What’s the Right Way to Protect Your Business Reputation Online?

Social media accounts for businesses are invaluable tools enterprises use to reach out to their client bases to fully understand their needs and wants. Make sure your social media manager understands the proper way to interact with people online, especially those with bad things to say about the company.

Online reputation management mistakes

As long as you have a successful business or brand, people will always have something to say about it. And when it comes to online reputation management, the goal is to create positive engagement with your customers. So if the discussion about your brand swings negative, here are a few online reputation blunders to avoid.

• Reacting to negative commentary – Negative commentary is generally any commentary that constitutes a verbal attack. As a rule, if it isn’t constructive criticism, it’s probably negative commentary. Feel free to ignore these comments because engaging with them will escalate the conversation further, and fueling those flames are never good for business. It is one thing to stand up for values and principles in a diplomatic manner, and it is a completely different thing to engage in a word war with online commenters who will likely not endure any adverse effects to their negative commentary.
• Reacting emotionally – If your reaction to negative comments is to fire back with negative comments, you’ll appear unprofessional. Customers want to do business with a brand that is professional. If you react emotionally or negatively to a customer online, who’s to say you wouldn’t do the same in real life to the person reading it? As a social media manager, you are the voice of the business. If your voice is abrasive, immature, and easy to bait into a pissing contest, best believe that your customers will see your business in the same light.

How to resolve negative commentary

While a negative comment about your brand may upset you, don’t let your emotions get the better of you and post something you’ll later regret. Instead, calm down, compose yourself, and follow these guidelines.

• Figure out what the customer really wants – Every customer wants their problem to be resolved, but how they want their issue fixed will vary. Some customers want an apology, others want a refund, and some may simply want the product they ordered but did not receive. Just because the customer’s comments are poorly phrased doesn’t mean that they don’t have a legitimate grievance. Learn to ignore the personal attack and carefully draw out the true cause for concern.
• Stick to the facts – When engaging with a customer online, the initial comment can quickly turn into a back-and-forth discussion. If this happens, don’t get off topic when addressing the problem. The customer may try to engage you in a he-said-she-said battle, but avoid taking the bait. Respond with facts, stick to the matter at hand, and don’t get caught up in personal accusations.
• Turn the negative into a positive – Negative feedback is an opportunity to improve your business. So be honest with yourself and, if there’s truth in the comment, take a good hard look at your company. Did the commenter point out a glaring problem you can improve upon? Remember, a business is nothing without its customers, so it makes sense to do your best to please them.

To learn more about how to best manage your online reputation, or for assistance with any of your IT needs, get in touch with our experts today.

What are the Differences between Microsoft 365 Collaboration Tools?

There are three communication and collaboration tools in Microsoft 365 that provide basically similar solutions for the same problem: Outlook Groups, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams. However, they all have subtle differences that set them apart from one another. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Outlook Groups

With Outlook Groups, every member gets a shared inbox, calendar, project planner, notebook, and document library. You can also connect to third-party apps such as Twitter, Trello, and Mailchimp, so notifications are sent directly to your shared inbox.

This means all relevant messages and information are sent to one place, so if most of your conversations are done via email, Outlook Groups is ideal. What’s more, HR and sales departments that communicate with external parties will also find plenty of uses for its email features.

A big downside of Outlook Groups, however, is email overload. Because all messages and notifications are sent to one inbox, users may become overwhelmed by the number of emails they have to sort through every day.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, a chat-based collaboration platform similar to Slack, works with Skype for Business so you can text, call, video chat, and share files with colleagues. Thanks to its seamless integrations with other Microsoft 365 programs, you can even work on shared files without leaving the app.

Unlike Groups, Microsoft Teams is designed for more advanced collaboration, making it great for completing projects with tight deadlines or other tasks requiring immediate feedback.

Yammer

Much like Groups and Teams, Yammer works well with other Microsoft 365 tools like Outlook and OneDrive. However, Yammer is a professional social media app designed to foster open communication and break down barriers between teams.

With Yammer, important files and announcements can be shared with the entire company like an office bulletin board. Users can also see the most popular post on their feeds, follow it, and even comment.

Yammer also takes design elements and features from social media apps like Facebook, making it a popular choice for companies with millennials in their workforce.

Although we’ve discussed the fundamental differences between Groups, Teams, and Yammer, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what each app can do. To figure out which apps you need, you must understand how your employees work, how they prefer to collaborate, and what you want to achieve from such collaborations. Reach out anytime with questions about how we can help.

3 Ways to Get a Better Wi-Fi Signal at Work or at Home

Chances are you’re still spending a lot of time at home, and a lot of that time is being spent on the Internet. With so many still working remotely, and many educational institutions continuing remote learning, the strength of a household’s Wi-Fi signal is going to be crucial. We wanted to offer you some tips to help you maximize the signal strength of your router.

By the way, the following would all apply to the office as well. So, don’t hesitate to use some of these tricks in the workplace.

Elevated, Centralized Placement

For your business to use the Internet wirelessly, your router needs to be able to get the signal to every device used in your day-to-day processes. This means that the signal should have as unobstructed a path as possible to, once again, every device.

To accomplish this, it helps to avoid as many obstacles to the signal as possible. While not all obstacles can be avoided, you should make sure that you eliminate as many as possible. One great way of doing so is to strategically place your router in a centralized place in your business, elevated above most barriers. This will help keep your coverage relatively consistent throughout the workspace.

Keep It Away from Clutter

On a related note, these signals can be blocked by obstacles of all sizes. So, while placing the router on top of a cabinet in the middle of the office will keep Rob’s desk from blocking the signal, stacking extra supplies around it will create just as much difficulty. Other devices and even wires can seriously disrupt the wireless connection.

Try to keep the area around your router relatively clear. Not only will this help preserve a stable signal, it will help keep heat from building up there and causing other problems with your equipment down the line.

Augment with Extenders, or a Second Router

Let’s say that router placement or clutter isn’t so much the problem, and it’s more of a problem of scope… your router just doesn’t get the signal to all of your employees, or the number of employees you have just clogs up the signal.

There are a few ways to potentially fix these issues. First, you could extend the range of your Wi-Fi signal using signal extenders. If you need to make more connections, you can add an additional router to your network as well.

Net Activity is here to assist you with your IT, from building the infrastructure that meets your needs to yes, helping you set up your wireless network. Give us a call at 216-503-5150 to learn more about how we can help.

The Right Way to Test your Company’s Disaster Preparedness

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

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.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind (so Clear your Desktop Now)

It’s simple, really: if your desktop is messy, then it’s more difficult to use. Don’t waste time and energy struggling to function — literally clean up your act by heeding our tips on decluttering your desktop.

1. Arrange, sort, and prioritize

Before you go about deleting everything from your desktop, think about what you really want to keep. This will vary from person to person, but most people use their desktop for storing files, folders, and app shortcuts that they want to access quickly.

Take the time to prioritize your files and folders. An easy way to do this is to right-click on an empty area of your desktop (where there are no icons) and select Auto arrange icons. This will organize your icons into a grid format that makes it easier for you to see and work with them. Then, right-click on the empty space and hover your mouse over Sort by and select Date modified to arrange the icons by the date they were last opened, with the latest on top.

2. Create a folder for holding files and another for keeping app shortcuts

People often use their desktop to hold files like downloads, photos, screenshots, and even email attachments. This can lead to a messy desktop in a short period of time.

In truth, you probably don’t need all these shortcuts on your desktop. Instead, create a folder on your desktop that will serve as your dumping ground for all your nonessential files and folders.

If you don’t intend to keep a file, icon, photo, etc. for long, put it in this folder. Revisit this folder every once in a while to delete the files you no longer need.

It also helps if you create a shortcut folder. When you install new programs on Windows, a shortcut icon is often automatically added to your desktop. However, these desktop shortcuts should be for frequently used programs only. Create a separate folder for programs that aren’t used that often.

3. Be ruthless in cleaning

Once you have your folders set up, it’s time to get rid of the clutter. If you haven’t used a file, folder, etc. in the past two months or so, you should seriously consider getting rid of it.

Examine your desktop and be ruthless in cleaning:

• Uninstall programs you no longer use.
• Delete unimportant files, such as screenshots you no longer need.
• Place the rest in relevant folders.

Once you’ve completed these, check your browser to see where it stores downloaded files. If your browser downloads files onto your desktop by default, go to Settings and change the target location to the Downloads folder.

4. Maintain order

Once you have decluttered your desktop, you must stick to the rules you’ve made. Whenever you download something, ask yourself whether this should go to the desktop, your dumping folder, or someplace else.

Of course, sticking with these rules won’t always be easy, so take time once or twice a month to revisit your desktop and clean it up a bit.

5. Use the taskbar or Start menu for apps

With Windows 10, you can pin apps to the Start menu and the taskbar. This is a great alternative to having program shortcuts on your desktop. To pin apps, open your apps list (i.e., click the Start menu icon at the bottom left corner of the screen) and right-click on the application you would like to pin. Simply select Pin to Start or Pin to taskbar for the option you want.

6. Choose a wallpaper you love looking at

An interesting way to minimize clutter is to pick a wallpaper that you enjoy looking at — whether it’s your favorite slogan, a photo of your family, or a picture of your dream house, car, or destination. Having an image you like serves as a reminder to keep icons to a minimum, so if you can’t see the image anymore, then you have too many icons, and it may be time to get rid of a few.

If you are looking to learn more about using Windows in your office, contact us today to see how we can help.

Technology Every Business Needs as they Grow

If you are an entrepreneur, changing the way that you look at your business can be pretty difficult. Many businesses start out with not much more than a ray of hope, so if your business is doing well, you must be doing something right. When demand makes you think bigger, your technology spend becomes a major priority. Let’s take a look at some of the changes a growing business has to make.

You’ll find that a lot of businesses succeed because the people running them are able to adapt to the challenges tossed their way. Whether that is learning from particular case studies or an intuition that makes you know you were made for this, you know that problems come from every angle. Technology smooths those angles out. Here are a few tools worth talking about:

Hosted VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol, further to be referred to as VoIP, is a telephone system, sure, but really what it is, is a financial correction. Why continue to waste money that could be better spent advancing your business? A VoIP system is a telephone system that uses your company’s bandwidth to deliver enterprise level call, text, and conferencing services.

A cloud-based, professionally maintained VoIP system can solve a lot of communications problems many could see with traditional phone systems. They include:

• Price – VoIP customers have the obvious cost reduction of eliminating their reliance on the telephone company.
• Scalability – A VoIP system makes adding and removing lines easy. A new phone can be up and running within minutes.
• Mobility – VoIP systems typically come with soft phone options that can turn any smartphone into a VoIP phone.
• Options – Any option a traditional telephone system can have, a VoIP platform offers. With VoIP you can get comprehensive communications tools that can be integrated with your business’ other operational systems.
• Hardware – Hosted VoIP systems typically use top-of-the-line hardware systems to ensure reliability.

A new Hosted VoIP system covers a lot of your business’ communications and can be a great tool for the growing business.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an end-to-end piece of operational management software that can function as a liaison between a business and their customers or potential customers. The CRM comes in many forms but their purpose is always to streamline and facilitate action on the operational end and offer support on the consumer end. Some of the features found in the CRM include:

• Contact management
• Lead management
• Relationship tracking
• Account management
• Quote and purchase management
• Procurement/Vendor management
• Workflow automation
• Sales process automation
• Service automation
• Campaign management
• Business analytics

…and more.

Why do you need these options? Because as your business grows, you will have less and less time to do all the things that need to be done. So as the amount of oversight that is needed to ensure that your sales team are doing the right things, your marketing team are doing the right things, your production staff are doing the right things, customers are getting value, and are properly supported when they don’t, increases, the reliance on automation will increase. The CRM automates a lot of the departmental interoperability, thus delivering an efficient and collaborative workflow that supports administration, staff, and customer, alike.

The CRM’s tools can be combined with payroll software, supply chain management software, service delivery software, and more to provide businesses the resources needed to support a business’ end-to-end operations. Growing businesses need to focus on efficiency and opportunities, and one of the best ways to get opportunities is by having a significant web presence.

Online Presence

Brand awareness is extremely important for modern businesses. In fact, it is right up there with convenience as the most important variable that consumers say plays into their decision to choose a product or service. With this in mind, having a web presence is more important than ever. Getting a website made isn’t enough anymore. Today’s businesses not only need to focus their marketing efforts locally using traditional methods, they also need to invest time and effort into their web marketing.

Many businesses have started using social media to start the conversation as it gives a business access to a customer base that they may not have access to in normal situations. The conversation that starts on social media by sharing knowledge via blogs and other pieces of content, responding to user problems with direct interaction, and promoting the good work that you do through case studies and other testimonials, can quickly become a great way to engage an audience that is looking for answers to their own problems. By linking your webpage to your social media accounts, you will increase traffic, which increases sales opportunities.

If your business is growing, you need to get out ahead of it by accepting that investing in technology is the way to go. If you would like to talk to one of our expert IT consultants about the technology your specific business needs, call us today at 216-503-5150.

When Securing Your Smartphone, Some Options are Better Than Others

Today’s smartphones are equipped with assorted ways that users can authenticate their identity, from the now old-fashioned PIN to basic biometrics. However, while these options are available on a wide range of phones, not all of them are equally secure. Let’s look a bit closer at these authentication measures to find out which is most effective.

Does Mobile Security Really Matter That Much?

In a word: yes.

Look at how much we can accomplish with a mobile device. While we’re used to the capabilities that a smartphone offers, it wasn’t too terribly long ago that these capabilities were unheard of outside of science fiction. It wasn’t until 1996 that practical PDAs came about with the Palm Pilot, followed by Blackberry in 2002 and 2004’s introduction of HTC’s Windows phones that we had a taste of what a “smart” phone would look like. It was only in 2007 that the first generally-agreed-upon smartphone, the iPhone, was released.

Just think about the difference between the devices we have today, compared to those that preceded them. While these so-called “dumb phones” were not devoid of sensitive data by any stretch, they may as well have been in comparison to today’s devices.

Now, there are applications for everything, from money management to medical data to shopping and every other purpose imaginable, many of which contain or regularly access personal data. Therefore, it is so important for these devices to be secured… the method by which a user can unlock the device being just one tiny facet of these security needs.

Evaluating Your Authentication Options

Nowadays, the authentication options present on mobile devices are designed to combine the needed security with the convenience of the user. Yet, since they aren’t all equally effective at securing the device, you need to be selective about the authentication method you use.

Let’s go over the options your device may offer and see which one is the best for your security.

Passcodes/PINs/Passwords

We’re all familiar with these authentication measures, as they’re generally the baseline authentication measure for any device, including mobile devices. They also help prevent other authentication proofs from being put in place without the user’s approval. While these security measures are far from impenetrable, they are secure enough to serve as the basis for sufficient security. This is, of course, provided that the user is responsible when they set them.

That said, many users don’t act responsibly as they should, leaving their mobile devices relatively insecure. A study conducted in 2012 revealed that the PINs people used were often of personal significance to them, were composed of repeated digits, or (most amusingly) featured the number 69. Other common numbers were those that could easily be typed in sequence, like 1234, 7890, and the like.

Another study showed that increasing the length of the PIN from four numbers to six rarely added any security benefits, again because of the user. Apparently, the added length makes the user feel more secure by default, and by doing so, gives them the comfort to slack off in how secure their PIN is.

Naturally, assuming the user has the patience to retype their password each time the device locks, this option is more secure than a PIN. Regardless, these options are generally accepted as the most secure option right now.

Biometrics

Thanks to the hardware and software that our devices now support, users can now use their physical attributes to confirm their identity, as biometric authentication has risen in popularity. Naturally, the different methods that make up biometric authentication aren’t as consistent as many would assume.

• Fingerprint Sensors: The first phone to have a fingerprint sensor—the Pantech GI100—first launched in 2004, and with the Toshiba G500, the fingerprint sensor became a mainstream inclusion on smartphones. This isn’t expected to change, with projections predicting that 90 percent of devices will still have a fingerprint sensor in 2023, as compared to 95 percent in 2018. Fingerprint sensors come in many kinds, which does impact their security somewhat. For example, Samsung has started to incorporate sensors under the screen to enable a three-dimensional image to be captured. However, this inherently secure technology can be undermined using a screen protector, as the screen protector can actually lead to any fingerprint being accepted. There is also the concern that fingerprints can be harvested from another source and transplanted to the device to unlock it, so the user needs to prioritize making sure their device is properly acclimated to their unique print.
• Iris Scanning: Currently, iris scanning is seen as the most secure biometric authentication, as the iris is even more unique than a fingerprint. While these capabilities are currently present in many devices, many users don’t use them. This is generally because it takes longer to scan the iris, as the user must direct their gaze to the sensor.
• Facial Recognition: Fingerprint recognition has begun to be replaced by facial recognition capabilities, particularly with the rising prevalence of full screen displays. With a decent software installed and a good set of reference data, facial recognition can make unlocking a device effectively effortless. However, that’s assuming that the software is good and that the reference images are good. If these images have blights like glare on them, it is harder for a user to unlock and easier for a hacker to crack.

Pattern Passwords/Knock Codes

Finally, we’ve come to the least secure option of all. Many Android devices offer the user the option to tap a pattern of their choosing on a grid to unlock their device. Multiple studies have disproven the security of this method, simply because it isn’t too challenging to figure out a user’s pattern.

In one study, it was found that 65 percent of the 351 participants involved created a code that followed Westernized reading patterns, starting at the top-left and progressing to the top-right. Increasing the size of the grid only led to users selecting shorter patterns. Many patterns proved common amongst the participants as well:

1. An hourglass: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, top left, top right
2. A square: Top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left, top left, top right
3. The number seven: Top left, top left, top right, top right, bottom left, bottom left

To top it all off, the researchers found that knock codes were rapidly forgotten. 10 percent of the participants had forgotten their selected code by the time the 10-minute study was over. Plus, they’re slower: knock codes took five seconds to input, while a PIN takes four and a half.

Don’t Skip Securing Your Mobile Device

If you’ve made it this far, you’re likely a smartphone user, and as such, it plays an important part in both your professional and personal life. As you have probably gathered, you can’t afford to short-change any aspect of your security, down to the way you unlock your mobile device.

Net Activity can assist you in ensuring your business’ technology is adequate for your purposes, and that it has the necessary protections surrounding it. To learn more about our services, reach out to our team at 216-503-5150 today.