Tag: TechBytes

In today’s tech tip, learn how to make the most out of your Microsoft Teams meetings by showing PowerPoint slides directly in the virtual meeting window.

Watch the video below, or click here.

 

Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration tool with a deep, rich feature set. One of the great features in Microsoft Teams is the ability to turn calendar appointments into virtual video or audio meetings directly in the app. We’ve covered how to do this before, but did you know you can show Microsoft PowerPoint slides right inside your Teams meeting? We’ll show you how in today’s tech tip.

Step 1: Launch or Join a Teams Meeting

To launch or join a meeting in Teams, click on the Meetings tab (on the desktop app, this is on the left side of the app). If your organization uses the Outlook calendar, Teams will pull that data into the Meetings tab. You should see a list of meetings here.

If you’re joining someone else’s meeting, you should see it in the list. Simply click “Join”. If you’re launching your own, click “Schedule a meeting” at the bottom of the column. Fill in the relevant details and pick a time. (It can be right now, if you need.)

Bonus tip: If you’re the one scheduling the meeting, make sure to invite the relevant teams or people. Use the Scheduling Assistant to see when your participants are free.

Step 2: Find and Click the Share Button

Once you’ve joined a Teams meeting (either as host or participant), you’ll see a set of buttons whenever you move the mouse. The video camera and microphone are fairly self-explanatory, but the button that comes next is a little less obvious. It looks like a rectangle with an up arrow in it. This is the Share button. Click it to bring up the Share menu.

You can share all sorts of things, but PowerPoints are what we’re after here. You’ll see a section with some suggested PowerPoints. Microsoft attempts to guess which OneDrive or SharePoint files you might want, but if it fails to suggest the right ones, you can always navigate yourself by clicking “Browse”. Click on the file you want, and it will launch into the Teams meeting.

How Presenting Works

Now that you’ve launched your PowerPoint presentation, be sure to understand how presenting works. You can toggle through your slides as you move through your presentation, just like you would in an in-person meeting. If you’re not the presenter, you can even toggle backward or forward through the slide deck without disturbing the presenter. This is handy if you need to move back to a previous slide and copy down information (or see what’s coming up if you need to time a restroom break!).

Sharing PowerPoints within Teams is a great way to keep up engagement in virtual meetings. Use this tip in your next Teams meeting and increase the value to all participants.

 

Microsoft’s Office suite makes it easy to schedule meetings, reserving the right room and inviting all the right people. Many people think they can only use these powerful features from their office computer, because Exchange calendar integration in iOS doesn’t support these features. In reality, mobile users can still access these powerful scheduling features using Outlook Mobile. Here’s how.

Step 1: Create a New Event

Open your Outlook Mobile and create a new event. To do this, tap on the calendar tab along the bottom of the app. Next, press the big plus sign in the lower right corner. (As always, locations can change over time and depending on device. You’re likely to find a calendar page and a plus sign somewhere, though—use them.)

Step 2: Name Event, Add Attendees, and Set Date and Time

Choose a name for your meeting in the first field, and add all the people you want to attend the meeting in the second one. For the latter, just start typing names. Outlook Mobile will pull up relevant contact information. Click on the contacts you want to include.

Note: Depending on your configuration settings, Outlook Mobile may offer you multiple options for some contacts. If you have a personal and a work version of a contact, for example, be sure you choose the right one. Do the same if you have a single contact with multiple email addresses associated.

Before moving to step 3, check that the date and time information is set correctly. You can change this later, but setting it up now allows the magic below to work properly.

Step 3: Click Location

Next, tap the “location” field a little bit lower on the screen. This is where the magic happens. Outlook Mobile will intelligently suggest connected meeting rooms that you use frequently and that are free for your selected time. It will also suggest places nearby, which is useful if you’re calling an off-site meeting. Outlook Mobile learns from you, too: the more you use it, the smarter its suggestions become.

If you don’t see a suitable location listed, you can search for a better one. This can be an on-site meeting room or any mappable location.

If you and your meeting attendees have “Time to Leave” enabled in settings, Outlook Mobile will even notify you a few minutes before you need to leave your current location to get to the meeting on time. One-touch directions are available directly in the calendar event, too.

Wrap Up

This is just one of many powerful yet overlooked features in Outlook Mobile. To learn more or for help with other IT questions, contact us today.

Data security becomes more important with each passing year. It’s important to have a good understanding of the terms that both governments and the information security industry use. Understanding these terms will help you lead your organization to comply with today’s regulations as well as whatever new regulations are coming down the pike. Today we’ll define three major terms: personally identifiable information, non-personally identifiable information, and personal data.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

Personally identifiable information, or PII, is information that organizations may hold on individuals that can be tied to the individuals’ identities. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provides a legal definition for the USA:

PII is any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual‘s identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother‘s maiden name, or biometric records; and (2) any other information that is linked or linkable to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information.

PII comes in two varieties. Linked information is the more sensitive variety. Anything that can by itself be used as an identifier is considered linked information. Social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, full names, and physical addresses are all examples of linked information.

Linkable information is the second category. Linkable information can’t do much on its own, but it becomes powerful when linked with other pieces of information. ZIP code, race, age range, and job information are all examples of linkable information.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information (Non-PII)

Non-personally identifiable information, or non-PII, is information that doesn’t fall into the above categories. All sorts of information falls into this category. In the digital world, IP addresses, cookies, and device IDs are considered non-PII, since (unlike what you see on TV) these pieces of information can’t be used to identify an individual.

Personal Data

Personal data sounds like a casual way to describe the above, but it’s more than that. Personal data is a term used in Europe that is roughly equivalent to PII. Euro-centric publications won’t tend to use the term PII unless discussing something explicitly American. Many of the same principles of PII apply to personal data, but there are some further ramifications that are important to know.

As the USA does with PII, the EU has a specific definition for personal data, defined in GDPR as this:

Article 4(1): ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

A Crucial Difference Between PII and Personal Data

One of the most crucial differences between the NIST’s definition of PII and GPDR’s definition of personal data is this: GPDR concludes that even cookies, IP addresses, and “other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags” can be personal data, especially when combined with other unique identifiers.

In short, the EU’s GPDR guidelines are more restrictive than their USA equivalents. This is the explanation for the rash of “cookie notices” that’s spread around the web, and it could have implications for your business.

Wrap Up

If you need more information about PII, non-PII, and personal data, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to serve you and meet your IT needs.

For today’s tech blog we’re going to discuss open source software. What is it, and how is it different from other types of software? In simple terms, open source software is a term for any program whose source code has been publicly released, allowing for others to modify it however they like.

Software Types

It’s easiest to understand open source software in the context of other types of software, so here’s a refresher in the other major types.

Licensed Software

Licensed software is any computer application that requires licensing to be used. This licensing can be as simple as purchasing a digital download code for a single computer, or it can be a complex, enterprise-wide licensing agreement. Nearly all licensed software must be purchased to be used legally. Microsoft Office has long been an example of licensed software.

Cloud or Subscription-Based Software

Technically a subset of licensed software, cloud or subscription-based software requires a recurring subscription-style payment. If your payment lapses, the software may become inoperable. Examples here include Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft’s newer offering, Office 365.

Freeware

Freeware is a broad term for software that’s distributed freely, with no expectation of payment for personal use. Install these at home as much as you like. Beware that some freeware is only free for personal use, though. If you want to use it in a corporate setting, you may need a license.

Open Source Software

Open source software takes the concept of freeware to the next level. To be considered open source, both the software and its source code must be freely available. Users are permitted (and even encouraged) to modify the source code to improve the software or to customize it for their own needs.

Open Source Certification

Open source as discussed above is a concept or philosophy. Developers who wish to release open source software with a sort of seal of approval can do so through the Open Source Initiative. This group offers a certification mark, Open Source (yes, it’s just the term we’ve been discussing, but with capital letters), which verifies that a piece of software meets certain qualifications.

To receive the Open Source designation, a piece of software must meet these two criteria.

• The software is available to anyone else, restriction free.
• The software’s source code is available for others to change and customize.

Additionally, provision is made so that the original creators can demand that future, customized versions of the software are clearly distinguished from the original, through naming or versioning.

Conclusion

By reading this tech blog post, you now understand what open source software is. If you’re wondering what it can do for your or your business, contact us today. We’re glad to help!

Firewalls were developed over thirty years ago and function as the first line of defense for many business networks. This piece of network equipment is a perimeter defense that determines whether packets can move into or out of the network. While the basic concept of a firewall is simple, the way that it performs this function and the features it offers continue to evolve based on current threats.

Types of Firewalls

Firewalls come in two major categories: hardware and software. The physical firewalls are network appliances that connect to the rest of the IT infrastructure so it’s able to monitor packets. There are several methods they can use to secure the network and assist with thwarting potential intruders.

Hardware Firewalls

Stateful

Stateful firewalls retain information about the connections being made. It offers good performance because this technology allows it to skip inspecting every single packet. Once it has inspected a connection, it allows it for subsequent packets.

Application-level

Application-level firewalls that are hardware based are designed to protect the application’s connections. They address common attack methods used on that type of application, such as stopping cross-site scripting for a web application.

Proxy

When someone thinks about a standard firewall, a proxy firewall is most likely what’s on their mind. It stands between a host device and the data source and inspects the packets that are sent between them. This type of firewall may not stand up to complex attacks due to its simplicity, but it masks a lot of the network information.

Circuit-level

This firewall is another basic one that focuses on checking the TCP handshake. It’s not resource intensive since it doesn’t look at the packet, but that does mean that it won’t protect against sophisticated attacks.

Next Generation

These firewalls have advanced features that give businesses more ways to stop malicious traffic from making it through the appliance. Some examples of these include deep packet inspection, checking attachments in sandboxes, and terminating encrypted traffic. Third-party data can be incorporated into the rules and filters of the firewall to improve protection against emerging threats. They can also incorporate technology that is found in other types of IT security hardware, such as intrusion detection. The drawback of this firewall type is that it can significantly slow down network traffic.

Software-based Firewalls

Virtual Appliance

This firewall is a software package that’s installed on the business network and does not rely on a hardware appliance for protecting traffic.

Application-level

Some applications have firewalls built into the software itself to act as a second layer of protection. Anything that gets through the physical firewall of the business network and reaches the application layer needs to go through another inspection. These firewalls focus on threats that are most common for that piece of software.

Cloud-based

A cloud-based firewall leverages cloud computing technology for the virtual appliance. Some advantages of a cloud firewall include the ability to scale quickly, high availability, and cost-efficiency. For organizations with limited IT budgets, using a cloud-based service can give them access to powerful features that they wouldn’t have access to without paying a substantial upfront hardware fee.

The right firewall for your organization depends on the typical threats that you face, the sensitivity of the information you’re protecting, and your performance requirements.

Regardless of who is taking care of your technology, it’s still your technology. If you’re planning on working with an outsourced IT partner, you’ll want to find out ahead of time if they intend to keep you in the loop, will be upfront with you about the work they do, and will help make your technology better instead of just keeping it going.

Check out this week’s Tech Tip for part two of our look at what you need to ask before outsourcing your IT support.

If you have questions, give me a call at (469) 635-5500 or email me at datamagic@datamagicinc.com.

Regards,

Chase

You likely spend a lot of your time using an internet browser at work. With so many hours spent online, it helps to know a few shortcuts and tips you can use to make your work more productive. Follow these tips and tricks to get the most out of your browsing experience.

Note: These tips and tricks are designed for use on Google Chrome, which has nearly two-thirds of the browser market share.

How Can I Customize My Browsing Experience?

Web browsers come with many great built-in features. However, you can customize your performance with extensions and plugins that make the browsing experience your own. There are extensions available to improve productivity, block ads, manage tabs and connect directly to other applications. Chrome makes it easy to manage these tools by typing chrome://plugins or chrome://extensions into your address bar.

What Do I Do About a Slow Network Connection?

To save RAM, be sure to install the Data Saver extension, which compresses and optimizes web pages before they load. Also, make sure you have the most current version of Chrome installed. Look for the vertical dots to the right of the address bar to turn from green to yellow to red to indicate how out-of-date your browser is. Go to the address bar, type in chrome://help and follow the prompts.

Can I Simplify Moving to Different Web Addresses?

Several years ago, Google made the address bar a far more powerful part of your browser. You can start typing in search terms in the address bar (known also as the Omnibox) and Google will display popular results. You can also type in a website or a portion of the website and find the most common results. There’s no need to type the “https://www.” portion of the web address in most cases.

How Can I Move Within a Web Page Faster?

If you’re on a page with lots of fields, use the Tab key to move quickly from one field to another. To move backward among fields, use Shift+Tab. A similar approach can be used to move from button to button (helpful if filling out an online form or survey). Click Tab or Shift+Tab to move among buttons, and use the space bar or hit enter to select. Here are a few other page navigation tricks:

• Press Alt+D or Ctrl+L to move your cursor to the address bar
• Hit the Ctrl key and + or – to increase or decrease the page text. Ctrl + 0 resets to the original
• F5 or Ctrl+R lets you refresh or reload the page
• Want to find text on the page? Hit Ctrl+F
• If you’re looking to open your bookmarks, press Ctrl+B

How Do I Maintain My Privacy?

There are several things to do to protect your privacy while browsing. The first is to use Chrome’s incognito mode. To open an incognito window, click on the three vertical dots or press Ctrl+Shift+N. The browser will not keep track of your browsing history or store any browsing cookies. You can also delete your browsing history by clicking on the three dots and selecting More tools > Clear browsing data.

Who Can Help Me Optimize My Technology?

Data Magic Computer Services is the leading provider of managed IT and security services for businesses in the metro Dallas area. To learn more about how Data Magic Computer Services can help your company get the most out of its technology investments, contact us today.

 

Life is extremely busy with people scheduling every moment of their day while still looking back and wondering where their month has gone. It’s all too easy to find yourself reviewing a 6-month plan only to find that you are seriously off-course. Focusing one day at a time can cause you to be short-sighted when it comes to achieving your long-term goals. A quick review of your monthly calendar helps ensure that you’re well on the way to meeting business — and personal — objectives.

Leverage Project Management Strategies

Most project managers realize the importance of scheduling regular project reviews where you focus not on the daily tasks, but on the distance, you have moved from the overall project perspective. You can leverage this same methodology when it comes to tackling your calendar! Looking at your calendar on a daily or even weekly basis gives you an idea of what you have to get through, but it doesn’t provide you with a holistic view of your month and your year. Breaking deliverables and goals down into monthly chunks lets you see results more quickly and provides ongoing motivation to stay the path.

Using the Right Tools for the Job

Keeping your calendar updated with all of your various home, family, personal and work obligations can be a chore, especially when you’re splitting childcare or after-school activity duties with your spouse, parents or friends. Outlook and your Google Calendar may be great for scheduling work items, but is your work calendar getting bogged down with non-work related tasks? This can make it extremely difficult for others to schedule meetings with you and to maintain visibility for crucial work projects and tasks.

Thinking Strategically

Do you have a 1-year, 5-year and 10-year plan? Breaking these plans down into bi-annual and quarterly chunks allows you to more accurately track where you are according to your plan. This also keeps you from getting to the end of a busy year and wondering what happened to all of your time! Bringing this type of strategic thinking into your calendar on a monthly basis assures that you’re setting aside a time that is just for you. Even if you only spend 15 minutes reviewing the next month on a Sunday afternoon, you will find that it was time well spent.

Don’t let yourself get tied down to the daily hassles of life that can keep you from meeting your long-term goals and objectives. You can even use your calendar to help schedule time for your monthly calendar review! Your future self thanks you.

Microsoft Office 365 has rolled out an impressive array of new features that business owners will appreciate. These range from handy mobile-to-PC interactions to intuitive, behind-the-scenes IT integrations to keep a business running smoothly. Here are some of the standout new additions to Office 365 that were specifically created with business managers in mind.

1. New Digital Pen Features

The Microsoft digital pen has some new tricks up its sleeve that make it easier than ever to edit your important documents. It’s like having an entire editing suite rolled into a single device, and it all but eliminates the need to type or use the mouse while editing. The digital pen lets you insert words or line breaks, split or change words, cross out paragraphs, circle text and leave detailed comments.

2. Embedded 3D Animations

3D animations can now be embedded directly into Word documents and PowerPoint slides with no coding required. Microsoft made this extremely easy to use: Insert a 3D model into the slide, select from a list of pre-built animations, click ‘Apply’ and the animation does its thing.

3. Blurred Background on Video Calls

Business managers who use a remote workforce will appreciate this feature. Video callers can now automatically blur out their backgrounds to minimize distractions and increase meeting productivity. No more worrying about video calls from the home office or a busy workplace — just blur it out.

4. Powerful PowerPoint Upgrades

This is a really cool feature for managers. Need a PowerPoint slide in a hurry? Office 365 now lets you draw your slides by hand on a tablet and convert your “chicken scratches” into a professionally-designed PowerPoint presentation in just a few minutes. PowerPoint now has digital design recommendations that it will make to recreate your sketches. This includes layouts, text suggestions and icons. The end result will look like you had the graphic design department laboring over it for hours.

5. Publish-to-Web Upgrades

Microsoft Office has allowed users to publish documents as web pages for years, but this feature just keeps getting better. Office 365 now allows users to publish docs as Sway websites by clicking ‘File’ and ‘Transform.’ It’s a big time-saving feature. It can also be used for publishing training documents, newsletters, pitch decks and product pages.

6. Compatibility Checks

This Office 365 addition allows you to make system upgrades without suffering any downtime from incompatibility issues. Microsoft’s most recent desktop application lets you check compatibility of apps before you run a system upgrade. Managers can save time and money, and keep things running smoothly by using this upgrade.

7. Robust Data Compliance

Office 365 has a long list of compliance certifications that are now directly integrated with the software. This is an incredibly helpful feature for public-private businesses, government organizations and non-profits that deal with a lot of regulatory compliance issues. For example, Office 365 now offers HIPAA and HITRUST CSF Certification for medical organizations, which allows them to remain security- and privacy-compliant in their documentation. Other certifications include AICPA Service Organization Control Reports, FedRAMP authorizations, FIPS 140-2 Cryptography, and much more. Microsoft also maintains a dedicated compliance team that monitors regulatory changes and quickly recommends changes to keep data compliance up-to-date.

8. Increased IT Management and Resolutions

Microsoft’s SharePoint Admin Center has some upgrades that IT departments will truly appreciate. The system now allows easier management of Office 365 group-connected sites and hubs. IT admins can now restrict access from non-compliant devices, automatically kick idle users out, and restrict or allow access from known IP addresses. The latest iteration also has a number of security upgrades and compliance upgrades.

These Office 365 upgrades were clearly designed from a business manager’s perspective. Microsoft has made the latest additions intuitive and simple to integrate in order to keep your business running as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Have you seen a new application — Chromium — suddenly appear on your computer? It’s likely that if you did not intentionally download it, the app is malware that should be removed immediately.

While Chromium is a legitimate product, hackers have been using it to deliver adware and potentially unwanted programs, redirect browsers to different websites and track Internet activity. The results of such unwanted software can range from minor irritation to serious privacy concerns, including identity theft.

What Is Chromium?

Chromium is an open-source browser application that was initially created by Google. Chromium is the source code for what became the Chrome browser. When Google released Chrome in 2008, it also released the Chromium code. The Chromium project is now managed by The Chromium Projects and is designed for developers to create a faster, more stable and safer form for web browsing.

Chrome itself still includes some of the Chromium source code along with proprietary features, such as automatic updates. Google owns and manages the product, which is by far the most popular browser worldwide, with 62.5 percent of the market share as of February 2019.

Why Is Chromium Popular with Hackers?

Because it’s an open-source product, Chromium is vulnerable to misuse. Browser hijackers are a type of malware that makes changes to a user’s browser settings without their knowledge or consent. Most users unintentionally download hijacking malware when clicking through online ads or when downloading or purchasing other software.

How Does Malware Chromium Work?

The malware Chromium app uses a virtual layer to push ads or redirect browsers to e-commerce websites. Other types can direct users to dangerous, malicious websites that can themselves contain infectious viruses and programs.

What’s worse is that the bad Chromium browsers track your browser activity and can grab browsing data, including personally identifying information, passwords and financial data such as credit card numbers and bank account numbers. The hackers then sell this information to third parties, who often use it illegally. This activity can mean privacy breaches, unwanted use of cards and accounts, and identity theft.

There are many different Chromium-based browser applications that are dubious, despite appearing to be legitimate. Usually, these apps claim to improve browsing speed and security and boast of having new features that other browsers lack. These claims lure users into a false sense of security and invite downloads that cause trouble. These questionable app names include BeagleBrowser, BrowserAir, Chedot, eFast, Fusion, MyBrowser, Olcinium, Qword, Torch and Tortuga, among others.

How Is Chromium Malware Installed?

Often, these rogue programs are part of the Custom or Advanced settings of an app. The most common victims of these unwanted applications are users who hastily download software and install it quickly without reviewing each step. To avoid these inadvertent downloads, it’s important to pay attention during download and installation steps. Be wary of any software that is bundled with other programs and never accept offers to install third-party programs.

How Do I Uninstall Rogue Chromium Browsers?

There are several step-by-step guides online to show how to remove the malware, do thorough scans of your computer for rogue files and registry keys, and clean and reset browsers. The steps are very specific to your operating system and browsers. Two good online guides are here and here.

Being aware of types of malware, how they infect your computer and what they do can help prevent you or your employees from the frustration, time and irritation of fake Chromium browsers.