Tag: cloud storage

  • 5 ways to organize your Microsoft 365 files to maximize your productivity this year

    5 ways to organize your Microsoft 365 files to maximize your productivity this year

    If you’re a Microsoft 365 subscriber – or considering it to utilize tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more in your business – you may not be taking advantage of all of the features it has to offer.

    These features include ways to help organize your files and corral your workload under one umbrella, which is useful with the deluge of information many of us are processing each day in the course of performing our job duties.

    Here are five ways to utilize Microsoft 365 to organize your files day to day:

    1. Use OneDrive for Personal Storage – Store and organize personal work files in OneDrive, using folders and tags for easy retrieval. OneDrive also allows for automatic backup and syncing across devices.
    2. Leverage SharePoint for Team Collaboration – Store shared files in SharePoint libraries, where teams can access, edit, and co-author documents with version control and permission settings.
    3. Utilize Microsoft Teams for File Organization – Upload and manage files directly in Microsoft Teams under specific channels, ensuring that relevant documents are easily accessible to team members.
    4. Tag and Search with Microsoft Search – Use metadata, tags, and keywords in file names to make documents easier to find using Microsoft Search across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
    5. Automate File Organization with Power Automate – Set up workflows that automatically sort, move, or categorize files based on specific triggers (e.g., when a file is uploaded, it moves to a designated folder).

    OneDrive in particular can be very helpful in extending your computers storage and organizing files to share throughout your company and can replace more insecure methods like DropBox or emailing directly. OneDrive can even be purchased as a standalone subscription if you’re not sure about making the switch to Microsoft 365 yet (though we highly recommend it).

    Also, if exploring AI as a tool to increase productivity is one of your 2025 goals, Microsoft’s Copilot and OneDrive work together seamlessly to help you with your automatic file organization goals. Copilot can make suggestions on how you should organize your files based on their content, usage and collaboration history.

    It also gives you a hand with searching for files in a way that’s more intuitive than your average Windows file search function. You can ask it something like “Show me the files I worked on last week” instead of trying to remember specific file names for example.

    Valley Techlogic has been partnering with Microsoft for more than 20 years and we’re experts in providing businesses with cohesive solutions that help them maximize their technology investments, including subscriptions like Microsoft 365. Schedule a consultation with us today to learn more.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, leading provider of trouble free IT services for businesses in California including Merced, Fresno, Stockton & More. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on X at https://x.com/valleytechlogic and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/valley-techlogic-inc/.

  • Zero trust or zero effort, how does your businesses security stack measure up?

    Zero trust or zero effort, how does your businesses security stack measure up?

    Have you been working on strengthening your cyber security stack in your business or crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? How much protection is really enough?

    There are a lot of remedies for improving cyber security out there, but which ones present the best value for your business, and what constitutes a “zero trust” environment?

    If you’re just starting out, these 10 items will greatly improve your business’s cyber security safety in a short amount of time (we call these “best practices”):

    1. Use multi-factor authentication. This one is obvious, but we still see it not being employed regularly. Multi-factor authentication is generally extremely easy to enable (often times just a checkbox) and it greatly improves the safety of that account. When we’re talking about accounts like your business email, or your banking account it’s a no brainer.
    2. Use a password manager. This is another easy one to employ but people still ignore it, or even worse they use the password manager built into their browser. We’re not saying that’s completely wrong, especially if you’ve started using stronger passwords because of it. It’s still a good idea, however, to use a password manager that’s not directly connected to your system. Often times the same password or biometric you use to log onto your computer is the one used to unlock your browsers password database, so if someone has breached the device all those passwords will be available to them too.
    3. Employ Biometrics. Speaking of biometrics, they can be an improvement over passwords when it comes to a physical devices security. Especially for mobile devices, most of us access our work emails, banking accounts, etc. through our phones. It’s very easy to lose a phone, so making that phone unusable to whoever finds it (or has taken it) is a good idea.
    4. Don’t give everyone admin privileges. Not every employee needs all the keys to your kingdom, limit admin access only to those who really need it so if you do have a breach the damage can be limited as well. This is a key component of a zero trust environment (which we describe in the chart below).
    5. Communicate your goals and train your employees. Loop employees into your increased cyber security efforts and provide training, no one wants to be responsible for a cyber-attack in their workplace but without training employees can become unknowing and unwilling threat vectors.
    6. Monitor network activity. Now we’re starting to get into the more challenging topics, monitoring your network activity can be a very effective way of noticing early when something is amiss. There are tools out there that can do this monitoring for you and provide warnings if suspicious behavior is detected (like a device being logged in after hours when it never usually is).
    7. Use encryption. It’s pretty easy to use encryption in email or with sensitive documents (again often just a checkbox) but it’s an effective way to make sure sensitive data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
    8. Use backups. Again, in the same vein of protecting your data having automatic backups will greatly increase your chances of recovering after a cyber-attack. Especially if those backups were stored offsite (such as cloud backups). We wrote an article on the best ways to manage your OneDrive storage (which is included in your Microsoft 365 subscription) here.
    9. Regularly patch your devices. Many of your vendors actually provide security protections for you via their patches, which more often than not are addressing specific security concerns that have been identified. Patching costs nothing but your time and the benefits are ten-fold compared to the costs of a security breach in your business.
    10. Have a security audit performed. The best way to address the holes in your security plan is to have a reputable IT company perform a security audit. Valley Techlogic is a provider of these audits in the Central Valley and you can request a consultation here.

    Performing these ten activities in your business will greatly improve your cybersecurity effectiveness across the board, but if you’ve reached the bottom of this article and have realized you do all of these you may be wondering what’s next? Or perhaps you’ve heard of zero trust but aren’t sure what that entails, here are the key components to having a zero-trust cybersecurity environment:

    We address ALL of these topics in our new book, Cyber Security Essentials, which covers all the components of a cybersecurity framework and how to implement them in your business. You can see a preview of the book in the video below.

    [youtube https://youtu.be/jlBAoq4tLNc]

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Your data is safer in the cloud, period.

    Your data is safer in the cloud, period.

    Speaking in absolutes is not usually a good idea, but in the case of data storage we feel the onus is on us to speak plainly – and it’s the plain truth that your data is safer in the cloud.

    It’s natural to be hesitant to move everything into the cloud, especially when it really wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things that all data was stored in filing cabinets. Safely tucked away and (hopefully) properly indexed to be pulled out as needed.

    Sure, we didn’t have to worry about malware with paper files, but theft and natural disasters were the enemy of on premises paper documents. Or just the ravages of time wreaking havoc on plain paper and ink. You also had to make sure to shred important documents and not just trash them lest they fall into the wrong hands.

    With the advent of computers most of our data moved to our personal computers and it greatly elevated our ability to communicate that data to others. Multi-million-dollar transactions can be easily completed by simply emailing a proposal and contract. Billing information, medical documents, all of the private information about an individual or business is often times found online and is available to be pulled up when needed.

    But this ease of information is also it’s downfall. Old fashioned robberies where thieves would break into brick-and-mortar establishments and steal private information to then be used to create false identities and/or use payment details for their own benefit have now been replaced with often a single user attacking a small business’s online accounts. They can dismantle everything that business has built in days or even hours and make recovering difficult or even impossible.

    That’s not even taking to account that a single on-premises server is just as vulnerable to fire or flood damage as your filing cabinet is. A singed or waterlogged hard drive has no more usefulness than the same data contained in a charred or dripping stack of papers.

    Like with many things in life this problem is solved by working together with others, and that’s where cloud data solutions come in. It’s still your data and we, like you, think it should have the same level of accessibility as it does when it’s on your personal computer or even a paper file on your desk.

    With the high-speed internet most of us have in our homes and offices downloading files from the cloud is often a nearly instantaneous click of a button and then you’re working on the file you were last night. Make a mistake a few hours in? Another benefit of the cloud is you can often times roll back to an earlier version.

    The cloud can sound nebulous but it’s not, it’s just using the resources of companies that put their whole stake into safeguarding data. Their existence as a business is in keeping your data safe, companies that fail at that task don’t stay in business long.

    It’s really not that different than utilizing the services of the power company for all of your power, or your local ISP for all of your networking needs. These services work best when they’re maintained by companies that dedicate themselves to the task and can provide a high level of continuity.

    And there are some major players in the game, players that have been in the business of data and even computers themselves as a whole for decades. At Valley Techlogic we greatly utilize the power of Microsoft’s cloud service – One Drive – to collaborate within our business. It’s even paved the way for our remote employees to maintain productivity with the whole team without missing a beat. The default storage capacity is 1 Terabyte (TB) which is more than most users will ever need.

    If our office ever burned down with no one inside, we can state with the utmost confidence it would not affect our ability to do business. Could you say the same?

    Cloud Data Facts

    If you’re considering a move to the cloud for your business, we can help. Backups and data recovery solutions are a keystone piece of all of our service plans, learn more today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • The future of hard drive storage is coming, what will it mean for the cloud?

    The future of hard drive storage is coming, what will it mean for the cloud?

    By now, most of us have made the jump from mechanical hard drives to solid state drives, and if you haven’t you really should. Faster loading times, less prone to drive failure, and greater bandwidth are just a few of the benefits. Once you switch, you’ll wonder how you ever went so long on mechanical drives.

    But what’s next? There have been fantastical talks of data stored in DNA, which is not so much aimed at consumers (especially not when it currently costs $7,000 to synthesize just 2 MBs of data) but at the Data Capacity Gap. The data capacity gap is a crisis in which the world may run out of data, I know this sounds far fetched but nothing in life is infinite… and this includes our data.

    If you’re wondering how this could be possible just take a look at these worldwide data statistics:

    • In the last two years alone 90% of the world’s data has been created
    • 5 quintillion bytes of data are produced by humans every day
    • 463 exabytes of data will be generated each day by humans as of 2025

    That’s a lot of data, and with all that data comes a need to store it. The main limitation to storing an endless supply of data currently? Chip grade silicon. We don’t want to bore you with the science but there’s an extreme limitation to creating what’s needed to make both data storage and a lot of other components our computers currently use. Including many rare earth elements.

    DNA

    Also just one more tidbit about DNA storage, it’s theorized it could eventually store all the world’s data in one room.

    It’s clear more innovations are needing to keep up with the demands of our online lifestyles, so what is on the horizon for consumers?

    Storage capacity on conventional drives has grown leaps and bounds since the first hard drive was created by IBM in 1956.

    This hard drive, which was shipped with the RAMAC 305 system, was the size of two refrigerators and weighed about a ton. It held 5MB of data, at a cost of $10,000 per megabyte. That makes the $3,500 per MB DNA storage sound like a bargain!

    Now in 2020, 18 and 20TB hard drives are being produced by Seagate, and yes that’s terabyte not gigabyte. While these are aimed at data centers the capacity for storage it’s very clear data storage has increased exponentially since the 1950’s.

    These heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) drives are still mechanical, so as we mentioned at the beginning you would still want to use SSD (Solid State Drives) for your main computing, but it does pose an interesting dilemma in the world of storing your own data.

    At Valley Techlogic, we’re big proponents of the cloud and the safety it presents to our customers. Even with high capacity storage available there are still limitations posed by storing your data yourself, such as the aforementioned drive failure or even your office being subject to a theft or natural disaster.

    However, we don’t believe anything has to be all or nothing. With a competent IT team behind you there are some real benefits to storing your own data, including having immediate access to your data and a faster recovery time for computers in your office.

    In a time when data capacity is still growing and choices are out there, we think the smart choice for most offices is BOTH onsite storage and cloud storage.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these tech articles from the last week.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

    Looking for IT Services in Fresno, Modesto, Stockton, Ceres, Atwater, Merced, Visalia or Lodi? We cover all these areas and more!