One question that is often asked is how often should you replace your computer?

The average lifespan of a computer is 3 to 5 years. Replacing a laptop should be done every 3-4 years and replacing a desktop computer should be done every 5 years. 

Of course you don’t always to have replace your computers. Upgrading them can save you money and time. If you notice any of your computers are not as fast or responsive as they used to be. Its time to think about replacing them or upgrading them.

When replacing a computer you have to be mindful of the following: 

Buy computers that your staff is already used to, as it will be easier to setup and maintain them. You can’t afford to have your staff spending time learning how to use their new computer.

Only buy computers that are designed to do what you want them to. Never buy computers designed for casual use in the home as they are not designed for the wear and tear associated with office use. Buy computers specifically made for business use.

When buying a new computer, hard disk space is less of a priority, as you will be using cloud storage and probably using cloud based applications. Memory and your computers processor will be much more important as they determine how fast your computer will run.   

When upgrading a computer you have to be mindful of the following:

Sometimes you only need to add more memory or a Solid State Drive to have your computer running fast again.

If you want to upgrade your computers processor this can be easily done but you might have to also upgrade motherboard.

If your graphics card is no longer up to doing what it is supposed to do, then you can easily replace it with a new one.

Of course, there is one important thing that you have to take note off. When Microsoft released Windows 10, they said they would not be releasing any new versions of Windows but that you will be getting updates instead. These updates could make your computer obsolete as it no longer meets the specification needed to run Windows 10. 

iPing provides managed services and IT services and we can help provide you with an overview of your current I.T. infrastructure, and what needs to be replaced or upgraded. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.

What technology you should be looking at? - Technology is always improving and becoming cheaper to buy and implement. It also raises your productivity too. So, with this in mind, isn’t time you take a look at the current and new technologies that you should be using.

Well first of, you have to ask yourself the following questions:

Do we need to be using collaboration tools?

Are internal emails getting lost, because they get hidden in our daily emails?

Are we making a lot of conference calls?

Should we take full advantage of the mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) that we are using?

Has the time come for us to be actively encourage remote working?

Should we be to revising our annual I.T. budget? 

Let’s take a look at each question and see how they apply to you. 

Internal emails, can easily get lost in your inbox. Especially if you are receiving lots of emails daily. If you are dealing with customers who are emailing you daily, they will naturally get top priority as you have to look after them. Internal emails besides getting easily lost or misplaced, also fall foul of your I.T. firewall. This means certain attachments, like demo software or images, could be blocked. The collaboration tools mentioned above will make sure this is never an issue.

Conference calls are very useful as some of your team members or clients based elsewhere can have a productive meeting with you. Clients no longer have to travel to meet you and you don’t have to travel to meet them. Team members in different offices/places don’t have to meet face to face. Your company and your clients will save a lot on travel expenses.

Mobile devices allow us to be contactable 24x7 where ever we are. They also allow you to use your favourite collaboration or SaaS tools and to respond in real time. All of your favourite software such as Office 365, Salesforce, Slack and Google Docs and Drive, can be used on your smartphones and tablets. Ensuring that you don’t have to be at your desk or computer to get any work done. 

Remote working is worth looking into if you have employees facing long daily commutes to and from work. Certain days of the week could be set aside for remote working. The hours you save from commuting can be used in a more productive way. The software mentioned above can be used on your laptop or mobile devices. All you will need is an internet connection and you are good to go. 

Your annual I.T. budget might be out of date as it is based on old work practices. A good example of this is if you are going more paperless. Less printer ink and toner cartridges will be used. The money saved can be invested in collaborations tools or conference call software. So by cutting the spending on what you don’t need you can focus your budget towards what you do need.  iPing provides managed services and IT services and we can help provide you with an overview of what current and future technologies suit your business best. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.

One of the main benefits of using Office 365 Enterprise is the extra security benefits that you get. The typical number of Office 365 Enterprise users would start at around 30 and go into the hundreds or thousands. With that amount of users, data security will be of the upmost importance. Office 365 Enterprise comes with Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection. All for an extra monthly fee which will vary according to which of the 3 versions you subscribe to. 

Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) protects your business against malicious threats. These may come from email messages, links (URL’s) and collaboration tools.

With ATP you can setup 4 different threat protection policies. These will allow you to decide the appropriate level of protection for your organisation.

These policies are:

• ATP Safe Attachments uses zero-day protection to check all incoming email attachments with the help of machine learning and analysis techniques. 
• ATP Safe Links checks that all URL’s in emails and office files are not malicious and any found blocked are automatically.
• ATP for SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams allows users in your organisation to collaborate and share files. By finding and blocking malicious files collaboration has become a lot safer.
• ATP anti-phishing protection uses machine learning and advanced impersonation detection algorithms help prevent phishing attacks.

ATP gives you the ability to:

View reports in real-time to monitor ATP performance in your organisation

Use leading edge tools that give you threat investigation and response capabilities to investigate, understand, simulate, and prevent threats.

Use automated investigation and response capabilities which saves time investigating and reducing the risks of threats. 

Which of the above ATP features you can avail off depends on which of the 3 versions that you subscribe to.

If you need some help securing your Office 365 infrastructure iPing can help.

iPing provides managed services and IT services and we can help provide you with an overview of Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection and which version will suit your business best. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.

It’s time to update your Microsoft Office package. And if you are a small business you will end up probably buying Microsoft Office 2019. But as there are 2 versions available Which one do you go for?

The main reasons why you are buying Microsoft Office 2019 is because you are only paying a one-off fee and because you are not interested in getting regular updates with new features. In fact, the only updates you will be getting is security updates. Which also means you don’t have to worry about having to learn more about the new regular updates.

Microsoft Office 2019 is available in 2 different versions. But which one is the best one for you? And is it worth paying over €200 extra for the second version? 

Office Home and Business 2019

It comes with: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook for 1 PC or Mac.
You only get security updates.
You can’t update to the latest versions of the apps which are only available as desktop apps.
The cost is €243.09 + VAT.

Office Professional 2019

It comes with: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access for 1 PC or Mac.
You only get security updates.
You can’t update to the latest versions of the apps which are only available as desktop apps.
The cost is €470.73 + VAT.

As you can see Microsoft Office 2019 is not suited to somebody who wants multiple licenses. As you end up paying more in the short term, and if you are not fully using mobile devices you will only need the desktop version of Office. If you don’t need or plan on using Publisher of Access why pay over €220 for the privilege and as for Office 365 that’s another blog post.  

iPing provide managed services and IT services and we can help provide you with an overview of Microsoft Office 2019 and which version will suit your business best. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.

Since GDPR came into law last year, people have been wondering should their laptops be encrypted, and if they are not encrypted would they be in breach of GDPR. Well, it turns out that there are no explicit encryption requirements in GDPR. But you are required to enforce security safeguards, and GDPR also mentions that encryption can be used with any personal data. 

So what is encryption?

Encryption is a method of data protection that converts data from a readable format to an encoded version. This can then only be decoded and read if the correct encryption key is used.

How does encryption work?

Encryption works by taking unencrypted data and then using an encryption algorithm and an encryption key to create ciphertext. Which can only be viewed in its original format when it is decrypted with the correct encryption key.  

Why should you consider encryption?

Since your data will be encrypted, you are ensuring that if your laptop is lost or stolen any data on it can’t be accessed. Under GDPR if you are affected by a data breach you have 72 hours to notify all your affected customer. This can be tricky if the data breach takes place on a bank holiday weekend. Because you have encrypted your data you have technically not suffered a data breach. As your data can’t be read you don’t have to notify your customers.

What do you do once you have installed encryption?

Once you have installed encryption on your laptop, you have to have regular check-up’s to ensure that encryption is still in place. Last year a laptop used by one of Eir’s staff got stolen, resulting in 37,000 customers having their data compromised. The laptop’s operating system Window’s 10 had recently installed an update which disabled the laptop’s encryption.

iPing provide managed services and IT services. We can help provide you with an overview of how you can go about encrypting your laptops or I.T. infrastructure. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.

Just to let everyone know that after eight years providing IT Support to the greater Dublin area from Lad Lane we have now moved.

IT Services In Dublin

Our new location is still in Dublin 2 and we are excited to keep providing Managed IT Services to all our clients from our new office on Baggot Street.

Please update your records to reflect the new address 126 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, D02 X934.

The end of Windows 7 - It seems like only yesterday that users of computers running Windows XP had to upgrade their operating system. And possibly their computers. As Microsoft was ending support for Windows XP. That scenario will soon come to pass again. When users of Windows 7 will be faced with Microsoft ending support in January 2020.

If you have Windows 7 Enterprise or Windows 7 Pro Microsoft will provide patches/updates until 2023. But if you are using Windows 7 Home edition then you are out of luck. As Microsoft won’t be providing any patches/updates and you will have to migrate to Windows 10. Microsoft has yet to announce the cost of the updates. And if you have to pay to update a lot of computers then it won’t be cheap.

What my Managed Service Provider Should Do

So what do you do if you have custom software and or hardware that only works with Windows 7?

You will have to replace your hardware and software as you prepare to move to Windows 10. But if you have Windows 7 Enterprise or Windows 7 Pro. You will have a bit longer to prepare for the move. The extra years you have to prepare for your move to Windows 10 will come in very handy. Especially if you have to replace your custom software. 

What happens if you dont migrate to Windows 10

Well, you can pay Microsoft for 3 years of patches/updates. If you can afford to and if your version of Windows 7 allows this. If you can’t do this because of the costs involved. Or because your Windows 7 is the Home edition version. You will be in breach of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation )which came into law on May 25th2018. Requiring you to be using up to date computers that are fully patched.    

It’s not all bad news as there is something positive to come out of this. Once you migrate to Windows 10. All updates will be done via the cloud. As Windows 10 will never be replaced by Microsoft. 

More information on Windows

If you are looking for more information from Microsoft on Windows 7 End Of Life then here is a great place to start!

If you want to buy a copy of Windows 10 you can contact iPing and we can help or you can go direct to Microsoft here. We advise on the first option as we can help with the upgrade and migration!

iPing provide managed services and IT services. We can help provide you with an overview of how you can go about upgrading your computers or I.T. infrastructure to Windows 10. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.

Secure Your Office 365 Email - Starting to see a few phishing messages coming from offlce.com (*Note the small L and not a small I*)

Please be so vigilant if you are ever verifying your email username and password. This is usually a scam just about to happen.

Also turn on your email 2 factor authentication. If you need help with securing your email give iPing a shout on 01 5241350.

If you have any questions about your companies managed services we can also help.

We thought we would take a little break from IT support and Managed Services and roll in on one of the most talked about technologies over the past few years, blockchain. When you mention blockchain it cryptocurrencies namely Bitcoin and Ethereum comes to mind. But blockchain is more than just Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as it will totally change the way that you do business.

So, what exactly is blockchain?

Well IBM state “A blockchain, as the name implies, is a chain of digital “blocks” that contain records of transactions. Each block is connected to all the blocks before and after it. This makes it difficult to tamper with a single record because a hacker would need to change the block containing that record as well as those linked to it to avoid detection. This alone might not seem like much of a deterrence, but blockchain has some other inherent characteristics that provide additional means of security.”

How can Blockchain change the way you do business?

Bitcoin was the first blockchain application that allows a network of users perform transactions without requiring the trust of anyone on the network or a third party. As everything is encrypted, if anyone tampers with the blockchain it will be immediately noticed. The encryption and trust parts of bitcoin are what make blockchain essential for your business as it offers you a secure way to store data or process payments.

Blockchain allows you to break up data into little pieces (like a jigsaw), and encrypt the data so that only you have access to it. These little pieces can be stored all over the world in a similar way to torrents, which means you are not relying on one storage space. You can also save a cryptographic signature of a document or file on a blockchain, which will allow you to ensure that any file has not been changed/edited and you won’t have to save the entire document or file on the blockchain.

If you want to make sure that certain transactions happen once certain conditions are met blockchain allows you to do this with smart contracts. For example, if you are sharing business contracts or accounts with a client, smart contracts will allow you to share documents that are read only and can only be viewed online, thus ensuring that no changes can be made to the documents and that they also can’t be leaked.

Blockchain is just starting to take off, and it will be a couple of years before its becomes as ubiquitous as the cloud. Every day more and more applications are being made for blockchain and more and more businesses are starting to use it. So isn’t it time you jumped on the band wagon?

iPing provides managed services and IT services and we can help provide you with an overview of what blockchain can do for you. So, if you need some help with the above please contact us or give us a call on 01 5241350.