Getting the Most from IT Support Dollars

Within the current landscape of today’s ongoing data theft activities a significant loss could be catastrophic to small businesses. Where large enterprises can attempt to ride the wave until the discovery of a loss is forgotten, small businesses may not have the liquid capital or extensive credit to fund the wait. Therefore, proper investments to protect your business sensitive data are often well worth the expenditure. This is especially true as it often consists of attention to detail and time.

We are not going to get into the deeper aspects of IT Security as that ends up being somewhat unique to each organization in knowing how to best protect different types of data. It also requires an assessment of overall risk along with evaluations of specific business processes to ensure the security model allows for the business to still run efficiently and effectively. What we will outline are the high level concerns with both inadequately protecting and over protecting your data.
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Protect Your Photos in the Cloud

One of the most emotionally painful stories to here for a family is to hear a recollection of fond memories only to here the photos that captured them for eternity have been lost. For many families of previous generations this was common to hear of books of printed photos lost in house fires, due to water damage, or just accidentally thrown away. The digital age changed that for everyone.

For current generations, however, you hear very similar stories, but with new age reasons such hard drives crashes, corrupted or damaged storage, or a dead iPod. With digital photography cutting the costs to take pictures, current day losses are much greater because we have many more photos than anyone could have afforded to shoot in the past. The evolution of the digital age has once again changed things for us.
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Music in the Cloud

In discussing today’s technology you can rarely escape the word cloud entering the conversation. However, once it does the big divide begins to happen in those that are ready to embrace and those that are reasonably reluctant. Are we ready to put what we consider valuable into a place of uncertainty?

For those that are still worried about what the cloud will offer from a stability and reliability standpoint there is at least a place to start. With Google and Amazon being the two biggest providers of cloud at this particular point in time, we have already entrusted much of our faith in these two giants. Whether you are a Google Apps user or have relied on Amazon to store your personal information for the most convenient checkout possible the road to the dependence and trust in the cloud has begun.
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VOIPo Voice Over IP Service

Well, it has been several months since I first took the plunge and rid myself of the the analog line and moved strictly to VOIP service. I had considered it for years, but several little things kept me paying over $50 per month for analog service with unlimited long distance.

Not everything is interoperable with VOIP. Most things can work over the digital line, but items like fax machines, dial out modems for services like the proprietary DirecTV Tivo, and the like don’t really get along without outright modification or hours upon hours of tweaking. And don’t think you will get any friendly support from either your VOIP provider or DirecTV.

With all of that said, I won’t ever be going back! After a long search I chose VOIPo. VOIPo is backended by one of the largest hosting providers in the world, Hostgator. The founder of VOIPo is an ex-partner of Hostgator and therefore has a solid relationship with the backbone of his service. This is always important.
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