MSPNetworks Blog

Workforces have been increasingly distributed and many businesses aim to continue that strategy for the foreseeable future. There are a fair share of challenges that distributed employees have themselves, but for the business, it can be tough getting them to do the things that need to be done to secure the business. Here are a few actions that need to be taken if you want to make that happen. 

What Changes When People Work Remotely?

One of the things that workers don’t understand is what exactly changes when they work from home is that it effectively distributes the operational network over a wide array of networks, making it difficult for security teams to provide the comprehensive services that they typically do. This requires the employee him/herself to do most of the diligent work to ensure that their endpoints don’t become problematic for their business. This gets more difficult as the number of new endpoints and those who are new to working remotely increase.

For many businesses, the procedures that dictate a work-from-home policy have been hashed out at some point over the past two years, but it is important to not be complacent when onboarding new workers or dealing with current staff that all have increasing numbers of endpoints in their home. Do you supply the devices that your employees are working on? Have you migrated your production to Software-as-a-Service applications?  Do you use any other cloud-hosted environments to make it easier for remote employees to access information? If not, do you have secure access for remote employees through a VPN or some other remote access service? 

Staying up to date and present on these issues will help you do more to protect your network and infrastructure from any threats that could be brought in by unwitting employees. 

The Threat of Personal Devices

For many organizations, the thought of purchasing endpoints for every employee now working from home is an impossible ask. Even if it is possible, is it a prudent way to spend capital? Some would argue yes since one of the biggest cybersecurity risks to your company is a personal device that isn’t secured against today’s various threats. This isn’t because your security platforms can’t secure your network, it is because the user may not have up-to-date antivirus software, or their applications aren’t updated properly, or they don’t use password practices that help ward against outside infiltration.

Since the threat of a data breach increases substantially when there are open vulnerabilities, it is prudent to expand your security protocols to ensure that all company-owned information is being saved to company-owned storage solutions; whether that be an onsite server or company-owned cloud platforms. The less company data is found on employees personal devices, the better the chances of protecting it. 

Collaboration Challenges

It was so when everyone was working side-by-side, but employees depend on collaboration apps even more today to get projects out the door and keep lines of communication open. Unfortunately, these tools were never designed with security in mind—they are designed with cooperative productivity in mind—so it opens up new problems for people working in these apps if their data isn’t secure in transit; and when it arrives on your employees’ computers. 

One solid tip is to ensure that the people that are collaborating on a project or service are the only ones inside a specific group. Since anyone can initiate conversations, it is important that only the people that need to be in on the conversation, data flow, and administration of any project be in the chat. Otherwise, exposing potentially sensitive information to insecure parties is possible. This happens more than you think, especially in enterprise and medium-sized business settings where people are added and removed to mailing lists and collaboration lists all the time. 

Finally, you will need to train your people. In the collaboration age, where doing more with less is a business model, you need to ensure that you invest resources in getting the people that work for you the information they need to keep your business’ IT and data secure. They don't necessarily need to be experts in computer maintenance to do this either. Just teach them the basics—how to spot phishing and other potentially harmful messages and report them to the IT administrator; how to put together a secure password; why your business has the password and security policies it does; what resources are managed by your IT team; and what they need to do to ensure that they aren’t a weak link in your business’ cybersecurity efforts. 

A lot of people like the experience of working from home, and for the business (with today’s technology) it can be of great benefit, but in order for it to be a good experience, strategies have to be altered to ensure that you aren’t constantly battling your team and scammers alike. If you would like some advice about how to navigate a remote team, the technology needed to ensure you’re ready and any other IT or workflow related questions, give MSPNetworks a call today at (516) 403-9001. 

If you’re trying to productively work from home, what you use and how you use it are equally important considerations. To assist you, we felt it would be helpful to share a few best practices for each variable, so that you might be able to boost your remote productivity.

Technology Tips

Make sure you have the technology you’ll need. To work from home as effectively as you could in the office, you’ll need to have the tools that allow you to do so—and the same goes for everyone on your team. While it may not be critical that everyone’s remote setup is identical to their in-office one, their capabilities should be somewhat consistent. Your team shouldn’t have to rely exclusively on a cell phone, for instance.

Provide software and data access with cloud solutions. Having the right tools is good, but it doesn’t help if your team doesn’t have access to the work they are supposed to be doing with these tools. Using the cloud to host data and solutions can make these resources accessible to your remote workforce.

Make sure your team uses a VPN. If your team needs to instead connect to your in-house infrastructure while working remotely, instruct them to always use a virtual private network. While it isn’t a solution for all your security needs, it will help sensitive data from being intercepted or compromised as it traverses the Internet between your office and your team members.

Productivity Tips

Stick to your typical work schedule. While working longer hours is much easier when working remotely, thanks to the 100 percent decrease in travel time, do your best to discourage your team from doing so. Otherwise, they could subject themselves to faster burnout, especially if it becomes a regular habit.

Designate “office” space. It should come as no surprise that the home has much more tempting distractions than the office would, with minimal supervision to ensure that the team is being diligent. Your team’s best bet is to minimize the distractions that are around them by establishing a set place to work while working remotely. This helps boost productivity and focus alike.

Keep in touch with your team. When working in the office, clearly communicating with those that work with you is a much simpler prospect than when working remotely. To compensate for this discrepancy, you should strongly encourage your team to overcommunicate with their coworkers. Make sure you lead by example as you do so as well, to make it clear what level of communication is expected.

What has your experience with remote work been like? Share your thoughts in the comments, as well as any tips we may have missed, and be sure to subscribe to our blog!

Getting tickets to see Hamilton was difficult before the global pandemic. The last time I had checked, ticket prices were over $600 on the low-end, and that was to reserve them 9 months early. With the pandemic, well, it’s just best to stay home.

Fortunately, on July 3rd, Disney released the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical on Disney+. You no longer have to Wait for It. What if you want to watch Hamilton with your friends while still practicing social distancing? We Know, and we’re about to show you. Best of all, your friends won’t need to be In the Room Where it Happens. We’re probably not going to stop with the Hamilton song title puns either.

What’s a Watch Party?

A Watch Party is where you gather some friends or family to stream a show or movie together, from different locations. Some services, like Amazon video, have adopted this to help us get through the global pandemic. 

Here’s What You Need to Host a Hamilton Watch Party

Everyone Needs Disney+
First of all, all parties involved will need their own Disney+ account. Unfortunately, Disney+ just stopped offering the free trial. I think they said “You’ll Be Back,” to everyone who let their subscription lapse after The Mandalorian was over.

Just log in to https://www.disneyplus.com/ and subscribe. Verizon has a promo right now, so if you recently bought a phone or signed up for Verizon Internet service, you might want to check to see if you are eligible.

Everyone Needs to Install a Browser Plugin
Next, all parties involved will need to install a Chrome browser plugin. If you only care about doing a watch party with Disney Plus, you can use the Disney Plus Party plugin. If you want to host watch parties with Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, and Hulu as well, you can check out Vemos.

Either way, as the host, you’ll want to pick one, install it, and ensure everyone else gets it before the show starts, to avoid technical issues. 

Both plugins allow you to sync up the video with your watch party and includes the ability to chat with each other during the movie. Once the Disney Plus Party plugin is installed, click the icon it adds to the top right of your Chrome browser and create an account.

Once you’ve followed the steps to create an account, start up Disney+ in Chrome and start a movie. Then click the Disney Plus Party button and Host a Movie. It will ask you to create a name for the room.

Your friends will need to install the plugin, create an account, and click Join a Movie and type in the name of your room.

From there, the host will be able to play the movie and it should sync across everyone else’s device. You can pause it (so nobody asks, “What’d I Miss?” if they Take a Break), or you can watch the whole movie Non-Stop. There is one caveat though… as of right now, Disney Plus Party is only free for the first four hours per week. Hamilton’s run time on Disney Plus is just under three hours, so it’s a good way to try out the plugin before committing to spending money on it.

We hope everyone in your watch party is Satisfied! 

Want more tips and tricks? Stay tuned to What Comes Next by subscribing to our blog. If you need a Right Hand Man for your IT, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

I think we did a pretty good job with the Hamilton song title puns, but feel free to take a shot in the comments!

Worldwide, we’re a good few months into dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, with many nonessential businesses shutting their doors for the time being. Even those industries that can’t just stop their operations are seeking alternatives, leading many to turn to implementing as much of a remote workforce as possible. Many still have questions about doing so, however, so we want to do our best to help answer some of the common questions these business people might ask about remote work.

So, this is really happening, isn’t it?

It sure is. When people are at least strongly encouraged to remain at home (with it becoming enforceable by law in some places if symptoms reveal themselves) and keep even their family members at a distance, you know we aren’t in a great situation.

It also doesn’t help that there are countless organizations and businesses of all shapes and sizes making the effort to implement remote working practices and strategies. It’s a bit of a mess, but it’ll help to “flatten the curve”--basically, help to make sure we don’t exceed the number of simultaneous, hospital-needed infections that our current systems can support. This will help keep the worst-case scenario more manageable to deal with.

Is remote work really worth all the effort?

Given the current situation, it is more or less the best way for essential businesses to do what they can to help minimize the spread of COVID-19 while still providing their necessary services. As states across the country have suspended on-site operations, businesses that can operate remotely can continue to do so, allowing their employees to continue supporting their families and making this shutdown much easier to sustain for a prolonged period of time.

Business recovery statistics being what they are, 40 percent of businesses that shut down in the face of any disaster never reopen, and of those that do, 25 percent of them fail within a year. Furthermore, overall trends show that 90 percent of businesses last less than two years after a disaster has struck. 

So if remaining open in some form helps you avoid becoming one of these data points, remote work is definitely worth it.

What are some of the biggest concerns and challenges?

Of course, there are plenty of obstacles that you will face, starting with your own hang-ups. We’ll get more into these shortly, but we may as well address some of the other, more external challenges now. 

You may be surprised to find out how many of your employees may initially resist the idea of adding remote work capabilities, as the structure of the workplace and the way they communicate will have to change. Anyone in a management position in your organization may be particularly resistant, as it may seem to them that you are removing the point of their title. 

Some employees may also not have the resources at home to effectively do their job, just in terms of equipment. Even if the willingness to work is there, it becomes exponentially more difficult to perform if lacking the technology to do so. 

Are my employees actually going to do their jobs from home?

More than likely, yes. We’ll get into this more below, but chances are a good employee will continue to take their work seriously. With so much of the workforce being unemployed right now, individuals are probably feeling the pressure. They don’t need that pressure from their employers or managers. If you feel like you have certain individuals that aren’t pulling their weight, it’s probably likely that they weren’t pulling their weight under less trying times.

As a manager or small business owner, it is your responsibility to check in and tackle the challenges of remote work with your staff.

Okay, so what do I need to do to avoid these challenges?

As an employer, there are a few steps you can take.

Provide the Equipment and Infrastructure

In order to permit remote capabilities and other collaborative necessities, your employees will need a reliable means to perform their work-related duties, while at the same time maintaining the security of your infrastructure and its data.

There are a few different ways that this can be accomplished. If they use a laptop in the office, rather than a desktop, their laptop can simply be brought home (assuming it has been equipped with the necessary security features and identify verification requirements) for work to be done on it. Otherwise, secure remote access tools can be used from their approved personal workstations in order to effectively complete their tasks.

The cloud also enables many of these capabilities, as an employee could use their credentials to access data from a cloud storage solution, and use a cloud-based application to complete their tasks from their approved personal device.

Maintain and Update Processes

If you have processes that exist within the office, these processes (or some adaptation of them) should be in place as your employees are working remotely. Don’t cancel meetings because a remote worker is involved--figure out a way to tie them in and incorporate them into your proceedings as usual. If your current processes aren’t a good fit, see what needs to be done to tailor them to be.

It may also help your out-of-office employees stay engaged if you start a new process of reaching out to them directly to check in with them, whether it happens individually, as a group, or some combination of the two. This leads us to our next recommended step...

Insist on Inclusive Communication

As we have established, it is fairly common for remote workers to start to feel isolated and dissociated from their coworkers without sufficient involvement with their activities. Make sure all of your employees know about (and are using) the communication tools available to them during this time. If you have generally strict guidelines for their use, you may even consider temporarily lifting these restrictions and allowing your employees to use them for an increased amount of non-work-related communication with their cohorts. This will help to keep your team working cohesively, despite the distance.

Trust Your Employees

On the topic, don’t assume that your employees need to be babysat in order to effectively work from home. While many employers and managers may assume the opposite, most workers can perform just as well in their home as they could coming into the office itself… if not overwork to accomplish just that much more at home. Unless you have a reason to distrust a member of your staff and are working to address that, make sure that your team doesn’t have to jump through any more extra hoops than are necessary to complete their responsibilities from home. Work with them to make it happen.

What should I tell my employees to do?

When discussing all of this with your team, we recommend that you do the following:

Encourage They Form Habits

Schedules, rituals, whatever they want to call them, set patterns of behavior can help make their transition to remote work easier on them while improving their productivity as they do so. Encouraging a “new normal” for them will be best for the time being, and in trying times, some level of predictability is a welcome thing.

Socialize and Collaborate with Coworkers

As we discussed before, one of the biggest threats that remote workers face is a feeling of isolation, which can have significant influence on their personal lives and professional performance. Keeping your coworkers involved with one another’s work and digitally connected can help counter these feelings.

Insist on Being Involved

Remind your employees that, even as the boss, you are part of the team as well. Reach out to your team members on an individual basis and check in personally if that’s an option for you. Showing that you care may not help the situation much, but it is so much better than doing nothing. A little support can go a surprisingly long way.

In the meantime, MSPNetworks is always here to help support you as your remote team works to keep your business operational. For any IT assistance or collaboration recommendations, don’t hesitate to give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused many businesses to enact a work-from-home policy. With so many people working from home, we thought it would be a good idea to write up some simple tips to follow to give yourself the best chance of being productive. 

Establish Your Workspace

The very first thing you need to do is set aside a workspace. It's hard to focus on your job if you are on a laptop in the living room in front of your entertainment center, or if the only place you have is your bedroom. One of the most distracting elements of being home are the modern comforts you’ve outfitted the place with. Find a place where you can be productive and use it.

Don’t Burnout

There is the tendency for workers that normally work in an office, but are forced to work from home, to overdo it. The theory is that most people would love the flexibility to work from home on occasion and when they get the opportunity, they spend more time than they should working. This can have negative effects on both their ability to focus and on the business’ payroll. If you are home working, work as you would at the office and walk away when it’s time.

If You Are Going Casual, Don’t Go TOO Casual

As a part of your normal work routine, you probably need to wash yourself and get dressed. At the very least you need to put on pants. When working from home, many people neglect to do that and it actually has an effect on their work. As a part of your pre-work routine you should wash up and dress yourself as if you were going to the office. You’ll feel, and likely perform better.

2. Encourage Co-working

Make Collaboration the Standard

With collaboration fueling a lot of businesses, when people work from home it is essential that there is solid communication going on. This will ensure that people are working on the things they need to, they are on the same page, and that they have an outlet from being stuck inside their house for days (or weeks) on end.

Stay Connected and Communicate Constantly

Following the same line of thought, to avoid falling into a non-productive routine, you should reach out to people in your company to gain some perspective on what they are working on. The more knowledge you can gain about your contemporaries’ priorities, the better you can be at filling in the gaps.

3. Commit to Working Productively

Schedule to Your Advantage

Working from home brings some additional flexibility. You may be expected to work your normal business hours, but if you find yourself falling into some bad habits or being complacent in the middle of the work day, figure out the times that you work most effectively. If you aren’t on the same schedule, you’ll likely get more done when you feel like working than working when you are distracted.

Don’t Get Distracted

Speaking of distractions, your home is filled with them. Sometimes it’s hard to make the transition to working in the main place you go to relax. There are all types of distractions from family to media to simple household chores. Commit to work when you work and you will find that you will likely get more done in that time than any time you spend at your office. 

For more great tips and tricks, return to our blog each week.

Collaboration is crucial in today’s work environment, which is one reason that solutions like Slack are so popular among businesses. Another reason that Slack is a popular option is how user-friendly it is - especially with the many shortcuts that are built in. We’ll go over a few of these shortcuts.

Navigating Slack

Open direct messages menu - Ctrl +Shift + K
Browse all channels - Ctrl + Shift + L
Previous (unread) channel or direct message - Alt (+ Shift) + Up Arrow
Next (unread) channel or direct message - Alt (+ Shift) + Down Arrow
Access the Quick Switcher - Ctrl + K
Switch to previous workspace -  Ctrl + Shift + Tab
Switch to the next workspace - Ctrl + Tab
Return to the previous channel - Alt + Left Arrow

Marking Up Your Messages

Mark all messages in current channel or direct message as read - Esc
Mark all messages as read - Shift + Esc
Mark a message as unread - Alt + Click

Creating Messages

Edit your last message - Up Arrow in empty message field (this shortcut changes to Ctrl + Up Arrow if Use up and down arrows to cycle through your typed history is enabled)
Bold selected text - Ctrl + B
Italicize selected text - Ctrl + I
Strikethrough selected text - Ctrl + Shift + X
Quote selected text - Ctrl + Shift + >
Convert selected text into a numbered list - Ctrl + Shift + 7
Convert selected text into a bulleted list - Ctrl + Shift + 8

Viewing All Keyboard Shortcuts in Slack

For a complete list of shortcuts in Slack, press Ctrl + /.

What other programs would you like to see shortcuts for? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss them!

How well do your employees collaborate with one another? Teamwork is essential to the success of any business, but it’s often something that doesn’t come naturally to some users. These days, there are ways you can make communication and teamwork more effective and efficient for your workforce. This week’s tip is dedicated to making this work.

Clarify Your Roles
The first thing you need to realize is that everyone should know what their role is with no misunderstandings. This helps you put processes in place that can help your employees know what they are responsible for and work toward a goal.

Ensuring this level of transparency can help foster appropriate teamwork. Feedback can be provided based on the role a user plays in a project, and you can use that feedback to assign them new challenges and objectives. You can also give team members a better way to approach their objectives by providing a singular end goal to work toward, at their discretion. If you give them power over their own processes, they will begin to take ownership of them and try to work in the most effective way possible.

Praise the Team’s Efforts
Sometimes interpersonal tensions can get in the way of a team performing as it’s supposed to. In cases like this, providing the team with praise can give them the incentive needed to set aside their differences and focus on the collaborative efforts. If this is the method chosen for encouraging teamwork, it’s important that you focus the praise on the team’s overall performance rather than individual performance, as this can breed jealousy in an already volatile environment. That being said, transparency is still important, as you don’t want employees to piggyback off of others’ success when in reality they don’t accomplish anything.

Encourage Socialization of Staff
For a group of people to work as a team, they need to visualize themselves as a team. One way to expedite this process is to make sure they are spending time together as a group. Team meetings might be helpful for discussing certain tasks, but they also give your employees opportunities to interact with each other in person. Activities and other social gatherings more in the casual vein can also help build camaraderie and friendly relationships between your employees. Encourage them to take team lunches or hit a local happy hour after the daily grind. When people like their coworkers, they tend to work better, so you might be surprised by the results.

Use Technology Solutions
In order for a team to work as a team, you’ll need to provide the tools to help them be as productive as possible. With the right solutions available, your team can work together on projects whether they are in the same room or across the country. Access permissions, file sharing, and virtual private networks will all be critical to the success of these solutions.

MSPNetworks can help your organization implement the best collaboration solutions on the market. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Once thought to just be a cool feature of the Internet--or the entirety of the Internet to your Great Aunt Maddie--instant messaging has a long history on the web. In fact, one could argue that it was the first great Internet-based application. Today, we take a look back at the history of Instant Messaging and how your organization can use it to create a better business.

History of Instant Messaging
In 1988, the development of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) allowed users to connect to networks with third-party software to chat in real-time. This was effectively the first chat program, and is still used today. As the Internet started to get more prevalent, chat rooms were one of the first novelty applications available to users. Being able to communicate with other people on your computer was a complete revelation for users, and it didn’t take long for innovations to make their mark.

In 1996, an Israeli company called Mirabilis launched ICQ. ICQ allowed users to have one-on-one chats, send files, and search for other users online. It quickly became successful and the following year, probably the most successful chat program of the early Internet was developed, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). AIM added the “buddy list” feature, which was a shortcut to open a chat with other users and a way to see if a person was online or not.

AIM was followed by Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger and for the first part of the 2000s the four competed for the IM market share. As social networks began to innovate and provide their users the ability to interact in real-time, the value of the chat program for personal use was left wanting. While there are still many chat programs, most of them allow users to send SMS messages (text messages) and other files. As of this writing, ICQ is the only one of the first four that still continues to function.

Messaging for Business
As the 2010s began, and mobility was growing very rapidly, mobile-based messaging applications began to completely replace the old IM services. Not only did the new chat services provide more options, but they were attached to popular web-based software. Business use of IM was more of a reaction than a planned implementation. People message other people constantly. For a while, business owners tried to limit this behavior at work, but with the workforce getting younger, it became evident that instant messaging was here to stay.

Today, the instant messaging application is a major part of most business’ communications strategies. This is because it is cost-effective, convenient, and scalable for almost any device. In some cases it has completely replaced email as the most important communications tool a company has. In other cases it is a nice supplementary collaboratory application that can move projects and tasks along faster. In fact, there have been some innovations in instant messaging technology that are designed for project management.

Collaboration apps, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams are taking instant messaging and adding powerful business-line integrations to help users collaborate more effectively. In each chat, users have the ability to bring in information from outside applications, including project management, customer relationship management, and productivity features that help them build more lucrative conversations. In doing so, these applications are being used by many organizations that have workers that work in different places. Since they are cloud-hosted, team members can access the chat, and the integrated information from more places, improving the speed and effectiveness of the project or task in progress.

For all of the benefits new instant messaging can bring to a business, there are some pretty important detriments to note. One is that it is easy to interrupt people with information that isn’t crucial to the workers’ tasks that can be distracting. This constant distraction, once a major consideration for keeping instant messaging tools out of a business’ cache of applications, is often looked upon as a part of the cost of doing business, with ROI figures providing impetus for continued use of these applications.

Further detriments come in industries that have to meet regulatory compliance. For example, businesses that need to meet the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have to have a solution in place to properly log and archive instant messages in order for them to be put in reports as needed. This presents complications and additional expense for a business.

Instant messaging can be a great addition to any business’ communications strategy. For more information about instant messaging and the role it can take in your business, call MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 today.