As most of us are working from home, many of us, for the first time, we realize that in many ways, working from home is much nicer than commuting into an office.  With today's technology, we can do just as much from home as we could in the office.  There are reports that large companies have learned so much from people working from home, that they are going to move to a work-from-home model even after the social distancing requirements are lifted.

There are some drawbacks to working from home.   Most of them are social, such as not having lunch with friends or grabbing a coffee with co-workers.  If you work for a larger company, one of the significant business-related drawbacks is not having access to your technical support people coming by the office to help you with your computer issues.

Most small businesses cannot afford to have a full-time IT department or technical support people.  Unfrustrating Computers is the outsourced IT department for many small businesses, and obviously, we cannot be in multiple places at the same time. We have been using remote access and remote control to fix most of the problems our clients call us about ever since remote access and remote control have been widely available.  Remote access allows us to help more of our clients throughout the day without having to drive from one location to another or having to hire different technicians to handle the volume of calls.

There are always going to be things that cannot be done through remote control, such as changing a hard drive on a computer, however, as the technology matures, more and more can be done remotely.  It used to be that to set up a new piece of hardware, you needed to be onsite.  With how technology is today, as long as someone can turn on the machine and plug it in, even device setups and configurations can be done through remote access.

One of the benefits of working with Unfrustrating Computers is that we have invested in the technology required to be able to troubleshoot or resolve most issues without having to go to an office.  Remote technologies save time and money.  Companies that do not quickly get on board with people working remotely and even having technical support staff being remote are going to get left behind.

This pandemic has opened a pandora's box of people realizing that even jobs previously thought impossible to do remotely can be done successfully without sacrificing quality.  People are going to expect to be allowed to work from home more often, if not full-time.
With the state of remote access, working from home help with employee morale and can save businesses large sums of money since they will no longer need to invest in large office spaces with exorbitant rent and overhead.  As working from home becomes more popular, remote technologies are going to get more sophisticated.  At Unfrustrating Computers, we are already well ahead of the curve when it comes to remote access, and we intend to stay there.

There are always going to be things that cannot be done through remote control, such as changing a hard drive on a computer, however, as the technology matures, more and more can be done remotely.  It used to be that to set up a new piece of hardware, you needed to be onsite.  With how technology is today, as long as someone can turn on the machine and plug it in, even device setups and configurations can be done through remote access.

One of the benefits of working with Unfrustrating Computers is that we have invested in the technology required to be able to troubleshoot or resolve most issues without having to go to an office.  Remote technologies save time and money.  Companies that do not quickly get on board with people working remotely and even having technical support staff being remote are going to get left behind.

This pandemic has opened a pandora's box of people realizing that even jobs previously thought impossible to do remotely can be done successfully without sacrificing quality.  People are going to expect to be allowed to work from home more often, if not full-time.
With the state of remote access, working from home help with employee morale and can save businesses large sums of money since they will no longer need to invest in large office spaces with exorbitant rent and overhead.  As working from home becomes more popular, remote technologies are going to get more sophisticated.  At Unfrustrating Computers, we are already well ahead of the curve when it comes to remote access, and we intend to stay there.

Most businesses are moving into their second month of working from home due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.  The process of getting people set up to be able to work from home has been difficult for some businesses who were not prepared.  For many businesses, it is not just a matter of going to your home computer and logging in.  There are many considerations, such as whether your employees home computers have the appropriate software installed.  You can’t just start installing software without additional licenses.

You also do not know if those home computers are secure.  If there are no anti-virus or antimalware programs, any data that resides on that computer can be placed at risk.  Even worse, if you put an infected machine on your network, you have now opened every other computer to additional risk.

Many businesses are protecting their data through some sort of backup system or disaster recovery platform.  This protects data from cases of fire, flood, or hardware failure.  With backups you know you can restore files and folders as needed.  With Disaster Recovery, you can restore your entire server.

Disaster recovery is considered an IT process in order to protect your servers and your data.  Business Continuity Planning is the process of making sure that your business processes will allow you to continue to function as a business after some form of disaster.  A disaster can be limited to your facility, such as a fire. It could be of a much grander scale, like a blackout, such as what occurred in 2003. 

The blackout, which at the time was the second worst in history, affected parts of eight states and the province of Ontario in Canada.  Many places were in the dark for two days.  Other major events that led to widespread disaster declarations in New York and surrounding areas include hurricane Irene in August of 2011, hurricane Sandy in October of 2012, and, of course, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

We are currently going through another long-term event with the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.  Unlike the other events, we are not dealing with things like floods or power outages.  Pandemic Planning, which is a subset of Business Continuity Planning is more concerned about how to allow a business to continue functioning while people are not able to commute or even leave their homes without putting themselves and others at risk.

Business Continuity Planning plan for many of the things that many companies struggled to implement at the very last minute before having to shut down their offices.  Some of the items that had to be completed were:

• Creating Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for people to be able to connect to their servers and data safely and securely. 
• Making sure people had laptops or computers they could use for work while they are at home
• Checking that all the right software was installed on every machine
• Getting webcams to virtual meetings were able to take place
• Setting up programs like Zoom for group and individual video conferences
• Making sure that data was stored in a way that it could be accessed from the outside through the VPN

There is nothing on this list that is difficult to do, however, when everything has to be done at a time of an emergency, as opposed to being planned before, some of these items become difficult to achieve. 

For several weeks after this current crisis began affordable laptops and webcams were difficult to find as so many people were trying to prepare for a long stint of working from home.

Setting up zoom and coming up with a process and plan to transition from working in the office to working from home is also time-consuming and cause work to come to a halt while the details are worked out.

Having gone through the process, many companies will take advantage of the new technologies now available to them and may change their policies on working from home allowing it to be done more often then was allowed previously.

Many people had to compromise or make potentially high-risk decisions such as having people use their personal computers for business transactions.

When all of this is over, we would recommend that every business take some time out and review their lessons learned from this.  You might want to consider things such as having remote access available to everyone as soon as they start working for your company, even if you do not regularly allow people to work from home.  You may also consider switching from desktops to laptops for the people who handle vital functions and you will want to maintain your ability to have remote video conferences.

Having these things be a part of your regular business process will save you time, money, and effort should this sort of thing happen again in the future.

If you are concerned that the current state of your technology was not adequate to meet the demands of working from home, or you want to upgrade your systems to make things easier down the road, call Steven at Unfrustrating Computers.  We can move you in the right direction.

When you started your small business, you did it all. You were the head of sales, the chief financial offer, and bookkeeper. You did all the work on your own, and you were also the IT guy (or gal) taking care of the computers, printers, and network.

As your company grew, you started to spend more time on the business. You had to begin to delegate some of the tasks. You might have hired a person to the bookkeeping and brought in a part-timer to help out with getting the work of the business done.

The business has started to take on a life of its own. It is no longer feasible for you to wear all the hats. Finances began to get more complicated, and you needed to hire an accountant or a financial expert to take care of things like payroll and taxes.

Why are you still taking care of your computers? The longer you are in business, the more data you accumulate. The more information you gather, the higher the risk to your business if you have a failure that leads to data loss.

Companies that experience computer failure with data loss and cannot get their data back within 72 hours suffer over an 80% chance of going out of business.

Deciding to hire an IT professional to monitor your computers is a big step to take. We have all been working with computers for so long, and things have gotten so automated that we all think we can take care of our own computers. The problem is not whether you could maintain your computer, but whether you should. 

When you have a computer issue, how much time to you take out of your day to track down the problem and find a solution? 

It is when you are doing this sort of troubleshooting when you realize you are several revisions of patches behind, so you try to get up to date. Did you know that significant updates might take over an hour to install? 

Also, if you are already having a problem, installing operating system patches might not resolve the issue. Patching a machine that is already having problems can make the problems worse. If a patch install fails, the computer might not even boot up again when restarted.

Here are a few points to consider when it comes to hiring Unfrustrating Computers to take care of your computers.

• 24 Hour Monitoring. We monitor your computers looking for potential issues. We can proactively call you to let you know what needs to be done before there is a significant problem.
• We install patches overnight. We schedule patches to be installed overnight while you are not working. We only install the necessary patches. We filter out the stuff that is not needed.
• We can backup your data. If you do have a hardware failure, you will know that your data is safe, so all you need is for us to repair the computer or set up a new one for you to access your data. Backups protect your data and company from the risk of failing due to data loss.
• We work remotely. If you have an issue, you can call us, and you will not have to wait for us to get to you. If your computer still has network connectivity, we can take care of many issues remotely. If your network is down or there is a hardware failure that requires us to be onsite, we will be there as soon as humanly possible.

We do much more than fixing computers. If you need new equipment, we have a great team of business partners from where we can get any technology. We can supply computers, servers, router, and hubs to printers, copiers, multi-function machines, and even telephones.

Unfrustrating Computer becomes your small business IT department. As your company grows, it becomes vital to outsource tasks bringing in people who have specialized expertise.

Call Steven at Unfrustrating Computers to see how we can benefit your company and even help you grow.

Most people have two or three passwords the always use and they never change.  This means that are using the same passwords for multiple things, like social media, online games, e-shopping, and even banking and credit cards.  It is a good idea to use different passwords for different website, especially your banking, credit cards, and other financial websites.  At the very least, any website that is related to finances or is a service that can impact your credit should have a different password.

For banks and financial institutions, digital security is a top priority.  They spend top dollar on websites and systems to keep your information safe.  They require two-factor authentication, and many require you to change your password every so often, usually every 90 days.

And yet, with all the tools that are in place and all the money that is spent on data security, the weakest part of the system is the user.  When the average person sets up their banking account, they use the same password they use for mostly everything else.
Non-financial website and mobile apps do not have the same encryption and data security requirements that financial institutions have.  Therefore, when you hear about companies that have been hacked, you rarely hear about companies like Chase or Morgan Stanley.  When a company like that gets hacked, it becomes big news.

The companies that get hacked are the smaller ones that do not have as much in the way of data security.  Hackers go after smaller companies or mobile apps because they want to get email address and password combinations.  They know that most people use the same email addresses and passwords for everything, so if they have email and passwords pairs, they then go out and check those combinations out on different banking sites, and when they get a hit, they now have access to all of your money, credit cards, and personal information. You could be completely wiped out.

• Use different passwords for different sites.  Therefore, if a site gets hacked and someone gets access to your password, that password will not work anywhere else.
• Change your passwords on a regular basis.  If you have been using the same password for years, chances are that someone along the way got that password in one of the major data breeches that has happened over the last few years.
• Don’t use passwords that are obvious. Such as kid’s names, or pets, spouses, loved ones, or even your favorite television characters.
• Use combinations of upper- and lower-case letters as well as numbers and special characters.
• Use a string of random words that are easy to remember, but hard for the a computer to guess.
• Most of all, don’t write your passwords down on a pad and place it someplace you think no one will ever look, like under your keyboard.  If you have to write down your passwords, keep them in a pad that you keep safely locked away somewhere, or better yet, use an app like LastPass to safely store your passwords in a way no one could easily get to them.

Be sure you protect yourself by keeping your passwords safe.  There is a lot of personal information that is stored online.  You have to make sure that your information is protected.

Windows 7 is now officially a thing of the past.  This shows the importance of keeping up with the patches, updates, and fixes to the operating system.   A lot of people will say that Windows is so insecure because they always must send out more updates to fix things.  This does not mean that Windows, or any other major operating system is insecure, it just means that there is a lot going on.  There are a lot of different things that can cause an issue which requires an update to an operating system or just require that the computer be properly maintained.  We list a few here.

Hardware manufacturers are constantly coming out with new models with the latest and greatest parts and equipment.  Memory is faster, processors have more computing power, sound cards are louder, and the motherboards are doing everything more efficiently with every new version.  Sometimes software is not prepared for new hardware, so parts of the operating system must be tweaked to account for the new hardware that is on the market.

There are people, and even governments around the world who make it their business to look for an exploit every possible flaw they can possibly find in an operating system.  With the uncountable lines of code that it takes to create an operating system, there is always going to be an error, a weakness, or just a hole in the code that went unnoticed until hackers come across it and create viruses and malware to exploit the weakness.  It is then up to the creators of the software and operating systems to find the code that was exploited and fix it in a way that doesn’t break other parts of the operating system and doesn’t plug one hole by exposing another.

There are a lot of processes and routines that are run by operating systems to make sure that an operating system is running smoothly.  We used to hear a lot about disk defragmentation.  This is still an issue with hard drives, but most operating systems clean these things up in the background, so you never have to even think about it.  Not all system or processes clean themselves up that well.  Some processes and other applications will create and leave behind temporary files that just pile up, or the apps will  use memory but not release it properly, called a memory leak, so the computer has less memory to work with, so it slows down and can possibly even crash.

The longer a computer goes without being properly maintained, the more things will accumulate causing your computer to slow down.  People will say that their computer is “slow this morning,” like it didn’t have its morning coffee.  Computers don’t have moods; they should always operate the same way.  The issues is that computer software can slow over time due to issues within the operating system.

The best thing you can do for your computer is to keep it maintained by a professional who is up to speed on the latest operating systems, hardware, tools, and processes.  Call Steven at Unfrustrating Computers to take care of your machines before you curse at your cursor.

Windows 7 support is ending on January 14, 2020.  Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended back in January of 2015.  Microsoft has been providing extended support ever since and now that is coming to an end.

Mainstream support is when a company like Microsoft offers full support for a product.  Full support means that besides offering security updates and patches or fixes to resolve issues,  they are actively working to improve and enhance the product.

Mainstream support means that the operating system or software is still an ongoing concern for the company.   It means the company is spending time, money, and significant effort to ensure that your experience with the product is the best that it could be.

As we all know, software companies, like Microsoft, will eventually retire an older version of their product to release a new version.  When this happens, that time, money and effort are moved to the new product, and less time is spent on the older versions.
Extended support means that the product is no longer a priority for the company. They understand that many people and many companies will not upgrade the latest and greatest as soon as it comes out. So they continue to provide security updates as well as patches and fixes to issues to keep the operating system safe and secure for use.

For Microsoft, its policy is to provide extended support for an operating system for five years.  An extended five-year window, no pun intended, will give people and companies enough time to plan their upgrades.  Often, those upgrades coincide with the purchase of new computers.  Most people, especially business owners and managers, will upgrade their computers within a five-year time frame.  The hope is that older operating systems will fall out of service due to attrition.

For those that do not plan an upgrade or buy new computers have to make the decision to upgrade their operating systems in one of three ways.

1. Buy new computers designed for the new operating system.  New operating systems often require more memory, more disk space, or better sound, video, or other hardware.  Getting new hardware will guarantee compatibility.
2. Reinstall the new operating system on the current hardware.  Some people choose to back up their data and start from scratch with the new operating system on the old hardware.  This clean install ensures that no issues or corruption from the old operating system finds its way into the new operating system.  Some people like to have a “clean” install.
3. In-place upgrade.  The easiest, though most risky upgrade, is to do an in-place upgrade from the new operating system to the new OS on the existing hardware.  Make sure your data is backed up and there is a risk that the upgrade will not work, and you will not be able to go back to your old OS.

Give Steve a call to discuss which is best for your circumstances.

Regardless of which method you use, you should upgrade.  End of extended support means that Microsoft will no longer release security updates or patches.  With the lack of updates, your old operating system will become a greater risk.  These risks can leave your computer and your information open to hackers.   Hackers will exploit possible security flaws knowing that Microsoft will no longer write the update to fix it.

Aside from the security issues, any technical bugs that pop up will no longer be addressed.   As you introduce new software, such as new browsers, or office products, and new hardware, such as new printers or monitors, the possibility of issues increases significantly.

With the end of support only weeks away, it is important to plan your next move.  

Whether it is new hardware or an in-place upgrade, call Steven at Unfrustrating Computers.   You need to be ready when support for Windows 7 ends two weeks into the new year.

Protecting your data is an essential part of being in business.  If you lose access to your data, your business can be in real trouble.  On average, a company can be without access to its financial data for three days before serious issues start to settle in, including possibly even going out of business.

In the area of data protection, two terms you will hear are “backup” and “disaster recovery.”  While both of these areas have the goal of protecting your data, backup and disaster recovery are not the same thing, and should not be treated as such.

What is Disaster Recovery?

It is all in the name.  Disaster Recovery is what you use to recover from a disaster.  The description hits the nail on the head.  In disaster recovery, we are not looking to back up individual files and folders.  The goal here is to create a full image of your server.  Full image protection means that the software is making a bit by bit copy of the server’s hard drives and storing the entire server as a single entity.  If you lose your server hardware due to a disaster, such as a fire, flood, or even a catastrophic hardware failure, your entire server can be restored either to the repaired server or entirely new hardware.   In a disaster situation, there is also the possibility of “failover.”  A failover is when you switch over from your production server, which is inaccessible, to the disaster recovery version of the server.  Failover can be a virtual image in the cloud, or on temporary hardware.  After your hardware is repaired or replaced, you would be able to “failback,” which is the process of moving your server’s data, including data that has changed since the failover, back to it’s new forever home.

The goal of Disaster Recovery is to get your data back into production in the shortest time possible.

RTO vs. RPO

Two goals for disaster recovery are the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).  Recovery Time Objective is the amount of time it would take to regain access to the server and the information.  An RTO of 72 hours means that you can expect to have access to your information within three days of the disaster.

Recovery Point Objective is how old the restored data can be from the time of the disaster.  Since many disaster recovery systems copy data once per day, depending on when the last data synchronization was, the restored information can be up to 24 hours old.  If data is protected once per day, it would be an RTO of 24 hours.

With updated technology, including cloud-based services and virtual machines,  that can monitor data as it is changed, we can now measure RTO and RPO in minutes or hours rather than days.

Data Backup

The other form of data protection is called Data Backup.  Backup systems protect servers and workstations down to the file and folders level.  With Data Backup, you can restore anything from a single file or folder to an entire directory structure.  With Data Backup, as opposed to Disaster Recovery, Data Backup does not assume that you have had a catastrophic failure of your equipment.  While Disaster Recovery systems will be utilized to protect from things like fire and flood, backups are there in case you accidentally delete or overwrite a file.  

In both cases, you are protecting your data, and if you absolutely had to, you can use your data backup to restore data after a disaster, or you could use your disaster recovery services to bring back a file you accidentally deleted, but it would be overkill just like using a sledgehammer to put a push-pin into a cork-board.

Both of these services are an important part of your business risk management, and if you have servers in your network environment, both should be properly implemented and managed.

Protect your data and protect your company, call Unfrustrating Computers at 516-679-0210 and ask us about our Data Backup and Disaster Recovery services.

It is all in the name.  Disaster Recovery is what you use to recover from a disaster.  The description hits the nail on the head.  In disaster recovery, we are not looking to back up individual files and folders.  The goal here is to create a full image of your server.  Full image protection means that the software is making a bit by bit copy of the server’s hard drives and storing the entire server as a single entity.  If you lose your server hardware due to a disaster, such as a fire, flood, or even a catastrophic hardware failure, your entire server can be restored either to the repaired server or entirely new hardware.   In a disaster situation, there is also the possibility of “failover.”  A failover is when you switch over from your production server, which is inaccessible, to the disaster recovery version of the server.  Failover can be a virtual image in the cloud, or on temporary hardware.  After your hardware is repaired or replaced, you would be able to “failback,” which is the process of moving your server’s data, including data that has changed since the failover, back to it’s new forever home.

The goal of Disaster Recovery is to get your data back into production in the shortest time possible.

Two goals for disaster recovery are the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).  Recovery Time Objective is the amount of time it would take to regain access to the server and the information.  An RTO of 72 hours means that you can expect to have access to your information within three days of the disaster.

Recovery Point Objective is how old the restored data can be from the time of the disaster.  Since many disaster recovery systems copy data once per day, depending on when the last data synchronization was, the restored information can be up to 24 hours old.  If data is protected once per day, it would be an RTO of 24 hours.

With updated technology, including cloud-based services and virtual machines,  that can monitor data as it is changed, we can now measure RTO and RPO in minutes or hours rather than days.

The other form of data protection is called Data Backup.  Backup systems protect servers and workstations down to the file and folders level.  With Data Backup, you can restore anything from a single file or folder to an entire directory structure.  With Data Backup, as opposed to Disaster Recovery, Data Backup does not assume that you have had a catastrophic failure of your equipment.  While Disaster Recovery systems will be utilized to protect from things like fire and flood, backups are there in case you accidentally delete or overwrite a file.  

In both cases, you are protecting your data, and if you absolutely had to, you can use your data backup to restore data after a disaster, or you could use your disaster recovery services to bring back a file you accidentally deleted, but it would be overkill just like using a sledgehammer to put a push-pin into a cork-board.

Both of these services are an important part of your business risk management, and if you have servers in your network environment, both should be properly implemented and managed.

Protect your data and protect your company, contact Unfrustrating Computers at 516-679-5540 and ask us about our Data Backup and Disaster Recovery services.