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Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Ferrum Technology Services has been serving the Elgin area since 2007, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

AI is Mobile, Can Your Business Take Advantage of It?

AI is Mobile, Can Your Business Take Advantage of It?

With AI changing the way we work forever, it was only a matter of time before it infiltrated the mobile market. Nowadays, smartphones and tablets are smarter and more powerful than ever, all through the use of AI. Let’s look at the trends in mobile AI usage and how your business can leverage it to your advantage.

Tip of the Week: Name Your Spreadsheet Cells for Quick and Easy Reference

Tip of the Week: Name Your Spreadsheet Cells for Quick and Easy Reference

Spreadsheets are handy tools for businesses, although it can become pretty easy to lose track of where and what certain data is as they grow… not to mention a pain to keep referencing back to as needed.

However, there’s an easy workaround: naming the cells of your spreadsheet.

Transform Your Employees Into Human Firewalls

Transform Your Employees Into Human Firewalls

All businesses have one key vulnerability that cybersecurity threats exploit: their employees. Your business has this vulnerability, too, even if you haven’t considered it. Just like any vulnerability, however, there is a patch, and it comes in the form of education. With an appropriate knowledge base, your team can effectively become a human firewall against any potential threat.

These Four Considerations Can Help You Choose the Right Tech for Your Business

These Four Considerations Can Help You Choose the Right Tech for Your Business

Many business owners struggle with technology that doesn’t meet their needs. We often hear from companies disappointed with their technology investments because they lack the right tools.

Choosing the right technology is vital for business success. In today’s blog, we offer four key tips to help you make informed decisions.

7 Critical Factors to Consider When Choosing IT Solutions

7 Critical Factors to Consider When Choosing IT Solutions

If your job is running a business, it’s pretty likely that making time to fully compare and understand every piece of business technology just isn’t in the cards. Even if you are pretty comfortable around computers and networking equipment, there are a lot of solutions out there, each with a big list of pros and cons. Finding exactly what you need can be challenging, time consuming, and cost you a lot of time and money if it doesn’t quite fit in with what you already have in place.

Tip of the Week: How to Share Large Files

Tip of the Week: How to Share Large Files

Collaboration is essential for modern business functionality, which often means that your team members will need to share files of all sizes. The trouble is that larger files have historically been a pain to share.

Fortunately, thanks to technology, there are now simple ways to share larger files with your team members. Let’s review them together.

How to Get Your Spreadsheets to Accurately Add Time

How to Get Your Spreadsheets to Accurately Add Time

Handling time calculations in a spreadsheet can often feel frustrating—especially when you’re just trying to add them up. Luckily, both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets have built-in functions specifically designed for this purpose, making the process more manageable.

Here’s a quick guide to help you get started, no matter which spreadsheet program you use.

Three Ways SMBs Combat Mobile Malware

Three Ways SMBs Combat Mobile Malware

Mobile malware might not have a lot of attention on it, but it can be a significant problem for organizations that rely on smartphones. This goes double for small businesses that typically don’t have the large teams and big budgets for their mobile strategies that include devices, data and phone plans, and security controls. Today, we’ll look at mobile malware and how an organization with a limited budget can keep it from impacting its business.

You Should Be Aware of These Two Productivity Pitfalls

You Should Be Aware of These Two Productivity Pitfalls

Technology has empowered us to achieve more than ever, but with that progress comes increased expectations for everyone. This means greater productivity, and the pressure to perform can be relentless at times, making it crucial to find efficient ways to manage our tasks. Unfortunately, there is a natural limit to how much we can accomplish, and certain challenges can push us to that limit faster. Today, we want to explore two of the most common productivity pitfalls.

Cybersecurity Solutions for Remote and Hybrid Work

Cybersecurity Solutions for Remote and Hybrid Work

Remote work has been a mainstay in most businesses’ standard operating procedures in at least some capacity, but it opens up a nasty can of worms regarding cybersecurity. If cybersecurity is not your top priority, and you have remote or hybrid employees, we need to have a talk—and probably a hard one.

Here’s How to Say “Bye Bye Bye” to Weak and Forgettable Passwords

Here’s How to Say “Bye Bye Bye” to Weak and Forgettable Passwords

Password best practices (and common sense, if we’re being honest) tell us to always use a strong password for every account we have. This is because, unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to crack a weak one anymore. A bit of software on a standard computer can crack millions of passwords in a matter of seconds… so the more complex and randomized a password, the better and more secure it will be.

However, this can also make it a real challenge to create and then memorize sufficiently complex passwords. To help, we wanted to share a fun trick.

Reduce Your Risk of Employee Theft

Reduce Your Risk of Employee Theft

Businesses today need to worry about people outside their business trying to break into their network and steal their data. Unfortunately, that’s not the only direction that theft can come from. In this week’s blog, we’ll take a look at the types of technology theft you need to be aware of inside of your company and what you can do about it.

COPE and BYOD: Two Options for Mobile Device Management

COPE and BYOD: Two Options for Mobile Device Management

With mobile devices playing a crucial role in modern business  it’s extremely important to have a clear plan for managing them. Unfortunately, this isn’t so cut and dry. Today, we’ll explore the differences between two of the most popular mobile management strategies: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Corporate-Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE).

Protect Your Business with These 6 Technology Tools

Protect Your Business with These 6 Technology Tools

Cybersecurity is the single largest problem that any business faces, particularly when the threat profile out there is so vast and varied. Today, we want to go over the many solutions your business can implement to make cybersecurity much more manageable.

Avoiding Employee Turnover and Burnout is Important for Any Business

Avoiding Employee Turnover and Burnout is Important for Any Business

Running a business is challenging, often involving tough decisions, particularly when it comes to employee retention and ensuring their productivity. In today's article, we discuss the issues that arise from high employee turnover and burnout, which can really be a problem for the modern business.

If You Care About the Earth, You May Want to Send Fewer Messages

If You Care About the Earth, You May Want to Send Fewer Messages

We all share a lot of data. There’s everything shared for professional purposes, of course, but there’s also all the casual things that we send back and forth—chats, requests to have people to pick up things on the way home, and (naturally) memes and pet pictures.

Most of this is sent off without a thought. However, let’s take a moment to think about it for a moment… is there an impact to all this data being sent around?

Use Software Management Tools for These 3 Benefits

Use Software Management Tools for These 3 Benefits

You can’t run a modern business without software. Even your most basic solopreneur business runs using software at its foundation. For businesses, this problem is increased dramatically as the amount of software fueling operations increases. Software management tools can improve the way your organization keeps tabs on its software.

How Much Adversity Warrants Technology Investment?

How Much Adversity Warrants Technology Investment?

Businesses deal with all types of problems, and some of them are really serious. Some situations aren’t even problems…yet. When risk is all around you, how can you know when enough is just enough? In today’s blog, we will provide you with some answers to how to flip potential problems into opportunities using technology.

4 Signs Your Information Technology Needs Some Restructuring

4 Signs Your Information Technology Needs Some Restructuring

Ideally, your business will last for years and years, but your information technology will simply not be able to do the same. This makes it essential to rework and update your business’ IT regularly. Let’s discuss a few warning signs that you need to pay attention to so you know when to do so.

This Patch Prevents Your Computer from Frying, But Only If You’ve Installed it Quick Enough

This Patch Prevents Your Computer from Frying, But Only If You’ve Installed it Quick Enough

Your computer’s CPU is one of the most sensitive, advanced pieces of technology that you probably don’t think too much about. The CPU itself is just around 4-5 centimeters in length and width, and it handles all of the data processing in your computer. Every single thing you do on a computer gets calculated through the CPU. Most modern CPUs have billions of microscopic transistors in that tiny little space. These transistors are so small that you can fit hundreds of them on a single red blood cell, or thousands of them in the width of a human hair.

So it’s inevitable that something can go wrong. Many fairly modern computers are experiencing a bug right now that could potentially and permanently damage the CPU. There’s a patch to fix it, but if the damage is already done, the patch won’t repair it.

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