SCW Blog

Have you found that your smartphone battery doesn’t last as long as it should? If you’re a business owner who uses your mobile device very frequently, you might notice a rather significant change in the quality of your device’s charge over time. How can you make sure that this decrease in power doesn’t create problems for your productivity?

Does your skin crawl with the thought of what would happen if you lose track of your smartphone? These days, a lot of users keep a plethora of personal information on their mobile devices, which makes a loss all the more dangerous for them. How can you make sure that your mobile device doesn’t accidentally become a treasure trove of information for any hackers or thieves who might try to steal it?

Surprisingly enough, there are a lot of benefits to letting your employees work remotely. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still benefit from it--you just need to put a little more care into planning for it. Your business’s infrastructure must be set up to allow for remote capabilities without being influenced by the potential risks.

When it comes to hacking and cybercrime, it can literally be a few seconds that will ruin your business. One single chink in your network’s armor is all it takes for your data to be compromised. Modern SMBs need to take every opportunity to ensure they’re using best practices to help keep their network safe and secure. Here’s a look at four network security bad habits that you and your team can fix today.

Most users are aware that their browsers offer a “secure” browsing experience. Google Chrome has Incognito mode, Microsoft’s Edge browser allows you to surf the Internet “InPrivate,” and Apple’s Safari offers Private Browsing as well. The trouble is, these “secure” browsing options aren’t actually all that secure. For today’s tip, we’ll discuss ways to actually keep your Internet browsing private.

Despite what some songs say, the best things in life aren’t always free. Take, for instance, your software. If you or one of your employees find and download a “free” version of some business-critical application instead of properly purchasing a license, you risk catching the eye of the BSA.

You are going to inevitably be in the position where using public Wi-Fi is better than not using any Wi-Fi at all. The issue with this is that public Wi-Fi is considerably more dangerous to use than the secured in-house network of your office. How can you maximize the productivity of your business’ staff while on the go, without sacrificing security by allowing them to use public Wi-Fi to access important data?

Chatbots aren’t an unfamiliar technology. These artificially intelligent constructs are becoming more and more prevalent, especially with the rise of virtual assistants in recent years. Now, with an example of this technology residing in most new devices, it becomes important to consider what it could mean for businesses as this trend continues in the future.

In November of 2014, the Federal Trade Commission announced that “two massive telemarketing operations” had been temporarily shut down after collecting over $120 million by “deceptively marketing computer software and tech support services.” It wasn’t long before these companies lost significant court judgements to the FTC, but by then, the money was gone.

Email is a solution that needs to be protected, lest you expose important information to any onlookers while messages are in transit. Encryption is one of the key ways you can make sure that your messages are safe, but email hasn’t always used this method to secure messages. In fact, it wasn’t until relatively recently that encryption became a staple of the major email providers.

Writing for a specific audience isn’t always the easiest thing for a business owner. You have to anticipate a certain reading level for your target audience. The readability of a document can have far-reaching consequences. For example, what if you write a business proposal, but the prospect grows impatient when they can’t understand what’s written in it? Thankfully, there are various tools at your disposal that can help you craft the perfect document for your purpose.

When the time comes, the process of migrating your data from one server to another is a considerable commitment. In order to ensure a smooth and uneventful data migration that results in the greatest benefit to your business, it helps to dive in with a few procedures at the top of mind.

Passwords are everywhere. It seems that every account requires a password, in addition to the devices we use to access these accounts. This is a good thing, as it only helps to increase security - assuming that the password is strong. After all, a password that anyone can guess can hardly be called a password at all.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month! To prepare for this incredibly important month, you’ll want to focus your efforts on ensuring your business is protected against the myriad of online threats that can pose a danger for your business. Thankfully, you don’t have to do it alone. With our trusted IT professionals by your side, you’ll be able to take the fight to hackers and other entities that threaten your data.

There’s plenty of terminology and acronyms used in the information technology field that may be unfamiliar at first. Take, for example, NAS. For today, we’ll explore this tech term to gain a deeper understanding of it, and how it may influence your business.

Purchased by Facebook in 2014 for $22 billion dollars, WhatsApp is a cross-platform application that uses an Internet connection to unify business communications. It allows users to write messages, share files, set groups, as well as make voice and video calls without using SMS mobile data.

It’s no secret that a business relies on its data. Therefore, it only becomes more important that this data is protected, especially in light of the predictions that have been made for the rest of the year concerning ransomware. Read on for a closer examination of these predictions, and suggested actions that you can take to protect your business and its data.

Business owners have a lot on their plate. Even the smallest businesses have a lot of moving parts that need to be attended to, which all add up to a mammoth amount of stress for their owners. Perhaps most obviously, financial matters contribute greatly to this angst.

We live in an era where the term “fake news” makes up a significant portion of the headlines. The Internet makes it very easy to misinform others and spread false rumors or news, as you can do so relatively anonymously with little fear of consequence. This has become a problem on social media sites like Facebook, which recently shut down a major “troll farm” in response to continued complaints.

Remember the good old days of your office’s corded telephone solution that was ringing off the hook every minute of the day? Granted, you can only look back on the good old days when they are behind you. If you need to bring business communications into the 21st century, you should consider implementing a Voice over Internet Protocol solution.