1.  Set the Precedent for Communication The importance of communication is always present, but it is even more critical to your operations when your people are working from home. To encourage your team to communicate with one another properly, you will need to actively take the first steps and establish procedures that require them to. What do I mean by this? It?s simple enough. Rather than relying on your team to take it upon themselves to reach out to their coworkers, add a morning meeting time that involves everyone on a given team or within a certain department. By requiring your team to actively communicate with one another you are establishing a standard for your employees to live up to throughout their workday. Don?t be afraid to reach out to your employees on an individual basis to check in on them and see how they are doing as well, whether this happens each week or even every other week. 2.  Provide the Tools Needed for Collaboration Again, when people are working in the office setting, collaboration is frequently as simple as facing one another and starting a dialogue. Remote work complicates this process considerably. You can simplify it again by making sure your team has the solutions they need to communicate efficiently with one another. Plenty of tools are now available that give your team the means to communicate their messages in the best way possible. You should make sure that your team has the tools needed to do so, including email, instant messaging, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), and conferencing platforms that provide them with different options for the assorted kinds of communication that will have to be exchanged. Emails aren?t the best for quick-response-needed messages, for instance, so having a combination of programs at your team?s disposal will help. 3.  Embrace Business Casual No, I?m not talking about the work-from-home dress code. One of the big shortcomings of remote work is the inherent lack of company engagement it can frequently cause. To counter this and prevent the burnout that many remote workers can see, make use of your communication tools and share some fun, not-strictly-work-related things. Encourage your employees to share what they?re having for lunch with each other, or any pictures they took while out on a weekend walk. The unity and low-key competition that these activities foster will help your team keep up the coworker relationships that help move business along. With the tools and support that we offer, White Mountain IT Services can provide your team with the means to exercise this kind of collaboration. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more today.

Let?s go over a few of the technologies that we recommend you embrace as you get back to business. Updated Solutions It is no secret that many cybercriminals have taken advantage of the current situation to hit businesses while they are down. This means that you need to prepare to deal with these attempts moving forward. The first step to doing so is to make sure that your business? assorted hardware and software solutions are up to date with any applicable updates and have been replaced when a better option becomes available. Not only will this make your solutions more secure, you will also see improved productivity and overall capability from newer solutions. As a result, your team will be able to accomplish their goals safely and effectively with the best tools available. Monitoring and Maintenance Once your team is back in the office, they will need to work at maximum efficiency to make up for lost ground. To accomplish this, they will need their tools and solutions to be available to them as much as is possible. Working with an IT resource who has the capability to monitor your solutions and resolve any issues they find remotely will prevent challenges from interrupting your staff. Oftentimes, these issues can be mitigated before your team is even aware that they are present. Cloud-based Technology The increasing development of cloud-based tools has opened possibilities to many businesses across the industry spectrum, with solutions to see to general business needs to the highly specified needs of each vertical. In addition to that, using the cloud also has the potential to expand your business? functional mobility through telework, as we will touch on next. With cloud technology by your side, you can have the mobility and efficiency that your successful operations require. Telework and Communication If conditions once again cause businesses to shut their doors, the right solutions can help prevent this from interrupting your operations a second time. Remote work is far easier with the support of the right technology, especially when paired with the communication tools your team will need when not working side-by-side. Fortunately, the cloud can cover many of these needs through Software-as-a-Service, Voice over Internet Protocol, and the far too many options to list here that it can support. If you elect to go through this route, however, you will want to be certain that your team isn?t inadvertently exposing your data to risks as they work. This will require a few safeguards to be in place. Security and Authentication To ensure your use of remote operations and telework doesn?t do more harm than good, you need to be sure that your employees are following the proper procedures. The use of a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, will help protect the data that your employees access as they are working remotely, in addition to the security solutions that you should have installed on each endpoint your team uses. Furthermore, your team should also be required to use authentication measures that meet best practices. This includes passwords that are sufficiently secured and multi-factor authentication wherever it is available. In the office, your solutions should have all the requisite defenses against downtime as well, to eliminate the possibility that they could be rendered unavailable to your team. White Mountain IT Services can help you […]

Yes, Small Businesses ARE a Target Somehow, the false idea that a smaller organization is immune to cyberattacks by virtue of its size seems to persist. The reason that this is untrue is a simple one: data, the target of modern cybercriminals, has equal value to a cybercriminal regardless of its source. This persistent idea of size-based invulnerability means that many small businesses overestimate their safety. It also doesn?t help that many modern cyberattacks require little effort on the cybercriminal?s part, so it only makes sense to attack a wider swath of targets. Finally, it should be mentioned that much of the data that a cybercriminal would want is precisely the kind that a small business would have. For instance, there are countless small medical practices out there. The financial data and medical records they keep are no less valuable than those kept at a major hospital or medical facility, so why would a cybercriminal be any less interested? Humans are the Weakest Link The DBIR also reiterated how many attacks focused on exploiting the imperfect nature of the user, rather than seeking out vulnerabilities or brute-forcing their way in. There is a reason that phishing attacks are so common, after all, and it isn?t as though every cyberthreat is maliciously motivated, either. Plenty of data loss occurs through honest human error, something that cybercriminals have not been shy about leveraging in phishing attacks and social engineering. The Best Protection is Proactive If you are to keep your business safe from the threats that could harm it, you need to take it upon yourself to keep up with these trends and take the steps needed to prevent such attempts before they become necessary. The expert team at White Mountain IT Services is here to help with that. Find out more about our services by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800, or by exploring the rest of our website.

Before we dive too deep, we should inform you that it will require you to make a few changes to your workstation. Make sure you check in with your company?s IT resource to confirm that these changes are okay to make, and if so, that you lean on them for assistance. Each day, a considerable amount of time is most likely devoted to getting ready to begin working on a user?s assignments and responsibilities. This includes the time needed to open all the software and programs that each member of the team will have to use. If you set these programs to open upon startup, however, you can make sure that your team members are fully prepared for the day. How to Do So: Locate the app in the Start menu. Once you?ve found it, right-click it and select More.  Select Open file location to find a shortcut to the app. Next, you should add that shortcut to a new folder. Leaving the file location open, press Win + R to open a utility called Run. Enter shell:startup into the field and hit Enter. This will open the Startup folder. Copy-and-paste the app shortcut from the original file location (the folder you left open) into the Startup folder. That?s all there is to it. Every time you log in after that, anything you?ve added to that folder will open themselves automatically. For more productivity tips, as well as the tools and solutions to help your other business considerations, make sure you subscribe to this blog. Our team can also assist you with your IT support. Call us at (603) 889-0800 to learn more about our managed services!

Security Strategies As threats have piled up, automation has made it possible to cover much of your business, but your staff presents hackers a route into even the most heavily fortified network. Perpetrators are aware of this opportunity, too, making it the predominant vector they attempt to use.  To help counter efforts to undermine their cybersecurity businesses need to properly train their people by teaching them how to identify threats, what to do if they think they?ve been the recipient of a phishing email, and that every threat needs to be reported. To make this a reality, many businesses invest in solutions designed to educate their users and test them to ensure that they?ve absorbed this information. To be properly prepared, you have to know that everyone on your team is familiar with phishing strategies and can defuse the situation competently.  Resources to Help Stave Off Cyberattacks Before you set out to get your staff trained up and thoroughly tested, you will want to create the policies and procedures and document them so that everyone in your business has access to them. These policies will want to cover phishing, use of company property, employee access, password best practices, and more. If it?s important to you, you will want to ensure that it?s protected with policy. Provide Feedback and Support The only way to be sure that your employees know that you are serious about your business? security is if there is constant communication about it. A data breach could very well mortally damage your business, so making sure there is an open dialogue between you, your staff, and your IT administrator is important.  Your team is literally on the front lines in the battle for your data and your company?s well-being, get the resources they need by calling the security professionals at White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800.