Consider Your Network?s Purpose First, you should consider why you are implementing the wireless connection and how it will be used. When you build it intentionally, you?ll find you get more out of your solutions. For example, you might not necessarily rely on it, but you want to implement it for greater options and to give your customers the choice to connect when they want to. Regardless of your reasons for implementing your solution, knowing how and why it is being implemented will help answer some tough questions during deployment. It?s also worth looking into your current hardware, or the hardware that will connect to the network. Older devices might not support the latest wireless standards, but thankfully, most routers can support older devices perfectly fine. Finally, once you have an idea of what you?re dealing with, you?ll have to consider how far you want your wireless network to extend. Do you want to open it up to devices outside your organization, or even outside your building?s walls? Be sure to consider these questions when putting together your implementation plan. The Right Bandwidth Goes a Long Way Your bandwidth will likely be one of the major factors in the quality of your wireless connection. Ensure that you take time to determine just how much bandwidth your business needs to operate effectively. Once you have an idea for this, you?ll be able to determine just how fast you need to go. Implement Appropriate Hardware Getting the right hardware is easy enough, but you?ll also have to consider the wireless standard that your devices prefer. The most utilized standards for high-speed wireless transmission are 802.11a and 802.11g. 802.11b is also reliable but delivers slower Internet speeds. Set Up Your Network Your wireless connection?s hardware and its location will be yet another major factor to consider during setup. Sometimes businesses will need multiple connectors to guarantee that the signal is distributed well enough around the office. Also be sure to consider guest use into this deployment strategy. Build Security Into Your Approach Your wireless network will run using an operating system and on firmware that requires patches and updates, just like any other device on your network. Therefore, it needs to be carefully protected and monitored to ensure security. You?ll want to enable firewall permissions, assign user access, and so much more, all of which is made easier if you have a security professional available to assist. Some Tips for the DIYers The best way to get the most out of your wireless network is to work with White Mountain IT Services, but if you want to give it a shot yourself first, we?ve got your back. Here are a couple of ideas to consider: Change your router?s password: Your router will have a default admin password that anyone can find by searching for it online. This is something you absolutely want to change upon setup. Turn off Service Set Identifier (SSID): The SSID is what anyone walking down the street will see when they see your wireless connection. You can disable this so that your network will be hidden. Change your default SSID: Additionally, you?ll want to adjust your default SSID name and password. Turn on MAC filtering: If you are going to use access control you?ll need to turn this setting on. If you […]

Good Backups vs Bad Backups When you were in college, working on a big paper or presentation, you may have had the hindsight to drag the files over to a thumb drive or external drive, or email them to yourself, just to make sure you had a spare copy in case something went wrong. That?s a backup, sure, but you needed to have the foresight to do it. You needed to manually stick a copy of the data somewhere, remember where it was, keep track of it, and hope you remembered to keep it updated as the original file changed. That is a bad backup. Sure, it accomplishes the goal of having redundancy for a particular piece of information, but it?s only as reliable as a person is. On top of that, thumb drives can be lost or stolen, and they break easily. They aren?t really designed for long-term storage. Your email inbox isn?t exactly the world?s best data repository either. This was kind of an extreme case, but it highlights the factors that make a bad backup. If you have to think about it, act on it, or it relies on a single point of fallible data storage, it?s a bad backup. A good backup has its own redundancies in place, and it doesn?t rely on human interaction to work?it simply does. There?s more to making a good backup, and that?s what we?ll be going over for the rest of this article. A Backup Isn?t Just a Copy of Files First of all, it?s important to understand just what your company data is. This will be different for just about any organization, but it?s likely you have a combination of standard files and data in directories and subdirectories on a centralized server. These will be things like Word documents, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, signed and scanned documents, proposal templates, images, video, CAD files, and that sort of thing.  Then you might have certain applications that your organization uses that store data in one or more databases, or they have some proprietary way to store information that isn?t quite as cut and dry as a ?folder full of files.? Essentially, a database is just a big file or series of files, but to a typical user, it might not be inherently clear how that data gets stored and where it is located.  Let?s take a look at our own helpdesk ticketing system. When you submit a support request to us, whether it be via email, or through our portal, or you call us at (603) 889-0800 and have a technician generate it, it goes into our ticketing system. This ticketing system holds a full historical record of everything we?ve ever done to support you and your network. Thorough documentation is absolutely essential for us to effectively do our jobs and provide good support, so when a technician is looking into an issue, it?s important that they can read through everything else we?ve ever done for you to determine if the current issue is related to something that happened or was changed in the past. We also track each individual piece of hardware and software we manage, so we can look back and see how much time and effort goes into supporting everything?to help make informed decisions on hardware that might […]

What Constitutes Enterprise Security? Enterprise security is an umbrella term for all of the strategies, policies, and procedures you put in place to keep your business safe from threats. This will include measures you implement to protect against cybercriminals, scammers, and potentially even your vendors and how they use your information. Small businesses might look at this and think that it?s unlikely it will become an issue, but the fact of the matter is that failure to have it is putting your business at risk. Why is Enterprise Security Important? Simply put, an ESS tool means keeping your business and data safe from theft and destruction. Businesses that experience much success will have to scale their services accordingly and deploy innovative new tools to keep data safe. ESS protects your business from all potential avenues of attack, significantly reducing the likelihood of a successful scam or hack. How To Plan for Enterprise Security If you want to maximize results from your ESS plan, then you?ll need to know what goes into making it successful. You?ll need to understand the devices accessing your network, as well as the demands you are placing on those devices. Most businesses will only consider enterprise security when it becomes apparent that more basic strategies prove ineffective for their needs. To implement more powerful solutions, you must start with a complete audit of your network to determine what must be done?a process which should ideally be carried out at least once a year. Once you know where your network currently stands, you can start to make changes for the better. Other ESS Considerations One important consideration for ESS is cloud computing. Almost all businesses use cloud computing in at least some capacity, and the fact remains that the cloud makes security a bit more difficult than you might think. All it takes is a simple misconfiguration to leave a business vulnerable. Furthermore, many businesses use Internet of Things devices, or they forget that Internet of Things devices themselves interface with the network and are effectively endpoints that must also be secured. Security professionals often overlook the threats that originate within a network, so to combat this, ESS strategies might implement zero-trust policies that keep tabs on employee devices on the network. If a zero-trust policy is in place on a network, self-sabotage and negligence become far less likely, and any good security system will include it. White Mountain IT Services can help your business shore up its security and prepare itself for any potential threats that could surface as a result of growth or new technology adoption. To learn more, call us today at (603) 889-0800.

Why is Security Training So Important? With the improvements that have been made to security in general over the years, many cybercriminals of all kinds find it far simpler to go through your users as a means of bypassing your protections. There?s also the fact that there are plenty of ways that you and your team could make the cybercriminal?s job easier by undermining your own protections. So, plain and simple, security training is required to minimize the risk of your team members being used to undermine your business. This all leads to an important question: what needs to be involved in your training to help protect your business from these kinds of issues?  Let?s go over some critical topics. Social Engineering Awareness Like we said, users are?generally speaking, at least?one of the most potentially vulnerable elements of any business. However, they have the potential to become one of any business? greatest security assets at the same time. Repeatedly reinforcing how prevalent social engineering efforts are, showing them examples, and frequently testing them with simulated phishing attacks are all effective ways to raise your team?s awareness of the threats they face and prepare them to deal with them appropriately. Security Protections and Preparations Of course, this doesn?t mean that you can focus exclusively on your employees? preparedness and neglect what you can directly influence. Installing and, crucially, maintaining your network protections will help reduce the number of threats that your team needs to interface with directly. Every phishing attack that your spam blocker stops is one less that could fool one of your employees. Every software update that is installed in a timely manner equates to less time a cybercriminal has to strike. Teaching your team about the defenses they need to have allows them to better work with them in place, and helps educate them to optimally supplement these tools through their own aforementioned alertness. Debunking Problematic Presumptions It?s likely that many of your employees feel that your business isn?t very likely to be targeted by a cyberattack. You may have these feelings yourself?and if so, thank you for sticking around this far into the blog. However, we need to discuss this for a moment. With many of today?s cyberattacks not needing active involvement, many cybercriminals essentially take the shotgun approach, hitting as many targets at random as possible. So, while the thought that you won?t be targeted may not be wrong, it?s very different from the presumption that you?ll never be attacked. Want to Improve Your Security Training? White Mountain IT Services is here to help. Turn to us to find out how we can prepare your network against modern threats, and teach your team how to keep it that much safer. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 today.

Reduce Paper Usage Paper use has long been focused on as a way businesses can improve in their ?green? status, namely by trying to reduce it however possible. Many modern technologies support efforts to go paperless, like cloud platforms and collaboration software, by eliminating the need for additional paper use. Meanwhile, scanning existing documents into a document management system allows these documents to be shredded and recycled responsibly. Go Remote Did you know that every gallon of gas burned emits 24 pounds of carbon dioxide? Now, multiply that by the number of gallons each of your employees use commuting to the office. That?s probably a massive amount of gas released into the air, every single day. While it is true that a lot of different circumstances can and do contribute to energy consumption and the environmental impacts different work behaviors can have, eliminating the commute isn?t nothing. Track Your Energy Use The Internet of Things is a fascinating technology for many reasons, not the least of which being how applicable it is to creating a greener company. Using the IoT to monitor the performance of your various network components and keep an eye on their status can help you to better maintain them, helping you to minimize the likelihood that any piece of your IT will get to the point that it needs to be replaced. Plus, you can get a better grasp of how your infrastructure is expending energy so it can be replaced over time with improved options. Seek Energy-Efficient Options Finally, there?s a ton that you can do to help make your office space more sustainable overall. Replacing your amenities with more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly alternatives make some difference, but all these little differences certainly can add up quickly. In many ways, the cloud is a relatively energy-efficient option. White Mountain IT Services is here to help New Hampshire businesses achieve their technology goals, which includes upgrading and improving your infrastructure to optimize your processes in any way you choose. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.