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Top 5 IT Tasks to focus on this year!

Published: 14 January 2022
Written by Natalie Finlayson
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Categories: COVID-19, Cyber Security, Hardware, Productivity

This week let’s discuss the top 5 IT tasks to focus on this new year.  We will go into each one in more detail and link to some of our previous blogs to help you make plans and set goals for your IT for 2022.  Let’s look at the top 5 tasks first:

  • Security
  • Work From Home Hybrid Setups
  • Cloud services
  • Microsoft 365 licensing Changes
  • Forward Planning for Hardware Requirements
  1. Security

No matter the time of year security should be the top of your priority list when considering your IT setup.  However, let’s make 2022 the year we all take a proactive step to cyber security rather than a reactive step when a cyber attack happens.  MJD can help you on your proactive security process through getting Cyber Security accreditation and advising solutions that are suitable for your circumstances.  You can read our blog on Cyber Security accreditation here and all our other security related blogs are tagged so you can easily filter and read more on particular topics.

  1. Work from Home Hybrid Setups

As the global pandemic is still with us and affecting the way we live our lives and how we work, we would always recommend considering your office setup.  Do you have the capability to allow employees to securely and productively continue to work from home if required.  Also, don’t just consider this for the pandemic, think beyond the pandemic and the flexibility that this can give your company and your work force, that for whatever reason they can’t work in the office they can continue to work and allow your business to function.  From an office fire or flood which leaves you without a workspace to snow stopping employees travelling to the office, if you have the capabilities and technology in place, business can continue.  We have a blog here on our essential WFH equipment and a blog on the considerations of the WFH environment and your business security here.

  1. Cloud Services

This area ties in nicely with the previous area, but should be given it’s own importance and time to be considered as this can benefit the business not just for the WFH benefits.  As more and more of the software we use daily offers cloud based options it is important that we make ourselves aware of these if the options are available to us.  Cloud based services can give us the flexibility to work from anywhere and reduce the capital costs required with servers and the maintenance of this equipment.  Most cloud services are monthly based subscriptions so allow you to budget for a fixed cost each month and not have to guestimate your maintenance budget on servers and any parts that may be required further down the line for them.  We wrote a blog on what is the cloud which you can read here.

  1. Microsoft 365 Licensing Changes

This year Microsoft are making some changes to the way in which they offer their 365 licensing.  These changes will see a shift from monthly licensing charges to annual commitments and we would urge you to speak with your Microsoft 365 provider to plan and discuss the impact this may have on your business in the coming year.  We will be in touch with all our clients to discuss these changes.

  1. Forward Planning for IT Hardware Requirements

Unfortunately, the worldwide chip shortage is going nowhere anytime soon, so we still need to consider our IT hardware requirements as far in advance as possible.  We are still seeing shortages of equipment with no forecast dates of arrival of the stock to our suppliers from the manufacturers, so the more time you can give your IT service provider to get the hardware the more chance of success you will have.  You can read our blog on the chip shortage here.

If you would like to discuss any of these IT areas and would like help to plan your IT for 2022 please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team here at MJD, and let’s make 2022 the year your IT works for YOU!

 

Essential IT equipment and software to make your WFH setup permanent

Published: 6 August 2021
Written by Natalie Finlayson
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Categories: COVID-19, Cyber Security, Hardware, Laptops, Microsoft Office, Productivity

As restrictions are easing and we are moving into a new phase of living with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing a trend develop for a hybrid working pattern and home working is here to stay.  That’s why this week we wanted to highlight the essential pieces of equipment that we would recommend to make your work from home setup more efficient and make your IT work for YOU.

  1. Docking Station

The most useful piece of kit you could have in your work from home and your office setup is a universal docking station.  We recommend and use the Terra 731 Docking Station, which means that all you have to do is connect a USB cable to your laptop and you can be connected to your monitors, speakers, internet, keyboard and mouse as quickly as you can connect the cable!  This can make the transition between office to your home desk feel effortless and you won’t even think about it.  This means you and your employees can concentrate on getting down to work and not having to setup your desk and work station each time you move between the two setups.

  1. Height adjustable monitors/Monitor Stands

                           

It is important to make sure that you now consider your work from home setup as a permenant fixture and therefore, are your monitors at the correct height for ensuring you have good posture?  If you have two monitors are they both at the same height?  If not, it would be worth considering new height adjustable, or if these monitors are still in good working order a monitor stand which would allow you to properly adjust the height of the monitor screen.  Terra have a range of monitors so please get in touch with your specific requirements for a bespoke recommendation.

  1. Microsoft 365

By using Microsoft 365 for your whole business setup or as a hybrid solution, this can help you to move seamlessly from office to home by having access to your files in the 365 cloud.  This also gives you access to use Teams to help manage your business remotely and to collaborate and stay in touch even while you are all in different locations.  If you have any questions or want to maximise the use of your 365 licenses, just get in touch with the MJD team and we’d be more than happy to help.

  1. Laptop

     

A laptop goes without saying, due to its portability will allow you to take it between the office and your home office with ease and combined with a docking station at both desks will allow you to always have everything you need at all times.

  1. Headset

If you are not the only one in your house then to ensure privacy and that your clients and colleagues can hear you clearly in video calls a headset is a must and not an expensive part of your kit.

  1. Security Software

This is a rather vague heading, but by this we want to encompass not just anti-virus & anti-malware but also security monitoring services which constantly monitor for suspicious activity on your devices which could be a result of malware or a ransomware attack plus remote management software for mobile devices to allow you to wipe them and protect your data if they are lost.  This is the most important part of your hybrid setup and why we left it to last to ensure it’s the one that sticks with you.  Portable devices are more likely to get lost, be left behind and be outwith your nice secure office network and therefore need protection from the environments they find themselves in.  Get in touch with our Cyber Security Specialist here at MJD to discuss your security software requirements and how to best manage your portable devices.

 

What should I do if I spill a liquid on my laptop?

Published: 16 April 2021
Written by Natalie Finlayson
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Categories: COVID-19, Laptops, Training

Accidentally spilled your water or morning coffee all over your laptop?  Or your chosen evening tipple while catching up after the kids are off to bed?  We have seen an increase in liquid damage to laptops since the move to working from home for the COVID-19 pandemic.  But we understand accidents happen and if we had the answer to prevent accidents, we would be sitting on a beach somewhere sunny!  However, how you react to a liquid spill on your laptop is controllable and can greatly help the success rate of bringing the device back from the brink.

First things first is so long as it is safe to do so, as please remember electricity and water do not mix, unplug the device and turn the laptop off as soon as is safely possible.  Next, if you can remove the battery from your laptop and any other peripherals you have connected to the laptop.

Now it is time to think about limiting the reach of the liquid and drying the laptop out.  So, if you spilled the liquid onto the keyboard, turn the laptop so the liquid can drain back out the keyboard and if possible leave it somewhere warm, so near a radiator or in a warm area of your house.

At this point, we would encourage our clients to contact us as soon as they have done the above steps so that we can plan the next steps based on the type of device which has had liquid damage to assess and hopefully repair the damage. Usually, it is a case of leaving the equipment to dry for a few days and then taking it into the workshop to assess the damage done.  But we will assess things like the make and model of the laptop, as to whether it is one which can be taken apart further in our workshop and left to dry there, or if it is a worse case of damage and we need to get the hard drive out ASAP to save your data.  However, we would always recommend that you carry out regular back ups of your data to ensure that should a liquid damage accident happen, and your laptop can’t be brought back that you can still be setup on an alternative or new device.  We have a blog here on why back ups are important and how to chose a suitable backup solution.

The type of liquid makes a big difference, for instance clean water is less likely to cause long term corrosion compared with sugary drinks.  Any corrosion internally can shorten the life of the laptop, even if we are able to bring it back from the liquid damage.

Please don’t ever hesitate to get in touch with us for advice on liquid damage to your laptop, the team at MJD are here to help and get you back and working as soon as possible.

Are we now increasingly working in hostile environments?

Published: 26 February 2021
Written by Natalie Finlayson
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Categories: COVID-19, Cyber Security

As we continue to work from home due to COVID-19 and a shift in our working practises and business models brought on by the pandemic, we need to consider that we are moving our business activities into potential hostile environments outside the safe confines of our office security systems.

Out of a need to move quickly we have all been learning how to connect remotely from our personal devices and how to continue business within our new work environment.  But, what may have be left out of your considerations is how secure is this new work environment.  Also, how many new work environments does my business now have which I currently have little or no control over?  Each employee working from home will have their own unique setup within their household for their own personal IT.  What we need to consider is this:  was this setup with business in mind?

The answer will likely be no as before now, unless they worked from home as part of their contract, the most they might have done remotely is to check emails on their home network via webmail or on their phone.  What their home setup will predominately be catering for is their personal use: entertainment, children, life admin!  The security setup will depend on their personal interest in IT and their appetite for risk.  If they are a security conscious individual concerned with internet safety they may have anti-virus software on personal laptops and have changed the default password on their router (if they know how to do this).  However, they could also have no software and have left the default password on their router as supplied from the manufacturer resulting in every hacker in the world knowing the password for their router in fact a 10 second internet search will likely provide the password to anyone that wants it.

This is where our term “hostile environment” comes into play.  When you ask employees to work from home, whether using company issued devices or not, you are introducing a new network into your business network parameters.  This means to ensure your network security is comprehensive you need to consider each employee who works from home as a satellite office and part of your overall IT network.  Ask the questions would you allow your employee to take commercially sensitive files out of the office and leave them in an unlocked home overnight?  This is effectively what you maybe doing with your electronic files.

Now we’re not trying to panic anyone and we’re not saying that you need to stop people working from home, quite the opposite!  Working from home has been vital for many businesses during COVID-19 and will probably continue with many workers afterwards. Here at MJD we’ve been working hard with our clients to set everyone up with safe and secure work from home solutions to allow them to protect their workforce and their business as best they can from the effects of the pandemic.  What we want is to increase the awareness of the security risks posed from the work from home movement and highlight that there are some key tools to implement to increase your opportunities and decrease your threats because of working from home.

In fact have you considered the fact that your employee could be in the kitchen making a cup of tea while other members of the family may have access to the computer and ultimately your valuable business information and whilst not being malicious children can be very inquisitive and can cause a lot of damage deleting things in the 5 minutes that the pc is unsupervised?

First and foremost, if your employee is working from home using a personal device it is highly recommended to make sure you have a Bring Your Own Device policy in place and that a stipulation of this is that a company approved anti-virus and anti-malware software is installed.  The National Cyber Security Centre have a fantastic advice document on their website on Bring Your Own Device policies which can be found here.

The team here at MJD can help you to implement such a policy and we can recommend suitable Remote Access software to help you manage this policy for mobile devices, laptops and PCs.

An IT policy should also be implemented alongside your BYOD policy, which we recently wrote a blog article on and can be read here.  This will help to protect the business should any IT hardware or services provide by the business to your employees be used outwith the manner agreed to and intended for while in the work from home and office environments.

A password manager should also be utilised to ensure the secure management of company passwords and allow employees to share credentials in a safe and secure method.  You can even share read only view permissions between members of your organisation so they can login but not view or edit the password themselves.

We would also recommend the use of Email Encryption for members of your organisation who require to send confidential or sensitive information.  This allows you to add a further layer or security on your business communications in these new hostile environments.  We recently wrote a blog article on email encryption which you can read here.

This is by no means an exhaustive guide on to how to fully protect your IT network and business in the work from home environment, but is a good starting point to encourage discussion and planning on the area.  If you have any questions about your remote setups or would like advice or guidance on improving your work from home security please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team here at MJD.

Using OneNote

Published: 21 August 2020
Written by Natalie Finlayson
No comments
Categories: COVID-19, Productivity

With us now moving towards working models where we may be a flexible mix of working from home and working on site and in our offices, the ability to takes notes and have them on our person where ever we are has become increasingly important. And with the requirement to reduce the amount of our own things we take into spaces where they could pick up contamination of COVID-19 from communal spaces, we need to think about maximising our use of technology.

We want to introduce Microsoft OneNote to any users out there who do not already utilise the programme. Or if you are aware and already use, hopefully we can share some handy tips and functions within the programme to maximise your usage of OneNote.

OneNote is a flexible electronic notebook, which you can access from your phone, PC, tablet, laptop etc so long as your notebook is linked to your Microsoft account. If you have 365 you will already have a Microsoft account you can log in with. If not, it only takes a few minutes to setup and link your OneNote notebooks too. This means the notebooks will be stored in the cloud so from any device which you have the app installed on it will sync and update your notebooks.

One of the key ways you can make OneNote really work for your business, is sharing notebooks between team members. This allows everyone to see the information held within them, to action tasks on check lists etc. Your imagination is the limit for the uses a shared electronic notebook has! It encourages collaboration and can be used during meetings for everyone to have access to the notes, tasks can be added to a To Do List as the work day progresses or can be used as a handover tool when people are out of the office, those covering have access to shared notes that may help them cover the work in their colleagues absence.

Within OneNote you can setup your notebooks in very much the same way as a physical notebook. You can have separate notebooks, sections within the Notebook and then different pages within your sections. Your sections can be colour coded and each page can be given a title. I find this personally much more organised than a paper notebook as I can easily find the notes I want from the title of the page, rather than numerous sticky tabs with small handwritten titles that wear off and disappear over the course of a working day!

Within a page, you can have text notes, use a pen tool, format your notes to have headings and layout different boxes to highlight particular information for yourself. A particularly handy formatting function that I use is the check box. I have a separate section just as my To Do Lists using the check box function which allows me at a glance to see tasks still to complete. There is also a dictate feature within OneNote if you are on the go and need to quickly add some notes. The audio record function can be useful when in a training or a meeting which you’d like to take more detailed notes from later, given that everyone in the room is happy for you to record. The sound recording is then embedded in that page in your notebook for review later. This was a handy feature while at university, to further augment the notes for studying later from lectures.

A handy automatic feature, is when you copy and paste text, images, content from online, OneNote will automatically include a link to the source in the Notebook for you. So gone is the issue of trying to remember where you read the information or searching through your browser history to locate the source. A useful tip for anyone at university and writing essays!

One feature that may be useful if you prefer to handwrite notes on your tablet or mobile with the Ink function, is the “Ink to Text” function. This means you can use the Lasso tool and select your handwritten notes and it will do it’s best to turn this into text. Obviously, this depends on how clear your handwriting is!

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the features of OneNote but just a few highlights we find useful ourselves here at MJD. Hopefully this has been insightful and sparked some ideas about how you can use this Microsoft Office offering to help in your daily working routine. If you have any issues or would like some further help in setting up OneNote please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, we’d be more than happy to help. We have included a small run through video below as a visual aid to where some of the features above are located within OneNote.  Lets make your IT work for you!

 

 

Key Timings in Video:

Share Function – 00:27.30

New Sections and Pages – 02:37.36

Change Section Colours – 04:08.46

Search Function – 04:22.20

To Do Lists – 05:31.00

Dictate – 06:14.20

Ink to Text – 07:00.50

Automatic Source Copying – 08:25.83

Audio Recording – 09:04.93

 

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