Partnering for G Suite Productivity with Our Top 9 Tips

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G Suite productivity tipsGoogle Workspace (formerly G Suite) is more than an email, calendar, and simple file sharing service.  G Suite is a productivity suite that serves as a platform for a range of tools that helps your team, and your business, work more effectively. It is a cloud-based productivity suite developed by Google that includes a range of productivity tools and applications such as Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and more. See how you can maximize your business efficiency with our top nine G suite productivity tips and tricks below.

9 ways your team can be more productive with Google Workspace (G Suite):

  1. Share Files, Not Copies:
    Stop sending attachments. Stop wasting time figuring out if the copy of the file in your inbox, on your local drive, or on a shared folder is the most current. Whether you use Google Docs for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations or you continuing using Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive and Team Drives serves your files rather than just sharing them.  People share via link, so all comments, suggestions, and edits are made within a single copy of the file. Versioning keeps this orderly and gives you the ability to look back and compare.
  2. Serve Files, Not File Servers:
    Use Team Drives and Drive File Stream to provide users with “explorer” access to files from Macs, PCs, and local software. Store files under central ownership and managed permissions; avoid performance and capacity problems with unlimited storage. Allow team members to work remotely and securely on computers, tablets, and mobile devices without VPNs and remote desktop services slowing things down.
  3. Communicate, Don’t Just Text:
    Most laptops now have microphones, speakers, and Bluetooth features similar to your smartphones and tablets. Have face to face conversations using Hangouts Meet instead of long email threads, phone tag, or text messaging. Communication is 55% non-verbal. Let your employees see and hear each other, your vendors, and your customers. You can share screens to live document reviews and discussions. Why pay extra for a conferencing service?
  4. Collaboration, Don’t Just Comment:
    True, Google Docs allow contributors to comment and suggest edits. You can also collaborate in real-time or as each participant is able. Version history lets you look back at who contributed, when, and where. You can name versions to track official revisions or specific working copies of documents.
  5. Schedule Productivity, Not Just Appointments:
    Your personal and shared calendars track your time as well as project or team activities. Resource calendars let you book rooms or any scheduled resource. Integrated with Hangout Meets, automatically include voice and video conferencing for the human touch. Integrated with Chrome for Meetings and you have 1-click video conferencing with screen sharing in your conference rooms.
  6. Manage Customer Relationships, Not Data:
    Integrated CRM applications, automatically pull person and company data into your CRM records and automatically track inbound and outbound emails with your prospects. Side panel gives you “pane of glass” access and context from within your Gmail inbox.
  7. Manage Communications, Not Data:
    Integrated sales and marketing tools, empower you team to better manage marketing, sales, and service communications without leaving your Gmail inbox.  Templates, mail merge, and tracking save time and energy as you drive your sales pipeline forward.
  8. Automate Tasks, Not People:
    Automate workflows and repetitive tasks, and build simple apps to boost productivity with AppMaker. The Low-code/no-code tool means you don’t need a cadre of programmers. Free up task time for more valuable activities.
  9. Protect Your Business; Not Just Data:
    Compliant archiving and e-discovery covers your email communications and your documents. Integrated solutions provide third party backup/recovery protection from accidental or intentional damage and loss. Cloud-to-cloud backup is less costly and requires less admin effort than traditional file server protection services.

Get the most value from your G Suite platform:

Our final G suite productivity tips include actionable ways to help your team ensure its workflow is up to date.

  • Verify you are on the right version of G Suite, with the capabilities that best meet your needs
  • Help your team learn how to use the G Suite apps to their fullest
  • Integrate 3rd party solutions for line of business needs, such as marketing, sales, and service

Please contact us for a free Cloud Advisor session to discuss getting the most value from G Suite.

 

When Your Identity is on the Dark Web

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Dark Web Threat AlertsAs a courtesy to our existing clients and prospective clients, we have been running complementary Dark Web Summary Scans of their domains. These summary scans let us know how many email addresses from each domain currently appear on dark web and identity theft websites. We can then perform a more detailed scan and analysis to identify the specific user identities.

The results are fascinating.

Of 200 domains recently scanned:

  • 87.4% had at least one potential identity compromised
  • The average number of potentially compromised identities is 41%
  • 16% of the companies had more exposed identities than users, indicating breaches occurred from multiple sources

What does this mean?

Just because employee@yourcompany.com appears on a dark web or identity theft site does not mean that the user account on your system has been breached.

It does mean, however, that a breach is likely. And, the more exposed identities for your domain, the greater the risk.

How does it work?

Chances are, your employees are using their work email address, employee@yourcompany.com, as their login identity for other systems.  These other systems are often work related services like Uber, Dropbox, online banking, credit cards used for business expenses, etc. Studies show that about 80% of people use the same or substantially similar passwords across systems.

If there is a data leak or breach at one of these third party services, hackers will test the identity on other systems.  If you have an employee whose email and password were leaked in one of the Dropbox incidents, for example, cyber criminals will test that email address and password, along with similar passwords, across common services like G Suite, Office 365, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and others.

A compromised identity on a third party service can easily lead to a breach of your systems.

What to do:

  • Get the Details:
    Get a detailed scan on your domain to clearly identify which user identities are exposed and at risk.
  • Mitigate Your Risk:
    Work directly with identified staff to reset passwords. Run additional scans on their systems for malware.
  • Communicate:
    Educate, train, and guide users on the risk of identity breach and how to avoid becoming a victim. Provide guidance, coaching, and policies around the use of company email addresses on other systems and best practices for password selection and management.
  • Challenge:
    Periodically test your employees using “honeypot” and “sandbox” methods to determine who is following best practices and who remains susceptible to attack.
  • Monitor:
    Monitor your domain, and personal accounts of key executives, for future issues and respond accordingly.

Next Steps

Your best next step is to contact us (email or web) to

  1. Request a detailed Dark Web Scan
  2. Discuss security education and testing services
  3. Setup on-going monitoring for your domain

 

 

EFail Flaw: Encryption Alone Does Not Protect Your Email

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Email EncryptionAs reported last week by eWeek and others, researched found two flaws that allow hackers with access to email accounts to read emails encrypted with OpenPGP and S/MIME.  This is significant for two reasons:

  1. These standards are available for us in almost every email client
  2. Budget-conscious users often relay on public-domain or free tools to use OpenPGP or S/MIME for email encryption

As noted in the eWeek article, 23 of 35 email clients tested as of the publication date were vulnerable.  While the actual risk from EFail is currently moderately low — hackers need access to the encrypted emails before they can exploit EFail, the rate of identity compromise is on the rise. Secondary threats, such as EFail, will become a more prominent form of attack in the future.

Free Encryption Solutions Often Lack Sufficient Protection

Robust email security and encryption services include features, such as validation of digital signatures, that ensure the integrity of encrypted email messages.

Furthermore, solutions, like ZixEncrypt, control both ends of the encryption process, so any messages (with or without S/MIME encrypted attachments) with an invalid or missing digital signature get bounced. Integrity checks prevent the delivery of compromised messages, thereby preventing exposure.

As you face an increasing need to secure email communications, the robust features in services like ZixEncrypt create a value proposition most businesses cannot and should not ignore.

Contact us for more information about email security, encryption, and compliance.

 

What is Slowing Down Your Internet? 5 Things Hurting Your Connection Speed

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what could be slowing down your internet speed

Bad WiFi service frustrates employees, hurts productivity, and can send customers to your competitors. Even if you use your wireless access point (AP) vendor’s management tool, there are still things that may be hurting your WiFi service quality or slowing down your internet speed without your knowledge. Read on below to learn about network connectivity, and the top five issues we usually see slowing down your internet speed.

Here are five thing that are likely slowing down your internet speed

  1. Network traffic actually transmitted over the air:
    APs know that they attempted to transmit data to a client, but cannot detect if a malfunction prevented transmissions.  Wireless access points cannot detect their own transmission problems, such as dropped packets, chatter, and jitter.
  2. Clients consuming channel bandwidth that are not connected to your infrastructure:
    Not every device using channel bandwidth connects to your network. These devices often interfere with connected traffic, hurting performance for others.
  3. Misconfiguration within your infrastructure:
    APs cannot self-detect if they are configured improperly or if neighboring APs are creating interference. APs are not clients on the network, so they can only see what they transmit and what they receive.
  4. Clients connected to APs not managed by your AP controller:
    While your AP management tool may identify unmanaged or unauthorized APs on your network, they cannot detect or analyze clients connected to those APs and/or the impact these unmanaged devices have on your WiFi performance.
  5. Interference from devices and networks outside of your control:
    Vendor AP management tools are built to manage the vendor’s APs. These tools do not identify or analyze neighboring networks that interfere with yours. Bandwidth and channel conflicts go undetected and unresolved.

Your vendor AP manager misses these issues because your APs are not WiFi clients.

How to Fix Slow WiFi Speed

The best way to monitor and manage WiFi performance and reliability is to place a passive sensor client in your environment.  Unlike expensive WiFi assessments of the past, done by on-site technicians lugging around specially equipped computers and meters, innovative services like the Wyebot Wireless Intelligence Platform™ (WIP) give you a plug-and-go solution for about 1/10th the cost.  WIP is a vendor agnostic tool that can see and monitor your entire WiFi environment, analyze and prioritize issues with alerts, make knowledge-driven solution recommendations, and provide remote network testing tools.

Tools like Wyebot help you ensure your WiFi network best serves your business.

Please download our eBook, Understanding WiFi Quality, for more information, or contact us to arrange an initial WiFi Assessment.

 

WiFi Quality is About the User Experience

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WiFi QualityAn ever increasing number of businesses are learning that WiFi is more than a convenient network connection.

  • Restaurants, bars, and coffee shops that want patrons to linger and spend more lose business when customers can’t check the score, answer an email, or scan their social apps.
  • When your mobile app doesn’t work in your establishment because of poor WiFi service quality, your patrons go elsewhere.
  • WiFi quality influences which conference rooms get booked, where teams choose to huddle, where individuals choose to sit and work, and where people choose to socialize.

WiFi service quality is becoming a competitive factor that can help or hurt your business.

Most network managers rely on vendor management tools to monitor and control their wireless Access Points (APs). These tools provide basic statistics on traffic volume and patterns.  The more sophisticated solutions provide cool looking color-coded heat mats that overlay WiFi signal strength onto blueprints of your business. Some tools even use APs to triangulate users’ locations within their business.

What vendor AP management tools do not show you, however, is the client experience. You can have great WiFi signal coverage, but applications time-out if client devices experience too much interference. Your network may be setup to support a high density of users, but if clients end AP-hopping for signal strength, management overhead can cripple performance.

To understand WiFi quality: Understand the user experience.

By definition, your Access Points are not and cannot be clients on your WiFi network. The data your APs gather represents only what goes in and out of (or is simulated by) each Access Point. WiFi clients will see your network performance and reliability differently than your APs.

Think of it this way.  A chef creates a new signature dish. The chef knows that she’s used the best, freshest ingredients. The chef has sampled dozens of variations to get the taste just right.  The chef believes that this her best new meal ever. Even so, a few, many, most, or all customers may not like the taste, texture, or presentation of the meal. Fortunately, WiFi quality and reliability is not subject to personal taste and preferences; WiFi service quality is determined by the client experience.

The only way to understand, monitor, and manage WiFi service quality is to monitor your network from a client.

Historically, this has meant expensive service engagements in which technicians bring in monitoring and analysis systems for a “point in time” assessment. These assessments, which can cost thousands of dollars and only capture one point in time, are beyond the budget of most small and midsize businesses and schools.

New solutions, however, provide vendor-agnostic analyses of your WiFi network using passive sensor WiFi clients, prioritize identification of service issues, and offer knowledge-driven recommended solutions.  With the Wyebot Wireless Intelligence Platform™ (WIP), for example, in most instances we can provide periodic WiFi Assessments for less than 1/10th the cost of a traditional assessments. Ongoing monitoring becomes affordable for nearly all businesses and schools, the the added value of historical data analysis, real-time alerts, and remote network testing.

If your business relies on WiFi, you can now afford to make sure your WiFi network is reliable and performs well.

For more information, download our eBook, Understanding WiFi Quality, or contact us about arranging an initial WiFi Assessment.

 

Echo of Non-Compliance

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Everyday, we hear about new ways we can use our smart speakers. Retailers, radio stations, product companies, and others remind us that we can use our Amazon Echo or Google Home to buy, listen, or learn. The term “smart speaker”, however, is misleading.  These are microphones and they are always listening. They are also likely recording everything they hear.

If you are covered by HIPAA or other privacy regulations, do not talk about protected information within earshot of Alexa.

This warning stems from a 2015 murder case in Arkansas. Believing that the Amazon Echo may have “heard” a murder, the District Attorney subpoenaed any recordings that Amazon may keep from the device. Amazon fought the decision on First Amendment and privacy rights, not by claiming that it was not recording. Amazon did not deny having recordings.

The issue for data privacy compliance is that your smart speaker may be listening to and recording conversations you have about protected information.  Allowing this is a violation of HIPAA and other regulations protecting personal identifying information (PII).

When is your Amazon Echo recording?

The short answer is: we are not sure, but maybe always.

Looking at the Alexa Terms of Use, Amazon tells us “Alexa streams audio to the cloud when you interact with Alexa” and “Alexa uses recordings of your voice to create an acoustic profile of your voice characteristics.” Alexa use is also covered by the Amazon Privacy Notice, which states, “We receive and store any information you enter on our Web site or give us in any other way.”

While Amazon tells us they are recording your “Hey, Alexa” commands, the Terms of Use and Privacy Notice are a bit more ambiguous. Neither document tells us that Amazon records only when listing and processing commands. Nor do the policies limit Amazon’s recording to those commands. We do not know, for sure, when Amazon is not recording what it hears on your Echo.

Better Safe Than Sorry

When speaking about sensitive or protected information, stay away from your “smart speaker” or manually mute the device.

One more thought:  Ever notice how after certain conversations, you see ads on Facebook related to the topic discussed?  Unless you turn off microphone access, Facebook is using your phone to listen to your conversations, analyze what you say, and profile you. Letting Facebook listen is another potential HIPAA and PII breach.

 

Team Drives Launches for G Suite Business, Enterprise, & Education

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Google DriveMost file storage solutions weren’t built to handle the explosion of files that are now created and shared in the cloud — because they were initially designed for individuals, not teams. With this amount of shared data, admins need more controls to keep their data safe and teams need to feel confident working together. Team Drives deliver the security, structure and ease-of-use enterprises need by making it easy to:

  • Add new team members. You can manage team members individually or with Google Groups and give them instant access to relevant Team Drives.
  • Keep track of your files if a team member leaves. Team Drives are jointly owned by the team, which means that anything added to Team Drives stays there no matter who comes or goes. Whirlpool Corporation, for example, uses Team Drives to manage file access. Says Troy McKim, Collaboration Principle at Whirlpool Corporation, “If you place files for a project in Team Drives, you don’t have to worry about losing them or moving them when files are re-owned.”
  • Understand and manage sharing permissions. Team members automatically see the same files regardless of who adds or reorganizes them. You can also manage share permissions by defining the restrictions for editing, commenting, reorganizing or deleting files.
  • Manage and view Team Drives as an admin. Admins can see Team Drives for a user and add new members if necessary: “Team Drives also ease the speed at which a team member can onboard and become effective in their new role,” says McKim.

Team Drives are now generally available to all of our G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise customers.