Zinc Blog

These days, we use a lot of cloud platforms. They can enhance productivity through improving access, and they allow a business to do more with their capital. For this week’s tip, we thought we’d look at two ways the cloud can help your business excel with its newly-remote workforce.

With so many people forced to work from home, your conferencing solution is likely getting a workout. With news coming in suggesting that many of the most popular video conferencing software titles have vulnerabilities, it is important for your business to find one that is reliable and promotes security. Today, we’ll go through how to ensure that your video conferencing software is getting the security attention it needs to be an effective option for your business. 

COVID-19 has been pretty rough on the small business. Millions of businesses have either been forced to suspend or alter operations. Today, we wanted to point out that you may be distracted with a lot of things, but your business’ cybersecurity efforts need to be a priority.

It only makes sense that a managed service provider would have a blog post discussing virus removal from a workstation, but today, we wanted to talk about a different virus, one that your antivirus software won’t affect in the slightest: SARS-CoV-2, or as it is better known now, COVID-19.

The influence of COVID-19 has permeated through most aspects of daily life, from the way we live, communicate, work, and for many, the way we learn. As schools must remain closed for now, that is not to say that the learning process will necessarily be suspended for all. Many institutions already have the necessary tools in place to continue their students’ education in the form of remote learning, but for many, this is uncharted territory.

In a word, yes.

While that answer may seem insufficient for such a broad question, you truly should, and there are many reasons why. Let’s get right into how trusting your staff can bring your business and its operations some significant benefits.

According to the latest edition of Microsoft’s regular Security Intelligence Report, phishing attacks are the most prevalent cyberthreat. Considering what is currently going on in the world, this is almost assuredly still the case, which means that businesses and individuals alike need to be more aware of how to spot these attempts. To help, we’ve put together a few tips.

The rise of the remote worker was happening long before the Novel Coronavirus outbreak made it necessary. People in all manners of positions were working remotely, and succeeding in doing so. Many organizations that have embraced the remote worker have seen noteworthy rises in productivity. In fact, many organizations have seen a lot of success using predominantly remote workers. 

The typical business network will contain quite a few critical assets that need to be protected, which means that you need to seriously consider anything you add to that network. Take the wireless network that your business uses--how secure is it, and how well does it work? Well, we have a few ways that you can ensure that the answer to both these questions is “well.”

While there are plenty of ways that a business can cut costs in the long term, one very effective way that this can be accomplished is by adopting more paperless solutions and printing less. As an added bonus, these solutions are also better for the environment as a whole, as they reduce the amount of resources being expended to do business. Let’s go over a few ways that you could cut back on your business’ paper expenditures over time.

The security of your business’ digital assets is extremely important, which is why it is disheartening when we see so few organizations taking the steps they need to sufficiently protect them. We thought we would go through some practices that will help you protect these assets and start you on your way to developing a security strategy of your own. 

Ransomware has become infamous in the past few years, largely due to its involvement in a growing number of cyberattacks during this time. Of course, not all ransomware works in the same way, and recognizing the difference could prove to be useful. Therefore, we’ve taken a few moments and assembled a brief description of the four most common ransomware varieties.

A global pandemic is about one of the worst situations that humans can endure. It has an effect on every person. The CDC is recommending that everyone practice what is called ‘social distancing.’ The unfortunate result of this policy is that many businesses lose access to their onsite workforce. Provided that you are set up to allow your staff to work remotely, you can avoid losing huge swaths of productivity. Today we will discuss some of the considerations and the technology you will need to make this strategy work for you.

Tomorrow is World Backup Day, which--considering the current business climate as the coronavirus pandemic rages on--seems only too appropriate. Let’s discuss why times like these make it only too clear how critical a business continuity strategy is, especially when supported by the right backup solution.

Virtual reality was once the “next big thing.” As predictions for VR were made over the decades, it showed great promise to be a truly ground changing technology for businesses to adopt, especially for remote work. So… what happened? 

Many people know about Microsoft Word. In fact, it has become effectively synonymous with word processing nowadays. However, fewer likely know about the templates that Microsoft Word offers, and how they can be customized to your particular needs and preferences. This week, our tip is committed to fixing that.

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly changed the way we do things in a very short period of time. Unfortunately, in times of absolute crisis and anxiety, cybercriminals use it as camouflage to steal data and infiltrate normally-secure networks. Let’s take a look at some of the ways hackers are able to exploit your employees and how you can work to protect your business. 

Whether your motives are financial, or you are actively trying to be more environmentally conscious in your business, there are plenty of ways to encourage ‘green’ behaviors in the workplace. We’ve taken the liberty of assembling a few of them for your consideration:

Data recovery is more a strategy than a solution. You first need to keep a regular backup to ensure that you aren’t losing large chunks of productivity. Then, you need to have a strategy to efficiently recover data if it is corrupted, lost, or stolen. Today, we’ll talk a little bit about some situations that businesses run into that would spark data recovery.

Big data, or massive data sets that can be used to make inferences and reveal patterns, has become an increasingly important part of modern business and can be leveraged in many different ways. There are a few different options for storing this data available, which the use case for the data will dictate. Here, we’ll evaluate whether a “data lake” or a “data warehouse” would better suit your needs.