choices, choices

365, 365, 365 or 365?

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If Windows’ journey has been toward ease-of-use uniformity across people’s devices, Microsoft’s business suite offerings continue to require some thoughtful investigation. In 2020 Microsoft announced ending the Office 365 name for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs [Microsoft defines these as businesses with 300 or fewer employees]) in order to try to lessen confusion by taking the focus off the product name and putting it on the service it provides. It was a welcome intention. Only thing is many of the offerings contain the same products – and the differentiators are not easy to summarize in a name. So we offer this guide … [4 min. read]

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Roy at Corridor 9/495 Expo

Corridor 9/495 Business Expo

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How good was it to be back to feeling a bit of normalcy April 6? That was the day of the Corridor 9/495 Chamber’s Open for Business Expo at the Doubletree Conference Center in Westboro, Mass … [2 min. read]

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chef

Is Windows 11 Done Yet?

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Maintaining your business operations without disruptions is Bryley’s reason-to-be. That’s why Bryley recommends that managers not be swayed by inducements to free upgrades and any pressure to use the latest tech. Because while this period of a free OS may be appealing, Windows 11’s main reason-to-be, in the words of Microsoft CEO Sataya Nadella, is as a single,”open platform” that behaves consistently, no matter the device. It integrates styling and an interface-approach from the iPhone and Android.

But that means things are different and moved around and not necessarily in the interest of productivity … [4 min. read]

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Semi

A Hundred Thousand Pounds Sixty Hours a Week

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How many van lines write on the backs of their trailers something like, ‘our employees are our biggest asset’? Could be true. Trucking is hard and lonely. The hours are long; the accountants under government restrictions calculate drivers’ time to maximize profit in a competitive field. And the hours are mostly passed in monotony. And somehow they’ve got to stay alert. Lives in the tiny cars around them depend on it. They’re responsible for tens of thousands of dollars of machinery and maybe more in cargo. They’ve got to continuously skillfully navigate a forty x ten foot wall at sixty-five miles an hour.

While you may not have a life-and-death-in-the-hands-of-your-employees sort of business like a tractor-trailer line, your employees still protect a lot when your organizations’ data is in their hands … [5 min. read]

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Anna

The Elements of Client Services

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“Eliminates dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks” -Elon Musk on his new robot

The purpose of technology is to meet people’s needs.

I received a degree in English from the University of Connecticut. I wanted to be a journalist, so I pursued a master’s degree and during that time I got a job in a library. The problem was, even as I was in that world of books and newspapers, I was watching that world completely change … [5 min. read]

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inspection

Why an Inspection?

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Technology assessments are a smart place to start to make sure your organization’s infrastructure continues to run smoothly.

And just like there are emissions and mechanical inspections for your car, different kinds of assessments reveal different types of gaps … [4 min. read]

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Invading via email

Email Compromise Is Insidious and Costly

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1 Request, 2 Follow-up, 3 Urgent, 4 Important

These are the top Email Subject lines in Business Email Compromise attacks, the costliest cyberattacks. There were 19,369 reported incidents at a loss of $1.8 billion in 2020, the most recent published data from the FBI.

A typical Business Email Compromise attack is the result of a credential breach. With stolen email credentials a crook poses as an established vendor, and uses this trusted position to ply company data or funds from you or a colleague. … [4 min. read]

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Holiday cards

Elves at Work

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Wishing that all your days are happy … [1 min. read]

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Santa?

Hacked for the Holidays (ain’t no ho ho ho)

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In an ongoing effort to elude this year’s frustrating shipping delays, more consumers are turning to the web for what they may see as easy answers to the holiday hassle. Vasu Jakkal VP Microsoft Security said that with “headlines about supply chain issues, worker shortages and costs rising … it’s no surprise that … at least sixty-three percent of holiday shopping will be done online.”

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Perpetual Motion

If Not Now, When?

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“Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly told industry leaders in a phone briefing Monday that a vulnerability in a widely-used logging library ‘is one of the most serious I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious.’

“‘We expect the vulnerability to be widely exploited by sophisticated actors and we have limited time to take necessary steps in order to reduce the likelihood of damage,’ she said of the Apache Log4j flaw. The issue is an unauthenticated remote execution vulnerability that could allow an intruder to take over an affected device.

“Hundreds of millions of devices are likely to be affected, said Jay Gazlay of CISA’s vulnerability management office in the [same] call” –as reported by Tim Starks, cyberscoop.com, Dec. 13, 2021

Because of how widespread this vulnerability is, affecting everyone from Microsoft to Apple to Amazon to Google (in fact it affects millions of pieces of software, it is time to make sure your business is as protected as possible. You may not hear bullets, but that doesn’t mean we not are in a war … [5 min. read]

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