Recent Blog Posts

  While flexible work policies might seem like they?re limiting your business?s potential, more flexible work hours could allow your team to flourish as people rather than as employees. It?s important to remember that your employees also have lives outside of the office. They have families and passions other than the workplace that they want to pursue. This becomes the biggest argument for a flexible workplace–when you give employees the mobile technology and flexibility to work on their own terms, you empower them to pursue their dreams in addition to fulfilling their work duties. Much of this can be accomplished thanks to the smartphone?s mobility and versatility. Yet, this mobile technology presents another problem in the form of the work-life balance. If your employees are constantly in contact with the office, even when in the comfort of their own home, this can be invasive to the employee?s personal life. In many cases, this can lead to a dissatisfaction which is difficult to resolve. After all, nobody likes to receive a phone call in the middle of the night or while at the dinner table, especially if it?s for something that can easily wait until the following morning to resolve. While the choice to implement a flexible working schedule is yours to make, you?ll need to invest in comprehensive technology solutions that can optimize communication and productivity: Voice over Internet Protocol: VoIP phone systems use your Internet connection rather than a traditional telephone line. Just imagine it as a normal telephone system without all of the complex wiring. VoIP systems are usually equipped (or have the potential for) plenty of standard phone system functions, such as call forwarding, conference calling, and transferring–and some even have video conferencing technology. Virtual Private Network: A VPN is capable of encrypting data that?s sent to and from your business?s network. They are crucial for keeping your sensitive data safe from hackers, and since data is most vulnerable while it?s in transit, the VPN shores up this weakness nicely. Hackers tend to lurk on public Wi-Fi connections, so it?s important that you have a VPN to keep your data safe. Cloud Computing: While your on-site network allows for access to applications and data, your remote workers won?t have this luxury. However, with a cloud computing solution, you can certainly make it easier for them to access your assets. Cloud computing lets your team access important data and applications in an online environment, which lets anyone with an Internet connection utilize it. Mobile Device Management: Your team may use their own devices to access your company?s sensitive information. If they do, make sure that they comply with your organization?s BYOD policy. A mobile device management solution can go a long way toward keeping devices and users in order, allowing you to remotely wipe devices and limit access to sensitive data If your business is ready to take on a more flexible business model, White Mountain IT Services can help. We can equip your business with technology solutions designed to maximize control while promoting flexibility. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Granted, most of the country doesn?t utilize electronic voting machines. Three-quarters of American voters still use paper ballots to cast their votes. There are still a few states that use these electronic machines exclusively: Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, and South Carolina. Machines that are left out-of-date could be subject to negative influence during an election. This is a valuable opportunity to share what we know about cyber security with your business. A major best practice is ensuring that your business?s operating systems are always supported with the latest patches and security updates from the developer. This is the only way to guarantee that your systems are protected from recent and emerging threats. However, developers eventually stop supporting outdated operating systems. With this in mind, consider the fact that some electronic voting machines are still running Windows XP. That?s the same Windows XP that hasn?t received patches or security updates since 2014. That makes almost three years of threats evolving to take advantage of the lack of security. Serious problems can occur, and perhaps even the ability to vote could be infringed upon. Plus, some of these machines have not been replaced in years, even though newer, more secure models are available. This is mostly because of a lack of financial resources available, but there?s also the issue of legislative pushback in regards to spending money on something that ?works perfectly fine.? It?s thanks to these constantly changing threat landscapes that it?s so important to maintain and update your systems to the most secure versions. You want to take a proactive stance on network security, compared to the traditional break-fix model. For the American voter, there are resources out there that can help one protect their right to vote. The Verified Voting Foundation, devoted to ?safeguarding elections in the digital age,? has an online map resource that breaks down into counties and describes what devices they utilize in counting votes. Even if it sounds beneficial to only replace technology when it?s broken, this could wind up causing more trouble down the road in the form of downtime and wasted assets. In contrast, a managed service plan allows for more budgetable IT costs and reduced downtime. To learn more about managed IT services, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

On January 10, 2016, television producer Sam Esmail stood on the stage at The Beverly Hilton and accepted the award for Best Dramatic Television Series for the show he serves as showrunner on, Mr. Robot. Despite the show?s non-traditional plot, the Hollywood foreign press saw fit to provide it with this prestigious award. The plot focuses on an antisocial and schizophrenic network administrator who spends his evenings as a white-hat hacker. Additionally, Christian Slater, the show?s co-star, took home the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series award. Other high-profile films explore the stories of hackers, which has prompted the suggestion that the entertainment industry is romanticizing what?s called ?hacking culture.? One example is 2015?s Blackhat, a drama directed by Michael Mann. Chris Hemsworth takes on the role of a federal inmate convicted of hacking, who is given a furlough to help his college roommate, a Chinese cyber warfare officer, solve several high-profile hacking attacks that threaten to cause immense destruction and chaos. Hemsworth is more of an anti-hero, a villain of society who pays his dues by performing the very act that put him in the clink in the first place. This trend–portraying hackers as the good guys or as an anti-hero–has been embraced by Hollywood for the past several decades. As you might suspect, hackers are most prominent in movies about hacking, but they also tend to show up in scenarios such as heists, law enforcement, and even superhero crime-fighting vigilantism. If it has a computer that?s required for the character to meet their goals, there?s probably a hacker–or at least hacking–to some degree. If there?s a hacker, they are probably going to wind up being a do-gooder who will save the day from–get this–ANOTHER hacker. This is a far cry from the actual, real-world hacker. They are criminals who will intentionally break through systems to steal you or your employees? sensitive data. This sort of opportunism is deplorable at best, and since computers are so central to today?s society, it?s no wonder that a hacker?s presence is as deep-seated in Hollywood as it is. In Hollywood?s defense, hacking makes for a pretty boring movie, but human oppression or destruction, themes that you?ll find in nearly every good hacker movie, don?t. Over the past thirty years, there have been dozens of films featuring hackers. Some of them, like Tron and The Matrix, are science-fiction films that delve into the concept of reality. Others, like War Games and Hackers, present hacking as a heroic means to an end. Some of the most noteworthy ?hacker? movies include: Tron (1982) War Games (1983) Sneakers (1992) The Net (1995) Hackers (1995) The Matrix (1999) Swordfish (2001) Live Free or Die Hard (2007) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) BlackHat (2015) How many of these movies have you seen? Do you think that hackers are fairly represented in film, or do you think that Hollywood glorifies them a bit too much? White Mountain IT Services sees hackers for what they truly are–criminals. We take the fight to them with proactive monitoring and management with the intention of keeping them out of your systems indefinitely. For more information, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

These days, who has time to read? For busy business owners, reading is a luxury. This is what makes audiobooks such a valuable tool. They allow busy people to consume information while accomplishing a mindless task like cleaning the house. While this arrangement works wonders for titles found on Audible.com, what about the documents you must read that haven?t been made into an audiobook? For example, what if you have to read a long Word document about a project, or a blog article about an important development in your industry, but, dang it, you just don?t have the time? Thankfully, there are some great text-to-speech tools available online that will do this heavy lifting for you. Granted, the narrator comes off sounding a bit robotic, but when it comes to helpful freeware, beggars can?t be choosers. SpeakIt!SpeakIt! is an extension for Chrome that reads text on a webpage back to you. With the extension downloaded, all you have to do is highlight the text you?d like read to you and then click on the SpeakIt! icon in the upper-right corner of Chrome. Then, just like that, it?s storytime. SpeakIt! boasts of a few handy features, like the ability to adjust the playback speed 10x faster or slower than the standard 330 words/minute, as well as the ability to translate text and utilize different languages. On the downside, a quick read through of the reviews reveal that some users experienced bugs after using SpeakIt! for more than a few minutes. Additionally, while SpeakIt! works great for static web pages, playback is painfully slow for pages in Chrome that allow for text to be edited, like apps in Google Drive, Gmail, Adobe Reader, etc. @Voice Aloud ReaderFor busy audiobook aficionados on the go, @Voice Aloud Reader for Android is a great mobile solution. It?s available for free on the Google Play Store. The app also has plugins available designed to enhance the functionality of reading specific files, like @Voice PDF Crop Plugin. @Voice Aloud Reader works by uploading text to the app, then, with the app open, select play and it will be read aloud to you. The app does a good job at retaining the formatting of the uploaded article. Additionally, while the text is being read, the app highlights the current sentence that it?s on, making it easy to follow along. Like Speak It!, @Voice Aloud Reader lets you adjust playback speed, and it?s compatible with a variety of files, like PDF, DOC, TXT, EPUB, FB2, and more. Overall, @Voice Aloud Reader is a highly-rated app. The biggest annoyance may be advertisements, but you can make these go away by upgrading to the pro version. Plus, the fact that the advertisements only show up in the display and they don?t interrupt the audio playback, makes this a non-issue. So go ahead and download these two free text-to-speech tools, knock out that list of assigned readings you?ve been putting off, and then share your review with us in the comments below!

Granted, it?s highly unlikely that a child will visit your front door this Halloween dressed as a hacker. Nevertheless, the digital doors of your business, i.e., your website and network, are very likely to be visited on Halloween–and every day following. While many of these threats aren?t all that scary and are easily thwarted by security tools like a managed firewall and spam-blocking solution, a threat that?s specifically targeting a user has a greater chance of getting through. If such a hacker successfully breaches your security system, that?s when the nightmare of cyber extortion begins. Cyber extortion comes in many different forms, and it can be very effective when executed properly. The hackers behind cyber extortion prefer using fear to incite unreasonable action from their victims, even if it means using frightful tactics like blackmail and deception. Many of these methods work similarly to ransomware. Most ransomware will encrypt the files stored on a victim?s computer, and they will only provide a decryption key if the victim pays a fee. The idea here is to use fear to get users to hand over money (often in the form of untraceable cryptocurrency) in exchange for their precious files. This can be particularly devastating for businesses, as it means they could potentially lose access to all of their mission-critical data. In the majority of ransomware cases, unless an organization has their data backed up, they?re out of luck and won?t be able to retrieve their data without paying the fine. Now that?s scary! In an even scarier twist on an already sick scam, there are hackers who will steal information from businesses or individuals, and then offer an ultimatum; either pay up, or the sensitive data gets leaked to the Internet. This may be a worse fate because it allows other, more dangerous hackers to access the data and use it for nefarious purposes. This variety of hackers tend to ask somewhere between $250 to $1,200 for the safe return of the victim’s data. IC3, the FBI?s Internet Crime Complaint Center, received a significant number of reports indicating that users who had data stolen through high-profile data breaches received extortion emails demanding that they pay a fee, or suffer the consequences. This data could be anything from personally identifiable information, like Social Security numbers, to financial information, like credit card numbers. In some cases, hackers would claim to have information that could cause catastrophic damage to victims? personal lives, like personal photos and correspondences. Although, we should point out that there?s virtually no way of guaranteeing that these hackers actually have the files they claim to have. They could just be blowing hot air and fishing for a response, hoping that you?ll be gullible enough to give in to their outlandish requests. However, for this same reason, it?s important that you don?t immediately pay the ransom. What guarantee do you have that they?ll give you the decryption key? The answer: none. Basically, you should never, under any circumstances, give in to fear and pay the ransom offered by the hackers. Doing so doesn?t necessarily save your information (if they even have it) from being posted on the Internet. All it does is give in to the hacker?s demands by providing them with exactly what they want. Why should you give them this […]