Macro Systems Blog

How many Vendors do you have to deal with? The answer to that is most likely, quite a few. Now consider how much time is spent managing each of them. Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was some way to limit this time to essentially nothing? 

In the ancient fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, the titular characters decided to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind them so they could find their way back home. While this strategy didn’t work out as planned for the siblings, the same concept is utilized in computing today. We even refer to it as breadcrumb navigation in honor of the German fairy tale.

It's fair to say that not everyone has an impeccable memory. The capability for multiple browsers to remember our passwords seem like a godsend. However, is this capability actually a good thing for your cybersecurity? 

Every business owner must contemplate how to approach network security. This is especially true with the continuously-growing list of threats that face their organization’s network from simply being connected to the Internet. It may sound like an overstatement, but when considering what some huge corporations have dealt with very recently, it becomes evident that figuring out how to approach cybersecurity is one of the most vital considerations any business owner has to make.

Organizations must protect themselves in our current climate littered with cyber threats. This fact can’t be negotiated, but many businesses have found themselves attempting to get by without protecting their assets or network infrastructure. Failing to implement security standards for your company could put its future on the line.

What would you do if you sat down at your desk one morning and found message on your computer claiming that Microsoft has detected a fatal issue with your workstation, and if they aren’t allowed to remote in and fix it, the entire network could be at risk? Would you be able to, in the heat of the moment, recognize it for the scam that it is and ignore it?

Like every other piece of equipment on your network, printers require careful configuration and regular maintenance to ensure that they aren’t placing your data and users at risk. Security researchers recently discovered two enormous vulnerabilities in HP Officejet All-in-One printers that make it very, very easy for hackers to spread malware and gain acquire to an organization’s network.

Your business operations are contingent on your budget; your business will rely on its budget to guide it fiscally through the next year of operation. Alas, IT resources, which can be unpredictable, care little about your budget. Let's examine some ways that you can keep your IT budget from breaking the bank, as well as how you can improve success over time via proper management of your IT assets.

In this era the smartphone camera has transformed into one of the biggest selling points when consumers want to buy a new phone. This is mostly because it is vital to the use of many of the applications that your average user utilizes the smartphone for. It just goes to show that, in less than two decades, how much more utility the phone has than it did when the Samsung SCH-V200 first provided users the option of taking pictures with their phone.

Email security has suffered recently because of the commoditization of basic email security services. If every spam solution is the same, then they can be changed out to just about any other solution out there, removing quality and replacing it with quantity. This trend has taken antivirus--the fact that free antivirus exists and many people prefer it over some paid solutions is a testament to this--but will spam protection move in the same direction?

The premier way to entice your audience is by understanding what they want from your company. Even something as simple as changing the color of your branding to be more enticing can be very helpful. This process is called A/B testing; it can help you make improvements to the way your organization operates.

The Internet of Things (IoT) can be described simply as 'devices that have connectivity to the Internet, and thus to a computing network'. Most of the time these connected devices aren’t produced with security solutions onboard, so they can be fickle instruments when trying to onerously secure a network that includes numerous IoT devices. Listed below are some of the threats IoT devices pose to your network, and how to reliably secure it from these threats.

With Hurricanes Florence, Helene and Isaac causing problems around the globe this month, it seems as good a time as any to discuss preparing your business for hurricane season Preparing your organization for events like these is vital to its survival, making it crucial that you know what your responsibilities are when awaiting a potentially devastating event such as a hurricane.

The computer is a viral tool In most businesses these days. Taking this into consideration, you need to make sure that your staff is equipped with the right tools for their given job; but which tool is the right tool? Below let's review the determinations that will help you make the best choice of workstation for your employees’ needs.

So far, the majority of our experience with the Internet of Things has been on a small scale: accessories and appliances that connect to the Internet to gain some additional functionality. This technology can also be applied to a larger, more civic purpose, including the development of a “smart city.” Sadly, this application could prove to be as troublesome as the IoT we are more used to.

Smartphones are convenient devices for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their availability when a note needs to be taken and the apps that are available for just that purpose. One of those apps is called Evernote and it stands a step above the rest, especially in a business setting. Let's review some of the features that Evernote offers that can help out your organization.

As the cloud is being used by more people and businesses to meet their computing requirements, more critical data is hosted outside of local computer networks. As a result, individuals use cloud storage for their backup and recovery strategies. In fact, it has become the primary use of cloud-hosted platforms, but just how does backup and recovery from these collaborative cloud-based platforms work?

Business owners: do you ever feel like you need to walk around on eggshells when it comes time to implement a new process or policy with your workers? Does it seem like your employees fight back tooth and nail when there is any technology alteration or IT restriction? You aren’t the only one who feels this way.

Chances are you've heard the term “hacker” before. A favorite character trope of Hollywood films and television dramas, these cybercriminals have appeared in movies like Die Hard and shows like Mr. Robot with varying degrees of accuracy. Let's examine what the term 'hacker' means and the different kinds of them that lurk in the real world. 

You serve as a vendor to your clients, supplying them with a required good or service. Similarly, you have vendors that supply you with the goods and services that enable you to do so. Yet, how well are your vendors managed?