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SCW has been serving the Spokane Valley area since 1997, providing IT Support such as helpdesk support, computer support, and technical consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Sam is a network engineer with a broad range of experience spanning more than 35 years. He wrote is first piece of code in 1979 and has been involved with the industry ever since. For the last 20 years, he has worked for SCW Consulting where he has embraced his passion for network technology and security.

You Need to Actively Support Your Employees

You Need to Actively Support Your Employees

We don’t believe for one second that employees want to do the wrong thing; after all, they work for you for a reason, that reason being they want to do the job you hired them to do. Unfortunately, technology can often make it so that this process becomes difficult. If you don’t invest time and effort into ensuring that your team’s technology and resources are available when they need them most, you risk them choosing unproductive or even unsecured work methods.

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Going Paperless Offers Tons of Value for Small Businesses

Going Paperless Offers Tons of Value for Small Businesses

Paper documents have always been a major part of doing business, whether it’s signing contracts between you and your clients or employee paperwork from when you make new hires. The thing with paper documents, however, is that they can take up a ton of space in filing cabinets, and depending on your habits, they can quickly become unorganized.

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Can Your Business Make Use of a Gamers’ Communications Platform? Maybe, Maybe Not

Can Your Business Make Use of a Gamers’ Communications Platform? Maybe, Maybe Not

Discord is not considered a business-grade solution, but it does have some merits in terms of communications and collaboration. Let’s discuss some of the ways that this platform can be used to help your business. After all, there is a reason why it’s so beloved with its user base, so maybe you will find some value in it.

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Companies Can Save Time and Money with Remote Maintenance

Companies Can Save Time and Money with Remote Maintenance

It comes as no surprise that IT maintenance and management is a pain point for small businesses. Perhaps they don’t have the resources to perform in-house maintenance because they lack the funds to hire trained technicians, a practice which leads them to rely on existing resources to make it happen. Unfortunately, this leads to inconsistent maintenance at best, a practice that can be both dangerous and wasteful in the long term. We’re here to tell you that not only is proactive maintenance important, but that remote maintenance is the best way to make it happen.

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VoIP Can be a Game Changer for Business Communications

VoIP Can be a Game Changer for Business Communications

Businesses have long used telephony solutions of some sort, but the traditional landline is an archaic piece of technology in the modern office. You can take your organization to the next level with a more dynamic and flexible solution, one that has the same features without all of the headaches associated with traditional telephone systems. A Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution can completely change your communications for the better.

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Keyboard Shortcuts to Help You Excel in Microsoft Excel

Keyboard Shortcuts to Help You Excel in Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a great tool to organize data into spreadsheets, but it’s kind of a tricky beast to master. As is the case with most software programs, you can add an extra level of mastery to your skillset by having a full understanding of keyboard shortcuts. We’ve listed some of the most common shortcuts that you might use during your day-to-day duties in Microsoft Excel.

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LinkedIn Users Exposed on Hacker Forums

LinkedIn Users Exposed on Hacker Forums

With every new day comes a new data breach that exposes the personal data of countless people. The most recent in this troubling trend is the LinkedIn data breach, an event that exposed 700 million profiles and led them to be put on sale on a hackers forum. LinkedIn denies the data breach, but how much truth is in this statement? Let’s take a closer look.

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Use This Built-In Tool to Record Screenshots, Audio, and Video of Your Windows 10 Screen

Use This Built-In Tool to Record Screenshots, Audio, and Video of Your Windows 10 Screen

If you have ever had to write up a report or process for a particular task, you know that images can go a long way toward helping people understand what exactly needs to be done. For Windows 10 users, there is a built-in tool that you can utilize to take screenshots, record video, and even record audio alongside all of this: the Xbox Game Bar.

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Strengths-Based Development Can Take Your Business to New Heights

Strengths-Based Development Can Take Your Business to New Heights

Imagine that you are a kid again and you get low marks on a test in school. The natural response from your parents and teachers is that you need to double down on studying for that subject, as it is clear that you struggle with it. The same can be said for any professional shortcomings, such as public speaking, interpersonal communication, and other performance-based skills. But what if we flipped this concept on its head and focused not on what our deficits are, but instead where our strengths lie?

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Unpacking the True Value of Managed IT Services

Unpacking the True Value of Managed IT Services

Small businesses are often in a precarious position with technology management, struggling with budgeting and acquisition of new technology as well as the difficulties that come with hiring top talent. Thankfully, they have an ace up their sleeves that allows them to stay competitive: managed IT services. With a great managed service provider helming their technology strategies, small business owners have a lot less to worry about than they might otherwise… at least in terms of their technology, anyway.

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Don’t Let Data Backup Concerns Hold Your Business Back

Don’t Let Data Backup Concerns Hold Your Business Back

Your business is not unique in the sense that it stores and transmits data during its day-to-day routines. Whether it’s financial information for your clients or employee records, it is more than likely that your business holds some kind of critical data that your operations rely on throughout the workday. Would your operations be able to recover from a sudden loss of data?

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Zero-Day Vulnerability Causes Major Problems for IT Providers

Zero-Day Vulnerability Causes Major Problems for IT Providers

A new ransomware attack has surfaced, this time mostly targeting IT companies and their clients. The attack is specifically targeting the Kaseya platform. Kaseya is management software that many IT companies use to remotely manage and support technology. The attack in question attacked Kaseya’s supply chain through a vulnerability in its VSA software; this attack is notable because of how it targeted the supply chain, not only striking at the vendor’s clients—notably IT companies—but also their customers. Basically, this attack had a trickle-down effect that is causing widespread chaos for a massive number of businesses.

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Use These 5 Steps to Implement New Technology for Your Business

Use These 5 Steps to Implement New Technology for Your Business

Implementing new technology into your IT infrastructure is not something that can be done without serious consideration. If you skip the planning process, the last thing you should expect is for things to work out in your favor. Start by weighing your organization’s specific needs, then consider all of the ways that those needs can be met. Today we are going to discuss how you can make all of this happen in the easiest way possible.

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Turns Out Paying Ransomware Hackers Is a Bad Idea After All

Turns Out Paying Ransomware Hackers Is a Bad Idea After All

Ransomware has taken over the security industry, as we are sure you have seen from the endless headlines associated with it. All business owners must remain cognizant of the dangers that ransomware represents. A new study has found that organizations infected by ransomware that wind up paying the ransom are not necessarily better off--in fact, paying the ransom could have disastrous consequences.

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3 Challenges (and Solutions) Posed by Remote Work

3 Challenges (and Solutions) Posed by Remote Work

For the past year, remote work has been basically the only option for some businesses. If the pandemic has proven anything, it is that all of our preconceived notions of remote work being impossible for certain industries and sectors are simply not true. Most businesses can leverage remote work in some capacity, so in a post-COVID world, it is your responsibility as a business owner to act on the many benefits that remote work can pose for organizations like yours.

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What a Global Internet Outage Tells About the Cloud and Your Business

What a Global Internet Outage Tells About the Cloud and Your Business

The week of June 14th, 2021 saw many applications and websites suffer from outages. This, consequently, created considerable problems for many organizations that used these services. Businesses suffered from continuity issues, but perhaps the biggest takeaway is just how vulnerable the Internet really is to these kinds of issues. What happened, exactly?

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McDonald’s Data Breach Is the Latest In a Disturbing Cyberattack Trend

McDonald’s Data Breach Is the Latest In a Disturbing Cyberattack Trend

Major cyberattacks seem a dime a dozen these days, especially with businesses that might not seem like possible targets. For example, McDonald’s restaurants recently suffered a data breach. Let’s take a look at the situation, how it played out, and what we can learn from it.

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How to Get Control of Your Inbox

How to Get Control of Your Inbox

As you read this sentence, think about the current state of your email inbox. Is it clean and crisp with only a handful of new emails on a daily basis, or is it an entangled mess filled with hundreds (or even thousands) of unread and often unimportant emails? If it’s the latter, you’re in luck; we’ve got some tips to help you finally get a grip on your email inbox.

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Phishing Attacks in 2021 Trend Toward the COVID-19 Pandemic

Phishing Attacks in 2021 Trend Toward the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hackers have made some nefarious choices over the past several months, many of which involve using the COVID-19 pandemic to spread their influence and steal data through the use of phishing attacks. Let’s explore how these cybercriminals have leveraged a global disaster to their benefit and some ways that you can keep your business secure.

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Privacy Engineering Holds the Key to Future Data Privacy Decisions

Privacy Engineering Holds the Key to Future Data Privacy Decisions

Data privacy is central to most conversations in the business environment, and in a time when ransomware and hacks of all kinds are constantly receiving media presence, it’s no surprise that it is sensationalized to a certain extent. That said, it’s critical for businesses to understand what needs to be done to future-proof their data privacy infrastructures.

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