Tip of the Week: Highlighting Messages in Outlook
Like any email platform, Microsoft Outlook can easily become overwhelmed with messages and conversations—effectively making it counterproductive rather than an asset to you and your team. Let’s take a few moments to go over a simple way that you can use Outlook’s internal tools to make your messages easier to deal with.
Examining the Email Issue
We’ve all been there: staring down an inbox filled to bursting with messages. Mixed with the important ones are promotional messages, internal messages that you don’t need to know about right now, and all the ones that you’ve kept for future reference. This can make it very difficult to keep track of where to find these messages and the like.
Fortunately, Outlook has a feature that enables a user to automatically highlight certain messages based on certain conditions. That way, when scanning your inbox messages, they’ll stand out and be easier to find.
How to Highlight Messages
So, you have a message that you need to pay attention to. For the sake of our example, we’ll say it’s from your direct manager, the person you regularly report to.
- In Outlook, locate the View menu at the top of the window. Doing so will give you access to your View Settings. Click into them.
- From there, click into the Conditional Formatting You’ll see a list of preloaded options included with Outlook, along with buttons that say Add, Delete…, Move Up, and Move Down. Click Add.
- You’ll see a new rule added to the list of options called Untitled. Rename it to whatever works for your purposes.
For this example, we’ll call it Manager.
- Click the button that says Condition… to establish when this rule comes into play. This can be based on a variety of options: whether a word or phrase is included in specific parts of the message, who it is from, the time it was sent, and even whether the message was directed to you specifically or to a larger group of recipients. Some of these can be disabled by unchecking the appropriate box or leaving the field blank.
Let’s stick to simply specifying that these messages are ones sent directly to you, from your manager.
- You’ll be brought back to your list of rules in Conditional Formatting. With your Manager rule still selected, click the Font
- There, you can adjust the way messages that meet your conditions will appear in your inbox. You can change the font, the font style, its size, add strikeout or underline effects, and even change its color. In this example, we’ll simply say that the messages should be highlighted in red.
- Click OK once you’re satisfied, continuing to do so until all the dialogue boxes are resolved.
You should then see your changes reflected in your inbox. In our case, any messages coming from your manager should appear red in your inbox list, making them much easier to see. Rinse and repeat for any other messages you want to be able to pick out quickly from the group, and your emails should be far more manageable.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog for a reminder whenever we’ve posted something new, and for any more assistance with your business’ IT, reach out to Point North Networks, Inc. at 651-234-0895!
The Power Button is Capable of More Than On/Off
If you’ve ever used technology, the power button has had a pretty consistent appearance and even more consistent use. However, there’s a reason that the power symbol we’re so familiar with looks the way it does. Furthermore, there’s more than the power button or the toggle switch can ultimately do.
What the “Power” Symbol Means
The symbol that appears on the power button looks somewhat unique. In most modern-day electronic devices, the power off symbol and the power on symbol are one and the same. Known to be one is the most common symbol used globally, the power button symbol is depicted by a broken circle with a line partially placed between the two broken ends. This was earlier used as the ‘standby symbol’ as an indication that the power supply isn’t completely broken off.
However, this makes more sense when you consider that it’s just what you get when you smoosh the “|” for on and the toggle switch opposite “O” for off.
How the Power Button Can Be Used
Hopefully, you’ve already learned that your power button should really only be used to power up your system, or—if no other options are available—to power off the device after all your work is saved and your programs are all closed out (again, only as a last resort). Whenever you can, it is better to use the shutdown option nestled into the operating system instead of choosing to fully disconnect power. Hence, the power button symbols on your device are best left untouched, unless absolutely necessary!
We take this so seriously because abusing the power buttons is just a convenient means to abuse the device powers. Improperly powering down your system in this way can cause an unwanted hard reset, lead to file corruption and potentially give the device a hard time when you start it back up.
Of course, with help from a technician, it is possible to remap your power button to do something different when it is pressed if you so choose.
Remapping Your Power Button
You have the capability to change your power button’s functionality for your electronic device, allowing you to set it to do something other than turn off your system when it is pressed—or, if you’re working with your laptop, your lid is closed when it’s plugged in or running on stored battery power. In your Control Panel, under Hardware and Sound, find your Power Options and Choose what the power button does.
Your options as to its function include:
- Do nothing (standby state)
- Sleep or Low Power State
- Hibernate
- Shut Down (when pressing the power button on a laptop)
- Turn off the display (when pressing the power button on a laptop)
Make sure you Save changes so that your settings are properly applied.
Interested in finding out more about your technology and how it can most benefit your business? Give Point North Networks, Inc., a call at 651-234-0895 to find out more.
Frequently Asked Questions About Power Button
Is it okay to turn off my desktop or laptop using the power button?
While it is not recommended to do it regularly, you can use the power button to forcibly shut down your device once in a while. It would not do any harm to the hardware, or your device in general. However, whenever possible it is best to switch off your device using the shutdown option nestled into the operating system.
Is it okay if I never shut down my computer?
It may seem convenient to have your laptop or desktop on standby mode, as it saves you the time taken during the power-up process, however, it would also mean that your processor, graphics card, and RAM are running constantly without a break. This can lead to additional stress on individual components of the computer, thereby shortening their lifespan.
Tip of the Week: How to Prepare a Data Breach Response
Unfortunately, the more people lean on technology, the more data breaches there are. The correlation makes sense, but with so much innovation in data security and data systems, it’s a shame more can’t be done to keep businesses and individuals from losing data to opportunists and scammers. That’s why knowing how to circumvent these forces is essential to keep your data safe. Let’s take a look at how the people that are best at it keep their data secure.
Best Practices Keep It Simple
To avoid negative data situations like this you will want to ensure that your best practices are being followed. In this particular case, they aren’t very complex. They include:
- Keeping data (particularly sensitive data) organized in secure locations
- Keeping data on a need-to-know basis via access controls
That’s the list. It’s not a lot to consider on the surface, but let’s unpack them a bit. By keeping data in a secure location, it makes it easier for the professionals that manage your data and infrastructure to respond to a breach; and, by controlling who can access what, they can easily identify where the problem comes from and work to remedy it.
Detecting When You’ve Been Breached
Obviously, to remedy against data breaches, you actually have to know that you’ve been breached. Unfortunately, attackers are using more sophisticated methods than ever to hack into your network, making evasion a priority. This means that the speed in which you identify a data breach is taking place is one of the most important factors.
Businesses today are using smart technology to consistently monitor and automate a response. A Netwrix 2020 Data Breach and Security report suggests that organizations using automation were better able to detect data breaches in minutes rather than hours or days. Comparatively, most of those without (56 percent) measured their detection time in days.
Respond Confidently
It can be quite off putting to consider that people are trying to break into your network. This is why you have all those procedures in place, after all. For those that haven’t gotten around to concocting a cyber threat response strategy for their team, it’s important that it is standardized and consistent; it makes it easier to follow should you have to deal with it.
Your business will definitely have to train its staff on what to do if they are confronted with a cyber threat. Training your staff on phishing, password hygiene, and more will put your workforce in a position to help you sustain a record of security, not hinder it. On top of testing, you should consider evaluating each worker individually to better understand who needs more training and who is competent to effectively respond against these threats.
Staying On Your Toes
Having the tools to recover from a data breach is almost as important as thwarting one. Your business may be on solid footing today, but one scam, hack, or situation brought on by outside forces can floor your business. Not only do you need to have the infrastructure and the support team in place to deal with a potential data breach, you have to know that your business can recover from one. This is why you need a business continuity plan with a full data backup and recovery strategy in place. Additionally, the exploit you have dealt with could have come from a vulnerability on your network (not a human). You will need to ensure that your team’s access credentials are updated and all software patched to their most current versions.
This is not a situation you have to handle alone. Call the IT professionals at Point North Networks, Inc., today at 651-234-0895 to learn about how we can help you protect your business against cyber threats, and provide you with the tools and support to handle any situation that comes your way.
If You Haven’t Already, It’s Time to Thoroughly Document Your Business IT
A business’ technology is by all measures a part of its inventory, and as such, it needs to be tracked. Let’s consider why in more detail, and how to do so properly.
Here’s the thing: technology maintenance takes much more than occasionally scanning for a virus or updating a firewall. To truly get the most value out of your IT, you need to have a deeper insight into the role each component plays in your overall strategy and a record to track these insights for later use.
Furthermore, you need to handle your infrastructure as well, tracking everything and how well it functions to ensure your productivity never lags.
Referring back to the record you keep, your documentation should include a few things:
- All network-attached devices you have, from your networking devices to every company-owned endpoint and peripheral that attaches to it.
- The proper configuration for each of these devices.
- The date that each of these devices was installed.
- The licenses that your business needs to maintain, and the status of the ones you have.
- A comprehensive history of any service each of these devices has received.
This kind of documentation gives whoever is in charge of your IT, in-house admin or managed service provider like us, a clearer path to follow in terms of your strategy. That way, time, energy, and capital can all be used to your greatest advantage over time.
We do this for our clients—it helps us keep our costs as low as possible and ensure that the work that we do is efficient and effective.
If you want to find out more about how IT services can bring you considerable benefits, give Point North Networks, Inc., a call at 651-234-0895.
3 Tips to Help You Make Better IT Decisions
Making solid business decisions can sometimes be confusing. Not that you try to make anything other than good decisions, but a lot of business is, and has always been, trial and error; and, you may know this from experience, error happens to be a big part of it. Today, we thought we would discuss what goes into good technology decisions and how many times it comes down to the results.
How to Make Good Technology Decisions
Making the right decisions in regards to your business’ technology has to do with multiple factors, but one sticks out: What do we do? It seems simple enough, but when you are choosing technology you are probably going to run into technical people that don’t speak your language or salespeople who speak your language a little too well. This will confuse the vast majority of people. It’s not as if there is a guide that can help you match the specific technology to your business; you will have to rely on people to help you do that.
Our consultants at Point North Networks, Inc., understand that there is a balance that needs to be considered when advising our clients on how to make the right technology decisions for them. The balance is between cost/complexity and effectiveness at meeting the goals you’ve set out for your business. Here are a few tips that can help you make the right technology decision, regardless of the situation.
Start with Security
Like any highly guarded place, all technology that you add to your infrastructure has to pass through security clearance. You should start every IT decision with the notion that you need to have the tools in place to protect it. If you don’t, any decisions you make probably won’t help as much as they will hurt.
Be Optimistic, but Prepared
Why else would you make strategic IT investments if not to improve your ability to turn a profit? In that regard, any IT investments you plan should be targeted to solve a problem your business currently faces. That’s not enough, however. To ensure any IT purchase you make works for your business, you need to protect it. That’s why we suggest that if you don’t have a dedicated backup and recovery platform in place, you need to prioritize that before you spend another cent on your business’ IT. A backup system that builds data redundancy and has a cloud-hosted option is the best. Our BDR service utilizes both network-attached backup with a device that uploads your backed up data to an offsite data center. This will help you be prepared for any eventuality and will make any IT investment that much stronger.
Work to Build a Knowledge Base
Another consideration that will help you make the best IT investments is to understand what you are getting into before you get into it. By researching solutions to your business problems you will be able to ensure that any IT decisions you do make are made for the right reasons and that you are getting technology that fits into your business plans. The more knowledge you have about the processes you need technology for, the better and more sound your decisions will be.
Technology can solve a lot of today’s most pressing business problems. If you would like to talk to one of our knowledgeable IT professionals about what technology you should be targeting, how to successfully implement it with the technology you already have in place, or if it’s time to retire a piece of technology, give us a call today at 651-234-0895.
Monitoring Your IT is a Crucial Step to Success
Your business’ technology is extremely important to your business’ success and ensuring that it is functioning as designed has to be an ongoing priority. This can be harder than you may think. Today, we’ll go over how you can actively confront this challenge and keep your IT running as it should.
Examining the Importance of a Business’ Infrastructure
If you stop and give it some thought, you’d immediately acknowledge just how much you rely on your IT. How many times a day do you use your IT to kick off or complete processes crucial to the ultimate success of your business? Quite a few, and as a result, when your IT isn’t functioning as intended, it can really put a damper on your business’ ability to get things done.
By understanding the relationship between your business’ results and functioning IT, you know that mitigating risks that could stymie your efforts is an important consideration of any business owner. One of the best strategies for the technology-savvy business is monitoring the infrastructure its operations rely on.
Why Monitoring Your IT Infrastructure is Crucial
Think about this, when raising children, do they tend to act up more when you are actively watching them? Absolutely not, and if they do, something can be done to keep them from some type of catastrophe.
The same can be said for watching a business’ IT. By keeping an active eye on your company’s IT, it can allow you to not only control certain situations, but it can allow you to stay on top and in the know of what is going on with your business’ technology. Today’s monitoring tools are state-of-the-art and can present technicians a level of workable automation that can keep them in the know, while also allowing them to actively work on any other projects you may have for them. Today’s monitoring tools take a variety of considerations into account, including:
- The health and functionality of your actual infrastructure
- The capability and security of your network
- The efficacy and availability of your team’s business applications
By having better transparency of how your IT is functioning, you also have more control over your business, and that isn’t ever bad.
Call Point North Networks, Inc.
Our technicians have the experience using modern monitoring tools and leveraging the built-in automation to ensure that every monitored piece of technology you have is patched, up to date, and functioning in a way that prioritizes productivity. To learn more about actively monitoring your business’ technology, call us today at 651-234-0895.
Do Your Privacy Practices Line Up With Your Privacy Expectations?
How concerned are you about your data privacy, as a consumer, particularly when you entrust it to another business? If you answered “very”, you aren’t alone… 87 percent of Americans consider their data privacy to be a human right. Having said that, most don’t pay near enough attention to their own security precautions. Let’s take a few moments and examine this trend.
How Consumers View Business Data Practices
A recently released report presented the results of a survey of American consumers to chart their attitudes and expectations regarding corporations and their data privacy. This report—which was compiled by advisory firm KPMG and is available for download on their website—outlined the primary privacy concerns of the everyday user and discusses the statistics around the issue.
Overall, the results showed varying levels of awareness amongst these users and made a few shared concerns very clear. For instance:
- 86 percent of respondents to the survey felt that their data privacy was a rising concern.
- 70 percent claimed to be “generally familiar” with how companies collect their personal data, while 64 percent were familiar with how it was used and stored, 63 percent say they understand how it is protected, and 57 percent say they know how it is sold.
- Having said that, 68 percent don’t trust these companies to sell this data ethically, 54 percent don’t trust it will be used ethically, 53 percent don’t feel it will be collected ethically, and 50 percent don’t trust these companies to protect their data sufficiently.
- Most consumers are concerned about the theft of their social security number, with 83 percent of respondents identifying this concern. Following closely behind come the 69 percent worried about their credit card numbers.
- Surprisingly, only 16 percent are concerned about the theft of their medical records.
How Consumers Treat Their Own Data Practices
Now, while this sounds promising (if not quite at optimal numbers), this concern isn’t reflected in consumers when their own actions are considered. While many—in fact, the majority—of users stated that they would consider it risky to engage in many online behaviors, like repeating passwords across accounts, using public Wi-Fi, and saving a credit card to a website, over 40 percent did these things regardless.
This study also took note of the fact that many users neglected their own security options… 61 percent, in fact.
What This Should Tell Us, as People and Business Owners
Whether you’re considering your own personal data, or you’re thinking about the data you’ve collected as you’ve done business, security needs to be your highest priority. Harvard Business Review Analytic Services conducted a study of their own, and the results were quite telling.
46 percent, essentially half of surveyed consumers, said that they had stopped doing business with a retailer due to discomfort with their privacy statement.
That’s huge. As a consumer, it only shows how much power can potentially be wielded to help improve security for everybody… and how much responsibility that power gives us. As a business, it’s a wakeup call to how important securing data really is. While comprehensive data and information security isn’t a simple process and will ultimately make some of your internal processes more time-consuming, it is better than alienating half of your market.
Fortunately, Point North Networks, Inc. can help make the adoption of improved security solutions and procedures far simpler. To learn more about what we have to offer to help ensure your data security, give us a call at 651-234-0895 today.
Don’t Allow Any Disasters to Put Your Operations on Hold
If there’s anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught businesses, it’s that they need to be (or, in too many cases, should have been) prepared for anything. Disasters don’t keep a nine-to-five schedule, and you generally won’t get much notice that one is going to strike. This is why it is so important to have fully considered your business continuity, and to have prepared your staff to work productively from anywhere.
First, let’s examine the various disasters that your business may have to contend with.
Business Disasters Come in Many Forms
As the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Unfortunately, in this case, the “cat” is your business and its operations.
There are plenty of reasons that you could find your processes interrupted. There are those relatively small frustrations, like an employee being out sick or a workstation demanding a restart at the least opportune time, with an entire spectrum of increasingly bad situations leading up to unmitigated disaster… think your office burning to the ground, or a worldwide pandemic forcing businesses to close for weeks on end.
You know, just to name a few examples.
While these situations all have varying degrees of severity, it is important that you have a plan for each to enable your operations to continue. This is what is known as business continuity.
Traditionally, we usually discuss business continuity in the context of data loss and extreme weather events. However, it has never been more clear that this is not the extent of what makes business continuity so necessary. We are now all first-hand witnesses of the importance of business continuity planning that doesn’t assume that there is anything inherently wrong with the office space or the business’ resources, and instead acknowledges that the human element may be the problematic factor.
When it comes to threats like viruses, businesses should be concerned about all kinds–those that infect computers, and those that infect users. Both need to be addressed in business continuity plans.
How to Address Business Continuity in Terms of Illness
The idea of business continuity is simple: maintaining an acceptable level of business processes, despite some negative consequences that would prevent them from being possible, without proactive planning and preparations. It’s having a playbook, so to speak, of how to survive assorted issues and disastrous circumstances.
While the natural approach is to focus on those events that would impact your business in terms of its operability, with some discussion of lacking human resources, recent events have made it abundantly clear that the opposite also needs to be true. How would your business cope if half of your workforce (or more) suddenly couldn’t safely stay in the office and work for health reasons?
This needs to be a part of your business continuity planning, especially because it’s a very new situation for so many businesses.
What Your Illness-Based Business Continuity Plan Needs
Let’s briefly talk about the components that need to be involved in your continuity plan:
- The Means to Be Productive: As your team members attempt to work from home, you need to ensure that they are capable of still fulfilling their responsibilities. To accomplish this, they are going to need comparable technology solutions to what they are able to access in-house. This can be accomplished through a few means. You could equip your team with laptops that they can take home and work remotely on, with the solutions they need either delivered via cloud services or installed on the device itself. Alternatively, you could also enable them to access their work resources on their own devices in an adapted version of a Bring Your Own Device strategy.
- The Means to Remain Secure: Whenever your team operates remotely, it is important to remember that they are not within the protections you’ve established within your network, and are therefore susceptible to additional cyberattacks and other threats. This makes it important that you not only provide them with the tools they need to help maintain an acceptable level of security–like a virtual private network, firewalls, and antivirus–but that you also educate them on the best practices they should be following.
- The Means to Communicate and Collaborate: Finally, just because your team will be working from home does not mean that they shouldn’t still be working together. You need to make sure that they have sufficient means of communicating with one another. Provide them with solutions like Voice over Internet Protocol solutions, conferencing tools, instant messaging, and email, and make sure they are trained to use them when it is appropriate to do so.
If your business technology is making it more difficult for you to operate with all that is going on, reach out to Point North Networks, Inc.. Our team of professionals can evaluate your needs, design the solution that best addresses these requirements, and provide the support needed to maintain it. Reach out to us at 651-234-0895 to learn more.
We’re Seeing an Increase in COVID-19-Related Cyberattacks
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Since the beginning of the COVID-19 situation in March, creating a vaccine has been a major priority. True to form, hackers have begun targeting the very organizations responsible for the vaccine trials. There’s a lesson to be learned, today we’ll discuss it.
Cozy Bear
According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, a group with the moniker “APT29” (who is also known as “Cozy Bear” or as “the Dukes”) has started to relentlessly hack organizations tabbed with creating a vaccine for COVID-19. These claims have been corroborated by both US and Canadan authorities, and present a significant roadblock to the progress of COVID-19 vaccine production.
In fact, the National Cyber Security Centre released a report that goes on to describe APT29’s use of several exploits in conjunction with spear phishing attacks to gain access to CSC’s network and infrastructure. Once network security is breached the organization gets busy deploying malware known as WellMess or WellMail.
CSC has been working with software vendors to patch vulnerabilities. Software that has been patched doesn’t provide the exploitable pathways that often lead to problems.
Experts believe that this is not the first time APT29 has struck and that this threat should be taken very seriously. The organization is believed to be behind the 2016 hack that broke into the Democratic National Committee’s systems. The group has also been suspected of attacks against various healthcare, energy, government and other organizations.
Spear Phishing
We relentlessly discuss phishing in our blog, because it is one of the biggest threats to maintaining network security. Most phishing attacks are messages sent randomly, but the spear phishing attack is one that is planned and executed deliberately to target one person. Hackers look for a weak link and try to take advantage of it.
While your organization probably won’t be targeted by major hacking collectives, it is still important that you and your staff know how to identify a phishing attack and what to do if you suspect you are being attacked. Here are a few tips:
- Always check the details. Legitimate emails are sent from legitimate email addresses. Take a look at the email address of suspect emails and you’ll likely see a potential ruse.
- Proofread the message. Most business correspondence is proofread before it is sent. If the spelling and grammar looks as suspect as the email is, it’s likely illegitimate.
- Reach out. If there is any question, reach out to the organization/person sending the message. The more you know, the less likely you will fall for a scam.
Identifying phishing attacks has to be a major point of emphasis for your company. Call Point North Networks today at 651-234-0895 for help with getting the resources you need to properly train your team.
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For Many Businesses, Working From Home Might Stick
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Work Can Get Done From Home. Who Would Have Guessed?
Skipping the commute, wearing comfortable pants, and foregoing everyday office distractions has become the new norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s very likely that the businesses that do well with a remote workforce might continue to keep operating that way even after we’re all able to see each other again.
Before the pandemic, if you were to ask a hundred small business owners what their biggest turn off was when it comes to allowing their staff to work from home, most would tell you that they didn’t have the confidence that their employees would treat their jobs as seriously. Less work would get done. At home, there are pets, television, video games, children, and a number of other distractions that would seemingly fight for the attention of your employees.
At the office, the business owner and managers can march around and make sure everybody is working hard, right?
It reminds me of a Dilbert strip. The exchange goes something like this:
Dilbert: I’d like to work from home so I can be more productive.
Boss: I can’t manage you as easily when you’re out of the office.
Dilbert: That’s why I’d be more productive.
Boss: But you’d be missing out on all of this.
Granted, every manager has their own management style, and every business has their own needs when it comes to keeping things productive, and there are always going to be employees that buck the trends. Still, a lot of employees around the world right now are suddenly discovering the fact that they are able to be as productive, if not more productive, when working from home.
Much of the office workforce is getting very used to wearing those comfy pants, and it’s going to be strange (and a little disappointing) having to go back to the old ways of doing things.
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Some Businesses Figured This Out Years Ago
Telecommuting isn’t anything new, but experts were pretty sure it was going to take a bit longer to catch on. Many organizations have been offering different flavors of remote employment for a while now. Some might have certain departments or employees working from home all the time, or they might offer flexibility to have people work from home a few days every week.
Either way, these organizations are using it as both a perk for prospective employees, and as a way to cut down on costs. It’s not cheap to keep and maintain a working area for employees. Keeping the lights on, the A.C. running, and maintaining a cubicle and workstation adds up.
Look at your office space. Add up the rent/lease costs, utilities, and the snack budget. It’s a big chunk of money. Imagine reducing that down to almost nothing – moving your IT to the cloud, finding a shared space for meetings and interviews (if needed), and ditching the expensive office space might look pretty attractive once you discover you don’t really need it.
Whether You Go Back or Stay Remote, We Can Help
Point North Networks, Inc. has worked with a lot of businesses during this pandemic to help get them set up to allow their workforce to be productive from home. We can help your business implement new technologies to make it easier for your staff to collaborate and work from home (or anywhere) for the long term.
Whether you need immediate help or you are looking to plan out strategies to keep things running smoothly for the long run, give us a call at (651) 234-0895 to discuss all the options.
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