Author: Casserly Consulting

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Tip of the Week: Making Your Excel Use Easier

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When it comes to making a spreadsheet, Microsoft Excel is the go-to program for many users. However, many of these users spend much more time creating and formatting these spreadsheets than they have to. For today’s tip, we’ll outline some experience-improving shortcuts that can improve how you use Excel.

Auto Sum Shortcut
You can use Excel as a quick-adding calculator. This can be made even easier with a quick shortcut. Once you’ve highlighted all the cells you’re trying to total up, pressing Alt and = will give you the final result.

Multiple Cells with the Same Text
We’ve all been there–arduously pasting the same text into cell after cell. Fortunately, there’s a shortcut that will let you do the same thing. Again, after highlighting all the cells that need the same text, you simply type the desired input, but press Ctrl and Enter rather than just hitting the Enter button on its own.

Speedy Data Sorting
Sometimes, we need to order the data in a spreadsheet by a particular variable. The Microsoft Auto Filter is a handy way to do so. Once your data is in the spreadsheet, you can select the columns you want to Auto Filter by clicking the top rows. Once that’s attended to, click Data. You will then see the option for Filter and then Auto Filter. This adds drop-down option menus to the top rows of each column, allowing you to sort them based on that column’s data, alphabetizing or grouping the data by its value.

What are your favorite Excel shortcuts? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to come back to the COMPANYNAME blog for more handy tips and trick!

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Is Your IT Holding Up Its End Of The Bargain?

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As you design your business’ IT infrastructure, it is important that you look months and years into the future, rather than just what you need in the moment. A good managed service provider will understand that–which makes it your job to find a good one. The following questions will help to more quickly narrow down your search to find the best provider for your needs.

What is included in the service level agreement we would have?
There is nothing that requires all companies to promise or provide the same things. This means that a provider can offer services A and C, but will have nothing to do with anything involving B. The same could just as easily be possible of services A or C. Some providers will have some sort of offering for all services, but offer so little that A, B, and C are more accurately described as a, b, and c. That’s not even taking response times into consideration. It wouldn’t matter if your provider could deliver A through Z, if it took them weeks or days to provide them, rather than hours.

Ideally, you will find a provider that will offer comprehensive services designed to resolve any pain points you may encounter in a swift and professional manner. In order to be sure that you have, you need to know what that provider will provide.

How to you approach network management?
This is an important consideration for a few reasons, first and foremost to ensure that you will not run up an obscene bill on what another provider would include in their basic IT support package. If your management costs are going to hold you back going forward, it makes a lot of sense that your provider can adapt with you to save you some much-needed capital.

Since making a profit is the primary goal of business, the more your organization grows the more agile you need your service provider to be. More technology to monitor and manage, the more time it will take, so choosing a provider that has shown success helping small businesses grow is advantageous.

How will you help us protect my network and data?
An IT disaster is usually a data disaster. Losing data can present all types of problems for your business; and, can happen in a number of ways. Hardware failure, malware, or user error can all result in critical data being lost.

As a result, along with the IT provider’s continuous monitoring and their use of automation to keep everything managed around the clock, an MSP has to be able to have a plan to protect the digital assets a company may have. A good amount of an organization’s data is useful, and having a plan to back it up, and recover it quickly can keep your business going. After all, a staff that is battling downtime from data loss (or any other IT-related reason) is less productive, and less engaged (leading to further productivity and revenue loss).

These are just a small number of the issues you have to be able to trust your IT Services provider to prioritize for your business. If you are looking for a comprehensive partner to protect your business from IT-related downtime, call the certified professional as COMPANYNAME today at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Why Spam Is So Bad For Your Inbox

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Spam. It’s detrimental and all businesses have to deal with it. But many don’t know the first thing about how to identify it, or how to work around it. The truth of the matter is that spam can be dangerous for your organization if it’s not dealt with properly, but dealing with it can also be a major waste of resources. We’ll walk you through what constitutes spam, and how you can identify it from legitimate messages in your inbox.

Defining Spam
At its very core, spam consists of messages that are either insubstantial, wasteful, or dangerous to your organization. Spam generally takes the form of a message that you find in your email inbox, but you can often receive spam through various other media, including social media platform messengers (though these platforms usually have pretty good filters that keep most away from you). Spam can range from being a simple annoyance to a real problem, depending on the nature of the messages received.

How Spam Happens
Spam is a naturally occurring part of having an email account, primarily because spam can happen for a number of reasons that aren’t under your control. Perhaps your email address appeared somewhere online and it has been entered into a database that sends out emails at regular intervals about certain topics. Maybe you signed up for a subscription to a certain newsletter and now you get emails from multiple services that you hadn’t anticipated. Either way, you’re getting messages that you neither need nor want.

Other times, spam takes the form of a message that tries to get you to click on a link or download an attachment. These spam messages are most likely to be malicious in nature, as they are urging immediate action and are trying to get you to download malware on your device.

Keeping Spam Out of Your Inbox
There are two ways you can keep wasteful or dangerous messages out of your inbox: 1) Unsubscribe from email newsletters that you no longer wish to receive, and 2) Implement a spam blocking solution. Most legitimate newsletter emails will have an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message which you can use to unsubscribe, preventing you from receiving any further messages from the sender. In order to keep the truly dangerous emails from being sent to you, you need an enterprise-level spam blocker. This will keep any messages that resemble spam out of your inbox in the first place, keeping you from having to deal with them at all. It’s the best way to keep spam away from your inbox.

To learn more about our enterprise-level spam blocking filter, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Tip of the Week: Using Shortcuts Can Improve Your Microsoft Outlook Experience

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Microsoft Outlook is a great tool that can help your business stay in touch with clients and vendors, as well as stay updated regarding your internal operations. However, did you know that you probably aren’t using Outlook to the best of its abilities? We’ll walk you through some of the easiest ways to help you take even greater advantage of Microsoft Outlook for your organization: keyboard shortcuts.

Many of the shortcuts that work in Microsoft Word, like bolding or underlining text, remain unchanged through the Office 365 productivity suite, but the following are exclusive to Outlook. Here are some great shortcuts that you can use in Microsoft Outlook versions 2013 and 2016. In fact, you can print out this blog and place it on your desk so that you’ll never have to look up another Microsoft Outlook keyboard shortcut again!

  • Alt + S: This will send an email.
  • Ctrl + Enter: Send the message you’re currently writing.
  • Ctrl + R: Reply to an email.
  • Ctrl + F: Forward an email.
  • Ctrl + K: Complete the name or email you are typing into the address bar.
  • Ctrl + N: Create a new email folder.
  • Ctrl + Shift + A: Create a new appointment on your calendar.
  • Ctrl + Shift + O: Open your Outbox.
  • Ctrl + Shift + I: Open your Inbox.
  • Ctrl + Shift + C: Create a new contact.

As previously mentioned, many other shortcuts exist, and they all function in similar ways to the way they work in other Microsoft products.

By using all of these shortcuts to your best advantage, you can cut down on time wasted by fumbling through Outlook to click on several buttons that can be replaced by keyboard shortcuts. To learn more about how you can take full advantage of your business technology, be sure to subscribe to our blog.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

A Few Security Lessons Your Business Can Learn From Game of Thrones

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Security is a major concern for anything successful, and television programming is no different. Game of Thrones, the BBC’s epic production based on George R.R. Martin’s book series A Song of Ice and Fire, has always been concerned with their security–and with the television series overtaking the book series, that concern has only grown as the production has brand new secrets to keep safe. As a result, the production has seen a steady increase in security.

Last season, scripts were handed out much more sparingly, and code words were assigned to characters and scenes. The network has also stopped the tradition of distributing advance copies of the program to members of the press, which is normally done so that reviews may be written.

With the action in the show finally overtaking the action in the books this season, the concern for the show’s security has leapt to new heights.

This year, two-factor authentication had to be set up on every cast member’s email account, where they would receive their copy of the script. According to Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays the role of Missandei on the show, these copies were not to be printed out. Even the notes that the cast members received during rehearsal were not to leave the set, and had to be turned in before the actors could leave.

This dedication to secrecy only makes sense. Game of Thrones is a bona fide cultural phenomenon, and more importantly has generated an astonishing amount of revenue. This is mainly because subscribers to HBO’s content repeatedly tune in every week to find out who is next on the chopping block–the show’s version of critical data. If that data was to get out ahead of schedule, subscribers would have less of an incentive to subscribe and would quickly transfer their focus (and capital) elsewhere.

Your business’ data needs to be secured for similar reasons–just substitute ‘subscribers’ for ‘clients’ in the situation above, and you see the importance of keeping your data secured.

Taking a page from Game of Thrones’ production can help you here. Two-factor authentication is a method of ensuring data security by requiring a secondary form of authentication to access an account, for example, a unique code sent to a mobile device. If the password were to somehow be guessed by some other party, they wouldn’t be able to access the account without the secondary code. There are many businesses that are already using this method, both as a means of compliance with various regulations and to reinforce their security.

So, tell us: are you looking forward to the rest of this season of Game of Thrones? Tell us in the comments, but please don’t spoil anything!

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Bring Your Own Device Is Great…When Applied Properly

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If you let your employees use their own devices for work purposes on the company network or wireless Internet, you might be seen as “the cool boss.” Your employees love this privilege, but this can be a dangerous practice if done so without moderation. Here are some of the many benefits that your organization can reap from a well-thought-out BYOD policy, as well as some of the pitfalls you could fall into if you’re not careful.

It’s understandable to imagine that your team will be getting more done using their own devices for the reason that they are simply more comfortable with certain products. For example, if you force someone who is used to Apple products to use a Samsung smartphone, they might be a bit frustrated until they get the hang of how it works. Furthermore, if you have your employees provide their own devices, you don’t have to purchase devices for everyone who needs them. Even something as simple as a little bit of freedom is invaluable for your employees, but you still want to dodge the many problems associated with BYOD if you want to safely allow it.

Ultimately, the goal should be to implement a BYOD policy that takes security into account, while also allowing employees to do their jobs properly. Here are some features that you will want in your BYOD strategy.

Application Blacklisting
It’s important to keep in mind that not all applications found on the Google Play Store are going to be safe and secure for your employees. You can’t let them just download any apps that they want. The risk of user error could mistakenly expose any company-owned data on the device to threats. Some apps are so sneaky that you can’t even tell they are stealing data from you while fulfilling a different purpose. A perfect example is a flashlight application that wants access to your device’s contacts, email, text messages, and so on. Since apps will usually ask for permissions before installing, it’s an ideal time to see if they are pulling some ulterior motive. Application whitelisting and blacklisting can also help you control which apps can (and can’t) be installed on a device, and what information can be collected by them. When in doubt, have your employees submit their app download requests to IT for review.

Remote Wiping
An employee losing a device could be a dangerous situation to be in. After all, you don’t know who will find it. For all you know, they could be a hacker or identity thief. If the device contains sensitive information, they may be able to access it somehow. It is situations like these that make remote wiping a necessity for SMBs, especially if employees take your data on the road. Remote wiping allows your business to immediately erase any data located on the lost device, helping you secure your business’ data even in the worst of times.

User Access Restriction
Not all of your organization’s data should be available to the entirety of your workforce. After all, why would the average worker need access to documented information from human resources, or financial data from accounting? You need to ensure that your BYOD policy reflects this kind of thinking by restricting data access according to work role. By doing so, you can limit how much data a potential thief has access to right off the bat. It might not be a perfect solution, but it helps you solidify security for the future–and it beats having your entire data infrastructure available to all onlooking eyes.

Do you have a solid BYOD strategy implemented for your organization? COMPANYNAME can help you choose what’s best for your business. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Tip of the Week: How to Use Tabs to Their Full Potential

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Tabbed browsing–it’s so commonplace that some might not even think about what it was like to use the Internet before tabs became a thing. Believe it or not, even this seemingly simple feature has a lot of depth to it. There are all sorts of tips and tricks that you can use to better use the tabbing features of your favorite web browser.

Open a Link in a New Tab
There are several ways to open up a link in a new tab. The first is to use the middle button of your mouse, which can be found by clicking in the mouse wheel used for scrolling. You can also right-click the link and select Open in a new tab. Furthermore, in Internet Explorer and Firefox, you can simply hold down Ctrl and click the link to open it in a new tab.

Close a Tab
The middle button on your mouse is great for closing out of a tab as well. You can just click the X, too, but what fun is that? After all, shortcuts are placed in order to make your life easier, so why not use them to the best of your ability?

Open a New Tab
There’s a keyboard shortcut to open up a new tab. To do so, just use Ctrl+T.

Reopen a Closed Tab
Let’s say that you accidentally close a tab that you wanted to keep open. You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen a closed tab. If there are multiple tabs that you want to reopen, just repeatedly use the shortcut until you are content.

Switch Between Open Tabs
You can even use your keyboard to jump quickly from one tab to the next. Just hold down Ctrl and press the corresponding number on your keyboard. For example, if you use Ctrl+1, you’ll be directed to the first tab from the left.

BONUS for Edge Users
Do you use Windows 10’s Edge browser? If so, there is a great new tab feature for anyone who tends to have way too many tabs open at any given time (you know who you are). Edge users can make groups of tabs and set them aside for later. Click the icon to the left of your tabs (it looks like a window with a back arrow) and it will move all of your open tabs into the menu on the left. You can click on the far-left icon to view all of your stored tabs.

For more great tips and tricks on how to take full advantage of your business technology, subscribe to our blog.

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Companies that Neglect Updating Web Browsers 2x as Likely to Suffer Data Breach, Study Finds

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Business has become such a competitive endeavor that those who deprive themselves of the latest and greatest technology solutions could be at a serious disadvantage–namely in terms of productivity and security. A new study shows that there is a direct relationship between businesses that run older versions of operating systems and web browsers, and businesses that fall victim to data breaches.

BitSight found that out of 35,000 companies from over 20 different industries, over 2,000 of them were running on operating systems that are out of date. Furthermore, 8,500 of these companies also ran out-of-date Internet browsers. This particular study focused on organizations using Apple and Microsoft operating systems, as well as the Internet browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome.

It’s clear that organizations that rely on outdated operating systems are three times more likely to suffer from a data breach. Likewise, organizations that use outdated web browsers are twice as likely to suffer from data breaches. While these numbers don’t necessarily show that this outdated software were directly responsible for data breaches, it’s still an important factor that cannot be ignored.

Granted, this shouldn’t be a surprise for any security-minded business professional. It’s been noted for a long time that software, while invaluable, can create any number of issues for organizations. Chief among these is outdated software. As more businesses remain in operation for extended periods of time, they continue to use unsupported software rather than upgrade to more recent versions. Examples of these business software include Windows XP and Windows Vista. What can you do to keep your own business from falling victim to these unfortunate side-effects of using outdated software?

The solution is simple–update your software. This is easier said than done, especially when time and resources are two pertinent issues. The easiest way to get a feel for how your business stands on this issue is to get a network audit from a trusted technology service provider. This will provide an unbiased analysis of how you can shore up weaknesses in your network infrastructure–including outdated software applications. The importance of such an audit cannot be underestimated, especially considering the amount of high-profile threats that like the WannaCry ransomware.

How does your business rate regarding network security? To get an understanding of this important aspect of running your organization, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Are You Making Your Business Vulnerable to Project Failure?

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When implementing a new project, expectations run high and deadlines must be met. The temptation is to feel so pressured to get the project finished that the planning phase is rushed. If even a small detail is overlooked and a shortcut is taken in this early stage, it can come back to bite you in a major way–perhaps even derailing the project altogether. This is especially the case for an IT project.

CIO.com provides a working ratio of why such oversight is important for IT projects of any size, especially during the more risk-prone discovery phase. “Discovery is the crux of project risk. Although the discovery and architecture phases of a project may represent only 15 percent of the overall effort, an error or omission early on can cause cost overruns of 150 percent or more.” Have you experienced an issue of this scope in any of your company’s previous projects?

In order to prevent your next IT project from facing a disastrous end like this, you’re going to want to invest the time needed to perform the discovery and architecture phases correctly, the first time. But how can you make sure this happens?

For starters, working closely with your vendors and service provider is a must. If you detect that they’re not thoroughly answering your questions or that they’re trying to rush the project in any way, then you’ll need to speak up about it, before it’s too late. Instead, you need to make sure your vendors are guiding you through each step of the process, and that they’re assertive enough to present you with options and tough choices when it comes to unpleasant tradeoffs.

Secondly, you need to know what it looks like when a project is being rushed or shortchanged. This can be difficult to catch for a busy business owner with only a surface-level knowledge of IT. At COMPANYNAME, we know what this looks like and we want to pass this information onto you. When in the discovery/architecture phases of your next (or current) IT project, look for a vendor taking these four shortcuts.

  1. The documents prepared for the project are based less on what your company’s specific needs are, and instead are overly influenced by industry jargon and sales propaganda. The idea here is to overwhelm a business owner with features and benefits that sound great, but may not be precisely what the project needs and what real users would actually use. Classic snake oil sales strategy.
  2. Project requirements aren’t prioritized adequately. This shortcut will provide poor guidance when it comes to the step-by-step implantation of the project, and the hard trade offs that are sure to pop up when dealing with a budget and a deadline will hit unexpectedly.
  3. The project requirements are lacking important steps, like transitions in the end-to-end business process. If these gaps are uncovered during the implantation phase instead of the discovery phase, then meeting these unplanned requirements will push back the schedule, and may even change the entire scope of work needing to be done.
  4. The needs of the business evolve dramatically enough over the course of the project that the project proves to be insufficient upon its completion. Keep in mind that technology itself is prone to becoming obsolete by newer solutions. Shortsightedness in both areas can make it frustrating to have to go back and redo the project much sooner than expected.

These four shortcuts can devastate an IT project, or any project for that matter. One way that you can safeguard your business from these risks is to hold consultation sessions all throughout the course of the project–as opposed to leaning heavily on the original project roadmap, which may grow more unreliable as the project progresses from phase to phase. COMPANYNAME can provide this kind of project oversight for your next IT initiative, as well as spend the time needed in the early phases of the project. This will ensure that no stone is left unturned and every possible circumstance is accounted for.

Give us a call at PHONENUMBER and don’t plan your next IT project without first consulting with the pros.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Tip of the Week: Google Offers Personal Users A Backup Solution

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Let’s say that you are a consumer looking to take advantage of data backup in an affordable way. You want a way to keep your data safe in the event of a disaster. For the average PC user, Google Drive now allows users to take backups of specific files and folders via the Backup and Sync application on their desktop PC.

Keep in mind that we are only discussing the possibility of Google Drive as an adequate backup solution for the average PC user. For businesses that want to ensure minimal downtime and maximum data recovery, your best chance is to implement an enterprise-level backup and disaster recovery solution. If you want a powerful backup solution, be sure to reach out to us and ask about your options.

In essence, Backup and Sync is the latest version of Google Drive, and allows users to back up specific files or folders on their desktop PC, and send them to Google Drive. This is particularly great for consumers who want to keep backups of their photos, videos, and other media. Google understands that this feature is primarily meant for consumer use, and encourages their G-Suite customers to wait patiently until their Drive File Stream feature is available.

In terms of availability, Backup and Sync can be implemented by users using Google Drive for PC, as well as for Mac. Just keep in mind that using Backup and Sync to store your videos and photos will likely result in your exceeding the free Drive space offered by Google.

One thing to think about as a business owner though; you shouldn’t let employees store company data directly on their workstations. Files should be stored centrally on the server where you back it up. If your workstations have a lot of sensitive company data on them, a disgruntled employee could easily set up Google Drive Backup to grab and steal all of your data. It doesn’t hurt to be a little paranoid over your data and where it’s stored.

As always, you can count on COMPANYNAME to inform you about the latest and greatest business technology solutions for your organization’s needs. If you need help with managing data backup and recovery, you’ll find no one better suited to the task than us. To learn more about your business’s data backup options, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.