Here, we’ll review the benefits that using PowerPoint can bring, as well as what you will want to include in the training materials you create. Why PowerPoint for Training Purposes? PowerPoint is an effective training tool for a variety of reasons – not the least of which is that it is effectively a multimedia platform. Allowing you to present information both visibly and via spoken word, PowerPoint gives you a platform to really reinforce the lessons you want to impart. Now, while there are many tools that PowerPoint includes to assist users in presenting whatever materials they have more effectively, we’re going to focus on one particular web-based feature: Presenter Coach. Presenter Coach does more or less what it sounds like it would do: it allows a user to practice their presentation, catching them as they fall back on undesirable public-speaking habits. The official video from the Microsoft Office 365 YouTube account explains it best: So, in a way, PowerPoint can not only help you train your users… it can help you improve your own abilities to train others. To activate it, open up the presentation in PowerPoint for the web. On the Slide Show tab, click Rehearse with Coach. (This option is also under the View tab for some users). What to Include in Your Training Of course, regardless of how well you present it, your training is only as effective as the content that goes into it. As you are creating your materials, it is important that you do so in an organized fashion. Here are a few tips to help you get started. Identify the need that this training should address. In other words, what do you want to teach your team about? What should they know how to do better than before they participated? Keeping this need in mind will help you to keep your training concise and targeted, making it more effective at communicating your specific lesson. Determine what information to include based on the lesson and who you are speaking to. If your training only applies to a given department in your business, use specifics in your presentation to better illustrate your points and drive the message home. However, if the training applies to everyone – as cybersecurity lessons do – make sure you discuss the topic in basic terms that everyone can grasp and put into action. Include visuals, calls for questions, and individual sections to ensure that each topic is understood. Incorporating visual aids and separating your points into their own distinct slides can make the information you are trying to get across clearer to your audience. You should also encourage your team to ask questions throughout the training, and remind them that they can always ask these questions if they are ever unsure. You training doesn’t stop once your presentation is over. You could have designed the best presentation of your life, but if nothing has changed after you deliver it, you need to go back to the drawing board. Be sure that your staff knows that they can give you honest feedback without any backlash from you. Give these tips a try, and feel free to reach out to SRS Networks for more assistance with your productivity tools.
To accomplish this, let’s examine the various types of hackers out there, and what it is that drives them to do what they do. Identifying Hackers, Based on Why They Hack “Hacker” is one of those blanket terms that most people take a lot of liberties with. However, like most blanket terms, one of its potential uses is focused upon much more heavily than the others. When you hear the word, what picture pops into your head? If you’re like most people, probably the image that pop culture has encouraged: someone sitting in a dark room, only lit by the glow of their monitors, typing furiously at their keyboards while line after line of data scrolls down their screens. This isn’t all that accurate. The Types of Hacker In actuality, there are many distinct categories of hacker, based on the motivations they have and their approach to accomplishing their goals. Originally, there were just two categories, inspired by the costuming conventions once found in Western movies. The hero typically wore a white Stetson, while the villain’s hat was traditionally black. However, as more complicated motives became apparent, more categories of hacker arose. Primary Varieties of Hacker and Their Motivations White Hat: These hackers are those who, going through the proper established channels, hacks into programs to help improve these programs’ security protocols. Anyone who assists you in running penetration tests or vulnerability assessments fits into this category, as their intention is to help keep your systems safe. Black Hat: These hackers are the ones most people think about – the ones who you are afraid of targeting your business. Motivated by their own personal gain or ill will towards their target, these hackers intend to do some kind of harm by stealing credit card information or by leveraging other methods. Grey Hat: Much like the color grey is the combination of black and white, a grey hat hacker is a blend of black hat and white hats. As such, while grey hat hackers have helped bring quite a bit of evidence to light and share it with the public, the tactics they leverage come from a black hat hacker’s playbook. Red Hat: While grey hat hackers use exposure as a weapon against wrongdoing, red hat hackers go on the offensive. By waiting for other black hat hacks, and intercepting them, a red hat hacker will attack a black hat hacker’s system to stop the attack and potentially take the other hacker out of commission. Green Hat: The greenhorn of the hacking community, a green hat hacker will commonly have no hand in any practical hacking attempts themselves, but is committed to acquiring as much knowledge about these attempts as they can. Blue Hat: Another amateur, blue hat hackers rely on preexisting attacks and techniques to go after their targets. These attacks are typically rudimentary, and are often motivated by some personal offense or argument with the target. But Why? The motivations of a hacker can be as varied as the types of hackers are, and some hackers don’t necessarily have a single motivation driving them. Stealing Information for Profit or Distribution This is perhaps the most well-known of a hacker’s motivations. Once data has been stolen, a hacker can leverage it for profit in various ways – identity theft, blackmail, […]
Permission-Based Access Control You want to keep the number of people given access to your servers to a minimum. It isn’t as though most of your users really need access to it, so why leave it open to potential threats? By leveraging the capabilities that access control now has – such as permission-based privileges – you can minimize these potential threats by simply preventing many of these potential events from happening. Use Various Alarms On the topic of restricted access, you want to make sure that you are aware of those times that someone attempted to access your server room without the requisite permissions. This is why you should equip your server room with a system to alert you when someone has done just that. Beyond that, your servers need to be protected in terms of climate, as well. With the very real risk of fires in the server room, you need various fire alarms, extinguishers, and fire suppression systems. On the flip side, moisture is another issue for your infrastructure, so you should consider adding moisture-detection systems. Backup Power Supplies Sudden power loss can be a huge problem for workstations and other pieces of your infrastructure, including your servers. In order to protect them, you need to make sure that your servers are supported by a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) so you can avoid these problems if your business encounters a power-loss issue. Locks! Locks Everywhere! Naturally, you’ll want to lock the door to the server room – as established in the section on permission-based access control. However, you shouldn’t stop there. Why not secure the actual infrastructure in your server room itself? Otherwise, someone who gained access to the server room could pluck a hard drive out and make their escape with all the data that hard drive contained. This includes things like your cables, switches, and other pieces of infrastructure as well. Keep an Eye on It Touching back onto the importance of monitoring access to your server room, why not keep a record of who is accessing it, and when? Using your access control, monitor when a certain authentication was utilized, and compare that to your video records. You can also keep an eye on your servers themselves using the same concept. SRS Networks can help you to ensure your servers are optimized and secure. Reach out to us at (831) 758-3636 to learn more.
The Clean Up Tool We’ve all been a part of an email chain that ultimately becomes useless, with redundant and repeated messages adding more confusion than context. To counter this, Microsoft Outlook offers the Clean Up tool. In an email conversation, users send messages back and forth to one another and create a thread. However, these threads can sometimes pull in and duplicate the same messages, over and over – especially as participants respond back and forth. Using the Clean Up tool, you can delete these redundancies from your email chains, or even from entire folders. To clean up an individual conversation, select that conversation thread in your inbox. Find the Clean Up icon in the ribbon on top of Outlook and click it to display a drop-down menu, giving you the option to Clean Up Conversation, Clean Up Folder, or Clean Up Folder & Subfolders. Selecting one will prompt you to confirm your choice, allowing you access to your Clean Up settings, which allow you to further define how and which things should be cleaned up. Scheduling Your Messages There are plenty of reasons that you’d want an email to be timed just right – for example, would you rather your employees email you at the end of the day with information relevant to the next, or would you prefer to get emails pertinent to that day, first thing? Outlook allows you to choose, offering the ability to schedule messages with Future Delivery. After writing the email as you normally would, access Options, and find the Delay Delivery option. Clicking it will open a Properties box, which will include a checkbox labeled “Do not deliver before” under Delivery Options. Selecting this box and providing a date and time will ensure the message will not be delivered before then. Once you’ve done so, close the Properties box and send your message as you ordinarily would. Using Outlook Shortcuts Like many of today’s solutions, Outlook offers keyboard shortcuts to make your use of the program more efficient. These shortcuts cover a variety of functions, from composing new messages (Ctrl+Shift+M) to moving a message from one place to another (Ctrl+Shift+V). You can easily insert hyperlinks by pressing Ctrl+K, or flag an important message using Ctrl+Shift+G. These are just a few basic ways that you can start to manage your Outlook emails a little more effectively. To be notified whenever we have more handy IT tips and other technology blogs, subscribe today!
There are only a few major smartphone manufacturers as the technology needed to make (and distribute) them takes a lot of capital. These major manufacturers are mostly from Asia, but have parts made in different locations all over the world. The modern smartphone features near-ubiquitous connectivity, desktop-like processing power, and enough storage to facilitate the millions of applications that are constantly being developed for the two main OSs. The best ones feature mics and speakers that are protected from water and sand, multiple cameras that are capable of 4K video, and batteries that only slowly degrade and can be active for half-a-day on a single charge. What’s worse, these manufacturers are doing it at a time when the devices they’ve created last a few sales cycles and result in their margins noticeably shrinking. This has created less competition at the top of the market, with more people using devices manufactured by a limited amount of companies. Smartphone Markets A brief look at the global smartphone market will show you that there are now only six manufacturers with a market share of eight percent or more. They are Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo. Most of these manufacturers service emerging or Asian markets, while Apple and Samsung are the only truly global brands. In the United States, Apple is the largest distributor of smartphones with a 41 percent market share, with only Korean manufacturers Samsung (21 percent) and LG (13 percent) holding more than 10 percent of the market. Things are basically the same in much of the English-speaking world. In the UK and Australia, Apple comes in with 49 percent and 55 percent of the market share, respectively. Samsung is a distant second with 29 percent and 22 percent, respectively. In mainland Europe, however, Samsung’s market share is nearly twice Apple’s. Overall there are over 1.5 billion smartphones shipped every year for a market that is now at nearly three billion people. 82 percent of people in the UK and 77 percent of Americans own one. Predictably, China is actually the largest smartphone market with nearly 800 million smartphone owners. Conversely, there are some places where smartphone adoption hasn’t reached high percentages. Despite having nearly 1.4 billion people, the smartphone ownership rate in India is only around 28 percent. Other potential growth markets include Indonesia (27 percent), Pakistan (14 percent), and several coastal African nations (6-to-13 percent). Innovation of the Modern Smartphone Steve Jobs is roundly credited as the “inventor” of the smartphone. Whether this is true or not is up for debate, but people in-the-know about such things say that companies were working on something like this for a decade leading up to the iPhone’s 2007 launch date. Apple’s iPhone was the first smartphone to market, but even though it was only a dozen years ago now, the devices have changed precipitously. Innovation of technology (and of the devices) has been a major driving force in pushing the use of devices. As we stated earlier billions of people actively use (and periodically purchase) smartphones and they are always looking for new ways to use their devices. So while the fundamental technologies found inside these devices have been pretty static, any new tools, and improved specifications show up on all manufacturer flagships eventually. The best phones are no longer […]
Staff Training – Without the ability to spot potential threats before falling for them, your employees are apt to get caught up in scams, ransomware attacks, and phishing attempts. Every level of the business needs to be taught how to spot these threats and mitigate them – including you – so there’s less of a chance of these threats being successful. Network Protection – Any device on your network, as well as your network itself, needs to have sufficient security solutions protecting it. You should have antivirus and antimalware installed, as well as content filtering to prevent unseemly and risky web surfing, and firewalls to block incoming threats… along with too many other protections to list here. Password Policies – A survey by the UK-based National Cyber Security Centre revealed a few telling things in an analysis of passwords involved in data breaches around the world. For example, here was the top 10 list of common passwords in breaches: 1. 123456 2.123456789 3. qwerty 4. password 5. 111111 6. 12345678 7. abc123 8. 1234567 9. password1 10. 12345 You probably noticed a pattern here. You need to have password policies in place that prevent these kinds of passwords from being utilized. Preferably, your users would use a passphrase, as these can be more secure than the typically recommended randomized password… if devised properly. Keep Software Updated – The majority of software updates are intended to shore up security concerns, so putting off updates for no reason is risky behavior. Make sure that you remain diligent about updating your solutions. Prepare for the Worst – The unfortunate truth is that some cyberthreats are bound to slip by your defenses at some point – that’s just statistics. Therefore, you need to have an ace up your sleeve – or a solid, bulletproof backup solution. Of course, you also need to have a strategy mapped out for any scenario that might force you to use it. For assistance in handling any of these tasks (and more), reach out to SRS Networks. We can provide the assistance necessary for you to accomplish these goals effectively and efficiently. To learn more, call (831) 758-3636.
Better Technology Makes You More Relevant – and Thereby, Competitive How would you feel if you walked into a financial planner’s office for assistance with your business’ budget and saw all of the employees working diligently at their desks, each making calculations with an abacus? Or if you were in the hospital for a procedure, and your anesthetist pulled out a mallet to prepare you for surgery? Presumably, you’d leave. While these are extreme examples, the same concept goes for any business. Technology is developed to improve workplace operations, making operations more efficient, more reliable, or more effective – if not some combination of the three. Failing to keep up with these improvements, as your competition does, will only put your business further behind the curve – making it harder to attract the clients and customers you need to maintain your revenue streams. It also doesn’t hurt that the majority of people you are trying to attract to your business are looking for a provider that can outperform the competition – something that you cannot do if they are utilizing the latest and greatest solutions when you aren’t. Today, your hope is that the opposite situation is the case – your solutions being better than theirs. Technology Can Boost Efficiency For the sake of your business’ budget, its aforementioned relevance, the overall satisfaction level of your clientele, and a variety of other key factors… your business needs to operate efficiently. The longer your operations take, the more expensive they will prove to be for your business, and the less satisfied your clientele will become – again, especially if they are comparing you to an alternative provider. There are many ways that IT solutions can prove to be a benefit in this way. Automation can reduce the amount of time your employees spend trudging through rote tasks, freeing up quite a bit of time in any department. As a result, these tasks can be completed with machine accuracy, while your employees can simultaneously be productive towards their goals and objectives. There’s Improved Security Potential in Technology You may have picked up on how a lot of cybersecurity threats now rely on the inherent vulnerability of human beings, with phishing attacks and ransomware being such popular means of attack. Why is this the case? Well, technology has improved to the point where it is often easier to take advantage of the user than it is to breach the system – assuming that the system in question has the proper safeguards implemented. While it obviously can’t be said that these safeguards will always keep your business’ data safe, there is a definite increase in the frequency of cyberattacks that target user vulnerabilities, rather than software ones. In fact, according to a survey that the Small Business Trends website maintains, phishing and social engineering were experienced by 43 percent of their respondents. According to some sources, a full 76 percent of businesses reported being the victims of a phishing attack in 2018. Why is this? Well, to be frank, many cybercriminals are reconsidering how their attacks should take shape as security solutions have improved. If the weakest point in a business’ security is the user, it makes more sense to target the user. While this means that any business needs to seriously consider training […]
Innovation Through IT It’s not a secret that lots of businesses rely on their information technology systems to run their entire business. IT fuels efficient data storage, use of stored data, and collaborative interfacing with said data. Even as that’s happening, businesses have to constantly monitor and maintain their IT systems. After all, if you depend on technology, and the technology goes down, your business isn’t going to get anything done. That is why innovations that make technology more reliable, and new tools that turn traditional business resources on its head, are moving business, and society, forward. Since this simple notion has been very difficult to put into practice, thought leaders and industry professionals are now trying to determine how to transform applications and infrastructure architectures, service delivery, DEVOps, production operations, security, and compliance. They are doing this, more than ever, by assessing what is needed and developing solutions. This is leading to the development of new solutions that will take IT out from a support capacity and make it more active in the day-to-day administration of key business tasks. Investment in Cognitive Computing Cognitive computing is the act of using powerful computing resources machine learning and artificial intelligence to continuously process data that is received in the course of doing business. These systems include pattern recognition, language processing, and data mining to create an efficiency that isn’t possible without these technologies. As more information comes in, these technologies are being used to improve the business’ ability to shift their business in ways that can: Enhance business agility by quickening decision making. Be able to consistently scale processes to meet budgetary and operational demands. Improve the overall efficiency and performance of a business. These technologies can also be used to support several different internal and external aspects of your business. They can help build a more robust operational structure, while also automating several of your business’ customer retention initiatives. By investing in the tools needed to create a more effective business, the “smart” business is sure to stay a step ahead of their direct competitors, and in some cases will be able to help the business to explore new avenues of revenue generation. Information Security A data breach can be a really terrible situation for any business, especially when clients’ and employees’ personal information is stolen. Today, threats are numerous and consistent, so technologies have been developed to help organizations weed out threats. There are several innovative tools designed to improve an organization’s data security initiatives. Many of these tools also use machine learning and artificial intelligence to actively adjust a cybersecurity policy to the threats the individual business faces. Since both sides have access to these tools, it becomes essential that companies get proficient at identifying the risks that their essential information systems present. These include: Remote access – With many businesses using workers that access data and applications from outside of their network, security solutions need to be able to secure these connections. IoT – With most businesses having dozens of unsecured endpoints in the way of IoT devices, having a strategy to keep them from becoming vulnerabilities is important. Regulatory demands – Some businesses have certain regulations they have to comply with and have certain conditions they need to meet in order to do so. Hackers – […]
Let’s Define AR Augmented reality is the real-time process of enhancing reality with information using cameras and displays. Some places where AR is well-travelled include sports broadcasts, Snapchat filters, and the world famous Pokemon Go. Some businesses have even begun creating their own AR app that’s designed to increase the immersion of the consumer with their products. AR’s Drawbacks and Opportunities A big hurdle to AR innovation has always been the reliance on devices that have small displays. The lack of technology to use AR-fueled apps leads to a lack of immersion; and, since AR is all about building immersion, it becomes a non-starter when it can’t be delivered. That’s not to say that AR isn’t useful and on the rise. Let’s take a look at some of the variables on the horizon that are sure to push AR forward fast: Connections are Faster AR depends on delivering information to users right now. With 4G LTE, developers had enough bandwidth to make it work, but with the advent of 5G, AR will now have more bandwidth to deliver information. Hardware is Improving Hardware has improved greatly and continues to do so, making it more and more capable of handling AR’s assorted demands. Higher processing power and the improvement of sensor technology will go a long way toward fueling AR innovation. Wider Adoption and Application Many organizations are coming up with various new ways to leverage AR to their advantage. Marketing agencies have used AR as a means of boosting engagement with their efforts and initiatives. It has proven useful in training applications in various industries, especially training and development – delivering information to students and workers at the time it is needed. Reduced Costs Of course, as AR becomes more common, it also becomes more affordable for a business to deploy. As more applications and devices become able to support it, its costs should only continue to trend down. It has become apparent that AR will play a big role in the future of many industries – so, what is your impression of all of this? Is AR just a gimmick, or do you see truly legitimate uses for it in the business environment? Discuss it in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Why IT Procurement Matters So Much In order for a business to see the most value from its technology, there needs to be an awareness of how interconnected and codependent the individual pieces are, and what technology solutions are needed. Let’s go over some of the components that a business will need. Servers and Networking Solutions In order for your employees to be appropriately collaborative, there needs to be an infrastructure in place that makes communications and data sharing practicable. As a business grows, the capacity of this infrastructure needs to grow with it. However, if tackled by someone who isn’t very familiar with the solutions currently in place, this expansion is apt to only cause further problems. The same goes for other improvements as well – a single misconfiguration could potentially cause a very expensive downtime event. On the other side of the coin, by calling in a professional to assist with the expansion of your networking infrastructure, you can effectively eliminate the risk of causing downtime while greatly expediting the actual process of upgrading your infrastructure. A professional can both advise a business in what is best for it to adopt, as well as come in to assist with the installation of the improved solution. Workstations and Computing Resources Without the right technology for their tasks, your employees aren’t going to be able to achieve very much. This makes it important that you acquire the right tech for the task at hand, rather than focusing exclusively on bargain hunting. Consider the possible ramifications of automatically going with the least expensive option, without taking the time to consider it more comprehensively. Bargain hunting online can lead to ultimately wasting money on a system that doesn’t actually serve your needs – or worse, doesn’t even work properly. In that case, you’d likely be stuck having to pay a professional to fix your newly acquired systems… and that’s assuming you wouldn’t be stuck having to purchase other ones. Once again, in working with a managed service provider, you have a resource that will assist you in selecting the right technology – the first time – potentially even getting a better deal than you would have otherwise. Software as a Service Of course, if you plan on using your technology, you are also going to need the appropriate software. If handling this independently, you may be tempted to cut corners a bit – downloading torrents instead of paying for the software you need. Doing so puts your business at considerable risk, and subjects it to negative attention from law enforcement and the public at large. However, a managed service provider provides a much better option. Instead of putting your reputation and operations at risk, you can lean on your provider’s Software-as-a-Service offering, Instead of investing a large lump sum on a software title that’s only going to need replacing in a few short years, a Software-as-a-Service arrangement effectively serves as a subscription to a particular solution. For a low monthly sum, SaaS provides your business with the most up-to-date version of a given software, as well as all the support you may need for it. That way, your employees have the tools to do their job, while you (and your budget) can rest easy. Which Experience Would You Prefer? If you’re looking […]