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Cloud computing is the future, and it has arrived in force. Numerous benefits come from storing data on the cloud, ranging from data backups to ease of distribution. On the other hand, it is also essential for companies to make sure their data is protected. There are a few simple steps that every company can take to protect themselves and their data from being stolen from the crowd. Authentication Controls One of the most important security tools comes in the form of authentication controls. Businesses need to make sure they use single sign-on methods to facilitate account management. This can also go a long way toward improving the experience of the user. This needs to be supplemented with additional multifactor authentication metrics that can prevent someone from reusing credentials that might have been stolen. Endpoint Protection Next, it is also important to deploy endpoint protection. This is a next-generation security technology that is a must for any company that runs full operating systems through the cloud. Endpoint protection can prevent someone from easily stealing data from the cloud and compromising a business. Do not overlook this vital metric. Monitor the Cloud Closely Countless technological tools can reach directly into public cloud environments. These tools play an important role in monitoring the security of web infrastructure. Some of the most important regulations that guide this technology include HIPAA, ISO 27001, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and other key rules. Remain compliant and protect company data at the same time. Segment Cloud Networks When servers are deployed to the cloud, they need to follow the same segmentation standards as deployments that take place on-site. Segmenting internet-facing systems can help a company reduce its risk, making it harder for criminals and hackers to find sensitive information.

You have a lot of choices when it comes to office services. For example, you could focus on boosting security, organizing your files, or improving communication. While these are all great options, there’s one solution that combines them all: mobile printing. Here are just a few things mobile printing can do for you! Efficiency On the Go For many businesses, the ideas of “efficiency” and “productivity” are mostly anchored to the office. After all, it’s not like you can pack up your printer and take it with you on the road, or pack all of the file cabinets into the back of your company car right? Well, the truth is, that’s where mobile printing comes in. As part of a comprehensive managed print approach to your workflow, mobile printing can be a simple office service that makes some significant changes. At its heart, mobile printing is a solution that allows you to take efficiency, productivity, reliability, and security on the go, which means that you can do business wherever your path takes you. Here are a few things mobile printing can do for you! #1: Improve flexibility Need to meet a client at a coffee shop? Interested in letting some of your employees work from home? Want to take your business on the road? Mobile printing allows you to do all these things and more without sacrificing your ability to access and print your documents. #2: Utilize tools more efficiently One of the best things about mobile printing is that it allows you to take advantage of the tools you already have for example, your smartphones and tablets. You can access mobile print apps from all your devices! #3: Manage data Mobile printing doesn’t just let you print. It helps you capture data, too which means your employees and teams can communicate smoothly and efficiently no matter where they are.

One of the first things you hear in discussions about printer security is to keep an eye on the hard drive. How can you do that if you don’t even know whether your machine has a hard drive at all? Today we’ll show you how to find out–and what to do with this information. Hard Drives and Print Security Protecting your office equipment can often feel like a full-time job. After all, you have to make sure your printers, copiers, computers, and mobile devices are safe both online and offline. Since there are so many ways to do that, the whole thing can start to feel overwhelming. Luckily, there’s an easy place to start: finding out if your printer or copier has a hard drive. Where to Look You’ll want to locate your device’s datasheet. Sometimes known as a spec sheet or brochure, this document comes straight from the manufacturer and includes everything you need to know about your printer or copier. You should be able to find the datasheet by starting an Internet search with the manufacturer name and machine identification. Hard Drives vs. Memory Remember, there’s a difference between memory and the hard drive. Random-access memory, or RAM, is (in simple terms) short-term storage, and is cleared of data every so often. Hard drives, on the other hand, store data more permanently. Why It Matters If your printer or copier has a hard drive, that means it’s storing your personal information. This isn’t a bad thing until you go to get rid of the machine. At that point, it’s essential to know how to wipe or destroy the hard drive so that your data never falls into the wrong hands.

When you have an office equipment maintenance agreement, it’s easy to see how well it works, especially when you have plenty of machines in the office that will all need regular maintenance. However, it may be tempting to not renew your agreement after it runs out simply to save money. However, this is likely to cause more trouble than it’s worth. Fix Your Costs If you don’t know which machines will need maintenance, and you can’t predict which type, there’s no way to know how much you need for maintenance or repairs in any given month. When you renew your office equipment maintenance agreement, you know exactly how much your maintenance costs will be for this month and every month. These fixed costs allow for better budging, and it leaves no risk of large, unexpected equipment costs. Keeping Machines Running Your office equipment is vital to the office, and it represents a large investment by the company. To protect the money that has been invested in these machines, a maintenance agreement will keep them running by providing regular maintenance to them. These maintenance sessions serve to keep the machines running well, and they can prevent larger problems from developing. This keeps costs low while keeping the machines in good condition for longer. This means not needing to replace the machines as often and significant savings for the company. Extra Services When you have a maintenance agreement for your office equipment, you have support personnel ready to extend help whenever it is needed. This includes being on call to take care of problems with the equipment. It also means having the same couple of technicians servicing your equipment. This allows you to have a good working relationship with your technicians as they learn about your machines and what they need over time. As you get to know your technicians, you can ask them questions and get advice about your machines. Your technicians are professionals who understand the exact models of office equipment in your office, so your equipment will get the right attention at the right time.

The average law firm has an enormous amount of information that must be kept accessible on office equipment and ready to be used when it’s needed. However, it is far harder to find specific information when it is in files like PDFs. These files can be transferred to different file types with the help of optical character recognition. Making Documents Searchable In any law firm, finding specific data is of the utmost importance. However, when documents are in PDF format, they can’t be searched for any words or phrases. Instead, the entire file is an image, and the computer can’t read the actual text on the page. To make these documents into ones that can be searchable, there is optical character recognition software. This software has a different way of scanning a PDF. Instead of seeing it as an image, it sees the specific characters and spaces on the document. It recreates all of the text into a different file format that can be read as text by the computer. This makes it fully searchable. Effective Translation When optical character recognition is used on documents, it is programmed to understand how words and sentences are constructed. It has its own dictionary of words, so it may even correct typos from the original document. Using optical character recognition is a great way to make sure that what is created is free from errors. It is more accurate than most human translation, so you can get a document that is correct and not hampered by any human error. No legal form should have errors in it. The precise language used needs to be preserved for clarity and correctness. Organizing Data In the course of legal work, information may be admitted in many different forms. It’s common to get a PDF of a document, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. With optical character recognition, you can get the text-based documents that you need no matter how they were originally sent to you. It takes little time to have the image document translated and placed into a searchable, editable document.

The use of managed print services is growing as the many benefits of this arrangement become clear. There are so many ways that managed print can save a business both time and money that it’s a fast-growing service for businesses of every type. If you’re considering managed print services, here are just a few ways that this service can help your business. Letting IT Do IT It’s become too common to have a company’s IT workers put in charge of taking care of the printers. However, this means they can spend less of their time on actual IT work. In addition, many IT workers aren’t well versed in printer maintenance. Each model of printer has its own maintenance needs and features to keep running, and your IT workers should not have to learn all of the ins and outs of that machine. When IT workers have less time for IT duties, your entire computer network could suffer. Getting managed print services puts printer maintenance, repairs and stocking supplies to printer techs who are highly knowledgeable about your printer type. Then, your IT department can keep your network safe. Keeping Your Printers Private Your laser printers are a part of your overall computer network. They may not be computers, but they receive streams of data to print, and that data can be hacked. Managed print services monitor your laser printers as well as making sure that all updates are installed and every security measure is taken to keep that data safe. Without professional care for your printer fleet and the quick updates of the system, hackers can take advantage of any software flaws to hack in and steal data. Cutting Printing Costs If you don’t have managed print, you may have high printing costs that you’ve been trying to figure out. Why is it costing so much? When there is no one to monitor the usage of the printer, employees will print as much as they like, whether or not they really need to do so. They may also print everything in color simply because they can. Once the printer is monitored for employee usage, however, printer users think twice about whether those pages really have to be printed and whether black-and-white is fine for the document. With less printing going on, you will pay less or ink, paper and electricity usage for the machine.

With so many services offered to modern businesses, it’s easy to get confused or assume that services are the same. This is often the case with cloud-based services, as the differences between them can be subtle. Understanding the difference between cloud backup and storage is vital before you sign up for either or both services. What is Cloud Backup? The idea behind cloud backup is a simple one. As your team works, a backup of the data created is sent to an offsite location. This can be done once a day or several times a day for larger enterprises. Backup helps to preserve the valuable data that your business creates from day to day. This might include records of client transactions, inventory records or documents created to make workflows easier. In the case of a power outage, natural disaster or malicious attack on your system, you can use the backup data to minimize the impact on your day to day operations instead of having to recreate everything from scratch. For example, cybercriminals may use ransomware attacks to hold your business data hostage and demand you pay them to restore your operations. Instead of paying the ransom, you can use cloud backup to restore your operations. What is Cloud Storage? Cloud storage is an essential service for businesses who want to make operations mobile, keep documents secure and allow employees to work remotely. With cloud storage, important documents and data are stored offsite, removing the expense of upkeeping a physical server in the office space. All kinds of files needed to do business can be stored this way, including important documents, photos, and multimedia resources. By moving to cloud storage, businesses also make it harder for hackers to gain access to the data, as the cloud adds an extra layer of protection. You can also expand the amount of storage you have at a moment’s notice, making it ideal for businesses that are growing quickly and expanding rapidly.

The choice of whether to buy or lease office equipment can be a big one. There are pros and cons for each choice, and the size of your company may dictate the best answer for your business. Buying Office Equipment Buying all of the office equipment is certainly a valid choice. For larger businesses that have equally large budgets, the cost of purchasing this equipment outright isn’t a strain on the finances. However, many companies find that this up-front payment to fund the needed equipment is a hardship on the company’s monthly budget. With a tight budget, there may be little money available for large purchases, and several large purchases at once may be a dangerous proposition. Buying does come with a much larger up-front cost, but many buyers find that over the years, the money spent was less than if they had leased the equipment. Leasing Office Machines The other option is to lease the machines, paying a smaller monthly fee each month to keep using the office equipment. With this option, it’s easier to fit these expenses into the monthly budget, as the cost will stay the same each month. Some companies choose this method because it allows them to have access to the latest machines that come onto the market. The leased machines can simply be exchanged for new ones when a newer model is needed for its advanced capabilities. With the technology behind printers, computers, and copiers in New Haven and Stamford advancing so quickly, some companies prefer this method to stay on top of the tech on the market. Trying Office Equipment It may be that you want to eventually buy your office equipment, but not just yet. With office machines being a significant investment of resources, you likely want to be very sure about the models you buy. When you lease machines, you can try different ones to see which models work best in your office. Then, once you’ve tried different types, you can choose the model that you want to buy outright. This allows you to get just the right equipment with the features that will be most helpful to your employees.

The many tasks in every office that require a printer often can’t be ignored or put off for another day. Getting the printers in place and keeping them running well is a big job with the complexities of today’s printers. Here’s why so many companies are now investing in outsourced managed print services. Keeping Costs Lower When companies try to take care of their own print maintenance, there are a number of costs that are associated with it. Perhaps the biggest of these is that the company will either have to hire more personnel to handle the job, or it will have to handle a loss of productivity that comes from other employees taking on this job. In either case, the costs to the business can be enormous. Avoiding Downtime When you consider all the things that printers do in modern offices, it’s easy to see how printer downtime could lead to a massive loss of productivity. There are things that simply can’t be done without the printer working. When you outsource managed print services, you don’t have to accept downtime as a part of doing business. The printer will be maintained as needed, supplies will be ordered and all repairs will be quickly made. It’s an investment in your business that you can’t be without if you have multiple employees using a printer for routine tasks. Keep Time Productive A loss of productivity is inevitable if the printers are broken or out of ink and paper. When employees then have to either go without documents or spend their working time to take care of the problem, productivity will certainly suffer. Any company that is interested in keeping productivity as high as possible will inevitably see that managed print services are highly cost-effective. A loss of productivity is one of the biggest ways that companies can lose money.

In a digital world, keeping information secure requires a proactive approach. For businesses who need to follow HIPAA law, there can be a lot to consider, including how each piece of technology may expose sensitive patient information to being seen by the wrong people. Having a plan for document solutions that includes HIPAA compliance is the best way to make sure you don’t expose sensitive documents and information to any risk. When you have a complete plan that includes computers, copiers, printers, and any other devices that might include a hard drive, it is easier to identify any areas that pose a risk and find solutions to make sure they stay protected. Take Steps to Keep Sensitive Information Protected Some policies you can enforce in the office that will help to keep patient information safe include: Employees should stay at the copier while making copies or scanning sensitive patient information. This limits the chance of someone walking by and picking up the papers, reading the information or taking photos of them. Each person should have a unique password or access code that allows them access to the copier. This creates a record of all actions taken and everyone who accessed the hard drive within the copier. Any documents that are sent to the copier or printer are temporarily stored on the hard drive within the machine and can remain in place longer than you realize. Encrypting this hard drive makes it harder for hackers to get to these files, and makes the data within them difficult or impossible to use. In addition to encrypting the files, any files stored on the hard drive should be deleted periodically so they aren’t kept where they can easily be found by hackers. If you need a new copier that meets all the requirements for HIPAA compliance and any other business needs, Base Technologies can help. With decades of experience supplying printers and copiers to businesses from every industry,