Washington Works Blog

Owning any piece of technology in today’s day and age is like a playing with fire. While it’s a great tool that has allowed civilization to grow and make great strides toward a better future, there’s also significant risk involved with owning such an expensive piece of technology. If it breaks down on you, you’ll be left with both a dent in your pocket and possibly even a chunk of your data missing. Here are three ways that even the average PC user can improve the performance of their technology and extend its life cycle considerably.

The branch of malware known as Ghost Push now has a new component, Gooligan, and it certainly lives up to its name. Google was struck by an attack that infected over one million Android users, with over 13,000 additional devices adding to that total on a daily basis.

Computing systems are always vulnerable to some obscure hack or another, and researchers are always trying to find ways to shore them up and prevent future attacks. One previously undiscovered hack literally sounds far-fetched. It uses the sounds that your hard drive makes to help a hacker steal data from your machine, including encryption keys designed to keep your data safe and secure.

Cell phones: as much as they’re needed for business purposes, there are definitely times that they shouldn’t ring and interrupt what is going on around you. However, turning a phone’s volume up or down isn’t always the first thing on a user’s mind. Fortunately for Android users, it no longer has to be.

Technology is a critical component of the modern office, but it’s only a matter of time until it breaks down and leaves you in a bind. In a way, it’s a lot like owning a vehicle. You need it to get from Point A to Point B, but when it doesn’t work properly, it winds up costing you an arm and a leg. Worse yet, extended periods of not having transportation make it difficult to live life and go to work.

All businesses need to use some sort of technology to keep their operations moving forward. Yet, it’s often difficult to gauge how new solutions will function with your current systems. You need to take your options into careful consideration before making such an important choice, and only an analysis of your current setup will help you ensure the success of your new technology.

It’s quite possibly the most infamous screen image in computing: the Blue Screen of Death. Encountering this screen will often cause two thoughts to run through a user’s mind: what just happened, and how can I fix it?

Social media is a great way for organizations to share information about their products and services, but while it’s great for those who want to reach a new audience, it’s also exposing you to another audience that you may not want to be familiar with: hackers. Believe it or not, there are hackers who are trying to take advantage of the personal information you share on your social media accounts.

If your business is still on the fence about implementing a cloud solution, we don’t blame you. Moving to the cloud can be a daunting task, and you don’t want to jump the gun and make such a big decision on a whim. It’s important to understand why businesses move their data to the cloud in the first place, as well as what the different types of cloud solutions are and what they can offer your unique business model.

So you’ve outgrown your office space and need to relocate. Congratulations on reaching this milestone with your business, but do you know what to look for in a new building? Finding the perfect setup can be daunting, especially if you don’t know what to look for. To help you out, here are four tips to make your transition easier.

Analytics play a major role in today’s business world, but they are also pivotal to the development of artificial intelligence systems. One of the expected qualities of AI is machine learning, the ability for a system to identify and learn from trends. Yet, this extremely practical aspect of artificially intelligent systems may have its uses in a business setting.

Email is a central part of any functional modern office, but if you aren’t proactive in keeping your inbox under control, you could be wasting time on unnecessary messages or spam. If you want to get the most out of your workday, it’s imperative that you take back control of your business email inbox. Here are three ways that yourself and your employees can clean up your inboxes and waste less time throughout the work day.

The busy business owner rarely has time to indulge in extracurricular activities, but there are still ways that you can make progress--even when you’re not actually in the office or working on important plans, there’s still the opportunity for self-improvement. One way that you can do this is by being well-read. In fact, science has practically proven that reading literary fiction is just as beneficial for your professional development as other seemingly more practical works.

Many websites and services now have apps that they use to further distribute their solutions via smartphone. However, when it comes to your business’s sensitive information, which is more secure: the mobile app, or the web-based client? Researchers from Northeastern University performed a study that asked this question, and the results might shock you.

Botnets are proving to be a difficult hurdle for security professionals, and it’s easy to understand why. Distributed Denial of Service attacks that can knock down servers or services, as well as hordes of remote-controlled zombie computers, are two of the most dangerous ways that hackers use botnets to serve their purposes. What can you do to protect your business from botnets?

When you’re planning your business’s technology ventures, how often does your IT budget become a major deciding factor? Chances are that it clings to you like a ball and chain. Wouldn’t it be nice to free yourself from something so limiting? We’ve compiled three ways that you can take some of the strain off of your IT budget.

Big data is a trend that’s gaining traction in the business environment. By taking a close look at the data that you collect, and identifying trends, you can potentially predict how your business can perform, and how your clients will respond to your products or services. Yet, there are two major questions that you need to ask: how are you going to use this data, and is the data that you’ve collected specifically to achieve that goal?

Hackers are always getting their hands into sticky situations, but one of the hot topics in world politics--the 2016 United States presidential election--is one of the nastier ones in recent years. In the past few months alone, hackers have reportedly breached not only the Democratic National Committee, but have also infiltrated at least two state election databases.

When Facebook released its Messenger app in 2011, it was primarily designed as a way for users to chat with each other outside of the main Facebook app. Since then, Facebook has added a plethora of new features and upgrades to Messenger, making it a tool that may have what it takes to meet the needs of your business.

Halloween is a time when people of all ages dress up as something spooky that they’re really not. For the scariest of hackers, every day is like a reverse Halloween as they try to scam victims by pretending to be someone safe and trustworthy--a persona that they’re really not. This Halloween, don’t get tricked by the haunted hack!