Washington Works Blog

One of the most high-profile hacking attacks in the United States struck last year when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was breached. 464,000 Social Security numbers were swiped; enough to file 101,000 tax returns using false personal identification numbers. Every organization can learn how to better protect themselves during tax return season, especially since you have so much on the line every year.

For the modern business it’s important to have software that is both simple to use and powerful enough to meet your needs. Nowadays, there are cloud-based platforms that come with storage, communication options, and many of the enterprise-level productivity applications that drive your organization’s productivity. Two of these, Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s G-Suite bring substantial value and flexibility to the table where there was once only expense.

Whether you are looking to prevent theft, curb employee time-wasting, or get a handle on workplace efficiency, security cameras are a solution that prevents and protects you from a wide variety of issues.

You might use the Internet and connected technology for most parts of your life, but do you understand the finer details of how these devices work? How do they receive information that is stored so far away, perhaps on the other side of the planet? This is done via a web server, and it’s a fascinating piece of technology!

Every business owner is painfully aware of how much their mission-critical software costs them. Yet, one metric that eludes many managers and CIOs alike is just how much value they’re getting from their software. Thanks to the cloud, assigning value to software and making decisions about enterprise technology accordingly, is easier than ever before!

What happens when you lock your Windows 10 PC? Unless you’ve changed your lock screen settings, you’re greeted with a dynamic background image that changes every day or so. Sometimes, Windows will show you an image that’s so good that you’ll want to download it so you can look at it more. But how does one go about this? For this week’s tip, we’ll show you how!

Business use IT more today than ever before, and this has led business owners, CIOs and IT managers to constantly search for ways to deliver organizational profitability through technology. They do this by attempting, sometimes futilely, to pinpoint issues with their overall business strategy and practices while discovering technology solutions that will help mitigate these problems. Typically, if an IT manager speculates that a technology implementation will reduce costs or improve productivity, those solutions find a way to be implemented.

Even webcams are susceptible to infestation from RATs, though they may not be the same creatures that haunt subway tunnels or dank basements. Remote Access Tools can be troublesome and, in some cases, invasive. RATs can be used to remotely access a computer and perform any number of functions, including turning on a device’s webcam.

Meetings: they’re known in the business world as a necessary evil. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. With a few adjustments, you can create the ideal conditions for effective and efficient meetings.

Though network security is a necessity, it’s difficult to plan for every single possibility. Small and medium-sized businesses have trouble accounting for the many threats that lurk on the Internet, as security often requires a professional’s touch. As experts ourselves, we’ll discuss the many security solutions available to your organization, as well as what your best option is.

Let’s say that you're on a business trip. As you travel, you decide you may as well get a bit of work done. You pull out your laptop and are pecking away, and that’s when you notice a growing feeling of nausea rising in your stomach. It gets so bad that you finally have to put the laptop away, having accomplished relatively little, before you are sick.

Fact: There’s a shortage in the IT skills market. Yet, businesses now have more opportunity than ever to make up for this shortage. A simple solution is to outsource your IT services to a managed service provider. You might find that it’s a great way to save time and revenue on a department that’s becoming increasingly difficult to hire for. Here are three reasons why outsourced IT services can resolve the shortage of IT talent.

2016 saw many notorious data breaches, along with developments in malware and other threats to security. It’s always helpful to reflect on these developments so that the knowledge can be used in the future to aid in developing new strategies for taking on the latest threats. How will your business learn from the mistakes of others in 2017?

The cloud lets your business share files easily and efficiently, but regardless of how useful this feature is, you need to make sure that your team understands how and why they’re given access to certain files. Giving the freedom to share files is great, but it can quickly become a hindrance when you have inexperienced users doing the sharing. Be sure to take these three risks into account before handing over the keys to your business’s file sharing.

Your workstation is equipped with all of your necessary software solutions, but sometimes it can be challenging to find a specific app. If you want to see a list of all applications on your device, Windows 10 makes it easy. The key to doing so lies in the Start menu.

In both the home and the business, security cameras are becoming more and more commonplace as a means of preserving security. However, some malware can turn these devices, and others, into cyber security threats.

How many people do you know that can be productive for 8 hours, or more, a day? It’s difficult for the average worker to do this, as their body needs time to relax and recover from the duress of the workday. Thankfully, new technologies provide some semblance of reprieve for office workers in the form of improving the way that they delegate and spend their breaks.

One of the most effective methods to boost employee productivity is to encourage your workforce to work together in order to achieve their goals. Workplace collaboration allows multiple employees to combine their efforts and energies into a common project, adding value to the final product and often completing it more quickly. The benefits don’t end there, either. Here are some of the other advantages gained by encouraging collaboration among your workforce.

It can be easy to underestimate the importance of maintaining permissions on your network. In fact, sometimes it takes a good dose of misfortune to present the consequences of unchecked access to your network. This time, the misfortune befell PA Online, an Internet service provider located in Pennsylvania.

Data might be the most important aspect of your organization, but how well do you protect it throughout your network? Every organization has data like personally identifiable information and financial credentials stashed away somewhere on the network, so security isn’t something that you can ignore. One of the best ways you can safeguard your data is through the use of encryption.