How to Keep Your Network Safe

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Maintaining the security of your business’s IT network safe isn’t an easy feat. Securing your network is a process requiring time and dedication even for those entrenched in the IT world. Doing it well on top of your everyday tasks can be daunting at best and fatal for your business at worst. Moreover, the sophistication of today’s hackers leaves no one’s system—not even your home computer—safe from threats.

To avoid these ongoing threats, consider the following tips to keep your business network safe.

Use encryption – Data that is encrypted requires a key or password to decode information, making it the most effective way to secure your network. At the very least, ensure that your Internet network has Wi-Fi Protected Access II encryption, the most up-to-date protocol, to eliminate the likelihood of a breach.

Change access passwords – When considering how to keep your network safe, also consider how conspicuous your passwords are. Of course, certain team members—if not all of them—will need to know your accessibility password. However, administrative passwords, where applicable, should be restricted. Also, if you notice too many users on your network and your bandwidth begins to suffer, consider changing your password and reinforcing its confidentiality to employees with whom it is shared.

Scan your system regularly – The point of malware and spyware is for it to remain undetected on your network in order to do as much damage to your system as possible. So, unless you take the time to regularly look for these programs, you won’t be able to detect their presence. Scanning your system will unveil viruses and spyware on your network, while scanning the ports will inform you of any accessibility issues. It’s recommended to scan your network on a daily basis to ensure security. This is ideal for outsourcing, since a trusted IT partner—like Infomax—will ensure this gets done regularly, whereas in-house staff might push system checks to deal with pressing issues.

Choose a smart SSID – Simply put, the Service Set Identifier (SSID) is the name of your Wi-Fi connection. Remember that this name will appear on a list that is available to anyone attempting to find a Wi-Fi network to join within a certain physical distance of your company. Naming your network after your company in any way provides an easy way for hackers to identify your network. A simple name like Wireless1 or WIFI1 strips your SSID of any company-related identifiers, adding an easy layer of security to your network.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the weight of keeping your network safe or you’d like more information on protecting your IT systems, contact Infomax today!

Quality and Affordable Printing Solutions for Every Office

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Monochrome printers and multi-function printers (MFPs) have come a long way since dot matrix printing of yesteryear. Many companies might assume monochrome printing solutions are also becoming dated, as color devices rise in popularity. But, today’s black-and-white printers and MFPs have kept pace with modern technology and often include sophisticated features—including Wi-Fi, duplex printing, and mobile capabilities—to streamline efficiency in your office, while still remaining incredibly affordable.

Monochrome machines are often the most affordable option, making them an ideal option for businesses on a budget. If your office has a color printer or MFP and needs to supplement its network, additional monochrome hardware is your most economical choice. If you’ve already determined that your office can benefit from a monochrome printer, the next step is to decide how you want that machine to function in your office. Is it going to be your company workhorse, shared by more than ten people? Is your marketing team going to be using it, possibly requiring very small fonts to print legibly? How you intend to use your new black and white printer is the first step in your purchase.

Once you figure out the purpose of your new machine, the next step is to consider the specs of your top choices. Each printer’s capabilities are clearly outlined for every machine on their corresponding information sheets. Simply understanding printer specifications in order to compare models can save you time and money in the long-run.

Here are a few points to consider in order to get the best monochrome device for your budget:

Resolution – Resolution is the maximum number of printed dots per inch (dpi) both vertically and horizontally. The lowest resolution in modern printers is roughly 600 dpi, so consider the type of printing you’ll be using your machine for. If you are simply adding a new device for a few employees to share for everyday printing—where professional-quality outputs are not required—a 600dpi printer will do the trick. Looking for resolution specs may help you determine if your choice is the most economical choice.

Print Speed – The corresponding acronym for this spec is PPM, or pages per minute. Again, the function of the machine will help determine an acceptable range for how many pages you need your new machine to print per minute. Typically, the fewer pages printed per minute, the more economical the machine.

Connectivity – Connectivity is about how your printer links to computers and mobile devices. All printers have USB ports, allowing for a wired connection to virtually any device. Basic devices can connect to your networked print fleet via an Ethernet cable. For increased mobility, many models also support wireless printing. Look for how each model connects to devices to help determine your top choice.

Paper Handling – The type of paper you intend to use—everything from size to thickness to output tray capacity—is outlined in the paper-handling specs. Consider not only if you’ll be printing in different sizes, but also the type of paper that you intend to use. This point is particularly important if you intend to print addresses on envelopes on your new machine. Also, duplex printing is included in this spec, and should be considered as an eco-friendly, cost-effective option.

Monochrome machines are an affordable option for your next office technology purchase, as they offer significant features that can be incredibly beneficial to your business at a fair price. Knowing the function of your machine and understanding the meaning behind the spec sheet should help you make the best decision for a quality, affordable monochrome printer to add to your network.

For more information on black and white printing solutions, contact Infomax today!

Ensuring Mobile Devices Stay Secure

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It’s hard to imagine how to effectively do our jobs without the use of smartphones and tablets. The benefits of incorporating mobile devices in our day-to-day workflows are significant—allowing us to go anywhere in the world, while remaining proactive and productive employees. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a way for employees to access work information via mobile devices, while companies are exempt from paying for the device itself, its maintenance, or any accumulating contractual monthly fees.

While the pros and cons of BYOD are debatable, keeping your company’s data secure is absolutely essential—every business should consider the security of its data a top priority. From internal emails, to client credit card information, and your employees’ social security numbers, there is plenty at risk when it comes to private company data. Setting a company-wide BYOD security strategy to ensure mobile devices stay safe is the first step in protecting your sensitive business data.

Consider implementing the following BYOD strategies to help keep mobile devices that access company files, email, or other data safe.

Remote Locate, Lock, and Wipe – No matter how diligent employees are with their devices, sometimes they are lost. With a remote locate, lock, and wipe system in place, you can find, password-protect, and delete all sensitive business data from an employee’s lost or stolen device from your office. This is a great feature when considering the devices of employees who are terminated or quit.

Device Backup and Updates – End users should be responsible for backing up their device to ensure their personal data is not lost. Doing so also entails processing any current updates or patches to devices, which increases that device’s level of security. So, encourage your employees to regularly backup and update each of their mobile devices used for BYOD

Beef Up Passwords – Ask your team to strengthen each device’s password and privacy settings on their apps to make hacking their devices more difficult. Passwords that are a minimum of ten characters long that use lower and upper case letters, numbers, and punctuation are recommended. Moreover, remember that recognizable words are easily hacked, so encourage employees to use meaningful acronyms as strong passwords.

Consider Outsourced Mobile Device Management – Companies like Infomax work every day to ensure the security of all of their clients’ technology, including across mobile devices. Infomax iGuard is a mobile device management service that provides an easy-to-use, cloud-based solution specifically designed to secure corporate mobile devices. Outsourcing mobile device management removes the onus from your IT staff and ensures that your data is always secure—even when accessed on a smartphone or tablet.

Setting a strategy and ensuring compliance are paramount when it comes to using mobile devices for work purposes. By developing a strategy and implementing it, you can protect your company’s sensitive information, while allowing your employees to be as productive as possible by using their own devices.

Contact Infomax today for more information on keeping your company data secure.

Cover All Your Bases When It Comes to Document Security

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You want your company’s data to be secure. Whether it’s protecting employee records and sensitive client information or guarding official papers that you don’t want competitors to see, document security is one of the many responsibilities that every business has to address. Companies are tasked to categorize both paper and electronic documents based on a predetermined sorting system that identifies each document’s level of security.

Whether you are developing your classification system from scratch or altering one that is already in place, it is important to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to document security.

The first step in document security is to determine an agreed-upon labeling system for both paper and electronic documents. There are two distinct aspects of how you classify data: the document’s sensitivity level and the document’s designated audience. Tiered levels of classification are meant to determine strictness of security, whereby a level one document is less secure than a level two or three document. Furthermore, these tiers determine who can access the data, whereby any company employee may be able to view a level one classified document, but only high-level managers and officials can view and edit level three files.

The next step is enforcing these new protocols and ensuring employee compliance. One way to do so is to consider automating the classification process. Document automation software automatically classifies and stores all of your electronic documents—from emails and memos to invoices and scans. Moreover, automating the process also provides instant restrictions on file access based on your company’s fixed parameters. Finessing your business’s document security system by incorporating Document Automation software through a Managed Services Provider (MSP) like Infomax removes human error and ensures compliance with your new system.

Most established companies have some document security protocols in place, but are they effective? Revisiting your predetermined document security rules to clarify, simplify, and modernize policies is recommended to ensure that each piece of data is secured appropriately every time. When it comes to employee compliance, simplicity is key. Ensure that your rules are precise, unambiguous, and easy to follow so that your team can comply with your internal document security protocols. One way to modernize your system is by bringing in an MSP to evaluate your current filing system and improve it with software designed to optimize workflows.

Contact Infomax today to learn how Document Automation can systematically streamline your business’s document security protocols.

Setting a New Standard for Service in 2016

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Modern businesses rely on linked technology systems to succeed. But, with technology comes service needs, and not many companies can support the infrastructure necessary to keep their office equipment up and running in-house. Outsourcing this job begs its own questions like, “Are you happy with your company’s current service of your desktop PCs, networks, and various imaging systems?”, or “Have you used the same service and maintenance company for years and think it may be time to reevaluate your needs?”. If you think the service you currently receive to support your business’s technology is lacking, consider updating your standard for service in 2016.

Specifically, consider a comprehensive service package for businesses relying on interconnections between all office technologies. This type of service offering boasts a complete answer for hands-off installation, setup, and optimization of office equipment that helps your business thrive by keeping all of your systems up-to-date and working together as efficiently as possible. Infomax’s complete service program—ConnectPlus—provides all of these features to ensure seamless technology integration and performance.

One significant benefit of a comprehensive service package is that a single vendor will assist you with all of your office equipment IT needs. From copiers and printers, to networked computers and software training, you only have one number to call for service, rather than dealing with the hassle of figuring out who to contact for each particular issue.

Moreover, this all-inclusive approach to office technology service ensures that the technician handling your account knows you and your business on a personal level, providing you with one point of contact who understands the intricacies of your business practices and workflows. Coupling intimate knowledge of your business with technical expertise will provide your company with top-notch, customized service.

Having one service provider simplifies your accounting situation, as well. Rather than receiving multiple bills from several providers, billing is consolidated into one invoice when you streamline your services. Merging all of your service and maintenance bills into a single invoice also has the potential to affect your bottom line dramatically, whereby you pay less on one bill than you would if your previous bills were summed.

So why not set a new standard for service in 2016? Working with a single vendor for all of your office’s technology needs ensures that your machines, both individually and as an interconnected system, are working as efficiently and economically as possible. Doing so will guarantee that your office’s workflows are optimized, allowing your team to work at peak performance throughout the year.

Contact Infomax today to speak with an expert about how your office can update its technology services by getting started with ConnectPlus.

The Driving Force behind Office Productivity

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When considering office productivity, several factors come into play. Your management style, employee morale, and even how much sleep your team gets at night affects your team’s productivity levels. One oftentimes overlooked factor of productivity is the tools you have in place to maximize your company’s workflows.

Although there are various novelty items that can make your business soar, like applications that enable wireless printing straight from mobile devices, or fire and waterproof external storage drives, the driving force behind office productivity is your larger technology fleet. These essential tools are responsible for keeping your team’s workflows running efficiently.

Here are a few foundational pieces of office equipment and technology that will ensure your team is working at its peak of productivity.

Multifunction Printers (MFPs) – Whether color or black and white, MFPs offer a wide range of capabilities, including document capture and data automation software, which will help your team function at its highest level. MFPs allow users to email scanned documents to a customer from the machine itself, or easily print addresses on envelopes instead of printing out labels. Once properly trained, your staff will save hours of time with an in-house MFP.

Cloud Storage – In today’s mobile world, having your business’s data available at your fingertips opens up new possibilities for workflows. You can pull up an invoice on your smartphone while visiting a client on-site, or edit a proposal on your tablet on a layover in the airport on a business trip. Unlimited access to all of your company data is available with modern cloud storage solutions, increasing your team’s access to business documents and programs, and in turn boosting productivity.

Software – Don’t forget the tremendous benefits that specific software can reap for your business. Think about how document automation software, programs that streamline the filing of electronic documents, can add to your team’s productivity. Your employees will never lose an email again, or decide how to file data. Software options are abundant, so working with your trusted technology partner is key when determining the best software to incorporate into you business’s workflows.

If you’re interested in upgrading your current technology or in adding new hardware or software to increase your company’s productivity, contact Infomax today.