Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Imagine a scenario where your password has been stolen by a hacker. Now your accounts are completely at the mercy of them. What do you do? Obviously you want to change the password, but are you going to learn from this mistake or let it happen again in the future? Thankfully, two-factor authentication offers a solution to this dilemma, and it’s one that you might not have considered in the past.

When it comes to dealing with things around the office, most people have almost no problem calling in a subject-matter expert to handle the issue. Toilet won’t stop running? Bring in a plumber. Simple, right? Yet, it seems that there’s one notable exception: technology issues.

As time passes, your business will need to be able to grow and develop its use of technology through thoughtful investments and improvements. To do so, it helps to calculate the returns you can anticipate seeing from these investments. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over how to do so.

It’s not always hackers that create dangerous situations for your organization. Threats can come from even unforeseen locations, such as your business’s network. No matter what the threat is, though, you have to be extremely careful about the little things that spell doom for organizations just like yours. One of these is failing to have a data backup solution in place.

How often does your business have employees traveling to conferences or working remotely due to circumstances or physical location? With technology improving at a rapid pace, these opportunities are more possible now than they ever were in the past, and depending on the solution implemented, they are far more efficient, too. Of course, one thing that will never change is the need to keep company data secure, no matter what type of Internet connection is being utilized.

The modern workforce depends on collaboration, which is one reason why solutions like Slack have taken off in recent years. Another reason for this is that it’s very user-friendly with many shortcuts built right into the interface. Here are just a few of these shortcuts that can save your business time during the workday.

As technology has advanced, we’ve reached the point where work can easily be accomplished outside of the office environment. In fact, just over half of all employees around the world work from home at least one day each week. This only makes sense, as there are a few very appealing benefits to remote work… including for the employer.

An older version of Microsoft’s popular database software SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 is losing support on July 9. If you haven’t updated away from the software, your organization’s IT is staring down a few very drastic problems. Today, we’ll go into your options with so little time left before the software’s support ends.

Email is a presence in almost every business, but some businesses use it better than others. Some use it as a be-all, end-all business communications solution, while others use it for correspondence that isn’t time sensitive. No matter how your business uses email, managing it properly will go a long way toward improving your efficiency and productivity.

Huawei is one of the biggest technology companies in the world, employing over 200,000 people and accruing more than $100 billion in annual revenue without being a major player in the hungry U.S. market. As impressive as these numbers are, the Chinese company is staring at a very troubling situation in the face.

Robocalls plague the world’s smartphone users, but have you ever stopped to ask why you receive them in the first place? Why are robocallers able to hide behind a local number so that you pick up the phone? Scammers are actually using a business tool you may have heard of… Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, a modern phone solution that in the hands of anyone else is extremely helpful.

Microsoft Excel has a ton of functionality, but how much of it are you actually utilizing? This week’s tip will help you take full advantage of keyboard shortcuts, so you can leverage the solution to the best of your ability.

The first big job of a person’s career is one of those special moments in life that can’t be beat, but if there is one thing that can do so, it’s a bigger and better opportunity elsewhere. The cold, hard realization that your employees won’t be sticking around forever might be hard to accept, but it’s one that you must consider. In order to keep your current workforce satisfied, you will need to manage your expectations, as well as managing theirs.

Chances are you’ve found yourself in a situation where you have accidentally deleted an important file. However, it’s possible that you can restore the data, depending on the scenario. We’ll walk you through the processes required just in case you find yourself scratching your head over a potentially deleted file.

Collaboration is, in many ways, one of the most important parts of running a business. The issue is that you need to ensure your entire team is prepared to participate and work towards the same goal. This week we want to emphasize the importance of collaboration, and to that end we have provided six simple steps to better collaboration.

The man in the middle has a lot of power and influence over the end result, and this is true even in the technological world. In fact, there are attacks dedicated to this vector, twisting and turning something that your organization needs into what amounts to a threat. We’ll discuss what a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack is, as well as what you can do to combat these threats.

The millennial generation has been much maligned in the business world. Whether they are being blamed for neglecting long-standing industries or being labeled as selfish and distracted, there aren’t too many superlatives that have been bandied about when describing millennial workers. The reality, however, is that millennial workers have the ability to be some of your best employees if your business is able to adjust accordingly. Today, we’ll get into how to get the most from your younger workers.

We thought we would do something a little bit different for this week’s tip. Instead of giving you some software tips or some kind of thing you can use to make your business more productive, we thought that we’d help you with the thing that you already know, but may not realize:

How many devices and technology solutions does your organization have to manage on a day-to-day basis? More often than not, small businesses have a limited quantity to work with for IT services, whether it’s a budget that’s too small or a workforce that’s too stretched. The problem is that IT troubles wait for no one, so you have to do everything you can to prevent them--even if it means asking for help from others.

Some people believe so much in something that they’ll commit their lives to make it better for everyone. The Internet, as one of the most impressive advancements of civilization, has a fair amount of people who take the time (or make a living) advocating on the various issues that face Internet users. These Internet rights advocates have begun to make a big difference on the way that businesses, especially those businesses that only exist on the Internet, can act. Today, we’ll take a look at Internet advocacy.