Ferrum Technology Services Blog

At this point, it’s hard to believe that anyone needs to be told that cybersecurity is important, but some organizations are still doing the bare minimum to protect their network and data. That can’t go on forever. Today, we thought we would discuss how to put together a cybersecurity policy that covers all the bases, and will give you the peace of mind that you are actively combating today’s most present threats to your network, infrastructure, and data. 

If you are a subscriber of this blog, you know that each week we create content that aims to educate people about the value of managed services and the growing importance of information technology. Today, we thought it would be useful to put together a glossary of some terms that we regularly use to ensure our readers understand what we are referencing. 

Companies around the world have or are finding the need to send their workers home to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. For many business owners, managing your staff remotely is a brand new paradigm. Here’s what you need to know.

“Redundancy” isn’t typically viewed as a good thing, but when a disaster strikes, it can become a good thing very quickly to have a redundant copy of your data. March 31st is World Backup Day so let’s take a moment and examine why a certain amount of data redundancy is actually welcomed. 

Each day, the news surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic gets closer and closer to home, and with new restrictions being levied each day, businesses are some of the hardest hit organizations. Today, we will discuss how file sync and sharing platforms can help your business immensely as this situation plays out.

When it comes to protecting your business, cybersecurity is a huge consideration that must be kept in mind. However, it isn’t the only consideration. Some of the biggest threats to your business can actually come from your own team. Let’s go over the three kinds of insider threats that you need to be on your guard against, and how to avoid them.

Monitoring parts of your business is a good practice as it allows you to get out in front of any potential problem it may have. As IT is concerned, monitoring is a crucial part of ensuring that every part of your business’ computing infrastructure is working as intended. Today, we thought we’d discuss the tools used to monitor IT networks and infrastructure, and what effect that can have on your business.

Cloud solutions have helped considerably advance businesses, regardless of whether a business makes use of public cloud solutions or a private option that it hosts itself. Many have found great utility in combining the two into a hybrid cloud solution. Let’s consider the pros and cons of the hybrid cloud to see if it would suit your needs.

COVID-19, or coronavirus, has been a major global health concern over the past couple of months. At this point, it is clear that this disease could have serious impacts on the workplace. We wanted to provide a brief rundown of good workplace and network health practices, as well as a few pointers on how you can handle health-based employee absences.

Say you are looking to learn something about a concept that you don’t know much about, what do you do? You “Google” it right? So when you are using Google Docs you’d think that it would automatically know any word that you would type in. This isn’t the case. It knows a lot of words, but if it doesn’t recognize a word that you would normally use, you will need to add it to your dictionary. Today we will tell you how to do so.

If you were asked to describe your average tech support experience, chances are that you remember a time when you had to either wait around for the technician to come around, dealing with downtime the entire time; or, worse yet, unplug your technology and schlep it across town to the break/fix store only to be told that it may be done in the next few days (code for over a week). Today, we’ll tell you how managed IT services can keep you from playing the waiting game. 

The G Suite is clearly a project that Google is far from finished with, as they have consistently made improvements to the suite and its included software. Recently, a few were added that could very much benefit a business’ users. Let’s go over a selection of these updates, and the benefits you could see as a result.

There are a lot of security threats directed toward businesses today, with plenty of immoral opportunists seeking to profit at your expense. This makes it critical to secure your network and its data, which sounds like an expensive and time-consuming process. However, it doesn’t have to be, as we’ll show you by highlighting a few ways to protect your business and its assets.

Millions of people are still using the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system despite it being completely unsupported. When Microsoft pulled the plug on support for the OS in January, most industry professionals expected there to be some exploits found pretty rapidly. It turns out that the very first exploit was actually Microsoft’s fault, and that Windows 7 support had a little life in it after all. 

Not many people realize this, but the concept of video conferencing has been around for about as long as the telephone has been—shortly after he was awarded the patent for the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell was apparently working on a version that would also transmit pictures. Many years later, conferencing technology has finally reached the point where it is a very beneficial business tool. Let’s review a few of these benefits.

It is an indisputable fact that the Google Play Store has a ridiculous number of applications for users to select from. It is also a fact that many of these applications should not be downloaded, and instead actively avoided. For this week’s tip, we’re giving a few examples of the kind of app you should steer clear of, and why.

Augmented reality (AR) has been talked about for what seems like ages. The technology, which overlays real time information over a displayed image, is seemingly advancing for retail use, but there have been several factors that have kept it from being as mainstream as it will be in the future. Let’s take a look at AR and how the efforts of some of the biggest tech companies in the world are aiming to push the technology to the limits. 

Over the past two decades, business technology was largely separated between information technology (IT)--that is, the business’ computers, networking equipment, and peripherals--and operational technology (OT): all other technology. As IT advanced, so has OT, which today presents many of the same risks that IT always has. Today, we will take a look at how to secure your business by focusing on where your IT meets your OT.

A slow network can be an infuriating problem under any circumstances, but in the business setting, not understanding its cause can potentially be devastating to operations. For this week’s tip, we’ll examine a few of the most common causes of this slowness, and some of the best ways to resolve the issue at hand.

The agility of a business to adjust to ebbs and flows in the market is extremely important. One way businesses are making this happen is by integrating their operational software with their management software. This tactic allows data to move faster, providing businesses with some very specific benefits. Let’s take a look at how integration works.