Is your internet bandwidth enough for remote work?

The coronavirus outbreak has necessitated people to work away from each other, so employees are now setting up offices at home. If you’re a remote worker, or if your business is planning to move to a work from home setup soon, make sure that your employees’ internet bandwidth can handle work-related processes. This way, your transition goes as smoothly as possible.

What is bandwidth?

Bandwidth refers to the maximum data transfer rate possible in a network or internet connection. It indicates the amount of data that can be sent over a connection in a given amount of time, and is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or bytes per second (Bps).

Imagine two computers with the same internet speed at 100 megabit per second (Mbps): the first computer only has a 50 Mbps bandwidth, while the second one has 100 Mbps. If they were to download the same 500 Megabit (Mb) file, the first computer would be able to do it in 10 seconds, while the second one could do it in just five.

This is because the first computer’s bandwidth is capped at 50 Mbps — even if the internet was fast, the limit of transfer would still be low. Therefore, the higher the bandwidth, the more data can be sent over a connection, contributing to faster uploads and downloads, and overall better internet experience.

How much bandwidth do you need for remote working?

The answer to this question isn’t clear cut. The biggest considerations are the type of work that you do and the apps that you use. If your job mostly consists of sending emails, editing and writing on Google Docs, and communicating on Slack, then you can do your job with ease even with a low bandwidth. On the other hand, if you frequently attend meetings through video calls, then you’d definitely need a plan with higher bandwidth.

Once you have a clear picture of how much data you send and receive on an average work day, you can start looking for plans that can support your needs. And while you definitely don’t need to conduct virtual meetings in 4K quality, you also won’t want your clients and colleagues to appear pixelated during a meeting. Neither would you want a session that gets choppy or cut off mid-conversation.

Here are the minimum requirements for the most common video chat apps used by remote workers today:

• Zoom

For 1:1 video calling:

• • 600 Kbps (up/down) for high-quality video
  • 1.2 Mbps (up/down) for 720p HD video
  • Receiving 1080p HD video requires 1.8 Mbps (up/down)
  • Sending 1080p HD video requires 1.8 Mbps (up/down)

For group video calling:

• • 800 Kbps/1.0 Mbps (up/down) for high-quality video
  • For 720p HD video: 1.5 Mbps (up/down)
  • Receiving 1080p HD video requires 2.5 Mbps (up/down)
  • Sending 1080p HD video requires 3.0 Mbps (up/down)

• Google Meet

HD video quality  

• • Outbound signals must always meet a 3.2 Mbps bandwidth requirement.
  • Inbound signals: 2.6 Mbps with two participants; 3.2 Mbps with five participants; and 4.0 Mbps with 10 participants

Standard definition (SD) video quality

• • Outbound signals must always meet a 1 Mbps bandwidth requirement.
  • Inbound signals: 1 Mbps with two participants; 1.5 Mbps with five participants; and 2 Mbps with 10 participants

• Skype

Video calling

• • HD: 1.2 Mbps (up/down)
  • SD: 400 Kbps (up/down)
  • The more participants, the higher the bandwidth requirement for downloads: 512 Kbps for three participants; 2 Mbps for five participants; and 4 Mbps for seven people. Upload requirements remain constant at 128 Kbps.

• Microsoft Teams

Teams requires the same upload and download internet bandwidth for the following scenarios:

• • 30 Kbps for peer-to-peer audio calling
  • 1.2 Mbps for peer-to-peer HD-quality video calling at 720p
  • 1.5 Mbps for peer-to-peer HD-quality video calling at 1080p
  • 500 Kbps/1 Mbps for group video calling

If you’re worried about your internet bandwidth, you can opt for audio calls instead of video calls. This considerably helps lower the information you need to upload and download. For more tips and solutions on how you can work from home without a hitch, call us. We’d be happy to help.

5 Easy Exercise Moves to keep you fit when Working from Home

More and more people are now forced to stay at home and work remotely to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Unfortunately, those who are used to working out in the gym may find it impossible to continue their regular exercise routine. The good news is, we have compiled a list of five easy exercise moves that don’t require gym equipment.

#1 Bridge

Also known as the hip raise or glute bridge, the bridge is a great way to strengthen your core, glutes, and hamstrings. Many people use this move as part of their warm-up.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Keep your hands by your sides, with your palms facing the floor.
2. Tighten your abdominal muscles and buttocks as you raise your hips off the floor. Make sure your hips form a straight line between your knees and shoulders.
3. Hold this position for three deep breaths, then return to the starting position.

#2 Knee push-up

The knee push-up works your arms, chest, and shoulders. It’s a modified version of the standard push-up that’s perfect for beginners.

Here’s how to do it:

Kneel on the floor then slowly bend forward, and put your palms on the floor shoulder-width apart with your arms straight. Bring your feet together behind you.

Keep your knees planted on the floor as you lower your body. Try to get as close to the floor as possible, with your chest between your hands.

While keeping your body tense, use your hands to push your body back up to the starting position.

#3 Squat

This lower body exercise uses your body weight for resistance to tone and strengthen your glutes and legs.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Stand straight with your feet shoulder-width apart.
2. With your arms fully stretched out in front of you, sit back like you are on a chair while keeping your back straight. Lower your hips until they are parallel to the floor. Make sure your knees are also behind your toes.
3. Push back up to the starting position.

#4 Reverse lunge

Reverse lunges or backward lunges tone your legs and strengthen your thighs and hips.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Stand with your feet hip-width apart, and put your hands on your hips for balance.
2. While keeping your torso straight, take a big step back using your left foot.
3. Lower your hips until your right knee is positioned directly above your right ankle, and your left knee is bent at a 90° angle with your left heel up.
4. Push back up to the starting position.

You can repeat this exercise on one leg before switching to your other leg, or opt to alternate legs.

#5 Jumping jack

Mostly used for warm-up, this childhood favorite exercise activates your entire body and elevates your heart rate.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Stand straight with your legs together and your arms at your sides.
2. With your knees slightly bent, jump with your feet shoulder-width apart as you overextend both arms over your head.
3. Jump back to the starting position.

Encourage your employees to do these basic exercise moves every day to keep them healthy while they work from home.

Having tech problems as your employees work remotely? Give our experts a call today and we’ll make sure you won’t have to worry about your IT again. 

Working from Home Isn’t Without Significant Cybersecurity Risks

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted daily life, restricting people to their homes and preventing them from going into the office to work. In response, many companies are hurriedly changing over to a remote-capable workforce and having their employees work from home. This strategy can be highly effective, but if a company and its team isn’t careful, it can also be risky.

Why This Matters Now

Many businesses have had no choice but to shut down as “non-essential” businesses are closed. While the definition of an “essential” business varies from place to place, the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have provided some general guidelines describing what kind of services should be seen as essential.

This list includes many businesses who could conceivably operate on a remote basis, if they had the internal capabilities. Unfortunately, this often isn’t the most secure option. Let’s review why working from home can be less secure than working in the office, and what you can do to help minimize these effects.

Security Threats for Remote Workers

As you would expect, there are a lot of factors that can serve as a detriment to remote work’s inherent security. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is currently a global health disaster that cybercriminals can use to their advantage:

• The security implemented into the business’ network is no longer protecting the employees and their devices.
• Employees may have more lax security habits when not in the workplace.
• Cybercriminals can shape their attacks and scams to be more convincing in the current climate.
• Many businesses haven’t prepared for this eventuality, and so are lacking the remote strategies that would keep their employees secure.

Therefore, cybercriminals have the opportunity to use many of their favorite tactics to their advantage. Researchers and cybersecurity professionals have seen an uptick in ransomware attacks, remote access tools, and trojans, thanks to cybercriminals using COVID-19 as bait during their phishing attacks by playing off the stress that the coronavirus is causing in many people. It doesn’t help that many remote workers will check their personal emails alongside their professional ones, adding to the chances of a successful attack via their email. Others will pose as the hiring organization itself to swindle remote employees.

To be fair, attackers are also seeing more success in targeting businesses directly, while security is put on the back burner as they focus on their COVID-19 preparedness.

As we mentioned earlier, businesses are also generally ill-prepared for this kind of event, especially those who operate in industries that aren’t commonly associated with remote operations, and whose systems are often outdated and poorly maintained, and/or proprietary in nature and not conducive to remote capabilities. Industries that face particular regulations and certification requirements have another hurdle to clear.

What Can Be Done?

While it is unfortunately going to be a reactive response at this point instead of a proactive measure, businesses can adopt certain solutions that will assist them in securing their remote workers from attack.

• Cloud Solutions – Utilizing the cloud, rather than requiring users to remote into an at-work solution, can prevent an external access point from being created that leads into your network. Simpler to use than remote access and inherently secure, a cloud solution is ideal for remote working. With the opportunity to host software, store data, or some combination of the two, the cloud can enable many of your employees to work completely independently of your network.
• Company Issued Equipment – With a company-issued device, it becomes a lot easier to ensure that your team has the security solutions and updates you need them to have. While this will require some investment into mobile devices that support your needs, this is a measure with lasting influence on your overall security and productivity.
• Employee Training and Education – Finally, and perhaps most importantly, your employees need to understand that their responsibility for the cybersecurity of the company at large carries over as they are working remotely. Teaching them how crucial security updates are, how to spot phishing attacks, and other preventative measures will make a huge difference.

Download our Cyber Threat Self Assessment

While the COVID-19 pandemic may be providing businesses with the motivation to put these measures into place now, these measures and other recommended best practices should always be followed. Download our Cyber Threat Self Assessment to discover your network’s readiness to fight off a cyber attack.

5 Steps To Rise Above The Fear Of COVID-19 And Focus On Growing Your Business

In a matter of just a few short weeks, we have gone from living how we’ve always lived to changing just about everything we do. Schools are out for weeks if not months. Cruises have stopped sailing, and air transportation may be next. Bars and restaurants are closing, sporting events are nonexistent and so many people are now unemployed. If you watch the news or follow social media and see the number of infected keep rising, you can’t help but wonder when (or if) life will return to normal.

As a result of these unprecedented life changes in such a short amount of time, so many people today are frozen in fear. They don’t know what they can do and what they can’t do. They’re numb, fearful and questioning everything.

It’s clear that accomplished and determined business owners in our world are facing a unique brand of fears: Will I lose sales and revenue due to the coronavirus? What if I have to lay people off? How can I keep my team and keep them working hard? How will I continue to provide for my family? How long will this last?

Here are five steps you can start taking now to stop being frozen in fear and move forward with your business, your family and living your life.

Step #1: Communicate Often.
You should make an effort to constantly communicate with all of your stakeholders. From your employees to your customers to your partners and vendors, stay in communication with them to share how your business is doing and how you can continue to serve them.

While in-person visits may not be ideal at this time, you can always resort to the good ol’ phone, e-mail, videos or webinars. You can bet that if your customers aren’t hearing from you, they are hearing from your competitors.

Step #2: Be a Valuable Resource.
While money is always important, now is the time to be a trusted resource and friend to your clients and prospects. People today need bold solutions. If you’re actively bringing solutions to your clients, you become a valuable resource. If they’re simply writing a check and never hearing from you – especially in today’s environment – you’ll be first on the chopping block when they have to cut expenses.

Step #3: Lean on People.
It’s ironic that the one time we need people more than ever before, we are supposed to socially distance ourselves and stay in our homes. Through video conferencing and web conferencing, work together with your team, your partners and your Accountability Groups to lean on one another. Because nobody has gone through anything like this before, nobody has all the answers. But as a collective group, you will find most every answer you need.

Step #4: Be MORE Than a Businessperson.
They may be your employees, your colleagues and your clients. But they are PEOPLE first. And just about everyone you interact with in your business world has endless stresses when the workday is done. Their kids are home from school all day getting into who knows what. They’re worried about going to the supermarket and if there will be meat and toilet paper. They’re concerned about keeping themselves and their family healthy.

When your clients and prospects start to see you not just as an IT services provider, but as a friend and someone who truly cares, that’s when they want to do business with you for life.

Step #5: Be Informed But Not Obsessed.
People were glued to their TVs for weeks after 9/11. As a result, although they were informed, they were also more stressed, depressed and fearful. Don’t do that to yourself. Yes, it’s prudent to know how to “flatten the curve” and protect your family, but watching too much news or social media right now can dominate your thinking and actions. That can negatively impact your business.

During this otherworldly pandemic, it’s good to have a little fear. To keep us safe. To keep us making good decisions. However, if you want to ensure your business is stable and growing, to help your family cope and get through this, you should take these steps to rise above the fear.

If you need immediate IT support or if you need help in setting your business up so your employees can work remotely from home, contact us today.

Cloud Use surges during COVID-19 Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads to more nations worldwide, millions of businesses turn to the internet as their employees are forced to work from home. Is the World Wide Web ready for the sudden increase in demand for cloud-based services?

Even before the pandemic, many companies were already turning to online productivity and collaboration tools for their business. While projections on how long this pandemic will force people to stay in their homes vary, it is certain that for the next month or so, cloud usage will continue to rise. This has many people worried that the internet is not ready for this sudden increase in activity.

What you should and shouldn’t be concerned about

The internet’s performance depends on many things, including network infrastructure, how things are wired up, and points of presence.

• Will the internet collapse? Experts say this is unlikely. In fact, the internet is built to survive such surges in activity.
• Will it affect the quality of service? Yes, but it depends on the network infrastructure, the level of demand, and the ability of providers to scale up rapidly. In areas with inadequate or weak infrastructure but with a lot of users, expect to experience a slower internet because response time takes longer. But for those whose infrastructure allows them to make use of multiple paths, they can continue business as usual.
• Can teleworking solutions cope with the demand? It depends on how capable they are of scaling horizontally; meaning, if they can distribute the load to different parts of their network. For cloud-based providers, that should not be difficult.
• Will the increased demand mean that businesses with their data in the cloud will have a harder time retrieving their data? Businesses that use a private cloud to store their data (often for cybersecurity reasons) will not be affected because they have their own dedicated connections. But those who use the public cloud to store their data may be affected.

How companies are preparing for this surge in cloud service usage

Since the pandemic is global, all areas are affected, even those with a strong infrastructure backbone. But how they are affected varies.

• Companies that are already using the cloud extensively are the most ready for this new normal of working from home. Having a multi-cloud infrastructure makes them even more nimble to adjust to the increase in demand.
• Global corporations with a presence in different parts of the world, including areas with inadequate infrastructure, will experience connectivity issues. The solution is for them to redirect traffic to their areas with better-developed backbones.
• Companies offering Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) and Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) like Google, Microsoft, Zoom, 8×8, Amazon Web Services, and IBM, to name a few, need to boost their distributed capacities to accommodate the increase in telecommuting.
• Cloud-based services are elastic, meaning they are quick to scale up or down. But the speed in which companies are able to scale up will depend on their network architecture and the kinds of services they offer.
• Some Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers, like Salesforce and Dropbox, are using a data-driven approach to manage their infrastructure and internet traffic. They incorporate real-time data to determine where to route their traffic so as to decongest their system and ensure consistent and reliable performance overall.
• The challenge is for providers to look for new and innovative ways to manage their traffic and resources. They should also look for ways to deploy new infrastructure to areas with slower, unpredictable internet service.

This work-from-home situation looks like it will last longer than just a couple of weeks. If you need help to set up your business for remote working, talk to our experts today.

Hackers Targeting People Seeking Coronavirus Information On Health Sites

Some people just want to watch the world burn. That seems to be the reason behind the recent attacks on the US Health and Human Services Department website, which serves as a clearinghouse for information relating to the Coronavirus outbreak.

As the virus has spread, more and more people have been heading to the HHS.gov website for news, advice and information.

The hackers, seeing this, decided it would be great fun to bring the site down. As such, an as yet unknown group decided to launch a DDoS (denial of service) attack against it.

Fortunately, the attack didn’t have the desired effect, as reported by Bloomberg.

When their original plan didn’t bear fruit, the hackers shifted gears and began spreading rumors of a national US quarantine and causing the hashtag #quarantine to spike. Things got so bad that the National Security Council (NSC) sent out a tweet in an attempt to quash the rumor. The NSC stated emphatically that there is no national lockdown and that any text or tweet bearing the hashtag #quarantine was spreading disinformation.

Sadly, this has become an increasingly common occurrence. Hackers around the world are taking advantage of the Coronavirus in a variety of ways. They’re sometimes offering what appears to be health advisories that appear to come from legitimate sources in order to get malware installed on target systems.

In other cases, nefarious groups are offering to sell masks or miracle cures and collecting payment information from people desperate for those things. Naturally, once the payment information has been collected, no mask or cure is actually sent. Of course, the hopeful person who placed the order has to spend the next year or so of his or her life dealing with the fallout of identity theft.

Worst of all, we can expect to see a lot more of this as the pandemic grinds on. Make sure the people who report to you are aware and stay vigilant.,

The Web Browser Wars Have A Clear Winner In 2020

It’s notoriously difficult to get reliable statistics on web browser usage.

While there are sites that purport to track such things such as StatCounter and NetMarketShare, the numbers coming from these sources have proved to be problematic and unreliable.

Enter the US Government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP, for short).

While it doesn’t reveal anything about browser statistics worldwide, it does give us a running count of the browsers used when visiting government websites over the last 90 days, which gives us a clear view of the American browser market breakdown.

The results will probably not be terribly surprising to anyone, but in 2020, the most popular web browser is Google Chrome, with 49.3 percent of the recorded share of visits. This is a far cry from IE’s once dominant share of 96 percent back in the infancy of the web, but it’s hardly a surprise that no company has that kind of dominance anymore.

Apple’s Safari browser comes in a distant second with 31.6 percent. At a glance, this number is interesting because to this day, Macs only make up about 10 percent of the PC market. Remember though, that most web surfing is done on smartphones these days. In the US, 29.5 percent of smartphones are Apple devices, compared to 23 percent Android devices. So most of the Safari use actually comes from phones, not PCs.

The big surprise is the third place winner. Internet Explorer. Despite the fact that Microsoft has been urging people to switch to Edge, IE is still the third most widely used browser, capturing 5.7 percent of the market. IE 11 is the most popular version, but there are still some users (0.5 percent of the market) using IE 7 which has been out of support for years now.

Edge loses out to IE, capturing only 4.2 percent of the market, and bringing up the rear is Firefox, with a mere 3.6 percent. The remaining 11.3 percent of the market share is divided up between a constellation of tiny, seldom used browsers that nonetheless have niche followings.

If you use Chrome, count yourself among the mainstream. If you’re still using IE, please consider switching to a more modern, more secure browser. Seriously.

New Phishing Emails Trick Users With Convincing Security Credentials

Unit 42 is a research division of Palo Alto Networks. Their researchers have discovered a sneaky and surprisingly effective phishing campaign that appears to have been launched in January of this year (2020).

When targeted by this attack, a user will get an email containing a braded document containing the name of a legitimate cybersecurity provider.

The name of a known cybersecurity provider alone generates a certain amount of trust in the reader. In addition, the email contains a password-protected document, which naturally is the kind of security that a company in the security business would utilize.

Most of the emails contain subject lines that indicate the recipient is entitled to a refund or a free security product upgrade. That builds on the trust already established and gives the user an enticement for opening the enclosed file that has been password protected “with their security in mind.”

Naturally, nothing could be further from the truth. If the user unlocks the protected file, he or she unwittingly enables the macros embedded in the file, which will then activate and install NetSupport Manager. The manager is surprisingly a completely legitimate remote access control program but used here for nefarious purposes.

As long as it’s running quietly in the background, it gives the people who sent the email a secret inroad into the machine and the network it is connected to.

Not only is the use of a known cybersecurity firm name a sneaky bit of social engineering, but the use of a perfectly legitimate remote connection tool is as well. That is because no antivirus software on the planet would flag the tool, which gives the hackers using it in this way a completely untraceable means of gaining access to a wide range of networks.

Be on your guard against this threat. It’s insidious, and the folks behind it could do a lot of harm to your company.

Master OneNote in No Time

OneNote is a useful but underutilized program that comes with Microsoft Office. With OneNote, you can create and share digital notebooks that contain handwritten or typed notes, drawings, screen clippings, audio commentaries, and more. This takes your note-taking to another level, allowing you to integrate multimedia as well as share notes and collaborate with other users. Here’s how you can master this remarkable 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, but OneNote shows 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 < 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 the notes regarding a particular client. Sections are shown as color-coded tabs along the top of the screen, next to the name of your Notebook. You can add more 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. The only way to find out if OneNote works for you is to try out all the features and decide which method is most effective. Here are some things you can try to get a feel of the OneNote experience.

• 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, you’ll need to upgrade to the latest version to enjoy these benefits.

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 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 tricks up its sleeve 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.