So, let?s start from the beginning and explore the concept of a Power Hour, as proposed by Adrienne Herbert in her book Power Hour: How to Focus on Your Goals and Create a Life You Love. So, What?s a ?Power Hour?? A Power Hour is the brief period of time that a person devotes their full attention to a specific task?typically, an hour?to really optimize the time spent on that task. Herbert describes it in the terms of using it on a personal intention, but it could just as easily be applied to a challenging work project or interesting process. The idea is that it?s a means of boosting productivity, but it can also have benefits in energizing you and helping you really embrace the day. While Herbert posits that the Power Hour is a first-thing-in-the-morning experience, you can certainly try to identify a different time that seems to work copacetically with your brain and schedule. Basically, you eliminate the time that you have other responsibilities in the way?you can?t really tune out the world and work when you need to be participating in a meeting?and try to lock down on the times you feel most engaged. Once you identify yours, you can then do a few things to make the most of it. How to Make the Most of Your Power Hour Pick Your Task In order to make the most of the time you?re establishing as your Power Hour, you should pick a single task to devote all of your attention to. Try focusing on the kind of task you would generally try to put off?completing it might give you a bit of extra motivation to tackle your other tasks with renewed vigor.  Cut Out Distractions Put your phone on silent, turn off your notifications, and set yourself as unavailable on your calendar. The concept of a Power Hour only works if interruptions aren?t an issue. Focus Up On a related note, do everything you are able to do to prepare yourself mentally for this extended focus session. Run through a quick mindfulness exercise, find a quiet corner if it?s open to you, and take a few deep breaths. There will be time enough to deal with other things on the other end of your Power Hour. Hopefully, trying this strategy or some of its elements will help you get more done. We?re always here to ensure that your technology is prepared to support you during these times, too. Find out more about our managed IT services and support options by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Managed IT services from White Mountain IT Services can be a great investment for any small business looking to get ahead of the competition. Here are four reasons why you should consider managed IT for your company. You?ll Save Money Look, we won?t beat around the bush here; if you implement managed IT services through us, you will save money, period. It costs a lot to hire internal IT workers, and it costs even more to keep them around when they are stressed out of their minds all the time with endless tasks and burnout. Furthermore, the cost of maintaining IT as well can be difficult, particularly if you currently subscribe to the break-fix mentality (it breaks, you fix or replace it). Managed IT makes technology maintenance accessible and, crucially, more affordable.  Your IT Will Run Better Operational issues will arise as your technology ages alongside your business. Thankfully, there are ways you can mitigate these challenges. Through proactive maintenance from a managed IT provider, you can stay on the lookout for issues and address them before they evolve into bigger and more complex problems. You can also address patches and updates manually without the need for an on-site visit, making your operations run smoother and better as a whole. You?ll Be Much More Secure Network security is not a simple feat, and there are countless variables to consider. You?ll need to keep your systems updated and maintained while also keeping an eye on traffic traveling to and from your network. Furthermore, you have your employees and their actions to worry about. For this reason alone, we recommend both taking preventative measures with comprehensive security solutions, and training your staff on security best practices to ensure they are not gateways into your organization?s network. You can combine all of this with remote monitoring and management tools to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity. A managed service provider can handle all of this for your business so you can focus on being productive. You Will Always Have Access to IT Professionals So much goes into managing an IT infrastructure that you might have internal IT staff who are simply too busy to address some of the smaller, everyday inconveniences that drive you nuts. Similarly, you might also encounter issues where your everyday challenges keep your IT staff from implementing new and innovative solutions designed to improve operations. In any case, you can make less work for everyone involved by outsourcing some aspects of your IT operations to a third party provider. White Mountain IT Services can provide the outsourced IT services your company needs to succeed. To learn more about all of the many services we can offer for your business, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Firewalls What?s better than stopping threats before they even hit your network? There?s nothing quite like a good firewall. They are the very definition of proactive security measures, effectively limiting the amount of threats you have to deal with to a bare minimum. Antivirus/Antimalware For the threats that do make it past the firewall, you have solutions like antivirus and antimalware software that can swiftly quarantine and eradicate threats. These solutions are constantly being updated with the latest threat definitions, meaning they evolve as the threat landscape evolves. Spam Blocking Another proactive solution is spam blocking, which prevents dangerous and unwanted messages from hitting your inbox in the first place. Too often messages with suspicious or dangerous links are sent to businesses just like yours, so you can eliminate the room for user error that they create with a spam-blocking solution. Content Filtering The Internet is a dark and dangerous place filled with distractions and other types of content your team has no business accessing on a work network. Whether it?s the employee wasting time on social media or the employee who gets redirected to fake or dangerous websites, a content filter gives you control over which sites are whitelisted and blacklisted by your organization on a user level. Virtual Private Networks Virtual private networks, and encryption in general, are great tools that can be used to protect your data whether it?s sitting in storage or being sent across networks or devices. VPNs in particular are important for employees who work out of the office and routinely send or receive data from your home base of operations. Access Logs and Controls It?s helpful to know who has access to what data on your network, but also helpful to know when it is accessed and why. Access logs can help you determine when something fishy is, indeed, fishy enough to investigate, and access controls allow you to control the damage such events could cause. White Mountain IT Services can help you implement all of the above solutions so you can protect your business from countless threats. To learn more, call us at (603) 889-0800.

Let?s discuss how the =DATEDIF function works, and how it could help you keep track of assorted pieces of data. What Does =DATEDIF Do? Using the =DATEDIF function returns the span of time between two different dates. Let?s say that you wanted to figure out how long your employees had each been working for your business. In either Excel or Sheets, all you have to do is list the start dates that each employee began working for your company, and then in the next column, insert the formula cited below. For clarity we?ll assume that your list of dates starts in cell B2. Therefore, you would type the following formula into C2: =DATEDIF(B2,TODAY(),?Y?) This will give you the difference between the provided date in B1, and ?TODAY,? the date you?re accessing the sheet, measured in years. You can also replace the ?Y? for years with ?M? for months or ?D? for days. Extending the formula down will give you the results for the rest of your list. For example, this is what it would look like in Google Sheets: Likewise, it should look something like this in Microsoft Excel: Be warned, however: this function is somewhat simple to break, so while there are other options, we wouldn?t recommend diving too far into them. That being said, this trick could potentially be applied to a wide assortment of data, helping you to track the age of projects, time since your last workplace accident?really, it all comes down to what you need to keep track of. For instance, you could hypothetically use it to track how long it has been since your team had to call White Mountain IT Services for assistance, which is a perk that our managed services clients get to enjoy whenever they need it. Find out more by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Underhanded tactics like these are critical to understand and be able to identify if you are to protect your business. How Do Phoicemail Scams Work? In order to appreciate how these scams function, we need to consider the recent trend of deepfakes?artificially generated footage of someone based on numerous data points?and remember that these scams often also feature audio. So, if a scammer can fool people with a doctored video, it stands to reason that it?s worth trying to fool people with just the audio. Enter phoicemail scams, where generated audio meant to mimic the supposed caller is left as a voicemail message instructing the recipient to do something they shouldn?t. For instance, sharing confidential or otherwise privileged information. Picture it: you come back to the office after lunch, only to see that you?ve received a phone call while you were away and there?s been a message left there. You listen to your voicemail, only to hear a voice that sounds a lot like your manager requesting you to send over the credentials needed to access an account to a different email address than usual. Would you fall for it? While it may be tempting to assume that you?d be able to pick up on how suspicious this seems, it is important to acknowledge that the fact that it isn?t coming in through an email might be enough to throw you. Plus, it isn?t unheard of for IT professionals?the ones who are arguably most conditioned to keep security in mind?to fall for these scams. Phoicemail Threats Can Be Hard to Spot Like many modern examples of phishing, it can be a real challenge to accurately judge whether a message has been tampered with or not. Don?t believe us? Check out the study that MIT is currently running, where you are challenged to identify deepfakes by examining transcripts, audio recordings, and videos of Joseph Biden and Donald Trump?half of which are real, half fabricated. While some of the fraudulent audio clips included are somewhat apparent, it may be more difficult than you?d expect to separate the more convincing samples from the truth. Phishing Awareness of All Types Needs to Be Part of Your Cybersecurity Posture It is important that your team is aware that phishing can happen in many ways, not just through their email inboxes. Phone calls and voicemail messages, text messages, even search engine results can be phishing vectors. Your team needs to know this, and keep this lesson in mind whatever they happen to be doing. White Mountain IT Services can help New Hampshire businesses practice these security-conscious habits, while also implementing more secure technologies and protections to help minimize cyberthreats as much as possible. Find out how we can help you and your business? team by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800 today.