Consider for a moment how expensive hardware, or even software, can be right out of the box. Workstations, servers, and other network equipment can easily rack up your business?s capital expenses, effectively breaking the budget and crippling your company?s ability to handle technology. Perhaps the costs of replacing this hardware far exceed your expectations, which forces you to free up funds from other vital portions of your budget in order to meet the costs. Now, imagine how much your business could benefit from having all of these expenses covered under a maintenance agreement with a managed service provider. This is known as Hardware as a Service (HaaS). It takes the capital expenditures of purchasing new hardware, and transforms them into monthly payments that are easily more affordable than outright costs. HaaS is capable of changing the way you handle your technology by almost eliminating up-front costs. Software as a Service, or SaaS, is another similar platform that helps businesses manage their mission-critical software solutions. Instead of purchasing software, like cloud computing applications, many businesses are instead opting to turn them into operational expenses. This provides them with a scalable solution that?s much less risky of a commitment than going all-in on expensive technology. Notice a pattern? Both Hardware as a Service and Software as a Service are designed to help your organization save money by avoiding the immense expenses associated with integrating new solutions. Being innovative and replacing old technology shouldn?t have to break your budget, and managed service providers like White Mountain IT Services understand this trouble. IT maintenance is one of the largest pain points that small and medium-sized businesses encounter these days, especially when it comes to ensuring that all hardware and software is kept up-to-date and competitive with the industry?s best practices. We make it simple by providing the technology you need to facilitate maximum productivity without the immediate deficit caused by the outright purchase of brand new technology. If your business is ready to commit to transparent scalable costs that technology as a service can provide, give White Mountain IT Services a call at (603) 889-0800.

There are plenty of ways your organization can maintain maximum security protocol when dealing with online threats. Here are four ways you can avoid running into the odd hack. Implement Two-Factor AuthenticationWe?ve said it before, and we?ll say it again. Two-factor authentication is a great way to keep hackers out of your accounts for the sole purpose that it makes them extraordinarily difficult to break into by brute force. Hackers will need two sets of credentials instead of one, with the second code being sent directly to you. This could be an alternate email address, a phone call, or an SMS message to your smartphone. Even if the hacker has managed to steal your password, they won?t be able to get into your accounts unless they have access to whatever device you have your secondary credential sent to. Review Your Login HistorySometimes you might get the feeling that your accounts have been tampered with. If you feel like there?s some suspicious activity, you can check to see how many current sessions you have open with the application of choice. For example, your Google account lets you see your latest logins, what device they are on, and more. You can even see the geographical location of the login, so if there?s some weird activity going on, change your password and implement two-factor authentication immediately. Additionally, viewing your network?s activity logs is often a solid way to monitor who accesses your network, and what information they are privy too. Keep Your Systems Up to DateOne of the key ways to ensure that your system?s security is always at its finest is to make sure that your software and hardware is properly maintained. This includes keeping an eye on the current state of the system, as well as applying patches and security updates. By doing so, you?re eliminating avenues that threats have been proven to move through in attempting to infiltrate your network. Staying on top of these necessary updates is crucial to improving network security, as well as maintaining compliance with various legal protocol. Take Advantage of Antivirus and Firewall SolutionsYou might have heard this before, but if you aren?t using firewalls or antivirus protection, you absolutely need to be doing so. Your firewalls, antivirus, and spam protection should focus not just on keeping threats out of your systems; they should also concentrate on identifying and quarantining existing threats so that they don?t cause any further harm. These solutions should be enterprise-level to ensure that they?re powerful enough to protect your business from all types of threats. In fact, White Mountain IT Services offers several of these services, including security solutions, and providing businesses with the remote maintenance and management necessary to ensure critical systems are always secure and functioning properly. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.

Here are three of the top technologies necessary in order to ensure your mobile workforce stays as productive as possible, even while working remotely. Voice over Internet ProtocolIf your remote employees have no way to communicate with your in-house staff, things will get ugly fast. Email is too unreliable to be your business?s primary method of communication with remote staff, so what?s the small business to do? Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a growing trend in the business environment, and for good reason. Organizations can dodge the long-distance charges and other overpriced telephone provider rates, that are often lump many services into a single package. With a VoIP solution from White Mountain IT Services, you pay for exactly what you want. You can have a powerful, scalable telephony solution that?s designed to be an operating expense rather than a capital investment. You pay for the services you want, and our rates are 100 percent transparent. Cloud ComputingCloud computing might still be an emerging technology, but it?s grown to be an imperative feature of the modern business?s data infrastructure. Organizations need access to their data anytime and anywhere, especially if they want to keep the productivity up while working remotely. Remote workers can access important information from the comfort of their home office (or wherever they work). White Mountain IT Services can assist your business with the integration and management of a cloud computing platform. Just like VoIP, our cloud solution is completely scalable to meet the specific needs of your organization. Remote Access SoftwareWith communication from VoIP and information/application access handled by cloud computing, what?s left to tackle for the remote employee? If they have an in-house PC, they might need to access certain applications in order to fulfill their work requirements. If this is the case, remote employees need remote access software to access information stored locally on their work PCs. Once again, White Mountain IT Services has your remote access needs covered. We can equip your business with the tools required to access information easily and efficiently, even while out of the office. For more information about how White Mountain IT Services?s remote technology solutions can improve your business?s operations, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

As most of you are probably aware, government agencies clearly don?t need the help of Microsoft?s products to collect information. In fact, many users of Google solutions like Gmail and Google Drive have surely already been exposed to data collection. Despite this, many privacy advocates have some major concerns, many of which are completely founded. Here are three of the default settings of Windows 10 that arguably violate user privacy. Advertising IDOne pet peeve of some Windows 10 users is the advertising ID function. Each user is automatically assigned an ID which is tied to the user?s email address. Windows 10 collects data about the user and uses this information to customize advertisements that might show themselves while browsing the Internet. CortanaDue to the nature of Cortana, it needs access to various essential data in orderto deliver the services it?s meant for. Still, it collects far more than what she needs to. In order to replicate the experience of having a personal assistant, Microsoft has Cortana collect as much as it can in order to provide the best user experience. This presents privacy issues for some, but they?re likely no more intrusive than Cortana?s competitors: Siri and Google Now. Windows Modern AppsAt the heart of this privacy conflict is the use of Windows Modern and Universal Apps. Each of these apps is capable of collecting your location, just like the Windows 8.1 versions did. Ultimately, though, it?s the way that these apps report this information to Microsoft?s servers that?s causing so much trouble for users. For example, when using the very useful OneNote app, the content of the notes are synced with the Microsoft servers. While many users are more than willing to sacrifice some of their privacy in return for better services, others aren?t so liberal when it comes to their computing information. The fact that Windows 10?s default privacy policy deliberately collects and shares information with Microsoft?s partners seems almost criminal to privacy advocates. Still, there are ways you can mitigate the amount of information that you share with Microsoft, but at the cost of some of Windows 10?s more dynamic features. First, you need to access the privacy menu, which can be found in the start menu. Simply open the start menu, then click on Settings and select Privacy from the pop-up. If there?s one thing to be said about Windows 10, it?s that there are a ton of options. All of the above settings offer increased performance capabilities, at the expense of the user?s privacy. The first suggestion we have, if you feel as if Microsoft doesn?t need to know every movement you make on your home PC, is to disable the targeted advertising ID. Next, you can turn off SmartScreen Filter to keep Windows Store from syphoning links to Store items. Some users will want to leave this feature on, but turn off the others. For instance, ?Send Microsoft info about how I write,? is a fancy way of saying ?keylogger.? Despite its uses being directly linked to Cortana?s functionality, it?s still somewhat intimidating. Click on Location and you?ll be taken to a list of applications that collect information about your location. Services like weather, traffic, news, and Cortana all collect this data and use it to provide relevant information to the user. This only […]

Yes, that?s right. The mighty Thor, Norse mythology?s god of thunder and lightning, rained down his mighty judgement upon one of Google?s Belgium-based data centers. Whether or not he was tricked by his brother Loki, the Norse god of mischief, into frying the data center is yet to be determined. It?s safe to say that the data center, which was used primarily to host Google?s Cloud Platform, sustained heavy damage; precisely what you might expect from four consecutive lightning strikes. Despite Thor mistaking Google?s data center to be the mighty jaws of J?rmungandr, the infernal serpent of Midgard, about 5% of the disks in the center could no longer read or write data. This translates to roughly a 0.000001% loss of the center?s data, on which Google reported that ?in these cases, full recovery is not possible.? While it might seem like such a small perchange, much less than even 0.5%, is a negligible amount of data and hardly worth mentioning, the odds are is that it isn’t your data that was lost. Depending on how much information you have stored up from your time as a business, losing even a fraction of your data can be a complete and total detriment. When you lose files, especially important ones, it could have far-reaching effects on your operations infrastructure. So, naturally, it?s imperative that your organization has some type of backup and disaster recovery plan put into place. Of course, a technology juggernaut like Google (as you might expect) did, in fact, have measures put in place to protect against freak accidents like a singular lightning strike. However, it?s unlikely that any data loss measure can protect from the immense amount of natural energy produced by four lightning strikes. So, the lesson we all can learn from this situation is that your business always needs to be prepared for disasters that can?t be predicted. Despite the completely absurd chance that this situation were to happen again, Google assures users that they?re taking steps to make sure that such a catastrophic loss of data is avoided in the future. Of course, if there?s one thing that?s for certain, it?s that mankind only has finite ways to combat the awesome power of nature. A backup and disaster solution from White Mountain IT Services can help your organization avoid unnecessary data loss in the event that natural forces, like floods, hurricanes, and even lightning strikes. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 for more information.