Why is My Phone So Hot? There are various reasons that your phone may be excessively warm, many of which have nothing to do with the environmental temperature. In fact, you can sometimes tell what component may be casting off excess heat based on where the heat is emanating from. For example, if the back of your phone gets hot, your battery may be overheating. If it’s at the bottom—specifically, as you’re charging the device—the charger may be to blame. Other locations on the phone could suggest other issues. It could also be what you’re using the device to do. Many mobile games and other intensive applications will require a lot of processing power, and streaming content means that your device is constantly loading data and keeping its screen awake. These tasks require your phone to work hard, which is going to generate some heat. Your settings can also overtax the CPU on your phone, again leading to excessive heat being produced. Software bugs and the updates intended to resolve them can both contribute to heating challenges—although those caused by the software updates will be much more temporary. Unfortunately, malware can also be a culprit, as there are many mobile varieties out there that hijack a phone for a criminal’s purposes. These purposes can range from mining cryptocurrency to installing ransomware to extort money from the user. Regardless of the reason, your priority if your device does begin to feel hot to the touch is to cool it down as quickly as possible. Here are a few ways to help you to keep your device cool. Tips to Keep a Smartphone Cool Before we begin, it may help to know how temperature works. Heat is a form of energy, which likes to spread out to accomplish equilibrium, from higher concentrations to the lower ones. The sensation that you feel when you perceive “hot” is that energy flowing to you. Conversely, “cold” is the absence of that energy, and your perception of “chill” is your energy flowing into what you’ve touched. Basically, all temperature changes are caused by energy seeking some personal space. So, with this principle of “hot heats up cold” in mind, let’s go over some tips. Tip: Don’t Keep It in a Hot Environment We’ve already established that your phone’s operations will generate some heat. So, in keeping with the principles we just reviewed, this heat will move so that it is equally distributed. Under normal conditions, this means that the phone’s environment will help cool it down. However, if the phone is someplace warm, like in a pocket, a car, or in direct sunlight, its surroundings will also be warm, giving this heat energy nowhere to go. Your case can even contribute to this. If heat is to be a concern, keep your phone in a relatively cool place, and consider removing its case. You wouldn’t wear a coat if you were already too warm, would you? Tip: Cool It Off Like You Would Cool Off A quick disclaimer here: while you might find a quick dip in a pool to be refreshing, your phone will not share that impression. So, when we say cool your phone off like you cool yourself off, keep in mind that we aren’t encouraging all methods of doing so. Instead, simply […]
Here’s a few other ways downtime can hurt your business: 1. Customer Loss – Today’s buyer lacks patience !important; They are used to getting everything at the click of a mouse, at the tap of a finger. Suppose they are looking for the kind of products/services that you offer and your site doesn’t load or is unavailable—even if temporarily– you are likely to lose them to a competitor—permanently. 2. Damage to Brand Reputation – Customers are now using Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and blogs to vent their bad brand experiences. Imagine an irate customer who doesn’t know if their card was charged on your site, or not, due to a server error. If it’s your bad day, they could probably be using Facebook or Twitter to share their bad experience, and it could be viewed by hundreds of people, causing irreparable harm to your brand image. 3. Loss of Productivity – When your systems don’t work, this can have a direct impact on your employees’ productivity. Consider a research firm of 200 employees where they primarily rely on internet connectivity to access the knowledge base. If the server hosting the knowledge base is down, there’s a total loss of at least 1600 work hours for one day. 4. Overtime, Repair and Recovery, Compensatory costs – In the above case, imagine the overtime wages the business would have to incur if they were to make up for the work loss they faced owing to downtime. In addition, there’s always the cost of repair—the money the business would have to shell out to fix the issue that caused the downtime and get the server up and running again. In some cases, businesses would have to incur additional costs to make customers happy. These could include giving away the product for free or at a discount, or using priority shipping to make up for a delayed order. 5. Possible Lawsuits – Businesses could also be at the receiving end of lawsuits. For example, a downtime that has an impact on production, delivery or finances of the customer could invite litigation. 6. Marketing Efforts Rendered Useless – Consider a pay-per-click advertisement that shows up for the right keywords on Google, or an extensive e-mail campaign that your business engages in. However, when the prospect clicks on the link, all they see is an error message – Isn’t that a waste of your marketing budget? The bottom line—one natural disaster, one technical snag or just one power outage has the power to put you out of business – both virtually and in reality. It’s probably time to think about how you can mitigate the threat of a possible downtime and whether your MSP can act as an effective and efficient ally in this battle for you.
Let’s examine what really makes collaboration, well, collaboration, and how you can encourage such habits in your own business. Separating Teamwork and Collaboration First thing’s first, we need to establish that—while closely related—teamwork and collaboration are not the same thing. While there is no collaboration without teamwork, teamwork is possible without technically collaborating. Consider the bucket brigade. Once upon a time, when a fire broke out, that was the preferred method to extinguish it—passing buckets of water up a line to the flame that needed to be put out. By lining people up to pass the buckets down, the people involved were all collaborating toward the goal of putting out the fire. Now, consider the alternative: everyone running back and forth with their own bucket, waiting for their turn to refill as the fire blazes on. Teamwork, sure, but nothing collaborative about a frantic free-for-all. Teamwork is the combined action of a group. Collaboration is the act of combining a team’s resources to accomplish each step of a given action. Here are a few other ways to tell an example of teamwork, from an example of true collaboration: There’s a tendency for a team to have a set leader to set the course of whatever project is being worked on, while collaboration thrives in an egalitarian group setting. Teamwork can be effective in completing a business’ short-term goals, while long-term goals are better served by collaborative behaviors. As we hinted at, teamwork requires someone to be in control of the group. Collaboration requires the group’s members to trust one another. The Benefits of Collaboration in Action Embracing collaboration brings universal advantages that you can enjoy. Improved Operations Why have one person working on a problem, when you have a whole team of people who could all think of a solution? With a workplace culture steeped in collaborative habits, problem-solving becomes much easier. Employee engagement also goes up, allowing you to enjoy side effects like increased revenue, greater productivity, fewer mishaps, and less turnover. Satisfied Employees Collaboration can also have a marked effect on the experience your employees have in the workplace. In addition to the knowledge-sharing capabilities that collaboration encourages, employee relationships can improve. This isn’t nothing—office friendships have been identified as one of the most important components of employee satisfaction. One survey ranked it as most important to 70 percent of workers. Collaboration also offers the benefit of increased morale, which itself brings better productivity and heighted retention rates. What You Can Do to Encourage Collaboration Endorsing collaboration in your office doesn’t need to be too difficult. In fact, there are a few simple methods that have proven very effective. Bring Your Team Together with a Shared Mission and Expectations If it weren’t for your team, your company couldn’t be as successful as it is. Make sure that they understand their value to the organization, and how their responsibilities play into those of the larger group. This is made easier with a shared company goal (also known as its mission). By establishing this mission, you can then set the benchmarks and objectives that your team needs to meet and assign your team members with the appropriate responsibilities to do so. Enable Innovative Collaboration Through Encouragement Make sure that, as your team works to implement their newly collaborative processes, you […]
#1. Cost of Office Space – Square footage can get pretty expensive. The more physical documents your business needs to store, the more space is taken up storing them. It stands to reason that you wouldn’t want to pay premium prices for a bunch of file cabinets. With a DMS, your staff would simply scan the document and then you can store it anywhere. You can reduce the price you pay in mortgage and rent costs by storing the files you once stored onsite in a place where square footage isn’t quite so expensive, while still having constant access to the digital copy of the file. #2. File Security – Document management provides a secure system in which to save your documents. Traditional thought would dictate that saving physical files would provide better access control, but with physical security, costs increase dramatically. Any DMS will provide your company the ability to control documents at the folder level, giving you a level of control over your information that’s as good as any a physical security system can provide. Additionally, any documents stored inside a DMS have an associated audit trail, giving administrators the transparency needed to manage system security. #3. Access and Speed – This is where the DMS starts to pay for itself. The time it takes to file and find physical documents costs businesses a lot of money. According to one industry study, it costs over $20 for businesses to file a single paper document, and if some part of the file management chain fails, those costs increase substantially. A DMS provides fast access to your organization’s documents and the ability to print documents in seconds, saving a lot of capital that could better be spent elsewhere. #4. Seamless Collaboration – Today, improving collaboration is a key business strategy. Using a solid DMS, sharing information is much easier and far more efficient. You don’t have to send someone to look for a document for half an hour, simply search for it in the DMS and it’s there in seconds. #5. Improved Compliance – Most businesses have to comply with some type of regulatory standard. By using a DMS to store your documents, your organization can significantly reduce the risks associated with non-compliance, even for the most complex regulations. Today’s document management systems are more powerful and dynamic than any in the past and can be a huge time and money-saver for your business. To talk to one of our technicians about document management today, call SRS Networks at (831) 758-3636.
Count Specific Cells If you need to take a tally of the number of times a value appears in your spreadsheet, doing so is simple. Using Excel’s COUNTIF function enables you to automatically total up all cells in a given range that meet a given criteria. Once all your data is entered into a column of your spreadsheet, select a new cell and label it with the data you want to track. In the cell below it, enter the formula =COUNTIF(, then select the range you want to count within (in our case, whichever column contains your data). Once that’s added to your formula, add a comma, and then specify which value you want to tally up in quotes (or, if you’ve labelled another cell with the value, simply select the appropriate cell. Close the parenthesis on your formula, hit enter, and you’re all set. In our example, we get a count of four for “Maggie” by using the formula =COUNTIF(A:A,D1). Alternatively, =COUNTIF(A:A,”Maggie”) would work, too. Switch Value Format Here’s the thing: there are a lot of formats that are a pain to type out individually, especially if your raw data isn’t converted. Fortunately, Excel makes it a lot simpler than typing each value out in the correct format. Rather than going through the motions to adjust to the proper formatting for each one, it can be done en masse with just a few clicks. For instance, to change your values to currency, all you must do is highlight the cells you need to change and press Ctrl+Shift+$. This allows you to turn this: …into this: You also have the option to change it using the toolbar. Under Home, you should see a section labelled Number. From there, you have a few quick options to adjust the formatting, including into a few different currencies, as well as a drop-down box with plenty of other options available. Nicer Formatting Let’s go back to some basics for a moment with some basic formatting best practices. Without proper formatting, a spreadsheet can be a pain to glean any decent information from, but with the right rules in place, it can quickly gain exponentially more use. Let’s go through a few simple basics to help make your spreadsheets more comprehensible. Let’s say, for the sake of our example, you wanted to take stock of some of the items in your office. Simple enough—you’d probably begin your list with the title (“Supplies”) and then list what it was you were trying to organize. However, with your items varying in length, the spreadsheet could quickly become confusing. Fortunately, this can be fixed by selecting the column and pressing Alt+H+O+I. Don’t worry too much if you realize you missed an item… you can always add another row by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Plus Sign. Now that you’ve compiled your list, you don’t want the title “Supplies” to interfere with your amounts. To avoid that, you can merge two cells (in this case, A1 and B1) into a single cell, where “Supplies” will be written out. Select them both and press Alt+H+M+M. Feel free to align your text to the center, as well, by pressing Alt+H+A+C, or by using the icon in the menu bar. Fill in the number of items you need in the next column over, and the price […]
What Are Unified Communications? Speaking plainly, “unified communications” are a business’ strategy to improve its collaborative capabilities by implementing various communication solutions for its staff to use. Oftentimes, this strategy is referred to as unified communications and collaboration. It is important to differentiate between these two parts, as they are—while similar—two different concepts. The Difference Between Communications and Collaboration We’re all familiar with the concept of water cooler talk. People gather around a common area and chat for a moment. This is a prime example of communication, as coworkers are talking to one another, but there isn’t necessarily any productive benefit to be directly gained from their conversation. For an example of collaboration, we would turn to the conference room, where coworkers go to discuss projects, hashing out ideas and pooling their talents. Basically, collaboration will involve communication, but not all communication counts as “collaborative.” Why Implement Unified Communications? Unified communications can deliver substantial benefits to the businesses that put them in place. For just a few examples: Improved productivity and performance. Unified communications gives the members of your team improved access to shared resources, along with the tools necessary for collaboration to take place. As a result, your team members can work together (even if working remotely) to produce a superior result. Improved user experience. With these collaborative tools, your employees will find it much more achievable to meet your expectations. Because of this, they will be more satisfied with the work they are tasked with while they increase their overall productivity. Improved budgeting. As unified communication platforms tend to be cloud-based, these services are billed per month and are therefore a scalable operational expense. This helps to make your available budget more flexible. Improved cohesion. By tying all of your communications together and tracking interactions and individual projects, unified communications make it far easier to keep everyone involved up to date on important information. Interested in learning more about unified communications, or any other beneficial IT solution? SRS Networks is here to help. To find out more, give us a call at (831) 758-3636.
The Impact of Remote Work There have been plenty of positive effects brought on by the implementation of remote work policies for businesses to only embrace it further. A recent study by Intermedia surveyed the owners of 250 businesses and revealed a telling selection of these effects, including: Increases in employee availability in 19 percent of these businesses Increased job satisfaction—15 percent—and life satisfaction—seven percent—alike Decreased overhead costs Improved employee attitudes Reduced work-related stress Increased engagement Out of these businesses, 85 percent had primarily functioned in a centralized office space, but with remote work exploding in prevalence as social distancing has been adopted, that number has gone down to 26 percent. Simultaneously, video conferencing increased in use by 27 percent, from a rate of 57 percent to 84 percent. This only makes sense, as businesses must continue their operations to remain open. If remote work is the only way to do this without jeopardizing the health and safety of their employees, clients, and customers, the smart play is to embrace remote operations. Will Remote Work Last Longer than the Pandemic? Admittedly, it can be hard to even think about the time after the current health crisis is over, as so much has changed in the relatively short time we’ve all been living this new normal. We don’t think that remote operations will go away, though. Consider the list of benefits that businesses reported seeing. The biggest concern that many of these businesses had was the matter of engagement: how could they attract and convert clients when face-to-face conversions were once their de facto strategy? However, these concerns were not fueled due to any influence by technology restrictions, as the explosion in conferencing we discussed above goes to show. As a result, we can confidently conclude that many businesses won’t shift away from remote operations when they are no longer required for survival. The benefits—increased team satisfaction and at least the same levels of productivity—are just too good to pass up. SRS Networks can help you embrace the remote capabilities that can help your business survive these challenges, along with many other IT tools and resources. Give us a call at (831) 758-3636 to learn more about what we can do for your business technology.
Hardware Needs and Capabilities Your hardware needs will largely depend upon how you intend to design your IT infrastructure: are you going to keep your solutions on-site in a server, or will you choose to make use of the cloud for most of your needs? Will you operate with company-owned devices, or will your employees be able to do their work on their own technology? To determine this, you need to fully understand what is required of the hardware that your team members use to complete their tasks successfully. This is a relatively simple process, but SRS Networks is always available to help, if need be. Features Based on your business’ procedures, what are the most important tasks for your hardware solutions to be able to handle? Will your team need to do any specific tasks, like print documents from a mobile device? Will point-of-sale systems be needed in bulk? What kind of workload will their network infrastructure need to support? Fully understanding these conditions will be key to ensuring that your intended hardware can deliver what you need it to. Storage Data is crucial to your success, so you need to have a plan prepared to deal with that which you collect. How much you will need to store, how you intend to back this data up, and how you’ve planned for business continuity will all impact how your storage infrastructure is built up. In turn, this outcome will dictate your hardware needs. Performance Again, what processes will your business’ hardware need to support as your daily functions are carried out? Word processing and video editing are very different processes and have very different hardware requirements to work properly. Working with an IT provider to ensure your business’ hardware has enough processing power for its intended use is crucial. Budget Here’s the thing, hardware investments can very easily run out of control, expending much more of your available funds that you would want to. Whether you need to purchase a new workstation, a new server, or any other IT component, you should go into the process completely understanding what it is you need. That way, you can find the vendor who offers the best value for your purchase, stretching your budget. Mobility Remote operations are increasingly popular amongst businesses, so it only makes sense that you seek out hardware solutions that can support mobile work when it is called for. This may be the difference between investing in a laptop over a desktop workstation, or the reason you elect to adopt cloud solutions. Security Whether you’re considering adding biometric authentication to your access controls, or you’re simply seeking to avoid data loss, there are hardware solutions that are involved in these processes that you need to consider as viable options. Consider any in-house infrastructure you might implement—what’s the one thing that it all needs, constantly? Electricity. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) device can often be crucial to avoiding data loss and hardware damages, helping to protect your data by reducing the threat that a power outage could cause. CCTV cameras are another example of a piece of hardware that can significantly boost your business’ security. Hardware Ratio Finally, you need to make sure that you have the infrastructure in place to support your various solutions. This will help to […]
What Is Changing? This year has been far from typical, but it started out “normal”. Businesses had time to set their technology budgets for 2020, but when the pandemic hit those plans were either tabled or thrown out entirely. Unfortunately, in times of crisis, cybercriminals strike, and with many businesses looking to cut costs where they can, security was, somewhat surprisingly, one place businesses borrowed from, weakening security at a time when most would assume that attacks were about to increase. What has happened in the interim has surprised many industry analysts. While many businesses cut their security spending, businesses have continued to invest in the right places to mitigate attacks. Businesses actually saw data breaches fall by a third in the first six months of 2020. This has led many businesses to question whether all the capital they were pumping into their cybersecurity strategies are actually necessary. Tried and True Solutions With thoughts about cybersecurity spending shifting, there are some strategies that are imperative to keep your business secure from threats. They include: Endpoint protection – setting policy that works to secure entrypoint onto your network is essential to keeping threats off your business’ network. Today, there are some very sophisticated attacks and being able to detect, analyze, thwart, and contain attacks is extremely important. Employee training – phishing attacks account for the majority of cyberthreats companies encounter. Ensuring that employees are cognizant of what constitutes a phishing threat, and what to do (and not to do) with it once it is received is paramount to keep data and networks secure. Encryption for remote connections – If your business relies on remote workers, keeping the connection they use secure is extremely important. You never know what your staff has on their PC, and if you don’t want to find out you need to find a reliable remote access software or outfit each member of your remote team with an enterprise VPN. Mobile access management – The smartphone has become more important than ever for businesses, but any environment that is being used as much as most people use their mobile devices needs to be secured against. These four platforms will go a long way toward helping your business maintain security of its digital assets. Where We Go From Here Now that organizations are being a little more selective about what they spend their capital on, you will see strategies emerge that are designed to combine the lessons from the past several years with the stripped-down financial obligations they’ve been working with during the first half of 2020. This means that businesses will be looking to build their cybersecurity platforms on efficiency. Here are three strategies you will see more of in the future: Building resilience – In order to be successful building cyber-resilience, companies will want to tear down the barriers that separate departments. A unified strategy for all to comply with reduces support overhead and promotes continuity throughout your organization. Establish good cyber-hygiene – Many organizations are disorganized when it comes to managing access to their digital resources. Moving to more consistent methods of managing access is advantageous for workers and administrators, alike. Lean on cooperation – One notion that has been reinforced during the pandemic is the need for cooperation between departments. Strategies in combating cybercrime and […]
Why Phishing Attacks are So Dangerous There are various factors that contribute to the risks associated with phishing attacks. One of the biggest contributors: the very low barrier to entry that a phishing scam requires of the person conducting it. Picture a hacker for a moment. What do you see? If you’re anything like the average user, you mind jumps to the imagery that pop culture has cultivated. A dark room, awash in a pale blue-white glow from an array of monitors, with someone hunched over a keyboard, fingers elegantly typing with the confidence of a concert pianist. While this picture has long been accepted by audiences as the way that a hacker looks, it is a fabrication. A lot of real-life hacking has pivoted to rely on psychology more than computer sciences and programming. Instead of manipulating code, a hacker focuses on manipulating the user. Why pick a lock if you can fool someone into handing over their keys? Unfortunately, phishing attacks are as effective as they are simple. Most users just don’t know what to look for to tell a legitimate email or website from a fraudulent one. Most aren’t even anticipating that they’ll be targeted at all. As a result, the scenario plays out like this: a hacker sends out an email that looks as though it is from a popular bank. To the untrained eye, it seems to be legitimate, and it may have even fooled the filters the user has set up to organize their emails. This is precisely how phishing attacks work—by getting the user to believe that the email is legitimate and having them play right into the attacker’s hands as a result. Whether the phishing email links to a malicious website or carries a malicious attachment, they are not to be taken lightly. How to Spot a Phishing Attempt While we aren’t trying to inspire paranoia, any email you receive could be a phishing email, which means you need to consider each one you receive. Make sure you follow the next few steps to prevent yourself from being taken advantage of. Check the tone. Is the email you’ve received trying to elicit an extreme emotion from you? Is it blatantly urgent, asking information about an account of yours without any reason to, or simply making a truly unbelievable offer? Attackers will often shape their phishing messages to instigate an emotional response. Stay rational. Check any links before clicking. It is startling how much trust people will put in a link. Hackers have numerous ways to hide the actual destination of a link, many of which indicate that the link is faked… although you need to know what to look for. Let’s consider PayPal for a moment. A legitimate PayPal link would direct to paypal-dot-com. However, if you were to add something—anything—between “paypal” and “dot-com”, the link would obviously go somewhere else. There are various other rules to keep in mind, too. For instance, the “dot-com” in the domain should be the last dot-anything and should be immediately followed by a forward slash (/). Here’s a brief list of safe examples, and some unsafe and suspicious examples: paypal.com – Safe paypal.com/activatecard – Safe business.paypal.com – Safe business.paypal.com/retail – Safe paypal.com.activatecard.net – Suspicious! (See the dot immediately after PayPal’s domain name?) paypal.com.activatecard.net/secure – Suspicious! […]