Week 4: Prioritizing Cybersecurity in a Hybrid Workplace

Currently, employees are more connected than ever. The hybrid workplace is here to stay, and for employees, this means relying on connected devices from their home office setups. According to recent data, smart home systems are set to rise to a market value of $157 billion by 2023, and the number of installed connected devices in the home is expected to rise by a staggering 70% by 2025. In this new normal where smart devices and consequently online safety are a must, here are some tips for securing those devices.

Remember Smart Devices Need Smart Security

Make cybersecurity a priority when purchasing a connected device. When setting up a new device, be sure to set up the privacy and security settings on web services and devices, bearing in mind, that you can limit who you are sharing information with. Once your device is set up, remember to keep tabs on how secure the information is that you store on it, and to actively manage location services so as not to unwittingly expose your location.

Put Cybersecurity First in Your Job

Make cybersecurity a priority when you are brought into a new role. Good online hygiene should be part of any organizations onboarding process, but if it is not, then take it upon yourself to exercise best practices to keep your company safe. Some precautions include performing regular software updates, and enabling multi-factor authentication.

Make Passwords and Passphrases Long and Strong

Whether or not the website you are on requires it, be sure to combine capital and lowercase letters with numbers and symbols to create the most secure password. Generic passwords are easy to hack. If you need help remembering and storing your passwords, don’t hesitate to turn to a password manager for assistance.

Never Use Public Computers to Log in to Any Accounts

While working from home, you may be tempted to change scenery and work from a coffee shop or another type of public space. While this is a great way to keep the day from becoming monotonous, caution must be exercised to protect yourself and your company from harm’s way. Make sure that security is top-of-mind always, and especially while working in a public setting, by keeping activities as generic and anonymous as possible.

Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth When Idle

The uncomfortable truth is, when Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are on, they can connect and track your whereabouts. To stay as safe as possible, if you do not need them, switch them off. It’s a simple step that can help alleviate tracking concerns and incidents.

These are just a few simple steps towards achieving the best online safety possible. Staying safe online is an active process that requires constant overseeing at every stage – from purchasing and setting up a device, to making sure that your day-to-day activities are not putting anyone at risk. By following these steps, you are doing your part to keep yourself and your company safe from malicious online activity.

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Home Office MPS takes the same concept of traditional MPS, and applies it to employees working from home. The fact is, that many employees working remotely still have to print documents, but unfortunately their personal print devices are usually not up to the task at hand. Home office printers are simply not designed to handle more than occasional printing. If your remote employees have to print documents on a regular basis, it places an unfair burden on them to have to put extra wear and tear on their personal printers. It also means that extra time must be spent creating an expense report so they can be reimbursed. Not only does this take up their valuable time, but it also slows down your payroll process as various expense reports have to be reviewed and reimbursements paid each month.

Managed Print Services for Home Offices allows businesses to provide remote workers with a high-quality laser printer that is reliable, and likely much faster, than any home printer they may have at their disposal. Not only is the correct equipment placed with the remote employee, but it’s also fully managed, giving your business more control over print costs. The printers covered under a Home Office MPS contract have a low, fixed CPP (cost per print). Included in the contract is the cost to acquire the printers, replace supplies, and provide service. The fixed CPP, means you pay the same low cost for every print produced by those printers, regardless of how much toner is used. With Home Office MPS, businesses not only enjoy predictable printing expenses, but also substantial cost savings.

Our MPS program has saved our clients an average of 30% on printing expenses, and often times even more. We want to help businesses as they evolve to meet the unique demands of a remote workforce. When you purchase a printer, the initial price of the printer is a drop in the bucket compared to the long-term cost of owning and operating a printer. The upfront cost is roughly 10% of the TCO (total cost of ownership). When you consider that 90% of the cost is management, toner or ink, paper, power, service, and connectivity support, it quickly becomes clear that an un-managed printer is expensive — even if it was cheap to acquire.

When you sign up for Home Office Managed Print Services, we take the time to understand how the printers will be used, the volume of printing that will be done on the device, and the functions that are required to work efficiently. Are you ready to trade in your system of fragmented personal printers for a streamlined print environment? Get a free print cost analysis to see how much you could be saving your business.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”35px”]

Transitioning to Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

Enabling remote work is now more important than ever. Even after things return to a relative sense of normal, remote work will likely remain a vital part of business operations. Whether there’s a health crisis or not, giving employees the tools needed to stay productive and connected from anywhere is a smart strategy. Our choice for remote collaboration is Microsoft Teams, a solution we use throughout our own organization.

A Better Way to Stay Organized

Microsoft teams allows your whole team to stay in touch, no matter where they are. Not only is this perfect for remote workers, but also for organizations with multiple locations and departments, as well as employees that travel to various locations to perform their duties. With Teams you’re able to access files on OneDrive, have online meetings and calls, chat with a few co-workers, and more. The Teams mobile app also helps you connect and collaborate from anywhere with a smartphone. You can download the app for iOS and Android devices to begin accessing your Microsoft Teams features on the go.

Set up Channels for Your Team

Your Team is the group of people you choose to set up in Microsoft Teams. It can be your whole organization, or a smaller group of people within a department. The feature that really helps kick your team’s productivity up into high gear is Channels. Channels keeps your team from getting overwhelmed with disorganized information, files, and conversions. You can set up as many channels as you need for a single team, each dedicated to a specific project, topic, or even department. This is where the real work happens, so make sure you take advantage of Channels. You can use your channel to share files, chat, hold meetings, and much more.

Collaborate on Files

You can attach files to your messages via the attach button. The files you attach will appear under the Files tab, so your whole team can access, view, and edit them.

Have Fun With Your Teammates

Teams allows you to add GIFs to your messages. This feature might seem a bit silly, but this little feature really helps you stay connected with your co-workers on a more personal level, especially while you can’t be together. To add a GIF, simply select the GIF button under the message box and insert the one you want.

Easily Transition a Chat to a Video Call

If you’re typing back and forth on chat with a co-worker and realize your efforts would be better served through face-to-face interaction, it’s easy to turn your chat into a video call. All you need to do is select the video call option from your chat. From there you’ll be able to chat over video and even share screens with each other.

Never Miss a Thing with Activity, Notifications and @Mentions

You can customize your notifications in your account settings so you’re always in the loop. Notifications include personal mentions, channel mentions, team mentions, chat messages, replies, likes, reactions, highlights and more. You can choose how you want to be alerted to each type of notification so you don’t get bombarded with notifications you don’t want, while never missing the ones that are most important.

You can see all of your notifications in one place under the Activity tab. Under this tab you will see an activity feed with a summary of all activities pertaining to you. You can filter activities in your feed to only show certain types of messages, mentions, replies, etc.

If you want to be extra certain to get a co-worker’s attention, you can use the @mention feature. In your message box, simply type @ and begin to type their name, then select their profile when it pops up. They will specifically get a notification when tagged.

Pin Channels for Quick Access

Search around less for channels. You can pin the channels you work in most often. When you do this, they will appear under Pinned at the top of your list so you can access them quickly and work more efficiently.

Set Custom Tabs

If you’d like to give your team easier access to files, and other tools they use frequently, you can set up custom tabs. To do this, select the + symbol at the top of your chat or channel.

There are many more great features in Microsoft Teams, but these are just a few to help your business start making the most of this great tool. If you’re looking for an excellent remote collaboration tool, we highly recommend Microsoft Teams. That’s why we use it for our own team. Get a no-obligation consultation.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”25px”]

In your business, your document workflow likely begins with an individual who physically walks a paper document from one place in the office to another. That’s something we’d like to help you change. In this article we will explore how digital workflows can simplify your business, while allowing your employees to continue completing their work, even if they can’t do it in the office.

DO Centralize Your Records

It’s very common for businesses to have a server on-site where files are accessed. When remote work comes into play, it becomes harder to access and share information because of the added barrier of VPN technology to effectively access needed data. With multiple users working from home, there can also be constraints on the network, which can cause a slow connection. A slow connection can mean slower workers.

A Document Management solution, like DocuWare, allows you to provide your employees with a web portal where they can access business files quickly and efficiently. It also allows you to get rid of disorganized network drives and paper files.

DO Streamline Your Processes

In offices across the United States, many processes are still handled manually. This is concerning because of the need to pass a paper document from person to person at a time when contact isn’t recommended. For some businesses following work-from-home orders, this isn’t even possible right now, but offices that are still up and running shouldn’t have documents come into contact with multiple pairs of hands as it’s an unnecessary risk to the health of employees.

These same processes and workflows can and should be happening digitally. Not only is it safer, it’s more efficient.

DO Ensure Privacy

Choose a solution that satisfies regulatory requirements, and meets high security standards.

DocuWare is a Comprehensive Best Practice Solution

• Centralized files in the cloud
  • Cloud and on-premise options
• Simplified workflows
  • Digitize existing paper-based workflows
  • Simplify existing digital workflows
  • Automated tasks and organize documents
• Mobile access
  • Empower remote workers to access information on more devices
  • Convenient mobile apps and web browser client
• Work from home
  • Connect all of your team members with a unified process
• Manage employees
  • More insight into employee workloads & productivity
• Easy audits & secure data
• Specific solutions for HR, AP, Sales, Legal, etc.
• Satisfy privacy and regulatory requirements

DON’T Leave Employees to Find Their Own Solutions

During this time, businesses should be aware of the risks of shadow IT This is where individuals within an organization utilize software or apps on their own, without the help of their IT Administrator. It’s important to provide your employees with a solution like Document Management so that everyone is on the same page with a sanctioned solution, rather than having employees go out and find their own workarounds like Google Drive, OneDrive, or other tools that can help them do their jobs, but don’t pass muster when it comes to security.

You absolutely don’t want your employees transacting business data and information through personal accounts. You will have no control over how long those accounts exist, what information is retained there, and what’s in the end-user license agreement. You will also be unable to do your due diligence to ensure it meets your security expectations, and/or compliance requirements. If you can centralize your tools, you will set your business up for success and limit your liability.

DON’T Use Email for Document Sharing

Email is now an increasingly important tool for staying engaged with your team. The temptation will be to use email to pass files back and forth. This will work on a limited basis, however we recommend you don’t use email as your file sharing system. This can lead to lost documents, disrupted workflow, and overlooking other important communications.

We understand that you have many challenges right now, and we want you to know that we’re here to help you overcome them. We have the solutions to your work-from-home problems and we’re ready to quickly get your remote work solutions up and running.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”35px”]

#1 Make Sure Your Devices and Systems are Fully Protected

Now is not the time to click “Remind me Later” on your operating system update. It’s more important than ever to ensure that all your network-connected devices, operating systems, and software applications are up-to-date with the latest versions and security patches.

Hackers can and will take advantage of an organization’s lax defenses, looking for whatever crack in security they can exploit. Make sure your IT Administrator stays on top of things on their end, and that employees know they’re expected to perform updates when prompted, rather than pushing it off for another time.

#2 Create a Secure Connection Back at the Office

We have 3 words for you. Virtual Private Network, otherwise known as VPN. While employees are at home getting work done, there will be a lot of information traveling back and forth between them and the office. We’re willing to bet you want to keep that information private and protected.

A VPN ensures the data being sent back and forth is encrypted, and it can also give your employees secure access to the files on your network needed to complete their jobs.

#3 Scan and Secure Emails, While Establishing Good Email Practices

Keeping lines of communication open while everyone works from a different physical location is important, so it comes as no surprise that the number of emails being sent will increase. With a cluttered inbox, it might be harder than usual to spot those sly phishing emails, designed to trick you. It’s not pretty, but scammers and hackers are hard at work blasting workers with phishing emails related to Coronavirus. Be sure to educate everyone on your team about phishing and how they can avoid getting caught up in a scam.

While educating employees about scams is your best line of defense, IT Administrators should take extra precautions to ensure email protections are up-to-date…just in case an employee accidentally clicks something they should’t.

We know there is a lot to think about right now, but these 3 tips to secure users working from home is a great step you can take to protect your business from the added hardship of a security breach.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”60px”]

Laptops & PCs

It won’t come as a surprise, but laptops are in high demand right now. They may be easier to get your hands on than toilet paper, but probably not for long. The benefit of a laptop is the ability to work from anywhere. We recommend having a docking station in the office, and one at home. This way your employees can seamlessly switch back and forth between two office setups. While businesses are struggling to find inventory, we were able to secure some Dynabook Tecra X40-F Laptops to help businesses supply laptops to their employees. These laptops are equipped with 8th Generation Core Intel Processors, touchscreen displays, and a new magnesium alloy body that makes them incredibly lightweight.

Another great option is helping your employees get their home office set up with a PC. Many users are already used to working with a desktop in the office and it may be the easiest way to replicate their at work office experience. We are currently able to offer both Dell OptiPlex Small Form Factor PCs and Dell OptiPlex Micro Form Factor PCs in stock and ready for delivery. A great reason to buy desktops today instead of laptops is their price-performance value. They typically are less expensive than laptops and offer great computing value for the price. They also have a compact footprint that won’t encroach on your employee’s home office space. While they’re small, they don’t compromise on performance. We are also an Authorized HP Partner and still have some availability on our usual lineup of HP Laptops and PCs.

Document Management Software

One of the biggest barriers businesses face now is the inability to access documents outside of their facilities. Whether your documents are still in paper format, or are being digitally saved somewhere you can only access on the network, a good Document Management Solution is a must to get your team on the same page (document pun intended).

We offer DocuWare Cloud, which allows you to store business documents digitally and make them securely available to anyone on your team, anywhere they are. We know that so much of your business workflow relies on documents, so having them unavailable through this crisis simply isn’t an option.

Unified Communication

You rely on phones to keep in touch with your customers, so what do you do when no one is there to answer the phones? With Unified Communication, someone can be there to answer the business line, right from their mobile phone, from the safety of their home. We offer solutions that can help you continue to engage with your customers over the phone, from wherever you are. Not only that, you can also help your remote employees stay in touch with each other through integrated phone, meetings, and team messaging.

Remote Work Tools

We are an Office 365 and G Suite Provider. These are both great options to make sure your employees have the productivity tools they need to do their jobs, while also enabling open lines of communication with group chat, meetings, and video conferencing. Office 365 gives you all the latest versions of things like Outlook email, Word, Excel, etc. G Suite gives you Gmail, Sheets, Docs, and more.

Software Security & Remote Access

Our Software Security & Remote Access bundle gives your business a wealth of tools to weather the storm securely, and with as few issues as possible. It includes Webroot for help stopping malware and zero-day threats with a unique next-gen approach. You also get Cisco Umbrella, your first line of defense against threats on the internet, LogMeIn Pro to help provide remote access to your networked devices, Remote Monitoring and Management, and our Client Communicator.

We are committed to doing everything in our power to make this process smooth for your business as you navigate your options. Let us work with you to come up with a plan that will set your business up for remote work success.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”60px”]

Hand sanitizer may be in short supply right now, but it’s not hard to get your hands on free tools to help your employees telecommute. Microsoft, Google, LogMeIn, and Cisco have all announced that they will help businesses by providing free tools to support working from home during the Coronavirus outbreak. These tools will allow remote workers to hold virtual meetings and chat with their coworkers while working from the safety of their homes. Let’s go through the solutions available to you, and how you can get them if and when you determine they are needed.

Tool: Microsoft Teams

Duration: Free for Six Months

What it does:

• Online Meetings
• Voice & Video Calling
• Instant Messaging

Tool: LogMeIn – Emergency Remote Work Kit

Duration: Free for Three Months

What it does:

• Meet and Collaborate with GoToMeeting
• Host Presentations with GoToWebinar
• Remote Access to Work Computers
• Provide Web-based Technical Support with RescueAssist

Tool: Cisco Webex Enhanced Free Licenses

What it does:

• Video Conferencing
• Team Messaging & File Sharing

Tool: Google Hangouts Meet

What it does:

• Video Calls
• Live Streaming
• Screen Sharing & Presentation Features

With technology changing the way we all work, telecommuting is becoming more common every day. Perhaps recent events will speed up the rate of adoption as businesses recognize the benefits of empowering a mobile workforce. For now we urge business owners to start creating a plan to “future-proof” their work environment.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”30px” id=”cz_62034″]