Recent Blog Posts

Microsoft?s Certification Options Microsoft offers an assortment of IT certifications, differentiated by the aspect of information technology that an IT professional may focus on?all of which, of course, are framed around the tools that Microsoft offers to businesses. These options replace the relatively more fragmented and outdated Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Program, including options like: Azure Administrator Associate – This certification serves as evidence that someone is proficient with Microsoft Azure and managing the resources that the platform makes available. Azure Solutions Architect Expert – Likewise, this certification signifies that someone is able to create Azure tools, as well as setting up an Azure environment and implementing the tools to secure and manage it appropriately. Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals – This certification shows that someone is familiar with how Microsoft technologies operate in terms of protecting your business? data. Modern Desktop Administrator Associate –  With this certification, one has demonstrated their proficiency in managing devices and applications in an enterprise environment, from deployment to ongoing security and everything in between. Certified Information System Security Professional The International Information System Security Certification Consortium created this prized certification to establish one?s expertise in planning and managing a security program for a business. This certification has some pretty stringent requirements, including an extensive certification pathway that involves training and evaluation. However, obtaining a certified membership to (ISC)? gives you access to a network of your fellow IT professionals and a library of continued educational opportunities. CompTIA A+ Technician As an entry-level certification, CompTIA A+ is a good certification for someone who is just starting off in their IT career as a help desk or support technician to secure, and can largely be seen as a good starting point for someone considering a career in IT. Covering the maintenance needs of various aspects of business computing, this certification requires a technician to pass two tests. Cisco Certified Network Associate As another entry-level certification, the CCNA certification covers how to manage enterprise-level networking equipment, like routers and switches, with specializations available in security, wireless, and voice networking. Obtaining this certification involves a written exam, and works well for a system or network administrator or a network engineer. Network+ This certification signifies a person?s familiarity with wireless and wired networks and their capability to manage them effectively. Requiring a passed exam evaluating how well a candidate can configure these networks and the devices that connect to them, this certification is another one that IT and help desk technicians should strongly consider obtaining. Turn to Us for Assistance from Fully Credentialed IT Professionals While we recommend that your in-house IT team members actively work to remain as credentialed as possible, you can always lean on the assistance of our team of IT professionals and resources. Find out more about our managed services and how they could benefit your business? operations by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Let?s go through a few of these mistakes so that you?re in a better position to avoid them in your business? cybersecurity. Assuming You Are Secure Consider for a moment how confident you are that, if your business was to be targeted by a cyberattack, you could weather the storm unscathed. It is important that you don?t overestimate how secure you are. Never assume that you have done everything you can to protect your business from threats. There is always the risk that something crucial malfunctions or one of your team members makes a mistake. There are countless ways that your data can be stolen, undermined, damaged, or otherwise lost, so making the assumption that your business is inherently secure is a serious error in judgment. Overlooking Security Issues On a related note, it can be too simple to also assume that you don?t have to worry about being targeted, on account of your size as a small or medium-sized organization. This assumption leads to an increased likelihood of successful attacks due to lax precautions and lacking training, as well as no real security strategy in place to help protect your business? data. This is a systemic issue for many businesses, putting them in a seriously precarious position. Missing or Neglected Best Practices There are dozens of ways that you and your team can either help or hurt your organizational security preparedness. Failing to keep your software promptly updated, utilizing insecure passwords, and connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi networks are all bad habits you?ll want to avoid. Educating your team members (and yourself) about the importance of adhering to the standards that your best practices establish is a critical step to avoid a lot of avoidable issues. White Mountain IT Services is here to help. We offer a variety of helpful security precautions as a part of our comprehensive managed services, allowing us to not only assist your business in recovering from a security breach but avoid them altogether. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to learn more.

This leaves a very small number of manufacturers holding down a large chunk of the smartphone market so they don?t have the overwhelming pressure to push the needle as much as they once did. In fact, many of the top manufacturers have actually invested in developing more in-house processes for the manufacturing of components that are actually spending on innovation. That?s not to say that there isn?t any innovation going on, but all in all, the things that manufacturers are doing with their smartphones aren?t much different than they were five years ago. Let?s take a look at one specific element of smartphones that is starting to get some new perspectives: the form factor. Changing the Form Factor Only over the past few years have smartphone manufacturers considered changing the form factor of the phones that they produce; and only then, it?s just a couple of manufacturers doing it. This is because a lot of companies don?t have the market share to do interesting new things with their devices and rely on standard products to be able to turn a profit.  For example, just before they ceased their smartphone division, the South Korean company LG released a phone called the LG Wing, which had two displays, but one was opened horizontally to create an interesting form factor that was like nothing that anyone had seen before. Then, as mentioned, it didn?t sell well enough to keep LG from shuttering their smartphone division permanently. Larger manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei have been first to market on smartphones with foldable screens. The foldable phones use a flexible OLED display to allow the devices to fold up. This tech seemed pretty improbable to catch on until Samsung released the Galaxy zFold in 2019. Around the same time Huawei Mate X launched. Each had a high-quality OLED foldable screen, but featured different mechanisms to make these bigger screens compact enough to be considered a smartphone. A year later Samsung doubled down with the Z Flip, which was effectively a flip phone from the early 2000s, but when you opened it up it was a flagship smartphone.  The next innovation is the ?rollable” phone. Using these pliable OLED displays, some manufacturers have played with the notion that the best way forward would be to keep the traditional form factor of a smartphone, but hide an expanded display inside the chassis of the phone. If a user wants to use a larger screen, they would toggle the screen to unroll and, voila, it will unroll to unveil a much larger screen. It remains to be seen when (or if) these expandable screens will get to market (or be a worthwhile innovation). One thing is for certain: smartphone manufacturers will continue to rely on the trusty form factor that has worked for them for over a decade.  If technology interests you, be sure to visit our blog weekly for articles aimed at expanding your business technology acumen. 

Let?s break down three examples of how engaging with a managed service provider, or MSP, allows you to accomplish this. An MSP Ensures Your Employees Have the Tools They Need Let?s say you were trying to chop down a tree. Do you think it would be faster to use a rusty, dulled hatchet, or a well-maintained chainsaw? This is the difference that a managed service provider can make for your business by equipping your team with the proper software and equipment and ensuring it is kept in top working condition. With this support at their backs, you can be confident that your team will not be held back by their tools, allowing them to accomplish more in their day and ultimately bring in more revenue as a result. An MSP Can Supplement Your Existing IT Team and Reduce Downtime Considering how closely profitability is tied to productivity, it should come as no surprise that downtime is a direct threat to your business? ability to make money. This is precisely why it is so important for every business to have access to information technology services and expertise. However, not every business is in the position to have a dedicated in-house team, and even if they can, it may not be large enough to sufficiently provide the benefits that any IT resource should. An MSP can help solve that problem by acting as either a supplement to your IT team or an entirely outsourced IT department, depending on your needs. In doing so, an MSP like White Mountain IT Services can help ensure that work is consistently being done, helping to ensure your profitability. An MSP Can Identify and Streamline Expensive Redundancies Let?s return to our tree-chopping example for a moment. Let?s say that your well-maintained chainsaw served you well enough that you were able to hire and equip employees to chop these trees for you, so you hired a small team of five. Meanwhile, you?ve also invested in 30 more chainsaws and are paying to have all of them regularly maintained. While a little bit of strategic redundancy is a good way to ensure business continuity, there is a line between ?pragmatic? and ?wasteful.? An MSP can use their insight into your business and its IT resources to catch if any of your business? IT is showing a similar pattern. Are you paying subscription costs for unused software? Are you relying on multiple services when a single one exists that provides everything you need? With an MSP like White Mountain IT Services in your corner, these opportunities to streamline your business can be embraced. Reach Out to Find Out How We Can Help You! White Mountain IT Services provides a wide range of managed IT services that businesses around New Hampshire can directly benefit from. Learn more about what we can do for you by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Let?s talk about how AI is now being trained as a means of stopping more phishing attacks from darkening the doors of your email inboxes. What is AI, and How Can It Help Stop Phishing? AI is just a very, very complicated computer program that collects data and parses it to make predictions, improving its predictions over time based on previous errors. Not only can it go through this process much faster than a human being, it can also do so more objectively and without the human error that a user is inherently prone to. This makes AI an excellent candidate for identifying and mitigating attacks like phishing. Let?s go over the four ways that it does so. AI can dig deeper into an email to spot signs of phishing. While it is still critical that you and your team are able to catch the surface-level signs of phishing, a system that puts AI to work can take a much deeper look at an email to identify attacks that are more effectively hidden?like if a message has needed to jump between too many IP address before arriving to the inbox, for instance. AI can detect atypical behavior based on a message?s contents. As time passes, you?ll receive more and more messages. An AI-powered security system can analyze your existing messages to identify patterns in how different contacts tend to communicate, helping spot behavior that is out of the norm. AI can also detect atypical behaviors based on a message?s context. Similarly, an AI-powered system can pull from past messages to spot other areas of concern in those that are incoming. These are largely the same ones that you and your team will be spotting, AI can just spot it before you ever receive the message. AI can take organizational patterns into account. By augmenting your email with AI-based protections, the system can actually spot any incongruous or otherwise suspicious interactions between users, acknowledging if an intern or entry-level employee is speaking oddly to a C-level business leader. Does This Mean Your Team Can Relax About Their Phishing Awareness? Absolutely not.  Not only does phishing spread through more means than just email, presenting itself in effectively every form of communication, these AI platforms are not perfect at spotting such attempts. Your team needs to be able to spot it regardless, if only as a final stopgap between a threat and your business? assets. White Mountain IT Services is here to help you secure your business as well. Learn more about our assortment of cybersecurity services and solutions by calling (603) 889-0800.