Security In The Cloud – Achilles Heel or Added Benefit?

Visit us at our new home to see this post!

Security In The Cloud – Achilles Heel or Added Benefit?

Call us (949) 243-7498

www.clouditoc.us

January tech news + tips from On-Site Technical Solutions, Inc.

Monthly tech news + tips from On-Site Technical Solutions, Inc.

Is it Time for Your business to Go “BYOD”? What are the advantages and disadvantages of “bring your own device” policies? Continue reading » Email Like Bond How to avoid a “spyfall” when emailing. Continue reading » How to Safely Use the Reply (to) All Button Every day we get bombarded with email messages we don’t want. The problem? These unwanted messages make it harder to see the important ones that we do want. We’re quick to point fingers at anonymous spammers selling fake Rolexes and male enhancement drugs, but maybe the problem is closer to home ... Is the 'Reply All’ button the major culprit behind our overflowing inboxes? In other words, is spam mostly a problem of our own making? And to ask a related question: How much humiliation could we spare ourselves if we got smarter about using—or not using—the reply all button? Lost productivity According to data cited in a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, at least 15 percent of a typical office worker’s day is spent on email, and 5 percent of emails received are replies to all. While that might sound like a small percentage, think about those stats over time ... What you have is “death by a thousand cuts.” Businessweek reports that the misuse of the reply-all button has some companies considering an outright ban on its use, and a handful of businesses have gone as far as to use in-house programmers to remove the button from employees’ view. Mistakes were made ... The reply all button is simply an inanimate thing, of course, which means it’s not something we can truly blame. The question is how we (as users) use and abuse this button ... it’s a question of etiquette. But sometimes it’s just simple human error—perhaps compounded by bad design: the Reply All button is just a few short pixels away from the Reply button. Everyone makes mistakes, right? Even those of us who should know better! Last fall, a student from NYU (who was studying computer science, of all things) accidentally replied to all 40,000 of his classmates—to their extreme annoyance. The event was soon dubbed the “Reply All-pocalype.” Fight back This isn’t a newly diagnosed problem. Back in 2009, Sperry Software developed an Outlook add-on that issued a pop-up warning every time a user clicked the reply all button, making it less likely to accidentally share, say, a delicate HR matter or a snarky comment about a colleague with the entire company. Since then, most major email providers have begun to take the reply-all problem seriously. Microsoft introduced its own plug-in called NoReplyAll. And Google, whose Gmail is the most widely used free email service, rolled out a “Mute” button to give weary users an escape from endless email gabfests. Despite these advances, it’s still up to us, as users, to exercise good judgement and do our part to reduce internal workplace spam. It’s our policy that you should have a really good reason every time you decide to respond to a mass mailer. What’s your policy? Just hit reply and let us know! Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek:http://kbit.co/reply-all-spam Gmail for Newbies: A Quick Guide Continue reading » Must-Have Tech for Emergencies Continue reading » Cool Apps for Your New iPad Continue reading »

Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Follow us online below. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

 

Technorati Tags

Cloud IT
iPad apps
emergencies
Gmail

reply all

email

BYOD

October tech news and tips from On-Site Technical Solutions

It's October already! Are you receiving our free email newsletters?  Below is our October monthly tech news and tips edition. If you'd like to sign up, send an email to info@on-siteoc.com with the subject "newsletter." 

Monthly tech news + tips from On-Site Technical Solutions, Inc.

Turn on Google’s 2-Factor Authentication ASAP! It’s the best way to protect yourself from hackers and other mischief-makers. Continue reading » Beyond Bombs: The Military's Cool New Tech  What’s cooking at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)? Continue reading » Gaining Control of Your Email is Simpler Than You Think How many email messages clutter your inbox? Do you have hundreds, maybe thousands, of email messages stored in your inbox? Don't feel bad. You're far from alone. Most of us receive a steady stream of email messages each day. We open and respond to the most important of these. However, we often leave the less pressing email messages for a latter day. That latter day might never come. That's the problem. Fortunately, Rene Shimada Siegel, writing for Inc. magazine, tackles this problem in a recent feature. She provides tips for people struggling to gain control of their email messages. Follow some of Siegel's better tips, and your cluttered inbox might soon be a thing of the past. Don't be afraid of the “Delete” button Siegel writes that the biggest factor leading to cluttered inboxes is our growing resistance to delete old messages. We hang onto email messages for months, even if we haven't actually looked at these particular messages for just as long. It's long hoarding boxes after you move to a new home. If you haven't opened a box for a year, you probably don't need what's inside. Take the same approach with your email messages. Go on a deleting purge every few weeks. Get rid of those email messages that you haven't looked at for weeks or months. You'll feel better after you do. News aggregators are your friend How much of the clutter in your inbox is made up of newsletters and news digests? Probably a lot. Fortunately, you can read most of these through news aggregators. Siegel recommends such aggregators as Google Reader and Flipboard. Once you start accessing these newsletters and digests through aggregators, you can take steps to make sure that these same digests aren't also sent to your email inbox. Doing so will greatly reduce the clutter in your inbox. Mobile cutting works Think of how much time you spend every day waiting for a colleague to show up at lunch, sitting in waiting rooms or sitting on public transportation. Why not take this time to go on an inbox-deletion spree with your iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices? Those minutes that you spend waiting for something else to happen can add up during a day. If you spend them using your mobile device to delete old messages, you'll take a big step toward un-cluttering that clogged inbox. Of course, some people don't mind having a cluttered inbox, but if you're one of those consumers who can't stand it when their inboxes crack the thousand-message mark, take action today: There's no reason to be plagued by a cluttered inbox. Read more at Inc. magazine. Staying Focused While Browsing the Web Continue reading » Designing the Future of IT Continue reading » Getting The Most Out Of Windows 8 Continue reading »

Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Follow us online below. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

 

Technorati Tags

Cloud IT
2 step verification
Security
DARPA
Windows 8
Email

Cloud Computing and Disaster Recovery by Google

Google has a blog post that explains why the Cloud can be a much more cost-effective way for business to manage IT resources. The focus of their blog post is disaster recovery, but the discussion also applies to the IT infrastructure and support needed to run any business.

By using Cloud applications businesses can not only save money on overall IT expenditures but can allocate the money spent on IT to ensure that technology is being leveraged to make the business as productive and efficient as possible. The savings on hardware and staffing to support the local hardware and applications can be significant for any organization as a percentage of sales.

For smaller businesses the Cloud also makes technology available that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive, making them more competitive and able to appear as much larger organizations. Google calls this the democratization of technology. They end their post by saying:

One of the most compelling advantages of cloud computing is its power to democratize technology. Whether it's a 25GB email inbox, Video for business, synchronous replication, or one of countless other advanced services, Google Apps gives companies of all sizes access to technology that until recently was available to only the largest enterprises. And it's available at a dramatically lower cost than the on-premises alternatives, without the usual hassles of upgrading, patching and maintaining the software.

Email is the easiest and most logical application for most businesses to migrate to the Cloud. Many strategic applications are not yet available in the Cloud or do not have the same functionality available.

Email, on the other hand, can be run completely from the Cloud either without changing the end user experience or adding functionality to it. Almost all of On-Site Technical Solutions customers now have their mail in the Cloud.

In the current IT landscape, the smaller the business the more likely it should be running completely in the Cloud. Businesses that only need email, accounting and CRM have applications available in the Cloud that are at least as functional and less expensive overall than their local counterparts.

Here is a link to the Google Enterprise Blog post:

Disaster Recovery by Google

Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. We can also help you with your mobile computing. You should follow us on Twitter here. Call or text me at 949-212-2168.



Technorati Tags

On-Site Technical Solutions
Cloud Computing
Google
Google Apps
email
disaster recovery

10 Things You Should Never Write in an E-Mail or Instant Message

Reams (terabytes?) have been written about Email etiquette. Heres more input from CIO These may seem pretty obvious, but I'll bet you've seen at least a couple of them your inbox.

10 Things You Should Never Write in an E-Mail or Instant Message

Technorati Tags

email etiquette
email
CIO.com