COVID related hardware shortages and merchandising shortages in general are not new, since the beginning of the pandemic we have seen shortages in food, toilet paper, cleaning products and even personal protective equipment (PPE) frontline workers desperately needed to stay safe.

We have talked about several major ransomware events over the past year, but these were far from unique. Ransomware and cyber security events have been on the rise lately and it’s been made abundantly apparent that NO ONE is immune to them.

From the yet to be officially validated Kia Motors attack, to the narrowly avoided disaster with a Florida Water Plant.

Most of us rely heavily on technology to accomplish our goals, whether it be at work or at home. Computers have made so many things in life more accessible, from learning to banking to downtime (though too much idle scrolling is the antithesis of productivity).

But have you ever stopped to think if you’re really getting the most from the technology you use? Often we get stuck in a rut and don’t really explore what else may be out there.

As a technology provider we’re well versed in supporting the Microsoft suite of products, and Outlook especially is a business staple. Whether you have made a one-time purchase with Office 2019 or are using the subscription model plan with Microsoft 365, both products include Teams, Outlook, OnePoint, SharePoint and Word.

There has been a lot of debate surrounding when things will get back to “normal” and what normal will even look like, but one thing we think is here to stay is the remote workforce.

While many jobs will go back to the office, the benefits of working from home and having a remote work staff cannot be downplayed.

In most situations where a massive hack or breach has occurred, trying to get a handle on what has been compromised or even what is still compromised can be a challenge.

It’s unfortunately been our experience that in most cases things almost end up being worse than they initially look.

When you’re talking about IT for businesses there’s a wide range of normal, for some businesses their normal is having in-house IT staff. For many though their IT operational needs are such that having a dedicated staff devoted to the job just doesn’t make financial sense.

Dell, Lenovo, even Apple brand computer and device repairs might be seeing major repair delays at the moment as a top repair firm they use was hit by a ransomware attack that ground their operations to a complete halt.

This has been seemingly squashed as a news worthy event for the moment but we think customers should be made aware that if they send their desktop or laptop in for a repair at this time they face major delays in getting it back.

Starlink has been a hot button topic this week: Elon Musk’s new satellite internet company is bringing fast internet speeds to many rural communities who have had very few options up until now.

It can seem strange to think about if you reside in an urban area where cable internet has been available since the early 2000s. The fact is many communities are still burdened with DSL connections whose max capabilities may be as low as 0.8 Mbps (a far cry from the 100+ Mbps cable speeds we’re all used to).

On speeds that slow downloading a video can take as long as an hour.

We regularly tout the necessity of data backups, but there’s one kind of backup we really haven’t spent much time on, and that is archival backups.

Backing up your data is an ongoing task or at least it should be. Whether it’s done daily or weekly, regular snap shots of your data make it easy in a data loss event to pull the most recent backup and get back to business as usual.