Office IT Archives - Page 9 of 13

Everyone Needs a Guest Wifi

Office IT, Office Networknetwork, secure, wifi, wirelessOphtek, LLC

Oct 2014

Providing wifi has become so popular that you’ll find it in just about every establishment. Having a guest wifi is a necessary safeguard for your data.

You can see this for yourself by simply looking at the available Wi-Fi networks broadcasted and picked up by any device like your smart-phone, tablet or laptop. As Wi-Fi can be easily accessed in many businesses, from coffee shops, to fast foods chains, to airports and public transport, why shouldn’t your business or home offer it too?

Practical reasons why setting up a guest network is important

Accommodating business needs.

After all, it’d be very inhospitable to turn down Wi-Fi requests from associates, guests or customers who need access to the Internet. By setting up a guest Wi-Fi network, you can grant them the right to stay productive on their projects, allowing them to access their emails or their files on the cloud, without them having to resort to doing it all on their smart-phone. How many times have you had, or will you be having temporary staff, contractors and visitors on-site, needing Wi-Fi access or at least an internet connection of some sort? After all, it’s impolite to say no to them, right?

Keeping the LAN (Local Area Network) private.

It’s wise to separate the business’ or home LAN from unauthorized public access. Your LAN will typically hold internal files, folders, display device names and access to the intranet. As the saying goes, it’s best to be safe than sorry. This will tighten up any vulnerability from both accidental and intended malicious activities which could otherwise compromise any part of your business.

Providing a different password.

You wouldn’t want to give the same password to just anyone who will be able to note and potentially store it for later use, especially if it’s for any of your own personal business accounts. Besides, some passwords can have a simple format which can make it easy for anyone to guess. It’s time to close that vulnerability!

Setting up a Guest Wi-Fi Network

Now you understand the reasons and the benefits of having a guest Wi-Fi network. It’s really simple to set one up. Our next guide will walk you through the general steps on how to do it.

For more ways you can protect your privacy, data and business from breaches, contact your local IT professionals.

Solutions to Manage Software Licenses

Office IT, Softwareaudits, compliance, software licensesOphtek, LLC

Oct 2014

Every business needs to be prepared for audits or system failures. Here are five solutions to help you manage software licenses.

In our previous article, we covered the importance of tracking software licenses. There’s no straightforward solution. Ultimately, it’s more about being organized and finding a method to manage licenses effectively. There are both free and paid tools available to help manage and track software licensing more efficiently.

Options

X-Formation- A software tracking solution https://www.x-formation.com/

You can track, audit and plan your software budgeting. There are three different options to choose from depending on your business needs. You can also test out a trial version before deciding.

License Tracker– Open source Tracking Software http://ltrack.sourceforge.net/

It is a web based tacker designed to monitor software package usage which is open source.

Kace (Dell) – Hardware Appliance solution http://www.kace.com

They offer different appliances to fit in with the size of your business. Covers both physical assets and license tracking. It can tell you the number of endpoints out of compliance that may have not updated to a given software baseline.

SysAid- Manages Software Inventory http://www.sysaid.com/asset-management.htm

It can assist with keeping track and complying with user agreements. An agent is deployed to help automatically update the software inventory.

White Source- Web browser based solution http://www.whitesourcesoftware.com/

You can manage your OS libraries thanks to its tracking utilities. The open source version is free.

Final Thoughts

You will need to consider the size of your business in terms of the amount of equipment used that needs software licensing. In some cases, more licenses are used for individual user accounts that may access the same desktop.

Auditing licenses centrally and frequently, especially for any growing businesses, is the way to go to stay organized!

For more ways your business can stay compliant with licenses and software management, contact your local IT professionals.

Why You Need to Track Software Licenses

Office IT, Softwarelicenses, managed services, softwareOphtek, LLC

Sep 2014

Can you list all of your licenses? From audits to system failures, tracking software licenses is a crucial part of keeping your business flowing smoothly.

We know how tedious this can be. Managing software is a little more complex than counting the number of physical assets, such as computer desktops and monitors.

Why would your business track software licenses?

We’ll use the BBC as a brief case study. They have over 27,000 computers on their network across the UK. As you can imagine, they’ve encountered a huge problem in the past when they needed to run an audit for all of the installed software on their endpoints. They were lost as to what was really being used on all staff computers. For example, a particular software package was purchased for 3,000 desktops; however, they eventually came to realize that only 300 were actually being used!

They found both legal and out of compliance software packages. They eventually decided to run a weekly audit to keep all of this under control. Prior to this, both hardware and software assets were de-centrally managed by each of their own departments, with no common procedure.

Big impact for small businesses

Users can have all sorts of software installed on their computers which can vary from Microsoft Office, Windows, Quickbooks and so forth. So think about this for a moment. What if your computer crashed today or worse yet, what if an employee reports their laptop stolen or completely kaput, what do you do about it?

You will likely search your storage or server room in desperation to find your previously purchased software. But wait, where’s the license? Nowadays, most software is available virtually over the cloud. Paper licenses and CDs have been replaced by electronic virtual software!

In the event of a computer crashing, there is of course a list of other important considerations regarding why a business needs to keep track of their software licenses.

Productivity. If not monitored systematically, it wastes time, resources, making it unproductive for both the business and staff. For instance, staff may need to spend an additional few hours to track software manually. Even then, the tracking may not be 100% accurate!
Less surprises. Your business and users can keep in compliance with EULAs, helping you to avoid expired software usage, which would also be outside of software support. In addition to this, it would prevent any disruption made to business operations as they would have fully functional software packages.
Understanding the software usage of your company. You can be in control and manage software usage, as well as making better purchasing decisions in regards to the exact amount needed over a given period of time.
Meeting budgets. Continuing from the last discussion point and using the BBC example, once you understand the realistic demand for a particular software package, you can save a significant amount and reduce costs from purchasing 3 licenses as opposed to 30.
Free up unused licensed keys. Every business knows the daunting task of having to re-purposing equipment or taking some out of service. With this taken into account, it is also important to consider what software may be installed that could be using up licenses or may be making the license key dormant.

Solutions

One piece of software that allows you to track thousands of software licenses on your office computers is called Recover Keys. Recover Keys allows you to find licenses to your computer Operating System, Office Products and 6500+ other pieces of software installed throughout your systems.

Aside from digging up licenses, Recover Keys has the following features:

Backup activation keys
Scan another Windows system or HDD
Scan remote network computers
Automatic updates

Onsite PC Solution offers software license tracking and management as a part of our managed service plans for your business. For more information on tracking license and maintaining good IT policy in your office, contact your local IT professionals.

Report: 43% of Companies had a Data Breach Last Year

Office IT, Securitydata breach, securityOphtek, LLC

Sep 2014

A recent report from the Ponemon Institute shows 43% of companies had a data breach in the last year. Here’s how you can harden your office security.

The report cites data breaches affecting as many as 20 million people in one incident. Criminals can use many different avenues into a company’s systems to steal client, proprietary or private information which then gets sold on the black market. Here are some ways to harden your office security:

Keep an Eye on your Hardware

Data breaches often occur in the form of viruses, trojans or malware being installed on office computers. These infections give criminals full control of the computer, even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface. One of the first signs of infections are high hardware usage:

Patches, Updates and Security

When Microsoft releases updates to fix security holes, anyone is able to look at the update and determine exactly which weakness was fixed. This is why it’s important to keep your system and anti-virus updated and patched:

IT Policy Enforcement

The first line of defense for any office or individual is a proper IT policy. This means putting in place rules on systems or as policy to office staff on how to manage data to prevent infections and data breaches. Here are some best practices we recommend:

For more information on managed IT services that can provide 24/7 monitoring, maintenance and IT management to prevent data breaches in your office, contact your local IT professionals.

Check if Your Email has Been Stolen

Office IT, Office Network, Securityemail, hacked, security, stolenOphtek, LLC

Sep 2014

With corporate data theft happening frequently, your email may have been stolen without you even knowing. Here’s how to check if your email has been stolen.

What Exactly is at Risk?

The simple answer is data. The power behind stealing data from a company means that your information can get into the wrong hands for malicious use. One prime example is Adobe, who had a large number of their users’ accounts exposed to the public domain. The interesting thing was that these same accounts were being targeted time and time again with the same user credentials, which puts their other accounts at risk. Other sites that have been compromised are mail.ru, Bitcoin Security Forum, Gmail dump accounts, Yahoo accounts, Sony, Tesco and many more.

Compromised information can include your email address, usernames, credit card details and password hints. People often use the same information on other websites as they would have done on their compromised email account making them, yet again, another easy target.

How to Check if You’ve Been Infiltrated

As much as we take precautions with our passwords, secret questions and the like, one needs to check periodically that their details have not already been accessed by unsolicited activity.

We suggest you check out this free public service, developed by Microsoft professional Troy Hunt, to check if your email or username has been compromised:

https://haveibeenpwned.com

If your email has been compromised, you will be advised on this site that it has been “pwned”. Being “pwned” is slang for having your email or other personal information stolen. You can also set up notifications in the event of being “pwned” in the future.

What if I have been “pwned”?

We suggest changing your password ASAP. The best practice is to use different passwords on different accounts. This is especially important for your primary email account, banking, shopping, and whatever else you would consider critical if someone were to steal. If keeping track of your various passwords is a challenge, there are free and secure password managers out there to help.

You can find a good FAQ and a list of other compromised networks as well.

For more tips on securing your privacy and office network, contact your local IT professionals.

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Category Archives: Office IT

Practical reasons why setting up a guest network is important

Setting up a Guest Wi-Fi Network

Options

Final Thoughts

Why would your business track software licenses?

Big impact for small businesses

Solutions

Keep an Eye on your Hardware

Patches, Updates and Security

IT Policy Enforcement

What Exactly is at Risk?

How to Check if You’ve Been Infiltrated

What if I have been “pwned”?