Mount Pocono 2015

Shooting out of 2015 with bows and guns in Mount Pocono!

Deep Learning Analytics Promises to Streamline Operations for SMBs

It has been said in many different ways, but for many businesses, inefficiency is stealing capital and keeping your organization from producing at the levels you’d almost certainly like to see. One problem is how do you measure your company’s usefulness, as in, it’s propensity to meet or exceed expectations. Does your business have inefficient operations, or are there just several small inefficiencies that produce the same effect? Either way, understanding the concept of deep learning can go a long way toward giving your business the look it needs to sustain growth.

The concept behind these analytics, machine or deep learning, is being deployed throughout the business world by many organizations who, like you, are searching for the most efficient (and profitable) ways to do whatever it is that you do. This practice consists of state of the art hardware, completing complicated algorithms to apply to every part of a process or system. By capturing every variable available in a construct and looking for patterns, this software basically predicts situations and effectively learn as it crawls data. One example of this process is the search results that you get when you type a word into the Google search bar. As you add letters, based on your search history, and the history of other users, Google attempts to predict what term you will search for. By using this technology over time, you will see improved results.

When used by organizations, deep learning can give amazingly accurate representations of complex systems, as well as predictive results that are so specific that they are almost clairvoyant. While data collection and analysis is a formidable way to predict trends and situations, deep learning takes this to a whole new level, especially considering the amount that is “learned.” It is important to state that some of the most successful data mining organizations have invested in the world’s most state-of-the-art deep learning systems. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are three such organizations. Even Apple, long known for its predominant individual security, has moved forward with deep learning, purchasing the machine learning specialists Vocal IQ and Perceptio recently.

This kind of push in deep learning from the world’s predominant technology companies can make the layman wonder what the endgame is. You don’t have to look too far to find that out. It is Artificial Intelligence, of course. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has been a favorite of movie makers and science fiction authors for some time. Tales of robots that think they’re alive and benevolent machines that have come to learn just how destructive the human race is and has decided the best thing for us is the complete annihilation of our species. Either way, humans need for drama as caused a fear of the capabilities of AI. Deep learning, as a basic building block of an artificially intelligent computing platform, can produce results in capturing and analyzing small tracks of data and receiving more accurate predictions than you would receive through standard analytical procedures.

For the small business owner, deep learning may be something you will need to see in practice before you go out and get yourself an expensive deep learning team. Or you can hitch your curiosity trailer to 24-year-old wonderkid Adam Gibson and his DL4J. Gibson has created the first “commercial-grade, open-source, distributed deep-learning library…,” as well as the company Skymind who works with IBM, Chevron, Booz Allen, Accenture and other organizations. By devoting their resources to promoting the field, they are significantly improving an organization’s ability to make business decisions that are more efficient and work best to serve the organization and its goals.

AI and deep learning are in their infancy, but if organizations begin to utilize this technology to streamline their operations, it’s likely that major progress will come quickly. What are your thoughts of artificial intelligence? Do you think it will benefit society with its unbridled efficiency, or do you think that the threats inherent with a world filled with cognizant machines outweigh the potential benefits? Sound off now in the comments.

Tip of the Week: Block Telemarketers and Other Annoying Callers From Your Android Device

Calls from telemarketers are the worst. These unwelcomed calls are especially annoying if you’re trying to be productive, and you’re interrupted in the middle of the workday by the same number repeatedly. Thankfully, more recent models of Android smartphones have the capabilities to blacklist numbers built right into the device. Here’s how it’s done.

There are multiple ways you can block numbers from calling you with an Android device. Depending on the device, there will either be several different ways to block a caller, or there won’t be any at all. In general, if the device is fairly recent, like the Samsung Galaxy S5, you shouldn’t have any problems finding the features. Here are three ways you can natively block calls on your Android smartphone.

Blocking All Calls
Depending on the device you’re using, and its current version of the Android operating system, the following steps could vary. First, open the Phone application. Next, you’ll want to click on the three-dot menu on the right side of the screen, and select Settings. Choose Call. The setting Call Rejection should immediately jump out at you. Select it.

You’ll be given some options for rejecting calls that you receive. If you select Auto reject mode, you’ll be shown yet another menu with several options. By default, Auto reject mode will be turned on, but you can turn off this setting if you want. Or, you could simply select All incoming calls, which will block the calls from connecting to your phone. This is great if you really need to hunker down and get things done, but what if you only want to block specific numbers?

Blocking Specific Numbers
The numbers that your phone blocks are pulled from an Auto reject list that’s found right beneath Auto reject mode. Click the + in the top-right corner of the screen, and you’ll be prompted to enter the number that you want to block. There’s also a default option to block any unknown number, which can be helpful at times. By adding numbers to the auto reject list, you can effectively eliminate the time-wasting calls you receive.

To do this, locate the number that called you in your Recent Calls. Select the number you want to block, then tap the three-dot menu. You should see the option Add to Auto reject list, which is an easy way to keep that number from calling you again.

Blocked-Call Messages
In the event you have blocked someone’s call, you can set up special text message responses that will be sent to the blocked number. The uses for this could vary, from being too busy to answer calls, or from being in a movie theater where it would be rude to answer and talk on the phone. To create messages or select from the available ones, selectRejection Messages. It’s right under the Auto reject list option in call settings.

Of course, there are other methods you can use to block annoying callers, but they might require you to call your service provider or download an app. If you want to just block them natively on your device, the above options are some of the best.

For more information about how to make the most of your technology, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Malvertising: When Advertisements on Legitimate Sites Contain Malware

Any business worth their gigabytes will practice extreme caution when surfing the Internet. Hackers tend to make users’ lives more difficult, even for those who are part of a small or medium-sized business. Teaching your employees security best practices in hopes that they’ll avoid suspicious websites isn’t a foolproof strategy, and thanks to malvertising, ensuring that your organization stays secure is more difficult.

The reasoning is that it’s becoming more difficult to identify potential threats because they can take the form of non-suspicious entities in the online environment. In particular, a new and emerging threat called “malvertising” threatens even the most cautious PC users by injecting malicious code via advertisements. This type of malware often takes advantage of zero-day exploits (mainly with flash) that haven’t been patched by the manufacturer. These kinds of threats are challenging to avoid, even under the best circumstances. For example, check out this malvertising threat described by ComputerWorld:

[...] the source of the infection was a malicious advertisement, one that was running on a mainstream news service! The news website sells ad space served up by an advertising company, which in turn sells that ad space to anybody willing to pay for it. In this case, the bad guys were paying for it. They signed up for ad space just like any other customer, but the advertisement they created — known as “malvertising” — exploited a zero-day (unpatched) vulnerability in Adobe Flash to run commands through the browser to the victim computers’ operating systems, without any knowledge or intervention by the end users.

Taking advantage of the latest cybersecurity measures, like enterprise-level firewall and antivirus solutions, can be great tools to ensure that your organization's network stays secure, but what happens if threats are capable of bypassing these measures? In the above scenario, the malware-fueled advertisement ignored all standard online threat behavior that’s expected of users. The malware needed no user activity, and because it was found on a legitimate site’s ad space, it wasn’t flagged as malicious. In other words, the malware was capable of ignoring the methods used by typical security solutions and employee training, and it managed to infiltrate the system.

Even if malware somehow finds ways to ignore security protocol, there are still ways to identify and resolve problems in a moment’s notice. If you remember anything about cyberthreats, keep this in mind: they will almost always leave some sort of sign that they’re present on your network or workstation. It could be something as simple as decreased network or PC performance, or it could be something a little more obvious. You’ll know if you’re being attacked when your firewall detects viruses or malware attempting to access the network, and phishing emails are blocked by spam filters. Even something as simple as a remote administrator login on your access log can be a giveaway that you’re dealing with a hacker.

Even if malvertising is a new and growing trend, you want to make sure that your network is protected from all threats that can be found on the Internet. Using an enterprise-level security solution like a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool is capable of limiting your business’s exposure to questionable online entities and maximize threat resistance. To learn more, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Game Changer: New Li-Fi Technology Transmits Data via Light!

WiFi and Wireless Internet connections are an integral part of any workplace infrastructure. They essentially allow workers to pick up their wireless technology, like smartphones, tablets, or laptops, and connect to a network from any location with a connection. This convenience was previously unprecedented, but now a new technology threatens to usurp WiFi’s coveted throne; Li-Fi, wireless Internet connections delivered via light.

The idea might sound far-fetched at first, and until very recently Li-Fi was considered nothing more than a theory. Now, however, it’s been tested in a real-world environment, and it’s proving to be an exceptional innovation. When tested, Li-Fi was capable of transferring data at speeds of around 1GB/second. As explained by ScienceAlert:

The technology uses Visible Light Communication (VLC), a medium that uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz). It works basically like an incredibly advanced form of Morse code - just like switching a torch on and off according to a certain pattern can relay a secret message, flicking an LED on and off at extreme speeds can be used to write and transmit things in binary code.

According to Professor Harald Haas, the creator of Li-Fi, Li-Fi addresses four of the main issues that most organizations have with their current wireless communications:

• Capacity: WiFi currently uses electromagnetic waves (particularly radio waves) for communication, which are limited in scope and, most importantly, range. These limits don’t align with society’s need for wireless data transmission, and there’s only so much space on the spectrum remaining. Light, on the other hand, travels at a much greater frequency than your typical radio waves--approximately 10,000 times faster, making for exceptionally faster data transfer speeds.
• Efficiency: At the present moment, data transfer is currently being distributed by base stations, which aren’t necessarily energy efficient. Only about five percent of the energy is used to transfer data while the rest is used to cool the base station. For Li-Fi, in terms of financial efficiency, data transferred alongside light essentially eliminates the costs of data transmission. There’s already a huge amount of light bulbs in the world that can be exploited for this purpose; the infrastructure already exists, and these LED bulbs can be used for Li-Fi data transfer.
• Availability: WiFi has limited availability in certain locations, and can’t be used in others (think hospitals and airplanes). Considering how visible light is all around us, light being available isn’t a question of “if,” but “how” we can use that energy.
• Security: Arguably most important of all is security. As we all know, wireless signals delivered by radio waves can go through walls into the outside world, where hackers and other malicious entities might be waiting. Light, on the other hand, can’t pass through walls, which means that it’s more likely to stay secure than a wireless signal broadcast to the entire vicinity.

Ideally, as Haas puts it, the world can solve the problem of high-speed wireless data transfer by taking advantage of Li-Fi. While the technology is still in development, it has been tested outside the lab environment and is currently being put on trial in both manufacturing and office settings.

Would you want to take advantage of Li-Fi? Let us know in the comments.

Tip of the Week: Adjust Camera Settings and Resize Pictures to Better Store/Share Your Digital Photos

Thanks to so many people carrying camera-equipped smartphones, our society is inundated with photos like never before. For many of us, sharing and posting pictures has become second nature. Although, not everyone is aware of just how large the file size of pictures can potentially be, and why large photos can be problematic.

To give you an idea of just how many more pictures we take today than we did before the advent of the digital camera, consider this cultural insight from comedian Jim Gaffigan: “I have more pictures of my kids than my Dad even looked at me.” Can you relate? If you can, then hopefully it’s because of the crazy amount of pictures you’re taking with your mobile device.

One of the developments of digital picture taking is that, as the cameras improve, the file sizes of the pictures being taken become larger. For example, in 2008 a three megapixel smartphone camera was about as large as you could find. Today, Samsung’s latest Galaxy smartphone (the S6) boasts a 16MP camera, which produces photos of a much greater file size. Although, to be fair, the largest SD card you could find in an electronics retail store in 2008 was 1GB, and today, you can easily find a 64GB miniSD card.

For photo enthusiasts, the advancement of what smartphone cameras can do is exciting. However, casual smartphone users may not appreciate the difference between a 1MP camera and a 16MP camera. The casual user will just use their camera to snap pictures of everything and anything, and then share their photos with all of their friends, family, and social media followers. While there’s nothing wrong with taking a million pictures, having all of your pictures be full-sized can actually complicate how you store and share data.

Pro tip: when taking a picture of something that’s not all that important (like your dinner), use the smallest file size setting possible that your device’s camera will allow. Think about it, “Do you really need to take glorious 16MP pictures of what items you have to pick up at the grocery store?”

It’s problematic to have each and every picture be full-sized for a few reasons.

Sharing large pictures with others: It’s fun and easy to snap a picture with your smartphone and then instantly text or email it to a friend, or even upload it to social media for the world to see. The problem here is that a full-sized picture can be a rather large file that will eat up a significant chunk of data and bandwidth, and a large photo can be cumbersome to send via text or email. Plus, it just doesn’t make sense to send a poster-sized picture to someone when you expect them to view it on the small screen of a mobile device.

Uploading large pictures to a website: If you have a blog or website, then you’re going to want to be mindful of picture size before uploading them. A full-sized, 16MP picture is going to take forever to load and annoy website visitors. For example, this is why social media websites like Facebook will automatically shrink images uploaded by its users. Otherwise, Facebook’s servers would be overwhelmed if the more than 350 million photos uploaded to its site every day were 16MP each.

Using too much data storage space: Fact: large photos take up more disk space than small photos. Therefore, you’ll want to take small pictures with your camera, or shrink your large images if you want to free up hard drive space.

Pro tip: Resizing your pictures to make them smaller is easy to do. However, you’ll want to make sure to not make your images so small that you’ll lose the desired quality. One way to do this is to open your image using any photo editing software, change the image’s size, and then save it as a new image. You can next delete the original image in order to free up space.

Another easy way to resize your image while retaining its quality is to use the website PunyPNG.com. Using this free online tool, you can upload your large image and it will then generate for you a much smaller image that keeps the dimensions and quality of your picture in tact.

Bonus pro tip: Once you shrink an image, you can’t blow it back up again without losing quality, so if you think you might need a higher resolution image later, keep the largest version you have.

Now that you’re mindful of the size of your photos, you’re well on your way to becoming a more knowledgeable photographer. All you have to do next is learn about exposure and lighting and you’ll get booked for weddings and graduations in no time. Do you have any more tips on managing your photos? Share them with us in the comments.

Cloud Computing Isn’t 100% Perfect, Be Sure to Account For These 3 Risks

Organizations are taking to the skies with cloud computing solutions in the workplace, and it’s proving to be a valuable investment. However, such unprecedented growth doesn’t come without its fair share of risks. How does the cloud affect your business’s ability to function without unknowingly compromising your data infrastructure, or risking heavy downtime?

In order to help you successfully leverage cloud computing to meet the specific needs of your business, we’ve outlined several of the more common risks associated with using a cloud computing platform, and how you can combat them.

Risk #1: Data Theft
Perhaps the biggest risk that you’re taking by using cloud computing solutions is the loss or theft of your business’s mission-critical data. Since you’re hosting your business’s data in an online environment, there’s always the chance that a hacker will attempt to crack your security protocol and access files or information that are sensitive in nature.

When it comes to protecting your data from this risk, you’ll want to first realize that there is always going to be a risk of data theft. There’s no foolproof way around it. What you can do, however, is optimize your data security to minimize the damage that can be done. You want to integrate a proactive security solution that’s designed to keep threats out of your system, and effectively neutralize those that do make it in. Contact Net It On for information about integrating powerful security solutions designed to do just that.

Risk #2: Compliance Violation
For businesses in specific industries, there are compliance laws that need to be observed for sensitive information. Storing this information in your business’s cloud computing solution can potentially yield unexpected troubles. For example, if this information were to be compromised, what would you do? Depending on the situation, you will be required to inform the victim of the breach, or be subject to a costly fine.

If you’re unsure of whether or not your system is meeting the protocol of certain compliance laws, we can help to ensure that you’re brought up to speed. Chances are, if you collect and store sensitive data anywhere on your network, you should be concerned about compliance laws. Let Net It On analyze your network to find out where you need to be to accommodate this information.

Risk #3: Major Downtime
One of the biggest detriments that can result from a solely cloud-based IT infrastructure is the potential for major downtime. When you store your infrastructure on the cloud, you’re basically hosting it online. Naturally, you’ll need Internet access in order to fully access your cloud’s data. If this connection is lost, this means that there’s no more access to your cloud data, and in turn, lost access to any productivity applications hosted on it. If you’re not hosting files locally, you’ll be in quite the debacle.

This is why it’s important to store important information and applications both locally on your network, and in the cloud. Not only does this improve access to specific mission-critical assets, but it also improves mobility. By utilizing the cloud, remote workers can have the same access to information that they would if they were in the office.

For proven technology solutions that are designed to enhance and improve your business’s operations, contact Net It On at (732) 360-2999.