Author: admin

When small business owners think about keeping their files in the cloud, they often turn to services such as Dropbox, Box or iCloud.  These services are great for synchronizing data files between multiple devices such as your office & home computers, tablets and phones.  They’re also a great way for individuals to quickly share files and folders with clients.

Unfortunately, when the business grows and staff numbers increase, these consumer grade file sync and share solutions start to drop the ball.  Once small businesses reach about 5 staff, they may need to start looking for a more business oriented solution.

Here at Insight Integration, we manage a variety of traditional servers and cloud virtual servers for our clients as well as our own systems…BUT…we also use a file sync solution called SoonR.

SoonR, now owned by AutoTask, delivers the file Sync and sharing services we’re all used to with DropBox.  What it also brings to SMB is a number of the more traditional IT management and control mechanisms that larger businesses need.  These include:

• Increased Security
  • Data encryption
  • User access control
  • Policy management (Password, session, IP addresses, links, remote access)
  • Device Security – You managed what devices as well as what users can connect too.
  • Remotely wipe data from old, stolen or ex-employees devices.
• Data sharing & management controls
  • Who can share data to the public
  • What data is shared
  • How long is it available for
• Server Agents – Sync your current server to the cloud for remote staff.
• Auditing & Reporting

So, if you think you’d like to improve your current data sharing solution or are just ready to put a toe in the water, give Insight Integration a call.

If you’re searching for a term that’s generating a lot of results that aren’t of interest to you. Use the minus sign to eliminate results containing certain words.

For example – searching for “jaguar” returns a lot of hits – which is great if you’re looking to buy a new car but not so good if you’re doing a school project on big cats.
Re-run the search using “jaguar –car” and you’ll get what you’re looking for.

Give it a try!

In business, today more than ever, your orders, quotes, correspondence with clients and suppliers are all sent and stored via email – or more accurately stored in the individual email mailboxes of each of your staff.

With email being so important these days, being able to easily access, search and retrieve both inbound and outbound email is critical.

In addition, as the dependence on email has grown so has the accompanying legal scrutiny. Poor data retention practices can expose businesses of all sizes to a host of potential problems.

 

So what is cloud based email archiving?

To put it simply – a copy of every email sent and received by your business is sent  via a secure channel and stored in a cloud based system.

It’s a separate system from your normal email & doesn’t impact your normal day-to-day use.

 

What are the benefits?

It’s automated – you set it up once & that’s it. No manual intervention is required.

It’s searchable – rapid search and retrieval for individuals in their personal archive or across the whole company by authorized users.

Ease of use – multiple ways of access. Eg web browser phone or tablet apps.

Legal hold – all email is stored and cannot be modified or deleted. The retention period can vary but the better services store for up to 10 years. Lawyers & compliance people love this!

Unlimited storage – regardless of how much email you add, storage continues to scale.

Compliance for document retention – some industries have compliance requirements for the retention of documents & communications.

No onsite hardware or software is required – these services typically integrate with all the common email systems (including cloud email solutions like Microsoft Office 365) with no requirement for additional hardware or software

 

What’s the next step?

As always, not all cloud services are equal. Which service best suits you will depend on your individual requirements.

Give us a call on (02) 9259 8500 or drop us on email at [email protected] and we can point you in the right direction.

Are you after free protection for your personal home computer or Mac?
Try Sophos Home. Some antivirus vendors pitch their products to business, some direct to consumers and some do both.
Sophos is a market leader on the business side of the market, but with the release of Sophos Homeconsumers can enjoy the same level of antivirus protection as the Fortune 500 companies on up to 10 Windows and Mac OS devices for free.

Download it for free here: https://www.sophos.com/home

Check your iphone battery usage 

A common iphone owner complaint is running out of power during the day.
Now there’s an easy way to check which apps are draining your battery over the last 24 hours or last 7 days.

Here’s how to check your stats:

Go to settings
Battery

At the bottom of the screen you’ll also see the amount of time you’ve used your phone since it’s last charge.
Beware this statistic can be quite high & leave you wondering why you spend so much time staring at your phone!!

The deadline is approaching! 

July 29^th is the official end to Microsoft’s free upgrade to Windows 10.

While there is some creditable speculation that a follow-up offer will come soon after, if you’re interested in upgrading, best to be quick!

So, should you upgrade?

If you’re running Windows 8…why wouldn’t you?   Consider that Windows 10 is Windows 8 done properly.

For those with Windows 7, this was a solid well designed and relatively efficient interface that you are used to.  The key to Windows 10 is that it hasn’t strayed too far from this successful formula while also bringing a host of new features including:

·       The start menu is back with more functional than ever

·       Action Centre – a very useful Tool bar for apps & persistent notifications

·       Universal Apps – for PC’s, Phones and Xbox

·       Cortana – Digital Assistant

·       Phone Companion – Setup your phone with your PC and other Microsoft services

·       Virtual desktops – very useful for multi-tasking without multiple monitors

·       Resizable command prompt – Tech heads will be cheering…trust me!

It also adds a level of future proofing, so in short… Why wouldn’t you?

Well.. some reasons you may decide against the free upgrade are:

·       Your system doesn’t meet the upgrade requirements

·       You use older or obscure peripherals

·       You don’t want to be forced to update

Upgrading at work

If you’re sitting at work and thinking about running the Windows 10 Upgrade…DON’T!

Leave it to your I.T. guys!

(BTW – For those using Windows 7 at work…as of 31^st October 2016, new computers will no longer ship with Windows 7.  Something to think about moving forward!)

Upgrading at home

So you’re thinking about upgrading your home PC…WHAT COULD GO WRONG?? :).   All jokes aside, if something does go wrong Microsoft has built a very effective roll back feature so you can go back if needed.

Hints and tips for upgrading:

1. Minimum PC specifications
   1. 16-20Gb of free space left.
   2. 1Ghz CPU
   3. 2Gb RAM (4Gb is realistically the minimum for most people)
   4. Graphics support DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver.  How many will check this?
2. Use a solid Internet link because you’ll be downloading about 3Gb.  A 4G connection with a 1Gb limit could become costly!
3. To reduce compatibility issues, updating or upgrade your applications (especially your Anti-virus)
4. If you’re technically minded, apply the latest firmware and BIOS updates from your PC vendor.  Old versions have been known to cause problems.
5. Unplugging peripheral devices has fixed some upgrade problems.
6. Microsoft has also already compiled a list of issues and Installation errors. Here

In short, for work systems leave it up to your I.T. provider as they are in the best position to decide.

For home systems it’s your decision, but make sure you consider the pro and cons beforehand.

If you do take the plunge and upgrade – remember, if you have problems google is your friend…and so are your I.T. guys.   But don’t wait until the evening of July 29^th !

If you see an image on Pinterest or on a website and you’d like to use it, you typically have to get permission first.

So here’s a Google trick for finding who owns the image.

• Open images.google.com in your web browser
• Drag and drop any image from your computer or another website onto the Google Image search page
• The search results will give you information about the image

or If you’re using the Chrome browser just right-click any image & select “search google with this image”

Click here for more detailed info.

8 tips for safe data back up for businesses in the cloud!

If you’re one of many businesses migrating to cloud services, we’re sure you’ll be singing cloud praises enjoying the benefits soon. Cloud systems are not without challenges – especially if you don’t think smart and act safely. There are a number of things you should consider to ensure your applications & data is kept safe.

For example, once you’ve successfully made the move you need to ensure the protection of your data in its new home.

Virtual hosted servers as well as data in applications like Office 365, Google Apps and Salesforce still need to be backed up. Your servers & data may be stored in the cloud – but this doesn’t mean it should be protected any less than when it was stored on premises.

Consider this: when your data was managed on-site, if data loss occurred you could call your IT provider. They would locate the backup then restore the data from the date you requested and load it into your application.

Now you are in the cloud do you still have the ability to manipulate data this way? Restoring data is still just as important, but do you have the ability to do it?

So what can you do? Start with these 8 tips:

1.  Understand what is & isn’t covered by your cloud provider(s):

Most major cloud providers do an excellent job of protecting your data from errors on their end. They have systems to protect you from hardware/software failures, natural disasters or power failure. Unfortunately it’s a different story when it comes to accidental or malicious data loss on your end.

Many businesses mistakenly believe that their cloud providers can assist in these circumstances too – unfortunately for them they’re often wrong.

2.  Define what you need:

Do you have specific industry business compliance requirements? And have you considered for how long do you need to keep backups– ie 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, 7 years or more?  There are often legal requirements that you need to be aware of.  These change from industry and business types, so best check with your relevant industry association to confirm your compliant.

3.  Implement a 3^rd Party backup solution – but do your homework.

4.  Make sure you have multiple restore points

This refers to the point in time that the last backup was done. Having multiple points through a day (say hourly) gives you the option of restoring a file from say 3pm. Think of it – if something goes wrong at 5pm it is preferable to restore a 4pm backup than having to back to a previous day or even earlier.

5.  Define access security

One of the benefits of a cloud system is that it allows your team to access data more conveniently than ever before. But this also presents risks too.  Make sure you clearly define who has access and to what they have access to.  Simply put, this ensures unauthorized users can’t access your secure data, which closes down a potential avenue of data loss.

6.  Encrypt it!

Your data & backups are now stored in the cloud – not only is it possible that strangers might see it, but your data could be sitting on the same storage as a business competitor. Encryption can make it possible to leverage the benefits of infrastructure as a service, while still ensuring the privacy of your data.

7.  Automate it & monitor it

There are 2 main problems with manual backup processes – First they take time to do and second they can be forgotten or missed.

The solution is simple – automate it! Make it run without any manual intervention, but also ensure you have a monitoring & notification system that will let you know of any problems.

8.  Does your back actually work? Test it!

What good is a backup if at the point you actually need it you find it doesn’t have the information you need or worse still does not work at all. Test your backup systems work by doing a restore of some data on a regular basis.

If you follow these tips, we’re sure you’ll be safe and not sorry!

We can help get you onto the cloud and ensure you’re implementing systems to keep you safe.

Contact us today on 9259 8500 for a discussion on how we can help.