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Resources to help you expand your skillsetThe ONE Thing You Must Do to Keep Your Data Safe in the Cloud. Is Your IT Guy Doing This?
How secure is your data? Cloud data storage is becoming a massive industry in this country, and many businesses and other institutions are putting their data into the cloud. Some of this data is pretty harmless. Other stuff — like hospital records, banking information, or company payrolls — are prime targets for bad actors. Is the cloud storage trade off worth it?
The short answer is yes, but only if your IT guy is encrypting your sensitive data. Every cloud storage company you talk to will claim to take top-of-the-line security measures on behalf of your data. But that, in a nutshell, highlights the problem with cloud storage. Your data is entrusted to a third party for safekeeping. It’s possible that they’d do everything in their power to safeguard your information. But bad things, like ransomware, phishing, or just plain going out of business, do happen. And when they happen, it’s not the cloud storage company whose data is on the line; it’s yours.
Even if that doesn’t occur, let’s be honest. Most of the major cloud storage companies are based in the United States, the U.K., or France, where they could be subject to NSA snooping (or questionably legal surveillance from any other government entity). Despite the best efforts of many storage companies to prevent government intrusion, your data could still be at risk, even when it’s locked up tight.
Most cloud storage companies protect your data with their own encryption, but you’ll have to find out if they are able to access the data (since they may have the keys), or not. Further, your IT provider should be instituting some additional means of encryption whenever feasible. Laptops, for example, should always be encrypted if they are used by employees. An encrypted laptop protects your data, even if the laptop is stolen.
Additionally, your IT Provider (even with Cloud-based products) should still discuss redundancy and backups with you. Most Cloud storage companies, including Microsoft and Google, do have a regular backup of your data in place. However, we also recommend that you implement an additional layer of security and use a third-party backup product as well. Not only does this give you additional control, multiple protections against failure and outages, but it also allows you to access your data if the initial storage location has a service outage or failure.
Many people have a misconception that these criminals will just use a magic program to crack your encrypted files. Decryption does exist, but it requires a lot of time and processing power. It’s far more likely that hackers will target your email or other aspects of your system and try to find out the encryption codes that way. And never forget that people are the weakest part of your IT security. Educate employees so they aren’t vulnerable to phishing scams, downloading questionable software, and visiting the wrong websites.
How to Copy or Move Appointments to a Different Outlook Calendar
If you have more than one calendar, you can easily move, or copy, appointments between them. Click and hold the appointment you want to move and drag it over to a different calendar in the list on the left. To copy it, do the same thing but hold down the CTRL key while you are dragging it. You will see a “+” indicating that it will copy instead of moving the appointment.
Resize Columns and Rows in Excel 2016
To accommodate your data, you can change the size of your columns and rows! If you go to the Home tab, hit Format (in the Cells group), and then click Row Height to adjust the rows and Column Width to adjust the columns. You can then enter the exact measurement! You can also use your mouse to adjust cells by clicking and dragging the divider line to expand. Also, if you double-click the divider between two rows or columns Excel will resize the row to fit the contents.
Choosing the Right Operating System -One of the most important business decisions you can make!
What’s good for home use isn’t for business.
Microsoft gives you a variety of choices when it comes to an Operating System for your computer. Unfortunately, you frequently only hear about one or two. The home-based ones.
Operating Systems like Windows 10 Home and Windows 7 Home are all Operating Systems specifically designed for casual, home use. These operating systems are less expensive than their business-grade counterparts and dominate the computer world.
Unfortunately, for a reliable and stable business system you shouldn’t consider anything except one of the business-grade Operating Systems such as Windows 10 Professional.
Windows 10 Professional offers huge performance jumps over its home counterpart. Additionally, it is more resilient. If you’re sick and tired of the “Blue Screen of Death”, Illegal Operations, and lock ups and crashes, then the Professional version of Windows will be a welcome relief.
The business versions of Microsoft Windows crash infrequently, use memory more efficiently (making many tasks noticeably faster) and handle networking better than the home versions. Also, if a program does crash, there’s seldom a need to reboot the computer. Just restart the program and away you go.
More important than reliability is security. Windows Home versions provide significantly worse security than Windows Professional. Since the home versions cannot take advantage of centralized security features, such as those from your company’s server, or Microsoft’s cloud-based Active Directory, most people rely solely on a log in and password. Even if your computer is currently prompting you for a password when you turn it on, it is a trivial task to get around it. Even a slightly experienced computer user can still get to your sensitive data!
The business versions of the operating system however, provide true security, when configured properly. When connected to, and managed by, a Windows Server, whether in your office or in the Cloud, business computers can be locked down, encrypted, remotely wiped (in case of loss or theft), and take advantage of other security and maintenance features that simply are not available in the home version of Windows.
The downfalls of these operating systems? First off, they cost more. Secondly, they require more experienced users to configure them (but not to use them). But the trade-offs are well worth the extra expense and effort.
The bottom line is, if you value your data and want computers that run smoothly, then you’ll need Windows Professional and a properly configured server in your office, or the Cloud. Whether your business has 1 or 100 employees, resist the temptation to purchase the Black Friday, Back-to-school, or department-store deals. These systems rarely include Windows Professional, placing your company and its sensitive data, at risk in this age full of ransomware, identity thieves, and cybercriminals.
A Cool Way to Quickly Search for Related Images in Google Chrome
Google’s Image search (https://www.google.com/images) shows images related to your search. However, you can also search for related images using this technique. In Chrome, hold down the S key while you right-click an image. A new tab will open, displaying similar and related images!
Events from Email – New Office 365 Feature (and How to Disable It)
Microsoft recently rolled out “Events from Email”, a feature that works with Outlook to automatically add events to your calendar, based on emails you received. This has some real benefits, such as adding hotel reservations, flight details, and more. Google’s Gmail has had this feature for quite a while now. However, if you don’t want this feature, it is possible to turn it off! Click here for an article on how to disable it.
An Introduction to Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is a new addition to your Office 365 subscription. Forms allows you to collect all sorts of data from surveys, to polls, to quizzes. Here’s an introduction.
How to Add Holidays to Your Outlook Calendar
You can add Holidays from several different countries to your Outlook Calendar. This process also works if Holidays are not showing up.
OneDrive For Business – Taking Your Business to The Cloud
OneDrive for Business, part of Microsoft’s Office 365 Suite, is one of the first steps to moving your company to the Cloud. Each user in your organization gets a whole Terabyte (TB) of storage space in OneDrive. In most small businesses, this is enough to hold all your “My Documents” files and the files you currently store on your server. Not only does moving your files to OneDrive take you one step closer to reducing the need for an in-house server, but it may also reduce your backup costs.
However, the real strength in moving your organization to Office 365, and OneDrive for Business, is that it opens up a whole new way to work, collaborate, and share files with your fellow employees, and the outside world. Not only can you now collaborate on a document in real time, simultaneously, but you can securely share files with people outside of your organization. Further, you can now share files that might otherwise be too large to email, by simply sending a link to the recipient.
If you haven’t had a chance to look into the powerful features of OneDrive, take a few minutes to get acquainted.
How to Create an Email Signature
In this video I show you how to create a quick, automatic signature in Outlook. The signature will automatically be used for new email messages and replies.