Blue Ridge Technology

You’ve heard of Copilot… but what is it? Microsoft Copilot is here now, and it’s worth checking out. You might have heard of Microsoft Copilot by now, but we can't blame you if the details are a little fuzzy. New tech developments are coming fast and furious these days, and it's easy to miss some as they come along or to not see how a particular tool will impact your business. So here’s what you need to know about Microsoft’s newest assistant — what it is, why it’s better than previous options, and the limitations you should know about before diving deep. What Is Microsoft Copilot? Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s latest AI-driven virtual assistant. It’s built into Microsoft Edge (the company’s newish web browser), and businesses with a Microsoft 365 subscription will eventually see it show up across Microsoft’s office suite — in Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. Getting Déjà vu? Take a Closer Look If you’re reading this and thinking “I’ve seen this movie before,” yo...

SHOCK STAT: A third of business owners don’t trust their staff Business success thrives on trust: to some degree, you trust that your customers and suppliers and vendors will all pay what they’ve promised, deliver goods on time, and keep the services running that you rely on to power your business. But trust is a tricky thing. And we’re often unsure exactly how much we can (or should) trust people. It’s one of the reasons some business owners struggled with the idea of remote or hybrid work. Too much trust is also a significant driver in cyberattacks, data theft, and any other sort of digital threat your business faces. One recent survey revealed something shocking: around a third of business owners don’t trust their own staff. Let’s take a look at why this is — both the good and the not-so-good reasons business leaders struggle to trust employees — along with what you can do to improve this crucial area. Why Leaders Struggle to Trust Many leaders struggle to trust because of past expe...

It’s time to say goodbye to traditional passwords We talk a lot about account security and passwords: how to avoid getting caught in a phishing scheme, what good password hygiene looks like, why you should use a password manager, and so on. But this week we’re dropping some new password advice that might surprise you: maybe it’s time to stop using passwords at all! Or at least, maybe that time will be here sooner than later. Here’s what you need to know about big changes coming in the cybersecurity space. Down with the Password? Google, Microsoft, Apple, and several other tech behemoths have joined forces to kill the password, essentially. And that’s a good thing. Passwords are notoriously, well, bad. They’re hard to remember, which leads to lots of password reuse and people using the simplest possible passwords…which makes those passwords really easy to steal, crack, or hack. Phishing schemes and other credential compromise attacks cost businesses trillions each year. And while those ...

That long password isn’t keeping you better protected Conventional password wisdom says the longer the password, the better. But that’s only partly true. An unusual new finding from Specops Software is that even 15-character passwords are cracked fairly often: it’s the eighth-most common length of password to be compromised. Here’s what this new research shows, what it means for you, and the steps you can take to keep your business safe. The Findings The company evaluated over 4 billion unique compromised passwords for the study, so it’s pretty safe to trust their findings. Of those 4 billion cracked passwords, 67.7 million were 15 characters or longer. Eight-character passwords are still the most commonly compromised (the company thinks that’s because Active Directory, an older but still active Microsoft product, defaults to eight-character passwords). The Limits of the Findings Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, it’s worth noting that these findings do have some significant l...

Are you ready for Windows 11 to get even better? Have you ever felt like being a PC user meant certain…compromises? You see ads for seemingly magical features from the likes of Apple or Google — things like pulling text straight out of images, or searching for objects in pictures — and feel left out in the cold? We’ve got good news: Microsoft keeps improving Windows 11, and the company’s latest updates to the operating system are worth catching up on. Admittedly, most of these new features are already available on flagship smartphones. But gaining access to them on work PCs and personal laptops is a pretty big deal. Snipping Tool Gets a Whole Lot Smarter First up is the Snipping Tool. With this tool, which has been a part of the last few generations of Windows, you can easily take a screenshot of your entire screen, or just select a smaller portion of the screen and “snip” it into a static image. Microsoft has implemented some AI-powered and machine learning tech to make those static i...

And breathe… the “file too large to send” problem is over It’s 2023. And yet many of us are still running into 1990s-era email problems. And there’s one incredibly frustrating issue that Microsoft hasn’t helped us all that much across Outlook or Microsoft 365 — yet. We’re talking about that obnoxious error you run into some of the time when you try to send an email with an attachment. It’s the dreaded “file too large to send” message. A Problem That’s Been Around a While It’s a little hard to believe how long this has been an unsolved issue. Sure, email providers have gradually raised the attachment file size limit. But it’s still far too low to account for every use case. Somehow we’re living in an age of streaming everything and cloud dominance — even Microsoft is pushing us all to the cloud with Microsoft 365 and OneDrive. But our email systems still can’t even handle a measly PDF if there are too many pictures in it. Frankly, it’s a ridiculous problem. And thankfully, Microsoft ag...

Microsoft and Samsung team up to boost work phone security If the way your team members access work resources from their smartphones keeps you up at night, we’ve got good news: Microsoft and Samsung are teaming up to give a massive security boost to the smartphones people use at work. But of course there’s a catch: you have to use the right phones. Here’s what you need to know about this smarter way to secure your company’s data and digital assets. The Breakthrough: On-Device Attestation We won’t get too technical here, don’t worry— but the technology breakthrough underlying this change is something called on-device attestation. We’ve talked about passkeys and other advanced authentication methods before, and this is sort of like those, only even more intense. Basically, with on-device attestation, companies can see more deeply into the software and firmware on a phone to identify possible compromises, hacks, or other threats. There are other attestation tools out there, but they all r...