Blue Ridge Technology

Ever wondered if your apps are spying on you? Now you can find out The last few years have been more than a little complicated for your business (and your employees). If you’re like most businesses in the Hendersonville and Asheville area, you have more people working remotely than you did in 2019, whether that means full-time remote, local but at-home, or a hybrid schedule with some days in the office and some days at home. Another element that’s changed is how your employees expect to access your company’s resources. They want to use whatever device is most convenient — and that isn’t always the laptop you issued them. Even on that company laptop, you have employees that want to use apps that aren’t an official part of your IT plan. And some of the apps they want to use could be creating security risks for your business. Employees Want More Control; Many Don’t Follow Guidelines Here’s a general life principle that shows up in your business: people don’t like being controlled or told ...

Microsoft’s taking a responsible leadership position on AI AI has been all over the news lately, with questions about whether some of the most advanced AIs are approaching sentience. ( They aren’t , according to most experts in the space, contrary to the alarmist view of one ex-Google AI expert. No Skynet anytime soon, phew!) AI is popping up in all sorts of useful ways throughout the business world. The everyday examples are quality-of-life improvements like AI-powered design recommendations in Microsoft PowerPoint and the machine learning-powered text to speech and voice assistants on our smartphones. On the more advanced end, machine learning and AI are solving complex business intelligence and data analytics problems and even assisting human agents in determining eligibility for loans or picking the best candidates for a job. Here’s the thing, though: on all fronts, there are all kinds of ethical issues to worry about, including AIs that end up adopting racist or sexist biases. Th...

How to stop Teams opening when you startup Windows 11 Your work PC is a pretty impressive piece of technology if you think about it. Your PC is the nerve center of your workday, empowering you to accomplish more in an hour than your parents or grandparents could’ve done in an entire workweek— not to mention tasks that are commonplace today that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago. (At least, all that’s true assuming you’ve updated your hardware recently enough — so if you’re tempted to disagree with that first sentence, maybe it’s time to talk about a hardware refresh!) But as powerful as your computer is, it can create frustrating distractions if you aren’t strategic in how you use it. And that strategy starts with a process called Startup — what happens when you first power up your machine. Today’s post will cover how to gain control of your Windows Startup — along with reasons why you might want to do so. Why Take Control of Windows Startup? In a nutshell, your startup pr...

Your business is losing hundreds of hours to spam every year Email spam in business contexts is still alive and well. It may not be as visible of a problem as it was a decade or 15 years ago, but spam email is still alive and well. Your business is dealing with costs associated with email spam. Some of these costs may already be on yoru radar, but others could be hiding out of sight. So what are the hidden (and not so hidden) costs of spam email, and what can you do about it beyond what you’ve already done? We’re glad you asked! Here are some threats you might not know about — and mitigation strategies that can help you shore up your spam defenses. Cost #1: Wasted Time and Lost Productivity The first cost to consider is just how much time your team is wasting working through pointless email. Yes, your spam filter is catching quite a bit of the spam heading to inboxes, but it doesn’t catch everything. And, depending on your settings and how well your team trusts the filter, people may s...

Rein In Notifications from Chrome and Windows to Regain Your Sanity If you’ve been using tech for a few years, you can probably appreciate just how powerful, efficient, and even intuitive today’s computers are compared to what you used 10 years ago or longer. Processor speeds have increased exponentially, and other under-the-hood tech improvements have helped, too. But where we’ve really seen improvements in usability and intuitiveness is in the software and operating systems running on our computers. Now that they have more power available to them, software and OS makers have been able to do some pretty awesome things. Like the humble notification. Notifications: A Powerful Tool, But Easy to Abuse Take notifications, for one. Best case, notifications are intuitive and immensely helpful, letting you know about a crucial email, a new Slack message, or even something like a severe weather alert or a missing child. But like absolutely everything new, notifications have a dark side. Even t...

Most ransomware victims would pay up if attacked again If you read much in the news — or in tech news specifically — it’s easy to grow a little numb to the constant reporting of digital threats and attacks on businesses. This is especially true if your business has yet to face a cyberattack: your policies and practices have gotten you by so far, so they must be good enough … right? The truth is, ransomware attacks are a threat, one that businesses like yours must take seriously now, not once you’ve already been attacked. How Ransomware Attacks Work Ransomware attacks can start like any other digital threat. Bad actors could go on a phishing expedition and steal the credentials of an unwitting employee. (We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: two-factor or multifactor authentication eliminates the vast majority of phishing threats.) Or threat actors could identify a vulnerability in your system through more sophisticated computer wizardry. Whatever way the bad guys find a way i...

Is this the end of passwords… forever? The move to simultaneously simplify and enhance security has been a long time coming. We’ve said it before: passwords are a terrible way to protect your business accounts. Microsoft, Apple, and Google all agree— and they’re finally going to work together to do something about it . This is going to be a pretty big shift once it arrives, and with the Big 3 involved, there’s every reason to believe this new system could become the new standard across most of your accounts and business services. And that’s very good news! Here’s what you need to know about this coming change: what it is, when it will roll out, and how to prepare. The Problem with Passwords We won’t go too deep here because we’ve talked about it so often already, but the short version is this: passwords are awful. They’re hard to remember and easy to steal or crack. They lead to all sorts of security breaches, data theft, and more: as many as 81 percent of data breaches are due to weak...