Blue Ridge Technology

More businesses are proactively investing in cyber security defenses Despite how serious the threats are, one recent study found that 50% of SMBs have no cybersecurity plan in place whatsoever . That’s fully half of all the companies out there like yours, with no plan, no coherent defense. Are you one of them? If so, it’s time to make a change — and we can help. More Businesses Investing, But Progress Is Slow-Going A large survey of small business owners in early pandemic days revealed that it used to be worse: as many as 60% of businesses had no cybersecurity plan going into the pandemic. If we got that number down to 50% by 2022, that’s progress. It means that more businesses are getting proactive about investing in cyber security defenses. But 50% is still frightfully far away from zero. That progress is taking place slowly. Comprehensive Cybersecurity Is an Investment One reason SMBs shy away from implementing robust cybersecurity measures is that doing so isn’t easy or cheap: it’...

What’s the Big Deal with Biometrics? Biometrics are a big deal. Even if they aren’t using the term biometrics, more and more digital apps and services are starting to offer some form of biometric authentication as a way of logging in. But just why is this a big deal? We’ve shared here numerous times about how bad the old username and password system is, so we won’t rehash all those details today. Just know that the old system is really, really bad, and we need a modern alternative. Biometrics could be a big part of that alternative — which is why they’re a big deal. Done right, biometrics offer us an extremely reliable system for authentication that’s far more secure than the old faithful password. Here’s what you need to know. What Are Biometrics? The term biometrics describes the practice of identifying, recognizing, or authenticating an individual using attributes unique to that individual, such as fingerprints, retina scans, or 3D face modeling, typically for security purposes. If...

If you rely on Microsoft Teams for video conferencing, whether with your internal teams or with clients (or both), you might be excited to learn about an upcoming feature on Microsoft’s roadmap for Teams. The company recently announced plans to fix notifications and pop-ups during video calls — something that could save you from distraction and embarrassment while you’re on a call. To understand how this works, let’s set the stage with a picture. Scenario: The “Honey I’m Home” Most of us have been there: we’re standing in front of a room full of people or the digital equivalent thereof. We’re presenting in some shape or fashion, which means we’re sharing our screens. You’re cranking through your presentation like the pro that you are, and you’ve got your audience right where you want them. Then, all of the sudden, a little bubble pops up in the corner. It’s very much not about your presentation or your client or your department. It’s an email or a chat message from your significant oth...

Stop and think about your first laptop: professionals over the age of 40 remember the days when laptops were absolute monsters in terms of size — but with extremely limited performance (compared to their desktop counterparts) and just terrible battery life. It’s amazing how far laptop technology has come since it hit the mainstream in the 90s: today’s laptops are widely capable in terms of performance, capable of matching all but the most extreme performance desktops. And battery life is so much better than it used to be. Even in 2008, most laptop batteries fizzled out after around 4 hours , and four years prior you couldn’t expect more than three . Today, it’s possible to get a sub-$1000 PC laptop with an advertised battery life of 13+ hours . And if you’re a Mac fan, you can do even better: the 2023 M3 Max MacBook Pro 16 boasts 21 hours of battery life! But no matter how long that battery lasts when you first power up, it’s only a matter of time before you start getting diminishing ...

Do you ever get tired of passwords? It seems like even in the best-case scenario where you’re doing everything you can to practice good password hygiene, it’s always frustrating. You’re constantly juggling tons of usernames and passwords, struggling to memorize them, failing to type them in quite right, or getting confused about which passwords all belong with which sites. Or you might be secretly operating in a much worse scenario: you know you can’t keep that many passwords, memorized, so you reuse one password across many of your accounts. No judgment here: the data is clear that lots and lots of people do this, even if they know they shouldn’t. Most People Struggle One of Two Ways The truth is, if you fall into either of these categories, you’re far from alone. Most people struggle with password use, falling into one of these two ditches. Either they’re struggling with password overload — because it is legitimately impossible to memorize hundreds of unique username and password com...

1 in 4 of us struggles with password overload. Here’s the answer We all know the importance of keeping our businesses safe by making sure our employees understand how to recognize and avoid cyber threats. And most businesses with a digital presence at this point have responded to this reality by instituting some kind of cyber security awareness training. But there are still lots of questions here: what exactly should go into training like this? Why do businesses keep becoming victims in spite of their training policies? And how often should businesses go about it? Why Once a Year Isn’t Enough For many organizations that do cyber security training, the event has become routine, something that happens once a year. Unfortunately, it’s also something that rarely gets talked about outside that once-a-year event. That’s in part why once a year isn’t enough: something that most people find rather uninteresting and that only comes up once every 12 months just isn’t going to take hold. It isn’t...

Great news: Microsoft Teams is getting even better! What may already be your favorite office productivity and collaboration tool is getting some new AI-powered features that could really make a difference in your workflows. Here’s what you need to know so you can get the maximum productivity out of this powerful tool you’re already using. Copilot Meeting Transcripts First up is a feature that you may have seen elsewhere, but now it’s built straight into Teams: AI-powered meeting transcripts. Teams users can now use Copilot to automatically transcribe the conversation that’s happening in any Teams meeting. This could be a video chat, an audio call, an all-hands meeting, or just about anything else you can do in Microsoft Teams. Admittedly, this capability has been around for a little while in other tools. There were even workarounds that would let you use other software services to do this in Teams, but what’s great here is tighter integration with Microsoft. In short, you get a better ...