Blue Ridge Technology

Back in August of 2021, Microsoft quietly announced a few changes coming to the Microsoft 365 program. They gave businesses a healthy six months of notice, and that time has almost expired. Starting in March of 2022, businesses need to be prepared for their Microsoft 365 subscriptions to change in some small ways — and to cost more. Here’s what you need to know about this upcoming change. The Big Change: Higher Prices The big piece of news is that Microsoft is raising prices across its various business plans. While no one likes to pay more, the move makes sense: since launching Office 365 back in 2011, Microsoft hasn’t raised pricing even once, despite adding 24 new apps, including Publisher, Stream, Bookings, Power Automate, SharePoint, and its stellar collaboration app, Microsoft Teams. If you think back to how you interacted with Office back in 2011 and compare it to how you use Microsoft 365 today, you’ll likely see the difference. Microsoft has continued to add features, function...

Phishing Emails: How Well Do You Trust Your Team? And Is Trust Enough? As we enter a new year, many of the digital threats targeting small businesses aren’t changing drastically. They’re just getting more sophisticated. Phishing was a top threat to your business’s cybersecurity last year, and it’s going to be this year, too. With attacks getting more and more believable and harder to detect, just how much should you trust your team to get this right? We believe business leaders should leave their digital security up to chance. Now is the time to go on the offensive. Phishing: a Refresher In case the term phishing isn’t quite ringing a bell, here’s a quick refresher. Phishing describes email-based attacks where people or groups send an email that looks like it’s coming from somewhere official (like Microsoft, a big bank, or a prominent supplier in your industry). They send you an urgent message and ask you to click a link (and usually log in). The link is malicious, though: clicking co...

You’ve probably seen the stats by now: data breaches can be massively expensive. The average cost of a breach in 2021 was $4.24 million globally, and for US companies that figure shoots up to $8.64 million (in 2020). No matter the size of your business, the financial costs of a data breach are concerning enough to get serious on your digital security. But the financial costs aren’t the sum total of what you’ll deal with in a breach. In fact, they’re only a small piece of the puzzle. Data breaches cause far more damage than just the monetary sort. Consider these hidden (and not so hidden) costs that you’ll face if your company goes through a data breach this year. 1. You Will Lose Clients First, if you encounter a data breach, you will with near certainty lose some of your clients. Your clients are expecting you to keep their information secure, and some of them will take a breach as serious enough to move on to a competitor. As a result, you’ll have to deal with the monetary costs of...