Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Many states’ stay-at-home orders that are/were designed to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus are now lapsing all over the U.S. As a result, business owners are re-opening their doors to a great deal of uncertainty. We have put together this guide to help the business owner understand that, even though you’ve finally been given the go-ahead, you have a responsibility to keep your staff and customers safe.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to respond quickly and radically change operations, but despite the circumstances, productivity is still at the center of most business professionals’ minds. If we can learn more about how businesses have managed to thrive even in the face of the pandemic, we can learn more about how to succeed when things get back to “normal,” whatever that looks like, particularly in regards to technology and the role it has played over the past year and a half.

During the COVID-19 pandemic there have been quite a few different types of scams. At first, most of the scams centered around economic relief money that was doled out to people to help prop up the fledgling economy. More recently however, scammers have focused on vaccines. Today, we will take a closer look at some of these scams, as they are growing in sophistication. 

The past year has been tough on many businesses. If they’ve learned anything it is the importance of staying flexible. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the need for organizations to move their operations offsite for fears of spreading the virus. With several different pharmaceutical companies now testing and pushing out vaccines for the virus, it seems that offices and other places of businesses will be opening back up, right? 

There is no denying that, as far as Christmas days go, 2020’s is much different than most of us are used to. Instead of visiting with family and friends, most of us are remaining at home and awaiting the normalcy that a vaccine to COVID-19 will bring. With that normalcy, we also anticipate a return to something like typical business operations.

There is a whole section of the workforce who forgoes the stability of a full-time job and contracts themselves out by the job. For many of these workers, the boom in application development has given them endless opportunities to make money. This all changed in March as government officials put forth stay-at-home orders, effectively putting millions of people out of work, and millions more displaced from their workplaces. This has had a dire effect on many of the gig workers that were making a living as more people are now trying to do whatever they can to make ends meet. Today, we thought we would look at the gig economy, how it functions, and how COVID-19 has exposed the gig economy.

COVID-19 is still a factor that businesses need to consider, especially in terms of their continued operations. With major adjustments required to stay open, many small and medium-sized businesses will need to accept the situation their business is in and implement changes. Fortunately, research that Salesforce summarized in their fourth Small & Medium Business Trends Report suggests that this is happening.

While businesses have always needed to focus on their data security, the COVID-19 pandemic has only made this more of a challenge. Let’s go over why this is, and how many industries (especially the healthcare industry) have had to adjust as a result.

Traditionally, when you talk about employee health, issues come up about health insurance and workplace safety. With the COVID-19 pandemic six months old, new considerations have to be made. The pandemic has caused many businesses to reassess the way they go about doing things to ensure that their workforces aren’t exposed to the virus, and that employees can handle their jobs with the pressures brought forth by the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Today, we’ll review some of the considerations business owners have to make to keep their workforces safe. 

The impact of COVID-19 to businesses has been such that we will not likely return to the way business was run before all of this happened. A major factor to this is how businesses once made use of their technology. The shifts that have occurred in the last few months will not likely go away, even after the pandemic ends.

Remember a few months ago when Google and Apple joined forces to come up with a system to help state and local governments establish a COVID-19 Exposure Notification system? If you didn’t, you aren’t alone. A lot has been going on lately. Just to catch you up, the two tech giants recently pushed out an update across nearly all modern smartphones so state and local governments can deploy apps to notify people when they may have been exposed to COVID-19. Let’s do a deep dive on what this means for your privacy.

Business reopening is proving to be relatively difficult as COVID-19 isn’t going away. To ensure the health of your staff, while still reopening your business to create revenue, you will need to carefully weigh all your operational decisions. Today, we have outlined some best practices in which to do so. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a lot of stress on people.  Nowhere is this more true than in the small business arena. Small businesses, many of which were forced to suspend or severely alter their operations, are also dealing with cyberattacks. Let’s take a look at the effects COVID-19 has on small businesses regarding cybersecurity. 

The World Health Organization has been busy dealing with one of the biggest calamities in contemporary times, the COVID-19 pandemic that has had much of the world on pause for the past few months. Unfortunately, they’ve been dealing with an increase in cyberattacks. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the issues the WHO is having with cybercriminals. 

As restrictions have started to ease and business returns to some semblance of normal, organizations are left picking up the pieces of a disaster that almost none of them planned for. Let’s look at some of the statistics that explain where small businesses are at this time, and some tips on how to get your business back being the productive company you remember.

Millions of businesses are being affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, it may not surprise you that you will have to adjust your budget to accommodate the massive amount of changes that we will see when the outbreak is handled and everyday life begins to normalize. Today, we thought we’d take you through some of the financial challenges your business is sure to have to deal with when the stay-at-home orders lift.