Silo IT is a form of IT services or support, usually as part of a Co-Managed IT relationship. The Internal IT folks of your organization might be doing a splendid job, but there’s this one thing they just don’t handle.

This past month our Technical Director Kevin Dutkiewicz and our Security Tsar Adam Evans went down to Orlando for the IT Nation Secure conference presented by ConnectWise. This conference focuses on cybersecurity in our slice of the technology world. We’ve asked them to share some of the fun and talk about what they took away from the event.

Microsoft’s decided to retire and rework an AI tool that could not only recognize our facial features, but also identify our mood. Azure Face is an emotion recognition tool. These are highly criticized by experts who believe they violate human rights. Microsoft has just published the updated version of its Responsible AI Standard.

It’s no secret that some applications are a little too interested in us and what we’re doing. We’ve all had this experience. You might be talking to a friend about a new product that you’d like to try. Or perhaps you’ve discussed somewhere you’d like to visit. Then the next time you go online you see adverts for the exact things you were talking about.

Hello, I am Kurt, a senior network engineer at Simplex-IT. In this blog, I will be discussing the 3 different types of clouds: public, private, and hybrid.

A recent report found that each one of your employees could be losing up to 80 hours each year, thanks to filtering and deleting spam emails. That’s a LOT of lost productivity.

The joke is that the cloud is somebody else’s computer. Actually, the cloud is taking the server in your office and migrating it to a resilient data center…

When you’re browsing it can feel like you’re being bombarded with things other people want you to see. Not only do we have to click on permissions for cookies and tracking, but now a lot of websites ask for our permission to send us notifications. And while many of these notifications are harmless – news updates, latest recipes, product releases – sometimes they can be outright spam.

So let’s talk about accounting and we’ll then get to cybersecurity.

Back in 1929 we had the great depression and it was great. One of the things that really came to light was that it was caused by faulty manipulative reporting practices and businesses. Businesses weren’t being safe, weren’t being cautious, they were extremely vulnerable and they were caught.

It feels like every day we’re being warned about a new threat to our cybersecurity, doesn’t it? That’s for good reason. Last year, ransomware attacks alone affected 81% of US businesses. And the cost of cyber-crime is estimated to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025, according to the ‘2022 Cybersecurity Almanac’. But we’re still seeing far too many businesses that aren’t taking this threat seriously.

We love to talk details, because it’s how we think in IT. Heck, it’s how we’re paid to think because details is where it’s at. But discussing those complex issues to someone who doesn’t have the background? Or interest? Or, most importantly, the need to understand to the level we do?

So if you’re in the IT field, learn to communicate better. And start by picking up these 3 explanation devices: similes, metaphors and analogies.

Ransomware is one of the fastest growing cyber-crimes in the world. Last year, 37% of businesses were victim to an attack. In case you didn’t know, a ransomware attack is where cyber criminals infiltrate your network (or device) and steal your data by encrypting it. The data is still there, but you can’t access it. Then they demand you pay a large ransom fee for the encryption key.

Early on in the first lockdowns in 2020, did you ever sit at your computer and think “I really like working from home”?

Some people are in the office. Some are at home. The days of having everyone together at the same time are gone. Maybe forever. Which means that video calls are here to stay. If you want to invest in your video call setup, here are three easy upgrades for you.

The domain name system or DNS is kind of like a phone book. When you try to go to something on either a public network or a private network odds are DNS will get you there.

The most common instance of this is when you go to a website, that is actually translated in the background to what’s called an IP address and routed to that website so you can see it, all in the background.

No-one likes passwords. Creating them. Remembering them. Typing them in. Your whole mood can change when an application you’re using suddenly logs you out, and you have to go through login all over again. It’s frustrating for everyone.

So, here’s some very welcome news, courtesy of Microsoft, Apple, and Google. The tech giants have joined forces to kill off the password for good.

We’ve all been in that situation where someone in our group, could be a lunch or dinner, whatever, has this great idea. And the great idea essentially is this, if we do this, then this will happen and it’ll be great. We’ll be rich, we’ll make lots of money, we’ll be popular, we’ll go viral, whatever. And you know it’s a bad idea usually because it’s unrealistic, it isn’t well thought through, it has all sorts of nuance to it, whatever.

The use of Microsoft Teams has just exploded in the last few years, and it now boasts 270 million people using it every month. Of course, it was the right tool at the right time when we all rushed to working from home at the start of the pandemic. But the growth of Teams has continued, even if some believe the growth has slowed down a little recently.

The fact is, a lot of us can be judged as stupid based on one bad practice or habit. Sometimes that habit is a personal one. Other times it can impact our entire family or even organization. So we shouldn’t judge a person as a complete idiot unless we’re ready to turn the mirror around and look at our own behavior.

That said…it’s time to start taking security seriously.

Microsoft is always introducing new features and services to keep your people safe online, and your data secure. As a business owner or manager, you should already know that weak or reused passwords are one of the biggest risks to data security.

We’re talking about multi-factor authentication. So what does that mean? You might be more familiar with “two factor authentication”