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Comparing Hangouts and Skype

Google and Microsoft have made huge strides with their communication solutions, Hangouts Meet and Skype for Business. Both products offer text, voice, and video chat, but each has unique features suited for specific businesses. To help you make a decision about which solution to install, we compare Hangouts Meet and Skype for Business features so you can see how they stack up against each other.

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19 Jul, 2017 / by Complete Technology Resources / in Office 365, VoIP category
Comparing Hangouts and Skype

Google and Microsoft have made huge strides with their communication solutions, Hangouts Meet and Skype for Business. Both products offer text, voice, and video chat, but each has unique features suited for specific businesses. To help you make a decision about which solution to install, we compare Hangouts Meet and Skype for Business features so you can see how they stack up against each other.

Calling features
While Hangouts and Skype both offer enterprise-grade security, 1080p HD quality video, and screen sharing capabilities, there are some slight differences. For starters, Skype for Business users can set up and record online meetings for up to 250 participants and broadcast meetings for up to 10,000 attendees. With call forwarding and auto-attendant features, Skype ensures you never miss calls and streamlines caller management. What’s more, it has Skype Translator, a plugin that instantly translates voice and text.

Hangouts Meets, on the other hand, supports up to 30 people per session and lacks broadcasting and voting capabilities. It does, however, have intelligent built-in features like auto screen focus and muting so that participants get the right amount of attention when they’re sharing ideas with the group. You can also invite participants to the call by simply sending the URL link of the Hangouts session.

Presence
Hangouts sports a simple green circle to indicate that a contact is online. Skype offers similar features, but the difference is that you have more status options to choose from such as Available, Busy, Away, Do Not Disturb, and In a Call.

Integrations and add-ons
Being a Google product, Hangouts has tight integrations with powerful G Suite apps, including Gmail, Sheets, Maps, YouTube and Google Calendar. With Calendar, Hangouts can schedule appointments and set call reminders within the app. Using YouTube, you can even broadcast your presentations live.

Meanwhile, Skype for Business is heavily integrated into Office 365. This means you can initiate calls with colleagues working on the same Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file. Outside of Microsoft, Skype also integrates with Slack and other unified communication solutions.

Price
The biggest difference between Google and Microsoft’s VoIP product is pricing. Hangouts is offered with every G Suite subscription plan (Basic, Business, Enterprise), and usually starts at $5 per user per month. By comparison, Skype for Business can be purchased as a standalone solution starting at $2 per user per month. Keep in mind, those with Office 365 Business subscriptions also get all the Skype features listed above.

What works for you?
Based on these features, it should be easy for you to decide which platform is suitable for your business. Hangouts is clearly built for startups and small companies that need a low cost communication solution. It supports only up to 30 people per call, and while its features are a bit limited compared to Skype, it does offer companies with fewer than 50 employees what they need.

In contrast, Skype for Business and its robust features are designed for small and large businesses alike. Of course, if you’re still unsure about either product, you should opt for a trial run and make up your mind then. Otherwise, contact our team today so we can recommend a VoIP solution that fits your business.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Workplace Analytics measures productivity

Microsoft’s MyAnalytics was designed for employees to monitor their individual performance. An updated version, Workplace Analytics, is a significant upgrade because it can be accessed by managers. It not only provides managers with insight into an individual employee’s performance, but it also helps them plan and create strategies around increasing productivity and improving employee output and engagement.

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18 Jul, 2017 / by Complete Technology Resources / in Office, Office 365, Productivity category
Workplace Analytics measures productivity

Microsoft’s MyAnalytics was designed for employees to monitor their individual performance. An updated version, Workplace Analytics, is a significant upgrade because it can be accessed by managers. It not only provides managers with insight into an individual employee’s performance, but it also helps them plan and create strategies around increasing productivity and improving employee output and engagement.

How it works

Now available as an add-on to Office 365 enterprise plans, Workplace Analytics extracts behavioral insights from data gathered from Office 365 email, calendar, documents, and Skype. This means that any data an employee types into their email and calendar -- whether it’s on the subject line or the main content itself -- can be used to indicate their productivity status.

The program has an overview dashboard that provides specific information:

  • Week in the Life provides an overall view of how the entire organization spends time and how members collaborate
  • Meetings shows the amount of time spent in meetings
  • Management and Coaching gauges staff-manager one-on-one meetings
  • Network and Collaboration takes a look at how employees connect to colleagues

What does it aim to do?

Workplace Analytics aims to address what, according to Microsoft, are businesses’ most common challenges: complexity, productivity, and engagement.

Using Analytics data, managers and human resources departments can form productivity strategies for the entire company. If, based on Workplace Analytics data, a majority of your employees are spending 60% of their time attending meetings and not enough time doing creative work, they can come up with a strategy that reduces meeting time and focuses more on productive tasks.

It also identifies how employees collaborate with internal and external parties. Suppose one of your sales staff frequently communicates with certain contacts. By using Workplace Analytics data, the employee’s manager would be able to determine whether this particular collaboration pattern is helping the employee hit sales targets or whether he or she is missing out on other more critical contacts. Also, based on this info, managers would be able to determine which employees are most likely to meet or exceed their targets and set company-wide standards accordingly.

Data gathered by Workplace Analytics also allows managers to determine an employee’s level of engagement (i.e., whether the organization’s collaboration patterns are good for the company) and whether workloads are fairly distributed among workers and/or departments.

Is it useful for small businesses?

Large corporations have been using Workplace Analytics, but small businesses can also benefit from it. For one, the data used to provide the insights are all based on data generated by employees themselves -- how much time they spend on meetings, whom they frequently communicate with, and how much time they spend on productive tasks.

Aside from letting managers examine their staff’s working behavior, Workplace Analytics also provides an overall look into what happens at an organizational level. If you want your organization to harness the capabilities of Workplace Analytics and other Office 365 tools, give us a call today.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Ransomware protection for Windows 10

The development of global ransomware attacks like WannaCry is a worrying trend for many computer users, especially for those with outdated Windows PCs. Fortunately, Microsoft is adding some much needed security features in Windows 10 to help keep users safe.

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14 Jul, 2017 / by Complete Technology Resources / in Security, Windows category
Ransomware protection for Windows 10

The development of global ransomware attacks like WannaCry is a worrying trend for many computer users, especially for those with outdated Windows PCs. Fortunately, Microsoft is adding some much needed security features in Windows 10 to help keep users safe. If you are a Windows user, here’s why you can’t afford to miss this critical update.

Controlled folders
With Microsoft’s new Controlled folders access feature, you can list certain documents and folders as “protected.” Only whitelisted apps can access and edit these folders, while any attempted changes by malicious apps are simply blocked by Windows Defender.

In theory, this should slow down a ransomware’s ability to encrypt critical information. Some reports suggest that other threats like malicious file macros and viruses can be prevented by this feature.

So far, only Windows Insider users have access to controlled folders. But if you’ve already signed up, you can access the feature by going to Windows Defender Security Center and then enabling Controlled folder access. From here, you can choose which folders will be protected and what apps are allowed to access them. To save you time, common Microsoft applications are trusted automatically, but you can remove them from your whitelist whenever you want.

Application Guard
Apart from folder protection, Microsoft also made security enhancements for web browsers. The Windows Defender Application Guard is designed to prevent intrusions, using Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtual machine technology to detect and isolate compromised applications from the rest of your system. So if someone accidentally downloads a virus from their web browser, Application Guard will contain the threat before it infiltrates the rest of your company’s devices, apps, data, and network.

Device Guard
In a similar vein, the Device Guard feature, which is also found in the Windows Defender Security Center, minimizes computer exposure to malware by using advanced threat detection policies to make sure only approved code is running throughout the system. This is meant to add an extra layer of defense in between your firewall and antivirus software.

As mentioned, Windows Insider users can get early access to these security features, but if you want to make sure that these security features are as strong as they can be, we suggest you wait for their public release around September for the Fall Creators update.

Want to stay on top of the latest technologies that can help you beat ransomware, viruses, and other nasty cyberattacks? Contact us today for any security updates and advice.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Nyetya ransomware: what you need to know

Nyetya, a variant of the Petya ransomware, is spreading across businesses all over the world. Although it shares the same qualities as WannaCry -- a ransomware deemed ‘one of the worst in history’ -- many cyber security experts are calling it a more virulent strain of malware that could cause greater damage to both small and large organizations.

The post Nyetya ransomware: what you need to know appeared first on Complete Technology Resources, Inc..

13 Jul, 2017 / by Complete Technology Resources / in Security category
Nyetya ransomware: what you need to know

Nyetya, a variant of the Petya ransomware, is spreading across businesses all over the world. Although it shares the same qualities as WannaCry -- a ransomware deemed ‘one of the worst in history’ -- many cyber security experts are calling it a more virulent strain of malware that could cause greater damage to both small and large organizations. Here’s everything we know about it so far.

Worse than WannaCry

Nyetya is deemed worse than WannaCry mainly because it spreads laterally, meaning it targets computers within networks and affects even systems that have been patched. Because it also spreads internally, it needs to infect only one device to affect several others within a single network.

Cyber researchers trace its origins to a tax accounting software called MEDoc, which infected 12,500 systems in Ukraine. Since the initial infections in June, it has spread to thousands of networks in 64 countries. And although it hasn’t spread as fast as WannaCry, it might have a wider reach soon because it uses three attack pathways to infect a system. It hasn’t made as much money as WannaCry, which is why cyber researchers are concluding that the attacks are not economically motivated.

Don’t pay the ransom

Cyber security firms and researchers strongly recommend affected businesses to avoid paying the ransom. According to them, paying the ransom would be a waste since the infected user won’t be able to receive a decryption key to unlock their files or systems. This is because the email provider has blocked the email address on the ransomware message.

Although it operates like a ransomware -- locking hard drives and files and demands a $300 ransom in Bitcoin -- it functions more as a wiperware that aims to permanently wipe out data and/or destroy systems. So far, it has affected big-name multinationals in various industries, including Merck, Mondelez International, and AP Moller-Maersk, among others.

Perform backups and update outdated security patches

The only way businesses can be protected is by performing backups and staying on top of patch updates.

It’s safe to say that in case of a Nyetya attack, there’s no chance of getting back your data. In such a scenario, you would have only your backup files -- whether on an external storage or in the cloud -- to fall back on. But backing up is not enough; you should also ensure that your backups are working, which you can do by testing them regularly. Given the nature of Nyetya, you should also make sure that your backups are stored off-site and disconnected from your network.

Like its predecessor, Nyetya exploited vulnerabilities in unpatched Microsoft-run computers. As a business owner, make it a part of your cyber security routine to update your systems with the latest security patches, or risk having your files or systems permanently corrupted.

As a business owner whose operations’ lifeline depends on critical files, your backups are your insurance. If your systems’ network security needs another layer of protection, get in touch with us today.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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