Windows Server 2022 Has Been Released

Some products are released with lots of fanfare. Others with very little. There was almost no fanfare behind the release of Windows Server 2022 but it is currently available to customers.

Windows Server 2022 has been in development for more than a year and comes in three different variants depending on your needs: Standard, Datacenter and Datacenter: Azure Edition.

According to a recently updated Windows Server 2022 documentation page the mainstream support for Windows Server 2022 will run from now to October 13th, 2026. Extended support will be available until October 14th, 2031.

According to the Windows Server 2022 documentation, here’s a quick overview of just some things the new OS makes possible:

• Apply advanced multi-layer protection against threats enabled easily with the secured-core server.
• Secure connectivity to business-critical assets with an additional layer of security during transport, including support for HTTPS and TLS 1.3 enabled by default.
• Manage and govern Windows Server on-premise with Azure Arc
• Get better virtual machine management with the latest Windows Admin Center.
• Migrate file servers from on-premises to Azure with new supported scenario in Storage Migration Service.
• Improve container application deployment with smaller image size for faster download and simplified network policy implementation.
• Update .NET applications with the new containerization tool in Windows Admin Center.

Interested in learning more or giving Windows Server 2022 a try? Microsoft has scheduled a virtual Windows Server Summit for September 16th of this year and are planning to provide the first in-depth public demo during the summit.

By all accounts and based on everything we’ve seen so far, Windows Server 2022 is going to be absolutely fantastic. It is brimming with features that administrators have been clamoring for and filled with features designed to simplify your life. Windows Server 2022 will likely become your go-to solution. Stay tuned for the virtual summit. You won’t want to miss it.

The Right Way to Test your Company’s Disaster Preparedness

This quote is frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and while it may not have actually been said by the Founding Father, it still teaches a valuable lesson – especially where disaster recovery is concerned. In other words, you need to make sure you have a working disaster recovery strategy – working being the key point.

To do that, you need to make sure that your backup and disaster recovery plans are effective, which in turn means you need to test them.

What Kind of Disasters Do You Need to Prepare For?

The first step to an effective disaster recovery strategy is to be prepared for as many scenarios as possible, as there are a wide variety of circumstances that could create a problem for your business.

• User Errors – While many user errors may be viewed as minor inconveniences, there are plenty of ways that a disaster can result from a simple mistake on the part of one of your users. Accidental deletions, shadow IT, and other common enough scenarios can all put your business in a bad place if you aren’t prepared.
• Key Staff Unavailability – What would happen if someone with exclusive access to key data was suddenly kept from the office, either due to some accident, a personal emergency, or some other situation? If they had exclusive access to critical business information or documents, you may find yourself stuck.
• Equipment Failures – Any business today relies on a lot of equipment, from the machines that power their processes to the infrastructure that supports them, the technologies they use to maintain communications to the basic functions of their location like lighting and HVAC. There are also a lot of ways that the equipment you rely upon could fall short, interrupting your processes.
• Malware – Malware has been a threat to businesses for a long time, evolving from the basic viruses that once plagued systems to the advanced threats that we see today. Adding to the threat is the fact that these attack vectors are constantly updated, meaning you have to stay vigilant against these threats.
• Natural Disasters – These are likely the first threats that pop into your mind when you think of a disaster that needs to be recovered from. Every place on the planet is susceptible to some kind of natural disaster, whether it’s a hurricane, earthquake, flood, high winds… you just need to identify your biggest risk, based on your location, and prioritize your preparations accordingly.
• The Unexpected – There are plenty of potential situations that don’t really fit into any of the other types we went over but can still cause big problems for your business. While these scenarios are hard to predict by definition, you should do your best to be prepared for any situation.

How to Be Sure You’re Properly Prepared

In a word: testing.

There are a variety of preparations and evaluations you should routinely go through in order to be sure that your disaster recovery strategy is sufficient. Why routinely? Simple – while it may be the one that is updated the quickest, malware isn’t the only threat that develops over time. Take user errors, for example: new employees are likely going to be unaware of many threats at first, and the most accurate way to find out what they know is to evaluate them. There are even different means of evaluating your employees, which should be combined into a comprehensive test and delivered on a periodic basis.

These tests should be designed to evaluate both the technical side of your disaster recovery process and your team’s ability to carry it out. As you collect data from these tests, you should update the plan to resolve any issues that may have become apparent, as well as keep your test airtight and devoid of any weak points.

Tests that You Should Run

Like we said, there are assorted evaluation processes that your employees should all go through on a semi-regular basis. These include the following:

1. Walkthrough Test: This is simply a basic review of the plan, reading it over to ensure that everyone involved remains updated to any possible changes that may have been made.
2. Tabletop Test: Similar to a tabletop game, someone from each department comes in and is given a hypothetical disaster scenario. Each team member should explain what they would do in their given scenario. This is useful in revealing possible shortcomings in a business’ existing strategy.
3. Parallel Test: These tests are meant to evaluate how well the restoration process works, using a virtual machine to “restore” your system, which continues to run in your usual infrastructure
4. Full Interruption Testing: This test is one of the most in-depth, but also the most risk-laden, as it could lead to actual downtime. In fact, some industries have regulations barring this kind of test, so be sure to double-check with your IT resource that this option is available to you.

Disaster recovery is a critically important process for any business; to make sure you are on the right track download our Business Continuity Essentials Guide below.

Take Notes The Modern Way With OneNote

Note-taking is a vital skill in life. Whether you’re in a board meeting, conference, or lecture, you’re bound to list, quote, or summarize certain points in order to recall and better understand them later. Thanks to new technologies, you now have more ways to take notes than just using pen and paper. With your mobile device and Microsoft OneNote, you can easily record your notes and even customize and share them. Read on to discover how to get the most out of this app.

Organize your digital notebook

While both Microsoft Word and OneNote let you create text-heavy documents, they store and display saved information differently. Word displays one document at a time, while OneNote can show you all your documents at once.

When you open the desktop version of OneNote for the first time, it shows you a default Notebook called “My Notebook.” If you want to create another Notebook, click on the < button beside the name of your current one, then choose +Notebook at the bottom of your screen.

You can customize a Notebook by separating it into subcategories called Sections, which are like dividers in a physical notebook. For instance, you can dedicate one Section for notes regarding a particular client or product. Sections are shown as color-coded tabs along the top of the screen, next to the name of your Notebook. You can add more sections by clicking on +Section at the bottom left of your screen.

You can add individual pages to a Section by clicking +Page, and you can use this feature to separate information. For example, you can add pages pertaining to a client’s contact details, project statuses, and billing information.

You can rename your Notebook, or any Section or Page, by right-clicking on it and choosing the rename option.

Start experimenting

There’s no hard-and-fast rule to enjoy OneNote because each person’s note-taking habits are unique. It’s best to try out all the features and decide which are most useful for you. Here are some things you can try:

Add tags to your notes so you can search for them efficiently.

Instantly turn your drawings into shapes or text using the Ink to Shape and Ink to Text functions, respectively.

Solve equations by using the Ink Math Assistant (which can help you graph or solve math problems).

Use Immersive Reader to read texts out loud.

Write on a web page in Microsoft Edge and save your annotations to OneNote.

Keep in mind, however, that these work only in OneNote for Windows 10. If you’re using an older version of the app, you’ll need to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy these features.

Share your OneNote

So you’ve created a detailed plan for an upcoming event complete with visual pegs and handwritten instructions and you want to share this with your team. That’s as easy as pie with OneNote. Just go to the upper right corner of your ribbon, click on the Share button, and type in the email addresses of the people to whom you wish to send your notes. You can also set the sharing permissions to either “can view” or “can edit,” giving you more control over your data.

OneNote has numerous features, and it can take months for you to master all of them. Call us today, and we’ll make sure you’ll get the hang of OneNote in no time.

Phishing is a Threat, Even By Phone

Working from home has become crucial for businesses to sustain themselves right now, as remote work became a hard and fast requirement in the face of the coronavirus. However, if businesses aren’t careful, they could trade one issue for another in exposing themselves to security threats.

Let’s take a look at main one threat that many are facing: voice-based phishing, or vishing.

Federal Agencies Have Sounded the Alarm

Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have called attention to this variety of phishing. By calling a targeted victim, rather than sending an email or another kind of correspondence, an attacker can potentially pull the wool over their target’s eyes by using a less-expected attack strategy.
Those who are working from home are being targeted by a vishing campaign intended to acquire the access credentials needed to get into corporate networks. Once these credentials are obtained, the cybercriminals responsible can turn around and sell this access to others for their nefarious use.

How These Attacks Are Presenting Themselves

By registering lookalike domains to pose as a company’s actual resources, cybercriminals set themselves up to steal company credentials. These domains can be extremely convincing, often structured in the following ways:

support-[company]
• ticket [company]
• employee-[company]
• [company]-support

As these pages replicate a company’s login page to their virtual private network, unwitting users are more likely to enter their credentials. This means that the attacker is then able to capture these credentials—including multi-factor authentication codes—and use them to gain access to the targeted business’ network.

Once these facsimile pages are completed, criminals then do some digging into a company to learn more about their employees. A profile is constructed, with the name, address, phone number, job title, and even length of employment for each employee included. Using this data, a hacker can call their target through a spoofed number and send them to their fraudulent VPN webpage.

This gives the hacker the means to access an employee’s work account, enabling them to collect more data for further phishing efforts or other data theft efforts. These attacks are now being directed to the team members that are currently working from home, making it even more important for your employees to be able to recognize the signs of phishing.

How to Identify Phishing Scams of All Kinds

• Exercise caution when dealing with unsolicited calls, voicemails, and any other messages from those you don’t know. If you can, double-check that the person is who they claim to be through another means of communication.
• Double-check the number of a suspected vishing caller, as well as any Internet domains you may be told to navigate to.
• Avoid visiting any websites that a caller recommends without good reason to trust their legitimacy.

Net Activity is here to help you with an assortment of your business’ IT needs and concerns, including your cybersecurity. Give us a call at 216-503-5050 to learn about the services and solutions we can put in place on your behalf.

Windows 10: Boost your PC’s performance with these tips

Windows 10 has a lot of special features that aim to improve your computing experience. Unfortunately, many of these may also slow your PC down, especially if your machine is older or has a low-end processor. We’ve listed four effective tweaks to make your Windows 10 computer faster.

Prevent programs from launching at startup

Windows makes certain programs readily available by loading them at startup. While Microsoft likely has good intentions for doing this, this auto-launch feature slows down your computer. To fix this issue, you’ll need to adjust your settings.

Open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc. On the Startup tab, select a program you don’t want launching at startup — such as a media player or an optional accessory that doesn’t have to be active all the time — then click Disable. To be on the safe side, however, keep essential apps such as antivirus software enabled.

Get rid of useless applications

Having too many programs installed on your computer uses up valuable memory and hard disk space. This slows down your machine and makes it work harder than necessary. Quickly uninstall programs you don’t need by following these steps:

• Tap the Windows key on your keyboard and type “Add or remove programs” in the search bar. Selecting the first result opens a System settings window.
• Under Apps & features, you will see all the apps stored on your computer.
• Select the program/s you no longer want, and click Uninstall.

You’ll then be guided through several steps to complete the uninstallation process.

Organize your disks

It’s important to regularly clean out your computer of data you don’t need. Thankfully, Microsoft’s Disk Cleanup tool makes it easy to do so.

To find the tool, tap on the Windows button on your keyboard and type “Disk Cleanup.” If you click on the first result, the tool will launch and automatically find files that take up too much memory space, such as temporary internet and system memory dump files. Make sure that the checkbox before each option is selected, then click OK to send these files to your Recycle Bin.

Turn off apps running in the background

You may not know it, but there are a lot of programs that run in the background as you use your computer. Even when you’re not actively using them, these apps run in the background so they can receive information, send notifications, and download and install updates. However, they also slow down your CPU. Disabling these apps will reduce the burden on your computer and speed it up.

To find out what programs are running in the background, press the Windows button on your keyboard, type “Background apps,” and hit Enter. Find the programs you don’t need running and toggle the On-Off button.

By following these four steps, you’ll see a noticeable difference in your PC speed. If you want to learn how to optimize your Windows system further or need assistance with other Microsoft products, give us a call.

BYOD vs. CYOD: Which Is Better For Your Business?

Bring your own device (BYOD) and choose your own device (CYOD) policies have been shown to enhance employees’ flexibility, productivity, and job satisfaction. If you’re thinking of adopting one of these strategies, here are some things to consider.

What is BYOD?

With BYOD, employees use their own devices, such as smartphones and laptops, to connect to the company network, access business data and applications, and perform work-related tasks. Since your staff are already familiar with these devices, the need to learn and adjust to new technology is eliminated. Therefore, your employees can get right to work, which leads to higher efficiency as well as better employee experience.

Also, BYOD gives employees greater flexibility and increased mobility, as it enables them to work anywhere, anytime. They don’t have to be chained to a desk in order to do their tasks. Instead, they can use their smartphones to check emails or their laptops to edit documents even when they’re on the go.

Your business stands to gain a lot from BYOD as well. Aside from enjoying enhanced employee productivity, you can reduce expenses related to owning computers and mobile devices, including maintenance and upgrades. The money you save can be put toward investments to further improve your bottom line.

However, the main drawback of BYOD is the risk involved when you grant employee-owned devices access to corporate resources. If you’re considering adopting BYOD, you must create a BYOD security policy to ensure that your company’s assets are well protected. This policy should outline key elements such as:

• The applications and data that employees can access from their personal devices
• The minimum security control requirements for employee-owned devices
• The implementation of a mobile device management solution that will allow your IT staff to remotely wipe lost or stolen devices of company data

What is CYOD?

CYOD allows users to choose from a list of devices approved by the company. In this regard, CYOD is similar to BYOD — it gives employees freedom of choice. While not everyone may like the selection of available devices, they may appreciate having a say regarding what computer or mobile device they’ll be using for work. You can also offer employees the option to purchase the device from the company, paying in installments or upfront.

For businesses, the biggest advantage of CYOD is security. You can equip devices with security features to ensure that sensitive data is properly protected. However, since you own the devices, the responsibility of spending on security and optimization will fall on you. This may not be ideal for small businesses or those with a limited budget.

Which policy should your company adopt?

Ultimately, the choice between BYOD and CYOD boils down to what your business needs. If you’re operating on a tight budget, a BYOD policy is the right option for you. On the other hand, CYOD is perfect if you want to ensure the security of your data and other company assets.

If you still need more information to help you make a decision or you just need guidance on all things related to business IT, give Net Activity’s experts a call today.

Microsoft Teams Fend Off Phishing Attacks With Link Protection

Microsoft Defender has long included “Safe Links” protection as part of its overall function. The company recently announced that it would be extending Safe Link functionality to protect from inside Microsoft Teams.

Safe Links is a powerful safety feature that scans a web link in real-time as a user clicks on it. Many users share useful links inside Teams. Most of the shared links are fine but some point back to poisoned websites that contain malicious code. That could potentially infect a user’s computer or other devices. Microsoft aims to limit this risk by extending the protection that Safe Links provides to include Teams.

The company had this to say about the change in a recent blog post:

“With today’s announcement, organizations with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can further protect Microsoft Teams users from malicious phishing attacks that are often orchestrated using weaponized URLs.

Safe Links in Defender for Office 365 scans URLs at the time of click to ensure that users are protected with the latest intelligence from Microsoft Defender.”

It’s a very good and very timely change. Teams has seen explosive growth over the last year and a half. Some of that growth would have occurred even without the pandemic but Covid-19 is undoubtedly the reason for most of the surge.

Because so many more people are using teams, the decision to extend Safe Links protection to the platform was easy.

Kudos to Microsoft for taking an active stance here and providing even better and more robust protections to one of the company’s most popular products. This will by no means completely prevent poisoned links from being shared because no system is perfect. It will dramatically reduce the number though and that’s a very good thing.