Tip of the Week: How to Type Special Characters Like Accents

What’s the difference between a cafe and a café? By definition, there’s no difference, but to a coffee aficionado, that symbol above the ‘e’ makes all the difference. But how do you type special characters like this? Here are two easy ways.

Copy/Paste What You Need
One way to type special characters is to cheat by copying and pasting. To do this, use Google Search to find the word you need with its special character. For example, if you search for “cafe,” then you’ll inevitably see the word “café” in the results. Simply copy and paste the word you need into your document. Just make sure you paste it as plain text. Otherwise, you might have conflicting fonts.

Although, in order to have the pasted word match the style of the rest of your document, you may have to reformat it. To do this, highlight the word and clear its formatting with Ctrl+\. Next, adjust the font, font size, color, and other style properties to match the rest of your text.

Use Alt Codes
The average PC user might not know about Alt codes. Basically, Alt codes allow you to enter in a string of characters while holding down the Alt key. When you release it, it should result in a special character. Just be sure that you’re using the number pad on the right-hand side of the keyboard. Otherwise, if you’re using the normal numbers on the top of the keyboard, it won’t work. You can find a list of codes here.

Now that you know how to type special characters, you’ll never again be limited to only what you can see on your keyboard. For more useful tech tips, subscribe to Net It On’s blog and be sure to check back every week!

5 Cloud Security Issues that Every Business Has In Common

Security is a primary concern for businesses that take advantage of the cloud, but the industry often dictates to what extent a business is concerned about cloud security. Yet, despite the varying cloud needs of industries, there are several variables that should be addressed when thinking about cloud security, including data permissions, account compromisation, and, of course, malware and other common online threats.

As reported by CloudLock in their Q4 cloud security report, there are several security issues that come up for specific industries, but there are five that are most prevalent throughout, regardless of what type of business you are:

• Account compromisation: How secure are your accounts from being infiltrated and taken over by hackers? You particularly need to be wary of administrator accounts being compromised. If hackers manage to get into your network with valid credentials, they won't set off any alarms for your security solutions, meaning that they’ll essentially have free reign until the problem is resolved. To this end, it’s crucial that you make your passwords as secure as possible by using upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols.
• Cloud malware: Is your cloud solution protected in the same way that your business’s in-house network is? You should be taking advantage of a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool for your cloud infrastructure. A firewall, antivirus, content filter, and spam blocker will be exceptionally potent to protect your business’s cloud data.
• Excessive data exposure: Who within (and outside) your organization can access the information that you’re storing on the cloud? For example, some employees shouldn’t be able to access financial records or personally identifiable information. In this case, you’d be exposing too much information to users who shouldn’t be privy to it, which makes it all the more likely that the data could be exposed to internal and external threats. Limiting who has access to critical information is a crucial step to take when considering your cloud’s security.
• Over-exposed personally identifiable information (PII) and payment card information (PCI): In other words, is your data complying with the various laws and regulations surrounding the collection of sensitive information? Do you collect information like credit card numbers or health records? If so, you’ll want to revisit how you store and manage this data, as your business could be subject to harsh fines should they be stolen or corrupted by hackers.
• Collaboration: Again, this returns to the ability to keep those who need access to critical information in the loop, without putting that information on the line. It’s up to you to make sure that your team isn’t sharing information with others who shouldn’t have access to specific information.

While it’s important to consider that your business has more specific industry standards to focus on for cloud security, it would be counter-productive to write off these five overarching trends. If you’re unsure of what kind of cloud security your business needs, we’d be happy to lend you a hand. For all of your business’s cloud security needs, you can call Net It On at (732) 360-2999.

4 Growth Scenarios Your Network Needs to Be Prepared For

Naturally, businesses put a lot of time, energy, and resources into growing their sales figures and bottom line. All of that is great, but if business owners don’t also plan for how success is going to add new pressures and challenges to their IT infrastructure, then a lot of time will be wasted reacting to growth-related network issues. Scenarios like this can be easily avoided by planning your network to grow alongside your company.

Here are four IT challenges that a growing business will need to be mindful of.

Additional Users
So you’ve doubled your workforce in the past year? That’s great; let’s just hope that your network can accommodate all of this extra traffic and that your security solution can protect your data from adding twice as many access points. If you didn’t plan for these additional users, network traffic will slow to a crawl and your IT infrastructure will be overwhelmed.

Additional Devices
Even if you’re not experiencing growth with your staff, workers in your office may be growing the number of personal devices they bring to the office. For example, if you haven’t reevaluated your network since before the first iPhone was released, then it may not be able to handle the strain of every worker connecting their mobile device to it. Another possibility you’ll want to be prepared for is users connecting multiple devices to your network; like the employee who feels it necessary to use their smartphone, tablet, and laptop -- all at the same time! The best way to prepare for this influx of devices is to have a BYOD policy enacted that accommodates mobile device trends. Net It On can help you with this.

Additional “Things”
Currently, the most significant trend facing the technology industry is what’s known as “The Internet of Things.” This is where a variety of “things,” like data-collecting devices used for analytics purposes are connected to a company’s networks. NetworkComputing explains the challenge of IoT:

Internet access for everything we touch is an imminent reality. Sooner or later, nontraditional network devices will be more common than traditional devices that plug into the network -- think lighting and security controls, scanners and sensors, even your office coffee pot. These "things" will soon infiltrate the network, hogging bandwidth and using network protocols, which means you need to prepare now for the network takeover of the "things."

What can your business do to prepare its network for this influx? First off, you need to make sure that your network has enough bandwidth to handle the increased traffic. Secondly, you need to implement a security solution designed for the new challenges presented by the IoT. For example, traditional IT security focuses on the activity of humans, but now your network will have to deal with security challenges imposed by having many times more machines than humans accessing your network, some of which could be compromised.

Therefore, you’re going to need a network monitoring solution that’s designed for IoT, like what Net It On offers.NetworkComputing explains:

If you're not already, you should be monitoring the network, applications and quality of service, and now is the time to get real control over IP address management as we look towards IPv6 migration, which will be even further hurried by the onslaught of Internet-connected devices.

Additional Customers
Of course, the most pleasant growth is the kind that makes you money. Having more customers access your website or call your company via your VoIP system to place orders and sit through sales demos will add more traffic and stress to your network. If your network is set up to handle the needs of a small business, and you’ve grown to become a medium-sized business, then you’re going to miss out on some sales opportunities.

Net It On is here to help your organization handle every growth scenario that will challenge your network's integrity. We do this by designing an IT roadmap that’s customized for the unique challenges of your business. This roadmap takes into account the latest IT trends, and it accommodates your IT needs for the next one-to-five years. Being prepared for the technological challenges of the future will make things easier on the budget, and give your business plenty of bandwidth to handle the technology that you rely on.

Call us today at (732) 360-2999 to schedule an appointment to create your very own IT roadmap!

Tip of the Week: We Bust the Myth of How Mobile Apps Drain Battery Power

Every mobile device user wishes for more battery power. There are many tips floating around the Internet on how to extend your battery’s life; one of them just isn’t true--closing out your apps. When it comes down to it, your battery is better off if you just leave your apps opened.

Many users assume that closing an app is the way to go because they think that, if it’s no longer open, then it’s no longer running and draining power. While this may be the case for a PC, mobile apps work differently. CNet explains:

When you leave an app, your phone actually pauses it in its current state. So, all of those apps that show up in your task manager aren’t actually draining your battery; they’re just frozen, sitting in your phone’s RAM, or memory. That way, the next time you launch it, you can pick up where you left off. When you kill an app, you’re actually taking it out of your phone’s memory, which means that the next time you launch it, your phone will have to do the work of putting it back in the RAM.

Essentially, it takes significant battery power to open a new app, and an opened-yet-frozen app doesn’t consume any extra power (outside of what the app normally uses by running in the background). Therefore, closing and opening your apps all day long will actually cause your RAM to do more work than it needs to, and thus, drain your battery quicker.

To be clear, there are many mobile apps that operate behind the scenes and eat up significant power, whether they’re open or not. To find out which apps are the biggest energy hogs on your Android device, go to Settings > Battery. This informative screen will break down app power consumption and data usage by percentages. It’s worth a look.

While you’re thinking about which apps use the most energy, it’s important to keep in mind that notifications can eat up a significant chunk of power. Therefore, you can save power by disabling notifications for apps that you don’t need to be notified about. Do this on Android by going to Settings > Sound and notifications > Application notifications, and then block the apps that you don’t use.

We know that keeping your apps opened like this seems counterintuitive as far as normal computing practices go, but we assure you that it will work like a charm. The next time you're in a pinch and need to extend the battery life of your mobile device, fight the urge to close and keep those apps open!

For more great tips from Net It On, subscribe to our blog!

Remembering warmer times in Keyport NJ

How Unified Communications Can Unite Your Business Like Never Before

A modern business needs to keep up with the latest technology solutions, and communications are no different. Believe it or not, though, many organizations have yet to commit to a comprehensive unified communications strategy that encompasses their entire network. It’s more important today than ever before to maintain a professional grip on your communications technology, including how your organization approaches both internal and external communications.

Unified Email
When you think about your organization's email, do you picture a unified email client or a scattered group of email addresses from random providers? Some businesses still allow employees to use their personal email addresses as their primary communication method, which is frowned upon for several reasons. For one, it looks unprofessional. Free email addresses like those from Gmail and Yahoo are great for personal use, but not for your business. Another reason you don’t want personal email addresses used is due to employee turnover. Should the team member leave your organization, they could depart with important access credentials and information that would then be inaccessible, and even at risk of being compromised.

Consistency is key for unified communications. Therefore, you should use an email setup that’s consistent throughout your organization. Your network administrators or IT service provider should have full control over accounts, so they can be promptly shut down upon the resignation of key personnel, or stored away in a secure archive for later viewing. Plus, you’ll be able to take advantage of your brand and professional image in an entirely new way.

Unified Instant Messaging
Instant messaging, or IM, has grown very popular over the past decade, thanks to the advent of high-speed Internet, mobile texting, and social media messaging features. Now, businesses want to take advantage of IM in the office environment, and for good reason. It helps to achieve greater response time for important matters and improves communication considerably within the office. For example, let’s say that you have a time-sensitive matter that needs to be addressed quickly. Rather than sending the recipient an email, which they may not see for several hours, you can send an IM to get a quicker response.

The best part of a unified communications solution is that its components are often very similar to consumer technology in usability. For example, many people use email and instant messaging outside of the office, which minimizes the learning curve of implementing new communications technologies. In reality, the main difference between consumer communications technology and unified communications is that unified communications solutions are created with enterprise-level control.

Net It On can implement and host your business’s email solution for you, which takes the stress of managing and maintaining it off your shoulders. Furthermore, we can help your organization maximize productivity with an instant messaging solution that suits your needs. To learn more, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Could You Go 99 Days Without Social Media?

Employees who are addicted to social media is a problem for modern businesses. Despite the professional networking benefits of social media, it can be a major distraction and time-waster. Before you lock down all social media websites on your network, you should first try to understand why humans have such a hard time leaving social media alone.

For the purposes of this article, let’s take a look at Facebook--easily the largest and most-used social media outlet out there right now. The reasoning behind why people can’t quit Facebook was the subject of a study performed by Cornell University researchers. The results were based on the online experiment called 99 Days of Freedom, which challenges participants to go 99 days without checking Facebook. Sounds like a pretty daunting task, huh?

More specifically, though, the study focused on the surveys completed by those who are participating in 99 Days of Freedom. Surveys designed by Just. Researchers at Leiden University were issued to willing participants at the 33, 66, and 99 day marks, and it yielded some not-so-surprising results.

What was surprising was a significant number of users managed to make it 99 days without checking Facebook, with only a marginal number of users crawling back to their favorite social media site. What’s most interesting about the survey, though, are the trends that they discovered in the survey data that led to users taking back Facebook:

• Self-diagnosed addiction: Some people might feel that Facebook (and social media in general) is addictive. This is usually the case if it’s made into a habit or included in a routine, just like any other addiction. Those who think that Facebook is addictive will naturally feel more of a pull to return to it.
• Privacy: Naturally, users who felt that their Facebook activity was being monitored were less likely to continue using Facebook. This makes sense, considering how some people refuse to use Facebook completely because they don’t want to expose themselves to the Internet. In the office, this works to your advantage, especially if you’re monitoring the web history of your end users.
• Mood: In what appears to be a strange finding, the end user’s mood can affect how often they use Facebook. A good mood helps to keep you off of social media, probably because you’re being entertained and engaged by something else.
• Other Social Media: The study found that users who have more than one social media account, like Twitter, are less drawn toward Facebook. This is likely due to users having somewhere else to go for their social media purposes.

People who were able to give up on Facebook for 99 days saved, on average, 28 hours. That’s a lot of time wasted browsing cat pictures and memes. Of course, something like social media is only bad in large quantities, so the key to limiting your own exposure to it is self-control. Otherwise, you could accidentally throw away countless hours that could be better spent on other things.

While social media is known as a time-waster, this isn’t to say that all social media should be blocked in order to retain productivity in the office; rather, we suggest that you implement a web content filter that’s capable of blocking content on a per-user basis. This way, you can only block social media websites for problem employees, while still allowing access to those who need it to perform their daily duties.

For more information about our web content blocking solution, give Net It On a call at (732) 360-2999.