. This allows you to set the status of your posts to either Public for Followers, or Friends for Friends only. Of course, a healthy dose of skepticism should always be used when dealing with social media, as people can masquerade under false identities easily enough. For more information about how to keep your organization secure, reach out to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.

This is by no means the first time HBO has moved to increase the show?s security. During last year?s season, fewer of the actors were given scripts and code words for certain characters and scenes were developed, just in case. HBO also put a stop to distributing screeners, or advance copies of the program, to members of the press to view so they can write their reviews. Now that the show has overtaken the books, the importance of secrecy and security has increased even more. This year, the cast was required to enable and set up two-factor authentication on their email accounts, where they exclusively received digital copies of the script that they were not allowed to print out. This is according to Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays the character Missandei on the show. Emmanuel added that even any rehearsal notes the cast members received were restricted to the set, signed for and returned before the actors were permitted to leave. For good reason, too. The series is a cultural juggernaut, and has generated its showrunners a vast amount of money. It is–in all senses of the word–a business, and if it was to lose its critical data or trade secrets (like who?s next to be violently eliminated from the Game of Thrones), their audience would have less of an incentive to tune in, and viewers would swiftly shift their support to a different project. In this way, it is just as important that you ensure that your business? data is secured as well. Otherwise, the same scenario would likely happen, your ?audience? replaced by your customers and clients. Two-Factor Authentication requires a user to not only know their password to log into their email or online accounts, but also have their mobile device on hand to type in a texted code. Even if someone were to guess the password, it would still require the mobile device to log in. Many businesses are adopting this to comply with various regulations, but it?s also quickly becoming a best practice for security. Are you excited about this season of Game of Thrones? Let us know in the comments what you think–but no spoilers, please!