How Impactful Can Remote Work Be?

According to a recent survey by Intermedia, there have been plenty of impacts to businesses that should only motivate these businesses to continue it.

For instance, in this study, owners of the 250 businesses surveyed indicated that they had experienced an assortment of positive influences, such as:

• Increases in employee availability in 19 percent of these businesses
• Increased job satisfaction—15 percent—and life satisfaction—seven percent—alike
• Decreased overhead costs
• Improved employee attitudes
• Reduced work-related stress
• Increased engagement

These businesses had primarily operated out of a centralized office beforehand, at a rate of 85 percent. Since then, that number has dropped to 26 percent as remote work has been embraced. Conversely, the use of video conferencing jumped up by 27 percent, from 57 percent to 84 percent.

This makes a lot of sense. After all, many businesses have needed to stay open in order to survive (which will continue for the foreseeable future) while simultaneously trying to preserve the safety of their employees, clients, and customers.

Will Remote Work Stick Around?

While it may still seem optimistic to look to a post-pandemic future, it is unlikely that many businesses will resume their unofficial moratorium on remote work. The largest concern that many of the survey’s respondents had were themed around engagement—how to engage and attract new and returning clients when an in-person meeting was once the preferred tactic for doing so.

It is also important to mention, however, that technology restrictions were not the source of this unease. Just look at the jump in conferencing use that we mentioned above.

Therefore, it seems overwhelmingly sure that many businesses will continue to implement remote work options in some shape or form even after the immediate need to do so has passed. After all, if a team is happier and more satisfied working remotely while still accomplishing as much as they could in the office, offering that freedom to them only makes sense.

Patriot Tech Services Inc. is here to help your business deploy and manage its remote teams and technologies, among other crucial IT services. To learn more about the litany of solutions we offer, reach out to us at 877-874-4629.

As you might imagine, your criteria for a business email should differ from what the average private email user may consider.

A personal email account, or one that a private user would likely make use of, has a few standard qualities:

• Free to use
• Limited storage space and features
• Generic Domain, like gmail-dot-com or outlook-dot-com

This is all just fine for a private user, but for a business’ purposes, these options fall short. Limited storage space alone would make email far less convenient for the business in question, the lack of features could complicate business processes, and the generic URL renders your communications unrecognizable at first glance. While “free” can be hard to argue with, the costs that you’re trading for that price tag make this option a non-starter.

Instead, a business will need more control over its email platform, which has led to many hosting their own Exchange servers. While this option works, it is not without its assorted challenges, such as:

• A need for greater technical skill and experience
• A larger time investment for set up and maintenance
• An increased chance of significant downtime
• Spam filtering will cost extra in time and finances
• All responsibility belongs to the business for upkeep and updates

Any one of these issues would be extremely costly on its own, never mind combined. Fortunately, there is another option, one that pairs the benefits of a local email server with the advantages of cloud email.

Hosted Email

Businesses now have enterprise-level hosted email solutions available to them that are commonly included in productivity suites. For example, both Google’s G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 have an enterprise-level email paired with each account. Utilizing these platforms can provide a plethora of benefits for your business, such as:

• No added infrastructure costs
• Scalable number of accounts
• No more email infrastructure management
• Unified billing
• Built-in productivity suites
• Built-in management and security
• No software licensing or maintenance
• Scalable storage
• Provided email backup
• Access from anywhere, at any time

Need a solid set of productivity solutions for a more business-friendly expense? Give our IT professionals a call at 877-874-4629 to discuss what Patriot Tech Services Inc. can do for you.

What is Ransomware?

Simply put, ransomware is malware that holds either files or entire drives ransom, until the perpetrator of the attack is paid via cryptocurrency. If the scammer isn’t paid in the time outlined, the data/drives are deleted, and if not properly backed up, lost forever. You can see how this can be a major problem for any business unfortunate enough to be victimized by ransomware. 

Ransomware has been around for quite a while, but over the past few years, with the availability of an alternate source of payment (cryptocurrency), ransomware attacks have been commonplace. As media attention surrounding these attacks has grown, businesses have started being more vigilant.

How Businesses Ward Off Ransomware

It’s not just the one thing that can keep ransomware from being a problem for your business, but there are a few actions that need to be taken to help avoid exposure to these nefarious strains of code. Let’s take a look at a few now:

1. Have a strategy for emails - Most ransomware attacks are sent through phishing emails. Make sure that you--and your staff--understands the best practices of dealing with emails and how to spot fraudulent messages. 
2. Have a backup strategy - Ransomware is a fabulous example of why organizations need to have offsite data backup in place. If your systems are hit by ransomware, having offsite backup in place will allow you to rest assured that your data remains unencrypted and available for use. 
3. Patch your security tools - One major problem with many organizations’ cybersecurity platforms is that the tools they rely on for network and data security aren’t always updated regularly. Keeping your antivirus and firewalls updated is a good practice regardless of the presence of ransomware. 
4. Never pay - There have been high-profile ransomware attacks where the victims pay the ransom. There is no guarantee that these scammers will unencrypt the files/drives or won’t leave other malware behind after they successfully extort you. 

Patriot Tech Services Inc. is the trusted name in TriState when it comes to helping businesses utilize IT the right way. Our expert technicians can help you outfit your IT infrastructure with the tools you need to keep your network up, running, and free from downtime-causing malware. Call us today at 877-874-4629 to learn more.