XFER Blog

It was only a few decades ago that purchasing a couple of computers for a business was almost the same investment as purchasing a decent company van. In 1986, a business could spend $3500 on a single Compaq Portable II, which was a 24 lb monstrosity with a tiny 9-inch screen. Alternatively, a Chevy Astro Cargo Van cost about $7800 around the same year. 

Technology is not cheap, especially not business technology that has features that the average user might not find much value in. To help you keep your business from investing in the wrong solutions or spending unnecessary capital on solutions you won’t find useful, we’ve put together some of the common places where businesses like yours might accidentally waste hard-earned funds.

The world has become reliant on technology for countless tasks, even to the point where businesses and individuals alike depend on technology just to go about their daily tasks. The big question, though, is whether people are happier with all this technology in their lives. Let’s go over how technology has impacted society as a whole in relation to people’s feelings.

The telephone cemented itself as a valuable tool of business long ago, but the ways that businesses use these devices have changed over the years. Thanks to advancements in technology, telephones can still be used by businesses even today, albeit with some modern adjustments to stay competitive and useful. One of these telephony solutions is Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP for short.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are entering the mainstream technology discourse, and with software developing the ability to learn from datasets, many businesses are using this technology to automate their processes to cut down on costs and better use their current resources. There is a lot of good that comes from this, but only when you look past these benefits can you start to see the drawbacks, including an important one called “data poisoning.”

Despite not wanting to think about cybersecurity incidents derailing your operations, it’s important nevertheless to consider them before it’s too late to do anything about them. These days, businesses need to invest considerable capital into protections, including a cyber insurance policy to cover all of their bases.

Let’s discuss some of your options for cybersecurity insurance and what you’ll need to know to make the most informed decisions possible.

Social media can be difficult to navigate due to how overstimulating it can be. Sometimes it is beneficial to unfollow people or pages that are either no longer relevant to you or are not doing anything for your mental health. To help you detox your social media feed a little bit, let’s discuss how you can unfollow someone on Facebook.

Password. 123456. Guest. Qwerty. These are just a few examples of passwords that are, in a word, terrible. To help you avoid using passwords like these, let’s go over what a good password is and how to choose one—starting with what you need to avoid.

The cloud has been a good resource for business for quite a while. Just how good? Currently, nine-out-of-ten businesses operate with some type of cloud-hosted solution. In fact, by the figures, we’re definitely looking at a cloud-hosted future. We thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the cloud computing stats and trends to paint a picture of just how the cloud has grown up. 

Most people look at only the first page of Google when they are trying to find results; anything seen past the first page is looked at as inferior, inaccurate, or possibly even dangerous. However, Google’s new plans for the search engine will put an end to this bias through the use of a continuous scroll feature.

For quite a while it took an actual disaster to encourage business leaders to allocate any time and money to put towards cybersecurity. Many businesses still don’t, in fact. Those that have, while absolutely prudent in their use of resources to help ward off security problems, may forget that there are still things that need to be done aside from employee training to keep their security up. Let’s go through a few things that every organization should be doing to maintain the security of their information systems. 

Travel has become pretty commonplace for businesses, and today, business travelers can do more than ever thanks to dynamic mobile computing tools. In this month’s newsletter, we will outline some of the most important mobile technologies available to help serve a business while its people are on the move. 

Cybersecurity is one part of your business’ computing that you must prioritize, as the fallout of a data breach could, in many cases, be enough to shutter your business for good. You want to be seen as a company that takes data security seriously, and to this end, you have likely implemented countless security features and measures to protect your organization’s resources and data. However, this all comes at a cost, and it’s not the one you might expect: your employees.

Everyone’s job has some degree of minutiae involved. Not everything can be exciting: I mean even a stuntman sits around for most of the day before his or her death-defying scene happens. This week, we thought we’d go through the importance of these seemingly rote tasks and how instituting technology that allows you to automate more of them can actually help a business accomplish a lot. 

In today's digital world, SMBs need to establish a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy to protect themselves from a range of potential threats. Whether it's a small business with a handful of employees or a large corporation with thousands of workers, every organization is vulnerable to cyberattacks. That’s worth stressing because so many business owners think they are immune simply because of the size of their organization.

Autocorrect is one of those things that you either love or hate, depending on how many times it has saved you from embarrassment or been a source of embarrassment. Without appropriate context, it can sometimes struggle to offer you appropriate suggestions. Thankfully, you can make autocorrect work a bit better for you, and if you are just sick of it altogether, you can disable it.

The idea of hot desking, or foregoing the traditional assigned workstation office organization method, is increasing in popularity, and for good reason. There might be several pros and cons to it, but people are generally finding that the benefits outweigh the costs. Let’s go over how you can implement hot desking to save money and improve operations.

Let’s say that, right now, someone was attempting to break into your network…could they do it? Is there some vulnerability present on your network that has left you open to attack? This is a question you need to know the answer to so that you can resolve it.

One way to get this answer is by bringing on a professional to perform a penetration test on your business IT.

How organized are your contacts stored in your Android smartphone? Chances are that, as a business professional, you might have several duplicate contacts in your phone, some from just asking for peoples’ contact information, some imported from your email application, and others from who knows where. Let’s discuss how you can merge duplicate contacts into one entry in your contact application, making for a much more organized list.

Few parts of your technology infrastructure will have such a profound impact on your operations as your communications systems. Whether it’s your email or your phone systems, you’re bound to use them on a daily basis, and you’ll feel a significant deficit in your operations without them. Today we want to look at one particular solution and ask if it’s right for you (hint: it is): Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.