eGuard Tech BLOG

What if I told you with one simple change, I could add another 26 hours – 0r 3 1/4 days – of time back into your life” And what if I told you I could give that back to every single employee you have working for you instantly, without having to master a new time management program or making any changes to the way you work. Would you want to implement that change immediately? If you said “yes,” then read on…

Tiny Hinges Swing Big Doors

In order to understand how this is done, you have to understand one very simple principle: losses in productivity and progress are not lost (or gained) in big, obvious blocks of time. The silent killer is the culmination of a multitude of tiny, seemingly insignificant “leaks” of minutes and progress over an extended period.

The “Latte Factor”

Author David Bach explained this phenomenon as it pertains to retiring rich in his book, “The Automatic Millionaire.” He calls it the “latte factor,” and it can be the difference between retiring financially independent or broke. Here’s how it works…

Let’s suppose you spend $7 a day for your fancy cup of coffee at Starbucks along with something to eat. On the surface, this seems like a very small, harmless expense. However, add that up over 30 years and if you had invested that money instead of spending it, you would end up with over $1.2 million in your pocket. But here’s where it gets significant…

MOST of the people who are spending $7 a day on trivial items are NOT investing ANYTHING into retirement. Why? Because they don’t understand the principle of the latte factor; because it’s such a small amount of money, they don’t think it would make any difference if they invested it – classic short term thinking. These are the people who end up working under the “golden arches” in their golden years because they can’t live off their meager savings. So what does this have to do with giving you 3 1/4 days of your life back?

How 6 Minutes Turns Into 3 Days

The same “latte factor” applies to tiny losses in time. Let’s say you lose 6 minutes a day in a 5-day workweek to computer problems, dealing with spam e-mails, slowness or other technical issues. Spread over a day it’s only a few seconds here or a minute or two there. On the surface, this seems insignificant and completely harmless.

However, you add that up over a year and it comes out to 26 HOURS of lost time, not to mention the aggravation of dealing with these issues.

Yet when we talk to most business owners about preventative maintenance to significantly REDUCE downtime, problems, slowness, or hang time, they aren’t interested. Like the folds spending $7 a day, they think that time improvement in performance really won’t translate into more profits or revenue for their business.

Stop the Slow Leak

An ill-maintained network is far more susceptible to viruses, hackers, spyware, data loss, hardware failure, and other malicious threats. Minute by minute, all of these issues waste your time.

To prevent this “slow leak” from impacting your bottom line, check out these 3 tips:

1.) Keep Your Virus Protection Up-To-Date

New threats are released everyday so staying on top of this maintenance is critical.

2.) Update Windows

Hotfixes, patches, and security features prevent system crashes and slowness.

3.) Get New “Firm ware”

Firmware is the updated software for your firewall. It protects you from the latest hacker invasions and other online threats.

Though sometimes necessary, letting go of an employee is never easy. No one wants to think that their employees would do anything inappropriate when they leave. But the fact is… it happens.

When you think about all the company information that person was privy to – and the damage this person could do – it’s downright scary.

Thankfully, Microsoft Exchange 2010 protects you from that. This popular e-mail system uses a feature called the “legal hold” to prevent an unscrupulous employee from deleting important messages to cover his tracks.

If any employee in your company deletes or alters an email, this new version of  Exchange can save this message for you.

To help prevent any funny business from happening in the first place, you can even have the e-mail system warn the employee that the “legal hold” feature is on.

In addition to protecting you from a bitter employee, the new Exchange can help with other legal matters, too.

Let’s say you are having a disagreement with a vendor. To support your case, you need to gather all the e-mails your company has send to them.

The new Exchange makes that a snap. With a few clicks, you can search everyone’s mailbox for relevant emails without going to each employee looking for it.

How do you get your hands on this software? 2 options.

Option #1 - Own it. You buy the server, software & pay for set-up, but retain all the control.

Option #2 – “Rent” it. Coined, “Hosted Exchange” this gives you the flexibility to “share” the software and hardware costs with other businesses thereby greatly lowering your upfront costs.

Which Option Is Right For You?

Call Us: 202-465-4670

Motorola Droid Phone

Here’s a quick run-down of the good, the bad, and the bottom line on this new phone.

The good: Most users of the new Motorola Droid Phone really like its display screen; fans cite the phone’s large, crisp picture and vivid graphics.

The phone also has a pretty fast Web browser, (reportedly much faster than that of the Blackberry), a Google Maps Navigation app, and better messaging and contact management. With Verizon as its carrier, the Droid has very reliable service.

The bad: The QWERTY keyboard seems to be a bit awkward, especially if you don’t exactly have dainty hands. Some people dislike its weight, too, since it weighs a full ounce more than its closest competitor.

Also, because the dialpad control is restricted to the home screen, driving and making a phone call is rather difficult.

Not surprisingly, music and video capabilities are not as strong as the iPod’s. In addition, there’s no Bluetooth voice dialing.

The bottom line: Overall, the Droid is a good smart phone with a good service, useful Google maps, and a killer display screen. It’s a great touch-screen upgrade from the Blackberry and gives its competition a run for their money.

A survey of over 2,500 employees found nearly half of the group admitted to wasting 1 to 3 hours every day on the web doing non-business related activities. Pretty scary, huh?

Just ONE employee in your company spending ONE hour surfing the web instead of doing what they should be doing is impacting your bottom line. Plus, this idle surfing line. Plus, this idle surfing doesn’t just affect that one employee; it could impact the whole team. If your Internet all of a sudden slows to a halt… a time-wasting employee may be the cause.

Watching a YouTube video, for example, can hog up your bandwidth and slow your entire company’s Internet speed way down, including e-mail and online applications.

How To Find Out If This Is Happening In Your Business

No business owner has time to look over their employees’ shoulders every hour of every day… and if Iternet usage abuse is going on, how do you stop it? Look to these two tips for help:

1.) Determine Your Rules

Unless your admin places company job postings online, you wouldn’t want to give her the opportunity to job search on your dime. So, you’d blog career sites. Social media is another example. Typically, you’d block Twitter. But if you use it for marketing your employees need access to it.

2.) Get An Internet Filter

Basically, a piece of hardware is installed on your network and its job is to block any specific websites or categories of websites, like shopping sites. Some of these devices even allow you to assign a hierarchy to your Internet speed, ensuring that your payroll software gets all the Internet juice before the NFL replay does.

You Can Also Purchase An Internet Usage Audit

This will reveal:

• What impact employee web browsing is having on your Internet speed
• How to stop any bad web behaviors without being “Big Brother”
• Our Internet usage filtering service is priced under $200 per month and can save you thousands in lost productivity

To Schedule Your Audit NOW Call Us At:

202-465-4670

“Arrggg… I forgot my phone!” If you utter this phrase regularly – this month’s shiny gadget can come to your aid.

The ZOMM, a “Best of Innovations” award winner at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, is a poker-chip sized device that clips on to your keychain or your pant loop and warns you when you’ve stepped away from your phone. Developed by a Mom (who was tired of forgetting her cell phone at restaurants and coffee shops) and her husband (who was no doubt frustrated as well), the device is like a wireless leash for your phone, sending an alert if your cell phone is left behind. And, as soon as your phone is out of range, the ZOMM can answer your calls too.

In an emergency situation and can’t grab your phone? The ZOMM can also call emergency assistance from anywhere in the world and can sound off a loud panic noise if you want to dissuade a potential attacker.

The device costs about $80 and is available now from www.zomm.com.

The downside? People who forget their phones now have to remember to wear the ZOMM. Guess the inventors forgot about that.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know you should be backing up your computers and a server. But here’s something you probably don’t know that will come back and bite you: simply having a backup of your data is NOT ENOUGH to guarantee you could be back up and running fast in the event of a disaster.

Having a data backup merely means that you have a copy of your company’s data stored somewhere; it does NOT mean you have a way to instantly restore your network back to normal.

For example, if your network crashed because of a hardware failure, your entire company is down, period. No email, printing, accessing the database, customer records, and more. Until whatever caused the problem can be fixed (which might involve ordering replacement parts), your business is closed.

So You Reach For You Backup Only To Discover…

Your information is there, but without a server, you have nowhere to load that information, and no way to access it. On top of that, a backup only holds your data, not your operating system, settings, or software applications. So even if you can load the data, you can’t actually use it without re-loading all the software applications – no small feat. Even IF you have all the software disks and key codes (most people don’t), it could still take days – possibly weeks – to rebuild, and the costs can run into the thousands.

That’s Not The Half Of It

The three most common causes of server downtime are hardware failure, software corruption, and human error. But nearly 20% of businesses suffer from damaging downtime from fire, flood, theft, or other natural disasters, and 44% of them never recover – and that’s mostly because they didn’t have a disaster recovery plan in place.

A disaster recovery plan covers more than just backup. It maps out how to get your business restored and running again in every possible scenario. For example, if another company in your office building has a fire, the police may quarantine your building preventing you from even entering your office. Or if a major storm knocks out power, Internet, or the phone lines, you need a plan “B” for servicing customers, taking orders, and keeping things rolling.

3 Crucial Components To A Disaster Recovery Plan

1.) Have One! As the old adage goes, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” When it comes to disaster recovery nothing could be more accurate.

If something happens to your office, will your employees be able to work from home? Do you have an alternate plan for your phones? Where would you temporarily set up shop? How quickly could you get technology equipment you need to function like computers, scanners, or printers? How will you access the Internet? Make a point to document the answers to these questions.

2. Onsite Server “Virtualization”

In a downtime situation, virtualization is basically a business owner’s lifeline to his business. Once only available to big businesses with deep pockets, this now affordable technology can literally get you back up and running just as you were before the disaster… in as little as 24 hours. If the disaster doesn’t take out your whole office, virtualization can have you back in business the same day. Here’s how it works. A second server makes exact copies of everything on your server  – operating system, software applications, and data – every 15-60 minutes.

This server replica, also known as an “image” can take over if your main server fails or gets corrupted. No need to re-load software, reconfigure your network, or re-load you data. In as little as 30 minutes, everyone in your company can get back to work, just as they were before the downtime. Compare this to the days or WEEKS it could take without virtualization; the productivity and money savings is staggering. Side Note: If you are still using old tape backups, you NEED to throw them away and virtualize your server with an offsite backup!

3.) Offsite Image of Your Server

Fire, flood, theft, natural disasters, or even faulty office sprinkler systems can physically damage your office equipment, including your server and your backup system.

Head this off by having an exact copy (an  image) of your server’s operating system, settings, programs, and data sent daily to an offiste location. Also make sure this image can be quickly loaded on to a server and shipped to you. With this in your plan, a tornado could rip open your office and destroy everything, yet you could be back up and running within a few days.

Need Help In Writing Your Company’s Disaster Recovery Plan?

Call Today: 202-465-4670

Total Backup Care

A “TRUE” Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution for Small Businesses.

     They say breaking up is hard to do, but when it comes to choosing between your old familiar tape drive or risking the company’s data, it should be a no-brainer. Tape drives are notorious for failure – and if you are still swapping out tapes as your only backup source, here are 4 reasons you need to break it off:

     1.) Your tape drive is a cheater.

     Here you are, faithfully swapping tapes and taking them home every day (at least you do most of the time), feeling secure that your data is safe and that you could be back up and running again fast in the event of a disaster, right? Wrong.

     Your tape drive only backs up your data – the information you have physically typed in; but your software programs, network settings, printer and Internet configurations are NOT getting backed up and cannot be recovered from the tape. That means if your server were to go up in flames (or simply fails) you would have to find all your software disks and authentication codes and REBUILD your server.

     That task could take several days, costing you a lot of money and lost time. But thanks to the vast improvements in backup technology, you can actually have a system that automatically backs up your entire server through a process called “mirroring” which simply means it backs up an exact replica of your server. You benefit because if your server failed, a replacement server could be set up and delivered in hours AND would retain all your settings and software. Plus, no more swapping tapes – everything happens automatically.

     2.) You could lose an entire day’s worth of work

     Ever lose an hour’s worth of work or a document because Word crashed? Now imagine losing an ENTIRE DAY’S worth of work. Frustrating, huh? Since tape drives can’t perfrom open file OR continuous backups, if your system crashes at the end of the day, all the documents, entries, and work you (and your entire staff) completed that day is toast. And if Murphy’s Law applies, that would be the day you hammered through a grueling 30-page report.

     Newer virtual backup systems will take a snapshot of your server every 30 minutes, saving your work from going into Never-land. Plus, if you leave files open at night when you leave for the day (and we all do that occasionally), it will back up those files too.

     3.) Your tape drive will abandon you when you need it most.

     You can only retrieve the data from your tape with a compatile tape drive. If you have had your tape drive more than 2 years, it may be a phased out model, no longer availble to order. This could mean that when you need to recover your data, you are unable to, even if the data is there.

     4.) You can’t trust a tape drive

     Tapes have an average failure rate of 100% — they all fail, it’s just a matter of when. Plus, you have to remember to swap out tapes every day, which leaves room for human error.

The bottom line is this:

     Tape drives are antiquated and an incredibly unpredictable way of backing up your company’s data. That’s why we urge all our clients to “break up” with their old tape drives and upgrade to Total Backup Care.

     Not only is it very affordable, but it will continuosly back up your entire server – including open documents – every 15 minutes so you don’t have to lose a day’s worth of work. Then every night it will automatically backup a snapshot of your entire server offsite to a military-grade data center where it will be kept safe and secure until you need it.

     No more swapping tapes, unpleasant surprises that your backups weren’t working, and no risk of being down for days trying to recover data from old tape drives. Plus you’ll gain the peace of mind that your data could be recovered fast in the event of a server meltdown or disaster.

     Don’t delay! Call us for a free estimate on switching over to a backup system that you can actually fall in love with: 202-465-4670