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You think Zoom, you think video calls. For millions around the world, it’s a tool they rely on at work every day.

But for productivity, collaboration and workplace integration (as well as video calls), it’s Microsoft Teams that’s leading the way. Its tight integration with other Microsoft 365 services makes it so easy.

Now Zoom is looking for a piece of that action with the launch of a whole suite of features and services. They’re clearly designed to take on Teams and Slack head-to-head.

These will include email, a calendar app, and a virtual co-working space called Zoom Spots. Meanwhile a bunch of upgrades to the Zoom One platform are aiming to improve collaboration, keep chats flowing, and keep projects moving.

While it feels like a logical step for the video conferencing giant, it remains to be seen how widely adopted the new services will be. And before we recommend it to our clients, we’ll want to know that the levels of support, reliability and security are all bulletproof.

Many businesses are already committed to Microsoft Teams, which releases its own improvements almost on a weekly basis. But this is an interesting new development and we’ll be watching what happens carefully.

If you want to know more about the best tools to keep your team working smoothly together, just get in touch.

Published with permission from Your Tech Updates.

You could be losing a full-time working week for every member of your team, thanks to the hassle of setting up video calls.

Video conferencing has revolutionized team meetings, and saves a huge amount of travel time. But we’re still not getting the full benefit from the new technology, according to new research.

Employees aged between 18 and 24 take up to 10 minutes to get set up for each remote meeting.

Times that by a typical five meetings a week, and it’s suddenly lost you 40 hours every year. That’s a whole working week of wasted time – a figure that gets even higher when you look at older age brackets.

It isn’t necessarily a result of differing technological know-how. The research shows that employees blame the tech itself for the loss of productivity.

Almost a third of people said they didn’t have the right tools for the job, and 23% even said they felt excluded from remote meetings thanks to inadequate tech.

Employees often feel that the audio-visual (AV) technology they’re provided for remote and hybrid working simply isn’t up to the job. That means poor microphones that don’t play ball, jittery webcams that interfere with communication, or the wrong choice of video calling software. All that makes meetings harder to set up and causes them to take longer than they should.

Despite this, businesses that offer remote and hybrid working are reaping the rewards in many other areas, including staff engagement and performance.

But there is a solution.

Assess your employees’ AV technology to make sure their tools are not slowing them down – new webcams and microphones could be a cheap and simple fix.

It’s also a good idea to ask your employees to find out where they see that problems are occurring. If they are finding your existing system difficult to use, or slow to log in to, you should consider alternative options or better training.

If this is something that’s slowing you down, we can help – just get in touch.

Published with permission from Your Tech Updates.

As you may know by now, Facebook announced a massive data breach today affecting at least 50 million (yup you read that right) users. 

It seems that a vulnerability in Facebook’s code for the “ViewAs” feature was exploited allowing the attackers to compromise access tokens which are digital unique identifiers of you and your account and prevents you from having to re-enter your password multiple times which would drive you crazy if you had to.

Facebook states that “there’s no need for anyone to change their passwords” however are you willing to trust your privacy to Facebook? Can those two words even be in the same sentence? Probably not. Be proactive and change your password which will regenerate the access tokens associated to your account assuring your account is safe.

It seems like the vulnerability has been there since July of 2017 and was just recently identified and corrected. So this “leak” has been there for a while.

Here are several links with more technical details on the Facebook breach, should you be interested:

• Facebook breach put data of 50 million users at risk
• Zuckerberg says Facebook working with FBI to investigate
• Everything We Know About Facebook’s Massive Security Breach

So the reality is Facebook and most reputable technology firms go to great legnths to get coding right and keep it secure but it is not uncommon that future modifications of existing code cause changes and vulnerabilities not perceived by the developer making the change. Organizations that have developers working with this kind of code typically have Change Management in place which primary purpose is understanding what effect a change in older code will make. Honestly, it is impossible to cover all scenarios but exposing 50 Million customers private data is not acceptable!

In today’s environment of constant data breaches and privacy compromises you shouldn’t be surprised but at the same time, you should become numb to this issue and protecting your privacy and data should stay high on your priority list. However, it will not protect itself and it has become painfully obvious you can’t rely on the “big players’ either. Be proactive!

What Can I Do Besides Change My Password?

Use Common Sense – First and foremost (and I’m sure you’ve heard if before) common sense should be in play. Be extremely cautious of what you post to social media. Yeah its great to share pics with friends and other interesting items but telling everyone in the world you are on vacation in another country (and that your home is currently empty) is probably not the smartest thing to do. Posting pics is great but consider whats in the picture frame before you take the shot. Are your vehicle tags in the frame? It is way too common to see pics posted on social media that contain things allowing someone to determine locations and identities. Facebook’s face recognition should scare you all by itself and especially your kids.Think ahead.

Use 2-Factor Authentication (also known as 2FA) – 2FA is where you have set up to send an authentication code to mobile devices verifying you are the owner of an account or password. Sure it can be a pain in the butt if you don’t have your phone with you but there are usually ways to do 2FA without your phone. This prevents unauthorized access to your accounts should your password be compromised. Use 2FA when possible!

Use Private Browsing – While certainly not full proof using your browser “private browsing” function, which is not on by default, helps protect the data stream between your computer and the websites you visit.

Use Complex Password – It baffles us how often we see 5-letter super simple passwords that are super simple to compromise. Start using sentences as passwords instead of one word. Most systems limit the minimum number of characters but not the maximum. Recently had a customer whose passwords were her pets name and her account was recently compromised. She couldn’t figure out what happened until we showed her the pics she posted all over Facebook of the pet WITH the pet’s name. Social engineering at its best! Also, we find customers using sentences as passwords are less likely to forget them which is a bonus.

How Do I Keep Up With All These Passwords? – Well, the answer certainly isn’t having everything with the same password! You are making it too easy to compromise. If you find you have too many passwords to track, use a password manager. Not only will it store and auto-enter your passwords, but you can also let it generate a complex password that you don’t have to recall. We highly recommend #LastPass. Shring has done very intensive testing of various password managers and LastPass is the winner. Check it out here.