We were so excited to celebrate Pi Day in person this year, after having to get creative last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pi day is on March 14th, 3.14, to celebrate the first three numbers of the mathematical constant Pi (π). It is a great excuse to enjoy the different varieties of pie. This year eight team members from Simplex-IT gathered fresh pies from Gardner Pies and hand-delivered them to our clients across northeast Ohio.

So you’re the internal IT Person and you’re expected to know everything about MS 365, I mean Office 365, I mean Windows 365…you get the idea, right?

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website that you could go to and be able to really dig deep into the features and specifics of the various 365 subscriptions? And I’m not talking about a Microsoft site either! Ooh, and compare them against one another? Maybe really figure out what you need?

Zero Trust World was an excellent conference and it’s been great getting back out there with peers in the industry after 2 years of virtual conference.

I had a chance to catch up with some of our amazing partners (looking at you Liongard and CompTIA) but also got to meet plenty of new folks. I’m excited to spend more time looking into their solutions later this year.

So if your country’s being attacked, invaded, and essentially just under siege, who are you going to call, Microsoft?

I want to call your attention to something that’s going on in terms of the Russian invasion and attacks on Ukraine that really brought Microsoft front and center. And this information is taken from primarily a post from Brad Smith, President and Vice-chair of Microsoft who talks about the roles that Microsoft played and it’s a pretty cool story actually.

Apparently, I want to buy cars in England, I want to sign up for anything that moves, and I want to have meetings with lots of people, or are these email scams?

I’ve noticed recently that there’s a significant increase in companies that are claiming that I’ve signed up for their services, even if it’s a 30 day demo or the like, and if I just click here I’ll finish setting up my demo. Problem is I haven’t heard of any of these guys.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of 100 battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. And if you know neither the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The reason I’m bringing it up is you’re the leader of an organization and you need to know what the bad guys are trying to do.

Trust me. No two words have such a wide array of implications. It’s the punchline of a joke. An appeal for help. An appeal to help. But here’s my question. What kind of trusts are there? And do we get them mixed up?

Computers are becoming more and more interactive every day, from video games giving you an ego boost by telling you, “You’re the hero of Gandor”, to your smart devices cheering you up when you’re feeling down. “Hey phone, make me feel better.” Haha, time well spent, thank you phone. But could the future of psychology be actually artificial?

So you’re the CEO of an organization, small, medium business and you’ve got internal IT people and they’re ok but they need some help. Co-Managed IT Services may be the right fit. Or maybe not?

What I want to talk about here is really the 3 types of Co-Managed IT services. And by that I mean things that are going to help or assist an organization that still wants to hold on to their internal IT people.

So, it’s your responsibility to continually improve your value proposition to your clients. Whether it be improvements to your product, service, delivery, or experience. Guess what? So do the bad guys.

And they’re taking a page out of our book.

No, these are not people trying to put chips into your bloodstream! (Gurh!)

The CIA Triad is actually a model that we use to communicate effectively, core bottom line cyber security concepts to people who aren’t cyber security experts. The CIA in this case stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, & Availability.

There’s a price increase for your Microsoft 365 licensing coming in March. Now before you start complaining, Microsoft has not increased the pricing for their products for about 10 years so it’s kind of overdue. They have added a lot of additional functionality without increasing the price. Also, it’s not every product that’s increasing, however it is the following:

We currently have 4 open positons. We are looking for reliable Service Desk Specialists to act as a Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 Technicians. We are also looking for a Client Relations Manager.

You must enjoy talking to and working with people. We offer a relaxed drama-free environment with cool people, and you will learn a ton in a supportive environment.

So, your organization has suffered some kind of data breach. Encryption. Theft. Destruction. It’s a sucky day to the highest degree. It’s time for an Incident Response Plan. Actually, it’s past time for one. It’s too late for one, actually. But let’s talk about what you can do if you don’t have an Incident Response Plan.

Douglas Adams. You may know this famous Sci-Fi author from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Sure, he was an accomplished author, with an impressive understanding of science and a unique perspective on technology, but was he also a prophet..?

We almost always talk about security in terms of the external, the bad guys out there, doing bad things.

Today, we’re going to talk about those other icky-type people: Employees.

From the CEO/HR standpoint, the first thing you need to do is keep an eye out for employees who are being terminated/fired/let go.

Here’s a tip for getting the most out of the batteries in your cell phones, tablets, and laptop computers!

You may have heard that by power cycling, or letting a device go completely dead before charging it back up, extends the life of your batteries. That may have been true for old NICAD batteries, but modern lithium ion batteries do NOT like being power cycled!

If you’re responsible for the IT of your organization, chances are you’re going to get complaints about performance. Complaints specifically on report performance from your line of business application. Your line of business application being the critical application that basically drives the service or product that your company delivers to your clients.

So, let’s talk about report performance and basically database performance and some key things that you can do.

So you’re the CEO of an organization and part of your job is to make sure that your company assets are protected. One of your most important assets is actually your domain name. Notice I didn’t say company name, but your domain name. Ours is Simplex-IT.com.

Now most of us know we have to go and register our domain name with an internet registrar like Go Daddy, Network Solutions or some other registrar. There are a lot of us that take the lazy way out and we register through our web developers, our managed service providers or someone else.

So you’re going to go to a cool restaurant and you take your car and you drop it off at the valet parking. They give you a ticket and you take the ticket and put it in your coat pocket. Then you take your coat and put that in the closet because you’ve got your suit coat on and this is your outside coat and that’s cool.

Somebody watched you do that and they just walked in the closet and they take out your coat. They have your valet ticket.