Tag: tech consulting

  • Traveling for the holidays? Take 8 tech tips from our experts with you

    Traveling for the holidays? Take 8 tech tips from our experts with you

    If you’re traveling the holidays this year, we have eight tech tips to help you stay safe while using your devices on the go.

    We’ve offered holiday themed tech advice before (here are a couple of our past articles on the top 10 Holiday Shopping Tips for Safer Online Shopping & 5 Holiday Tips for Your E-Commerce Business and 5 for Everyone Else). The holidays usually mean more time off which can lead to more time spent browsing the web or being able to work on things in your business you usually don’t have time for.

    It’s also a good idea to keep in mind that bad actors don’t typically take the holidays off, in fact ransomware attacks usually increase by 30% on the holidays. That’s because many people are keeping an eye out for sale emails or emails from relatives this time of year – giving more opportunities for scammers and bad actors to take advantage of folks just looking for a good deal or a message from their loved ones.

    Traveling especially can leave you more vulnerable, if you’re quickly scanning messages in-between flight connections, logging into public WiFi or any number of things that are a normal part of being on the go you can miss some obvious red flags.

    That’s why we’re going to divide up our advice into 4 tips that are related to being safer online while traveling, and 4 tips for improving your technology experience while traveling.

    First our safety themed tips:

    1. As we mentioned, be careful on public WiFi. Nowadays, even if you need to use your laptop the better option might be to use your phone as a hotspot. If you do need to connect to public Wi-Fi, consider doing it through a VPN. We can personally recommend Mullvad which is not subscription based, one payment will get you online through a secure connection without having to remember to cancel it later.
    2. Be careful about what you’re posting on social media. Posting travel photos for your friends and family to see can be really fun, but you should be wary about who else might be watching. It’s a good idea to make your social media profiles private but if you maintain a public presence, you can also think about posting those photos after your trip has concluded instead.
    3. Public charging stations can also pose a risk. Unfortunately, these stations can be tampered with and become an attack vector to everyone who uses them. Battery banks are pretty inexpensive these days and even more convenient when you’re on the go.
    4. Don’t leave your items unattended. Just as airport personnel will ask if your suitcases have been in your possession the whole time, it’s a good idea to keep track of your belongings from a tech standpoint as well. Someone with bad intent might not be after your device when your data is much more valuable.

    Now for our convenience themed tips:

    1. Keep track of your belongings on the go with an Apple Airtag, Tile Pro or other bluetooth based trackers. A misplaced bag can ruin your vacation, having one of these trackers inside it will prevent that from happening.
    2. Turn any audio jack into a Bluetooth wireless transmitter. Whether you rent a car without a Bluetooth adapter or you want to use your Bluetooth headphones on the plane, a wireless Bluetooth transmitter is a gamechanger. Best of all many options are on sale at the moment for Black Friday, we’ve personally used the Anker Soundsync. It’s small so it won’t take up much room in your bag and as 12 hours of run time per charge.
    3. We mentioned using your phone as a mobile hotspot up above, but if your data plan is not the best you can also purchase a standalone mobile hotspot (with a data package included). This can also be a gamechanger if your network Isn’t going to be stellar where you’re going, you can purchase a mobile data plan for a network that has coverage instead. T-Mobile, AT&T and more all have options for this.
    4. Having to work on the go but don’t want to drag your whole setup with you? Consider a portable monitor. If you’ve gone to two (or more) monitors at work you know there’s no going back, but sometimes travel includes doing some work out on the road and bringing your at home setup is not going to be an option. Portable monitors often come with a travel ready case and can be connected to your laptop via USB-C (both for power and display), bringing you the convenience or two displays without the headache of trying to travel with a full-size monitor.

    Technical advice like this is one of the advantages of being a Valley Techlogic customer, and for a limited time if you meet with us about our services, we will give you $100 cash just to hear us out.

    What do you have to lose? Schedule a consultation 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.

  • Proactive vs Reactive Tech Care – Why Tackling Things as They Spring Up Can Backfire BIG

    Proactive vs Reactive Tech Care – Why Tackling Things as They Spring Up Can Backfire BIG

    As a technology service provider, it’s probably a given that we believe in proactive maintenance. We believe being proactive is less costly both in lost revenue and lost time (and time is money so it’s doubling down when a technology outage occurs).

    Many clients are afraid to replace aging hardware, these systems represent a big investment for them typically and they want to get the most “bang for their buck” out of systems they spent thousands of dollars on. They’re also used to how these machines operate and aren’t sure if newer machines will really represent a quality of life upgrade for them.

    There’s also the fear that replacing hardware will be a protracted situation, where transferring files, setup etc. may result in the one thing we all fear most in the business world – downtime.

    This is generally not the case, most of the time switching out systems is an easy seamless process that’s completed in less than a couple of hours or even during a lunch break. Switching out a server can be more time consuming but at Valley Techlogic we perform those upgrades after hours so as not to inconvenience our clients. We can also keep your existing server running as we get the replacement up and going in most cases (and is another reason it’s a good idea to perform these upgrades before a hardware failure occurs).

    Proactive maintenance also applies to software, whether it be updating existing software or finding a new solution for a software product that’s no longer available. Replacing aging hardware and aging software often go hand in hand, with clients keeping a system around that’s functionally way past it’s prime but is necessary to run a line of business software that’s no longer available.

    This is a risky endeavor, machines running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2012 or older are no longer being updated by Microsoft and represent a literal threat vector to which bad actors can infiltrate your business. The same goes for other aging devices that are no longer receiving firmware updates, such as routers and peripherals like smart switches that connect to the internet.

    At Valley Techlogic we are utilizing tools that track the age of equipment and whether it’s been recently updated, that way we can make recommendations to our clients ahead of time when equipment has reached its end of life.

    In many businesses, operating on a “run-to-failure” basis makes sense, if you’re in manufacturing for example repairing large, expensive equipment for as long as you can to maximize your ROI is a smart business practice. However, anyone would agree that replacing equipment that’s become unsafe is absolutely crucial.

    That’s why we operate on a proactive model, in the technology world aging hardware that can’t be updated is a risk to your business whether it be from unintended downtime or a cyber security threat.

    Here are some other items we’re also proactive about for our clients:

    Click to view the full size version.

    If you would like to learn more about obtaining a proactive technology service plan for your business, just request a consultation. We’ll even give you your first service call on the house (up to 2 hours) which we can use to evaluate your existing devices and offer our recommendations. 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.