Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Imagine for a minute that you work in a small factory or machine shop. Some wind comes through and drops a 200-year-old maple tree through the roof onto the machines that you use to create your product. The devastation is total. If you have a second factory built to scale from the first, you could just ship your workers over to that one and keep productivity high. Chances are, however, there is no second factory. Your business is done until you can get the situation fixed. It could take days, weeks, or even months to get your business back on track; and if the stats are any indication, it probably won’t. 

Today’s businesses are more dependent on collaboration than ever before, and that’s without even taking the current social climate into consideration. However, accounting for these considerations, it seemed appropriate that we shared a few tips to help increase your collaborative capabilities while your team is working remotely.

A business’ computing network is one of their most important tools. Therefore, it’s extremely important that it is managed and maintained properly. Today, we’ll go over a few tips you should keep in mind to ensure that your IT network is managed and secure. 

As statewide stay-at-home orders lapse, more and more businesses aim to reopen. For a fair share of these businesses, remote technology has been a godsend. For the businesses that cannot reopen yet, being able to monitor your IT infrastructure while you are out of the office is extremely important to the sustainability of your remote access solutions. Today, we’ll discuss monitoring your infrastructure.

With all the threats that stand to create problems for your business, it can be surprising to hear that some of your biggest security risks actually derive from your staff, and their exposure to your technology. Less surprising to hear: security issues interfere with the successful operation of your business. Here, we’ve shared a few tips to help your staff better adhere to security practices.

When reading through Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report you will quickly get the notion that phishing attacks are some of the most prevalent cyberattacks. With businesses forced to use technology to support a remote workforce, this is definitely still relevant information. It, then, becomes extremely important that your business does a quality job of training your employees to spot phishing attempts before they become a problem. Let’s take you through some of the telltale signs that you have received a phishing message.

Most computer users have at least a passing familiarity with Portable Document Format files, better known as PDFs. As a tip, we’ll review how a PDF can be created, and even edited.

Most smartphone users like to get a new phone every year or two. This isn’t just because the hardware or software on newer devices are better, but because after two years, many people have dropped their devices a half dozen times and there are cracks and dings in the device. After two years most device’s batteries start to degrade. Some newer software isn’t compatible or won’t run on older devices. Whatever your reason is for getting a new smartphone, you should know that your old smartphone still has some value. For this week’s tip, we’ll outline some ways you can use your old mobile device:

Say you are looking to learn something about a concept that you don’t know much about, what do you do? You “Google” it right? So when you are using Google Docs you’d think that it would automatically know any word that you would type in. This isn’t the case. It knows a lot of words, but if it doesn’t recognize a word that you would normally use, you will need to add it to your dictionary. Today we will tell you how to do so.

There are a lot of security threats directed toward businesses today, with plenty of immoral opportunists seeking to profit at your expense. This makes it critical to secure your network and its data, which sounds like an expensive and time-consuming process. However, it doesn’t have to be, as we’ll show you by highlighting a few ways to protect your business and its assets.

It is an indisputable fact that the Google Play Store has a ridiculous number of applications for users to select from. It is also a fact that many of these applications should not be downloaded, and instead actively avoided. For this week’s tip, we’re giving a few examples of the kind of app you should steer clear of, and why.

A slow network can be an infuriating problem under any circumstances, but in the business setting, not understanding its cause can potentially be devastating to operations. For this week’s tip, we’ll examine a few of the most common causes of this slowness, and some of the best ways to resolve the issue at hand.

Efficient use of modern information technology should make business faster and more agile. No matter how you set your business up, however, a slow Internet connection can be a real drag on business. Today, we wanted to go over some scenarios you should know about when your Internet connection is holding your business back; and, solid practices that you can use to get the Internet speeds you need to move business along efficiently. 

While we don’t mean to gross you out, your computer can be a pretty dirty place - and considering that we have our hands all over it (and who knows what else) all day, it seems a little obvious. What is also obvious is the idea that perhaps it should be cleaned once in a while. Here, we’re giving you a few tips to help you to do so safely.

While Windows 10 is inarguably the better choice of OS over Windows 7 (especially now that the latter has officially gone the way of the dodo), the experience is made even better with the right customizations made to the settings. Let’s go through some changes you might want to make as you’re starting off (or even later on).

With data being such a valuable asset today (especially personally identifiable data), you can’t afford to let any of the information your company has access to fall into the wrong hands. The same goes for all of your data, especially that which concerns your employees or your clients. Let’s go over a few tips that should help you keep this data safe, step by step.

Windows 10 gives you interesting options to help you manage your computing experience. One of these options is the presence of the virtual desktop. On a Windows machine, look at your taskbar, near the Start button and the search function. The next little icon, the one that almost looks like a bit of film, is the Task View button, the button that will give users the ability to create and manage virtual desktops. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss how to use this feature.

At the time of this writing, Microsoft Word has a market share just shy of 37 percent, making it a pretty safe bet that you’ve used it at some point. As a result, you’re probably familiar with Word’s insistence of changing how certain things are formatted, which can become irritating - especially if you had it formatted how you wanted it the first time. This week, our tip will cover how you can stop Word from editorializing.

Happy New Year! As tradition dictates that we all select a resolution to improve ourselves for the coming year, why not do the same for your business and its operations? For our first tip of the year, we’re sharing how to come up with resolutions that could help you start off this year on the right footing.

You have goals for your business and most of them will require strategic investment to get off the ground. These projects can have a huge effect on your business. If they go right, your company stands to benefit, but if they go wrong, you are putting your business in jeopardy. It is important that you have a careful and capable project manager to help you implement your plans. Today, we’ll give you three variables that you have to look for when hiring a project manager.