Earlier this month, the World Wide Web Consortium, announced plans to begin allowing users to log into online accounts with fingerprints, facial scans, and voice recognition. This will not only boost security, but also make account management much simpler.

Authenticate Your Profile on Your Mobile Device

Chrome OS, Windows, and MacOS, Linux, and Android are all adding features to help users safely log in using biometric identification via USB, Bluetooth, and NFC devices connected to smartphones and tablets. With such convenience, users can verify their accounts on the go.

Preventing Cyber Attacks with Browser-based Biometrics

Passwords are notoriously bad at protecting users' accounts and the information they store. Facial scans, fingerprints and voice recognition would make it exponentially harder for hackers to commit identity theft. That means you're also less likely to be duped by an email from a hacker pretending to be your boss asking for the company credit card.

Enjoy More Secured Online Transactions

Biometric verification will also retire the need for logging in your information when shopping online, streaming video, using cloud applications, and other internet-based transactions. Windows 10 has already adopted features that offer limited account management with fingerprints and facial scans. But none of the big-name technology vendors have offered solutions to achieve this on mobile devices as of yet.

Browser-based biometrics could revolutionize and streamline the steps of verifying an online account. It promises to add more security and ease in logging in and transacting on the internet. To keep up with the latest and greatest in browser-related innovations at your company, give us a call now.

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Due to increasing connectivity and technological advances, mobile workers are increasingly becoming the norm in almost every industry. Business owners need to ensure these workers stay connected, so we’ve got some helpful tips in how to effectively apply mobile performance management.

The ability to manage the workforce out in the field requires a modern support infrastructure called mobile performance management. It includes the top five tips to keep field workers connected: optimizing traffic, applying control, measuring performance analytics, simplifying data security, and identifying the root cause of connectivity issues.

Optimize

Although the latest apps on the market can maximize productivity for the mobile workforce, these apps come with a certain risks: stability issues that could lead to the apps crashing while out in the field. If you are your company’s IT decision-maker, be cautious of untested apps, and consider blocking heavy bandwidth apps to streamline data flow when signal strength is weak.

Control

Another thing you can do with mobile performance management solutions is blocking personal apps and unsafe WiFi networks. Both of these create serious security risks that could lead to costly data theft or loss.

Analyzing performance

Field workers mostly rely on GPS location data for more efficient scheduling, route-planning, and effective control of fuel consumption. This is possible only if there are reporting tools that confirm that the GPS capability is working. Performance analytics show you what mobile workers are experiencing, gaining access to robust data, network and app usage reports, inventory analysis, coverage maps and device maps as needed.

Simplify security

IT should tightly restrict access without making security complicated for mobile workers. IT administrators need to create a highly flexible and programmable secure mobile strategy. You must be able to restrict which apps can access company data and remotely wipe data from the device if it is lost or stolen.

Identifying the root cause of connection issues

Obviously, field workers are not IT experts, so organizations need to be fully prepared for connectivity issues involving their mobile devices. Organizations of all sizes should be able to afford remote diagnostics to gather complete troubleshooting information to allow IT to identify the root cause of the problem quickly, without relying on workers, who have no idea about how to run tests and answer questions regarding these issues.

For any organization with workers in the field, the ability to implement performance management structures and policies is a must. For other tips on how to keep your employees connected, engaged, and efficient, give us a call and we’ll be happy to advise.

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Virtualization can help boost operational efficiencies like never before, but you have to understand that the benefits aren't always immediate. As valuable as it is, it does come with flaws to those who don’t know how to properly adopt it. Here are a few concerns that can become an issue in virtualization adoption:

Backup

Incorporating a robust backup system in a virtualized setting can become a huge challenge. You’d have to determine which data you want to store and how often it should be backed up. You would then have to decide whether you should back up all your virtual machines or just some vital ones that have important apps and data.

In any case, you’ll be caught in a grueling battle because of the overwhelming amount of data that needs to be backed up. The only way to overcome this is to integrate a powerful backup-to-disk solution offered by a reputable managed services provider (MSP).

Security

Security concerns are more complicated in a virtualized setting since you have to monitor security on a couple of tiers: virtual machine security and physical host security.

A compromised physical host security will affect every virtual machine running on this particular host server. Meanwhile, a compromised virtual machine will disrupt the physical server and affect every virtual machine residing on the same host. To address this, you need to set up strong network defenses -- including firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, antivirus software, and virtual machine security tool -- and a hardened physical security system -- in the form of surveillance cameras, locks, biometric scans, and security guards. Of course, if you don't have the funds to set these up, it may make more sense to leave it to a security-conscious MSP.

Monitoring

Since your team has to oversee both virtual machines and physical servers to ensure that you have a fully operational environment, it does have a few pain points.

First, running a monitoring software on the physical host server is likely to impact the virtual machines’ performance since it takes up valued processing power and memory. That means you'll need to compute the resources used by your monitoring software and make sure it's not consuming too much from your physical host server.

Second, keeping tabs on your virtual machines, making sure it's secure and running at all times, is a full-time job. So unless you have a team of professionals in-house, you'll definitely need some help from the outside.

Without a doubt, virtualization brings a lot of benefits to the table, but you have to know how it affects every aspect of your business -- particularly issues involved in management. Let us show you how you can use it to its full potential. Just give us a call today!

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Compared with Windows computers, Macs are less likely to crash or get infected with a virus. Although that’s true, Macs are as vulnerable to theft, spills, and other events that could render a computer useless. Fortunately for Mac users, Time Machine offers a simple way to restore data.

What is Time Machine and why should you use it?

Time Machine is a backup system software for Macs that run on Mac OS X Leopard or later. It makes regular periodic backups in the following intervals:

• Hourly backups for the past 24 hours
• Daily backups for the past month
• Weekly backups for previous months

If you’re concerned about storage space running out fast because of the frequent backups, don’t worry. These scheduled backups don’t replace previously saved files; rather, they only save the changes you’ve made to a file.

Let’s say you’ve been working on a file for five days: Time Machine has periodically created backups of the changes you made every day. So if you need to retrieve a version of a file with changes made on Day 2, you can do so even after you’ve made several changes on the file from Days 3-5 because Time Machine stores multiple copies of the file from Days 1-5.

In case you’re replacing a Mac, you can easily copy all your files from your old computer to the new one, with your settings, files, and folders intact. And if you’re backing up data from several Mac computers, there’s no need to use a separate device for each Mac, provided it has enough space for all files.

How to use Time Machine

To use Time Machine, you only need an external storage drive such as a USB, an SSD card, or any storage device that can be plugged into your Mac. Then follow these steps:

• Connect an external storage device (or macOS server) to your Mac
• Go to System Preferences > Time Machine
• Click ‘Use as Backup Disk’ (It’s recommended that you click Encrypt Backup Disk before you do so, in order to set up a password for accessing your backup)
• If Time Machine doesn’t automatically pop up when you connect an external storage disk, go to Time Machine via System Preferences or click the Apple icon on the upper left corner of the menu bar, click System Preferences > Time Machine
• Select the storage disk you’ve just connected, then click ‘Use Disk’

Other backup options

Although there are various other backup systems for Mac, Time Machine is one of the more practical options for users who value simplicity, convenience, and reliability. What’s more, it’s free.

That said, similar backup systems like ChronoSync offer slightly more comprehensive backups. And since Time Machine only backs up data instead of the entire hard drive, restoring an entire system is relatively slower.

Despite this minor shortcoming, Time Machine is a reliable, user-friendly, and economical way to back up your files. Whether you’re backing up a device for personal or business use, using Time Machine ensures all your files are safe and can be recovered. If you need more comprehensive backup solutions, our experts are ready to help -- call us today.

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