Workplace Recovery - Prepare for the Unexpected

What is Workplace Recovery?

Workplace recovery is designed to prepare your business for the unexpected. Disaster recovery is of critical importance to any business and physical disasters such as fire, floods and lightning strikes are vastly overlooked when it comes to comprising a disaster recovery plan, yet these cause just as much harm to businesses as stolen, lost or broken hardware or data and email outages.

If your business was hit by fire or flood putting your office completely out of use, it will seriously inhibit your ability to trade. Over 70% of businesses involved in a major disaster either never reopen or subsequently fail shortly after reopening due to lack of client confidence or the customers taking their business to a competitor. That equates to one out of two businesses that never return to the marketplace following a major disaster. The businesses that do survive, plan their response to a disaster before it strikes.  Our workplace recovery service is designed to quickly provide you with office space, IT equipment, telephony and most importantly access to your business critical servers and data in order to help your business continue to function. 

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

In business, being prepared to respond promptly in the event of a disaster is vital to ensuring you can continue to trade as normal. Without plans in place to deal with emergency situations, the outcome will be devastating to your business. With our workplace recovery service it is easy to keep your business prepared for the unexpected, and your critical operations running as normal.

With one in five businesses suffering a major disruption to business every year, can you afford to be unprepared?  Our workplace recovery service can be completely tailored to meet the specific requirements of your business.

What Practical Networks Workplace Recovery has to offer?

Practical Networks has many years’ experience working with businesses of all shapes and sizes, so you can rest assured that whatever the disaster, we will have your critical operations up and running as quickly as possible.

The Workplace Recovery services on offer include:

•    Access to your business critical data and email
•    High speed internet access with enterprise firewall security.
•    Pre-equipped workstations
•    Dedicated rack space and cooling.
•   Telephony, including DDI and VOIP
•    Secure Server rooms
•     Fax, print and copying
•     Full onsite technical support
•     Easy access and onsite parking
•     Fax, print and copying
•     Meeting rooms
•     Secure storage
•      Kitchen facilities

Expect the Unexpected!

Physical or natural disasters are often overlooked in disaster recovery plans, yet there are a number of events that can put your office out of use such as:

• Fire
• Flood
• Lightning strikes affecting communication
• Theft or vandalism
• Severe weather

Natural disasters can cause a great deal of property damage and often leave some economic damage in their wake. The severity of the aftermath largely depends on the resilience of the affected party.

Reputation, Compliance & Delivery of Service

Customers expect to be able to deal with organisations during normal working hours and any drop in this service can damage the reputation of your business. The inability to operate can have a negative effect on your customers and their likelihood to remain loyal. Also with customers continually expecting more and more from the companies they work with, resilience is an important business trait to have.

A resilient workplace recovery strategy can be an integral element of meeting industry regulations. A number of industry governing bodies require a plan of continuous service and delivery at all times.

Our workplace recovery will help your business reputation stays intact, by ensuring you can maintain critical operations in times of crisis, while also helping you to meet industry regulations.

Is your business prepared for the unexpected? If not, we are on hand to provide a tailor made solution to meet your requirements.  For more information or to discuss your requirements call Andy on: 01723 587240 or email recovery@practicalnetworks.co.uk

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Cryptolocker - Don't Let It Hold You To Ransom

WARNING - RANSOMWARE!

Cryptolocker ransomware is spreading at a rapid rate, with business PC users being a primary target.

What is Cryptolocker?

Cryptolocker is a ransomware that encrypts files and charges a ransom to decrypt them. Below are examples of the prompt given once cryptolocker has taken hold of your files.  

How it spreads:

Cryptolocker spreads in two ways, via email attachments or as a secondary infection.

Email Attachments – Email attachments that require downloading are the primary tool used to spread cryptolocker. The emails often appear to be from a shipping company, for example; UPS, FedEx and Royal Mail, with the attachment portrayed as tracking information. See examples below:

Secondary Infection – PCs that are already affected by one or more viruses are more open to being infected with cryptolocker. This is because viruses offer a back door for further attacks. 

Prevention Advice:

Backup – It is always a good idea to make regular backups of important data, especially in this case. Backups can be set up to prevent the backup of infected files and provide a clear restoration point when files are lost or infected.

Limit – Limit access to important files, as this lessens the chance of them being encrypted.

Update – Maintain updates for your anti-virus, system and applications to keep your PC up to date and patched.

Educate – Make sure everyone in the office is aware of the dangers of phishing emails and suspicious email attachments.

Avoid – Avoid opening attachments you weren't expecting or from unknown sources.

If you would like more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us on 01723 587240.

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So What is OneNote?

So what is OneNote?

OneNote is an application designed for note taking, and is often overlooked in favour of Microsoft Word. However OneNote is set apart by its interface, which offers flexibility in the organisation of your notes. The layout is essentially that of a notebook, the pages automatically divide into notebooks, sections, pages and subpages, thus lending itself to easy organisation and reorganisation of vital information. OneNote is designed to allow text to be inputted anywhere on a page, as you would in a hand written notebook.

OneNote may also be seen as a collaboration tool as it also allows users to save images, tables, audio and other forms of communication in a free-form document.  When importing files such as Excel spreadsheets, images or Visio diagrams, OneNote stores a copy of the original file directly to the notebook while also allowing for editing. 

OneNote also saves all notes to your OneDrive online storage account, allowing access from a wide range of devices.

OneNote’s benefits include:

Email linking – Outlook includes a OneNote icon in the ribbon of email messages, allowing you to browse and choose where you would like to save the email within OneNote. This allows for emails to be linked to corresponding projects for ease of access.

Charts & Graphs – OneNote offers its own chart tool or allows you to import charts and graphs from applications such as Excel or Word.

Built in OCR – If you have an image in which you only need the text, paste the image into a OneNote document and choose the copy text from picture option. You will instantly get a plain text version of the text within the image that you can paste into a notebook or word document.

Collaboration – OneNote has a sharing feature which allows multiple users on a network to connect to the same notebook for viewing or editing purposes. Notebooks can have many authors and masses of information, so OneNote automatically highlights recent changes and lists the authors of new material for ease of collaboration.

Information storage and retrieval – OneNote has a built in search feature, which begins displaying results as you type, allowing for quickly locating files. Users can also add keywords to audio and video files in order to aid others in quickly locating and viewing the media. Searches can be altered to span the entire history of the application or to focus on specific notebooks or groups of notebooks.

All of these benefits aid productivity in the work place by allowing a wide range of media and information to be stored, organised and viewed in one place.

So if you have the Microsoft Office Suite, why not try OneNote now? You’ve got it already.

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Windows 8 - The Business Benefits!

Windows 8

Designed to meet its users’ need for speed, multi-device access and touch screen capabilities, Windows 8 has essentially improved on the Windows 7 fundamentals, and is re-imagined to support a number of different working styles. With a range of new features Windows 8 offers a number of benefits to businesses.

The Benefits:

The Layout:

Windows 8 is sporting a completely new layout to all previous versions of Windows, as well as a new app model. The design makes it easier for businesses to create their own line-of-business apps to help improve productivity, by allowing you to place all the information you need on the start screen. The start screen can be organized to group your apps and information, thus making everything you need, easy to find.

Available on a range of hardware:

Windows 8 will run on an extremely wide range of devices, from tablets to laptops, to desktop PCs with large, high definition screens, thus allowing users to pick the device that works best for them. Therefore making Windows 8 convenient and versatile, whether you work in the office, at home or out and about.

Flexible:

Microsoft has also added cloud connectivity to Windows 8, allowing for users to start a project on one PC and finish it on another with ease. Using the cloud to store your information dissolves the boundaries between devices, allowing you to access your information from any Windows 8 device, simply by signing in with your own Microsoft account.

Windows to go:

Windows to go is a fully manageable corporate Windows 8 environment and is a feature specific to Windows 8 Enterprise. Giving users the capability to boot and run Windows 8 Enterprise on compatible devices, from mass storage devices such as USB drives.  Unlike many other mobility solutions Windows to go allows you to be productive from almost any location you choose to work.

Windows 8 offers numerous other benefits and features such as:

• Direct Access

• Enhanced end-to-end security

• Built in mobile broadband features

• Manageability and virtualisation advancements

Windows 8 delivers enterprise-grade capabilities that IT departments need, by combining the power and familiarity of the desktop, with new ways for users to interact with line-of-business apps and offering support for more mobile form factors. All of its features are designed to aid production and keep your data secure.

Ready to make the switch? Then why not call us on 01723 587240 for a quote.

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