Directive Blogs

You're likely familiar with the various ways that hackers can steal your identity, but you may not be familiar with how hackers anonymously buy and sell people's personal information to interested parties. This is done through online ID theft services and a December hearing before the U.S. Senate highlights how one service was selling personal records on more than 200 million Americans!

Thanks to the explosion of mobile phones, the world is connected like never before and most people seem to have a good grip on how to talk to each other using proper telephone etiquette. Therefore, when someone breaks socially accepted phone etiquette practices, they make themselves or the business they represent look bad.

If you think you are not up to date on your tech jargon, don't feel bad. A recent study conducted by Vouchercloud.com asked 2,392 adults multiple choice questions about the definitions of common technology terms. The findings suggested that many of them were worse off.

Tablets have a reputation for being a fun consumer product, but they can also be utilized as a practical business tool. In fact, tablets can be used to accomplish a variety of business-related tasks. Here are five practical uses for tablets that you can use around the office.

In the business world, it's common knowledge that Microsoft is ending support for its popular operating system Windows XP on April 8. However, with recent data showing that 29% of the world's computers are still running Windows XP, it appears that the rest of the world is slow to act upon Microsoft's expiration date.

The end-of-support date for Windows XP is April 8. If you're still running XP, then you likely have a strong reason for it. Although, your reason may not be strong enough in light of how big of a security risk XP will be. Let's dismantle three of the most common reasons people are choosing to stick with XP.

Before the XXII Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, there were concerns from several influential entities about the data security at the Olympics. These concerns were reported leading up to the games and on the eve of competition, the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams ran a story by reporter Richard Engel that intimated that visitors to Sochi were immediately being hacked when they signed into the public WiFi accounts provided to athletes, media, and guests of the games.

This statistic comes from California-based market research firm In-Stat, and it highlights the growth of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. To give you an idea of how far VoIP has come in recent years, this figure was at 42% just five years ago. Is your business taking advantage of the VoIP revolution?

Are you aware of the value of your company's data? If you lost it all today, what would it cost your business in terms of productivity, downtime, and liability? Security precautions need to be taken in order to keep your data safe, including data backups. However, after you have a backup system in place, don't neglect the need to secure those backup files!

For a business owner, leaving money on the table is the worst feeling because it means passing up on easy money. From forgetting to upsell to a customer to having a delivery route be longer than it needs to be, there are many ways that businesses leave money on the table. Take a look at your company's technology; you may be leaving money on the table by using inefficient technology that's literally sitting on your table.

Starting a new business is a huge undertaking that's highly demanding. Wishy washy people need not apply. An individual starting a new company will need to take into consideration every possible scenario and make plans for it as best they can. Taking advantage of the right technology from the very beginning will make starting a new business much easier.

Microsoft's Note-taking application is something of an enigma. Most of the time, Microsoft Office users have OneNote installed and don't even realize it or use it. This handly little secret has some pretty powerful features. Here are three tips that will change the way you take phone calls and write notes on your PC.

We've all wasted time surfing the Internet, but as we know, there are unfortunately extremes to every action. Wasting time by mindlessly browsing Internet pages can certainly become a problem when it claims huge portions of your time at work, killing your productivity. Can you not seem to get away from surfing the Internet?

We live in a time where information technology has touched every facet of life. It would be a fair bet to assume that, at this point, it is more commonplace than a trend. We are inundated with Internet-connected computer systems in every aspect of life. We use automated tellers to do our banking, most major retailers have automated checkouts to supplement the work staff they have in place, and even your Grandma uses Gmail. With this technology saturated into the culture, there are many pragmatic uses that are just now being discovered and implemented. Nowhere is this more true than in the health care industry.

For a modern business that depends on its technology, few things are worse than when a server crashes, causing an entire organization to experience downtime. The only thing worse than downtime is the repair bill that accompanies it. In desperate times like this, is your IT company taking advantage of your misfortune?

A business that manages its data efficiently will be well positioned to handle growth. One of the most crucial components of data management is ensuring that everything is backed up properly; an increasingly difficult task as businesses use more data every year. Implementing a cost-effective and reliable data backup solution should be the goal of every IT professional.

When you need to make your point in a big way, you can make a sharp looking graph. You may think that graph making is difficult, but thanks to tools like Microsoft Excel, creating a convincing chart is as easy as pie! To help you out, we'll walk you through how to make a graph in Microsoft Excel.

Consolidation makes life easier. Your smartphone is a prime example of this; consolidating dozens of individual gadgets down to one easy-to-use device that can fit inside your pocket. Before smartphones, we had to travel with a carry-on bag full of electronics, but now, thanks to smartphones, traveling is much easier. This principle of consolidation also applies to IT services.

Microsoft has made significant upgrades to SkyDrive. In fact, the upgrades are such a big deal that Microsoft is rebranding their data hosting service as OneDrive. Microsoft is calling it OneDrive because it's the "one place for your photos, videos, documents, and files across all your devices."

The CEO baton at Microsoft has been passed from Steve Ballmer to Satya Nadella, making Nadella the third CEO in Microsoft's well-publicized history. You may not think that this will have an impact on your business, but considering how intertwined Microsoft is with the the global economy, you may be surprised to learn that this move will affect your company.