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XFER Blog

XFER has been serving the Livonia area since 1994, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.
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Best Practices

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Mike

You Might Be Surprised At the Ways Your Employees Put Your Data At Risk

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October is Cyber Security Month and we want to use this time to bring awareness to the different aspects of cyber security. One often overlooked element of cyber security is employee risk management. What level of risk does your staff pose to your network’s security? You can easily find this out by taking an online test.

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Best Practices Risk Management Employer-Employee Relationship
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Mike

3 Ways To Buck the Trend of Unproductive Meetings

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Running a business means going to meetings. There’s really no way around it. And while you can’t run a business without meetings, you can run your meetings as efficiently as possible so that they’re not a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, according to a recent study by Blue Jeans Network, the worldwide trends for meetings show that they can hinder productivity more than help it.

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Best Practices Efficiency Meetings
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Mike

4 Ways You Can Protect Your Accounts from Hacking Attacks

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We don’t need to explain how dangerous the Internet is. Behind a veil of deception is a horde of malicious entities that are practically begging you to make a mistake and allow them access to your infrastructure. If there’s one thing you should be sure of, it’s that a single mistake is all it takes to allow dangerous entities into your organization, like ransomware, viruses, malware, or even spyware.

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Hacking Best Practices Security
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Mike

Your Inbox Needs a Sheriff with a Strike Plan

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Spam emails often contain viruses leading to any number of potentially threatening situations for your company’s network. Therefore, it’s essential that your network has a security solution in place that acts as a sort of virtual sheriff, blocking malicious messages from accessing your network, while granting passage to the good guys.

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Security Best Practices Email
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Mike

Overcome IT Performance Issues with These 4 Proven Practices

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Is your network running a little sluggish? Computing hardware isn’t perfect and requires a certain level of maintenance in order to keep everything running at capacity. Before you swap out your old server units for new ones, try these maintenance best practices.

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Best Practices Maintenance IT Services
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Mike

Tip of the Week: Taking a Screenshot is Ridiculously Easy

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Sometimes explaining issues with your technology to someone over the phone is difficult at best. To help your tech support better understand the issue you’re dealing with, provide screenshots to help with your explanations. All you have to do to take a screenshot is hit a few keys. Here’s how it’s done.

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Best Practices Software Application
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Mike

Tip of the Week: 3 Tricks to Get the Most Power Out of Your Android Device

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Smartphones are exceptionally useful tools capable of enhancing your productivity, even while out of the office, but this comes at a steep cost. If your phone’s battery isn’t optimized to handle the workload, the multitude of apps will quickly drain it and you’ll be left with a dead device.

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Best Practices Lithium-ion Battery Android
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Mike

Take a Fresh Look at Your IT Security Budget

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As technology grows ever more complex, the average garden-variety threats grow exponentially. As such, security measures grow more comprehensive to battle the myriad of new threats that appear every day. If you’re not protecting yourself by maximizing your network security, you could be weak and vulnerable.

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Security Best Practices Budget
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Mike

Why Coca-Cola’s #MakeItHappy Commercial Fails to Make IT Happy

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One of the most memorable Super Bowl XLIX commercials yet again came from Coca-Cola. In classic Coca-Cola fashion (pun intended), they premiered an inspirational video with the message, “Let’s all make the World Wide Web a better place, #MakeItHappy.” We can’t contest to Coke’s feel-good message, but as an IT Company, we must object to one horrifying aspect of this commercial.

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Marketing Best Practices Miscellaneous
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Mike

Tip of the Week: 5 Ways to Prevent Getting Burned By Your Job

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Occupational burnout is a real risk for the busy business owner. Wikipedia defines it as, “Characterized by short-term exhaustion, lack of enthusiasm and motivation, feeling drained, and also may have the dimension of frustration and/or negative emotion and cynical behavior, and as a result reduced professional efficacy.” Can you relate? How can you prevent occupational burnout?

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Best Practices Workplace Tips Tip of the Week
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Mike

Tip of the Week: How to Stay Productive, Even When You Feel Under the Weather

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Even if you’re a top-tier businessman, you’re still only human; and the human body can be defeated by something as insignificant as germs. Eventually, your body’s immune system can give in and let a biological virus or two into your system. When you’re feeling under the weather, it’s probably best to stay home, but you can still keep yourself preoccupied and productive if need be.

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Best Practices Productivity Tip of the Week
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Mike

Two-Factor Authentication: What Does the Future Hold?

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Passwords are slowly becoming obsolete in the face of more powerful security solutions. This is especially true considering how a hacker can input millions of characters every second in an attempt to break into your account and unleash who knows what into your business’s network. While using a password is still a good idea, professionals are working tirelessly to bring the new face of two-factor authentication to light.

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Privacy Best Practices Security
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Mike

Does Your Business’s Data Have a Self-Destruct Switch, Just in Case?

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It seems most logical to store every byte of your data, and with the advent of cloud computing, it's more affordable than ever. While most companies tend to store a huge amount of data, some forget that they should always be willing to delete old files if need be. This is especially true if you deal with sensitive data which can leave your business liable to a possible lawsuit.

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Data Security Best Practices
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Mike

Tip of the Week: How to Use Technology in a Sanitary Fashion

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These days, with the Ebola virus on everyone's mind, sanitation is a major issue. Enacting proper sanitation procedures is a must for any public place, especially in the office. Unbeknownst to most office workers, one of the biggest transmitters of germs is frequently-handled technology. Therefore, it's imperative that you properly use your technology in a sanitary fashion. Here's how.

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Tip of the Week Technology Best Practices
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Mike

Tip of the Week: How to Reorganize Your IT Infrastructure

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Everyone needs a tip occasionally. Therefore, we want to provide our followers with what we like to call, "Tips of the Week." These helpful tidbits are targeted toward helping you understand certain aspects of business technology. For our first tip, we will walk you through how to reorganize your IT infrastructure. For more tips, see our previous blog articles.

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Tip of the Week Best Practices Server
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Mike

Are You Sure Your Former Employees Won’t Stab You in the Back?

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As a business owner, you've probably had the misfortune of letting a valued (or not-so-valued) employee go. The reasons might vary, but one thing is consistent: they're gone, and could potentially use their newfound residual malice to strike your business right where it hurts. How can you prepare yourself against former employees you may have once called "family?"

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Hiring/Firing Best Practices Network
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Mike

3 Ways to Keep IT Simple Stupid (KISS)

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Keep It Simple Stupid, aka KISS, is a sure way to find success in business. By keeping operations simple, the cost of doing business is reduced, there's less room for error, and more people understand what's going on. Your IT infrastructure is at the heart of your organization, keeping IT simple will help your business kiss many of its problems goodbye!

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Best Practices Security IT Support
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Mike

Use a Firewall Before You Get Burned

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Too many people think that their systems are safe from the corruption of hackers and viruses. They're wrong. In order to keep your business safe from all of the common threats found on the Internet, you should think about installing some protective software.

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Security Firewall Best Practices
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Mike

Make Lasting Business Connections with LinkedIn

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It's no secret that social media has opened a lot of doors for businesses that may not have been there a short time ago. LinkedIn in particular has been an immensely useful tool for people looking for employment, and for employers to find prospective hires.

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Social Media LinkedIn Best Practices
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Mike

Prevent the Summer Heat from Roasting Your Servers with this Portable Solution

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Technically speaking, it needs to be 158°F for a raw egg to become firm. The summer heat doesn't get that hot, but outdoor objects like sidewalks and car hoods that come in contact with it can. Thus the phrase, "It's so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalk!" When it's hot outside, you need to keep your server units cool inside.

Tags:
Workplace Tips Server Best Practices
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