Ferrum Technology Services Blog

As headlines shout about Hurricane Florence approaching the East Coast later this week, with Helene and Isaac also stirring in the Atlantic Ocean, it seems as good a time as any to discuss preparing your business for hurricane season; and, really any adverse weather effects that could negatively influence your business. Preparing your business for events like these is key to its survival, making it crucial that you know what your responsibilities are when awaiting a potentially devastating event such as a hurricane.

Regardless of the policies your company sets, your employees are going to have their mobile devices on them; and, depending on their circumstances, they may be tempted to use them to further their work processes. While this may have been cause for concern at one point, there are now methods, collectively known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), that allow you to leverage these tendencies.

Physical data backup can be a key part of data backup and disaster recovery. Even if you utilize the cloud for your business continuity solution, there can be no discrediting the importance of having physical data backup. A simple physical data backup can be effective under the right circumstances.

Spring is traditionally a time of rebirth and renewal, which has inspired the tradition of spring cleaning - starting fresh and organized after long months of darkness and cold. While the home is the traditional target of spring cleaning, people spend enough time at the office to make some cleaning worth it. In this blog, we’ll go over the benefits of a clean office, as well as how to achieve one.

Most businesses utilize the Internet in some fashion, and a slow connection can be a major annoyance and inconvenience. Thankfully, there are several ways that you can improve or troubleshoot your connection in the event that it’s suffering. Here are some of the ways you can make sure your Internet connection remains as consistent as possible.

Have you ever waited far too long for your Windows workstation to boot up? Chances are that you’ve seen first-hand how much time can be wasted during this process. If you want to save some time, you can review our three tips to help you speed up your Windows 10 computer’s boot time.

Here’s the thing about IT security: it requires a little more than a decent firewall and a reasonably-strong password. We talk a lot about how to ensure that your business’ network stays a top priority, and the best way to do that is to implement what we call a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. An enterprise security system like a UTM can provide a considerable improvement for the way you protect your organization, but even something as simple as a little bit of user error could bypass these protocols.

Losing a smartphone can be a problem for anyone. For the modern business, it can really cause issues. Mobile devices are notorious for housing a lot of personal information, which makes them extraordinarily dangerous to lose track of. How much is at stake with mobile devices going missing; and, what kind of information is stored on these devices that makes them so dangerous to misplace?

January 28th marks Data Privacy Day, a day intended to raise awareness of the importance of data privacy and educate users and business owners of its benefits. Spearheaded by the National Cyber Security Alliance, there are plenty of lessons the NCSA has to share with businesses as this day puts their, and their clients’, privacy in the spotlight.

The term “best practice” has been used by businesses for years to describe the optimal way of performing a particular task. However, before fully adopting them into business operations, it is important for these practices to be examined and deemed to be beneficial to an individual company’s circumstances. If they are not, a company risks much by adopting a misplaced best practice.

You might think you know all of the tricks that a mouse is capable of, but you would be wrong. Here are some of the niftiest uses possible for your mouse.

Have you considered the process in which your organization takes data backups and restores them following an emergency? The value of data backup and fast recovery can’t be ignored. Unless you take proper precautions, you could potentially face a situation that threatens the very existence of your business.

Servers are responsible for the distribution and storage of your business’s data infrastructure, as well as the deployment of important applications and data. However, if your organization is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of these server units, you’ll be tasked with having the knowledge of how to keep them in optimal shape. We’ll discuss some of the ways you can better take care of your server units, as well as the optimal solution: server hosting.

Procuring equipment is a necessary part of managing any business, but this is often easier said than done. Your organization works with multiple vendors, which could be both confusing and time-consuming. How does your business manage its vendors, and is there a way to make this easier and more efficient?

Ransomware remains a very real threat, and is arguably only getting worse. Attacks are now able to come more frequently, and there are opportunities for even relative amateurs to level an attack against some unfortunate victim. However, this is not to say that there is nothing you can do to keep your business from becoming another cautionary tale.

You might spend a significant amount of time thinking about your business’s security practices, but the same can’t be said for your organization’s employees. Unless you give them a reason to care about security, they likely won’t. The resulting apathy could eventually become serious problems that could hinder operations in the long run, or worse, expose your business to threats that could put your employees and your clients in danger.

Having consistent access to data is what drives business. If you can’t access mission-critical data, then you experience what’s called downtime, which drives profits into the ground. Therefore, you need to keep your data safe, especially if you want your company’s future to be prosperous. Therefore, you need data backup and disaster recovery.

When you get an email from a big name brand or a trusted vendor, how often do you question the authenticity of it? Thanks to threats like email spoofing, you can’t afford to be as trusting of others as you might like. When all it takes is clicking the wrong link or opening the wrong attachment to set something terrible in motion, you need to be very cautious.

Many of those who are responsible for a business could tell you that managing it isn’t an easy task--and when IT is involved, it can very quickly get a lot more complicated. Of course, those that say that are more than likely using an antiquated, break-fix approach. Those who utilize managed IT services, however, will likely have a much different opinion.

Did you know? Today is National Clean Out Your Computer Day! As technology buffs ourselves, we want to spread the word about this annual opportunity to clean out the technology that your business uses on a daily basis. Here are five great ways to make sure that your computers are being properly maintained.