Ferrum Technology Services Blog

There’s nothing more intriguing than finding a random USB drive while cleaning up your office or while out and about. You might feel the urge to plug it in and discover its contents, but we are here to tell you that this is often a bad idea—particularly if the drive is unfamiliar to you. Unlike cloud storage, which is quite transparent, you don’t know what’s on a USB drive until you plug it in, and it’s often too late by the time this happens.

Earlier this year, it became known that almost 2,000 mobile applications suffered from some type of security threat, thus putting a lot of sensitive data on the line. Let’s examine how you can ensure that your business doesn’t suffer from mobile app security issues.

Building a company’s computing infrastructure is a costly and time-consuming process. Sure, you can purchase new servers; or workstations in bulk, but overall it takes some time to get everything set up and running just how you need it to. PC manufacturers are shipping fewer computers than ever before and that may have an impact on your business’ ability to get the technology it needs when it needs it. Let’s take a look. 

When you receive countless meeting invites or time-sensitive reminders on a day-to-day basis, it’s easy to forget a thing or two here and there. If you get an email, wouldn’t it be better to just make the event right from your inbox so your calendar can remind you about it when the time comes? Google Calendar and Gmail have this functionality built right in.

We apologize for the pun, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

When you go about your business and attempt to onboard a new client or implement a new tool for your company, you spend time getting to know what your business is doing and why. Well, a newly formed ransomware group will spend up to two weeks mapping your network before launching its attacks, making it a potent threat actor that you should keep an eye out for on your business network.

Remote work might have been crucial in the face of the pandemic, but now that companies are bringing employees back to the workplace, many are pushing back. While we can of course assist with your implementation of remote work technologies, there might be more reason to consider allowing for remote work. This doesn’t come from just us; it also comes from industry experts.

It’s been about a month since LastPass—one of the most well-known and popular password managers out there—suffered a security breach where attackers managed to worm their way into the systems where LastPass stored its source code. Let’s review the situation, and what your response should be.

Have you heard the term “quiet quitting''?” It’s been going around lately, and it can be a problem if it isn’t addressed. Let’s examine what quiet quitting is, what it means for your business, and what you can do to solve it.

The cloud as a computing strategy is helping millions of businesses be the best version of themselves. The main reason for this is the inherent scalability that is made available through cloud solutions. Let’s take a look at how scalability benefits a business and how it works.

Communications are important for small businesses, but how much do you pay attention to your telephone system? While it might have been useful in the past, chances are your team members and clients are communicating with you in different ways, rendering your telephone system, more or less, obsolete—at least the traditional telephone systems, anyway.

Compared to other options like Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, traditional telephone solutions are simply outdated in nature and scope. Let’s go over what you need to know about VoIP.

Mobile devices have cemented themselves in day-to-day life, so much so that people feel uncomfortable when they don’t know where their smartphone is or if they don’t have it on their person. Furthermore, devices can keep track of your location; this goes for the applications on your device, as well. How do you keep track of which devices have these privileges, and what do you do to manage them?

Ever since the pandemic, there has been an increased focus on mental health and well-being in the workplace. This has led many business owners to consider how they can improve their employees’ relationships with not just each other, but all of the other important people in their lives. As it turns out, remote work can be a major facilitator in this effort.

By default, when you download a file from the Internet, it will go to your Downloads folder, unless you specify for them to go elsewhere. While this is certainly a fine place for your downloaded files to wind up—at least for the short term—what if you wanted to change the default file location for your downloaded files? This is what today’s blog is all about: how you can change the downloaded file location for your Google Chrome web browser.

Most people will spend about one-third of their lives at work. Naturally, this large amount of time spent away from home can lead to a lot of stress. Emotions can overwhelm your employees and lead them to experience negative side effects that could impact their physical and mental health. Let’s examine some ways you can minimize the workday stressors that your employees may suffer from.

If you’ve spent any amount of time around us, you’ve probably had the importance of data backup and disaster recovery preparation preached to you—probably more than once. However, as closely associated as the two are, they are not the same. Let’s explore the critical differences between these two processes so you can be fully prepared to attend to both.

Your business’ operations and performance will vary depending on how you choose to invest your IT resources and budget. If you see marked improvements over the years, then you are doing something right. If things remain the same, however, perhaps you could benefit from a different approach to your technology investments. Let’s examine the subtle art of IT investment and how you should approach it.

Imagine your business becomes the target of a ransomware attack. The situation is dire, and you need access to your data. You decide to pay the ransom, even though all security professionals advocate for the opposite. The worst is behind you, you think. This is unfortunately not the case; there are countless other costs that ransomware can bring to the table, and none of them are good. Let’s examine the true cost of ransomware beyond just the ransom.

Laptops are remarkable pieces of ingenuity that can perform just about any work-related task without sacrificing portability. However, these amazing devices cannot last forever, and they will inevitably need to be upgraded. Do you know when the appropriate time to address this issue is?

Collaboration is key in the business world, but it’s not always as easy or as simple as it might seem at first glance. Naturally, when you try to get people to work together, you add even more moving parts to the puzzle, and if you aren’t careful, you can accidentally influence your bottom line, and not in a good way. Here are three helpful tips you can implement for better collaboration strategies.

Business technology is far from the easiest thing to manage, and it’s mostly because managing technology is not the sole focus of companies (unless you’re us, of course). If you can’t overcome your IT challenges, your business could be held back needlessly. Let’s go over some of the common issues your organization might face with regards to technology management and maintenance.