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Microsoft Copilot, is it worth investigating for your business? 10 things you can use it for TODAY

Released earlier this year, Microsoft Copilot is available for you to use today and is Microsoft’s answer to the growing trend of AI assisted technologies. Copilot is a Microsoft 365 offering alongside their other popular business software applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and more but you may be asking, what can I do with it?

Here are 10 real life use cases for Microsoft Copilot:

Automate Reporting from Excel: If you’re still manually generating reports based on the Excel spreadsheets created by your business that can end today.

Received a weird text from your boss? You’re not alone, text scams are rising in popularity

You’re sitting at your desk when you receive a text on your phone, it’s allegedly from the CEO of your company. He may say this is his new number (or his personal number) and he’s reaching out to you by name, adding to the legitimacy of the text. If you respond, he’ll say he’s in an important meeting and he needs you to use your company card to buy gift cards as a gift for the attendants of the meeting.

China sponsored hacking data dump highlights the importance of seeing the bigger picture when it comes to your cyber security protections

It’s not a new concept to many Americans that cyber warfare crosses all borders and boundaries and affects many areas of our day to day, from the increase in attacks at the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine, to concerns related to our voting systems and democracy, to even leaving US citizens nationwide transfixed over the implications of an errant balloon.

5 Reasons to have an annual meeting with your IT service provider and how to make the most of it

If you’re a small business owner and you work with an outsourced IT provider you’re not alone, statistics vary but it’s estimated up to 60% of small businesses utilize a third-party resource for their IT.

This can look different depending on your particular size and needs, for some businesses it can look like support for existing IT staff, for other businesses their entire IT needs are shifted onto a third party IT resource.

Toothbrush or threat vector? Turns out it was both for 3 million smart toothbrushes utilized in a recent DDoS attack

When it comes to cyber attacks it seems like anything can be utilized (see Amazon Fire Stick on the recent attack on Rockstar Games) but even our toothbrushes?

It’s true, while details are still coming out it’s been reported that 3 million malware infected toothbrushes were used to bring down a Swiss company’s website at the cost of millions of Euros.

CMMC Changes for 2024 Summarized

On December 26th 2023 the DoD (Department of Defense) dropped a slightly belated Christmas gift on defense contractors and vendors in the form of big changes to the CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) program.

Whether the timing of the info dump was intentional or not remains a matter of debate but what’s not up for debate is that these changes are now the law of the land when it comes to reaching your CMMC goals (at least until they’re possibly challenged in court but we wouldn’t hold our breath on that). If you have not started working on them yet this is your sign to get started ASAP.

The 234-page document covered a variety of updates to the program, including splitting up tier 2 into self-attestation OR requiring contractors and vendors to obtain a third-party audit, but for those actively working on it we’re happy to say the controls themselves remain unchanged.

Which Microsoft 365 subscription is right for you in 2024?

Microsoft cemented its place in businesses with their productivity software suite Office in the 1990’s, combining many existing tools such as Word and Excel and PowerPoint under one umbrella and making it clear that Microsoft was not just it’s operating system Windows but a source for businesses looking to consolidate their work under one platform and expand their tech capabilities as computers became more ubiquitous in modern workspaces.