Washington Works Blog

Imagine that your screen flashes a devastating message: your critical data is encrypted, and you face a massive ransom demand. Your operation grinds to a halt. This isn't just an enterprise problem; it's the harsh reality for businesses of all sizes.

Cyber threats don't discriminate. Your small or mid-sized business is a prime target.

You likely use basic shortcuts like cut, copy, and paste every day. While essential, these are just the foundation. To truly maximize your productivity and demonstrate peak efficiency, mastering a few advanced keyboard shortcuts is key.

Each shortcut may only save a few seconds, but over time, these moments accumulate into significant time savings. Ready to move beyond the basics?

Good luck going about your day without hearing how AI is changing the workplace as we know it; let alone running a business without considering its useful applications. While you might feel pressured to adopt AI, we want to urge you to think before you act. Doing so could prevent you from investing money into a solution that doesn’t help your business in the slightest.

To find out if AI is an appropriate next step for your business, consider these steps:

With over $101 million in jewelry stolen, the recent Louvre heist was a costly success for criminals. However, French publications suggest the thieves may have encountered less resistance than an organization of the museum's stature should provide, thanks to a documented history of severe cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

This history offers a crucial lesson for all businesses: Foundational security flaws can undermine even the most complex physical protections. Let's examine the documented oversights and what they imply about the museum's current security posture.

Open your Profit & Loss statement. I'm willing to bet that the IT line is sitting squarely in the expense column, right next to rent, electricity, and paper towels.

For many business owners, IT is seen as a necessary evil; a cost center, a black hole they just have to throw money into. When you see a technology bill, you get that double-take and cringe. Your primary goal is to minimize this cost; often to the point of avoidance.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved from science fiction to a daily reality, fundamentally reshaping how we work and communicate. Yet, behind every groundbreaking AI application lies massive infrastructure in the form of data centers. These sprawling facilities, packed with servers, storage, and networking equipment, aren't just filing cabinets for data; they are the engines that make AI possible. Today, we are going to look at the data center and the pros and cons society will see from the expansion of AI.

How do you approach decision-making for your business? While it might be tempting to forego critical thought and rely on your gut instinct for major decisions, we urge you to instead follow the data and observe what it’s trying to tell you. If data analysis sounds like pulling teeth, however, you’ll be relieved to know that AI tools have made it significantly easier to analyze large amounts of data and make more informed decisions.

The shift to remote work has transformed business, yet the virtual meeting remains a point of friction. A poorly executed remote meeting isn't just a time-waster; it drains productivity and damages company culture.

With the right strategy and tools, your remote meetings can be even more effective and engaging than in-person ones.

If you’ve played with AI for any purpose, but particularly for your business’ benefit, you may have found your results less than impressive. One of the biggest challenges of working with artificial intelligence is our assumption that our instructions are sufficient, even when they are vague or non-specific.

A prompt of this caliber will not produce the quality responses that you need. Instead, you need to use “prompt engineering” to come up with a request that will. Fortunately, you can improve your prompts considerably by simply remembering three things.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is or which industry you fall into; communication is always going to be a major pain point that influences your technology investments. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, that is a strategic and sound upgrade from your traditional telephone solution, and it’s one that can transform your communication infrastructure for the better.

Here are three reasons why you should consider a VoIP phone system today.

How effectively can you multitask in the office? Are you known to have multiple windows and tabs open at any given time? With so many windows, applications, and tabs cluttering your brain, it helps to have tricks to keep them all in line. Using Smart windows (or Snap windows), you can place two or more side-by-side to clear things up a bit and make working in multiple apps or windows easier than ever.

When was the last time you actually powered down your Android smartphone and gave it a much-needed restart? Chances are you go way too long in between restarts, but what if the reason you haven’t done so recently is because you can’t? Whether it’s wear and tear on your power button or some other issue, it’s good to have alternative ways to restart your Android operating system. Today, we want to show you how.

Your business has a specific goal in mind, whether that’s providing customers with a product or providing them with a service. On the back end of that goal is a lot of administrative work, the stuff that happens behind the scenes to facilitate that goal. Artificial intelligence is a tool that can help your business be more efficient and effective with this behind-the-scenes work, and we’ll show you how.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, can be found in pretty much every facet of business these days, and CIOs are more tempted than ever to use innovative AI tools. There are plenty of reasons: they can increase efficiency and do the mundane things that need to be done, but are more expensive. AI is more than just for generative content; strategic implementation means implementing the right tools for your business and taking action in a calculated manner.

Today, we want to explore the dangers of rushed adoption and why it’s important to carefully consider your business’ use of AI. The consequences of not doing so can be dangerous, to say the least.

That little scrolly wheel on your mouse packs a lot of functionality that you might not have realized. Today, we want to break down some of the neat tricks you can pull off through the use of the mouse wheel. You might be surprised by how much the mouse wheel helps you navigate pages, view content, and so much more.

Whatever type of business you operate, you likely do so with the intention of assisting your clients, customers, or patrons with a specific goal. It isn’t as though you started a business because you wanted to do all the administrative work… right?

Fortunately, modern technology offers a way out, especially now that artificial intelligence is readily available. Let’s go over three ways that AI could help do the busy work on your behalf, and touch on just how much it could wind up saving you.

Ah, the IT budget. So crucial, yet so stressful at the same time. It doesn’t have to be! You too can get your IT budget under control, and all it takes is keeping the following in mind. We’ll look into why you should have an IT roadmap, how your business can minimize downtime, and how you can strategically outsource your IT to ensure your budget remains in control at all times.

Your network powers your business, so it makes sense that you would want to treat your networking hardware with the respect it deserves. Today, we want to explore some of the common networking solutions out there and how easy it can be to neglect them after the initial setup. Furthermore, we want to emphasize the importance of treating your networking as a priority; remember, your business runs on its network, and if it’s not performing well, all other areas of your business will suffer.

What if we told you that not all VPNs were created equal? What if we said that some are meant to be used by consumers, while others are meant to be used for businesses that need to keep data secure while out of the office? Today, we want to clear up some misconceptions about what virtual private networks do, how they work, and what they actually protect you from—as well as how you can get started with a business-grade VPN today.

Email is necessary for your business to function, but it’s far from a perfect solution. In fact, you might experience all kinds of issues with it that can eat into your company’s productivity and put it at risk in more ways than one. We’re going to demystify two of the major problems that businesses experience with email so you can hopefully get your business back on track.