While this article is a guide for installation and reinstallation of Office 365 in general, it is meant to make it simpler for those of you who may have previously downloaded Office and needed to reset your workstation. This guide helps walk you through from downloading the package installer, to properly inputting keys and credentials in, so that your applications are up and ready to go when you need to have the software back on your machine. Hopefully this article makes the reboot experience that much easier, courtesy of Microsoft. Click to read more. […]
This article, courtesy of Tom's Hardware, shows that sometimes even the drivers we largely ignore day-to-day as part of renewing security measures go, can sometimes pose a problem. This particular issue is focused on a vulnerability caused by the drivers in systems with particular nvidia graphics cards, allowing for major hacks and security breaches. Always make sure that just as with your Norton or other security protocols, that you keep your graphics and other device drivers up to date as part of your good security hygiene habits. Click to read more if this applies. […]
This guide from Microsoft helps to explain many of the questions that clients have in regards to making sure that their data is secure when accessing Office 365 in any environment, whether it's after-hours at home on an iPhone, or a secured business network at the office on your workstation. Listed are various methods in which to make sure that the person logging in is present, as in multi-factor authentication, as well as many tips in presenting a secure methodology for all your employees and workers to practice when using company information through the 365 portal. Click to read more below. […]
This article is a step-by-step guide on how to reset your workstation if you have forgotten your password. Outlined is how to do so by logging into windows using your email address, however if you have forgotten entirely your Microsoft credentials and reset using this trick, all data on the machine will be lost, so make sure to exhaust all potential password resets and work-around options before logging in using this method if you don't have an active backup of your important system and data files. Click below to read more on this article, provided by Acer. […]
This article is a good guide on how to manually configure options for certain folder and file upload settings in Microsoft OneDrive. OneDrive is an excellent option offered as one of the many tools in Office365 that can help put a company's database on the internet and in your employee's hands. The key to using OneDrive is knowing how to upload files and synchronize across all your business workstations, employee cellular phones, tablets, etc., as well as what to allow access to, since anyone with the login credentials can see and potentially modify those files. This article aims to make this task that much easier for you and your business. Click below to read more. […]
This article, courtesy of Forbes Inc., is an example of how the cybersecurity world is constantly evolving, and not always in a way that supports your business. It's very important to make sure that virus definitions are up to date, and that day-to-day common sense is being used when clicking those links in emails you're not entirely sure of where they came from or what they contain. Make sure to keep your business protected, have managed endpoint security, revolving and complex passcodes, two-factor authentication, etc. If you have any indication that something is going wrong with your machine and you are within a company network, you could be putting the business at risk. Click to read more and, as always, we here at Shur-Net Solutions aim to provide all the services and information necessary to keep threats like this from being a problem in your company. […]
As written in the earlier post, there are multiple methods to utilize when sharing your calendar with other people. Within the workplace, having the ability to share calendars in Outlook and editing events/appointments could be crucial for you and your business in sharing vital information. This is another guide, courtesy of Microsoft support, that will help you set the correct permissions and user settings in Outlook to get everyone on the same page. Making sure that the settings allow those you need to view, and those you need able to edit information is important to keep in mind when setting the permission depth. Click below to read more on this tutorial. […]
This article, courtesy of Microsoft, is a step-by-step guide on how to get items scheduled in multiple calendars/Outlook calendar accounts, and have them seamlessly put together in single-view. When working across multiple platforms and accounts, duplicate calendars can make scheduling and syncing difficult to consolidate, and this article will hopefully take the headache away if you are currently experiencing this issue. Permissions on sharing items in Outlook are another matter, which I will post on soon. Click on the link to read more.. […]
Windows continuously updates itself, and in the process, sometimes causes conflicts with hardware and driver settings. Most recently, there was an update that caused many USB devices to stop working abruptly, leading many to frustration. It's not uncommon for legacy (older) technologies to conflict with newer software, although in the business world, there is simply no time to have anything go wrong. Hopefully this helps avoid the issue if you haven't run into it, and if you have then this is a good find for you. Microsoft has released an official article, which I have put in the "continue reading" link below, which outlines how to fix this issue. […]
This article, courtesy of CNET, is a classic example of how using good judgement in everyday-clicking of links, entering phone information into untrustworthy sites, and even responding to unknown text-senders can put your phone number and other personal information at risk. In the business world, and in our daily lives, we often see an exchange of information between personal and business platforms. We call clients and coworkers from our personal lines when we're not at the office, we follow-up on emails on Exchange accounts on our phones, etc., and this is a harsh reminder that making sure you keep healthy web and phone-usage habits can be critical to the security of your business and client protection. It's always important to make sure you have managed endpoint security on all devices, and proper protocols in place for use of personal devices for business outside the office. Click to read more on this article. […]
It is important to know that even on the highest level, as with corporations like Microsoft and Apple, use of their products and third-party software always comes with user agreements, many of which give you the option to share information that may seem innocuous, but if you read the fine-print, could include data as personal as uploading contacts and calendar information. The main takeaway from this article is to show you that caution is necessary when using any software, even from the corporations that we rely on for everyday use of our computers and smartphones. Just as any company is at risk of of a security breach, we can make sure to the best of our ability to limit how much information we put out there to be, unintentionally, misused by those who want to exploit our company data. Keeping your company and your clients safe are of the utmost priority. Make sure that whether it's agreeing to diagnostic data on your iPhone, use of Facebook or Instagram at work, or signing into your Microsoft Office 365 account, that you are using proper judgement in where you go on your workstation, and what you agree to. As always, make sure you have proper security measures implemented in the workplace, and a good place to start would be to have managed endpoint security, encrypted regular backups of all systems, and strong cloud security. We here at Shur-Net know the value of your business, and the cost associated with having data breaches. Click to read more on this article from ZDNet. […]
This article, courtesy of Forbes Inc., caught my attention while looking through articles to help everyday people understand the value of security implementation in their business. Traditionally, a lot of the budgeting in start-up costs and overhead for business has not included dedicated IT teams or support companies, this is however a new digital era in which the backbone of your business is comprised of workstations, routers, servers, and drives that are all inter-connected, both from within and outside to the world-wide web. IT technology has changed the way in which we produce, and in most ways, for the better. Sharing emails, uploading a secure business cloud server for large files, and proprietary email and internet domains have become the standard for any small, medium, or enterprise-scale company. With these advances, however, have come all the risks of breaches and the issues with setting up the right hardware to begin with to best propel your productivity to new heights. Hopefully this article will show you how crucial it is to not think of IT management as a superfluous cost, but a cost that is as essential to success as essential as it is to make sure your company has great people behind it. Shur-Net Solutions is a company dedicated to setting up, maintaining, and continuously upgrading and securing your business IT needs, and most budgets do not allow for a dedicated IT team within the company. Let us take the place of having an IT department. We offer all the benefits without the prohibitive costs associated with having an on-staff department to let your business reach it's full potential, all while staying within your overhead budget, and maximizing profits and productivity. […]
This guide helps walk you through the steps necessary to set up new email accounts with Outlook through Office 365, manually, on your workstation. For home use, signing into your Gmail or Yahoo account through the application is as easy as entering a user-name and password, but with protected business proprietary email accounts, setting up proxies and encryption settings can be, in short, tedious and confusing. We here, at Shur-Net Solutions, hope you find this article helpful in setting up your business accounts with Outlook without frustration and guesswork. Click on the link, courtesy of GoDaddy, to read more. […]
This article outlines just how tenuous our use of "secure" email applications and portals can be, and how while we depend on IT professionals to safeguard our businesses, we too from CEO to every last employee, must be aware of how potential hacks are always a risk. If one single account is breached, such as an Outlook account at work, it could leak invaluable data that could lead to breaches at the highest levels, threatening your whole business and its clientele. Make sure to have everyone in the office change email passwords regularly, from desktops to mobile apps on phones, and look to your IT administrators for more effective password combinations, and better methods of storing them, such as key-generators and password vaults. Here at Shur-Net Solutions, we always recommend having managed hosted endpoint protection to keep your business safe from what may seem like innocuous, but critical changes to how you implement security in your workplace. Protect that which matters most: your business and it's clientele, do not let these password breaches threaten what you've built for the sake of ease of use, change those passwords and security implementation habits as soon as possible. Click to read more on these very real threats that are currently circulating the web. […]
Sometimes the greatest vulnerabilities are in how we operate at our place of business, day-to-day. Our habits may be to mix checking various social media sites for the latest news feed on Facebook while taking a break at work, or see how many "likes" you just received on that selfie you took last night while out with your friends, but let this article be of caution to you: do not mix business with pleasure. While in the workplace, security doesn't just rely on safe browsing email, updating virus protection, checking your firewall settings, etc. It also includes not exposing yourself to the web in ways that can be easy and preventable, yet potentially devastating if overlooked. This article is just one of thousands currently circulating that shows how easily passwords and personal information, and yes, exposing the same passwords one would use for business workstation log-in credentials and Outlook, by simply accessing social media while at work. There are already enough threats that we need to protect our businesses from, make sure that you and all of your employees are safe-guarding your livelihoods by keeping personal use of the web, and checking those Facebook news feeds, at home and not at work. […]
This article is a good read for anyone who logs into Office 365 or mobile Outlook email platforms for their business needs. While it identifies several ways in which cloud-email user's security can be put at risk, the primary focus of this post is to make sure that one takes necessary precautions when accessing company email at all times: logging in from a secured device (be it from Microsoft Edge on your PC, or your mobile application on your android/iPhone), logging out every time your done using the service, turning off wifi if stepping away from your computer for long periods of time, and always making sure that your security software is up to date and running actively in the background to scan for all potential threats such as malicious code in email attachments and secure browsing. If in doubt, contact your administrator to make sure that you're not putting yourself, or your company, at risk. I hope this article sheds light on how real this threat is and that this advice helps you implement proper security precautions when it comes to safe cloud-based email usage. Click below to read more. […]
While this article highlights the vulnerabilities of cloud computing in particular with google cloud services and exploitation of DNS (Domain Name System) settings on home routers, this is a good read for anyone conducting business away from the office. Domain name system settings are, in essence, the naming of an end user to identify with information on the web, and in the case of operating on the web from a personal home router, it's creating a set of vulnerabilities on the server that are often ambushed if you don't have reliable oversight of DNS settings. Never change these on your own, and if you do, take the utmost caution and contact your IT administrator at work, or an IT expert familiar with your business's various cloud computing needs and services to have them adjusted accordingly. Having someone on your side to manage all devices and computers used within your IT infrastructure is of great benefit when it comes to closing the gap in these seemingly nuanced, and (unfortunately), easily accessible settings that anyone can tinker with. Make sure to have these settings reviewed for all employees and yourself within a corporation, as the consequences could be potentially grave in nature for anyone involved. Stay safe while staying productive and click to read more on this topic! […]
This article is a testament to safe browsing and email opening. Especially during tax season, more fake emails and links are showing up in our inboxes and during internet browsing, attempting to gain log-in credentials to sites such as Paychex, other payroll services, and even fake IRS links. It's important to make sure you are always using not just good judgement in secure web-browsing, but also to have active, and better yet, "managed endpoint security," so that you protect yourself and those in your company from accidently releasing information that could put everyone at risk. Make sure that all emails are scanned, and keep in mind that the IRS, by the way, will never ask you for personal information by email. Make sure any attachments are sent from the certified senders, and if in doubt, don't click the links. At Shur-Net Solutions, we utilize the security software we implement with all our clients for just this reason: to keep safe during times of growing vulnerability. […]
As posted earlier in this blog, Outlook's calendar can be an incredibly useful tool to get everyone you work with on the same page when it comes to getting to an appointment, or getting tasks done. Setting up meetings and events and sharing it with others is another way of confirming that this information is shared without a hitch. Within this guide, you will see how to set appointments and meetings up not just for yourself, but how to send specific invites and receive confirmation in turn.[…]
When creating documents in Excel, we oftentimes do not think twice about assigning an author to the spreadsheet. In the business world, it's practical and useful to add "authorship" to these documents when sharing with others, especially if people within your organization are going to be editing or adding content to them. Besides having specific folders for managing shared content, assigning an author, or changing "authorship," can help you keep track of who is working on the specific project, and make your life a lot easier when it comes time to reviewing them and going back to the drawing-board with the "authorship" paper-trail. This guide helps explain how to do just that.[…]
Your business doesn't stop at 5:00pm once you leave the office. You need access to whatever comes your way on or off the clock, and we here at Shur-Net Solutions understand just that: you need to communicate regardless of being at the office, and at any time. When you're away from your workstation, you can configure your business email account to go through to your personal Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. account. In doing so, you can send and receive critical information throughout your day on your mobile device or tablet as well, if forwarded correctly. This guide from Microsoft helps make it that much easier to do so.[…]
As business users, we know how important it is to share scheduling and events with others to keep them in the loop. Missing that deadline or forgetting a meeting can throw off the entire day if your team is unaware of them being set up in the first place, or allocating a work project to one of your employees. Sharing a calendar within a business means sharing what matters, and oftentimes creating a shared calendar, or 10, can effectively limit what you need others to see so that the job gets done. After all, as in your personal life, you want to know what is happening that pertains to your business infrastructure so that it gets the attention paid to it that you need to keep business afloat. This guide helps walk you through the steps necessary to share a calendar within Office 365, with steps describing how to set parameters such as to whom and what content you want shared, in addition to editing and confirming with others for a seamless line of communication regarding your day-to-day business needs.[…]
Microsoft 365 holds undoubtedly some of the best resources for you and your business in sharing information and getting your tasks done. Email accounts are often forwarded through your company's server, both for management awareness, safety, oversight, and sending what you need throughout the day. Being able to do so with ease and dependability is essential to your work. Setting forwarding up involves certain parameters and rules, and this article will hopefully make it easier when it comes time for you to do so.[…]
This support article, courtesy of Microsoft, helps walk you through how to share files using OneDrive. Sending individual emails throughout your company to share information can become repetitive and inefficient. Oftentimes, it's impossible to share multiple files of large size if sent through the most common email servers, such as Yahoo or Gmail. Creating an accessible, and secure, cloud storage folder can help open up your business to accessing common tools, software, documents, and images that can be put into one centralized cloud location for all to see. Publishing your information on OneDrive, as with any cloud service, comes with it's own set of instructions on how to do so without opening up your information to just anyone on the web. This guide walks you through how to do just that: share your files with your team, and only your team.[…]
This article helps outline several basic, but essential, points on how to look at security from a business-defensive strategic view. Starting with knowing who is accessing your data, and how they are utilizing it, whom they share it with, etc. are all easily overlooked basics that anyone, whether an employee in a small company, a business owner, or the day-to-day home user, can take control of securing what is yours in a world where privacy has become unsettlingly scarce and easily exploited.[…]
The following article helps with an issue that many encounter when uploading a new software image to your Cisco ASA appliance, often due to having an existing software image that is corrupted and thus booting into standard operating mode become a problem. This guide gives step-by-step directions on how to bypass this issue and successfully implement a new software image by means of ROM monitor mode, and TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) remotely.[…]
This article helps guide the administrator through several methods of achieving successful enactment of utilities and command prompt implementation within Microsoft Windows. The difficulties seen in launching the command prompt with many tasks are seen when met with errors that you do not have sufficient restrictions/privileges/authentication credentials. By following this guide, and the article posted below, we hope that this will help you understand how to use elevated command prompt without headache-causing barriers to your management and end-users.[…]
As an administrator, it is sometimes difficult to know how to properly open an elevated command prompt with the access privileges necessary to enact changes to your server and/or desktop for granting tasks and utilities for deployment. In this article, we find several ways to go about accomplishing this.[…]
Are there things that business, or even consumers, can do to fend off these types of secret ransomware attacks? A lot of best practices we've personally been giving for years are still some of our best defenses. We see them continuing to be exploited because they aren't being followed. Those are things like maintaining your cache levels on your applications and your operating system. It is utilizing inbound and outbound firewalls, especially for a consumer, by utilizing a laptop. They don't have a tech department to help them.[…]
It is tempting to think that the process of securing a Windows 10 device can be reduced to a simple checklist. Install some security software, adjust a few settings, hold a training session or two, and you can move on to the next item on your to-do list.Alas, the real world is far more complicated than that...There is no software magic bullet, and your initial setup simply establishes a security baseline. After that initial configuration is complete, security requires continued vigilance and ongoing effort. Much of the work of securing a Windows 10 device happens away from the device itself. A well-planned security policy pays attention to network traffic, email accounts, authentication mechanisms, management servers, and other external connections....In a small business without dedicated IT staff, outsourcing these responsibilities to a consultant with the necessary expertise might be the best approach.[…]
Billions of hacked passwords and usernames from the last decade have come together in a convenient download for anyone who can find it on the dark web. Data breaches are a painful reality of the digital era, with billions of people's personal and confidential information at stake. That's drawn the attention of lawmakers, who are considering ways to punish multimillion-dollar companies that can't protect people's private data.Compiling data from old breaches could be a startling new trend for cybercriminals, said Emily Wilson, vice president of research at security firm Terbium Labs..[…]
If you’re selling a product, you’re now selling trust. That’s thanks to two conflicting trends. One is our increasing reliance on software across nearly every dimension of our lives. It’s for this reason that, among all Fortune 500 CEOs, a full 71% now claim they are running technology companies. The second is the inherent privacy and security vulnerabilities related to software itself. As security and privacy pioneer Willis Ware once wryly declared, “The only computer that’s completely secure is a computer that no one can use.”...To start with, trust must now be considered a key feature of every product containing software, no matter whether it is a purely digital product or a physical product containing software. In the consumer space, for example, studies have demonstrated that loss of trust can lead users to abandon a company or a product altogether. Some are even calling for a “return on trust” as a value proposition in and of itself. As a result, security and privacy concerns can no longer take a back seat in the product development lifecycle — not simply because of the value of security and privacy alone, but for their business impact as well.[…]
More than ever, the ability to manage torrents of data is critical to a company’s success. But even with the emergence of data-management functions and chief data officers (CDOs), most companies remain badly behind the curve. Cross-industry studies show that on average, less than half of an organization’s structured data is actively used in making decisions—and less than 1% of its unstructured data is analyzed or used at all. More than 70% of employees have access to data they should not, and 80% of analysts’ time is spent simply discovering and preparing data. Data breaches are common, rogue data sets propagate in silos, and companies’ data technology often isn’t up to the demands put on it.Having a CDO and a data-management function is a start, but neither can be fully effective in the absence of a coherent strategy for organizing, governing, analyzing, and deploying an organization’s information assets.[...]
